I hate foot gloves.

Emergency alert! This entry is a special bulletin. I missed the public service message, but apparently there was one because in the past week approximately ¼ of the population is now wearing foot gloves instead of those lame shoes. And guess what? I hate them. I really, really hate them.

Idiotically stupid looking and childish, these “shoes” are officially known as Vibram FiveFingers. According to Vibram’s website, we can reclaim the child-like wonder of going barefoot now in many activities, including hiking, yoga, and kayaking. Wouldn’t you rather do these things barefoot? Now you can…sort of. With Vibram FiveFingers, it’s really supposed to feel like you’re walking around barefoot, at one with nature, with just the patented protective Vibram sole to keep your feet safe. But hold on a minute, I’d just as soon wear shoes doing most of this crap anyway. Arch support, anyone? Beyond that, how about a little decorum and self-respect. With their ballet-slipper design, made more asinine by those absurd little toe-sleeves, this footwear just makes people look like idiots. Especially since, in addition to those woodsier, hippy pleasures, people seem most often compelled to don them for more mundane tasks, like shopping at Trader Joe’s, or walking the dog. Yes please, make sure you show off your trendy new purchase as often as possible. Really, I want to see people doing more exciting things in their new foot gloves, like falling off buildings, getting hit by cars, and stepping on nails.

To me foot gloves have all the appeal of those silly socks my college roommate used to have, which had articulated toes, each a different color. I hate the little connector on flip-flops that goes between your big and second toe. The idea of having a sock or shoe crammed up between each toe doesn’t sound like bliss, it sounds irritating. Please keep your colorful footwear fads. If you own foot gloves, please shove them up your ass along with the (no doubt brightly-colored) croc’s you bought five years ago and don’t wear anymore.

I hate raping the classics: Disney edition.

I hate these stupid direct-to-DVD Disney sequels that they have been churning out like frothy diarrhea since 1994's Return of Jafar. I can't really critique these abominations on content, since I've never seen a single one, but the very idea of them represents the worst of consumer excess. The direct-to-DVD nature right away warns "Inferior Quality! We don't care!," which is only backed up by such high-profile disappointments as a non-Robin-Williams-voiced Genie. The sales pitch was obvious: Here is a low-cost product with brand- (via character-) recognition that parents will buy up in the millions to stuff into DVD-players instead of raising their kids. The titles do nothing to disguise the lack of inspiration:

• The Return of Jafar - Jafar returns! Chaos ensues.

• Cinderella II: Dreams Come True - Guess what!? Cinderella and the prince do live happily ever after, tying up that cliffhanger fifty years later.

• Return to Neverland - Hey, Peter Pan goes back!? Never saw that coming...not even when it was called Hook.

A quick review of some other titles out reveals the bottom-of-the-barrel depths to which the catalog has sunk: The Fox and the Hound 2, Atlantis: Milo's Return, Stitch! The Movie. And no classic property is sacred, as evidenced by decades-late shit-bombs bearing the inspired names Cinderella II (and III), Bambi 2, The Jungle Book 2, and Lady and the Tramp 2. Maybe it's just me, but something about this makes it even more insulting than the crappy Star Wars prequels. At least George Lucas cared, and spend a lot of time, money, and energy on a (horribly misguided) labor of love. Disney is just cashing in. (Yes, I realize this particular blog entry doesn't exactly have it's finger on the pulse of pop culture. Whining about Disney as the worst of Capitalism isn't new stuff, but you know what, I just started this blog so let me play a little catch-up! After all, I'm suffering through the endless commercials for new classics like Tinkerbell now more than ever as I live in a Nick-friendly household.)

Finally, in addition to insulting its customers with inferior animation, writing, and voice work, it's really just the general lack of inspiration that I do find so hateful. The sheer point of a classic fairy tale like Cinderella is to achieve the conventional happy ending. Was there ever a story that demanded a sequel less, much less two of them? (Even Into the Woods drags after intermission!) Say what you want (and I want) about Disney, I still have a cherished reverence for their classic films. On and off, they have created some of the best children's movies ever, from Snow White through, well the last classic was probably The Lion King. But I've even got colorful childhood memories of The Aristocats and The Rescuers. If Atlantis: Milo's Return is the fodder for the fond memories of tomorrow's adults, that just depresses me.

