Malingering’s World

By some unknown force of nature (or possible exposure to Santa Monica Pier seawater) Bratz dolls have now mutated to look and act like real live children. They have actually kidnapped and replaced several real children in the homes of various Westside parents who are too busy yakking on their Bluetooth headsets to notice any sort of anomaly. It is only the nannies who recognize the change, and are wondering why the 5 year old is suddenly asking if she can go out to the club and get freaky, but of course the parents dismiss the nanny and her observations, “Honey, Maria’s yapping about something again, will you give her another $20 for the day?” Beware. The Bratz may be coming to your city next, and eventually stage a national takeover.

I apologize for the 5 day break in posts. I decided to try to expand my horizons and worked on a larger scale pissing off American Girl Doll lovers and also making sure away team fans don’t act like helpless jackasses at Dodger games. Then, because of some odd American Girl karma, I couldn’t get on the internet for two days, either at home or at work. Anyway, now I am back, and to show my apologizes, I give you the above photo as a peace offering.

405 South during rush hour.

Yes, women were always left behind in the MLB wear. Then they started making these hideous pink jerseys and pink caps and pink pants to try to appeal to the vagina-bearing fan (our genitals are pink, why shouldn’t our clothes be?).

[side note: once I was in the Top of the Park store at Dodger Stadium and I picked up a pink jersey and turned to my sister and said "what kind of fucking moron spends $90 on a PINK jersey? Is this Dodger PINK? Does the sign say THINK PINK?" and only to have my sister motion to her right where there were two women trying these jerseys on and telling each other how very cute they look. I almost felt embarrassed but then thought better and thought I was doing a public service, but it wasn't so as they both purchased them.]

While some of the fitted MLB wear was appreciated, now Alyssa Milano is trying to get her hand in things (just because she has her hand on Barry Zito’s/Brad Penny’s/Carl Pavano’s cock doesn’t mean she can just march into the stadium and be fan of the game). I am rather ashamed that she sites the Dodgers as her favorite team (though I’m sure this will change according to which pitcher she is dating this week). P.S. Check out her effect on MLB pitchers, it’s embarrassing. Bring back Carolyn Hughes!

Just because women have boobs, does that mean we need to show them off at every possible opportunity?? No.

Just because Alyssa is attractive, does that mean she dresses well? No.

Then again, the blog responses are indicative of who will be wearing this crap (misspelling naive morons who know nothing about sports or grammar or apostrophes).

Find me a fan at the Dodger game who will wear this and I will show you a beer drenched muffin top.

While I know there are a number of Japanese pitchers in the league whose dicks she is dying to get her lips around, do we really need a fucking kimono? Does Dice-K approve of this Yankees apparel?

This one is my favorite report. Think about it, Alyssa. Really. Think about it.

This was the traffic TWO AND A HALF HOURS BEFORE GAME TIME on Opening Day. People were pissed. The LA Times has run 3 articles about how shitty the parking situation is. And now you come up with this load of bullshit?

I love the Dodgers. But this made my (Dodger Blue) blood boil:

Johnston said the organization did receive negative e-mail about Opening Day, but very little regarding any parking problems for Tuesday and Wednesday’s games. The e-mails showed there is a certain type of fan that is having a hard time with the new system.

“Many of our fans who have been coming here, some of them for 45 years, they like to drive in one gate, out the other gate, park in their favorite spot, all those things,” Johnston said. “Those are the people that this has been a difficult change for. For the average person, not much has changed at all. They come into a gate, they are directed to a parking spot, and they walk into the stadium. [Then] they come out and get out.”

