A Klosterman-esque Tirade



I have neices. I feel we should get that out of the way. Keep in mind, I don't show pictures, I often tell them they are punished, and sometimes tell them Santa and The Easter Bunny hate them.

They enjoy bland Disney entertainment. Amanda Bynes, Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff, the parade of collarbone protrusion delights them the same way I am delighted by vodka. Only I don't think The Lizzie McGuire Show ever brought on nausea and a penchant for inappropriate men.

Anyway, Nicole (Niece The Elder, age 10) and I were watching Amanda Bynes vehicle "What A Girl Wants". The story of an unbelievably quirky chick who has never met her father (A Colin, i forget which one) who, also unbelievably, is some kind of British prince or some such. Makeovers, bitchy rivals, heartwarming talks with absent-dad over cocoa puffs ensue. Cockles? Warmed.

ANYWAY, somewhere in the middle, a young brit boy attempts to woo Amanda B. by taking over a party and singing her a rock song. I immediately and with great urgency, turned to Nicole and said "That. Never. Happens."

I knew i had to take it upon myself to keep her from suffering from "Lloyd Dobler Syndrome", the affliction I posses that drives me to teeth gritting whenever a guy DOESN'T hold a stereo over his head when I decide I like him. And where does it start? With that Nazi Walt Disney and his bland fucking entertainment. "Prince Charming". C'mon only an anti-semetic insanity pepper like Walter could come up with that shit.

Nicole immediately gave me a little sass, replying "It Could!". "No," I reiterated, "it won't.". Then I sent her to bed. It was 6pm.

Perhaps now she will settle for a non-romantic with alot of money, as so many of us should. I have averted the inevitable, as now she will not search out her Lloyd and spent most of college weeping as so many of us do, when trenchcoat wearing sad-eyed gentlemen don't wander into her life, but I can rest assured that I have squashed all romantic notions.

Imagine, my pretties, (and this applies to both men and women, Romanticism is hardly gender specific) that a gorgeous aunt, raven haired and well dressed, swopped down upon you at the end of Pretty In Pink and informed you that Molly Ringwald is FAKE, Andrew McCarthy is weird, Duckie is the obvious match for bucktooth girl in ugly dress, and James Spader is hot wether he was the bad guy or not. Perhaps high school would've been different? Perhaps you would never have had a broken heart? Can't help but wonder how things would be different if John Hughes never paired up The Psycho and The Jock.

I continue to hate Walt, as it's his fault that Prince's are thought to be charming, but Nicole is now steeled against the various assholes and douchebags sure to plague her young adulthood (at 10 she is already alarmingly beautiful).

I told her the easter Bunny still loves her, though.

Wow...something made me happy.


Like any Urban Hipster not living in a dark cave, I have seen the OK Go video for "Here it Goes Again". I chortled and promptly sent it to the part of my brain reserved for things my psyche decides I do not need, like my times tables and friend's birthdays. Over the course of the summer, I remained faithful to my other hipster obsession We Are Scientists (seriously, go to their website, they are so much smarter than Bono.)

However, upon my 10 millionth perusal of "Best Week Ever" (whew alot of name dropping today), I stumbled upon Ok Gos video again. And...I am obssesed.

For those of you unable or unwilling to be brought to YouTube by my link, the video unfolds thusly: Four guys on eight treadmills. Choreographed. They walk and jump and skip and so forth in such a way as to make one want to dial up QVC and put eight treadmills on finance and enjoy an afternoon of falling on one's face, happily losing teeth in an effort to be a fraction as cool. Ok Go, however, doesn't fall. The video is a single continuous shot with a stationary camera, so no tricks and no edits.

Undoubtedly, it was a painstaking process to come up with the moves and execute them properly. At some point a few of the boys jump onto the handlebars of the treadmills and jump off violently. I have half a demented mind to show this to schoolchildren, just to see what hilarious pratfalls ensue. Come on, dangerous exercise machinery + kids = funny!

Furthermore? The lead singer? Is. Smoking. Hot. Of course only I could fall for a Boston educated floppy haired skinny dude in a band. He's like Seth Cohen V2.0.

