Sunday, December 23, 2012
Ask Santa
Santa, why do you sometimes use the same wrapping paper as my mom?
–Erin G., Jerusalem, PA
Christmas is an exciting day for everybody. Kids, North Pole Staff, and even parents. And we can hardly blame anybody if they come down and see all the presents we've left under the tree. And if they maybe want to take a little peek. I don't want to point any fingers. But the Spirit of the Holiday sometimes gets the best of us all. And having to re-wrap presents is something Moms and Dads sometimes have to do. Say hello to your brother Jason for me. He almost catches me every year. Almost!
Have you avoided using social media? Why not make it easier for children to be in touch with you via email, Facebook, and Twitter?
–Steve Y., South Bend, IN
We still like getting letters very much!
Santa, my dog Harry is so sick! I don’t think he’s going to make it to Christmas! Can you help?
–Bryant E., Tate, NM
I’m really sorry to hear about Harry. He is a great dog. Losing a pet is terrible, our cat Celery recently died. She was such a great friend to us and we felt so lucky to know her. I cried. She had gotten older and was sick, too, at the end. Patrice, one of our Master Woodworker elves, made this wonderful ornament of Celery, her paws holding up the star on the top of the Christmas tree here in the center of the village. She has these wonderful angel wings, and I can’t help but smile when I see it. It helps me remember the good times we had with Celery, when she would sit in my lap by the fire or wake us up at 4 AM to be fed. I am sending you some dog food for Harry that we used for Celery at the end of her life. It is quite tasty and really boosted her spirits toward the end of her life. I hope Harry makes it to Christmas. I would like to see him Christmas Eve and scratch behind his ear a little, like he likes it. READ MORE
The Jellyfish 4-Ever
Previously: The Devil of the Sea.
Natalie Eve Garrett is an artist who likes surprises. Prints of her paintings are for sale here (and some paintings are available, too).
How "Baby It's Cold Outside" Became America's Secular Christmas Anthem, Despite People Claiming It's About Date Rape
Betty Garrett and Red Skelton, reversing roles in the song's 1948 Hollywood premiere.
This Christmastime, last Christmastime and for many holiday seasons past, writers and commenters of the Internet have gathered to argue over the holiday classic "Baby It's Cold Outside." The conversations and accusations are rarely about the song's merits as a Tin Pan Alley jazz-pop composition. Instead, we wonder if the playful exchange of the man and woman is actually the loaded conversation before a sinister date rape. Or is the whole song just a harmless relic of a bygone time when "The answer is No" meant not "No," but "maybe just a half a drink more," and then, later, "lend me your comb."
We will not talk about that. Go to Salon or the Atlantic for such debates. We are going to talk about the song itself, while we listen to various interpretations, and we will assume the lyric is about a couple doing what couples have often done, which is to overthink everything and worry about what neighbors and relatives will say, and then eventually just blame the eventual deed on the timeworn suspects of drink, lack of cabs and bad weather. READ MORE
Beauty Q&A: Ask a Former Beauty PR Manager
Jane Marie: As your friend, I know that you used to work in the New York beauty PR world — calling around to get products into magazines, always smelling great and having awesome eyeshadow and stuff. That's how I would describe your old job, if pressed. You wanna give it a shot?
MacKenzie Lewis: My official title was PR Manager. My unofficial title was press liaison, pitcher of stories, planner of events and writer of press releases. It was a great gig because no two days were ever the same, and I was able to work on projects like Fashion Week and events with Colette in Paris. But budgeting, strategic planning and analysis make up the less glamorous side of things. There's this misconception that PR is all about socializing at cocktail parties — that's part of the job, but a very small part.
Okay, so the impetus for this interview was that the other day I was on Sephora.com and on the home page they had this "Shop Allure's 'Best Of Beauty'" feature. You know, that annual list in Allure magazine of the "best" beauty products? Of course there were a bunch of the usual suspects in there — the Clarisonic face brush, Bobbi Brown gel eyeliner (yes!) — but then I kept scrolling and there was all this other stuff that I had never heard of, nor would I ever play with at Sephora. So it got me wondering how that shit gets on the list, you know? Could you maybe walk me through how a beauty product gets featured in an average editorial — that is, not an advertisement — in any magazine?
