I’m Not a Cat Lady

Word Watch: All of the Sudden

Call me old fashioned but I'm a stickler for good spelling and proper use of language. I was a copy editor for years and old habits are hard to break.

It's ancient history, of course, that the blogging/texting/Twitter generation don't care to be bogged down by such petty concerns. They need to get their messages out tout suite, and if that means a their instead of they're, or a your instead of you're, or a then instead of a than—you know, whatevs, who cares? Only old people, right? Not to mention the whole "leetspeak" culture popularized sometime last century by gamers along with texting abbreviations that even the mombloggers use now, like ur and LOL and pwn and srsly.

But every so often, on a blog or in a forum or among some comments or other, I come across the casual flaying of an extremely common word or phrase that is just too egregious to ignore. Like per say. Which, I guess, is a little like here say. Or low and behold. That's a good one. Because, you know, when you wish to draw extra attention to a certain fact or observation, you shall gaze upon it and low like a cow. Lo and behold is such an archaic expression, it really doesn't belong in the realm of casual online conversation at all. Why is anyone under 85 saying it? Yet I see it all the time.

Another one I see constantly, and have done for years, is all of the sudden. Not all of just any sudden, you see—it's got to be all of a very specific sudden. I mean, sheesh! Whoever uses this phrase probably should have stuck to using suddenly in the first place.

Like Cindy Sherman. Unbelievably, I saw this error very recently in old media. New York magazine, to be exact, in the cover story My First New York. I was curious to know all about Ms Sherman's first impressions of New York City back in the day, so I settled in to read. Here's what I saw:

It was the summer of 1977, and I was terrified of the city. The Son of Sam was going around murdering couples, the city blacked out for 24 hours, the transit strike stopped all the buses, and all of the sudden women who used to wear little pumps to work now started wearing sneakers. I don’t remember leaving the apartment much. I was just like, “Oh my God, here I am in the city!”

This is forgivable when a random blogger or commenter commits this kind of language abuse. A mature,  celebrated artist? Well, maybe Cindy's more of a visual person. And that's okay. But New York? I'm sure everyone there is overworked and stressed out there, like anyone in the dismal world of magazine publishing right now, but this is, in my view, super sloppy. New York, you are not just a blog yet. Bad New York! 

Consider this the first part of an occasional series. I'll be watching...

Fashion's Groundhog Day

If shoulder pads are seriously back in style, then the fashion industry needs to retire. Here we are, 10 years into the new millennium, and fashion is recycling itself at such lightning speed, soon everyone will be wearing Ugg Boots again. Oh wait. They never stopped, did they?

I'm no fashion historian, but I do know that around this time last millennium, fashion elements were being introduced for the very first time, like corsetless dresses, the bias cut and casual skirts. These were not simply old looks rehashed for a generation that was too young to remember them the first time around: They were experimental, revolutionary innovations. Throughout the decade, firsts galore: trousers, separates, knits, jeans, miniskirts, bikinis, the little black dress, minimalist shapes, the bra.

We've had clever twists on past styles, like Halston's revival of 30s and 40s glamour for the 70s disco era, or Vivienne Westwood's wildly witty, ironic takes on British classics dating back to the 17th century. But what's happening now is just straight-up reproduction. Back in the 80s, the shoulder-pad silhouette was an obvious homage to the militaristic shapes of the 40s: Women were back in the workplace after a brief fling during World War II. What's the latest incarnation, a nod to Dynasty? If so, why? The bejewelled, pointy shoulder was never a cool look. Why try to pass it off as hip or edgy now? And don't tell me it's ironic. Not when a Kardashian is wearing it. Same goes for the dreaded harem pants with the floor-sweeping crotch, which desperate designers have been trying to revive since 2007. Okay when swanning around the Studio 54 dancefloor with cocaine-packed nostrils; a joke when MC Hammer wore 'em; an even bigger joke now, I don't care how louche and model-skinny you are. Even worse: harem shorts. Just throw on a pair of Snuggies, no one will notice the difference. Superfluously, New York magazine asks, Are You Excited About Harem Pants, or Just Plain Terrified? The answer: Neither. Anyone who reads New York is too old for these, end of story.

