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Footwear insanity

03/31/2011

There is nothing more disturbing than witnessing a footwear atrocity first-hand. Okay, that's not true, but let's pretend.

The facts:

Last week I found myself in the Kohl's shoe department. I say 'found' because I can't remember why I was there and, trust me, when I go to Kohl's for footwear there is always a reason. Ferragamo? The back clearance room in Von Mauer? Those trips are pure recreation. When I go to Kohl's for shoes, I go with a purpose. That's just the way I roll.

Anyway, I'm in the Kohl's shoe department and I see them: a certain style of sandal (extra points for alliteration) that had been unleashed on the world last year. They were ridiculous. I thought they would be in and out of fashion in less than a humminbird heartbeat. Yet, here they were for season two and they had multiplied. A full row of different variations was dedicated to this style. That's part one.

Part two happened this past Monday. I was back in Kohl's shoe department due to a shoe emergency that has no bearing on this story. Plus it might make one of my family members mad so my lips are sealed. Anyway, remembering the row of ridiculous sandals I brought my camera, thinking it would be fun to take a picture of it and write a post. Well, guess what. Only one style still remained on the display shelf. Below it looked like this:

That's right. Only two boxes remained.

From the photo above, I'm not sure if you can appreciate the full glory of this sandal so here's a close up:

Seriously?

What am I not seeing here? Is there some chilly ankle epidemic I'm not aware of? A sudden fancy for cankles? I can't remember the last summer day when I said, "My toes are so hot but my ankles are so cold! Why don't they have sandals for that?"

Maybe I'm just out of touch, but those things look incredibly silly. Am I alone here, or are you with me?

Tell me, what do you think?

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Travelling back in the day

03/23/2011

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This post is going to be more of a rolling train of thought than a literary masterpiece because, a) I’ve still got a travel hangover from our Spring Break trip and b) I’m depressed because I’ve been using Rimmel’s Lash Accelerator for almost two months and my lashes still look nothing like Zoey Deschanel’s. Thinking on it now, though, that may be for the best. Is it me, or in the commercials doesn’t it look like she’s having trouble keeping her eyes open? Those lashes must weigh a ton.

Anyway, the lack in flow will be more than made up for by the wealth of knowledge I will share with you now. If you’re young, it will lift you to a higher level of enlightenment (lie). If you're old, like me, it will make you nod nostalgically in remembrance (no lie).

Anyway here it is.

Our car looked like this. Sweet ride, huh?

When I was young, most of our family travelling was done between the mid-Seventies and mid-Eighties. Back then families rarely flew on a plane. In relative dollars, air fare was about twice as much as it is now and gas was a little cheaper. If you went on vacation, chances are you drove. That’s what my family did.

The car ride? Boy, it was different than now. First of all, we had freedom. Seat belts had been in cars for years, but people didn’t use them often. That began in 1984, when states started passing seat belt laws. There also weren’t many car seats. Those came in the mid Eighties, too. Young kids used something similar to a booster seat. When we were babies, our parents put us in little beds that were held steady by a big prong that nestled into the back seam of the seat.

Scary.

While travelling, kids held reign over the entire area behind the car’s front seat. In our family, we got half of the cargo area of our station wagon, so we made a 'fort' and took turns using it. There were three of us, so the remaining two had to share the large back seat. It looked like a couch. There were no bucket seats. Up front, the seat was the same. There weren’t two seats with a break in the middle -- no cup holders or storage compartments. In fact, there were no cup holders at all. There were ash trays that went unused. When cup holders replaced them the world rejoiced, at least the non-smokers did.

As for what we did in the car? We didn’t have Gameboys, Nintendo DS, etc. There were no IPods or portable DVD players, either. (Heck, we didn’t have regular DVD players!) In fact, few cars had anything more than a radio, maybe an 8-track tape player. Later cars had cassette players. How luxurious. For fun we would read, write or draw, or look for license plates from other states. We would also play the Alphabet Game, where we’d hunt for letters of the alphabet in order on billboards, road signs and other cars.

Oops. Wrong 'billboard.'

Speaking of billboards, they were plastered all over. There are much fewer of them today. There were more because we didn’t have those blue ‘FOOD’ and ‘LODGING’ road signs that listed businesses at every exit. Not that there were tons of food options anyway. Highways had no fast food at every turn. There are twice as many McDonalds now as there were back then. We always had sandwiches in a cooler.

