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I asked my tiny friends on Facebook what the worst thing to say on a date was.
They had a few ideas from experience.
Unfortunately, I recalled using some of them on my dates.
Which is why I don’t date now.
Let’s get started.
1. “You Remind Me Of My Ex.”
This is like going to a job interview and the boss says You remind me of exactly the type of person we fire.
2. “You Remind Me Of My Dad.”
Just say You’re never getting laid.
3. “Does This Look Infected To You?”
If it’s debatable, it’s not presentable.
4. “I Forgot To Take My Meds.”
Anti-rapist pills? Diarrhea? When we wonder, we start with those.
5. “So I Read On Google That You…”
We want to be courted, romanced, then creepily stalked. Don’t upset the order.
6. “You’re Late. Are You Screwing Someone Else?”
Yes! Let’s keep it short, I’m late for another screwing appointment.
7. “You Don’t Watch That ‘To Catch A Predator’ Show, Do You?”
Be proud. It’s network TV.
8. “I Have The Worst Hemmorhoid.”
You can compare this one to others? Think of what the future will bring
9.”I Only Brought Enough Money For What I Got.”
Nothing’s hotter than poorness.
10. “I’ve Already Sent You A Friend Request On Facebook.”
So you can’t ever, ever leave me.
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That’s just the beginning. I’m sure you have more. Leave a line in the comments, and let me know if it actually happened to you.
On Twitter? Follow me here.
Thank you to my tiny friends on Facebook for allowing me to harvest and exploit their minds.
Images by ShutterStock.
For the past two years the Maserati MC12 supercar has been competing – and winning – in the FIA GT Championship. The 2007 season of the series gets under way in March, with a trip to the Zhuhai circuit in China, which makes this the perfect time to look back at the history and technology of the superlative car.
The Maserati company was originally created to do one thing: build race cars. The company didn’t commence building road cars for another twenty years, when the A6 Gran Turismo was unveiled in 1946. While the company had spectacular success in grand prix racing with the legendary 250F, with Juan Manuel Fangio taking the World Championship in 1957, Maserati has a long and illustrious history in GT racing. So when considering the type of car to create for the 21st Century, it was only natural that it should be a Grand Tourer.
Capitalising on the company’s technical partnership with Ferrari, the MC12 utilises the carbon-fiber monocoque used for the Enzo Ferrari, along with a modified version of the 6-liter V12 engine from the Enzo. Very little else was carried over; the bodywork, for example, bears no relationship to the Ferrari. Based on a design concept by Giugiaro, was then refined by renowned designer Frank Stephenson, making extensive use of the wind-tunnel.
Despite having the diameter of the air intakes restricted, the 48-valve, quad-cam engine develops over 600bhp, fed through a six-speed paddle-shift gearbox that would be familiar to anyone who has driven a roadgoing Maserati equipped with a DuoSelect or Cambiocorsa gearbox. As everything possible has been done to make the car as light as possible, performance is stunning – the roadgoing version goes from zero to sixty in under four seconds, and the top speed is over 200mph.
Oschersleben in Germany
The MC12 made its debut in the eighth round of the 2004 FIA GT Championship at Imola, as a ‘guest’ entry; the potential of the car was immediately apparent, with the two cars finishing second and third. At the next race, at Oschersleben in Germany, Andrea Bertolini and Mika Salo went one better and claimed the first win for the Maserati. A second place in Dubai was followed by the final race of the season, in China – and the two MC12s came home first and second.
For 2005 there were no fewer than four Maseratis competing in the championship – two each for the Vitaphone Racing and JMB Racing teams. The opening round at Monza saw the four cars finish 2-3-4-5, with the cars in second and third both within 2s of the race winner. The next race, at Magny-Cours in France, saw an historic 1-2-3 for Maserati; a further four victories came over the remainder of the season, including a remarkable 1-2 finish in the grueling Spa-Francorchamps 24 Hours race.
By the end of the season Vitaphone Racing had claimed the Teams’ Championship ahead of JMB Racing, with Maserati dominating the Manufacturers’ Cup with a points total almost double that of their nearest competitor. Timo Scheider and Michael Bartels just missed out on the Drivers’ title, beaten by a single point.
Vitaphone Racing raced on in 2006 with their two cars, and this time the pairing of Bartels and Andrea Bertolini were not to be denied. The season began in fine style with a win in the opening round at Silverstone; on the podium, Bartels and Bertolini were presented with the historic Tourist Trophy by racing legend Sir Stirling Moss. A 1-2 finish came at Oschersleben, followed by a back-to-back win in the 24 Hours at Spa.
Team-mates Jamie Davies and Thomas Biagi found their stride in the second half of the season, claiming victories at Dijon and Adria, while Bartels and Bertolini showed amazing consistency, scoring points in every round and clinching the coveted Drivers’ Championship with a race to spare; Vitaphone again won the Teams’ title with a winning margin over 50 points.
In 2006 the Maserati MC12 also raced in the Italian GT Championship; the Box Racing and Playteam SaraFree teams each entered two cars. The Maserati was almost unbeatable, winning fourteen of the sixteen races; the Playteam SaraFree squad has stepped up to the FIA GT Championship for 2007. With JMB Racing also opting to campaign their MC12 in the series, the FIA GT Championship could see as many as six Maseratis on the grid during the season.Of course we brought our cameras with us, and once again the Japanese Lady Gaga fans amazed and impressed us with their over-the-top fashion. Sure, we saw the large hair bows that Lady Gaga is known for (BTW, big hair bows have been quite popular in Shibuya for several years), but there were also a lot of handmade costumes, inspired-by fashions, totally original creations, and Japanese vs. Gaga style mashups (Lolita Gaga, Mori-Girl Gaga, Shibuya Gal Gaga, etc.) We couldn’t get pictures of every cool Lady Gaga fan we saw (that would require thousands of photos), but we tried to bring back a good collection for those of you that couldn’t make it to the show.
Before we get to the pics, we’d like to thank all of the Gaga fans who were nice enough to talk to us and to pose for our pictures on both days. A special shout-out to the amazingly awesome Japanese girl you see in the middle of the first two pictures below. She was totally cool and fun – so cool that we photographed her (and her huge Lady Gaga sign) on both days. Also, the girl in the last photo (at the bottom of the page) is obviously not Japanese. We saw her standing outside the arena trying to get a ticket for hours. We were too happy for her when she finally found a ticket for the sold-out show, so we took her picture with the ticket to celebrate. Enjoy the pictures!
As usual, we recommend the you click on the photos to see them at full size – the bigger the better!
By Leanne Italie, Associated Press Writer April 1st, 2010
Flats, platforms, wedges and stilettos. Sandals, slippers, boots and clogs. Craftsmen and haute designers have been tweaking women’s footwear for centuries to reflect culture, politics and utility, but few have broken through with truly renegade reinventions.
“There are adaptations, but actual world-changing innovation is a lot less common than we might want to believe,” said Elizabeth Semmelhack, senior curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.
The museum collects, exhibits and interprets footwear from around the world, with 13,000 examples of early designs and styles. Many are still referenced today, from thong sandals of the ancient East to towering chopines of Renaissance Europe.
Semmelhack gives credit to thinkers like Salvatore Ferragamo for his wartime cork wedges and Alexander McQueen for his 10-inch lobster claws, but she points to the rise of celebrity designers themselves as perhaps the most influential development of all.
“Did you even think about who made your Keds? Over the course of the 20th century, shoemakers have gone from anonymous craftsmen to fashion trendsetters,” she said. “It’s a relatively new phenomenon.”
So when, exactly, did shoes begin? No one knows precisely.
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis theorize that western Eurasians used supportive footwear nearly 30,000 years ago, based on a shortening and weakening of the bones of the smallest four toes while leg muscles remained long and strong. Simpler, more ill-fitting coverings protected feet in harsh climates about 50,000 years ago, according to other research.
The oldest surviving specimens of shoes appear to be sagebrush bark strap sandals found in caves of the Northern Great Basin in Western North America that are thought to be more than 9,000 years old.
Sandals haven’t changed all that much since, or from ancient times in Egypt, Greece and China. Strappy gladiator touches have never gone out of style, bejeweled thongs mimic the practice of placing precious gems on shoes for royalty and platforms in the West can be traced in an almost unbroken timeline right on through to Carmen Miranda and Lady Gaga.
A surviving Spanish chopine mule with tooled leather over cork heels dates to before 1540 as one of the earliest platforms, Semmelhack said. One of the oldest depictions of people in high wooden clogs is “oriental” servants found in stone carvings on a 12th-century church in France, according to the Bata museum’s exhibition On a Pedestal: From Renaissance Chopines to Baroque Heels.
Even older, a wooden Japanese thong platform called a geta, with separate heel pieces, has been traced to 300 B.C.
High, narrow stilettos didn’t come into their own in the West until the 1950s, but chunkier heels detached from the front of a sole were everywhere among the upper crust in the 17th and 18th centuries. The separate high heel, Semmelhack said, “came into fashion in Europe but was worn in the Near East before it was of any interest to Europeans.”
Height has a long history played out in the extreme in chopines nearly 20 inches high in 16th-century Venice.
“Venetian women were actually sequestered and only put on view at certain times of the year,” Semmelhack said. “You don’t actually see the chopines themselves. They were put under women’s dresses. The cost of textiles was so high that wearing chopines meant more fabric and therefore higher status. They needed to lean on two servants and that was also a statement of how incredibly wealthy their families were.”
Color, in the same way as comfort food, often shows up in shoes via long-lasting books and movies, taking women back to their childhood romps through the closets of their mothers.
“Footwear has this special place, as we all know,” said Stuart Weitzman, who has a long relationship with glitzy heels and a new line of chunky jeweled and studded jelly sandals and shoes for spring.
Year after year, he said, his best-selling color in sandals is no color at all.
“Who is the first hero, the first story that every girl ever reads or learns or is told about in her lifetime? The transparent shoe in Cinderella,” Weitzman said. “Before you can read or write, you’re brainwashed into what a transparent shoe can do for your life. It takes everybody back to that time, the mystery.”
Weitzman does sell color as well. A consistent favorite is red. “Red, every year. Dorothy’s ruby slipper is second only to Cinderella’s shoe for so many,” he said.
As mass media and mass production made fashion “more democratic,” according to Semmelhack, politics often revolutionized it. Shoes were no exception. Heels went immediately flat in 1800 and stayed that way through 1850 in response to the French Revolution, a time that ornate heels were preferred by the ruling class, she said.
“Styles became much more widely available with mass production, but they also were much more regimented in terms of design,” Semmelhack said. “It’s interesting that when we head into more difficult economic times, we see a rise of very, very architectural and sculptural footwear.”
Platforms were reborn at the height of the Great Depression, linked to Hollywood glamour and excess. Not all high shoes appear built for torture, though many were promoted then and are sought after now for their slim silhouettes and dainty gaits—the same coveted traits that drove foot binding in China for thousands of years.
Ferragamo is one of the biggest names in women’s shoes. Some have speculated his wedges were inspired by chopines, but few realize he was genuinely interested in women’s comfort, Semmelhack said.
“With the wedge, he says he was trying to make an orthopedic shoe. He was attempting to offer women support all along the instep of their foot. He took courses in biology and the structure of the human foot,” she said. “He was trying to make a very comfortable, fashionable shoe and it just so happened he also created a fashion craze.”
Herman Delman, who founded the Delman brand 91 years ago, also built shoes of style and comfort. His company does a booming business in basic ballet flats today. Over the years, Delman hired Roger Vivier, Herbert Levine and other top designers as he attracted star clients like Marilyn Monroe and Joan Crawford, releasing ready-to-wear copies of shoes he made exclusively for the rich and famous, according to a student-curated exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, Scandal Sandals and Lady Slippers: A History of Delman Shoes.
Delman put out a gold studded platform with black leather crossed straps at the toe in 1939, with strikingly similar silhouettes still selling well. His strappy “Scandal Sandal” of the mid-1940s with ties crossing up the calf was based on a 1920s custom shoe for Irene Castle, a popular ballroom dancer and fashion icon. At the time, Delman called the look “daring.”
Ferragamo debuted his wedges in the 1930s. They stayed strong until the mid-40s, surfacing again during the social upheaval of the Vietnam War and the oil crisis of the late 1960s and ’70s.
“It seems to be about pushing boundaries, escapism,” Semmelhack said. “If Ferragamo was looking to the past, he was looking to the 16th century to be inspired by the last time a platform was in fashion.”
Cycles in shoes and fashion overall have become “tighter” in recent years, she said. “We’re looking back 20 years, even 10, to be inspired. Our concept of vintage is contracting.”