Stop Fronting!

At the risk of pulling a Dmitry by posting video after video with no text for weeks at a time in order to assuage my guilt for not blogging, I have a question about this one. Why do marketing agencies insist on trying to make people believe that dorm rooms look like hotels in heaven? Students have likely visited campuses, children don't care about college, and grown-ups have been to college and know what real dorm rooms look like, so who exactly are they trying to fool?



Maybe I'm wrong and roommates burst out into spontaneous-but-choreographed dance sequences upon meeting, and proceed to decorate their spaces sans school-commissioned furniture. In which case you screwed me, Colgate. You screwed me.

Beware of the Fuwa!

The upcoming Beijing Olympics will start at exactly 8pm on August 8, because eight is a lucky number for the Chinese. With the "Curse of the Fuwa" upon them, they can use all the luck they can get.

The Fuwa, meaning "good-luck dolls" or "friendlies," are the five teddy bear-looking creatures designed by a famous Chinese artist as the mascots for the 2008 Olympics. Together, their names say "Beijing huanying ni," which means "Beijing welcomes you." Adorable, right? Plus they're much better than the mostly lame mascots other countries have come up with in the past. So why are Chinese people deathly afraid of them? And why has the artist totally disowned them? Because they believe that these cuddly beasts, created in the image of the country's favorite animals, are portents of the various disasters that China has suffered so far this year.

*In May, an earthquake devastated Sichuan province, renowned home of the Panda bear. JingJing, the black one, is a Panda.

*HuanHuan (the red one in the center) represents the Olympic torch. He's also being blamed for the unrest that occurred during the torch relay around the world, which also brought light to the situation in Tibet and made a lot of people think of China as oppressive and feudalistic.

*YingYing (yellow), a Tibetan antelope, is apprently the cause of that whole Tibet mess.

*In April, there was a deadly train crash in Weifang, known as the "Kite City." Nini is a swallow who's decorated like a green kite.

*It was in June when the fear of the Fuwa grew significantly. Southern China was hit with the worst flooding in 50 years, forcing over 1.6 million people to evacuate their homes. Beibei, the blue one, is fish-shaped and also represents water. She's also female, naturally.

Religious and superstitious people (many Chinese are both) have a knack for connecting coincidences with divine or supernatural influence (sometimes very convincingly). But this is pretty weird. What do you think?

The Complicated Art of Satire

Here's illustrator Barry Blitt's illustration on this week's cover of the New Yorker:




It's obviously an attempt at satire and not a reflection of the magazine's actual opinion of the Obamas (or at least let's hope not), so I won't even address the people who are offended by the depiction.

I guess the question is whether or not you think the cover is successful. Most Americans are pretty dumb and do not understand the concept of satire, so it could be a failure in the sense that it didn't take that into consideration. But you could also say that the magazine addresses a specific audience, a more "intellectual" and urbane one, so it's fine because the people who were supposed to get it, did.

One opinion I read from a Slate commenter kind of intrigued me:

"Any satire that can be easily used to further the viewpoint it's trying to satirize, is, by definition, a failure. The New Yorker cover fails abysmally."

Interesting way of looking at satire. What do you think? Was this cover a success? Should a magazine only pander to its intended demographic?

Weekly Weigh-In

So I've been away for a while and I need to get back into the blogging habit. I'll start with a weigh-in. Among the most irksome of my texting pet peeves are the following:

*When you text someone to tell them know you're on your way or you'll call them later or something like that, and they reply with, "k." I hate one-word text messages to begin with, but one-letter ones are abominable.

*When people use numbers to abbreviate words, i.e. l8er, gr8, 2morrow, etc.

*Text message forwards ("Send this to all your friends in the next 5 minutes or you'll be ugly and loveless forever!!)

*When people text when they should be calling, resulting in 20 unnecessary messages back & forth, or call at inconvenient times when they could just text.

Do you agree or disagree with any of these? Any others you would add?

