Posted via web from coffeecat’s ephemera

If you haven’t yet checked out ModCloth, ladies, click over there right now (but hold on to your wallet). They trend a little hipsterish, but I’ve always seen several things I liked on every visit. Plus, they have free shipping, which makes returns really easy, and great customer service. They email you about returns and exchanges to answer any questions you have, and they also sometimes include little freebies, like barrettes and cloth headbands, along with your order.

The Fabray Cardigan, one of my ModCloth finds.

The biggest drawback to ModCloth is that they receive such small quantities of each item that they sell out very quickly—sometimes within a day or two. And they don’t always restock items, so, if you see something you really like, pounce on it. It also might be a good idea to order more than one size and return the one that doesn’t fit, just in case they stop stocking your item.

The other caveat is that, since ModCloth buys from small indie designers, sizing can be inconsistent. They give the measurements for each piece lying flat, but that’s not always reliable as you can’t be sure how much something stretches. Sometimes you can get a better idea of how an item runs from the customer comments. Their sizing tends more towards “juniors” than “misses,” so if you’re no longer a teenybopper, you may have to order a size up.

ModCloth also doesn’t have the best selection for women who are larger than a U.S. size 10 or so. The dress I tried on, for example, only came in small, medium, and large. The large fit me with little room to spare, and I usually take an 8. Some items do come in XL and XXL sizes, though.

But, if you’re willing to deal with a little hassle and a couple extra trips to the post office, you can score some really great clothes on ModCloth—with the added benefit of supporting an independent company and designers instead of a huge mall chain. If I’d found it sooner, I think most of my wardrobe would come from there.

The Trouble With Wicked

Contains spoilers.

My husband and I went to see Wicked over Christmas break. It’s a big, baroque spectacle of a musical, with soaring songs, intricate sets, and steampunky costumes in a Venetian palette. What sets it apart from other Broadway juggernauts like Phantom of the Opera are its attempts at political commentary. Wicked sends a valuable message about accepting moral ambiguity and not blindly following those in power; the problem is that it grafts these messages too clunkily onto a crowd-pleasing template, making for an entertaining but less than intellectually satisfying experience.

The most clever thing Wicked does is to overturn all your childhood perceptions. In its opening song, citizens of Oz, grateful that the Wicked Witch of the West has been killed, sing:

No one mourns the wicked,

No one lays a lily on their grave,

The good man scorns the wicked,

Through their lives our children learn

What we miss when we misbehave.

The “children” they’re singing about, we come to learn as the play progresses, are us: Americans who grew up watching The Wizard of Oz. From that movie—which, before the age of VCRs, DVDs, and TiVo, used to appear on television as a once-yearly event—we learned that “only bad witches are ugly,” that villains are absolute, and that it is perfectly safe for teenage girls to enlist the help of random grown men they meet on the road.

But Wicked’s message is that such a binary view of good and evil is only suitable for children. When adults adopt it, the musical implies, the consequences can be devastating.

In Wicked’s Oz, the Wizard is a dictator, the talking animals a persecuted minority, and the Tin Man a McCarthyite finger-pointer. The Witch of the West, Elphaba, is a would-be reformer used as a scapegoat by the Wizard when she resists his plans, and Glinda’s no longer a “good witch” but a spin doctor for the powers that be.

It can be disconcerting to see beloved characters acting in cruel ways: the Tin Man, for example, sings, “I’m glad I’m heartless / I’ll be heartless killing her [Elphaba],” but it’s thought-provoking, too. What other “truths” about people and values, the musical forces us to ask, do we accept without examination? And who sold us on these “truths,” and for what purpose?

As the Wizard himself sings in one particularly clever song, “Wonderful,”

A man’s called a traitor,

Or liberator,

A rich man’s a thief,

Or philanthropist.

Is one a crusader,

Or ruthless invader?

It’s all in which label

Is able to persist.