I am doomed to repeat myself over and over and over....
(it should be brought to all's attention that the not very hot guy lip synching in the video is NOT the singer. He is Tim, the bassist. Lead singer is Damien, the one in the red pants.)

Anyway, I have spent the better part of my (recently unemployed) day watching this video. And then watching it again. There is something calmly mesmerizing about 4 dudes wandering across the landscape of alternating treadmills in such a way as to make them look like they are swimming. Into my heart. And just when I couldn't stands no more...I went to YouTube and found their performance of the very same act LIVE at the MTV VMAs!

4 dudes, endangering life, limb, and certainly floppy hair, in front of P Diddy and the universe. I want to settle into a 5 way love nest, perpetually screaming "OK Go!!" as they bring me to whole nebulas of happiness.

This video may have unlocked the cold metal armoire that resides beneath my ribcage, encasing a dead stone formerly called a Heart.

Oh wait, Lindsay Lohan didn't get hit by a truck today?
< end happiness >

Career Meltdown Reached (Hers, not mine)

Well, it official. The public as a whole cares nothing for Britney Spears anymore.

Case in point: She had a baby. Chica had a BABY for god's sake! Another heir to the throne of empty Cheetos bags and spare tires. And? No. One. Cared. Not AOL, not Yahoo News, not even the many many many blogs I troll on a regular basis. How, you ask, did I found out? It was a sidebar in the Long Island edition of Newsday. Along with a picture of BritBrit looking like Ursula from The Little Mermaid. (please picture a jowly young woman with a greasy toothy smile and breasts of unusual proportion)

It was another boy, as yet unamed. And no one cares.

But why not? We collectively yearn for the implosion of her marriage, drool over her steady downfall to hell in a handbasket of hair extensions, and buy magazine whose cover she graces semi-naked and kind of ickily preggers. And the culmination of it all stirs not a single member of the press. I even watched The View today, those possessed clucking chickens that sound like tea kettles, and even those prying harpies didn't mention it! God dammit I wasted 15 minutes of life on The 4 Dyke-ateers!

What now? She can't sing for fear of popping her stiches (well, she couldn't anyway, but you get it), and assuming she's still doing her own make-up and swiffering her own cottage floor, she may not sing for a long time.

Jesus. She was everything! She was the cutest thing ever! Justin, Rolling Stone, GQ, MTV! All hers!

SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU HAVE KIDS!?

It's true. It wasn't K-Fed, it was the babies. We would have been delighted to watch her drop wine glasses and strip on table tops and publicly fuck her boyfriend (don't deny it, you'd buy that issue of USweekly for SHIZ.), but the babies, as amusing as it is to see them bruised and bounced and hurled off ten story buildings, are boring.

She was America's Sweet Piece of Ass, he America's Sweet Piece Of Ass' Stubbly Plaything.

The babies? They're just babies.

Here's hoping at least one of them is The Omen or something.

Hit My Baby One More Time,
Rosa

I'm Crunchy.

My confession...
I went to Whole Foods and visited a vegan restaurant all in one day.
Not a typical Rosa evening, I assure you. Usually I read alot. And eat red meat.
More of a right leaning liberal, what with my hate of all races and colors and creeds and all (Rosa- An equal opportunity hater).

But today, my pretties, I was feeling...crunchy. Do not ask me to explain. Perhaps it was some kind of protein deficiency or early onset osteoperosis. I am, truth be told, normally rather healthy. When everyone else at works gets 5 donuts and a grande full fat cappucino i am eating hummus and drinking water. Because i LIKE it that way, mind you, not because I love God's smelly dumb animals or hate fur. I like fur. On me.
Kill it, i'm cold.

I digress.

Have you ever been to Whole Foods? Allow me to explain, backwater Myspace friends. Whole Foods is crunchy. It sells such things as 7 dollar granola in a hand made hemp sack, organically grown-cruelty free toothpaste and, or course, tofu. Especially tofu. There is alot of tofu.

Not to be labeled too crunchy, they also carry high end stuff such as good quality (eye poppingly expensive) olive oil and fresh sushi and organic veggies (which do, admittedly, put Stop and Shop produce to absolute crushing shame.)

