What is it about florescent colored chunky sandals that makes them so appealing … and so divisive in the fashion community? Do people wear them for comfort, or just to make a loud fashion statement … about how much they do not care about fashion?

Take Crocs for example. Not since the two-piece swim suit has a fashion statement caused such an uproar. There are even entire web sites dedicated to the wholesale destruction of the shoe. I’ve never seen so many people get so worked up about footwear.

(I personally don’t think the things are that bad. They can’t be that bad, as even our own Catherine Toth succumbed to the trend in May.)

So, last night I saw a TV commercial for Cheeks — an inclined “exercise sandal” that is supposed to be totally comfortable AND at the same time firm up your *ahem* cheeks while doing everyday walking. The commercial featured skinny blond models in bikinis prancing up and down a runway wearing the clunky sandals.

The shoes are part of frequently-parodied fitness TV personality Tony Little’s fashion line, retail for $29.95 and come in Black, Taupe, Denim, Bubble Gum or Aqua.

And, the Cheeks marketing strategy draws on a study that drew much attention in Hawaii in June about how slippers can cause health problems, especially in your legs and feet.

“Now you can get a work out while you walk!” says the site. “Our new Cheeks™ Exercise Sandals have a unique design to firm your legs and buttocks with every step. The ultra lightweight sandals feature outsole and footbed technology to keep your feet in perfect postural alignment. Fun and Functional!”

I know I’ve personally been more conscious of how often I wear slippers since reading the June study. And getting more of a workout while walking is intriguing!

But I’m not sure I’m ready to explore Crocs or Cheeks yet, knowing how many vehement haters of huge, ugly sandals are probably just sitting around at Ala Moana laughing or sneering at all the Croc-wearers walking by. I don’t want my feet to appear on someone’s blog …

Would you sacrifice fashion for fitness if it meant you could have sleeker cheeks?

Images of the robots inside fluffy children’s toys at mattkirkland.com.

Don’t try this at home, unless you want nightmares. Luckily, I was a little bit too old when Barney entered the scene.

You can probably tell from the lack of blog posts yesterday and the day before that I’ve come down with a case of uninspired-itis again. Here are some things that interested me today:

Preggers.

Disturbing: A pact between teenage girls at Gloucester High School to get pregnant was at least partly behind a rise in the number of pregnancies there, according to the AP.

The school’s principal told Time magazine that several girls confessed to making the pact. The school started to worry when 17 girls, none over 16, became pregnant. The school average is four pregnancies per year.

The principal told Time, according to the AP, that “[s]ome of the girls reacted to the news they were pregnant with high fives and plans for baby showers.”

I wish teenagers would stick to trends like black nail polish or Hello Kitty pencil cases — things that can be rubbed off or thrown away or outgrown … not like a baby.

In other news…

Seventeen year-old Jamie Lynn Spears gave birth to a baby girl on Thursday. Hm.

Attack of the Clones (in a good way).

The Guardian reports that a man whose skin cancer had spread to his lung and groin was cleared of all traces of the disease after doctors injected him with five billion of his own immune cells.

Cloning was used to create billions of the man’s own cells, which, when they were put back into his body, starting attacking the cancer. Tests showed that tumors in the patient’s body disappeared within two months of the treatment and had not reappeared two years later.

Doctors believe that the treatment could work in about a quarter of people with skin cancer whose immune systems are already primed to attack the cancer, the article said.

Hat tip to juh for the link.

Aloha, Azerbaijan!

Hawaii state House Rep. Gene Ward’s Thursday op-ed in the Advertiser about a recent women’s rights conference in Azerbaijan got a mention in APA, which covers news in that Eurasian country. Amusingly, the news service labeled Ward a “Congressman,” and included beside the article what I think is a photo of the U.S. House? Senate?

Congress, legislature, it’s all the same. Oh well.

Props to Ward for looking beyond Hawaii and offering his perspective on an important international issue.

What’s a Blog For?

There’s a 6-comment discussion going on over at Poinography regarding the Advertiser blogs, in response to Doug White’s recent post about Editor Mark Platte’s June 15 column about blogging. For the most part, the comments (all besides mine) are pretty critical of the approach to blogging the Advertiser has taken.

This underscores an interesting and current debate about the purpose of a blog. When I first got to blogging back in high school, blogs were online diaries where you’d post your thoughts, feelings, angry poetry, song lyrics and other gibberish. Flash forward 10 years later and blogs are transforming the media landscape with insider analysis or information posted minutes or seconds after news breaks.

A lot of the Advertiser blogs more closely resemble the online diary model than the Daily Dish (Andrew Sullivan), Instapundit, Boing Boing or Talking Points Memo models. Which is great, if you’re just looking to offer your two cents about cell phones, but annoying if you’re looking for something with more, well, substance, or insider info that all of us reporters are supposedly toting around in our pockets. Believe me, if it were THAT interesting, we’d have written about it by now.

Some of the government/politics and business-oriented blogs don’t so much follow the diary model as they’re written by reporters who know their blog subject intimately. That goes for the sports bloggers, as well. Of course the Advertiser would like to supply readers with more blogs about things they’re interested in. But it seems just from the numbers that what readers want isn’t always what’s most pressing or significant in the grand scheme of things. I’ll admit it — it’s puzzling to me when a post I write about slippers gets 10 times as many comments as one Jerry Burris writes about important rumblings in state government.

Let me follow that by saying that I do not begrudge anyone their blog posts about slippers, as reading about Hawaii politics can get depressing.

I suppose Quarterlife Cafe would probably fall into the category of “meaningless fluff” designed to entice the twenty-something crowd into reading the newspaper. But, hey, if I can get just one more apathetic twenty-something to read just one more article and learn just one more important aspect of some Hawaii issue, then I’ll write all the meaningless fluff I can muster.

Happy Aloha Friday!

Does anyone else find this disturbing?

(No, not the can-can dancers.)

Disneyland’s famous “It’s a Small World” ride has been closed since January for a 10-month renovation in part to replace the boats and flume they travel along. The boats and flume are originals from the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair, and after more than 40 years of use, are in need of a facelift.

I’m sure everyone has been stuck on some Disneyland ride at least once (for my mom and I, it was Pirates of the Caribbean, in the dark water next to the deserted island, with the soundtrack eerily repeating “DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES.”). When the Small World ride re-opens, the flume will be deeper and the boats more buoyant, which will hopefully eliminate the problem of boats getting stuck and passengers being driven to near insanity by that incessant theme song.

But the buzz is that not ALL the problems with the ride result from its age. According to Al Lutz at the Disney-watching blog MiceAge.com:

The Americans riding in those pastel boats almost 45 years ago were much slimmer than those boarding the same boats now. While the CM’s [Cast Members] operating the ride try their very best to eyeball the girth and size of the riders coming down the line and purposely leave a row or two empty on many boats nowadays to hopefully keep them floating, even those discreet tactics don’t always work with today’s riders.

Quite simply, the boats weren’t designed to handle multiple adults weighing more than 200 pounds, and they now routinely bottom out in the shallow flume and get stuck. The Imagineers who designed the unique flume ride system for the World’s Fair assumed that adult men would average 175 pounds, and adult women would average 135 pounds. Needless to say, those 1960’s statistics are hopelessly out of date in today’s world. This same issue creates similar problems on the drops at Pirates of the Caribbean, or even on the older dark rides like Pinocchio or Alice In Wonderland as the more heavily loaded cars try to keep up their pace throughout the ride.

Believe it? The LA Times Travel section blog picked up the story, plus other online sources, like TMZ.com, Consumerist.com and CalorieLab.com. The story also made Fortune Magazine’s “101 Dumbest Moments in Business,” weighing in at number 13.

Even the New York Times took note, and quoted a Disney spokesperson who said the occasional hold-ups during rides are due to fiberglass build-up in the flume and that the repairs “have nothing to do with weight.”

It’s easy to chuckle at the irony of overweight theme park visitors causing problems at the Small World ride. But seriously. This is a non-laughing matter. If need be, should Disneyland modify its rides to accommodate the enlarging American waistline?

Or should we start taking it easy on the ice cream and churros?

photo: http://en.wikipedia.org.

Joey and Chandler. Matt and Ben. Bill Clinton and…Al Gore?

The Seattle Times on Monday explored the “bromance” — “the complicated love and affection shared by two straight males,” as defined by urbandictionary.com.

More than one woman I know has had momentary suspicions — even if only fleeting — of her boyfriend’s closeness with his roommate, teammate or co-worker.

The “bromance” assures women that men — tada! — can be close and still straight!

Wait. Is this news? Isn’t this article not so much about an amazing new social phenomenon as about a new word coined to describe, well, men who are FRIENDS?

The article says one of the reasons behind the  popularity of the “bromance” is that the average man is getting married later, at an average age of 27, according to a 2007 report by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. The average marrying age in 1960 was 23. The study also found that men with more education were tying the knot even later, in their 30s.

All of this apparently is rolled up in the dreaded “quarterlife crisis”:

Experts say the prevalence of these friendships can in part be explained by the delay in major life milestones. Fifty years ago, a man could graduate from college, get a job and get married all within a couple of months. But today’s men are drifting, as opposed to jumping, into the traditional notion of adulthood.

“The transition to adulthood is now taking about a decade longer than it used to,” said Michael Kimmel, a sociology professor at Stony Brook University in New York whose upcoming book is called “Guy Land: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men.” One set of men Kimmel interviewed for the book were fraternity brothers at Dartmouth College. Following graduation, seven of them squeezed into a two-bedroom apartment in Boston.

The article also links the “bromance” trend to changing perceptions of homosexuality in America:

According to Peter Nardi, a sociologist at Pitzer College who specializes in male friendships, all these phrases are safer than they used to be because men are less afraid of being perceived as gay. It has become more acceptable for them to show some emotion. Al Gore and Bill Clinton hugged when they won the 1992 election and sports figures cry on camera when they’re busted for steroids, Nardi pointed out.

Finally! So, straight men are relieved of the burden of worrying about others thinking they are gay, and can just admit that they like other men and show some emotion!

Women: I hope this doesn’t create confusion about who wears the pants in the relationship.

photo: www.nbc.com/scrubs