Like 99 out of 100 tween girls in the Pointes, Kate has a pair of Crocs this summer. For a pair of plastic shoes, they’re priced a little steeply at $25, but eh, it’s summer and she’s never going to be 9 years old and thrilled by turquoise plastic shoes again. (I hope.) However, buying the shoes is only the beginning. Perhaps because everyone has a pair, some in several colors, the next step has to be personalization. After some discussion about the wise use of one’s allowance, we went online to buy a few Crocs charms to stick into the holes.
If you look at the link immediately above, you’ll see the splash screen features a shoe with “LOVE” spelled out in letter charms. I told Kate all about Robert Mitchum in “The Night of the Hunter” and how amusing and cool it would be if she got charms so that one shoe said “LOVE” and the other “HATE.” Astonishingly — astonishingly! — she rejected this idea, perhaps perceiving that she had grown out of the age when she could be propped up in a stroller and dressed in a T-shirt reflecting her mother’s political opinions.
Still, it would be an amusing sight gag for a mean-girl character in a contemporary teen movie. At least as long as Crocs stay in style. Which, given the time it takes to get a movie made, means…forget it.
Man, what a weekend. Pulsating sunshine, azure sky, low humidity, mild temperatures. We/I celebrated by going sailing in fairly light wind, which sort of sucked (but the sunbathing was nonpareil); working on Project Table; riding the bike all over hell ‘n’ gone; watching “Closer” and going on at least a portion of the Grosse Pointe garden tour.
One of the houses featured a long arbor leading from the house to the pool, with years-old roses climbing all over it. The ground beneath was littered with petals; unfortunately, the tour seemed to catch the arbor between blooming cycles. But I was amazed at the thick canes at the base of the plants, and how the thorns were proportionately large. They twined all around the arbor supports, nature’s own razor wire. It wasn’t the sort of place where you’d want to lose your balance and grab a post for support. Which gave me an idea for a fight scene in a movie, where the rich villain and the cool hero are fighting in the arbor, smashing one another against the thorns and tearing the crap out of one another — except the cool hero still looks very, very handsome — before the villain finally dies from…oh, say, a trowel plunged into the throat.
Gardening can be a very violent sport.
Do I have bloggage? I have a bit:
I loved this NYT story about Larry Kramer, the gay playwright and activist, and his brother Arthur. I suspect Larry is a difficult man to have a close relationship with, and yet I came away amazed yet again by the strange bonds of family and love and all the rest of it. The normal heart, indeed.
I know you wake up every morning and ask yourself, “Hey, whatever happened to Maria Schneider, the girl from “Last Tango in Paris”? She became a junkie, among other things. She also starred with Jack Nicholson in “The Passenger,” which is finally being released on DVD. Now you know.
And now I’m going to take a shower. See you later.
mary said on June 26, 2006 at 10:50 am
The mean girl movie character with the love/hate crocs kills her rival in the rose arbor. It’s not two movies. It’s one, and it’s a combo Jeffrey Eugenides Elmore Leonard screenplay.
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Kim said on June 26, 2006 at 1:21 pm
So sorry, Nance, but I would’ve refused to purchase the Crocs charms off the linked site on what my kids know as “The Grammar Principle.” I’m so sick of the misplaced apostrophe that I have drawn my line in the commerce world. Bee’s and Butterfly’s — oh my. But putting “LOVE” and “HATE” across a pair is pure brilliance. You know these things come in adult sizes ….
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brian stouder said on June 26, 2006 at 1:28 pm
and my lovely wife tells me that you can get them at Target for $6.99.
We’ve noticed that Chloe, our 2 year old, has a thing for shoes…and she LOVES her pink crocs! (her 8 year old sister likes ’em, too)
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nancy said on June 26, 2006 at 2:03 pm
The Target knockoffs are fine — they were, in fact, Kate’s starter Crocs — but are made out of a stiffer material, and gave her blisters. The originals are more supple, and the straps can be worn two ways. On the knockoffs, they’re nailed to the front of the shoe, decorative only.
And Kim, I thought of getting my own pair, but lately I’ve been thinking maybe, in middle middle age, I should start acting like an adult. However, in researching this burning question, I found a short history of the love/hate tattoo and its various imitators and references. My favorite: Sideshow Bob, a Simpsons character, had the tattoo. However, like all Simpsons characters, he has only three fingers. So his tattoo read LUV and HAT, with a line over the A, indicating a long-a vowel sound.
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brian stouder said on June 26, 2006 at 2:27 pm
the straps can be worn two ways. On the knockoffs, they’re nailed to the front of the shoe, decorative only.
Chloe’s Target knock-offs have the convertable straps – but she always has them backward (to keep the things on her little feet)…but I don’t know about Shelby’s. Chloe’s are well suited to their amphibious mission; we did the zoo on Sunday and she splashed right into the wading pools by the train ride.
(I may hafta link to a picture or two!)
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mary said on June 26, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Many of the nurses, male and female, wear Crocs here at the hospital. They swear by them. I think the washability means a lot to nurses, and the material the originals are made from is supposedly anti-bacterial, anti-fungal. One of the plusses of this job is that I can wear ugly-comfy footwear with my standard management type pantsuit. I don’t have crocs, but Merrel mocs work for me. They can’t hardly criticize me for not wearing heels when everyone around me is wearing neon colored plastic clogs. My black mesh merrel mocs look posh around here.
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nancy said on June 26, 2006 at 3:12 pm
Crocs and Danskos are the footwear of choice for nurses, doctors and chefs, and I think it’s their, um, unique needs that led to Danskos being available in better-quality synthetic materials — you can hose vomit, blood or spilled bearnaise sauce off at the end of a shift, no problem. And yes, Merrell mocs would look positively formal compared to fuschia clogs.
Obsessive shoe-watching note: If you see the trailer for “Ratatouille,” note when the rat runs into the kitchen. The feet he scurries past are wearing Dansko clogs (telltale heel grooving). Pixar is so precise it’s just astonishing.
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vince said on June 27, 2006 at 1:01 am
You’ve neglected one more category of Croc wearers: journalism fellows.
A friend of mine just finished a fellowship year in Boulder. I’ve seen him 3 times since his sabbatical began and every time he was wearing those damned rubbery sandals.
After the 3rd time, and after seeing my 50+ neighbor out gardening in her pair, I went looking but could not find them in my size.
Both of these folks swear they’re the most comfortable, airy sandals they’ve ever owned.
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Dorothy said on June 27, 2006 at 7:28 am
I might have to cave and get a pair my ownself. We ate at the Mellow Mushroom on Saturday night and I spotted two or three of the waitstaff wearing cros. And I had a visit at my doctor’s office yesterday and my nurse had them on, too. They look like they must be comfy as heck, which they must be if so many people are wearing them.
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John said on June 27, 2006 at 7:44 am
“However, like all Simpsons characters, he has only three fingers.”
With the sole exception of God, who is always drawn with four fingers and a thumb on each hand.
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Danny said on June 27, 2006 at 10:13 am
Dorothy, is that the Mellow Mushroom in Clemson? We eat there every year when we visit!
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Dorothy said on June 27, 2006 at 10:36 am
Maybe they have a branch, but this one was in downtown Greenville. Near the falls! And very close to the new ballpark, which is fab. Have you been yet? We have tickets to the game on Friday.
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Danny said on June 27, 2006 at 11:14 am
No, we are never there during baseball season. Well, actually, my wife sometimes is, but usually it is during the winter. We almost went to go see the Growwwl last year, but the schedule just did not work.
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