As KMart in Manhattan is a tiny cousin to a massive MegaKMart in Cowtown, Kansas, Whole Foods in Chelsea or thereabouts ain't got nuthin on the one in Redbank, NJ. First of all, it's so massive as to induce vertigo. The Olive Oil ALONE take up ONE WHOLE AISLE! OF OLIVE OIL! Come on now that's muy awesome.

Upon entering the gleaming bastion of pleasant supermarket employees (believed to be extinct in the outside world) sporting dreadlocks in blonde hair (should absolutely be banned everywhere but Jamaica) you are greeted with 6 dollar jars of organic natural cruelty free peanut butter. From whence is the cruelty removed? Who cares? It's 6 dollars! It must be LUXURY peanut butter!

It's not. There's a thin layer of oil on top and the whole thing makes you wonder if you had dropped the full jar into some wet sand.

Well, maybe the macoroni and cheese that is "organic" will taste lighter and less like death then Kraft.

It doesn't. Mac and cheese is fake, i don't care how many pictures of grass you put on the box. If my cheese is powdered, you have done something to make it so, and you used a machine and some kind of lab now SHUT UP and go protest something.

5 dollars for 6 "natural" marshmallows?

Ok those were TOTALLY worth it, but that's candy. Candy is fructose laden and good for the soul, no matter how many dolphins do or do not die to bring it to you.

But a whole aisle of olive oil? Do you people understand that given an earlier birth year i could BE Rachel Ray? I have a love affair with good quality ingredients, and olive oil that is 15 bucks per ounce is made for ME! I will roast red peppers, sizzle up some pork chops, begin a nice risotto....oh olive oil, would that you were cheaper so that I could cover myself in you...

Um.

I digress.

So, Whole Foods? Fun because I love to food shop, not so fun because all the stuff tasted the same or worse than less expensive yet no less healthy ingredients from Grand Union.

On to the restaurant. "Down To Earth" it is called. A zagat rated vegan/vegetarian place located in the heart of achingly cute Redbank. The sidewalks are paved with red brick! (I am easily swayed by charm. Ask any boy who's spoken to me)

Our menu was as follows:

Potato Skins to share
Portobello Mushroom Sandwich for him
Vegetarian Lasagna for me


The potatoes were, in fact, potatoes. I do not know if they were ever treated cruelly, but they seemed to have been baked in a humane way. Not humane, however, was the bacon. No, Virginia, it was not bacon. It was "tempeh bacon".

Fuck your mother.

But i was in a vegan place. I brought it on myself. We did enjoy the skins but most peculiar was the fact that we were filling up very quickly. Odd, shouldn't these things free the conservative side of your soul to decend into hell thus making your whole body feel lighter?

My escort for the night only recently developed a taste for mushrooms, so the portobello was rather lost on him, but I found the lasagna to be surprisingly good. Save for the abomination of this land called "gluten free pasta". It tastes very very similar to run of the mill Barilla, but once cooked to anything past perfect "al dente" it falls apart. God invented gluten for THIS PURPOSE! Gluten makes your cookies chewy, your pizza crusts bubbly, your pastas STAY TOGETHER.

Don't start that some people are allergic to that kind of thing. They should've been left by the side of a mountain as babies in the first place so as to rid the earth of "gluten free pasta"!

I digress...

There was no cheese in the lasagna, it was replaced with good quality soft tofu which had been treated with some kind of herbed mixture so as to make it rather tasty. I enjoyed it.

We did, however, leave without dessert.

Most peculiar was the clientelle of these two fine establishments: Frighteningly skinny people with stern looks on their faces. One waitress was boasting that she posted her "Rasing your child Vegan" Instructional short on YouTube. (P.S, stupid, YouTube is so ubiquitous I think there is video of Lincoln's assasination on there).

Oily peanut butter, 10 dollar toothpaste, crumbly pasta, mediocre cheese, boring soft drinks, 7 (SEVEN!) different textures of tofu...it does not make for a happy life, does it?

