… despite having a girl’s name. It’s like a boy named Sue, isn’t it? You have been taunted and toughened and become the manliest of them all now that you are all grown up.

Mars Chocolate North America announced today the release of the second annual COMBOS ‘America’s Manliest Cities’ study – crowning Charlotte with this year’s top spot of manliness.

Mars, yes, the candy company, commissioned Bert Sperling, the people who brought us “Best Places to Live” studies (in case you have actually heard of these studies), to conduct the “America’s Manliest Cities” study for the second time. This is a marketing move, as far as I can tell, to promote Combos.  You can check them out at Combos.com: Home of the Comboviore. And yup, they are really going after a certain demographics, hard.

Charlotte, N.C. now has chief bragging rights on manliness thanks to its top 10 rankings in the sports, manly lifestyle, manly retail stores, manly occupations and salty snack sales categories.

Naturally ”salty snack sales” is one of the metrics. I wonder whether instances of men dying of heart attack and high blood pressure is also taken into account for the study. Have no fear because we know men dying will be well taken care of in these cities since the quintessential Manly Occupations (fire fighters, police officers, construction workers and EMT personnel) were added to the mix this year.

I don’t know what Manly Lifestyle means, in all seriousness. Can someone explain to me? Because here is my thought process when I saw “Manly Lifestyle”:

Watching sports, drinking beers, hanging around bars, shouting, yelling, hooting.

Smoking. Driving. Smoking while driving. Smoking while driving while using the earth as his personal ashtray.

Having big loud supped-up cars that can supposedly go very fast. But ooops. You live in a crowded metro city so your speed is constantly lower than 50 MPH. Better move to Montana (which is not on the list).

Wouldn’t you think that men who work on farms and ranches with their bare hands, and bare chest *swoon* should arguably be the manliest?

Hmmm. Brokeback Mountain. Oh. Never mind.

Well, the study did not say you have to be straight to be manly. I am down with that.

Hmmm. Brokeback Mountain. So it is kind of stupid that Wyoming is not on the list.

Wyoming should definitely be on the list.

Maybe that’s why they did not dare do “The Manliest STATES” because that would totally not be targeting people who may buy Combos and be caught dead with a bag of Combos in their hands walking around when their neighbors are wrestling with steers and cattle and other miscellaneous large animals that men in these mountainous ranges wrestle with their bare hands.

Maybe that’s why the study was confined to Metro Cities. So metrosexuals are not good marketing target for Combos?

Mars feel that they need to step up to market to “manly men” because, eh, Combos look kind of suspicious? Cylinder shape with gooey filling inside?

Do straight men naturally suspect eating anything that’s cylinder shaped? But they sure like hot dogs.

Ok. Focus: Men in metro cities. Think. Harder.

Construction workers. Jack hammers. Wolf whistles.

Wife beaters.

Marlon Brando. A Streetcar Named Desire.

Stanley is without a doubt a "manly man". Hot. But. What an asshole.

“Stella!” For once I just want to do this in the middle of a crowd.

Wife beaters.

West Side Story. Jazz hands. Definitely manly. Yup.

.

.

.

And my mind went on and on. See? It is all very confusing.

So here are the rankings of the 50 cities included in the study:

1. Charlotte, NC (▲ 1 spot)
2. Columbus, OH (▲ 5 spots)
3. Kansas City, MO (▲ 5 spots)
4. Nashville, TN (▼ 3 spots)
5. Baltimore, MD (▲ 32 spots)
6. Milwaukee, WI (▲ 11 spots)
7. Chicago, IL (▲ 39 spots)
8. Indianapolis, IN (▲ 1 spot)
9. Washington, D.C. (▲ 36 spots)
10. Philadelphia, PA (▲ 20 spots)
11. Denver, CO (▼ 6 spots)
12. St. Louis, MO (▼ 6 spots)
13. Columbia, SC (No Change)
14. Harrisburg, PA (▲ 12 spots)
15. Cleveland, OH (▲ 4 spots)
16. Orlando, FL (▼ 2 spots)
17. Salt Lake City, UT (▼ 1 spot)
18. Birmingham, AL (▲ 5 spots)
19. Detroit, MI (▲ 1 spot)
20. Cincinnati, OH (▼ 16 spots)
21. Richmond, VA (▼ 9 spots)
22. New Orleans, LA (▲ 5 spots)
23. Phoenix, AZ (▼ 1 spot)
24. Houston, TX (▲ 15 spots)
25. Oklahoma City, OK (▼ 22 spots)
26. Toledo, OH (▼ 16 spots)
27. Minneapolis, MN (▼9 spots)
28. Memphis, TN (▼ 17 spots)
29. Louisville, KY (▲ 2 spots)
30. Seattle, WA (▲ 10 spots)
31. Boston, MA (▲ 7 spots)
32. Atlanta, GA (No Change)
33. Providence, RI (No Change)
34. Dayton, OH (▼ 19 spots)
35. New York, NY (▲ 15 spots)
36. Jacksonville, FL (▼ 15 spots)
37. Pittsburgh, PA (▼ 8 spots)
38. Grand Rapids, MI (▼ 14 spots)
39. Dallas, TX (▼ 5 spots)
40. Rochester, NY (▼ 4 spots)
41. Las Vegas, NV (▼ 13 spots)
42. San Diego, CA (▲ 1 spot)
43. San Francisco, CA (▲ 5 spots)
44. Tampa, FL (▼ 19 spots)
45. Sacramento, CA (▼ 4 spots)
46. Buffalo, NY (▼ 11 spots)
47. Oakland, CA (▼ 3 spots)
48. Los Angeles, CA  (▲ 1 spot)
49. Miami, FL (▼ 7 spots)
50. Portland, OR (▼ 3 spots)

I know there is a reason why I instinctively like Portland… Miami got beaten by San Francisco? I blame it on David Caruso.

Charlotte won the crown but Chicago is the biggest winner this year (and of course I am biased): Chicago had the biggest move in the rankings, going from 46th to 7th, reportedly due to the addition of the “Manly Occupations” category.

We clearly have the best Men in Blue (and Red and Yellow and White and Brown and Black and so on…)

The following is said without any trace of sarcasm. Seriously.

The Chicago Blues definitely deserve The Manliest Award this year because many of them are confident enough in their own skin and self-identity to host (and give permission for their fellow officers to host and attend – this is a giant step away from the stereotypically homophobic environment associated with police departments in general, and specifically the Chicago PD in the past) the 14th annual International LGBT Conference for Law Enforcement & Criminal Justice Professionals for the first time in Chicago, ending with the Chicago Pride Parade this past Sunday.

I salute you, officers! Rock those self-confident booties of yours!

.

Sexiness comes from being comfortable in your own skin. Rock on!

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In addition to Threadless Tees, I also try to seem young and hip and on top of things by subscribing to Wired Magazine. Although I have been caught in this conundrum of inadvertently outing myself as an old fart by actually subscribing to the print edition. Seriously, who subscribes to print editions of magazines any more? And since I am in the confessional mode, I may as well tell you that I still buy music CDs. Yup. I am single-handedly supporting the dinosaurs.

That being said, until the day I can sit in the open (in my own house, mind you) reading without being bothered, I will always prefer papers to hard metal/plastic. They are just a lot easier to read in a locked bathroom, with the fan on to drone out the incessant, “Mom. Mom. Mommy. Mommy. Mom. Mama.”

As always, I was happy to receive my latest Wired. I skipped the important article on Sergey Brin’s search for a cure for Parkinson’s Disease and tore immediately into the shopping feature (Shut up!). I saw this and my inner 16-year-old boy made me choke on my cocktail:

ETA: Of course the Product of the Month is a super duper $2,000 sub-woofer for your home theatre, Beolab 11 by the revered Bang & Olufsen.

You said it. Not me.

.

Ok. Not to be sexist or anything, I am going to guess that the department that worked on testing, rating and writing about the 39 summer gears is mostly male. So nobody snickered or doing a Beavis & Butthead’s “Hehehe.” Is it just me? Really? I am very impressed.

