Dear Parenting Magazine Fashion Consultants, WTF ARE YOU THINKING!???

I am somehow the recipient of an accidental lifetime subscription to your magazine. THANKS A LOT. I have never paid for the thing and still it comes, every month, bombarding me with boredom and upsetting fashion statements. This month however, you magazine went too far. WAY TOO far. Please find below "after" photo of one of your "real mom models."

Call me shallow, but this "after shot" almost made me throw up. No joke. I literally became epileptic when I opened up to your "makeover" and saw the horror that is your idea of "styling."

Please study the following photo yourself and remember you paid a "stylist" to "style" a mother who needed "help" and this was what you came up with? A school marm on crack?

Behold for Fall, I present: Frump-a-leupagus... The look of the season for Mom's with no taste!

I have blogged about my disdain for the whole "I'm a Mom so I should dress like one!" phenomenon. There is nothing wrong with a woman with style AND kids and yet, somehow in the past few decades there has become a definite mom-wardrobe. Khaki pants, white OR black tee. Sometimes tube socks and sweatpants. Lee jeans and button downs. No offense if you dig Lee jeans and tube socks, I'm just saying, NOT EVERYONE DOES.

This is why I do not read parenting magazines and refuse to subscribe to what I like to call, "Mini-Van-Couture." Just because I am a parent does not mean I need to dress like one, walk like one, talk like one, hang with them and feel self conscious if I wear lipstick, heels and a bag that isn't some tweed disaster from Talbots.



Because seriously? Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I put on a sundress with leggings and kitten heels and a pageboy cap and a thousand necklaces and I do the fucking dishes. Yeah, you heard me. Sometimes I wear my Dolce and Gabanna pinstripe pants to Trader Joes. Sometimes I read Vogue on the treadmill and listen to The Misfits on my IPOD. Sometimes I don't want to look like a mom. And always I don't want to be represented by a magazine whose idea of a makeover is positively embarrassing.

This is the All American Mom, you say?



Ah, yes, The All American Mom. She's so busy cooking meatloaf she forgets to have any style at all! BUT THANK YOU PARENTING MAGAZINE! You have been a lifesaver with your tips! Now thanks to you I can dress like a "hip" mama and STILL have dinner ready by 7:00!

HELLLLLOOOO? Am I the only person pissed off? Like I have said in the past, "A hip mother doesn't use words like "hip.""

And just because knit sweaters and skinny belts are big for Fall, doesn't mean you have to dress us up in the D versions of said items. Just because we are Moms does not mean we lost our ability to sense fashion disaster. Just because we're mothers, doesn't mean we want to look like every other "mother" in our ticky-tacky towns.

Guess what? The higher the pant, the better the parent!

I'm extremely fed up with so-called "mom-fashion" which is one of the reasons I am proud to contribute to Cool Mom Picks and DEVASTATED by magazines like Parenting who assume all mothers have no fashion taste, sense and would HONESTLY wear a sea-green sweater from JCPenny with a pair of moccasin boots from FOUR seasons ago.

I don't care about your focus groups and your marketing statistics and your readership. You're stale and a bore and your stereotype of mothers and motherhood is dated and a little disgusting.

If you ask me? YOU'RE the one who needs a makeover. BAD.

Yes, my panties are in a bunch and no, they are not Hanes her Way, full coverage briefs with the little pink-hearted elastic. In fact, sometimes I don't even wear underwear. Put that in your Parenting pipe and smoke it.

GGC

GGC's Five Weekend Recs:

1. Book: Sippy Cups are not for Chardonnay: Written by my new friend and fellow Mama-blogger, Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, this book is so much fun it's not even fair. If you are not already a fan of her blog, go check-it out and fall in lurve, and if you haven't a copy of her book go buy one. It's a kick.


2. Cause: Momready Hurricane Clearinghouse: The travesty in New Orleans is far from over and although it's quite easy to forget that there are still THOUSANDS of people in great need of help, it's also quite easy to tune in and lend a hand if you are able. The Clearinghouse is basically a place for Katrina victims to list items they are desperately in need of so people like us can contact them personally and send what we can.

Perhaps you have some spare art supplies for evacuee, Matjames Metson?:

my name is matjames.i was put here in los angeles 16 days after katrina.i would like to ask for any art supplies so i can make art again.i also never learned how to drive a car but need a job.a job i can get to by metro.i live in korea town.the rent is really high.there isnt any where for my dogs to play.we are tired of being shut ins.i guess any help of any kind would be really wonderfull.viva new orleans!
thank you all for the help.your pal matjames.artist.

If you have any questions or comments you can contact Elisa or Yvonna at Katrina@momready.com. See all listings here and THANK YOU in advance.


3. Film: F is for Fake: Orson Welles's visual essay about fakes and fakery (hence the title.) A wonderful, insightful, quirky film involving fabulous characters and Wellesian twists. I have always been intrigued with lies, liars and the facts about fiction, after all, who is a greater liar than a writer? Take for instance this blog. Fiction or fact? Maybe I don't have a child. Maybe I'm really a man. I mean... right?

Rent it here on Netflix.


