"The lack of trend is the trend."

Said jeans designer Katrina Klein, quoted in "Is Denim in an Identity Crisis?/Low slung, high waisted, skinny, cropped, baggy, flared — there’s no consensus on jeans these days. What does that say about the era we’re living through? And what can it tell us about ourselves?" (NYT).

The article cites that 2004 book "The Paradox of Choice" by  Barry Schwartz, who famously took the position"  that — as the NYT paraphrases it — "too many choices makes us anxious." 

I've already written — back in 2011 — about Barry Schwartz agonizing over which jeans to buy when there are so many choices and you just want "normal" jeans. That's how he begins his book! I wrote: "Get a grip, Barry! I feel like Barry I-just-want-normal-jeans Schwartz was the guy who inspired one of my favorite songs." And I'm absolutely delighted that the embedded video — "Randy Normal Jeans" — still works.

But back to today's NYT fashion article about the trend of no trend:

This blog has a theme today.

Just noticing. And I'll be breaking the theme soon, but I thought I'd mention it.

ADDED: Why haven't people realized that Oumuamua is Lieutenant Custard's Banger of Time?



(Clearer audio here.)

Retro website design.

Like this.

It's the thing now. (Please click that link, which is for a new, hip restaurant.)

I learned about that trend in the NYT, and I know you won't necessarily click that link, but you will not regret clicking of the top link.

From the NYT article, on the subject of the website you'll see at that top link:

[The] restaurateur... tapped his buddy... to slap together something quick... The result recalls a personal website built by a bored teenager in the days before Facebook and Myspace, with flashing Comic Sans text, dancing MC Hammer GIFs and cheesy keyboard music. A banner declaring “now with working email” scrolls across the top.

Mr. Silverman said he regularly gets emails from customers who are confused. A common note: “‘I love your restaurant but saw your website and think I can help you out.’”

Hey, email is cool. The Internet. Hey, I'm on a site. Hey, download tonight.... The Internet....

Mashable may be thinking "Thoughts That Etsy Models Are Having Right Now."

See if you can caption that better than Mashable did.

But what I'm thinking is: Time to revisit Randy Normal:



ADDED: Sorry the old "Randy Normal Jeans" video has gone private. I wouldn't have even put this post up if I'd known that would happen. I've swapped in a poorly filmed live version, and I can't even find a good screen shot of Randy Normal. Not only am I off to a terrible start on the first day of the work week, I realize that at least 7 old posts are now wrecked.

"It is more than just a Korean soap opera. It hurts our culture dignity."

Anguished one member of China’s political advisory body (the CPPCC).

Well aware of the craze [the Korean soap opera "My Love from the Star"] has created in China... the CPPCC... spent a whole morning bemoaning why China can’t make a show as good and as big of a hit.

At a meeting of delegates from the culture and entertainment industry, some blamed it partly on China’s censorship, euphemistically referred to as the “examination and approval system” at the meeting by Feng Xiaogang, a famous director and a CPPCC member. “My heart trembles,” he said, when waiting for a movie to go through this rigorous censoring procedure.

“My wings and imagination are all broken,” said one comedian delegate. But she didn’t go into further detail, perhaps out of caution of offending those very censors.

What would it take for the Chinese government to lift censorship? Seeing its own people really loving a Korean soap opera?

“Korean drama is ahead of us,” Wang Qishan said in surprising comments at one of the more important legislative meetings, according to Beijing News. Wang is head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, in charge of an ongoing wide-scale anti-corruption campaign.

And he adds this hilarious grab at cultural dignity: "The core and soul of the Korean opera is a distillation of traditional Chinese culture... It just propagates traditional Chinese culture in the form of a TV drama."

That's funnier when you realize that the story line is about "an alien who accidentally arrives on Earth 400 years ago, meets an arrogant female pop star and falls in love."

And I love the detail that the lead female character referred to "beer and fried chicken" that caused Chinese restaurants to offer beer-and-fried-chicken meals.

ADDED: What kind of arrogant female pop stars did they have 400 years ago?