Okay, well let me preface whatever I’m about to say with a disclaimer that neither Allure nor any other magazine has ever let me sit in while they compile their “best of” lists. But I do have friends who are editors and am not completely oblivious to what happens around me. I’m also an editor now, though in a country where publishing functions slightly differently than in the US.
But back to the question. I guess the first factor in getting on the list is the most optimistic: the editor genuinely likes a product. Most things in life prefaced by the word “best” (movies, New York style pizzas, friends) are subjective, and makeup is no exception. Consider just how many boxes would have to be ticked off before you’d call a dry shampoo, for example, your favorite. How many of those are personal preferences (good packaging, for me, is essential)? And then consider how many things affect that dry shampoo’s performance on you, personally: your hair color, texture, shampooing habits and even climate. I might love one brand of hair powder because it disappears on my hair and gives it just the right amount of body in my humid climate. But on your shade it might leave white residue and feel dry, or the fact that it doesn’t wash out easily could be a deal breaker.
Then there’s the practicality factor. Editing a magazine is someone’s job, and sometimes she has to make concessions for the overall good of the story. For example, maybe she’s doing a “Best fall fragrances” piece, and the art department told her she needs to include eight fragrances for the layout to work. But what if she only likes seven? That eighth “best” scent is going to come down to a) whatever’s already in the magazine’s beauty closet, b) whichever publicist sends her an eighth perfume first, or c) whichever beauty publicist she’s better friends with. READ MORE
The Best For Me But Worst Overall Ghost Encounter This Year
My girlfriend and I were enjoying some beers (nice) as we made dinner together a couple of weeks ago.
"Hey," she says, and I look over from cleaning some dishes. "Did you do this?" Her beer bottle's label has been completely removed, not a rogue strip or glue remnant in sight. I say no, and she says she didn't either. We test another bottle to see if we can even recreate such a clean tear job. Not possible. But surely I'd done it, she's convinced. "This is the worst prank anyone could ever pull." OKAY, neither of us did it, let's put it behind us and enjoy "The Sopranos" like a goddamn family!
I go to the fridge for another beer. It still has its label, and I know this because labels are the only thing on either of our minds at this point, and possibly forever. I bring it back to the couch and settle in with a couple of sips, then put it down. A few minutes pass. "I just opened this," I say looking down, so sad, at my bottle.
"Okay …" she says. "I didn't do that."
The label isn't there.
Erin Sullivan lives in Portland, Oregon.
Things I've Replaced With Olive or Jojoba Oil
Butter
Exfoliants (when combined with brown sugar)
Moisturizer
Conditioner
Face wash
Makeup remover
Cigarettes
Family
The internet
Reality
Yule Log It!
Why did I start making yule logs? Because they are hilarious. (Bûche de Noëls, on the other hand, are beautiful, French, and fine and not hilarious at all.) The idea of taking this wonderfully airy, yellow sponge cake, a delicate whipped filling and a rich, decadent chocolate frosting, and turning it all into a cake make to look like a rotting log covered in fungus is simply one of the most marvelous holiday traditions of all time. If you aren’t dead on your feet yet (if so, sorry! Just skip ahead to the drink at the bottom of the page!), grab your friends, and log away.
The Best GIF (-Related) Stories I Read This Year
The moving GIF started making its come-back a few years back, but only in 2012 did writers really agree to call the phenomenon in terms of a GIF Renaissance. It is, after all, the quarter-century anniversary of these fun looping pictures. The Oxford Dictionaries even named “GIF” word of the year, beating out “YOLO,” and rightly so. Ann Friedman wrote a good overview of what journalists need to know about the animated GIF, while Jezebel explained the reaction GIF.