One thing we had more of was hitchhikers. The practice had not been outlawed. We never picked up one. Our car was full, plus a lot of them looked pretty scary. Still, there were a few that looked just fine. We hoped they made it to where they were going. I had a friend whose sister didn’t. That’s a story I’ll never forget.

One other thing I remember was all the trash alongside the road. People chucked their junk out the window. You’d even see garbage bags in the ditches. It was just plain gross. The Crying Indian changed all that. If you don’t know about this American icon, here is a commercial:

The “Keep American Beautiful” movement took off. No one wanted to be a ‘litter bug.’

But let’s get back to technology. There were no ATMs, though credit cards had become fairly prevalent. People used cash and Traveller’s Checks, both of which you got at your bank.

As for cell phones? I wish! If you broke down, things looked grim. Instead, there were pay phones at every major business. Hotel reservations were made in advance. That is, unless you wanted to try you luck. Many people did. One year, while my family was travelling home from Colorado we drove home without a plan. On the west side of Kansas, we started looking for a hotel. All of them were booked. It took three hours later and many miles before we found a motel. The seedy place charged by the hour. We didn't touch anything. My mom refused to let us crawl under the sheets. We spread our coats on the bed and slept on top.

GPS devices didn’t exist, either. Everyone used maps. There was no internet, so there was no MapQuest or a quick way to find hotels. Mobil, AAA and Fodor all had guidebooks with listings of hotels and attractions for every region. Hotel chains also had books of their own. That's the way we got information. One thing we did have that you don't see much now was a ‘fuzz buster,’ or radar detector. It detected when cop cars were near by, so drivers could slow down and not get caught speeding. (Don’t get any ideas, punk. They’re illegal, you know.)

Well, that’s the extent to what I remember. I’m sure there’s more info out there. I’d love to hear your travelling stories, be you young, old or in between.

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Spring break safety tips

03/10/2011

24 Comments

This post is going to be short because my family is going on vacation today and I’m, like, freakin’ out!

We’re heading to Florida and it’s not lost on me that a lot of older teens will be heading in the same direction with lots of friends and zero parents. Nothing like an unsupervised Spring Break trip to get me inspired! So if you’re one of those teens going where too many teens have gone before, I’ve got some words of wisdom:

- First of all, read my Leave No Wild Child Behind post. Rules to live by forever and always. Seriously.

- Know that the risk of getting raped is triple the national average in Daytona Beach. Don’t be a statistic. Stay in groups and stay safe.

- Stay away from dark alleys, balconies, and anyone claiming to have tiger’s blood and Adonis DNA. Also remember that the guys who seem the nicest can end up being the most dangerous.

- Realize that when someone says, ‘Come on, one more won’t make you sick,’ chances are one more will, indeed, make you sick. Also make sure never to drink from a cup you haven’t poured yourself or watched someone pour for you. Ever.

- If you’re still feeling cocky, watch the movie Taken with Liam Neeson. May it scare the bejeezus out of you and instill common sense at the same time. Plus it’s an awesome flick.

And lastly….

Do you know how many Girls Gone Wild videos are in existence? 15? 20? 30? There are over 150. Yep, you heard me right. We’re talking thousands of girls. Of those thousands, you know how many are glad they are in one? Only a handful and it’s because they want to get into the porn industry. The first one was released in 1998, which means many former ‘stars’ are now moms. I’m curious. Do you want to see your mom in a Girls Gone Wild Video? Think your future kids will want to see you? How about your dad? Think he wants to see you in one now?

Well, mini ‘girls gone wild’ videos and action photos can be captured by any cell phone and by anybody. Don’t become a viral video or embarrassing Facebook share. Digital photos, like herpes, last forever.

With that in mind, have a super duper great time! J If you’re trip seems somewhat lackluster, just think of me. I’m about to be stuck in a car 20 hours with my entire family.

Woo hoo.

bikini photo from jemingway's Flickr photostream

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Worst fictional moms of the last fifty years

03/03/2011

16 Comments

Some moms are good.
Some moms are bad.
And some are really, REALLY bad.

So I thought it might be fun to compile a list of some of the worst moms in contemporary fiction. I assembled a team of experts (a.k.a. Facebook and blogging buddies) and asked them to tell me who they thought were the worst fictional moms over the past fifty years or so. Then I added my own two cents. Below are the results.

