Thursday, October 29, 2009

Scary Halloween Post. Well, sort of.

There is a park in northeast Seattle that is being refurbished. (Is that the right word for a park? Renovated? Redone? Whatever.) Part of the revitalization is that it will restore a bunch of wetlands and other natural features. A few weeks ago, BioGirl and I went to check it out. While there, we came across signs and displays that tell you what sorts of re-doing has been done. Among these, there is a section called the Leaky Berms. Funny name, no? It sort of sounds like an old skool comedian. Ladies and Gentleman! Opening act for Soupy Sales and Red Buttons will be: Leaky Berms! Turns out it just means that there are sections of the land that have rocks and permeable fabric to help deal with water drainage.

And by the way, between Nordic Boy re-routing water in our yard and now this, how many times can I blog about drainage? I think I might have to change my name to the Pop Drainage Librarian.

Also, as long as I am being tangential, RIP Soupy Sales. Did I ever tell you guys that I met Soupy Sales once? It was in the early 90s and Alli and I went to the video store in our hometown in the middle of the afternoon one day, and there he was, sitting at a table, selling a dvd set of his old show. We got a glossy with his autograph and I distinctly remember that we were the only ones in the store who paid him any mind. It was sad.

You thought you were going to get some sort of witty story about my meeting with Soupy Sales, didn't you? Turns out, it was sad. And boring. Sorry.

So anyway. Back to the leaky berms. On the park walking map, there was this.



Why? Why is there a giant burrito on the map to denote the Leaky Berms? Are we not brainy enough to understand the concept of a leaky berm? Can anyone explain to me why the leaky berm had to be "aka the burrito"? Really. I am asking.

It's sort of scary actually. GIANT BURRITO IN THE PARK, AND IT WILL LEAK ON YOU.

Speaking of things that are slightly spooky, does anyone else think that Nikolas from Project Runway is related in some way to Severus Snape?





Scary when you put it together like that, right?

Also, since we are on the subject of scary (and it is almost Halloween after all so I am totally being topical), bike messengers? You are going to give me a mothereffing heart attack one of these days. Darting in and out of traffic like that? YIKES. Granny's ticker can't take it. It's super scary. They should make a scary movie out of that shit. Ghosts and masked killers don't scare me a whit, but a montage of bike messengers? Bring on the smelling salts!

Oh, and one more scary thing: TYRA MADE HER MODELS GET IN BLACKFACE. Oh yes, she did. And she did this horrid thing where she made fake ethnicity mashups. Like one lady she had dressed up as a mashup between Indian and Native American. She painted that stick figure brown and then put a sari on her and a giant feather headdress. Because TYRA IS SO CLEVER. She did this other mashup where the model was supposed to be Botswanan and Polynesian, which means Blackface, some garb made out of grass and a big ass necklace. And she told the person to pose as if she could hear music, because Botswanans always hear music everywhere. BECAUSE THEY IS TRIBAL SEE? And then one of the models waxed poetic about having always dreamed what it would be like to be brown, and that doing this shoot made her feel so EXOTIC. It was one tiny heartbeat away from Tyra sticking bones through these girls' noses and telling them to do the ooga booga dance. I swear! I am not even making it up. It almost made me barf up some leaky berm burrito.

4 comments:

rachael said...

I think I said, "This is so wrong" aloud about six times while I watched ANTM this week.

And if next season doesn't go back to tall giraffe girls, I might finally be done with that show.

Rachel said...

Oh God, Tyra.

I felt uncomfortable watching that shoot. I couldn't decide whether I was just a PC-obsessed prude who doesn't understand "art"--or--Tyra is a blatantly offensive maniac.

I decided on maniac.

SAVanVleck said...

You are so right about Nikolas. I kept looking at him trying to figure out what (oopss, I meant who) he reminded me of. Something just wasn't right. Thank you for figuring that out.

I gave up on Tyra last year, but this sounds soooo wrong.

cadiz12 said...

i just finished watching that ANTM episode on my dvr, and couldn't figure out why, if it was supposed to be "inspired by" the ethnicities, why they couldn't just be their original colors? BIZARRE.

she needs to run her ideas past someone else besides miss jay.