You have heard me ranting about flip-flops in the past.  Allow me to be a curmudgeon yet again.  LEGGINGS.  I know they’re popular, but I haaaaaaate them. They are wretched.  Can they go away now?

To begin with, let’s admit: leggings only look tolerable on a VERY small minority of women.  Legs that look fine bare and look fine in pants can look bulgy or spindly in leggings.  There was a big spread of pictures in July’s Vogue of Sienna Miller wearing leggings.  Sienna Miller can wear leggings.  Me?  I’m tall enough but I’m still not even sure that I can wear leggings or if my legs are too muscular to get away with it.  Sadly, the fact that leggings only look good on a minute fraction of the female population doesn’t keep lots of and lots of people from wearing them.  Even if your legs look okay, they always end at the ankle, leaving a bright flash of skin before the shoe to draw the eye.  Woe betide you if you then pick the wrong shoe.  If you do, the leggings will make your feet look comparatively enormous, and the flash of skin will make sure no one fails to notice that you are wearing rowboats on your feet.  I have trouble imagining an outfit with which you could wear leggings that wouldn’t be better served by skinny jeans or tights except the ones that are straight of the 1980s, and I am SO not going there.

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THANK GOODNESS it is finally Friday.  A horrifically long workweek and this disgusting, stinking humidity, which makes Manhattan feel like one giant unwashed mouth – gross, but true – have put me a kind of foul mood this morning (if you didn’t notice).  BUT it has put me in the perfect frame of mind to laugh at this series of unintentionally sadistic, effed up vintage magazine ads that some FOAFOAF (I really don’t know this guy, but apparently one of my facebook friends does) pulled together for our benefit.    I especially like the cheery family of five playing with their new Christmas rifles.

Another favorite below, indicating that media portrayals of women screwed our mothers up, too.

Okay, I know I’m too young to be this persnickety about popular entertainment and the world in general, but, well, the world is too full of idiotic things to ignore.  As you may have gathered, I’m not a big watcher of reality TV.  Regular episodes of “What Not To Wear” and occasional forays into “Top Design” are about as trashy as it gets for me.  It’s several things, really.  The people on most reality shows are deliberately selected to be not-too-bright and actively obnoxious, so much so that after a while, I start worrying that the dumb is going to rub off.  There isn’t a chance in hell I’d choose to spend time with most of these people in real life, so why would I want to bring them into my living room?  And at least in scripted television there’s a chance that someone will say something clever or do something interesting.  If I want people living normal life… I have my own life for that.

So, I am obviously not the target audience for this series, but still: HOW is there a whole series entitled “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant”?  I can understand how this could be an amusing or interesting special.  But a whole series?  What is this contributing to the world?  I realize that, dumb as it sounds, there are in fact situations in which it’s possible for women who are not total idiots to not realize that they are pregnant.  Women who are carrying extra weight, have irregular cycles, have other medical issues, etc.  I get that, although I do still wonder how you get to the point of being in labor before you figure it out.  I find it impossible to imagine how more than an hour of this could possibly be education, though, and a whole series?  I can’t see how they could avoid running through a trillion women who make the same dumb decisions ignoring their symptoms, and what does anyone get out of that except an opportunity to make fun?  Come on, people.

So, has anyone noticed the recent change to our basic cable lineup?  Rest in peace, Sci-Fi Channel, I enjoyed you while you lasted.  I know, I’m a chick.  I’m not supposed to watch sci-fi on TV.  But the fact is, I have gotten more hours of mileage out of the former Sci-Fi Channel than I care to admit.  As of yesterday, the Sci-Fi Channel changed its name in an attempt to both shake the geeky image of science fiction and free itself up to pursue programming that goes farther afield from sci-fi and fantasy.  I’m a little dubious about the value of freeing the network up to bring their programming back to the mainstream stuff that every other network (how many hundreds are there now?) is already doing, but I can understand the desire to do some PR for the image of the sci fi viewer as teenaged, geeky, and male.  (I’ll note that it’s an increasingly inaccurate image of science fiction readers and viewers to the extent that it was ever accurate in the first place, but that’s a whole different discussion.)