Sadly, though, Wicked doesn’t always make its points so cunningly. At times it’s downright anvilicious; ironically, its message that “good” and “evil” aren’t always the absolutes they appear to be is drummed into the audience’s heads in an awfully moralistic fashion. Consider the song titles alone, for example: “No One Mourns The Wicked,” “No Good Deed,” “Something Bad,” “Thank Goodness,” “For Good.” (As a former resident of Southeastern Massachusetts, I was holding out for a song called “Wicked Good,” but, alas, it was not to be.)

Elphaba’s unexpected survival also weakens the play’s impact. Had she been offed by the Wizard and his coterie, she could have become a martyr to principle. Instead, the play’s authors opt for a wishy-washy, feel-good ending in which Elphaba, apparently melted by Dorothy and presumed dead, escapes to freedom with her lover, Fiyero. By doing so, they sell out their audience, whom they don’t believe tough enough to accept the harsh consequences that often arise when people stand up to power in the real world.

Regime Change Comes to Oz: Wicked and the Bush Administration

Though Wicked at times gestures towards Nazi Germany (through its scapegoated and persecuted minority, the talking animals) and racial discrimination (Elphaba is shunned because of her skin color), for the most part its targets are generic: corrupt officials, mercenary famemongers, and a frightened and closeminded populace. Still, it’s hard not to see some parallels to the war on terror: the musical, which premiered in 2003, was developed in the early 2000’s, during the early days of the war, and Glinda even drops the phrase “regime change” when the Witch of the East is killed.

To begin with, Oz is a realm governed by fear, in which rumors gain currency with frightening speed. “I hear she has an extra eye that always stays awake,” one citizen sings of Elphaba, and then another joins in, and another:

I hear she can shed her skin

As easily as a snake

I hear her soul is so unclean

Pure water can melt her!

From there it’s but a short step to: Please! Somebody melt her! And it’s the Wizard and his spin doctor, Madam Morrible, who step in to reassure everyone that the Wicked Witch will be dealt with. Meanwhile, they’re taking away the rights of the Talking Animals, banning them from teaching, and, finally, speaking. Elphaba morphs from a single woman to an embodiment of Evil itself, one who must be eradicated for the realm to regain a state of Edenic purity.

Sound familiar? The creators of Wicked, I believe, are not criticizing the war on terror so much as the morality-play rhetoric and symbolism underlying it. The terrorists may indeed by “wicked” (and what’s a better example of black-and-white moral thinking than Jihadism?), and should be stopped, but by painting them as “evil” and ourselves as “good,” we can fail to take a close, critical view of them and the leaders we count on to protect us.

It’s All About Popular: Sarah Palin as Glinda

And, though the authors couldn’t have foreseen the rise of Sarah Palin back in 2000 or so, they must have shared a wry chuckle or two over Palin’s resemblance to Glinda. A celebrated beauty, Glinda is beloved wherever she goes, owing solely to her looks and charm. She is almost utterly lacking in talent or intellect, but that matters to her far less than popularity. As she tells Elphaba,

Think of celebrated heads of state

Or ‘specially great communicators:

Did they have brains or knowledge?

Don’t make me laugh!

They were popular!

It’s all about popular.

Glinda becomes so addicted to popularity that she can’t bear to let it out of her grip, even when that means joining forces with people she knows to be corrupt. In one particularly underhanded and catty move, she sells out Elphaba—her erstwhile “best friend”—to the Wizard because Fiyero has chosen Elphaba over her.

With a better script, Wicked would have been Glinda’s tragedy as much as it almost was Elphaba’s. For Glinda does become self-aware by the play’s close. She’s less happy to spread the Wizard’s lies than she is afraid not to, lest she lose her adoring public. As she mollifies the Munchkins with assurances that the Wizard has everything under control, one can almost hear her thinking, “This isn’t right, but if I speak out, then they won’t like me anymore.” That basic desire to be liked is what humanizes Glinda, transforming her from the ditzy comic relief into a sympathetic character.

But the play goes too far in trying to vindicate Glinda. After Elphaba’s “death,” Glinda tries to redeem her friend’s reputation — but doesn’t try so hard that she’d get herself in trouble with the Wizard. Despite being so weenie and weasely, she gets to end the play on a soaring duet in which she and Elphaba proclaim, “Because I knew you / I have been changed for the better / I have been changed for good.” Schmaltz, once again, wins out over substance.

