Judgement Corner : Why you shouldn’t wear that sexy Elmo Costume

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I love Married to the Sea

Welcome to Judgement Corner, where I get to rant about things and be judgy and not feel guilty because I’m acknowledging that I’m being judgy! YAY!

*clap clap clap*

In this, the very inaugural installment, I would like to broach the topic of sexy costumes and the top ten costumes you just shouldn’t put on. Ever.

I’d like to introduce you to my friend Mariet, an artist and a Halloween connoisseur, who will be helping me with this little editorial.

I hope you enjoy!

Once upon a time little girls dressed up as zombies, flappers, mummies, ghosts, cops, wrestlers, Disney characters and action heroes/figurines.

Then something happened in their life. Maybe their father left them. Maybe they discovered the pleasures of sex too early. Maybe they were ignored by their parents. Maybe they liked extra candy.

No one knows what happened but the story goes that these little girls grew up in a culture that celebrates being half-naked and flaunts an impossible ideal. These children took those costumes that they were as a child and sexified them.

Yes. They sex-i-fied them.

To this day, on the days leading up to Halloween, these girls –nay, these Women, for that’s what they are now, have lowered the neckline of their princess costumes, hiked up the hems of their action heroes and cut out large portions of their cop uniforms until you don’t know what they are until they tell you that they are the Sexy version of something.

Let us not be hypocrites. Sometimes sexy is cool. I may have been a sexy cat or whatevs for one Halloween. Hell, I may have been a cute ass pirate.

BUT! While I understand that Sexy is the new Halloween costume (much to my chagrin because I would really like to see a Neils Bohr costume) and the clothing is just the accessory, there are just certain costumes that are just bad ideas; either through horrible social connotations or just for the sheer creepiness factor.

My friend Mariet and I were watching one of my favorite video blogs and up popped an ad for www.yandy.com. A lingerie company that makes sexy Halloween costumes. Just like Frederick’s of Hollywood – www.fredericks.com except the difference is that these costumes are just like..wow.

It got us to start a-thinking, which can either end badly or amazingly (in this case, A-MAA-Zingly) of the horrible sexy costumes that are out there.

Listen, if everyone is wearing a sexy costume you’re gonna wear one too. You’re not going to be like Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls and show up wearing a mummy bride costume. You’re just not so stop pretending.

I think the lesson in all of this is actually :Never do anything LiLo would do.

So with that in mind, Halloween is not the time to sex-i-fy just anything.  Childhood memories, anything childlike, things that are supposed to be scary or animals should not be sexy.

So for your sake and mine, me and my good friend Mariet have put together a list of certain costumes that you just shouldn’t sexify.

Because it’s creepy.

Let’s start with Queen of Halloween, Mariet.

These are Mariet’s top five “Are you fucking kidding me” sexified costumes:

Well ladies, it’s that time of the year again, where we all have to practice our walk of shame in our brightly decorated costumes. I’m talking, of course, about Halloween (unless you do that on the regular, then… well….that’s another article for another time) but anyhow, Halloween!

Spooky!

Scary!

And it also mean chicks being a sexified version of something, like a cop or a nurse or a nun (because nothing says “fuck yeah, sexy” like the Bride of Christ, AMIRITE?!).

*ahem*

Anyhow, since I fancy myself a humanitarian, I care about a person’s decision to go out and look like Pay-for-Play chick. It’s good to know which costumes can make you look hot but even more importantly, it’s good to know which ones are just so fucking bad. With that in mind here’s my contribution to the world.

You’re welcome and please feel free to send me cash or gift cards as signs of gratitude.

Cock-a-doodle-will-you?

Sexy Rooster: QUICK! how many Chicken Head jokes can you make, RIGHT NOW?!

あなたは私をからかっていますか？
Google Japanese for “Are you kidding me?”

Asian Persuasion: Hey just for shits and giggles, why doesn’t some chick dress like this and then head to her local Asian Cultural location (or a take out place if your city doesn’t have one) and see how many people would accept this?…. I’m guessing aside from the local white frat boys, none. But hey, give it a shot little lady. Beside who are we kidding? What shred of dignity do you have anymore while wearing this indoors?

Adult Baby: I’m pushing close to my 30’s and there’s no reason why i should type “wtf” anymore…. so with that in mind: WHAT THE FUCK? 

She comes with her own milk.

Red from da’ hood: oh wow…. That’s…. just…. all I have to ask is, is she packing a box cutter, a gat and crack in that basket? Because…. well…. she is from the hood.

I guess she’s a Blood?

Care Bear costumes: the Care Bears? really? y’know what? Turn to your significant other and run a little test. “How to know if you have some sort of psycho-sexual issue: watching “Care Bears” and getting a hard-on. Go kill yourself.

Gives new meaning to Bedtime Bear

Happy Hooker-ing!…. I mean “Halloween”!. Unless you are Hooking on Halloween, then please have them pay you the cash upfront.

I have to agree with Mariet on this one. My eyes are burning with some of those.