A few are funny. Most are scary. All make me thank my lucky stars I didn't get them as a mother. But let's get to the good stuff...I mean the bad stuff. Oh, you know what I mean. Here they are in chronological order:

Eleanor Iselin from Richard Condon's 1959 book, The Manchurian Candidate, later turned into the 1962 movie. Cold and calculating, this deliciously wicked Russian spy did anything for power, including letting her grown son be brainwashed into an assassin. Add a creepy kiss into the mix and you’ve got one twisted woman.

Hattie Dorsett from Flora Rheta Schreiber’s 1973 book, Sybil, later turned into the 1976 made-for-TV mini-series. Why did Sybil have so many different personalities? Because of her mother, of course. Doling out physical, mental and sexual abuse, this mom won the trifecta for terrible behavior.

Margaret White from Stephen King’s 1974 book, Carrie, later turned into the 1976 movie. Christian fundamentalism + batcrap crazy = this awful freak of a mother. Thank goodness Carrie had sweet and wonderful high school classmates to fall back on. Oh, that’s right. They were nasty, too. Poor Carrie. If only she had horrific powers enabling her to take revenge….

Joan Crawford, as inspired by the real Joan Crawford, from the 1978 memoir, Mommie Dearest, which inspired the 1991 movie. Okay, okay. This woman was a real person, but it was Faye Dunaway’s characterized performance of her as an alcoholic tyrant that turned her into one of the worst mommy legends of all time. Based on the first tell-all book by her adopted daughter, a lot of Crawford’s friends disputed the book. But the public didn’t care. They couldn’t get enough of the phrase, “No wire hangers!” The truth of it all? We’ll never know.

Corinne (mom) and Olivia (grandma) from V.C. Andrew’s 1979 book, Flowers in the Attic. What comes between a mom and her father’s inheritance? In this case, nothing, even if it means hiding your kids in an attic for years and then trying to kill them with poison. Don’t worry, though, grandma knew the kids were there, too, which is why she starved and beat them repeatedly. Man, what a team they made.

Mrs. Lift from the 1987 movie comedy, Throw Momma from the Train. How bad does a mom have to be for her grown son to want to kill her? Pretty dang bad. There’s only one way to get this abusive battle axe of a mom to stop pestering her son -- throw her from a train!

Peg Bundy from the 1987-1997 comedy TV series, Married with Children. This woman was nothing to laugh about. Well, actually she was. This loud mouthed, no work, sit on the couch all day queen of hair spray was a role model of the worst kind.

Lily Dillon from the 1990 movie drama, The Grifters. Think Mom’s always got your back? Not this one. This viciously cold-blooded con artist was willing to do anything, even sacrifice her own son, just for a few bucks.

Beverly R. Sutphin from 1994’s movie comedy, Serial Mom. Ah, June Cleaver with a cleaver. This pearls and pumps suburban mom had only one small problem: her feathers got ruffled easily. When her daughter was stood up on a date, she murdered the boy. When her neighbor failed to recycle, she murdered her, too. A lot of people with bad manners were punished. A mother's job is never done.

Mary Jones, from the 1996 book, Push, later turned into the 2009 movie, Precious. Incredibly abusive, lazy, ignorant, and selfish, this ghetto mom to teenager Precious Jones had no love for her daughter. Read the book, saw the movie, and I’m still shuddering.

Livia Soprano from the 1999-2007 drama TV Series, The Sopranos. What mom would convince her brother to put out a hit on her son? This conniving one would. With the sole aim of making everyone in her path miserable, this Mob matriarch knew how to push everyone’s buttons and did. The inspiration for her character? The creator of the show’s own mother.

Mom from the animated series, Futurama, that began in 1999. Thank goodness this woman is a cartoon. Can you imagine her in real life? This ‘sweet old woman’ is a foul-mouthed, evil narcissist who loves manipulating the three sons who help run MomCorp. Yikes!

Julie Cooper from the 2003-2007 TV drama series, The O.C. Just because she was pretty didn't mean she wasn't wicked. The woman manipulated. The woman exploited. The woman slept with her daughter’s ex-boyfriend. Not cool. Bad mom, bad!

Honorable mentions also go to Estelle Costanza from the 1989-1998 comedy TV series, Seinfeld, and Marie Barone from the 1996-2005 comedy TV series Everybody Loves Raymond. Sorry guys, you made me laugh too much to hate you!

Anyway, how'd we do? Anyone we missed? Who's the baddest of the bunch? I'll be a good mom and listen. Promise.

16 Comments

Footwear insanity

Travelling back in the day

Spring break safety tips

Worst fictional moms of the last fifty years

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