I don’t know what goes on in Sarah Palin’s head, and so I can’t say whether she believes some of the more inflammatory things she says, but I see her as a Glinda: someone who’s in love with popularity and will hold onto it at any cost. Palin’s been blessed with good looks, charisma, and a gift for coining phrases that resonate with her base. When I hear her spouting rhetoric about “death panels” or Obama’s “palling around with terrorists,” I look at her winks and smirks and think, “There’s no way she can really buy that tripe,” partly because I don’t believe that Bump-It-covered head has ever held an idea in its life, and partly out of an inborn suspicion that all politicians*, of whatever party, are glib hucksters. Palin’s speeches are conglomerations of catch phrases, unfettered by logic or even grammar; they say nothing, except for the fact that she all too often has no idea what she’s talking about. But as long as she manages to push the right buttons — maverick! homespun hockey mom! Obama=the end of America! — she remains popular.

Does doubt ever creep into her mind, as it did for Glinda, making her think that maybe her irresponsible statements are causing harm, or, failing that, that maybe she shouldn’t be blathering on about subjects she knows nothing about? There’s been no sign of it so far, but one can always hope.

* For the record, I don’t think Obama cares nearly as much about hope, change, or health care reform as he does the awesomeness of one Barack H. Obama.

There’s a certain logic to that: being crammed in sardine-style for a 12-hour slog to Beijing, for example, can lower anyone’s resistance. At 3 in the morning, between 40-minute naps, contorted into a pretzel formation, with The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice playing as the in-flight movie overhead, rubber bands that promise an “instant face lift” can start sounding like a good idea.

But on shorter flights, SkyMall’s just a showcase for the worst aspects of a consumer society: mass-produced crap packaged as “collectors’ items,” complete with “certificates of authenticity,” and devices that appeal only to the desperately credulous, like laser and “ion”-emitting wands that purportedly regrow hair or erase wrinkles (because apparently, “sciencey stuff you don’t understand” = magic!). Then there’s the capitalizing on the ambient environment with the geegaws to make your flight more comfortable, including my favorite, the Drunken Crash Pillow.

But then there are products of such obvious inutility that they’re in a class by themselves: the groan-out-loud, why-would-anyone-buy-that? category. Here are this year’s prime offenders:

The Canine Genealogy Kit

Dying to know your mutt’s ancestry? Send in a sample of his spit to Hammacher Schlemmer, and, for only $59.95, you’ll finally figure out if Fido is part pit bull. Hammacher Schlemmer’s test can distinguish between 63 different breeds, but if that’s not accurate enough for you, send $124.99 and a blood sample to the Wisdom Panel (and anyone who does so is apparently immune to the irony of that name), which can trace your dog’s lineage back to any of 173 breeds.

Coming up next: Think that seat-kicker behind you is the spawn of Satan? Prove it to his parents with the Inflight Paternity Test! Only from SkyMall!

The Telekinetic Obstacle Course ($99.95)

This “game” allows you to move a foam ball through an obstacle course using only your theta brain waves. Its other function is to make you look like a gigantic dork as you strap a clunky bionic band to your head. Trekkies reading about this device will have only one question: Does it give you an orgasm every time you move up a level? Seriously, this sounds like a half-baked Scientology plot to take over the world – or at least recruit some dumb people with too much disposable income.

The Howard Hughes Collection

With the “Keep Your Distance” Bug Vacuum ($49.95), the Million Germ Eliminating Travel Toothbrush Sanitizer ($29.95), and the Nano-UV Disinfection Scanner ($59.95), you’ll never have to encounter organic material ever again! And, if you’re concerned about those filthy, bedbug-ridden hotel linens, invest in the PillowBuddy ($19.95), a “hypoallergenic,” “100% natural cotton” cover for your pillow, which differs from an ordinary pillowcase ($3.99) in some subtle way I am unable to determine.