Reddit has an endless log of GIFs. Buzzfeed’s GIF-lists go on (Mad Men!), and on (Olympics!), and on (rub-a-GIF!). Refresh with the GIFs on Colossal, and then repeat. READ MORE
The Internet's Vigilante Shame Army
In 2012, more than ever, the internet became the way we shame people now. Here to talk about online justice and public shaming are academic internet experts Whitney Phillips and Kate Miltner. (Whitney recently completed her PhD dissertation on trolls; Kate wrote her Masters thesis on LOLCats—yep!) Up for discussion today: Violentacrez, hate blogs, racist teens on Twitter, poor Lindsey Stone, Hunter Moore, and last Friday's misidentification of the Sandy Hook shooter.
Whitney: Contrary to Nathan Heller's Onion-worthy New York Magazine article lamenting the loss of the "hostile, predatory, somewhat haunted" feel of early web, the internet of 2012 is not always a warm and fuzzy place. In fact it can be pretty terrible, particularly for women, a point Katie J.M. Baker raises in her pointed response to Heller's article. The internet is so far from a utopian paradise, in fact, that lawmakers in the US, UK, and Australia are scrambling to do something, anything, to combat online aggression and abuse.
Not everyone supports legal intervention, of course. Academics like Jonathan Zittrain readily concede that online harassment is a major concern, but they argue that the laws designed to counter these behaviors risk gutting the First Amendment. A better solution, Zittrain maintains, would be to innovate and implement on-site features that allow people to undo damage to someone's reputation, livelihood, and/or peace of mind. As an example, during an interview with NPR, Zittrain suggested that Twitter users could be given the option to update or retract "bad" information, which would then ping everyone who interacted with the original tweet. Existing damage would thus be mitigated, and draconian censorship measures rendered unnecessary.
Regardless of the impact that either type of intervention might have, the fact is that today, this very second, there is often little recourse against behaviors that might be deeply upsetting, but aren't quite illegal either. In those cases, what should be done? What can be done?
If recent high-profile controversies surrounding Violentacrez, Comfortably Smug, racist teens on Twitter, Lindsey Stone and Hunter Moore are any indication, it would seem that many people, members of the media very much included, are increasingly willing to take online justice into their own hands. Because these behaviors attempt to route around the existing chain of command (within mainstream media circles, the legal system, even on-site moderation policies), I've taken to describing them as a broad kind of online vigilantism. It might not be vigilantism in the Dog the Bounty Hunter sense, but it does—at least, it is meant to—call attention to and push back against some real or perceived offense. READ MORE
The Top Five Lesser-Known Failed Apocalypses
The world is probably going to end tomorrow! Alternately, the world is definitely not going to end tomorrow! Frequent, vigorous, nonsensical, and ultimately unsuccessful apocalyptic predictions are a part of our shared cultural heritage; making them is a tradition we're simply carrying forward.
5. Some time in the 1600s: Christopher Columbus
Most of us know Christopher Columbus as a guy who sailed the ocean blue/ genocidal maniac, but he was also fascinated by the apocalypse, and toward the end of his life wrote The Book of Prophecies, which drew apocalyptic theories from the Old and New Testament, as well as his own era, to try to convince King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to sponsor new voyages that would help bring around the end times and the return of Christ. In fact, some claim that his entire voyage to the ‘new world’ was part of an attempt to discover a new route to Jerusalem, the first step toward bringing about the end of days. He died in 1506, convinced the end was quite near.
4. 1999: Charles Berlitz
Charles Berlitz was a Yale magna cum laude and an heir to the Berlitz language school company, and he helped pioneer the recording of foreign language lessons on tape. But who cares about any of that stuff! Berlitz’s real legacy was that he predicted the end of the world. In 1982, he published Doomsday 1999: Countdown to the Apocalypse, which made the case that because of problems like famine, overpopulation, and climate change, the world would end around 1999 (certainly not the most far-out claim on this list). His other books, on topics like the lost city of Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, and Roswell UFOs, are available on Amazon, in case you’re still trying to figure out what to get anyone for Christmas. READ MORE
“I have 11 brothers and sisters, and 26 nieces and nephews. Let’s hope everyone stays alive and keeps talking with each other."
