Tuesday, October 14, 2003

next on martha's kitchen: knitted kozys for your forties.

so i was up late last night watching the late late show with craig kilborn (whatever) because of course paul weller was on, and multitasker that i am, i was concurrently installing panther on my computer(s). anyway, whatever, the show finishes and i'm still working on the computers and whatnot and martha stewart's show comes on afterwards. whatever, i'm not watching at this point--it's just background noise, she's making tortilla casseroles and whatnot, i'm ignoring it, then all of a sudden she's making duct tape wallets. what the fuck? not only is she making duct tape wallets, but camo duct tape wallets. (!) i mean, i think of gutterpunks or crafty art school kids when i think of duct-tape wallets, not martha stewart omnimedia.

i guess when mainstream society co-opted skateboarding and snowboarding and all the other action sports, i should have known that the world was going to hell--times have sure changed. seriously, i can't imagine what it would be like to be in high school these days--when i was in school, you had your jocks and you had your skaters and you had your geeks. these days, there are literally more skateboarders than there are little league players, and it's at least as likely, if not more likely that someone will want to idolize tony hawk or mat hoffman or kelly slater and go home and play their signature videogame as much as they want to be derek jeter or kobe bryant or whoever. this is a good thing, for sure. however, the ridiculous "jock" attitude has crept into these other action sports, and that is a bad thing. kids will be kids i guess, but the bad attitudes, posturing and bullying once reserved for the court or field has started to replace the feeling of camaraderie and acceptance that you used to enjoy at the skatepark or the local street spot.

having said all that and completely off topic since i can come to no conclusion about the co-opting of alternative culture into mainstream culture (and i realize it's fine, it's helping the sports grow, it's allowing people to be professional athletes and to do what they love to do for a living, i'm just bitter), i just had a wonderful beef brisket burrito from the fresh/pre-made section at whole foods. (i've said it before and here, i'll say it again--seriously, half of the people in there at any time look like they just came from yoga--this is not a bad thing necessarily, i'm used to it--i live in venice remember, there are probably 8 yoga studios within a half mile of me.) a sublime experience, this burrito from the border girls (mary sue milliken and susan feniger from border grill, the two hot tamales?), damn i didn't want that burrito to end. speaking of whole foods (who was doing brisk business due to the supermarket strikes going on here in so cal), i know it's a shame that we have to pay for water, but how can they well those 1.5 liter bottles for $.59? amazing! i guess it's to offset all the other ridiculous boatloads of cash that you spend there on food.

can you tell i'm procrastinating right now?