I hate celery.

I used to hate celery. I've grown oddly fond of it in certain situations, say, trench-stuffed with peanut butter or tahini. Celery, however, is at its best - or at least most bearable - when bland and kind of tasteless. Under those circumstances, crisp, cold celery is almost refreshing. On the other hand, there's celery the rest of the time, in all it's green bitterness.

Not quite an onion, not quite, er, anything else, celery often has a bitter, overpowering flavor. It's crispiness, while appreciated by many for it's toothiness, to me conjures a raw onion. Something that hasn't been cooked properly. Fill a salad with little crescent slices of the vegetable, and what you wind up with at the end is a bowl full of hard little green boomerangs that never quite managed to stick to anything or wind up on your fork. Worse yet, when they do wind up on your fork, they fill your mouth with a bitterness that makes you feel like you're being poisoned. I imagine if I sprayed Raid on my salad instead of dressing, it would taste something like celery. And in it's stalk form, celery is famously annoying. Even full of delicious peanut butter, I'm often inclined to cut my little celery-boats into bite sized chunks with a steak-knife. Yeah, I would feel a little like Rainman, but in the end when I try to break a bite off and cut through those ropes with my teeth, I feel just as foolish.

I will allow that celery can add excellent dimension to the flavor of a dish, but only when properly cooked. I make an excellent Chinese dish that is essentially half chicken, half chopped celery, and nothing else. But the celery is small and soft, and the flavor is tamed by rice wine and brown sugar. The flavor of celery seed, however, can be more of a challenge, with it's potent bitterness. Yes, it's essential in some circumstances, like on a Chicago hot dog, but it's also easily overdone. I've had pasta salad prepared by some overenthusiastic cooks that are just drenched in celery seed, and those little buggers get stuck in your teeth, just like poppy seeds.

Celery seed is so potent, its extract makes a powerful flavoring in itself. Take, for example, Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray, the infamous celery-flavored soda. Oh, why didn't Fanta think of this one? Open the can and one whiff smells like one of those overbearing pasta salads. A sip offers a surprisingly less disgusting experience, somewhat like ginger ale poured into a glass that had been used to hold pasta salad. (In a recent office taste-test, most responses hovered around "weird.") Distinctly celery, though, and distinctly infused with the flavor of that little seed.

I hate Zooey Deschanel

Fellow haters, you've been waiting for it: I hate Zooey Deschanel. Look at her. She's cute. Her big doe eyes are visually appealing. Her dry delivery encapsulates her hipster generation's feigned apathy. Then watch her in another movie, then another, and realize a bitch can't act. She really can't act, no more than fellow indie icon Catherine Keener (who I somehow still liked until I found out she was in Where the Wild Things Are). Zooey Deschanel refuses to find a character in any script. She simply says things. I don't get it. After one or two movies, you realize those doe eyes are no pools of emotion - they might as well be drawn on. Scratch that - Spongebob's drawn eyes say a lot more than ZD's ever will. ZD has buttons, like Coraline. Notice I can't even type her name anymore. Has there ever been a more pretentious name than Zooey?

To pile on the pretentious hipsterism, a few more facts. ZD is married to the lead singer of such over-glorified sissy hipster bands as Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service, Ben Gibbard, a person so grotesquely unattractive, hip and sensitive that he can only wear black nerd glasses. They're like the Brangelina of their own pathetic genre - "Zen?" Another fact, this girl is so full of her self she actually has her own band, too! She's like a, well, double threat! (Threat to no one.) Her band is called She & Him - such profound simplicity. And to top that, their first album was called Volume One; the second one, Volume Two. They're way too cool for something as commercial as a title! One day I'll have to check this band out. I can't even bear to play a clip on You Tube to research this post.