Archived Observation Lounges for the following months can be found here:
[Avery] 9/30/98
I know that it's a documented fact that fashion trends tend to cycle every
couple of decades. In the early nineties, people were sporting the classic
hippie do's of the sixties. You remember the 1991 de rigeur
uniform for the college set... girls wore sleeveless tie-dyed sundresses
without bras and sported nasty armpit hair. Guys wore drab olive shorts and
dirty beige shirts (unless they were wearing tie dyed shirts), with a bandana
sticking out somewhere (hair, back pocket, sewn into the ass of their shorts
to cover some massive hole). Everyone was sporting dreadlocks and reaking
of patchouli oil. Hey, do you know how they make patchouli oil? They just
scrape the sweat off of a dead (or sleeping or tripped out) hippie, put it
in a bottle and voila! Patchouli oil... Earth's Renewable Perfume.
I never had any love for the sixties. At summer camp, during sixties day,
Jason Adelburg and I dressed up as riot police. GET BACK IN LINE YOU DIRTY
HIPPIE! hee hee hee... boy we scared the snot out of those tie-died hippie
wannabees.
So, if you follow the style-recycling schedule, if 1991 reflected 1969 fashion...
then 1998 should put us smack dab in the middle of 1976. If I didn't feel
anthing special towards the sixties, I absolutely hated the seventies. Aside
from the fact that I was born in 1973, nothing good ever came out of the
seventies. I mean, come on... the seventies brought us disco, afros, and
those wretched pants called Bellbottoms. In 1998, they're not called bellbottoms
anymore... now they're called Flares.
Call 'em Flares or call 'em Bellbottoms... I just call them
butt-ugly. I just can't wait until we hit the style year 1982, when neon-green
tank tops and flourescent rubber bracelets come into style... now that's
fashion!
[Avery] 9/13/98
This afternoon, Janet and I made the trek to Union Square to do some shopping.
We hate Union Square... it's San Francisco's tourist central... and
a vile place to spend an afternoon. But, there are some stores that are only
in Union Square, like Comp USA, Crate & Barrel and Express. Today, we
had a mission: replace a broken glass at Crate & Barrel, check out a
new mouse at Comp USA, go to Express so Janet can use the free $15 gift
certificate that they sent her last week, and then get the hell back to the
Lower Haight. While at Express, which as we all know is a woman's clothing
store, I spent a good amount of time looking at the in-store advertisements
while sitting on the brand new white vinyl couch as I waited for Janet to
finish trying on a skirt (which she never ended up buying). There was one
particular ad which fascinated me... it was a six foot by six foot shot of
a topless model, modeling the new Express jeans. She was clutching... I mean
covering... her breasts with her hands in a failed attempt to cover anything
other than her nipples.
As I was looking at this picture, I was thinking "Geez, if you took her out
of those jeans and and just left her clutching her breasts in some underwear,
it would be a perfect Playboy shot." But then the hypocrisy of the whole
picture hit me.
Express is a women's clothing store. All women have breasts, so who are they
hiding those naughty nipples from? Women shouldn't be offended if
they see breasts in a woman's clothing store, should they? I mean, they see
them every time they shower or get dressed or change in the locker room
at the gym. So, are they covering the nipples so those dirty perverted men
at the shop won't get turned on?
Number one, there are a number of more revealing, sexually evocative ads
in the store... like the woman showing off the short-shorts, or the woman
with the party-hat nipple erections showing off the new tricot mesh tank
top. The jeans picture was just a picture of a woman only wearing
the Express brand jeans. Calvin Klein ran an ad very similar to this about
10 years ago. Herb Ritts took the picture, Cindy Crawford (if I remember
properly) was the model, and the only difference was that you could see Cindy's
nipples... because the only thing more contrived that a topless woman wearing
just jeans, is a topless woman just wearing jeans hugging her breasts, and
Herb Ritts knew it. I mean come on... if you want to cover your breasts,
use a bra or a shirt... maybe a towel, but hands? That's just silly.
On top of that, the only guys ever in the store are usually married to someone
shopping (or at least in a serious relationship, because men casually dating
someone never go clothes shopping with them)... so chances are that
they have seen breasts before.
I guess it's part of the de-nipplization of the Limited Companies.... first
they airbrushed the nipples out of the Victoria's Secret catalog, and now
this. Is American society so prudish that it can't handle a couple of breasts?