Let me break it down for you…

You know Georgia O'Keeffe?

.

Georgia O'keeffe. The artist famous for you know who-who...

.

Come on! I cannot be the only one...

.

In order to drive my point home, I have taken the liberty to dress the “Tulip” up…

.

Ta da!

.

Oh please please please don’t let me be the only one…

CODA on 7/7: I am happy to report that after almost 1 month, I am finally “vindicated”… This picture is now on Wired.com and the comments proved that well, it does not take any imagination to see this fancy sub-woofer as a, eh, modern piece of art…

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My parents watch a lot of TV. They are at a stage where they deserve to do whatever they feel like, really, and my dad’s health does not allow him to stray away too much or too often from stationary activities. That being said, there are three televisions inside the 800-sq-ft. 3- BR apartment, so yeah, they watch a lot of TV. I have realized after having left home for the U.S. in 1993 that the most precious yet the most difficult gift I can give my parents is simply being there.  As a result, I end up watching a lot of TV when I keep them company.

It is always a quick and dirty way for me to get reacquainted with the here and now in Taiwan. The social mores in vogue. I am often reminded to be proud of where I came from, followed by a sudden wave of homesickness and dread while I am… at home… because of my imminent departure. On the other hand, I am also quite frequently flabbergasted, especially by the commercials. Since  ”a cultural critic / modern tribe ethnographer” was one of my answers to “What do you want to be when you grow up?”), I cannot help but have a running commentary scrolling through my mind’s eye, my mental news ticker. To be unabashedly confessional, I am fascinated and excited by the contradictions, the dichotomy, the ambiguities represented in the media messages now that I have had a chance to step outside, looking in.

Sometimes a virtual lower third is the only image superimposed on what I am seeing…

WTF MOMENT: I CAN TOTALLY WRITE A DISSERTATION ON THIS.

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(The first line of caption in the video says, “The 42nd day after breakup…”

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFHk6nARDcM

.

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p.s. This post is being written as I watch TV with my father which we have been doing for about 2 hours now…

p.p.s. The first time we saw this commercial, my father said, “@#%%$. We are a bunch of crazy people.”

p.p.p.s. Yes, this commercial is being aired at all hours, not just “after hours” which do not exist here anyway.

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Here is another edition of I Comment Therefore I Am, following the footsteps of the great Unknown Mammi.

In this era of information overload, in a lot of the news blogs, especially political news blogs, comments are often the best part. Sometimes the scariest part. The comment section is like a looking glass through which you get a glimpse into what the other end of the spectrum is really thinking, under the cloak of anonymity. Wouldn’t you know that comments are also the best part in product review websites?

Amazon.com.

Bet you did not know the fun you would encounter by prowling the world’s largest retail store. Here is one that has become a legend, a pop culture reference:

Three Wolf Moon Short Sleeve Tee: BEST comments? You bet'ya!

As of now, there are 1,657 customer reviews of this shirt. WHAT? Yup.

In November 2008, one genius shopper, or social commentator, wrote a smashing, rave review of this shirt, which has since garnered 222 comments. More than that, 17,617 of 17,783 people found the review helpful. Sheer number counts make this review a force to be reckoned with. The popularity of the review and the number of imitators propelled this shirt to some Geek Stardom. Case in point: The final episode of The Office when Pam and Jim got hitched? Dwight was wearing this shirt when he proudly declared that he would be at the bar to pick up the ladies.

The review is funny as hell. Read on:

“This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to ‘howl at the moon’ from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn’t have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn’t settle for the first thing that comes to him…” (Continue reading)

Satirical, rave reviews are often done to highlight the ridiculousness of the high price asked for the product. For this $500 audio cable, Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable, dueling reviews have been written: Yes! It solved Global Warming! and No! It caused alien invasion!

I know. Some people have way too much time on their hands. Speaking of people with too much time AND money on their hands… SOMEONE alerted me to this Land Cruiser for sale. At $19,999.95 it is a steal, won’t you say? But the reviews are priceless.

JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank: I think this is an ACTUAL product and not meant to be a joke...