AND: Attempting to answer that last question, I arrived at this find example of Americans distilling traditional Chinese culture (and word has it that the restaurants in China will soon be serving bangers and custard):

Normcore on my mind.

We were talking about "normcore," the fashion trend — for all I know it's a hoax —  of "embracing sameness deliberately as a new way of being cool, rather than striving for 'difference' or 'authenticity.'" One wears "ardently ordinary clothes" — "Mall clothes. Blank clothes... dad-brand non-style...."

Once you think about this nonstyle being a style — and, seriously, I do not know whether that linked article in New York Magazine is a satire or not — it affects how you see fashion advertising. I opened an email this morning from Shop Bop and saw this...



... and my feeling was: This is the kind of marketing that drives consumers to normcore. Whether normcore is a real trend itself or not, the word aptly expresses consumer resistance to excessive prodding to see the trends as constantly changing, one's possessions seeming to require endless "editing," and the speciousness of the assertion that something random — like, here, splattered patterns — is suddenly what looks exactly new right now.

And if you're feeling the call of the normal — if you've been searching for something great to wear, man — remember there's always Randy Normal Jeans:

"What Is The Internet Anyway?"

"And remember: If you're still in the market for a computer, make sure you tell your dealer that you're going to be using it to access the internet."

Seriously, what is the internet?

Here at Meadhouse, when we ask what is the internet, we sing this song:



Hey, I'm on a site!

You need to wear your comfortable jeans today.

(Yes, I've blogged this before, but you know you've worn your "Randy Normal" jeans before.)

"The other day I gave her mash and fishfingers for dinner — something quite boring — and her response was 'That’s impressive,' so she has a sense of humor, too."

An English dad describes the experience of living with a 4-year-old genius. 

ADDED: Confession: I had to Google to make sure "mash" referred to potatoes. The process of doing blog tags confronted me with the part of my brain — of whatever size IQ, I don't know — that has been dealing with English food. Long ago, "mash" got mushed with "mushy peas," and I'd never had the push to straighten that out until just now. But, thanks to Wikipedia, I've set my head straight. "Mash" is just mashed potatoes. And "bangers and mash" — which sounds dirty — is just sausages and mashed potatoes, which I think are "impressive."

The term "bangers" is attributed to the fact that sausages, particularly the kind made during World War II under rationing, were made with water so they were more likely to explode under high heat if not cooked carefully; modern sausages do not have this attribute.

Wikipedia kindly includes some pop culture references, including Peter Sellers singing to Sophia Loren, about how he's unsatisfied with her "macaroni" and would like her to "give us a bash at the bangers and mash me mother used to make," which you can listen to on one of those YouTube videos where all you look at is the record spinning. Sellers and Loren do their best to exclude any double entendre that those lyrics may seem to convey in writing.

There's also a Radiohead number called "Bangers + Mash," which has lyrics that begin "You bit me, bit me, bit me, ow," which is something Peter Sellers never sang to Sophia Loren.

Times change, which reminds me of my favorite "banger" song: "Lieutenant Custard & His Banger of Time," which involves a time-travel sausage. Please be careful with this!

The Internet!

"I just want regular jeans. You know, the kind that used to be the only kind.”

This is the anecdote that begins Barry Schwartz's book "The Paradox of Choice." He "spluttered" that after a Gap salesgirl asked him if he wanted "slim fit, easy fit, relaxed fit, baggy, or extra baggy... stonewashed, acid-washed, or distressed... button-fly or zipper-fly?" His anguish was supposed to exemplify a big problem we have these days.

By creating all these options, the store undoubtedly had done a favor for customers with varied tastes and body types. However, by vastly expanding the range of choices, they had also created a new problem that needed to be solved. Before these options were available, a buyer like myself had to settle for an imperfect fit, but at least purchasing jeans was a five-minute affair. Now it was a complex decision in which I was forced to invest time, energy, and no small amount of self-doubt, anxiety, and dread.

Buying jeans is a trivial matter, but it suggests a much larger theme we will pursue throughout this book, which is this: When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable. As the number of available choices increases, as it has in our consumer culture, the autonomy, control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful and But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.

