Question – what are your favorite fads?

For the first time since it became “required” to wear masks at the grocery store I saw some maskless ones.  There was a young couple who appeared to be strolling around rather than shopping – the lady had no mask and the dude had a mask but it was on his chin.  Obviously they should both go to federal prison with the crotch biters, but I have a shred more respect for no-mask over chin-mask.  She doesn’t want to wear a mask so she’s not, at least she has some integrity when it comes to being stupid.  Chin-mask is pretending to wear a mask which annoys me. 

I’m less full of hatred and bile these days (for SOME reason) but one thing that still really gets my goat is when people are doing something stupid and think they’re being clever.  I blogged on my old old old blog a couple times about one of my earliest formative childhood memories being one the mom of one of my acquaintances bragging to me about how smart she was because she lies and tells people her son is disabled so she can get good seats at concerts.  She was so proud of herself.  I hadn’t realized until then that adults could be assholes. 

Anyway, fads, I hate them.  I’m not sure why.  Probably it’s somehow related to my hatred of memes and my instinct to dislike things that are popular.  Of my many massive character flaws disliking things just because a lot of other people like them is one of my least favorite because smacks of some form of elitism and there’s nothing elite about me.  Sometimes people at my old job would accuse me of being “too cool for school” when I refused to participate in whatever retarded (sorry) thing they were doing which is laughable because I am not cool, but I can kind of see what they were driving at.

So these are my “favorite” fads in the sense that they best show how stupid everyone else is and how I’m the smartest and best and more interesting person in the world. 

#1 – Pot smoking grannies

I don’t remember exactly when this was, early 90s I think (you know 25 FUCKING years ago!!!).  What would happen is Jay Leno or some other moron would have an old black lady come out.  And then Jay Leno or some other moron would pretend to be all flustered and stammery because surely you couldn’t say the word marijuana on TV so they would say it “funny” like this “So you like . . . the uh . . . um . . . you like . . . (looks off camera) what can we say here Jimmy?  You smoke . . . . you know . . . .  you’re . . . uh. . . .”  And then old black lady would say “I love reefer” and everyone would HOWL with laughter.  An old person doing something that WE LIKE?!?!?! Hilarious!!!!!!   And that was the whole interview.  This one only lasted a few months, maybe even a few weeks, but it was BIG for a while.  A quick googling suggests that maybe this one is back, there’s a lot of videos for grannies smoking pot for the first time.  They’re all white though.

#2 – Getting off on a technicality

I feel like this one was going on throughout the 80s and 90s and into the 00s.  TV and movie writers really thought that it was super hard to ever put anyone in prison because of all the damn red tape!  Which is interesting because that’s the period of time when the prison population skyrocketed.  Wouldn’t it be neat if we found out they were told to do that by the government as a form of propaganda so people wouldn’t think the prisons weren’t be filled up with non-violent offenders?   

What would happen is the bad guy would rape and murder 67 nuns on live TV and then the police would get them and they would confess but then at trial the defense attorney would be like “but this form has a coma instead of a period!!!” and everyone would gasp and then the judge would dismiss the case the cops that arrested the raping murderer would be fired for arresting the wrong man.  And then their wives would leave them because they were having an affair with the raping murderer as well.  So then the guy would rape and murder a bunch more people and laugh about it and no one could do ANYTHING because he got away with it on a TECHNICALITY.  So then the cops would have to choice but to take the law into their own hands.

This is interesting as well because it seems built on the idea that judges are just itching for a reason to turn people loose.  When as far as I can tell it’s the opposite – it seems like judges in general love sending people to prison.  Even if they’re not guilty of that crime they did something so lock them up.  Plus they probably own stock in the for-profit prison management company. 

Remember when that South African guy shoots Danny Glover and then laughs and goes “Diplomatic immunity” in Lethal Weapon 2?  I do.  I don’t think that’s quite how that works.

#3 – Digital pets

I only put this one the list because I mentioned it to Sweet Pancakes the other day and she had no idea what I was talking about.  For people that have as much in common as we do it’s interesting how wildly different our lives were in the olden times. 

#4 – Dido

Remember Dido?  I dodo. 

Now for the sad part, if you go to the Wikipedia and look up fads by decade pretty much every decade has some form of “maybe women have rights?” as a “fad”.  It’s hard to be sure which is more depressing, the fact that it keeps coming around or the fact that it’s considered a fad. 

In somewhat related news I was chatting with S. Pancakes the other day and she claimed that in the 90s we didn’t have a lot of dance moves – that it was all just depressed grunge shuffling in our day.  I disputed this with the examples of the “the dinosaur” “the cabbage patch” “the running man” “the tootsee roll” and of course the Macerena.  But looking at the fad-lists now I realize there were so many that I forgot.  The Madaonna vogue, the sprinkler, hammer time, the electric slide, the roger rabbit!  How could I forget the roger rabbit?! 

I went to one dance one time in school.  I don’t know why.  It was 6-8 girls doing choreographed synchronized routines while everyone else stood around awkwardly on the edges and was deafened by the speakers.  Those had to have been the cheerleaders right?  Otherwise why would they have had routines ready to go?  After a few minutes my buddy Slapjack and I went out into the hallway and stood talking and killing time until we were supposed to be picked up.  At one point a girl came out to ask me if I wanted to dance with this other girl.  I panicked and said “no” because what else was teenage me going do?  Would my life have been substantially different if I talked to a girl (you know, in THAT way) before I was in college?  Probably not.