You know how I love making a point when given the chance, therefore when I saw how much the baby bath book is fetching…

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I had some fun…

Product reviews as a new form of satire. What has the world come to? Guilty as charged...

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Veterans Day.

I always thought it is a fitting coincidence that Veterans Day falls in November, right before Thanksgiving.

As you know, Veterans Day is celebrated in other parts of the world.  On November 11, 1918, at 11 am (Paris time), the Germans signed the Armistice that officially ended World War I.  The day was originally celebrated as Armistice Day (also as Remembrance Day in Europe).  In 1954, the U.S. Congress passed and amended an act to officially make November 11 the Veterans Day, honoring all veterans, and not just those who served in World War I. What took them so long?!

I don’t think I will be able to say anything more eloquently, more heartfelt, than this blog post, “The Greatest Casualty is to be Forgotten“. As she put it so well, you don‘t have to support war to support a Veteran.

Thus begins my tirade against the demise of the significance of Thanksgiving in the face of overwhelming commercialism…

Are you ready for this?

I started campaigning for a forced postponement, a temporary deferral, of celebrating Christmas until AFTER Thanksgiving Day four years ago.  I even registered for the domain name: BringBackThanksgiving.com (which is still available… Any takers?)  I stopped paying for it after two years when I realized that with a full time job and three boys to take care of, I simply did not have the capacity to deal with Microsoft FrontPage. (Yikes. Do you remember the days, the days before Blogger, WordPress, etc. when one had to use a software such as FrontPage in order to have one’s own website? *shudder*)

“Curb your enthusiasm!” I beseech you.  “As you recover from the sugar high from all the Halloween candies.  As you dispose of the spider webs, the goblins, the mummy tombs, the rotten carved pumpkins.”

Please, oh, please don’t switch directly from Orange and Black to Red and Green.  However tempting it is when you move all the Halloween boxes down to your basement and see all the Christmas boxes beckoning at you. The smiling Santa with the chubby cheeks.  The snowman. The reindeer.  Resist the temptation: Didn’t Jesus die on the cross partly to teach us this lesson?  Be strong for the sake of your children.

The children need you to show them that, Yes, you believe in the meaning and significance of Thanksgiving Day. Yes, it is important that we take one day out to deliberately remember and show gratitude to all the people who add meanings to our lives, to all the material goods that we are blessed enough to own. To strangers who give you a smile in the street and thus brighten your day. To strangers who by merely doing their jobs are making the world a better, safer place.

My heart aches upon seeing houses adorned with Christmas lights right after, sometimes even before, Halloween.  Of course I am not intimating that the homeowners are therefore not thankful.  No siree.  I am simply dismayed that the significance of Thanksgiving, the arguably ONE holiday that we should all be able to agree on and celebrate, is undermined sandwiched between Halloween and Christmas.

(I admit: I may be putting my foot in my mouth by saying this. I have no clear idea how the native Americans take this holiday though I suspect there must be a lot of conflicting feelings. Do they sometimes wish that Squanto were not so kind as to assist the pilgrims? FWIW, by reading “Thanksgiving: A Native American View” and “Teaching About Thanksgiving“, I am convinced that Thanksgiving is indeed deeper and bigger than just the Pilgrims and the Indians… I hope I do not offend should anyone of Native American descent stops by this post…)

I blame the turkey.

You heard me right. It is the turkey’s fault. In terms of merchandising, turkeys are just not as attractive as say, bunnies, chicks, Santa Clause, snowman, reindeer, and so on.  I have not seen any child hugging a plush Turkey toy lovingly.

To be honest, that red thing hanging down the throat freaks me out.  Pardon me for being crass, but it always reminds me of testicles. I don’t know why. But it does.

Many, especially Hallmark (bless their heart!), have tried to turn the turkey into an adorable icon:  but seriously, how adorable can you make a turkey?

Even more sickening is that in these cutesy depictions of turkeys, they are all forced to celebrate the event in which they will be slaughtered, cooked and eaten! The abomination!

No cute icons, no easy way for merchandising. No easy way for merchandising, no rampant commidification of Thanksgiving. No rampant commidification of Thanksgiving, no shelf space at your local drugstores and grocery stores.