The Pants Un-Heeled

In the ever-popular “problems you didn’t know you had” category comes Pants Un-Heeled, sticky strips you can attach to your pant cuffs to save yourself from the scourge of the “pant/heel” wedgie, SkyMall’s term for what happens when your cuffs get caught between the heel of your foot and the sole of your shoe. They’re $12.99 for 12 (strips, not pairs). Or you could always, you know, get your pants tailored.

The Solafeet Foot Tanner

If I had to nominate one product in this catalog for the “Most Likely To Start A Marxist Revolution By Virtue Of Its Very Existence,” it might well be the Solafeet, a $299.99 miniature tanning bed for your feet. As opposed to the sun, a giant ball of gas located 92 million miles from Earth, which will tan your entire body for free.

The Hide-Away Foot & Body Personal Infrared Sauna

Also known as the Christopher Pike emulator, this $499.00 device will “boost your immune system from the comfort of your own home.” It has infrared technology, and since you, the average SkyMall consumer, know all about electromagnetic radiation, you can be confident this sauna will make you healthier. Remember, one flash means yes, two means no!

And this picture almost exactly recaptures Sarah Connor’s nightmare from Terminator 2. Run, girls, run!:

Tom Coates has set up ‘Red Dust,’ a Flickr gallery filled with orangey goodness. It’s exceptionally well-curated and contains such beauties as the following:

Simply gorgeous — and no Photoshop required.

Then there’s this one, which Coates dubs “the most sinister photo over taken”:

That’s no understatement: it’s like a Stephen King cover come to life. Sleep well, lil’ Aussie kiddies. If the dingoes don’t eat you, the giant head will.

Sorry, but Courtney: kind of a stuck-up name. . . .

Based totally on my personal experience, I can see a Courtney being the kind of girl who makes the teacher’s life hell by constantly talking, laughing, texting, and gum-chewing during class. She’s not the class clown — that would be beneath her — instead, she’s that girl who thinks she’s too cool to pay attention. And who maybe feels kind of bad for the teacher because she has ugly shoes and is, like, teaching junior high school. She’s the girl who’s way cooler than you in eighth grade and who, if you ever actually become a teacher yourself, you totally dread.

While I’m sure the world abounds with humble, down-to-earth Courtneys, the Courtneys I have known have generally been princessy, popular, and blonde. The name doesn’t say “bitch” to me exactly — Courtney’s not the type to, say, fill your locker with tampons. She’s the type to laugh when they all fall out, then go back to forgetting you exist.

Ouch! I’m tempted to start listing Anna stereotypes, but: a) there aren’t any; and b) that would just make me one of the obnoxious Courtneys, so I’ll refrain.

I knew my name had some “too cool for school” connotations about it, but I never realized people felt this strongly about it. Now I’m wondering whether, whenever someone learns my name without meeting me, they imagine I’m going to act like a member of the Plastics. I don’t fit the stereotype at all, for the record: in high school, I was the dorky, quiet girl with glasses who hid behind her hair all the time. I was actually the student that teachers loved because I read constantly and knew how to write a decent essay. I’ve always been solidly middle class, am miserable at tennis, and never once have I been remotely considered ‘popular.’ My hair is brown, and, most of the time, it’s up in either a ponytail or a bun. And I blog about Star Trek, for crying out loud!

But, even though Courtney may not match up in the public eye with my nerdy self, I still like my name. It’s feminine, but there are enough crunchy consonants in it to keep it from sounding too girly. It looks good at the top of a resume or on an application to grad school. It’s not overly popular, or at least it wasn’t when I was in school, but neither is it too strange. Most people know how to spell and pronounce it, although a French roommate I once had confused it with “Coralie,” and there was one in high school, who, honest to God, though it was spelled Quarkney. Maybe I was giving out Trekkie signals even back then.

I am your liege lady Gypsycat, here to bestow upon you my bons mots and insightful observations about all things cultural and belletristic . . .
Okay, okay, I’m starting a blog. It’ll be about books. And coffee, and cats, and Star Trek, and Travel Channel shows, and pop sociology, and cool stuff I found online, and other random bits of nerdity. Enjoy.