Costumes to Avoid: Girls edition

When I was a little girl, I thought the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" meant the same thing as 'What do you want to be for Halloween?" I would always answer that I wanted to be a cat or an angel, which left a lot of grown ups confused. I can't explain why I mixed those two up. The logic of five-year-olds is lost once you move past that age.

Anyway, to the little girl costumes!

Sexy Firefighter's Costume

This costume is ok even though it is a "Anything + Female = Sexy!" costume. I am worried that this was listed in the young girl's section.

Gretal costume

Nothing wrong with the costume itself. But perhaps "Hansel and Gretal" is not the best theme to explore on the night you send your children to strangers' houses to ask for snacks. They'll find a delicious house, get kidnapped by a witch, and the next thing you know your son is on trial for manslaughter of the witch.

Hello Kitty Charleston

Flapper + Hello Kitty = ????? WHY???

Cap & Gown Costume

I heard that there are little graduation ceremonies for kids in elementary school and whatnot. Provided you go to the right school, this costume could go double duty. The downside is that your child has to like "High School Musical" and you don't want a child like that.

Plus sized Tracy from "Hairspray"

Ironically, cruelly, (or perhaps appropriately) this costume is available in plus sizes only. Ouch.

Now for something a little different: The Best Costume!

Unicorn Costume

Fuck. Yeah. I love this costume so much that I really wish they had it in adult size. I love this unicorn thing so much that I would wear it around on non-Halloween days, like on Saturday afternoons on a long walk out in public. Business meetings, court appearances, weddings, work days, church. There are no situations that cannot be improved by strapping a stuffed unicorn to your waist.

Most of all, I love it because I saw it in a funny portrait in the Nation Portrait Gallery's Photographic Portrait Prize 2007 (check out some of the other portaits).

Lily-Pea (found here)
by Shara Henderson

Aquatic tables and school folders

My grandparents used to have a condominium in Florida. They flew down there for five months of the year, enjoying the balmy winter while the Midwest battled lake effect snow and Ugg boots. They used to go to Florida but stopped when my grandmother saw one cockroach after many many years of staying in a tropical climate. Their solution? Spend the winter in Texas. Now they remain up north during the winter, having chosen to be snowed in rather than ever see the kind of cockroaches that thrive in the south.

Their Floridian condo was as dull as can be expected. Everything was beige colored except for some salmon pink wallpaper that occurs only in Florida.

Why bring up an old condo I visited as a child on winter breaks? Ten years too late, I found the perfect table for their beige besieged apartment. I found a table that is so unique that it needs the blandest of colors to be paired with; it's a table that can only be paired with chairs that do not remotely match.

this thing is a bazillion dollars

YES. It's a glass table with a surfacing sea turtle. I'm not a fan of glass topped tables but I'm even more hesitant about a glass top table with an embedded statue. Not only would I be terrified of breaking the turtle's face, I'd feel terrible for setting down a casserole on his face during dinner time.


A manta ray table might be an interesting gift but it would be in bad taste to send it to Steve Irwin's family.


Not gonna lie. I would like to have a manatee coffee table, with or without the oddly place flower vase. I wouldn't buy it (especially not at $3200 + $300 for shipping) but if I saw it on the side of the road, I would stuff it in the car's backseat and take back to my imaginary bachorlette pad.


I am certain I had a similar picture on school supplies when I was in elementary school. Nothings screams 90s for me like a Christian Riese Lassen psychedelic waterscape on a folder.


Speaking of Mr. Lassen, it turns out he has made an aquatic theme table too.

I have relatives who would buy this

I like the mantra ray a lot better.


Sources:
John Didier Designs Custome Furniture
Christian Riese Lassen

Unicorn, Cupcakes, and Religions Icons

My family is not particularly religious. They are vaguely protestant Christians and occasional show up to church. My peers came from a mixed bag of families, ranging from fanatical Baptists to easy going Methodists and to half hearted Catholics. In the end, my peers had little to no religious education either.

Thankfully art history filled me in on Christians legends, making me at least feel well educated.

Anyway, this t-shirt is the formula for awesome. Unicorn + cupcake + Our Lady of Guadalupe = AWESOME. Math is good for many things.

BME Shop: Unicorns and Cupcakes

You Only Wish You Were This Awesome - Joseph Ducreux

At some point in our life, we like to think of ourselves as being awesome. Not awesome in that "filling with awe" sort of way, but the "I'm the coolest baddest mother-effing human being" kind of awesome.

Well, we will never be the most awesome person on the planet because Batman has already been invented. But there are several real people we can look up to as an inspiration for awesome.

One of those people is Joseph Ducreux.

Pimping Pose by an awesome dude

According to Wikipedia, Joseph Ducreux was French portrait painter, pastelist, miniaturist, and engraver. He painted portraits for Marie Antoinette, King Louis XVI and other famous people but those all pale in comparison to his famous self portraits done in the 1780s.

Ducreux was trying to break free from the stiff limitations of portraiture and engage in real expression, wether it be an alarmed face asking for silence, being in the middle of a yawn, or guffawing at the audience in a very pimp-esque pose. Two centuries ago, he painted himself to be what would become known as humorous image macros, but without the obnoxious text, obviously.

You can only wish you were as awesome as this guy.

(More serious biographical information that is not Wikipedia.)