The pouf skirt—been there, several times actually, in the 80s, 90s and again in 2003–5. The 80s pirate boot—I think it's been five years now. The gladiator sandal—three summers and still going strong! The Ray-Ban Wayfarer: The hepcat's choice in the 50s turned glamorous in the 60s turned rock-star cool in the late 70s/early 80s turned frat favorite by 1983 thanks to Tom Cruise in Risky Business, and now—in candy colors and stripes and plaid, oversized and undersized—as boring and ubiquitous as a Gossip Girl. Not clever. Not edgy. Not original. Just sad.

It must be crap to be in your teens or early 20s now, when the clothes being sent down the runway were all worn by your mom. Whatever they try to do to be stylish or edgy has been done and done and done some more. Their fashion choices are sloppy thirds and fourths and fifths at this point. They'll never know what it feels like to wear a brand-new look that's never been seen before. The upside? Hmm. I guess it's super-hip to recycle.

Press 1 if You're Behind the Times

The New York Times has been outdoing itself lately with the pseudo trend stories. Now, the latest: Still using voice mail? Then you're a dithering old fart. Because nobody under 25 uses voicemail anymore—it's all texting and Twitter and Facebook. Voicemail is for your mom. Voicemail is for the senile. Voicemail is for losers.

And, like all the Times' pseudo trend stories, the evidence is entirely anecdotal. Note the disclaimer:

There are no definitive studies of how many voice mail messages American leave compared with earlier periods, but if the technology is heading toward obsolescence — as many communication experts suspect — the trend is being driven by young people. Again and again, people under 25 recount returning calls from older colleagues and family members without bothering to listen to messages first.

"The trend is being driven by young people." Novel, that. And then the writer—Jill Colvin, who is a reporter for the Columbia news service (what?)—rolls out the repetitive quotes from random bunch of "voice mail phobic" young'uns (who, by the way, wouldn't dream of rendering voicemail as two words, or bother putting a hyphen in email—e-mail—like the cutting-edge Times does) brattily declaring that they're all too busy to bother with the exhausting procedure of dialing in and entering a code and, sigh, listening to some clueless old luddite actually utilizing this hopelessly outdated technology.

I'll tell you what's exhausting: Scrolling down as you read a Times' pseudo trend story and seeing that NEXT PAGE box lurking down there. If a trend piece needs a click through, it's too long. Somebody needs to edit that thing. Except, oh, that's right, editors are obsolete!

It's a shame, really, that the Times is compelled to infuse every pseudo trend story with that "it's a generational thing" argument, because I, an old'un in the Times' book, hate voicemail too. Well, love/hate, really, because I love letting calls go to voicemail when I'm too busy to talk or when it's a number I don't know or when it's just plain inconvenient to answer the phonel. But I hate it like a twentysomething when people commit voicemail abuse and just start talking as if they've actually reached you in person, like my mother used to do (I think everyone's mother does) and this one friend of mine who makes me seethe with his infernally long messages second-guessing why I'm not home ("You're probably at the gym or maybe you're out shopping or maybe you're having lunch...") and then dictating his whole schedule for the week and the specific windows available to reach him. I also hate those precious seconds wasted when reaching someone else's voicemail and being instructed after over a decade of cell phone saturation to "Leave a message after the tone; to leave a callback number, press 5" and the truly egregious "To end your call, hang up or press 1 for more options." What options? To send up a flare?

But I'm not a young person, so who cares what I think? Certainly not the Times. It only matters what the under-25s think—the same demographic, by the way, who think the New York Times is obsolete.

NYT: You've Got Voice Mail, but Do You Care?