I demand more nerd girls!

Packaging Girlhood is a great blog concerned with marketing aimed at girls. They just released their Best & Worst Marketing Campaigns of 2006 list, and it's a pretty good audit.

On the loser list, the disturbing Bratz Party Plane, which I'm sure all junior spoiled slutz enjoyed opening this holiday season. The whole Bratz line is particularly repulsive, not to mention their line of padded bras for six-year olds.


Accessories included: cup holders; nail polish applicator; smoothies; hair gel; crimper; make-up case; mascara.

Accessories they should have included: lapdance chair; tanning bed; wheel of appetite-suppressants; morning-after-pills; I'm an exotic dancer because daddy didn't love me t-shirt.

Grossest.

On to the winners list, my peeps at Nintendo get props for the game Super Princess Peach, which I enjoyed playing immensely this year, and which did have a fantastic commercial:


Go Pink Power!

Having said that, on a feminist level, I wasn't sure what to make of this game. Princess Peach's powers come from her emotions - anger turns her to fire, sadness makes her shoot tears, joy makes her fly etc. Isn't that reinforcing the stereotypes that girls are more emotional than logical, and that our uncontrollable feelings make us unreliable - one of the classic arguments against promoting women in the workplace?

Another winner, and a program I have been a big fan of for a while, is the Girl Scouts Girls Go Tech campaign. It's so critical to teach young girls that technology is cool, because, well, technology is hella cool! How great is this ad:


Baby's smarter than daddy!

Driving young girls less toward lame lip gloss crap, and more into awesome science and adventure crap, will make more Natalie Portmans, and less Tara Reids. And really, isn't that something we all want?


Seriously people. Think about the children.

There's also a great CBC Marketplace piece on this issue - Buying into Sexy.

Let's all make it a mission to make more nerd girls this millenium. Hear that pregnant moms-to-be? I'm looking at you, Willow and Nikki! Don't think Auntie Beckstar won't be popping in with her Lego Robotics kits!

Live Action Video Games!

Why is anything digital rendered in live action so so very awesome?


Live Pac Man is obviously the coolest thing ever. I love Japanese television. And beating video game characters with sticks, naturally.


And of course, we have the great Super Mario live action performance from Gordon College. These guys should make the Dean's List just for this one effort.

Remember the Acapella Nintendo? Same general family of fantastic.

Down Mexico Waaaaay...

So I'm back from an amazing trip South of the Border.

Check out these amazing photos I took in Mexico - each one leads to a gallery of images.

Blog of the Week: The art of judging strangers

So I've got to say I'm pretty impressed with He Looks Like - The Morbid Game of Psychoanalyzing Strangers in Pictures.

It raises judging strangers to a fine art. Check a small sample:

She looks like the mastermind behind the crystal meth epidemic sweeping the U.S.

Incidentally, her famous Coconut Brownie Surprise Bars came in 2nd in a Betty Crocker baking contest where one of the judges exclaimed, "I had 3 of them this morning and would have eaten the whole plate if I hadn't gotten distracted by an impulse to sprint across two state lines before running myself through the plate glass window of a Gap Kids store in Jersey."

He looks like a great example of the age-old Christian debate, what makes a child gay? Is it the immense enjoyment of a phallic oral applicator for his cough medicine, or wearing shirts made from his sister's recycled bedspread?

And so on.

Warning: don't be this guy.

Yes folks, I'm back.

I have a sweet post with all the photos of my amazing trip to Mexico, on the burner, but it's time to go to bed.

Still running a bit of a deficit from the INSANE (in truly the most literal sense of the word) New Year's party at the Biltmore. Details to follow.

In the meantime, enjoy this little spot from Europe. A good public warning, this one. You definitely don't want to be this guy.

Tony Danza, you hapless bitch

I hate this guy.

Partially because he plays characters named Tony so much it's become an obvious joke, and really, what is that?

Partially because he's just such an unbelievable douchebag*. I mean seriously - look at the guy.

Partially because he says stuff like this in interviews:

I think in a crazy way Eminem has got a sound. There’s something very different about what he does.

I mean I wish it wasn’t as vulgar as it is at times, but, there’s something about it that’s different, that I respond differently to, or the same way I used to respond to stuff when it was new. We may be in a little bit of slump.

In my act I do some songs from 1951, the year I was born. I say that’s the prevalent music of ’51 and now the prevalent music of today is rap-----and then I rap. I got an alter-ego. I don’t know if you know that. Italian Ice. (Laughs). I do some rap.

There is some rap put there that’s very good and different and not as vulgar, and uplifting. Even Tupac Shakur, if you ever heard his song “Dear Momma”, you say wow, this guy could’ve really been something as far as uplifting as opposed to the thug life that he chose.

* Douchebag is one of my 'Top Ten Socially-Acceptable Insults', coming soon!