So, vegans, I tried. but your lifestyle so totally sucks. You see those sharp things in your mouth? Those teeth you saw the last time you pretended to smile? Those are made for tearing into flesh. I like tofu. I like smoothies. I adore olive oil. I hate the president. Can't we simply get along based on those common factors? MUST you hate me for my fur and my hamburger.

Tell you what. I will starve you, vegan dredheaded skinny person, for 2 days. Not so much that you'll die, you see. Just enough to make you realize what hunger is. Then, i will put two things in front of you.

Plate 1- a lightly roasted firm tofu with soba noodles in a sesame sauce
Plate 2 - one bite (ONE bite i say!) of medium rare filet mignon.

Your brain will know what to do.

Im'a go have some ice cream with gluten in it. And dolphins.
Peace!

What is WITH us??

Our Generation, that is. A generation i had previously held in highest regard, for being the most gay (Queerness being less of a stigma and more of a social commodity, akin to owning Louis Vuitton luggage), the most feminist (to a fault, even), the most political (arguably), I suddenly and without pause realized today: I am either caught between generations or you all everybody are skin crawlingly immature.(Forwarning: I mean this only in a Fashion sense)

To wit:

I may, in the near future, have a wedding to go to (I am not cutely alluding to mine own, fear not) and decided with set jaw to find a dress that costs more than 30 dollars, is made of real materials, and does not come from a place that is near another place that sells "ice cream from the future".

Being the lazy ass my baby boomer parents raised, I went straight to my teacher and lover, The Internet.
........And all I found were "logo tees", "terrycloth hoodies", "camis" (boys, that is the tank top your girl wears under one of those whoreish see-through tops that usually ends up on your floor) and of course, slut underwear.

Seriously, I've long ago resolved myself to cotton underthings (to the surprisingly massive delight of both male friends and my washing machine alike). The rest of my peers seem to think rayon underwear with monkeys and duckies and butterfly jewels on the ass triangle part that sticks out of your whore jeans are all acceptable. But I digress.

I flashed with lividity at the websites that were NOT HELPING ME.

I mean, I just wanted a pretty dress and had to wade through Paul Frank monkey head socks and Hello Kitty wallets. And when I did see a link on certain sites to "dresses" I was lead to a place of either obscene (even for ME) cleavage-baring-synthetics or hipster button down courdoroy jumpers.

What REALLY brings me to my usual exasperation? I went to the site of a very expensive clothing line, Anthropologie, and found a beautiful dress (for $300...still sitting on that one) and decided to occupy myself with some tops whilst thinking about making the purchase. I scanned over the link list again and again, not finding "tops" or even "shirts", refusing to believe this place wouldn't sell me a nice long sleeved sweater or some such. And then I realized...the link was marked "Blouses". I have never, in my life, refered to anything on my torso as a "blouse". I have never found a catalog geared towards my born in the 80s noggin with "blouses" in the table of contents.

Or COURSE it's a fucking blouse! That is the true fashion term for it! Not a "tee"! Forever, these items have been marketed to us as "tops"!! Because we are STUPID! Because we have been CODDLED in our little fashion world! The 80s kids learned to sew, the 90s kids went vintage! Our style icons include Britney "I'm Country" Spears, Ben "I'm so lazy my girlfriends dress me" Affleck and Christina "I even DRESS like I have herpes" Aguilera.

My God...my mom was right...my belly is over-bared...

We are totally the worst! Who else but Generation Y would, without irony, wear a "Free Martha" t-shirt to an AIDS Awareness walk (seen on NY1, not kidding)?

What is WITH us?? What of our FUTURE??

Think on it: Your look in your 20s and 30s is pretty much what you stick with for the rest of your life. The grandmas with mile high blue hair and voluminous "blouses" are holdovers from the early 1960s. Your mom probably does that blow dried teased bangs thing she perfected in her 1986 heyday.

Will I be wearing an ironic t-shirt and chuck taylors to my adopted daughter's high school graduation? Hair pin straight, jeans low at the waist? Or, worse, a $40 polyester dress bought at the shop next door to Auntie Anne's Pretzels?? Sheesh. I shiver.