—Jon (bosom friend of the Hairpin) Cotner asks strangers on the street for their holiday wishes, with customarily sweet and sad and funny results. | December 20, 2012
A Christmas Story
The old nativity scene we put up on the church lawn was made of white plastic that lit up at night, bright slashes of paint for beards and eyes and hair. The figures — one Mary, one Joseph, one Jesus, two shepherds, one angel, three wise Men, and a camel — had always glowed cheap and cheerful under their straw hutch. And they were light enough that it only took a couple volunteers from the youth group to set them up (and untangle their wires, and enjoy the scene with hot cider in styrofoam cups).
This year, though, the plastic figurines had flickered and then gone dark when we tested them in the church basement. “Well,” the pastor said, placing a hand on Joseph’s shoulder, “we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” He smiled and left in his truck. He returned few hours later, stamping his feet for warmth as he climbed down. “Come help me unload this,” he called, flushed with excitement. “Got these for free. Didn’t even have to dip into the holiday funds.”
There weren’t as many of the new nativity figures, only the Holy Family and the angel (“Don’t know what happened to the shepherds and the Wise Men," he said, "but free is free”). They were made of dark wood and were heavier than they looked — it took two of us to carry the angel alone. The choir director wrinkled her nose as she placed the baby Jesus onto his weathered manger. "I think they’ve molded,” she said.
“Do you?” the pastor said. “I think they smell nice. Spicy, almost.” He pushed Mary into place, and we stepped back to get a good look.
"Let’s say you do not want to cut a bunch of hair off, or apply duct tape to your face, or achieve the world’s briefest, ugliest mustache, but you do want to achieve a wild happiness." | December 20, 2012
Dogs, Babies, and the Process of Learning to Generalize
The other day, the baby lurched clumsily across the floor to our large bag of dog food, from which she usually successfully extracts two or three pieces of high-quality low-residue kibble a day. This time, she paused and scrutinized the illustration on the front. She touched it, and said: "dawwwwww?"
Yes! we said. Dawwwwwwg.
She looked confused. Then she walked to the bed and craned her head up until she made eye contact with our actual dog. "Dawwwwwwww?"
Yes! we said. Dawwwwwwg.
And then she went back to the bag, and hugged it. And we were all THIS IS HOW MALCOLM MCDOWELL FELT WHEN HE ENTERED THE NEXUS IN STAR TREK: GENERATIONS.
So, here's the thing. We talk a lot about the problems of over-generalization. There are a bunch of them! I don't think I've ever said "under-generalization" in my life, yet we all have to weather it while we learn which things are the same as other things. There are dogs and dogs and dogs and dogs and dogs, and a noob to this world would not necessarily believe that a wolfhound is a chihuahua is a Great Dane, but they are, like many prickly or soft or peel-y things are fruit, and we all figured it out, and it's no less amazing just because it was a while back, so good for you, knowing which things are fruit and which things are dawwwwwwwgs.
And that's what being a parent is like right now, and, conceptually, it's pretty neat.
Kahlúa Gingerbread ... Gingerbread
I know. It's obvious. But it's holiday time, and I wanted to decorate some cookies. And I have to say, if you decide to get one egregiously holiday-themed product this year, this is not a bad one to choose (especially compared to Pringles Peppermint or whatever). Straight, it tastes a bit like sweet coffee made with ashes, but mix in some hot milk and by golly you got a nog goin'!
Plus, of all the ridiculous liquors I've gotten, this one seems to make the most sense, baking-wise. Why bother with nutmeg and cinnamon and actual ginger when you can just use a dollop of Kahlúa Gingerbread? Cut your prep time in half! Set it and forget it! READ MORE
