By Angela Hill
Oakland Tribune.
OAKLAND, Calif.
I was about two years late on the Honey Badger mania.
About the same for “What Does the Fox Say?” And now it seems I’ve been completely out of the loop on “trash the dress,” the wild and wacky fad where brides of an impetuous ilk will, after the ceremony, roll around in mud, jump in swimming pools or even set fire to their gowns for an edgy, memorable photo shoot ostensibly to display their individuality.
Might make sense were they mud wrestlers, Olympic swimmers or firefighters, but not really otherwise.
While it has indeed always seemed absurd to spend thousands on a gown you’re going to wear once, then preserve for your future daughter to shun when her own wedding day rolls around, trashing/soaking/burning sends the wrong message unless the wedding was called off or later ended in a nasty divorce.
But this trend has been going on for more than a decade, and it is apparently not dead yet, even though one of the brides is.
A Canadian woman was swept down a river and drowned while attempting a dress-trashing stunt in 2012. A cautionary tale.
WORLD CUPPING
Safer, just spill coffee all over your gown. That’s about the only thing most supermarket coffee-bean brands are good for, according to recent taste-test results from Lorenzo Perkins, a certified coffee instructor and an executive council member of the Barista Guild of America.
He “cupped” (brewed and sipped samples of) Folgers Classic Roast, Maxwell House French Roast, Chock full o’Nuts Original, Community Coffee Cafe Special and Yuban. The best of the bunch was Community Coffee (I don’t think we get that here anyway), which Perkins calls palatable with aromas of chocolate, honey and “wet paper” (yum).
Maxwell House came in last (and not in the sense of its final drops being good) with an aroma of “wet dog” and “burning,” plus back notes of “fish oil” and “despair,” possibly resembling “what death tastes like.
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New motto for Maxwell House: Till death do us part.
CALL ME, MAYBE
Back when I was single and jerky guys would ask for my phone number, I would sometimes give them the patrol desk at the Oakland Police Department (that’s probably some kind of crime, so shh, don’t tell OPD).
But this is even better. There’s now a Feminist Phone Intervention hotline, at 669-221-6251, that sends your unwanted suitor to an automatically generated text or computer voice that delivers a quote from feminist activist Gloria Jean Watkins, who goes by the lowercase pen name of bell hooks.
I called just for fun and got, “Whenever domination is present, love is lacking.” I’m not sure how much that will educate jerky guys.
It might just confuse them into thinking you’re a dominatrix. And, eww, they might like that.