Get a grip, Barry! I feel like Barry I-just-want-normal-jeans Schwartz was the guy who inspired one of my favorite songs:



That was linked to in the comments — by bagoh20 — over on the Obama and the Packers post:

When I think of Obama and sports I always am reminded of this video that Althouse showed quite a while back. I watch it ever now and then, and I don't know why.

Why you watch it... or why Obama and sports reminds you of it? You watch it because it's so infectious. And comforting. And infectiously comforting, like friendly jeans. It reminds you of Obama and sports, I think, because you've had this picture in your head for so long: "Obama Celebrates Win By Riding Bike." He was a winner, about to coast downhill, and the regrettable jeans were the first foreshadowing of a failed presidency. He was not, as we'd thought, the hero. He was the man in Randy Normal Jeans. And then there are the dance moves:



They were so cool at the time, but now? I'm seeing Randy.

We found morels.

We looked the hard way yesterday... and the easy way today:



At the Dane County Farmers Market:



Where they'll sell you the supplies to grow your own...



... mushrooms. But not morel mushrooms, which is what we buy:



And on to other things... curds perhaps....



Now, we're home, I'm blogging the morels, and Meade is getting some of them ready to fry into the morning eggs.... mmmmm.

***

See the jeans on that guy in the last photograph? That's what, chez Meadhouse, we call Randy Normal Jeans.

"In Defense of Monogamy, or What to do about Our Polyamorous Genes."

"Because of our ancestors’ polygynous and polyamorous sexual behavior, where a small group of powerful men, mostly traveling military warriors and merchants, had children with numerous women of diverse ethnicities, backgrounds and nationalities, more diversity was passed along to us along our ancestors’ X chromosomes than their Y chromosomes. Both men and women inherit diverse genes from their mothers and pass along these diverse sex genes on the X chromosome to their children."

What, then, did you expect from Tiger Woods?

And, speaking of genes:



I made a mess in my genes....

Get friendly with randy, normal genes.

"Creepy Ad Watch"?

That's what Andrew Sullivan calls this. I disagree.



I think it's totally clear and effective. It's not too scary. It's engaging and memorable. Don't knock the PSA. I mean, go ahead and laugh if you're beyond the age when you need this kind of help, but the only thing that makes this creepy is that you know there really are people who would trick kids this way.

ADDED: Here's a different approach:

Have you got a song that you use to eradicate another catchy song from your head?

I do. I've had it for years. It's "5D" by The Byrds. I've used it, effectively for 40 years. (And I'm still wondering how it is that I could come out to here and be still floating and never hit bottom but keep falling through, just relaxed and paying attention?)

And what's the last song you needed to eradicate? (I dislike the term "earworm" for some reason.)

Chez Althouse, the song in need of eradication is something you will hear if you play the clip that follows, which you will do at your own risk.




That's the comedian, JP Inc., who opened for Neil Hamburger, here in Madison last Thursday.

And here are photographs of President Barack Obama wearing what, if you were foolish enough to play that clip, you will now be calling — not "mom jeans" — Randy Normal jeans.

"[Neil] Hamburger’s sets of hackneyed, setup-and-punch line jokes with a side of the bitter are built to bomb..."

"... and rely on pop-culture references that are either too soon for good taste (look for some Michael Jackson jokes on his current tour) or stale going on oblivious. (Who else is still talking about Smash Mouth in 2009?) Yet this rumpled husk of a comic also proclaims his adoration for good old showbiz and laments its decline, especially when he interrupts his shows to scream at audience members who egg on his pitifully out-of-date shtick."

(Clips at that link illustrate the technique well.)

Were you at Neil Hamburger's show at the High Noon Saloon last night? We were. Let this fuzzy iPhone pic prove it:



Or did you make it to "RiffTrax Live: Plan 9 from Outer Space"? We missed that unfortunately, but had a lot of fun laughing at Neil Hamburger and his painfully bad jokes — and JP Inc. and his theme songs for TV shows that don't exist.