4. Event: Sal Glynn, Author, Editor, Mentor extraordinaire @ The Learning Annex in Los Angeles & San Francisco.

Sal edited my manuscript and is one of the finest editors and human beings I have ever known. He is my hero of all heroes and one day I will try to do him justice by blogging about his fabulousness. His brilliant book," The Dog Walked Down the Street: Requested and uncalled-for advice from a book midwife" is the only book about publishing you will ever need. It's wonderful and about to hit shelves so keep your eyes peeled or buy your advance copy here.

If by chance you do live in Los Angeles (Sept. 11th: See Info Here) or San Francisco (September 21st: See Info Here) and you're either working on a manuscript or wanting to, you should most def come check him out. (I'll be front row center waving my sign. Go Sal!)


5. Revenge: Sending your husband to buy you tampons. Haha, sucka!

Have a great holiday weekend, folks and foos!

GGC

I Do Not Like Green Tea and Spam

I have a two part question:

Why is it that I drink green tea every day and still, I cannot learn to love it? And why is it that I'm still getting porn spam from the job I worked two years ago?

First off, I would like to talk about life without coffee. Have you ever started your period at the gym while wearing white? Have you ever accidentally farted on a date? Have you ever gotten caught picking your nose at a stoplight by Ben Affleck? Because add all of that shit up and it's STILL NOT AS BAD as life without coffee.


I know, I know. There's decaf. Decaf coffee. Hmmm... Something wrong with decaf and coffee in the same sentence, like non-alcoholic beer. Um, WHO DRINKS IT? Not me. I want results from my beverages. Alcohol? I don't have to be flash-Mack trucks-out-the-sunroof-wasted to enjoy a stiff* one. Just a buzz is fine, but I need AT LEAST some *tingling* otherwise what the hell's the point? And coffee? If it can't wake me up and make me feel like a chipper smiley-face, then it has no place in my body. Whatsoever.

Maybe the problem is that I know green tea is good for me and for some reason THAT'S really annoying. I am forced to be even more anal about my eating. I am a permanent grump on wheels with my green salad and my green juice and green sensibilities and my green frigging tea. Gah!

Secondly, I may have to retire my beloved gmail account (which I have always used for work purposes) which is sad because I got in there early and was able to get myname@gmail dot com which is always awesome and exciting. Not awesome and/or exciting are the over 2,000 spam emails I get daily. Yes- DAILY from very "physical" and sometimes frightening websites. I will not go into graphic detail but the words "fist" and "donkey" are popular names for attached jpegs.

Before you get all "ewww! GGC is a perv with a porn addiction," (for the record I have NO PROBLEM with pornography and even enjoy it from time to time) lemme explain: I wrote copy for an adult website while I was pregnant and through Archer's first four months.

The story is kind of funny actually because I applied for the job online "duh" and was perhaps hired based on an essay I wrote for a friend's magazine in which I used the word "fuck" and "sex" quite a few times. When I went in for the interview I was five months pregnant and was very creative with my fashion in order to hide my "with child-ness" in case you know, a bunch of porn dudes weren't so keen on making a pregnant chick their head* copy editor. I wrote for the website for 6 months. I interviewed "adult models" while breastfeeding and typed up "sexy" copy while hooked up to the Medela Pump-Master 5000. Yes, that's right. I wrote about "firm tits and ass" whilst being milked like a cow by a fucking machine. HIGH FIVE!

The job was awesome and my boss was way cool and I got to chat up some brilliant young women, including (my personal favorite) "Kitty" who when I asked her what she thought was sexy, replied, after a long breathy pause, "Vegetables. I have always found vegetables sexy." Um. WTF? Vegetables? Turns out she was a vegan and a green tea drinker. Of course she was. Figures.

Another one of my favorite interviews includes the following exchange:

Me: What is your biggest regret? (I know, I was getting DEEP*, dudes.)

Bobbi: Probably that I didn't start writing my dreams down until recently.

Me: Ouch. That's gotta be tough. Are you writing them down now?

Bobbi: Every night!

Me: So tell me, Bobbi? What's the very last dream you had?

Bobbi: Um. (Silence) Um.... (More silence followed by tapping) I actually don't remember...

So, yeah. The job was pretty sweet. I learned so much and really got to grow as a serious journalist. Screw war-coverage. I was in the trenches* and I was sorry to see the job go, truth be told. (Turns out no one READS the words on an adult site. Psh, whatever.) I was NOT sorry, however, to see the emails go. All those pesky forwards were getting a little exhausting.

And guess what? They still are because they never WENT AWAY. The internet is some sort of genius, I guess, because even after my email address was deleted from "adult website" server, my "personal address" is still being hit, HARD.*

And after I recently sent several query emails for editorial work through my gmail account, I am afraid I will never know if an editor wants to work with me. I fear that important emails are getting lost in my warped gmail e-abyss, overlooked between emails from Angie Asscrack and Randi Roadhead and I will NEVER write in this town again. *Sniff* Or any town. For money. Money to buy GREEN TEABAGS* for the rest of my days. *Double Sniff*


You said it, comic Archer. You said it.

GGC

*no pun(s) intended