While mine aren’t quite as specific, here are some of mine “Oh-Please-God-No” sexified themes/costumes one should just. not. touch.

– Sexy Clowns – I don’t have coulrophobia but many many people do. I just find clowns to be one of those things that are just weird. They aren’t sexy, they aren’t scary and they are pretty outdated. They are also linked to childhood. You know?

When a bad idea becomes worse

Birthday parties where you eat too much cake and throw up, circus’ where you eat too many peanuts and watch in a combo of fear and awe as acrobats perform tricks a few light years away from the ground and may or may not fall or hell that sad clown picture at the doctor’s office right before you’re about to get a shot. What I’m trying to say is that clowns, for those that don’t have coulrophobia, make people think of vomiting, death and horrible pain. How the hell that’s sexy eludes the shit out of me. So, do yourself a favor, unless you’re going to one of the Alien Killer Klowns, just don’t do it. It can only end up badly.

– Native Americans – Hmmm. Here’s an idea. Tonight, why don’t I dress up as a historically inaccurate Native American wearing nothing but a strange imitation of buckskin (beige colored polyester) while revealing cleavage and half my ass…ooo, and a long black wig in braids.

The name of this costume is Poke Ho
Really?

I can either accessorize with a ridiculous feathered headdress (because everyone wore those back in the day. natch) or impractical high heels. Everyone knows the Sioux women wore high heels while keeping their tribe safe during the Black Hills War or that the Cherokee’s wore ridiculously low tunics while being swaddled in small-pox ridden blankets and marched to Oklahoma. I mean, come on! Everyone knows that the Native Americans were not only exploited and massacred but they looked incredibly sexy while doing it.

headdesk

If you didn’t understand anything from the above, you might as well get out the black shoe polish and go as a sexy Hattie McDaniel.

–Sesame Street – *headdesk* The first time I saw Sesame Street I was a child. I remember Teeny Weeny Little Super Guy and Lucille the Orange. I remember Maria and Big Bird. I remember eating two cookies (because I’m a kid and can’t have a third. *pout*) and watching Sesame Street. Wearing little people clothes and thinking little people thoughts.

My eyes are burning

Never. Ever. EVER did I think Elmo was sexy. Even when I got older and watched the Street with my sisters.
If you wake up a few days before Halloween and decide that Sexy Big Bird or Sexy Grover is your thing this year. You may need to find the people in the white coats. No, not the one in the sexy white coat, the other one. Yeah. See him. He’s smiling at you? Him.

– Sexy Food — there is nothing sexy about a hamburger or a grilled cheese sandwich unless it is hot and full of cheese and bacon and is presented on a plate with some shoestring fries and a nice cold glass of beer in my hand. If you really want to be sexy, buy a green t-shirt and cut out the areas around the boobs and write Soylent Green right underneath it. That has about the same sex appeal as dressing up as a sexy hamburger.

Look Lady, I don’t know why you’re dressed like that either

– Sexy Unicorns – You can be a sexy cat. You can be a cute dog. You may be able to pull off a cute/sexy tropical fish. What you can’t and should never ever do is dress up as a sexy wolf or unicorn. Emphasis on the unicorn actually. Did you know that unicorns are actually a symbol of purity and legend has that they would only respond to virgins? In fact, there was a mythical test that was conducted with a unicorn and a maid. If the unicorn laid his head in the lap of the maid, she was a virgin.

So many levels of ‘not okay’ with this image that it’s hard to even…I can’t concentrate

Of course, this was also back in the day when you would piss on a rabbit to find out if you were pregnant.

Point of this story, other than ruining the myth, is that Unicorns are ethereal, cute, graceful but they’ve never been sexy. Much like Audrey Hepburn. She was gorgeous and gamine but she’s wasn’t sexy.

So please do not ruin Unicorns for little children and yourself. Do not wear the sexy unicorn costume. Unless you really want to test for virgins but you might want to save yourself the trouble on that one.

So there you go, the top ten “Don’t do it please” sexy costumes that shouldn’t even cross your mind.

Also, any costume that you have to ask, IS THIS GOING TO OFFEND ANYONE? Is probably not a costume you want to buy. Same goes for any question starting with SHOULD I?

Happy Halloween all. Be safe. Be Merry and leave a little room for imagination.

If we’re forgetting something, let us know.

*Mariet is a wonderful friend and an awesome artist. Check out her portfolio here: http://marietguerrero.carbonmade.com/

know thy oven

If only…

As some of you know I moved recently. My husband and I had lived at our last place for nearly six years and in those years I held parties and cooked and did what I love – baking. So to say I knew my oven is a misnomer. I was intimate with my oven.

It burned me, it steamed in my eye, it emitted foul odors when I didn’t clean it right and it fed people from across the boroughs. It also ran hot.

Which to those who don’t cook I’m not making a joke. Ovens can run hotter or colder and still say 350 degrees. My mother’s oven for example runs a little cooler. Take for instance a batch of brownies to be cooked at 325 for 25 minutes. My mom’s would take about 28 – 29 minutes, with my old oven, I’d clock it around 22-23.