Let us get together, ersatz goths, the second wave of metal heads, the greasy haired hipsters, the very last of the potheads to enjoy Sublime, and buy a nice coat. If I see one more of you cats with a CBGBs shirt on, I may remove my own head.

The dress? Remains unbought (here it is though: http://www.anthropologie.com/jump.jsp?itemID=11727&itemType=PRODUCT&iSubCat=297&iMainCat=17 ) but I just couldn't let a blog go unblogged. I leave you,

Straddling the gap between "Cute" and "Chic",
R.A.D.

(Editors note: I bought a kimono instead...so much for growing up. Gonna go play Geisha now. SAKE!!)

Paris Hilton has hurt me again. No, she didn't give me herpes (not yet, anyway. I imagine her particular strain can be contacted by touching clothes she once looked at). She actively and often makes my very bone marrow hurt with her stupidity, vapidity, and hooker sensibilities. This time, I feel I should take her to court for mental distress.

Her exact words, as seen in US Weekly*:

"There's nobody in the world like me. I think every decade has an iconic blonde including Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana and right now I'm that icon."

what.

I feel my blood pressure rising. My very blood cells are jumping beans of lividity.

First of all, every decade? Blondes don't even exist in the wild before 1920. Queen Elizabeth was a well documented redhead, Cleopatra a brunette. Mary Pickford, perhaps the first movie star, had brown hair. So the whole "blonde icon" thing doesn't hold much water. Let us assume she means every generation she can remember exists. I'm sure she thinks Hilton Hotels came into existence along with the rest of the universe in a Big Bang that took place sometime in 1946.

Secondly, Marilyn was a shrewd business woman who knew EXACTLY who to sleep with. A multi faceted and troubled creature in possession of a melancholy, beauty and sex appeal not seen before or since. Princess Diana was an icon of stature and poise, certainly known more for her philanthropy and class than her hair color. Both women were sadly and tragically taken well before their time was up.

Paris is an ugly cum-guzzling whore who should have, by all means, died in a snuff film at age 14.

Furthermore, whose icon does this bitch really think she is? She hangs out with Trust-Fund-Baby Douchebags and the kinds of girls that drink champagne directly out the bottle while falling off a table in a trendy nightclub. Flashes of blonde actresses and singers infinitely more talented, likable and for God's Sake BETTER LOOKING than ol' Herp here come to mind in an instant. Gwen Stefani, Reese Witherspoon, Rachel McAdams, fuck, even Ashlee Simpson has emerged from the cocoon of her old nose to become smoking hot. Sean Preston Spears Federline is more of an iconic blonde that this...this....thing undoubetly mad with syphilis.

"Nobody in the world like me". Oh yeah? You, you cunt, did a TV show with a girl whose only difference from your stick insect visage was her extra layer of heroin induced fat. THAT'S hot.

What could possibly make her..no..IT..what could make IT think it's an icon?? The fact that she is, perhaps, blonde? Well, we all saw the tape. I suppose her hair color is true enough, but it's that word. "Icon". It drives me up the wall. It is thrown around entirely too much.
Webster's defines Icon as "An important and enduring symbol, an idol."

Madonna, I will reluctantly admit, is an icon. Bob Dylan, Kurt Cobain, Bono, aforementioned Marilyn. All represented their decades and generations through art or style. Watermarks of the height of their particular movements, be it grunge or rockstar philanthropy**.

Could Paris be implying that she is indicative of us all? We are all, here on this particular nook of Myspace, born in the early 80s. The children of Care Bears, Thundercats, Oklahoma City and the first WTC bombing. Could the future generations look back on us and Mademoiselle Hilton with the same eyes through which we see Kurt C and Generation X? Were they truly a pack of flannel shirted mix tape making slackers with dirty hair and babies made out of wedlock? Are we nothing more than a gaggle of blank eyed slaves to fashion and reality TV with ridiculous cars and an over abundance of jewelry?

Um.

Yes.

Bitch has never been more right in her wicked life. How's THAT for an enduring symbol.

Horrifying, isn't it?

* Hey, I was at the beach with my sister and forgot my New York Times Book Review, ok?

** And that, my pretties, is a blog for another time.