I Heart Starbucks

photo courtesy of bigmarketing.wordpress.com

If you live in Mahattan and haven't explored it's northern-most reaches—WaHi, Inwood—then you know nothing of the lingering popularity of oversized hoop earrings and inch-long acrylic nails, and something wholly new to me: t-shirts that say "I [heart] DR." (The cracker that I am first understood that as "I love doctors" because of the proximity to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. Boy, was I wrong).

Similarly, unless you read the New York Times article yesterday about the feud brewing between Washington Heights standby coffee stop, Jou Jou, and recently instituted Starbucks, then you know nothing of turf wars. I do. I live up there and I have seen West Side Story, so I suggest we settle this matter in a fashion that is as New York as Crackerjacks are American: a knife fight.

Whoever wins has my undying allegiance, except on weekdays when I go to Starbucks because it is so delicious.

Bald Eagle says lean on me

Based on some sort of left-field premonition, I think I will someday need a cane—or maybe I will just use one for sheer pleasure as a sartorial accoutrement, like an attache or a brooch. Either way, when one strikes my little girl's fancy I take note.

In this case it was during the President's summation of the State of the Union. That whittled bald eagle now ranks a close second behind the Ronson Lighter walking stick I have vowed to put a down payment on with my economic stimulus handout. To hell with my heating bill, I say! My fingers might be frostbitten, but when I stroll down Madison Avenue people will say, "that girl...can light my cigarette with her cane, and that is very practical."

The caffeine coat hanger

photo courtesy of Marketofchoice.com

Thanks to movies like Juno, Knocked Up and those 30-foot-billboards erected by pro-life activists, abortion rates are at their lowest since Roe vs. Wade, according to a recent report by the Guttmacher Institute. Or is it that women are simply miscarrying their aborning fetuses by drinking too much coffee?

An article posted today on CNN.com reveals that caffeine may increase the risk of miscarriage, but fails to mention the implications this study may have for my favorite celebrity du jour, 'lil Spears. Jamie Lynn, here is a cup o' joe on me. And no, I didn't add Splenda—that would be bad for the baby (followed by malicious chuckle). Drink up, blondie.

**note that when I described the billboards, I employed the term "erected" as a tongue-in-cheek sexual reference; also note that the CNN headline accompanying the caffeine article ("Study: Caffeine may boost miscarriage risk") attempted the same verb appropriation, but failed miserably. One refers to boosting sales or boosting morale, not boosting miscarriages. Way to be sensitive CNN. Way to be sensitive.

Women do it better

Image P&G from ABC World News

The increased vocalization of sexist sentiments coming from Black male voters in South Carolina has gotten me thinking: what do women do well? Below I have comprised a list of things that we of the fairer sex inarguably do with more aplomb than men:

1. Cooking
2. Cleaning
3. Changing dirty diapers
4. Being flight attendants
5. Getting beaten
6. Sewing
7. Nagging
8. Withholding sex
9. Crying
10. Fishing for compliments

Butter Face

Professional wrestler Torrie Wilson isn't bad-looking. In fact, she is rather attractive in a girlfriend-of-Rick-Soloman kind of way. Her respective WWF figurine on the other hand, leads me to believe she has an enemy or two at Hasbro, the toy manufacturer responsible for putting a man's face on the 5" effigy.

Nonetheless, this He-man-like character has permeated the pages of magazines. Just the other day I came across an ad for KY Jelly that featured a model (pictured above) who resembles the testosterone-infused doll.

Torrie, I would sue. Dude canoodling Manface, if she starts having mood swings and growing facial hair I suggest just slathering on more KY, a little-known panacea for all things—gender ambiguity and steroid use included.

Second Life gaps and curves

According to Keith Mandell (pictured below, and who I am inclined to simply call "Braces"), women in virtual reality ought to be stacked like a plate of Denny's pancakes.

His company, Second Life, constructs chat rooms where people are more than just screen names: they are 3-D. When ABC correspondent Claire Shipman sat down with designer Giff Constable, his fantasy became a digital reality in his Second Life rendering of the PTA-Mom-next-door reporter.

Ward Churchill's Whopper Freakout

After being fired from CU Boulder for of falsifying and fabricating information, plagiarism and improperly reporting the results of studies, what a relief it is that Ward Churchill hasn't shied away from media attention. In this this Burger King commercial, the former professor of ethnic studies appears as if he has just stepped out of the Mystery Machine. But the best part is that on YouTube, the video is titled "Whopper Freakout by Angry Indian Professor."

Avatar Terrifying

Photo is P&G from Avatar website

With eyes that follow your pointer and a constant (not to mention unsettling) Bauble Head-like nod, the new SitePal talking advertisements that are popping up all over the Internet are just plain creepy—like Ally McBeal dancing baby creepy. Despite the video sales pitch, which assures that the "virtual hosts" boost online sales, I am compelled to click the other way for fear of having SitePal nightmares.

Happily Ever ad campaign

First it was a postcard in my mailbox (pictured top), then it was on the back cover of Us Weekly (pictured bottom). Today, it was looming over my head on one of those Godzilla-sized (or would Cloverfield be more "now?") billboards at the intersection of Broadway and Lafayette in Manhattan. I feel as if I have been roofied then coaxed into some Equinox Gym orgy.


Printing a full-page ad is upwards of $200,000. Compound that with the price of producing the images, constructing a direct mail campaign and renting the prime-spot billboard, and you have what I assume is one of the most massive advertising endeavors of 2008.

Pickled Cricket

Is it? No, it can't be. Oh yes, my friends, 'tis pickled cricket. I was under the impression that when one resorts to eating insects, he or she must be in a state of hopeless destitution—like a Gary Paulson character who is forced to fry up meal worm in a makeshift pan constructed of moose dung and spittle, and wash it down with urine. But when a person goes to, say, the Vietnamese market on Federal Avenue in Denver to procure themselves a 15 oz. (brine included) can of pickled cricket for $2.95, it is no longer a case of survival, but affinity.

I bought Jing Kung for novelty's sake, but I won't eat it because its saturated fat content would be 30% of my daily value, and I prefer my fat to come from mint Milanos.