With the move, I lost my beloved oven.

Now I’m stuck with the  a temperamental oven.

Yesterday’s recipe for the pound cake came out dry. Wanna know why? My oven runs hot. Sometimes.

I followed the recipe, stopping it about 3 minutes before the recipe called for it and the cake was still dry.

Granted, I should have checked a little more frequently if I knew my oven was pms-ing but hey, I didn’t ask for your logic. So just take it and move along.

Move along….

So, I have to break in my oven. With baking. My meat dishes tend to come out well (thank you meat thermometer) and frozen foods (yes, not everything can be magically whipped up into … well, magic) come out fine.

It’s just by baked goods.

I’m telling you this because if you follow the previous recipe, watch your oven. Love your oven. Unless it doesn’t love you back and then spite it by using the microwave.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I knew you were coming, I’d’ve baked: i just lost my vanilla bean virginity + recipes and pics

The other day I had a sudden craving for pound cake. Not the greasy processed Entenmann’s variety (which I did have on my table and got stale because I would pass by it and cringe) but the good ol’ fashioned buttery cakey wonderful kind.

So I began to look on the interwebz. I checked my usual suspects; The Pioneer Woman & Smitten Kitchen and couldn’t really find anything so I scoured the web and came up empty. So I tried one more time over at Smitten and wham bam! I found it. The recipe that would satisfy my craving and offer me the opportunity to use vanilla. Until I saw the vanilla beans. Fear froze me as my tastebuds began to tingle. Smitten Kitchen’s recipe called for vanilla beans. *gulp*

I bake .I do. In the fall. But never with something as precious as vanilla beans. Extract? Sure. I try to only buy the best because frankly, I love vanilla but beans? No way. No how.

But the pictures. They looked amazing. You know when you’re dreaming and you dream of something in your hand, like money or candy and then you wake up and you still think you have it in your hands? This is what that picture did to me.  By the way, I do not recommend trying to lick a flatscreen computer monitor.
So, ok. Vanilla beans. I trust Smitten’s recipes and look, she was also popping her own vanilla bean cherry with this recipe. If she could do it the best I could do was try, right?

Right.

So, I marched to the natural food market near my house and perused the shelves and found reasonably priced beans from a brand I trusted:

So I brought it home (As you can see) and today, I started on the recipe which was taken from Smitten Kitchen’s blog.

Vanilla Bean Pound Cake
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

1 pound (2 cups) sugar
1/2 vanilla bean, used is fine
1 pound (4 sticks) butter, at room temperature — (I left mine out for about an hour and ten minutes and they ended up looking pretty awesome)
1 pound (9 large) eggs
1 pound (4 cups) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 325°F. In a food processor, grind vanilla bean and sugar until vanilla is as finely chopped as it can get. Sift this mixture twice, making sure all larger pieces have been filtered out. Set aside.

2. In another bowl, add the flour and salt together

3. In a large bowl, cream your butter with a bit of the vanilla sugar until you’ve got a good base going.  word of advice, always cut up your butter. It’s easier on your blade or edge beaters and there’s less splash back.  Gradually add the rest of the vanilla sugar, not stopping until it is creamy and smooth.

4. With your KitchenAid whisk the eggs one at a time (or two at time. Don’t worry if your mixture looks curdled, it’s not), beating well after each addition. Gradually sift in the flour and salt mixture, beating constantly. Add the vanilla extract and continue beating until well blended.

5. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube or bundt pan. Pour in the batter and ”spank” the bottom of the pan to distribute the batter evenly. Bake until a straw inserted into the cake comes out clean, about 1 hour 15 minutes, taking care not to overcook. Turn cake out onto a rack and let cool.

As a note: this cake is on the dry side. I love the flavor and the texture.It goes great with sauces, coulis, jams or caramel.  I prefer to use Lemon Curd. If you want a less dry cake, I recommend, leaving it in the oven for -10 minutes. As long as the cake is cooked, meaning you took the stick out and it was dry, then you’re good.

The first thing I did was pretend I was a pastry chef and cut one of the beans in half and scrap out some of the paste from one of them

Looks a bit like Vegemite doesn’t it?

Then I got serious.

Throwing the pods and the 2 cups of sugar in my little food processor (because the big one is missing), I began…processing. I think next time I’ll use my grinder but I’m still happy with the results. I mean, I pretty much wanted to sugar scrub myself to death with the end results.

that’s a blowpop! say from charms

Nothing much to report here, I’m gearing up for Writer Friday which I’m kinda exciting about it. If all works out well, you’ll see some art by a friend of mine with a piece of my writing.
I’m heading off to PA this weekend to shoot some paper targets, spend some time with the family, and then try to make it to an engagement party.

Don’t worry, I’ll not forget about you.

This is a repost from a former blog of mine. Here ya go, something to tide you over until Writer Friday: