What's up, Portland?

I've done what I can to keep you looking decent. It's high time I focused my attention on what everyone in Portland is up to.

Follow me to the Left Coast version of Brooklyn where you'll find lower rents, more tattoos and the exact same number of ironic mustaches:  EveryoneInPortland.com

You're welcome.

XO,
MsChief

Portland Blues Festival Stereotypes

1) Hipster youth in winter hats looking slightly unhappy

2) Guy in hiking boots & shorts duck dancing: knees bent, ass out

3) Drunk lady in flowery sundress & white sneakers who sings along & acts surprised when you tell her you came to hear the performers

4) Guy in Rock Revival jeans, cowboy hat & obscenely long goatee

5) Group of bikers wearing Sturgis t-shirts with horrible sunburns and teeth that rival British stereotypes

6) Lady w/ skin 40 years older than her LA-made spherical boobs w/ boyfriend wearing loafers sans socks

7) On the West Coast Swing dance floor, guy with an asymmetrical haircut and capri pants attempts to do Kevin Bacon's dance routine from Footloose, then falls down


8) Sour couple in huge straw hats sitting and reading the newspaper - during a great show by Robert Cray

Just because Michael Jackson did it doesn't make it right

Here's a riddle: what is a cookie and also a verb and also a disaster?

Here's the answer: Oreoing

XO,

Ms.Chief

P.S. Thank you, friends in the Nerdosphere, for alerting me to this most excellent verb

Bump Bumpit up!

Q: Why is it okay to wear a prosthetic plastic thing under your hair that makes it look like you have a skull deformity?

A: Oh, you must be talking about the Bumpit, which recreates a 1960s pouf hairstyle traditionally embraced by beauty queens and country singers and Jane Fonda in Barbarella. This look may have been an outgrowth of the late 50s/early 60s beehive (still sported today by Amy Winehouse and Marge Simpson).

So why is this popular once again? Look at the ad's tagline: "from flat to fabulous in seconds!" It's like a Wonderbra for your hair. It's a way of being taller without wearing high heels. But the real reason behind the Bumpit's resurgence is a secret no one in their right mind wants to admit: today's women want to look like the Tyrannosaurus Rex, a symbol of power, speed and very short arms.

XO,
Ms.Chief

Happy Telegraphing Day!

Apparently today is Telegraphing Day. Nope, not the communications medium, but rather the act of transmitting a shape through a covering. Today I observed three separate cases of telegraphing:

1. Woman walking through IKEA wearing nubby hand-crocheted socks that looked like lumberjack boots pulled up over skinny jeans. As she skidded along the polished concrete floor like a hapless drunk, the shape of her shoes under her boot-socks was telegraphing through the socks. (It may also be Inside Out Day.)
   
2. Man with subcutaneous piercing telegraphed the shape of a Frankenstein bolt through his neck skin.
3. Woman's tight white sweatpants was telegraphing the shape of her companion's hand as it slipped its way inside said pants, giving her bottom a solid groping.
   

Happy Telegraphing Day!

XO,
Ms.Chief

Cutoff Couture

Dear Readers,

Lately I've received several inquiries about whether there is a place in today's society for boots coupled with cutoff jeans shorts, other than in gentlemen's clubs or at nostalgia-inducing outdoor music festivals.

I am happy to tell you that this combination does indeed have one other application: Halloween, when you want to dress up as a stripper or pretend to be a hippie at the Glastonbury Festival circa 1972. Alternately, you can add sickly face paint, drag your foot along and call yourself a Zombie Hippie Stripper. Enjoy!

XO,
Ms.Chief

Birds, Bees & Buckskin

Dear Ms.Chief,
My awesome boyfriend bought us these buckskin outfits that we will always wear whenever we are together always. Forever, I mean. The problem is, I feel kind of torn up about it, because I am a political vegetarian since it's majorly wrong to take away an animal's skin and leave them standing there naked in the wild, all without skin and fur, because that's embarrassing for them in front of the other animals. My boyfriend says it's no big deal and I need to chill about it, because he got the buckskin outfits at Goodwill (we got the fleas out with clove cigarettes), and since they are second hand, that means the animals don't blame us personally for taking their skin. Is that true?
Peace out.

Dear Buckskin Betty,
I checked with my guru and mentor, Paul the Egg-laying Man Chicken, and he says that as long as you never think too hard about what happens when you take away an animal's skin, everything's going to be just fine.
XO,
Ms.Chief