plastic not so fantastic

More often than not last week, I was assailed by words, images, and vocals pertaining to plastic surgery. Men getting 'Bro-tox'; Candy coating plastic surgery with virtuous terms like 'maintenance' and 'highlighting ''natural'' features', culminating with the plastic train wreak that is Rock of Love Bus where money should be placed on how many more episodes it will take before Bret Michaels is visually indistinguishable from the contests who make Amanda Lepore look frugal with the knife. Jezebel's weekend contributer, commented on a USC study that equates plastic surgery as the new placard of class status and how this effects women's perceptions of their own bodies. Personally, I would be more apt to let a doctor file my teeth into points or outfit me with robotic apendages as an alternative to getting surgically sculpted to a preconcieved ideal; atleast in that situation the modifications would be of some use. However, to give a temperature reading of my feelings on 'enhancement' i even find hair extentions and victoria's secret's vein of boob crushing pushup bras to be eye-roll worthy and somewhat desperate. Some people cite that they cannot go outside because they are so traumatized that they have small breasts or that their nose was so crooked it caused them to be the town leper. Is plastic surgery necessary in some cases for the patient's mental well being? Yes. Do I find it socially laudable that we are collectively homogenizing our bodies to a pop-culturally presumed ideal? uh not so much. And really, especially where contestants of Rock of Love are concerned, why are you going to pay so much money for a body and dress it in such cheap clothing? I could close up with just closing my eyes and smiling wishing that everyone would just be happy with what they have been given, but that is not only trite it would never work. Cultures have always placed value on a seemingly silently agreed upon standard of beauty whether it be fairness of complexion or darkness of hair or straightness of teeth or the spectral ends of voluptuousness and prepubecent body types. And it is understood that some 'looks' will be more or less socially popular than others, but I feel it to be irresponsible to permanently alter the only body you have just for, what often ends up, the acceptance of others instead of yourself.

not so handy

Ok. Specific vagary: nothing drives me up the wall more than a shitty illustration with a overtly flourished signature. Perhaps its a cornball still life where in the fabric is rendered to look like cardboard instead of, you know, fabric. Maybe it's a depiction of light reflection off a glass' rim that is conveyed with a five point christmas tree STAR. Then to cap it all off, right in the cornor, carefully exacted, is a fucking Ben Franklin 2.0 insignia.Seriously, if your signature is the only thing someone can remember about your work, you might need to work a little harder on your rendering skills. This goes for that calender of animal illustrations that I thought was done by children with disabilities, but was really executed by art-lovin' adults. What happened to the good ol days of the self-deprecating artist? Now everyone is pushing their crappy chalk pastel drawings on innocent bystanders and trying to tell the internet while working on their reality show clip reel. Not every child, or adult, is the next Plato, Homer, or Da Vinci. Not everyone is gifted and talented if they did possess above average (or average) intelligence they would have powers of comparison and see that, really, that shit kind of blows and if you tell me how awesome it is one more time I will likely snap.

conglomerate cop-out

Looks like with Conde Nast folding some of its papers and consolidating others, W -the magazine I formerly loved in the flush of youth, now I'm getting annoyed with it's bad habits in old age- is fast becoming a catchall for all the offal the other doomed diaries leave behind. To back track to the upsets at the Conde Bldg. here is a run down of their current troubles: Portfolio has less issues a year, Men's Vogue is being folded into Reg. Vogue (take that Sean Avery!), Rumors of Anna Wintour leaving as EIC of Vogue only to be succeeded by none other than CARINE ROITFELD (I fucking hope!) AND! NO HOLIDAY PARTY!
Back to W, seriously, it's getting old. It's no better than American Vogue anymore. Celebrities on every cover for at least the past 6 months, my hands down favorite being Angelina Jolie on the cover of the ART ISSUE. Even my brainy, art imbibed, sig other-who is usually impervious to women's magazines-scoffed and sighed when he saw the nonsense they were peddling in that particular issue.
This issue, December, which I have yet to even get all the way through because, at my age, I am NOT interested in some tv-drama character-ess pouting through the pages because she, apparently, with being conventionally pretty and fairly tall, is a model now, but you know, she has a career too, like, doing stuff.
Not to be out-shone by the clever cover lines and cover choice, you also get what seems like A MILLION FUCKING PAGES OF WATCHES. Ranging from a modest $84,000 (Chanel) to an aspirational-or asphyxiational depending on who you ask- $800,000 (De Beers). Seriously, watches, as an item, are for the poor; for people who need to know what time it is. To have a watch that costs more than a NYC condo is ludicrous. If you are that rich you have no use for the construct of time; you can pay someone to wear your bedazzled time piece(as fancy watches are called) and tell you the time in the native tongue of whichever far flung locale you are currently detoxing in. To top it off, the watches themselves aren't even all that great to look at! They are so adorned that even a rapping guest on Cribs would find the piece a little outre.
Oh, but it's not over, you then are treated to a food article that I can sum up in 10 words: Who is a thin, pretentious, glutton? So sorry, not you.
A stimulating two pages of "Celebrities are rich, thin, eat astronomically expensive and rare food, but not pedestrian items like spinach-artichoke dip. I would rather die, or give up the treat that is cold bone marrow, than eat that slop. Though, ramen noodles are cool because they are kitschy. Oh, exercise 2 hour a day and maybe you wouldn't be such a poor, fat-ass, dear reader. P.s. you're POOOORRRRRRRRRR and uncultured! lol"
W is becoming that girl in middle school that thinks she is so cool because she has her mom's hand-me-down Coach bag and is totally getting a Beemer for her 15th birthday even though she doesn't get her license for another year (yeah, she failed 1st grade, but that's because the teacher didn't see her true genius). She is the leader of the popular girls despite the fact she has a dog-face and frizzy hair; the other kids probably only like her because she has a trampoline and her parent's let her read Cosmo and watch Cinemax.
In a nutshell, or a $3000 Tumi hat box, W, you've got to go. We really can't do this anymore, pack your monogrammed luggage, take those Cheetos you are hiding behind the water heater and get out of my house. I don't want to see you anymore, you need an intervention, you're out of control, and I just don't love you enough anymore to call and get you on the show. Sorry, it's not me, it's you.

Disgust and laughter: down by da beach

I thought waking up to the sounds of waves, labor day sunshine and the fifty pound fall fashion issue if W would be a good goodbye to summer and hello to fall. Little did I know that ten-ish pages into the actual articles (which start a good 100pages past the ads), I would be near vomiting from the overtly cloying article on the nonsense that is San francisco academy of art. I am typing this from my phone-that's how much I think you need to know about this-so instead of going into great detail I am going to bullet point the offenses:
-an instructor saying graffiti started in the west coasts-knowlege much?
-it is a for profit private school with open enrollment
-those c-mdumpsters (sorry mom) from the hills tv show went there, but atleast they dropped out
-an instructor defensively prefacing herself with "I've written two books on illustration" chill, if you were confident in your former students work you wouldn't have to freak on yourself so hard
-full sports program; what? That makes no sense
And the two biggest crimes
-Saying "we can teach good taste...we can teach anyone to be am artist"
-followed by an ADVERTISEMENT to enroll at the school a scant 25 pages after the article

How much did that school just PAY to give themselves a better image? Hard work and actual design acheivemet is so last season

daily ricidulous

Daily Candy LA sent out a news letter this morning about FACERCISE exercises for idiot women who are internally paralyzed with fear of aging and wish their tan mug would catch up. The facercise website has such classic images as the ones above, but really, why are you paying any money or even time to this pipe dream? The new age-iness of the whole thing is belied by the portrait of Carole who looks like she has had more botox than the dented can of chickpeas in my cupboard circa my kindergarten ballet recital. Oh, if the instructional video and audio tracks aren't enough to whip your face-flesh into shape you can pay for a one on one session with Mme. C herself. Aging is a part of being ALIVEEEEEEEE. The only way to stop wrinkles is to die. You wrinkle because of loss of collagen that supports your epidermis on your skin and the natural degradation of muscle fibers. Not because your face watched too many episodes of Oprah and sat on it's face-ass instead of exercising. Even Dr.90210 gives better misguided medical advice than this nonsense.
UPDATE: nymag makes great assertions on this young face-stick body phenomena of middle age women. the types that would yoga-lates kick flip onto this band wagon of facercises.

skinny tards

are you joking me? someone really said this? and people are making money off of the 'innovative' idea that a vegan diet will make you drop some serious ell-bees? new york times profiles the authors of the apparently phenominally well-selling books 'skinny bitch' and its follow up cook book. both books tout veganism as a beneficial diet choice and have such illuminous readers as "Kimberly Latham, a fashion publicist in New York, (who) said: “I would never have read ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma.’ I’m not even sure I know what an omnivore is. But I know what a skinny bitch is, and I know I want to be one.”" the authors scare the readers off of eating animal products because 'like duh they're icky' though, common sense begs to assert itself that if one eliminates SEVERAL food groups from their daily diet, whether they be grains, carbs, sugars, meat, dairy et al. you will drop some weight in a fucking hurry. also, how is it appropriate to enlist women and/or men in a diet of veganism to firstly reap its body slimming benefits and only secondly address animal rights concerns? shouldn't PETA be throwing red paint on someone involved here for the trending out of vanity fueled animal cruelty awareness? maybe they should all just, i don't know, read a real book like THE JUNGLE for example? Upton Sinclair was no skinny bitch, but at least he stayed away from such fine prose as “‘Chicken’ Noodle Soup: Just like Mom used to make — minus the pieces of decomposing, rotting chicken carcass.” ugh whatever, this exasperated vegan needs a beer and a nap with her kitties.

so creessy

pre-info: just this year designers have shown pre-fall runway looks. this is new. new new. and entirely retail, not vision/design, driven. you see, in real life time, january-early march and late june-early august are death for the retail world; it's those times referred to as 'winter' and 'summer'. generally, no high-end or directional lines set in stores in those months so buyers rely on late or replenishment shipments of already owned goods to carry them through to the big fashion seasons of fall and spring, but now with the release of pre-fall retailers have 'fresh' goods to bolster their profits in the summer death months. this can also be construed as an optimistic look for the next years economy with designers betting on people wanting to buy medium weight coats and pre-fall-y luxury goods in july. fyi: there is no pre-spring because resort exists, but it generally is not a big enough draw to be carried in stores outside of the 3 b's: bloomingdales, bergdorf, and barney's. so far only a handful of designers have shown pre-fall looks, most showing 12-24 looks posed in look-book/resort style and true to their purpose they are more conservative and would be appealing to a bigger selection of potential shoppers. however, chanel showed as well, and it's as if karl lagerfeld said 'homie dont play that' . chanel showed 64 (sixty four!) separate looks, menswear included and is said to be influenced by amy winehouse. some of the looks seem to be influenced, at least a little, by marc by marc jacobs circa 2003, but that is just me, you can compare yourself. he said she said aside, 64 looks is a ridiculous amount of clothing to produce, even just as samples for a runway show, especially when chanel already shows full 60+ look shows for fall and spring with resort clocking in with over 40 looks. so creesy.

the train wreck that is project run-gay rant

so i gave instant message commentary on last nights episode of project runway (which only served to infuriate me) where the contestants had to take 'out' trends and make them faaaaaaabuuuulloouuussssss. such trends as: overalls, leggings, neon, poodle skirts, and 70s flare. all of which the contestants were embarrassedly sporting. the winning outfits were facemilies of 20$ rags i saw two days ago at a suburban forever 21. the losing outfits more closely resembled to couches off of a bad telemundo version of Dynasty.
everything was all set in sleeves and straight grain shifts. the techniques are remedial and the concepts are tired, but i can't fully hate on the cast because they are so pitiful; they got excited to work with horse face herself on a line for steve and barrys. not exactly a career move to catapault you into the fashion stratosphere.
the show is nothing but bad news; you go on under the guise of showing your *~taLeNtS!>!~* to the WORLD on the TEE-VEE, but really you come off as a slyly-edited caricature of yourself and are better known by the fights you are in or the flops you send down on your elderly models every week. you earn nicknames such as: big gay party monster, smurfette, or tiny cut-rate paris hilton with hideously out-moded scene mullet and brain dead fall out boy lovin' alterna girl side-kick, or that-imbalanced-bitch.
the only lucky ones are the people who are eliminated right off the bat because you won't be recognized on the street as that guy who can't sew a slip dress or make a button down shirt or continually wears s&m inspired hats or got drunk that one time and fell off a subway platform; losing allows you to still have a chance at defining yourself by your talents and not by editor approved sound-bites.