(I am grateful for no longer being in the academia which affords me the opportunity to posit theories full of holes and preaches them on the Internet with no qualms… I am like Glenn Beck on an anti-Turkey path…)

But with your help, we can stem the tide.  We can start it from inside of our homes.

Perhaps we can all start a tradition of having each one of the family members mention one thing that they are grateful for, every day, in the month of November.  No matter how small or how trivial.

Perhaps we can start a quiet movement to resist the Red and Green color scheme from popping up inside of our own houses. Until the day after Thanksgiving.

On the morning of November 27 this year, I am moving up the Christmas Tree from our basement first thing in the morning.  I am really looking forward to it. And to optimize my effort of transforming my house into a winter wonderland for Christmas, I shall keep the decorations up until after Valentine’s day. Thank goodness for the lllloooonnnngggg winter here. That is, of course, until one of you starts a campaign for bringing back Valentine’s Day…

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Let me start this post by saying that we are a Lego family.  With 3 boys in the household – my 2 sons and my one husband, our floor used to be covered with Lego pieces when they were little (the kids, not the husband).  Later, a home-made Lego table was the mainstay in the living room, also covered with Lego pieces, and at one time, Lego train tracks, until the kids decided to use the train and tracks as launching pad for Lego people…

We love Legos.   We are not embarrassed to admit that we still play with Legos ourselves.  We don’t make fun of people who love Legos, or trains for that matter.  Yada yada yada.  You get the drift.

Then I saw this today on Amazon.com (or as one of my good friends calls them, The Evil Empire…)

I was utterly disturbed.

Is this a joke?  Is it Photoshopped?  Is it me?  Doesn’t that seem like a parallel to “Could you come and help me look for my puppy?”

I showed it to my 11 year-old, and the first thing he said was, “Wow.  I have no life.  I play with Lego all day!”

Then he went back to his Mindstorms.   (Yeah. I love me some good irony too…)

Has the marketing department at Lego lost their marbles?  Or, in this case, their blocks?

Much to my embarrassment and relief, google is once again my friend, and I found the truth behind the

The Special 50th Anniversary Edition Lego!

My bad…  The guy?  He is the owner of the Lego company Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen (yeah, no kidding. Try and say that name 3 times…) aka Lego founder’s grandson who appeared as a kid on the original Town Plan box and now returns on this 50th anniversary special edition!

Somehow I suspect that he does indeed “have no life” because he’s too busy running a global company and thinking up ways to reinvent Lego year after year, and that he does “play with Lego all day”.

The rest of us are just jealous.

To redeem myself from the over-rampant cynicism, I shall seek solace in this oldie but goodie:

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I know I am late to the party. But here is my motto as a good wife and good mother: Family First, and Bacon Second…

September 6, 2009 was the Second International Bacon Day.  And of course, in case you, like I, wondered, there is a blog dedicated to this much celebrated holiday.

How much do we love bacon?  Or rather, how much do the marketing departments think we love bacon?

A lot, apparently.  Let me count the ways…

Bacon Flavored Lip Balm

Bacon Flavored Gumballs!!

Don’t feel like swallowing the questionable food items?  No problem.  Try bacon-flavored dental floss...

Don’t want your love for bacon involve your mouth at all?  How about showing it on your skin?

Bacon bandages…

And so on and so forth…

Will bacon ever become too much of a good thing?

Update 09-13-2009:

Apparently not…

Now whenever I go on Amazon.com (or as a good friend with better conscience calls them, The Evil Online Retail Overlord), Bacon-themed product will prominently show up on the screen.  Eh. I wonder why…

“You might also consider…”

So I have been introduced to Bacon Air Freshener

The thing is, ever since 7, I can never look at any hanging car freshener without remembering that scene…  And so I was thinking, “Wouldn’t it be funny and ironic and even scarier if the serial killer aka Kevin Spacey actually used these?”

p.s. Apparently, one can become an “affliat” with Amazon.com and make $ by enticing people to click on the links that lead them to Amazon.  Trust me: I am too lazy to do that.  Jeff Bezos just owes me a lot of favors.  That’s all.

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Apparently Pork-flavored Vodka is gaining some traction now in the Northeast, originated from Seattle, more specifically, the Seattle-based Black Rock Spirits.  According to this online article, Bacon-Flavored Vodka: What’s Next? Eggs Bourbon? , BAKON, the vodka with an oink in it, is getting some dedicated followers because people just love bacon.

Thanks to the same article, a recipe for a home-made concoction to spice up your Vodka and martini with bacon is also available:

“Add cooked bacon to a clean pint sized mason jar. Trim the ends of the bacon if they are too tall to fit. Or you can just throw in a bunch of fried up bacon scraps. Crushed black peppercorns can be added for a real zing, but check your zinger scale of tolerance first.

Fill the jar up with vodka. Cap and place in a dark cupboard for at least three weeks. Then place the bacon vodka in the freezer to solidify the fats. Contact local authorities to be on hand before opening and then strain out the fats through a coffee filter. The yield should be clear, pale yellow bacon vodka. (If it is any other color, check with health officials.) Decant into decorative bottles and enjoy.”

I am PUMPED!  I think I owe it to myself to experiment on this.  Here is my shopping list (which of course I tweeted, that’s what Twitter is for, no?):

1. Cheap vodka
2. Bacon
3. Mason jar
4. Tarp
5. Waders
6. Safety goggles

A very funny @Andjelija suggested that I check out prices for my  supplies at Walmart, and take pictures while I am at it.

I will blog my experiment, so stay tuned…

*pouring Vodka*

Here’s to a successful experiment!

And to me not getting punched while taking pictures of people at Walmart!

And also to no pictures of me getting submitted to peopleofwalmart.com!

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If you really want to contextualize the social and cultural circumstances in which this Folgers commercial was made, then we can all go back to school and read upon all the feminist histories and theories. But this commercial simply makes me laugh out loud. It makes us feel better about ourselves, about how far we have come. Like the fact we now have an African American as the President, racism must be no more.

If only I could just make a decent cup of coffee, I could relax!

If only life were that simple…

p.s. Read the comments, and decide how far we have come.

p.p.s. I always wince when people lament about the Good Old Days. Read the comments, and see for yourself why.

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Well, I do. Especially after watching the Rosanne episode of Home-Ec where she gave Darlene’s home-ec class a field trip to the grocery store, I’ve always felt quite guilty reaching for the NAME BRAND product instead of the generic, store-brand next to it, the one that is shouting loudly from its display:

COMPARE TO NAME BRAND NEXT TO ME HERE, practically the same stuff and at 50% of the cost! Only a sucker and a snob will pick him over me!

Reaching for the name brand would BRAND myself as a snob, an irrational person easily duped by flashy marketing, a bourgeois with too much money to spare… So what if the generic brand would ONLY save me a dollar? A penny saved is a penny, how does that saying go again?

(Watch from 4:20)


Something happened recently that absolved me from the guilt associated with the Rosanne Home-ec guilt…

In my last post I made fun of the confusing instructions that came with the Walgreen ant baits. Turned out that the instructions were not the only one that did not work… The Walgreen generic ant bait cost $0.50 less than the name brand, RAID. I dutifully purchased the generic brand, esp. at this economy, I wanted to show that I was not a frivolous consumer. Well, guess what? It does not work!!!

The idea of an ant bait is that it is supposed to attract the ants to go inside the thingy. That is the most important step. In fact, that is the first step, and the ONLY step an ant bait is supposed to accomplish.

After I put on the black housing on the floor, I watched the ants walk around it. Yup. They WALKED AROUND the darn thing! I tried to nudge them with chopsticks in that direction. They kept on during around, or, walked OVER the housing. They had no interest getting into the hole.

I finally gave up and got the ones made by RAID. And they worked like a charm. Or at least, they worked the way ant baits were supposed to work: the ants swarmed the new baits I put down on the floor, while ignoring the old ones.

Hallelujah! Tide laundry detergent, I am getting you next time I am at Costco!

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