My problem is this: is “SyFy” supposed to seem cooler?  This is possibly the stupidest network name I have ever seen. It sounds and looks even more idiotic than the National Geographic Channel calling itself Nat Geo.  I think I actually even like “Spike” better as a network name, and Spike is, well, lacking in nuance to say the least. In this article from TV Week, the president of the former Sci-Fi Channel had this to say about their decision to change to SyFy:

When we tested this new name, the thing that we got back from our 18-to-34 techno-savvy crowd, which is quite a lot of our audience, is actually this is how you’d text it… It made us feel much cooler, much more cutting-edge, much more hip, which was kind of bang-on what we wanted to achieve communication-wise.

Seriously? They feel cooler by changing the name to conform with text message spelling?  (Number 536 on my list of signs of the apocalypse…)  Am I supposed to LOL at this point? Dear God, people.  I don’t normally feel self-conscious about watching sci-fi on television, but it’s hard not to see that quote as just pitiful — he sounds like the confused middle-aged dad trying to seem cool with the kids.

The name change was timed to coincide with the premier of the new “SyFy” original series “Warehouse 13″ yesterday.  While I haven’t seen it, the reviews I’ve seen of Warehouse 13 have been uniformly terrible and have said that it is derivative of… pretty much everything from Raiders of the Lost Ark to X-Files in the most obvious possible way.  I’ll note that the reviews for their real science fiction series like “Stargate SG-1″ and “Battlestar Galactica” were generally very good.  Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

I am squealing with delight, ladies! The trailer for The September Issue has finally dropped!  Feast your eyes on this:

Quite simply, it looks A-MAH-ZING.  Our beloved Ms. Wintour could strike a person dead with a single glance, and boy does this film capture her in her glory.

Looks like there is even a speacial quest appearancshe from Uncle Karl!!

You better believe your Femmes will be there opening day.

It’s Friday, and I’m both sick and tired.  So I’m copping out … Time for a blind item, one I actually witnessed with my very own eyes!

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I have a horrifying confession. I may be the only person on the planet who feels this way.  Or just the only person under the age of 70.  I realize that this may make me a traitor to my generation, and possibly also a curmudgeon waiting to happen the second I turn 40.  I can’t help it.  Here it is:

I.  Hate.  Flip Flops.

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Please make them stop.

Okay, so I watch too much TV and see too many commercials.  But I have been seriously disturbed to learn that Disney, not contented with commercializing childhood at large, is also selling eggs.  Plain old ordinary white eggs.  Oy.  Really, people? What POSSIBLE reason could I have to buy eggs from Disney, even assuming that they were widely available in local grocery stores (I’ve never laid eyes on them)?  Is there a reason that Disney’s empire needs to include farm produce?  The eggs apparently have a cartoon character outline stamped on them, which I suppose makes them marginally more attractive to kids, but still.  The commercials show eggs fried up in a Mickey Mouse shape:

Hopefully the kids won’t think that the eggs naturally come out that shape (I think it might be a sign of the apocalypse if they did).

Dear, dear.  This all makes me nostalgic for my childhood when Disney didn’t own the entire universe.

Deliciousness from Foley & Corinna

Do you have StefaniBags bookmarked on your browser?  If not, you should. Trust.

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This morning I received an e-mail from Bergdorf Goodman offering me Valentino’s pre-fall collection.  This is the second e-mail they’ve sent me offering me pre-fall wear, and all I can say is, are you joking?  It is currently pre-fall the way the fall of Constantinople was pre-automobile. I have, quite frankly, not even reached the point where buying stuff in flirty summery fabrics is starting to call to me, although possibly this weekend’s weather will change that.  FALL?  Good God, people.  Can’t you let me get to summer first?  Or, you know, MAY?

Look, I realize that in recent years the designers have been trying to extend the seasons with pre-fall and resort collections so that we’re not all stuck waiting for things to happen only twice a year.  I’m all for new fashions coming in more regularly.  I also realize that the retailers are being hit hard by the current state of the economy.  But really, can’t we agree to observe some standard of decency in advertising?

I will give fair warning right now, anyone who starts pitching me Christmas stuff before October is going to get an earful!