So what you’re telling me, Camille Johnston, Dodgers’ senior vice president of communications, is that you would prefer to cater to Miss French Manicured Toenails who wears wedge sandals to the ballpark and has no idea what a double play is beyond that it sounds a little like something she did for Girls Gone Wild back in Cancun last spring and her date Mr Greek Letters with a ratty backward baseball cap that says Abercrombie (which division is that? AA?) in flip-flops with hairy foot tops who decide it would be “really cool” if they went on a date to the Dodger game and spend the first 35 minutes of their arrival talking about how long it’s been since they’ve been to a ballgame and then leave in the 7th inning because it’s “boring” instead of your long time 45 year dedicated fans?
And don’t even get me started on the disgustingly faulty logic that the system worked because parking troubles improved on Tuesday and Wednesday. The ONLY reason it looked any better to you from your sky high glass protected box seat is because there were HALF AS MANY PEOPLE AT THE GAME. Even if paid attendance was 56,000 on opening day and 35,852 on Wednesday, I am willing to bet my peanuts and cracker jacks that a higher percentage of people didn’t show up on Wednesday than Opening fucking Day where tickets were being sold by brokers for 8 times the face value. The people who show up on Opening Day and pay exorbitant prices to go (because you lied about selling single game opening tickets online, but that is an entirely different rant) are the die-hard Blue Thinking Dodger loving fans who believe in the religion of Vin Scully and pray in the church of Chavez Ravine. They are not going to miss Opening Day. Your statement that parking has “improved” just because 50% fewer cars showed up is insulting to those of us with brains, which comprise a good 60% of your fan base.

This is your “new and improved” parking system on Tuesday night. Note the hoards of cars here trying to log jam out the Downtown Gate. Also note the wide expanse of empty space leading to the Academy Gate. Last season, these cars would have been able to veer left and exit out the back gate, thus cutting down on the crowd here. But with the new system we have sealed our fate upon entering, and lust as we might for a chance to speed down that path to freedom there is no chance in parking lot hell (why do you think brake lights are red?) that anyone will be allowed out an alternate route. Even if it made everyone’s life a bit easier.

And while I’m addressing this monstrosity of a problem which is sucking hours out of my week, may I please bring up the fact that the earlier you get there, the farther from the entrance you have to park. See below, I got to the park at 5:30pm for a 7:10pm game.

The lots were entirely empty. I grinned with delight at the perfect parking spot right by the exit which I knew would be my path to freedom. And then the giant walking highlighters (pictured above) start waving their orange flags at me, coaxing me through rows of pylons until I am in the absolute furthest spot from the exit. Please, I begged them. Let me park over THERE! But no, there is no sympathy in highlighter-ville and I was exiled to a deep dark corner of parking lot hell, so that I may spend the next 4 hours grimacing in anticipation at the thought of trying to go home.

I’ve been going to Dodger games for a long time. Last year I attended 33 home games, and my parking has a system so fine tuned and perfect that once I set foot in my car it was guaranteed I would be speeding along the 110 freeway within 10 short minutes. It did not fail me. To me, this was my reward for being a dedicated and quick-thinking Dodger fan. Sure I had to pay $330 in parking last season, but hey, I got in and out without any trouble at all and I got to see my beloved team make it to the post-season.

This current situation is a kick in the scrotum to those of us who love the Dodgers. I have tried to think of creative solutions to this problem:

1) Take a train to Union Station and take a taxi cab up to the park, then call another taxi cab to come pick me up when the game is over. Unfortunately, even the cabbies were stuck in traffic this past week, and I’m sure they’d charge more than $15 to be put through this torture.

2) Purchase a pit bull. Park in the $5 flat rate lots over in Chinatown and walk the mile or so up to the stadium. Tie the pit bull outside the park during the game. Game is over, walk back with the pit bull next to me, as I will likely be mugged a total of 34 times on my way from Stadium Way down to Broadway.

3) Move into that apartment that sits at the entrance of the 110 freeway with the boarded up windows and rusted barbed wire fence and the old toilet on the stoop. I would call for the next open house but the numbers on the door are disguised by so many tags and so much spray paint that this is rendered impossible.

4) Purchase a nice tent and live on the grounds of Dodger Stadium in the bushes where all of the drunk fans throw their Corona bottles and pee after the games because they know they’re going to be stuck in the parking lot for 2 hours trying to leave and they are going to have to empty their bladders before that.

5) Start picking up transients downtown on the way to the stadium and pay them off to sit in my car so that I can park in the special “carpools of 4 or more only” lot.

Until then, I’m just going to bitch and moan. April 13th is Cap Night. There will likely be 55,000 people there. I’ll tell you how it goes.

These are the prices for the American Girl hair salon at American Girl Place.

While it may be “fun” to watch your $86 doll be pampered in a doll sized chair with a doll sized comb and a doll sized water bottle (a facial can be added on for only $5!), I’m feeling rather certain that the 8 year olds who are indulging in this luxury do not have this much disposable income. Which leads me to believe that there are parents (and not just a few) who are out there spoiling their little girls by teaching them it is okay to spend $15 to have someone else put a ribbon in your pretty princess’s hair, which translates to: It is more special to have other people do things that you could otherwise do for yourself and that’s okay because money actually does grow on trees and lands in Mommy’s purse and that’s why consumerism brings happiness.