[Janet] 9/13/98
It has been a week full of awards shows on TV. OK, there were only
two, both in one week! As an awards-show fan, I watched the entire MTV Video
Music Awards on Thursday night, including the Pre-Show, as we just
had to see the Barenaked Ladies play. I must say, I was a little apprehensive
about Hole and their new CD, what with Courtney Love and her new image and
all, but they were basically the same old band. The Emmy Awards show is on
now, and boy is it a downer! The dull stage set and lighting look like
something straight out of the 1970's, and everybody's waxing philosophical
in a mildly depressing sort of way. But, I'll still watch for some reason
I just cannot explain. I love when all the nominees each get a little
square of the TV screen and you try to watch each of them to see their reactions
to losing but you just can't, so when they announce the winner your eyes
go darting all over the squares to try to catch all of the reactions
at once, but you still can't. I also love the subtle piano music that's supposed
to urge the winner to stop thanking their kids and cats and god. The king
of all awards shows is of course, the Oscars, and when we went to LA to see
Rent last year I just stood in awe in front of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion,
thinking of how many famous people must have stood in that same spot!
One year, Avery was out of town on a business trip on Oscar night so I got
to watch it alone, and I don't know if it was PMS or that the show was
extra-sentimental that year or what, but I just cried the whole way though.
I cried when someone won, I cried when they cried, I cried when someone was
honored, I cried when they showed all the dead famous people. *sigh* I love
awards shows!
[Janet] 9/9/98
I was looking through our new copy of Diamond Previews (a HUGE book that
lists what comics are coming out within the next month) this past weekend,
and as I turned page after page after page (it's a big book), I noticed picture
after picture after picture of comic book heroines wearing skimpy latex,
revealing short-shorts, skin-tight halter tops, thong bikinis and high-heeled
boots. Since their common denominator was the requisite perfectly spherical
breasts with their disproportionate cleavage, I immediately started thinking
about Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider video game. Now, I love a good video
game, and this one seemed to be one that bunches of people recommended, but
I have to say that I was on the fence about actually buying it due to the
big-boobed skimpy-outfitted Lara. I mean, she's wearing a halter top
in the snow for Christ's sake! Lately I've been reading little reviews
of Tomb Raider, some of them written by women who have praise for Lara and
her abilities, which say things along the lines of , "She kicks ass and
looks good in a bikini." OK. I'm not saying that female action heroes
should weigh in at a muscular 200 pounds and wear no makeup, but put a jacket
on that girl! Make her a little more in proportion, anyway. We ended
up buying the game, and as I got used to maneuvering Lara around her landscapes
(which takes a lot of practice using just the keyboard), I noticed
that if you steered her in the wrong direction, she would run up to a wall
and just stand there. Get eaten by bats, even. Until you gave her a push
in the right direction, that is. And then it occurred to me, what is Lara
Croft but something that needs to be controlled? Thinking further, who, for
the most part are these games aimed towards, and who, for the most part buys
them? Just an observation, not some kind of feminist rant.
Maybe girls who play video games would want to tape a picture of the main
female character up on their bedroom walls. At this point, it's the boys
who're putting up the pictures!
[Janet] 9/6/98
In San Francisco (and I'm sure in other cities as well), those infernal postcard
racks are springing up in more and more public places, especially bars and
restaurants. They are racks that are bolted to the wall that display about
12 or so different types of "postcards," free for the taking, which are actually
just advertisements masquerading as postcards. I'm always astounded
at how it attracts the young, very dressy, very conservative yuppie girls
like moths to a flame. They run over to the display in pairs and coo at the
cards, and sometimes they excitedly call their boyfriends over to see. What
I want to know is, what do they do with those handfuls of free ads...I mean,
postcards? Do they actually take the time to write someone a note, stamp
it and mail it off to places not fortunate enough to have the postcard racks?
Do they hang them on their bathroom mirrors? Decorate their cubicles at work?
I guess it's OK, if your idea of interior decorating involves pictures of
Mr. Jenkins or the Odwalla tangerines.
[Avery] 9/2/98
The main responsibility of a project manager is to make sure that their projects
come in on time. Over the last few weeks, some of the groups responsible
for bringing up one of my projects have missed their dates. This is why I
had to take that damn trip to Colorado
Springs... my manager and I needed to get a set of firm, committed dates
for the project milestones. We left Colorado Springs feeling like all was
under control. Today, I was informed that the dates have slipped by three
weeks once again. I spent most of the afternoon dealing with people who when
confronted and asked to explain the three week "slippage" took an attitude
with me and my management. I don't know about anyone else, but if I miss
a date for a project, I expect everyone who depended on me completing that
project on that date to read me the riot act. Why don't people take personal
responsibility anymore?