The Least Offensive Theory of Shopping goes like this: Your younger sister drags your begrudging self into a Strawberry’s. After playing on your cell phone for a few yawny minutes, you start casually filing through some of the racks because.... Sequined Fergalicious blouse. Pleather leggings. “Cuddle Power” Carebear underwear. By the time you reach the faux-denim romper with gold heart buttons you’re like, hey, is this cute? Five minutes later: Yeah this real cute. It’s only when you get home, far away from the Gloria Estefan-pumping confines of the store, you tragically realize your 30 bucks would have been better spent on new floss and a precautionary tube of athlete’s foot cream. Point being: Cuteness is environmentally relative. The latter sentence: the new signature on my credit cards.

Land of the Lost, Land of the Malls

Oh hi! Haven't posted for a while. I was visiting the parental abode last week, spending perfect spring days alternating my time between the indoor confines of the Mall of Amer and various chain restaurants, getting to intake some much missed trans fat in a state that still doesn't have a senator.

Anyway, I saw Star Trek last night. What a rollicking romp of a revel! I have much I want to say about it, but not really in any coherent paragraphic form, so bear with les bullets:
1.) Flip phones in the first scene, really? This is supposed to be "the future" after all. Is this foreshadowing some terrible fate for the iPhone? Do Romulans gain majority shareholder stake in Apple during the space year 5306-87-6839? So many questions. And a little sadness, for I think the movie could have gone differently had the Federation possessed iPhones. Impending spaceship crash? THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT (TM)

2.) Captain Kirk is dating Audrina, or so says OneIndia, the most reputable source for Hollywood gossip. Or Hollywood gossip, outsourced.

3.) Okay, that bar scene in Iowa--- was that not Good Will Hunting meets space age setting? Genius townie walks into a bar, flirts with hot female cadet, she insinuates he doesn't know what xenolinguistics is. Genius Townie gives a perfect definition. Male cadet comes over and is like, "Is this dumb townie bothering you?" Hot cadet is like, "no, I can handle him." Still, fight ensues because Genius Townie loves fights! Then academy professor looks up Genius Townie's files and discovering that his "apptitude tests are off-the-charts" gives him a lofty speech about his destiny. Moral being: No Undisclosed Genius is Ever Left Behind, Ever. Not in Boston. Not in Iowa. Not in the Future. NOT FAIR.

4.) Homeland Security should take comfort that the chauvinistic American cowboy personality is always right, even in space. Western Hem's future dominance assured! Terrorists lose!

Lastly, they showed a preview for Land of the Lost before the film last night. I will see this because I like Will Ferrell. I also thought it was interesting that half of the comedy seems based on "ironic CGI", like this-scene-is-funny-because-it's-painfully-obvious-that-Will-Ferrell-is-standing
in-front-of-a-blue-screen (see top picture). This is good, because CGI nowadays is like an annoying scholarship student always showing off its accomplishments.

There is a questionably homeless man who sits in the Minneapolis skyway (pictured right) playing an acoustic guitar and singing a song called "Tim Pawlenty Must Die Because He Lies" which sounds similar enough to Corey Flood's "Joe Lies" that I'm going to call it a possible reimagining. I should probably also take the opportunity to inform you that though the skyways are crazyfuntimes, I'm not quite sure why there is a collected mass looking out on the street in this picture. Guesses: Prince sighting, cow parade. Hey!

I bring this up, because it's pretty obvious now that Tim Pawlenty will die, albeit not in the literal means outlined by the skyway man. Nate Silver had a good rundown on 538 yesterday about Pawlenty's plummeting approval rating due to the fact he refuses to give us people an acting senator and is instead towing the party line, and for no good reason. ( Didn't he learn his lesson when the GOP, standing in his homestate's convention center, proclaimed Sarah Palin their VP pick?) Luckily he has a pocketful of "my wife won't have sex with me...she's fishing" jokes that will play real well with the other ice hockey Dads when he's out of a job in 2010.

Here is A Case Study

How Flocabulary, A Study-Guide Publisher Reinvented Itself.

Enjoyment of “reality” shows like The Hills or Daisy of Love come with certain conditions. One: it’s a bad idea to watch alone. Or at least without a solid Internet connection and the misguided notion that blogs are friends. There is nothing more demoralizing than sitting down by your lonesome to a show whose main value lies in the external dialogue created around it. The Hills is basically that back page of Star magazine “Week’s Worst Dressed” wherein C-grade comedians and sometimes Julia Allison make unfunny, mostly incomprehensible quips at the expense of the terribly dressed. (Picture: Martha Stewart dressed in striped shirt, Quip: “Looks like someone misses the prison couture.” Yes, THAT one.) The point being that the terribly dressed celebs are a platform, just as reality shows like The Hills showcase stupidly attractive narcissists vaguely acting out scripted reality so Ivy League grads with loosely defined bloggery-type media jobs like yourself can expound on your campy enjoyment of it or sit around at Monday night viewing parties and make sharp-witted comments. And don’t get me wrong--- THIS IS A GOOD THING. But my point is that if you took away that meta-TV reaction, you are just sitting on your couch alone watching morons who will never earn your emotional investment. That can’t be fun. I mean, I suppose there are people in the world who take The Hills very, very earnestly, hence Lauren Conrad getting a Kohl’s line, but I’m pretty sure those people are stupid or preteens. And I’m pretty sure I don’t want to address the stupid or the preteen.

I hope you don’t consider yourself violated when I tell you that this has all been an overly meandering exposition for a fairly simple sentiment: I frakking LOVE MTV’s high school reality show Taking The Stage. Mostly because the equation doesn’t compute. MTV + high school + reality show doesn’t = dumbfuck microcelebs. And, as it turns out, that’s more refreshing than a 4pm Fresca after a mid-afternoon tampon change. Sure the students have banal high school anxieties— half of Mia’s time is spent trying to decipher the lame-ass flirtations of Tyler, who has a girlfriend he is very clearly too pussy to leave. But after Mia finishes her naïve, navel-gazing rant about how great they would be together, the fact remains that she sings like this:



Contrast that against Heidi Montag’s ill-fledged music career or Spencer Pratt’s should-be-trademarked method of existential dickbaggery, both of which unfortunately have more staying power than swine flu. Isn’t it kind of nice to watch a reality show with people you like, despite their annoying traits? With people who maybe have some obnoxiously grandiose dreams, but are so talented you’re not upset by all the props MTV throws their way? I think this is what being a really nice person feels like, and I like when TV inspires positive character growth in my person.