Goggles for Dogs and Other Bad Ideas 8/14/02

Someone actually manufactures "Doggles" (http://www.doggles.com/) and thinks they've found a new marketing niche. Buying these is the easy part - getting your pooch to put 'em on, well, that's your lookout.

Seems that you can't turn on the Idiot Box these days without seeing tributes to Elvis and features on Graceland. Now, I like a few of the guy's songs, but Graceland seems to be a monument to kitsch that proves some people just shouldn't have unlimited means to express themselves. What we've seen of the inside of Ozzy's home makes this utterly clear.

You might note, and correctly so, that there are plenty of people living in trailers who furnish their homes in bad taste as well, but they aren't subsidizing the zebra-skin upholstery industry while they're at it. They are, on the other hand, apparently working as Katie Couric's fashion consultants - yikes, she's looking downright over-frosted in the Amy Yamada, Yokosuka Base front-gate grrl style (the ones who stand on the left).

"Malt Beverage." Now who do they think they're fooling with this one? From Zima, to Skyy Blue, to Smirnoff, to Captain Morgan, a whole line of cloyingly sweet hangover-inducing concoctions have flooded the market and there still isn't any generic term for these things (except "crap"). I've deduced that the beer, wine, and punch advisory boards have enacted laws that restrict what may be sold as such, which leaves Zima, et al., in some linguistic no-man's land. Your vocabulary just got a whole lot less interesting.

If the same thinking applies to other areas, we're going to be in trouble. Say, for instance, that apparel makers start to circle the wagons against the intrusion of urban guerrilla chic that has spawned the "bustin' a sag" look. Should we expect the new entrants to label their goods "short-like lower-body covering," "shoe-like foot garment," and "hat-like headwrap"?

Blog on.