And I wondered where MTV found all of those people to be on “My Super Sweet Sixteen.” Silly me.

Today I give you another piece of mail I received from another admiring fan. As you may or may not know, I am a collector of fan mail and rather enjoy reading the collection of letters and comments left for me. I received this rather benign e-mail which then stirred up a number of questions, and I am allowing myself to purge my blogsphere angst onto the page. You do not need to keep reading, but allow me my catharsis, please.

Flickr mail from: [name hidden to protect the belly] Subject: Wow! Yes, I have seen some hilarious photo ops myself. Yet I have chosen not to display the ones I did manage to shoot because I started to wonder how I would look if someone secretly took photos of me on a bad day, or at a bad angle. Who knows, maybe I have no good angles. I guess that I felt ashamed of myself after I got to the 5th or 6th photo of yours. I had to stop looking. I typed in the words ‘stretch marks’ to see what came up. Mistake. I have a photo of my own belly, after 3 children, posted. Sadly, I do not wear those marks proudly. I never wear a short shirt or a bathing suit. I suppose you’re happy to know that. Ask yourself , Are you perfect? Do you have flaws? Are you self-conscious? Just curious.

Okay lady, my take on self-consciousness is this: Pretty much every person on this earth minus the arrogant narcissists are self-conscious. To deal with this there are basically two options.

1) To be self-conscious but do your best not to let other people’s opinions affect you, to laugh at yourself and others because no one is perfect, and to be happy with who you are regardless of how other’s view you because most people are idiots anyway.

or

2) To be self-conscious and then blame others for it, project your own self-loathing onto strangers and then get angry at them, and to not accept who you are or what you stand for and live in constant fear of criticism and general misery.

I also think the fact that if I sit and watch people walk around like this in public and comment to the person next to me, it’s okay, but if I photograph it and comment to general cyberspace, I’m an asshole brings up an interesting philosophical point. Does our existence within society suddenly change if it is “made permanent” by a photograph? Does the anger stem from not having a choice about who sees you (i.e. 500 Grove patrons vs. 200 Flickr users)? Do you believe your image is an ephemeral and intangible entity until it is frizen by a camera? Are very public spaces still considered to be private if 500 people look at you, but once a photo is taken, that privacy is invaded? I don’t know.I will have to look around for some philosophies which incorporate technological advances and then cling to them in order to give me an identity.

And I’ve said it once, I’ll say it 50 times: the point here is not to be “superficial.” It is to show how being superficial and focused on your image then backfires and achieves the opposite result. (See above.) It also should remind us that we can laugh or snicker or snark at how someone looks and while this has no bearing on our opinion of who this person is, one’s image is still a reflection of oneself onto other people, whether we like it or not. I don’t think that will ever change, regardless of how progressive we try to be. The obvious example of this point is women who dress like tramps/sluts/whores/skanks/etc. and by that I mean showing excessive cleavage, asscheeks hanging out the bottom of the skirt, bearing a large amount of belly skin. Sure, they could be sweet, loving, innocent, charitable virgins who haven’t once given a blow job at a frat party, but all of that is lost when a stranger looks at them and sees a tramp. That’s how our brains work and there is simply no changing that. So these photos are emphasizing that point: No matter what we do we will always be projecting an image onto the people around us, and we can choose whether or not we want to take control over that. In the end, we do live in a society and our brains are shaped according to our interactions within that society, and how we choose to exist within these boundaries is really up to us.

There is something about that crease where the gut meets the hip that just borders on offensive. Everything that exists between your gut/panus and your mid-thigh really should be kept in private. It’s not about being conservative or prudish or lame. I really just think that’s how God intended it to be.

I have mixed feelings about the situation surrounding our infamous radio not-friend Don Imus. Groups around the country are calling for him to be fired to prevent him from spreading words laced with racism and prejudice. Fine, fine, we all agree something needs to happen. But part of me feels that firing the guy just isn’t the appropriate punishment.

I suppose I’m trying to determine what would be better for society in the long run, censoring the guy or allowing him to act a fool and be humiliated by the majority of people in this country. There are two things I’m thinking about here.

