Every day when I come home from a long day at work, I find something new in my mailbox

Rants

Why I Love J. Crew
I Wanna Be An MTV VJ, My Ass

Why I Love J. Crew

Every day when I come home from a long day at work, I find something new in my mailbox. Victoria's Secret. Aerosoles. J. Crew. Wireless. Anthropologie. Pottery Barn. J. Jill. Spiegel. Ann Taylor. The Sharper Image, Talbots. Ralph Lauren, Origins. Brainstorms. FAO Schwartz. The list goes on. Each of these companies has my number (I'm not sure how they got it). And each of them kills about 15 trees a year just to keep me supplied with bird cage litter.

But I love getting catalogs. I read every one of them from cover to cover. I mark pages in the J. Crew catalog where that weird bulimic-looking model is wearing the $78 Tencel pants I want to buy while petting her pet dog/boyfriend/picnic table. I do my Christmas shopping through that one catalog with all the pewter dragons. I goggle at the $5 million bra (studded with diamonds and rubies) in the Victoria's Secret book, fascinated. And why?

Because I feel connected to the world when I get pages full of impossibly gorgeous underwear models sporting lacy Miraclebras with leopard-style prints. I believe I'm part of a mainstream consumer society when I vicariously shop for sparkly lipstick worn by those jailbait indie chick Delia's models. I mean, normally, I'm just another disenfranchised person on the street. I'm nothing special -- not overly hip, no longer in the teenage group who watches "Dawson's Creek" that all the TV advertisers want to target. I don't understand the appeal of the Backstreet Boys. Couldn't explain the popularity of LeAnn Rimes at gunpoint. But these people want ME (to buy their stuff).

Besides, I still have all my insecurities. I'm too much of this, not enough of the other thing. Catalogs provide me with a wonderful way of not only figuring out what all my shortcomings are (I don't own a matching Metro furniture set, I don't have a tankini, I can't live without $200 sunglasses), but ALSO makes it really easy to solve my own problems. Not thin enough? Okay, well, that bodyslimmer thing will do the trick, and it's just $42 without shipping and handling. Not hip enough? Those dragonfly barrettes ought to do the trick, and they're only $14 a pair. The solutions to all those worries I didn't even know I had come right to my doorstep. I can call the toll-free number and suddenly I'm part of the "in" crowd.

In one fell swoop I've defined my problem and solved it with the use of my credit card, while wearing pajamas. What more could one ask for in life? Even those perky Old Navy ads on TV don't do all that for me. I have to get up off my ass and find a mall if I want buy drawstring pants.

I now have a house full of video games from Electronics Boutique, a CD rack from Crate & Barrel, a lip gloss maker from Delia's and stacks of DVDs from Ken Crane's. And so, thanks to all these wonderful catalogs, I can finally say that I BELONG. For, like the rest of America, I am deeply in debt.

I Wanna Be An MTV VJ, My Ass

Okay, I admit when I was 11 I dreamed about being Martha Quinn. Well, maybe not her - Mark Goodman played better music. But MTV is WAY past its prime, and the last thing I want to be now is the "it" girl picked out by a corporate entity that isn't smart enough to give us what we want on MTV - VIDEOS.

The other day here in Chicago I was fortunate enough to be working in a building right near the "I Wanna Be An MTV VJ Too" auditions. There were 1,000 screaming club kids standing out in the cold hoping to be the next Jesse Camp (I met him, by the way - that dude is on major drugs). They were all trying to be so cool, but every so often you'd see some random suburban hausfrau in a tropical shirt you knew did not have a chance in hell.

As a media person, I was given a little pink MTV press pass and allowed to go in and watch some of these showbiz travesties. And it was truly pathetic. I have a feeling some of these people had practiced their response to the "What are the five CDs you can't live without question" for days. Everyone had a gimmick.

There was the nerdy guy in the Pee-Wee Herman getup. The one who branded himself as the "Unknown VJ" and wore some kind of black cloth over his face during the audition. An arrogant little chick who tried to show how "different" she was by saying she actually LIKED Courtney Love. Countless fashion plates in capri pants and platform shoes who said nothing of interest. A transvestite freezing her ass off in the cold. Lots of white guys with baggy pants and Nikes. One curly-haired blonde white girl, dressed in Indian-inspired garb (poser!), who hadn't gotten to the audition before the cutoff time. Her boyfriend solicited everyone he could think of to get her in (including me). Ultimately, he failed.

These people paraded out in the cold (not dressed properly, favoring style over substance) from before 9 a.m. to after 6, waiting for their 30 second audition. I know that the image-conscious entertainment world is starved for, well, entertainment, but somehow I can't help thinking that the kind of person who goes through this stupidity just to be on MTV is the type of person I DON'T WANT TO WATCH.