"Believe Me, It's Torture."

Graydon Carter, famous editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, asked writer Christopher Hitchens if he would agree to go through water-boarding and then write an article about it for the July issue of the magazine. Hitchens is a pretty sick opinion writer and does a lot of good stuff for Slate, where you may have run into his stuff. Water-boarding, if you're unfamiliar with the term, is a form of torture that's currently on the menu at Guantanamo Bay. They basically strap you down to something so that you're lying on your back, put something over your head (a mask, a bag, whatever) and pour water into your breathing passages so that you're pretty much drowning. Some people like to think that this isn't a form of torture, and the VF article is his response to that.

The site won't allow me to embed the video, but you should really click on this link and check it out (it's not long). Hitchens is given two balls, one in each of his hands, to release his grip from if he feels untolerable pressure or pain. I thought it was amazing how quickly he not only relesed his grip but flung the balls out of his hands, when the prisoners at Guantanamo are probably being subjected to this for hours at a time, if they don't die first. Watch the video and then tell me, do you think it's safe to call this practice "torture?" And do you think it's justifiable that they're doing this to people we're holding without any sort of hearing or trial?

Weekly Weigh-In

I recently got my hands on a Viewmaster. Remember those? It was like your own little private show filled with splashes of technicolor and funny little cartoon characters from the old days. (I just turned 24 and I'm having a mid-twenties crisis.) It got me thinking about all the cool stuff from my childhood, like snap bracelets, Rainbow Brite, the Saturday morning TV lineup (California Raisins), Tamagotchis, and how all the cool kids in elementary school used to bring in Now&Laters and the more colors you had, the cooler you were. If you had the flavor that just came out, you were basically King of the World.

What's your favorite thing from your childhood, or the thing you get most nostalgic about? A TV show, movie (Land Before Time, anyone?), food, candy, toy...give it to me.

Are You ADHD?!

Pharrell "Freddy Sess" Williams has some tattoos that he wants to get rid of. It happens -- you get inked up when you're 17 or 18 and then you grow up and realize you did something dumb. Fair enough. It's HOW he's getting them removed that bothers me. The procedure he prefers involves using new skin to cover the ink. Says Pharrell in the July issue of UK Vogue:

"It's basically like getting a skin graft, but you're not taking skin from your ass or your legs. These guys actually grow the skin for you," he explains. "First you have to give them a sample of your skin, which they then replicate. Once that's been done, they sew it on - and it's seamless."

Umm, what? They grow skin for you? That's DISGUSTING!!! **gag**

A lot of you guys have tattoos. If money wasn't an issue, and knowing that getting your ink lasered off often hurts more than getting the tat itself, would you consider this procedure instead?

Weekly Weigh-In

Do you get annoyed when people read over your shoulder? For example, if you're on the train and you open up the newspaper and someone standing behind you or sitting next to you starts reading your paper, too.

I'm So Ready.

Apparently lots of people are saying that Heath Ledger could win an Oscar for his portrayal of the Joker in Dark Knight. Director Kevin Smith recently saw the movie, and here's what he had to say, courtesy of his blog:

"Courtesy of Peter Sciretta over at SlashFilm.com, I caught an early screening of "The Dark Knight" yesterday evening. Without giving anything away, this is an epic film (and trust me: based on the sheer size and scope of the visuals and storytelling, that's not an overstatement). It's the "Godfather II" of comic book films and three times more earnest than "Batman Begins" (and fuck, was that an earnest film). Easily the most adult comic book film ever made. Heath Ledger didn't so much give a performance as he disappeared completely into the role; I know I'm not the first to suggest this, but he'll likely get at least an Oscar nod (if not the win) for Best Supporting Actor. Fucking flick's nearly three hours long and only leaves you wanting more (in a great way). I can't imagine anyone being disappointed by it. Nolan and crew have created something close to a masterpiece."

He dissolves into the role? It's the Godfather II of comic book movies? Hmm...I'm excited.