1) Don’t fire the guy, make an example of him. Sue him for libel or slander or defamation or whatever else. Show people how his remarks are damaging and oppressive. Let the civil rights groups continue to harass him. To fire him simply shuts him down, and we can go back to pretending that racism doesn’t really exist. Part of me thinks that people want him fired so they don’t have to face up to the fact that there are people just like him all over the place, who share his views and make generalizations like this. Studies have shown that these prejudices are ingrained in our unconscious, in people of all races and cultures. For almost everyone, they exist before we can even think about it, and the answer to changing that is promoting awareness of these ideas. Removing them from mainstream society just sweeps them under the rug. It doesn’t solve anything.

2) Or maybe it does. Maybe our generation is not salvageable and we need to focus on the young ‘uns. Maybe if we remove prejudice from popular culture and the mainstream, those who are born now will not develop these inherent biases and they will grow up truly believing and enforcing equality, pop culture won’t reinforce stereotypes, and there will be rainbows over our country every day.

But if you’re going to do that, then for the love of God someone needs to censor people like Howard Stern, who demeans women on a daily basis; most stand-up comedians, who thrive on sweeping generalizations; AM radio talk shows, which seem to reinforce gender stereotypes; the list goes on and on.

There is a small piece of me with empathizes with Imus. I have been known to do and say very stupid and offensive things to try to get a laugh. Most of the time I don’t believe them and I say them to be so over the top that I assume people will understand the utter ridiculousness of the statement and simply laugh at how offensive it is. But everyone’s looking for a fight and they will gladly jump on me to call me a racist and a bigot and a Nazi rather than realize that it was said in the name of humor.

I don’t know Imus, I don’t know how he operates in the real world when he isn’t trying to be funny and appealing. Maybe he’s a KKK loving asshole who burns crosses. Maybe he’s a regular white guy who has prejudices but his actions are the same as any other regular white guy who isn’t attacked by minority groups. I really don’t know. But my question is: Is firing this man going to solve anything in the long run?

It’s all rather confusing to me and has made my head spin.

Back to the Ugg boots and tramp stamps for me.

Now that American Girl Dolls have taken over the Westside, my guess is that every girl in 3rd grade who does not have a birthday party at American Girl Place will be ostricized by her classmates. Parents, do your girl a favor and give her the party! It’s only $60 per kid to have a 90 minute birthday party, $60 x her 8 closest friends is under $500. (Or you could spend the entire day at Disneyland for the same price. You know, whatever the kid wants.)

*note that to have a “hair salon spectacular” at your 90 minute party there is an additional fee, so don’t forget to budget that in

 

Good thing they have an American Girl class on how to make money. It only costs $24 per person, which I suppose means that anyone idiotic enough to pay for the class really does need it. Talk about selection bias.

For the love of god, a $90 deserves better than this! She’s being toted around like a mere piece of merchandise! I am hoping they will soon develop a Department of American Girl Protective Services (DAGPS) to monitor these injustices and force these kids into a parenting class (for the cost of $29/hour).

Shit, you know, when I was a kid I was happy with a burger and fries. A McDonald’s Happy Meal was treat enough to get us through the month, and if we were extra good we could get a hot fudge sundae with nuts on top. Check this out: The dolls get salad nicoise. Can the kid even SAY “nicoise”? And tell me, what 8 year old kid likes portabello salad and artichoke dip? However I must admit that $22 seems reasonable, given $15 cost of having someone put a ribbon in the doll’s hair (gratuity not included).

Okay, okay, I know. I’m a rude bitch. Perhaps I need the American Girl manners class. I’m hoping for $90 a person they will teach me that it’s rude for an American Girl to want to have a career or be independent, and that proper manners include not thinking for oneself, falling victim to out of control marketing schemes, and pressuring others to spend money so that you can have anything you like. I also hope they eliminate that pesky imagination that kids have, and hopefully naturalize them into the submissive position of proper womanhood.

And for the girl who wants to do it on her own, she can pay $27 (per person) to learn from an American Doll Stylist how to put your doll’s hair in a ponytail. Please note that it is a 4 part class, and $27 for EACH PART. Part include “5 minute hair dos” for when your doll is really in a rush to get to the mall and just doesn’t have time for the braids, and “fancy up-dos” for when your doll is invited to a formal event or wedding (which won’t happen, since there are no male dolls for them to marry).