Poor Aesthetic Decisions Made By Famous Blondes

I don't think it takes all that much to fuck with a baby's mind.  Fears are instantaneous and insurmountable; baby brains aren't all that known for their powers of perspective.  When I was somewhere around three or four, I saw my mom eating a bowl of Quaker oatmeal, went to sleep, and dreamt a creature made of instant cereal was scaling the side of my house.  It broke in through the second story window of my bedroom, and, taking a spoon to its side, scraped off a piece of itself, which it then force fed me.  That night I experienced a level of horror I hadn't known to exist.  And this fear persisted, eclipsing my sense of well-being even during the daytime.  I thought about that oatmeal monster constantly.  I discovered my mentally induced gag reflex.  I watched my mom's bowl of cereal with a profoundly untoddlerish sense of dread, waiting for its contents to congeal, organize into a sentient being, and make me its bitch.  I learned what it was to have a reoccurring nightmare.  And that this oatmeal monster persists in my adult memory as one of the guiding images of the first house I ever lived in says volumes to me about its tremendous sway over my psyche.  In fact, I was only able to start eating Quaker in 2007, it having apparently taken me a quarter century to process this trauma.

All I'm saying is the dumbest shit can really scare a kid.  So that Christina Aguilera decided it would be a fantastic idea to bring home the ELEVEN FOOT moon from her most recent concert tour and hover it in near proximity to her kid's crib initially struck me as a questionable parenting instinct.

And then I took a good look at that moon's face.  Imagine you're little Max Aguilera Bratman.  You've got a hazy field of vision and so far, your universe is a blur beyond the rosy nipples and soft globes of your mothers bountiful, enhanced breasts.   Before you know it, as weeks go by, your sight begins to lock into focus:

Hey, there's my friends, Mr. Lamby and Mr. Teddy on the easy chairs...hey, there's the pillowy shapes of the trees and the cloud and the hills on my mural...hey, there's my dad's droopy nice-Jewish-boy punim!  And then:

Holy shit, ma, there's a slice of evil fucking incarnate that looks as if it's decaying from the inside and trying to cover the stench of death and gangrene with hot tranny mess rouge!

The kid would be less scarred had she accessorized his room with the assless leather chaps from the Dirrrrrrty tour.  Poor aesthetic decision.  Less potentially psychologically damaging is Scarlett Johansson's new tattoo, which I keep waiting to learn is really a fake-out stunt for Ashton Kutcher's new meta-meta-Punk'd show, except he already had The Hills' Audrina tattoo her arm with Chinese characters advocating frying rice in pork fat, and the lameness of Scar-Jo's ink is both more subtle and more astonishing than I think the Kutch is capable of dreaming up.  (If the tattoo was a joke, then I replace this poor aesthetic decision made by a famous blonde with Carrie Underwood's Bride of Jessica McClintock styling during last night's "Idol Gives Back.")  I always say that choosing a tattoo is not about selecting a design that you think you'll always love, but instead about choosing one that accurately depicts the moment in which you got the work done, so that it's a mark in time and not a mark of identity.  And if Scarlett had gotten this ink done on the last day of Camp Wichi-Wachi when she was eleven so that she would never forget what great friends she had in Tikki-Takki cabin and the summer she learned to make lanyard keychains that twist, I would get it.  Compleeeeeetely.  But if Scarlett is currently at a place in her life where a kindergarten sun rises over the kind of ocean that usually accompanies a menage of Wyland dolphins (I was once there too), then she has no business putting out an album of Tom Waits covers.

 

About a month ago, my mom and I were in side-by-side dressing rooms at Loehmanns, and she wanted me to tell her if a certain pair of pin-striped jeans were making her ass look fat.  In a state of partial undress, I opened the door to see if the stripes were distorting that ass, forgetting the latest tattoo on my ribcage, now visible.  When my mom saw the ribcage, she sucked in her breath as a quiver took to her voice and asked, "What...is...that?" in the same voice used by one Abigail Breslin in M. Night Shyamalan's Signs when the aliens first started attacking her home.  "No, your ass doesn't look fat," I said, wanting to move past the issue, but my mom retreated to her dressing room where I heard sighing, more vocal quivering, and some crocodile tears for the next fifteen minutes.  I said, "It's not on you.  Get over it," when really I should have said, "It's not a technicolor circle of afternoon delight on my forearm; be grateful for that."

And my last poor aesthetic decision made by a famous blonde for the day:

This one needs no exploration.  The Bee Movie press tour haircut and its lingering aftermath are tragic.

Comments

[mia]

Ha ha ha - I saw that scary-ass nursery via the Gallery 1988 site, because one of the pictures used in the nursery was bought from 1988 (the Donkey Kong last supper). Which I thought was weird, because it didn't really fit with the other stuff (that's vaguely Hello Kitty-esque) and then I saw that moon and I almost pooped. Why? WHY do people think that giant moons with creepy FACES are cool? Aiiiiieee!!

[Mark]

So I guess the question for all us curious folk is: what _did_ you get tattooed on your ribcage, and how does it reflect this moment in your life?