Fashion

Vanity Fair does the numbers on the "banana look" so you don't have to :

Cindy McCain
Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100

John Edwards lost in a haze of hair spray? This is so wrong on so many levels.

I have not seen this amount of hair spray used on anybody anywhere west of Long Island. I love his dedication and commitment to his bangs ...

Hat tip to TechPresident.

Enjoy.

The Immigration Rallies
By 2015, the largest ethnic group in the country will be Latinos. The rallies are the beginning because, come 2008, we Latinos will be swinging the vote. The GOP knows it --that's why they appointed a chicano as their chairman.

Muhammad Yunus
He won a Noble Peace Prize for proving that poverty not only leads to violence but that the poverty of women, and the violence inherent in that poverty, affects whole nations.

Al Gore
Barack Obama
Cecilia Fire Thunder
Jennifer Hudson
John Edwards
Katie Couric
Keith Ellison
Nancy Pelosi and the new Democratic majority
Seminole / Hard Rock Cafe acquisition

And the "So good it's bad, bad, bad" Award goes to...

Stephen Colbert coined the phrase but the art of truthiness was perfected by Sacha Baron Cohen in his movie Borat.

He is so good he is bad. Badass cool. Brothercool cool. Borat has turned Cohen into the sexiest Orthodox Jew in Hollywood.

Been blogging at Snook about school dress codes and the degree to which costumes constitute culture, connecting that to how best to prepare for all possible futures and for disasters of all types -- natural, manmade and fashion disasters!

Which no doubt connects somehow to Liza's "taxidermy fashion as politics" too, but to me the main power of story is (as always) educational. Visit the original blogpost if you can, to see other links, comments and connected ideas, including how military hero Colin Powell's dress code fits into cultural warfare, but here's a little tease:

It’s the Culture, Stupid. Change their culture, change their world, which put in current culturally relevant terms might evoke “save the cheerleader, save the world”– and saving her doesn’t mean fretting over her algebra grade, much less clucking at her cleavage and throwing an old shirt over it in the guidance office…

Kids and teens live in a very real culture even if it seems like a comic book, one that School does not control or define (much as it wants to believe otherwise) and marginalizes itself further by refusing to engage.

I give thee, Gwyneth Paltrow:

Via Jossip.com

and now the Kate Moss/Giorgio Armani abomination for the "Africa Issue" of the Indepent :

Via Feministe.

Seriously. This is just getting out of hand.

Associated Press

NEW YORK - Girl power on Broadway.

A musical version of "Legally Blonde," based on the hit movie starring Reese Witherspoon and the novel by Amanda Brown, will open on Broadway in April 2007.
. . . the show will mark the Broadway directorial debut of Jerry Mitchell, who won a 2005 Tony Award for his choreography for the revival of "La Cage aux Folles."

"I love the story," Mitchell said Tuesday of his new project. "It's so positive, especially for young girls to believe in themselves. And it's fun to root for a leading character you care about."

Mitchell, who also created the dances for "Hairspray" and "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," also will do the choreography for "Legally Blonde."

The show will open April 26, 2007, at a Broadway theater to be announced. Preview performances begin March 30. San Francisco will see the musical first, with a five-week engagement at the Orpheum Theatre beginning in late January.

Ministry supervisor Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter's Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom made the difference between School and Education crystal-gazing clear.

[quote=JK Rowling in Order of the Phoenix]- "This is School, Mr. Potter. Not the Real World," she said softly.

- "So we're not supposed to be prepared for what's waiting out there?"

- "There's nothing waiting out there . . .
who do you imagine wants to attack children like yourselves? If you are still worried, if someone is alarming you with fibs, I would like to hear about it. I am your friend. Now kindly continue your reading."[/quote]

I had to blog this while the Stupid Girls debate is on, because I consider JK Rowling's cultural smarts to reach far beyond Stupid Girls and the Tyranny of Thin. Having read every Harry Potter book at least once, I'd argue that the Culture of Schooling is a specialty of Rowling's. I'd argue that Order of the Phoenix would make a first-class focus for modern citizenship education throughout all worlds muggle and magical, in any language.

Are we just a pretend world of fashionable thought, obsessed with trying to look and feel smart for each other, neglecting and perhaps unable to actually BE smart and DO smart?

This film will examine the negative impact that the misinterpretation of Islam has created for some of its women by ... all » looking at Muslim women's lives in two different countries -- Afghanistan and Pakistan. The central thesis of the film is that Islam has been politicized and misinterpreted to suit the ends of certain fundamentalist factions within the larger religious group. This misinterpretation resulted in the tragedy of 9/11. It has also resulted in extremely barbaric behavior towards women in some Muslim countries, where political upheavals have drastically and negatively impacted the status of its women.