for 21 September 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Miscellaneous How does one become a Suckster? Nothing my career guidance teacher ever said covered it! Seamus Sweeney <slinkyspringsupremo@yahoo.com> It takes a combination of bad luck and a lifetime of bitterness and frustration to become a Suckster. Judging from your naively upbeat tone, your giddily goofy email address, and the fact that you have a career guidance teacher, you've got a long way to go, baby. It's better this way. Trust us. Sucksters  Kornheiser, Center of Controversy! A good deal of the point of Alan Kornheiser's email was said first by Mencken, and a lot more succinctly: "There are, to be sure, advantages in Union for everyone, but it must be manifest that they are greatest for the worst kinds of people. All the benefit that a New Yorker gets out of Kansas is no more than what he might get out of Saskatchewan, the Argentine pampas, or Siberia. But New York to a Kansan is not only a place where he may get drunk, look at dirty shows, and buy bogus antiques; it is also a place where he may enforce his dunghill ideas upon his betters." Robert L. McMillin <rlm@syseca-us.com> How dare you imply that anyone could express an idea more succinctly than Alan Kornheiser! Blasphemer! Sucksters East Timor Sucksters: Need help. Been Suck reader for couple years now. Need you to help with situation in East Timor. This is when people who actually give a shit need to band together. Is a Suck issue no doubt ... involves huge lies and the usual disregard for human life. Look forward to seeing the issue. Yours faithfully, Steve Wigney Sydney, Australia <swigney@c2.telstra-mm.net.au> Um, how are we supposed to help? By writing about it? Maybe you're a little bit too faithfully ours. But we do remain firmly against huge lies and the usual disregard for human life — don't get us wrong. At least, until the latest polls are in, at which point we might support both. Send your contributions for James Bong's campaign first, then we'll talk. Sucksters It's in the Bag I just wanted to say I loved this article. I had to finish it without clicking a single link. A whole level above the usual Suck drivel, although I did draw a blank on "Duchamp or gas huffing," probably because I'm Canadian. It's a shame Seinfeld is no longer in production. The urban sombrero could have just been the beginning. Rock on! Jack Lindsey <Jack@Ottawa.com> I have no doubt it was because you are Canadian. One question: In Canada, wouldn't the correct translation be urban tuque? Ann Hey, your fashion insights are in the bag. I have one personal story I'd like to add to give your article a sidebar with the real feel of a haute couture directive. Fashion Don't! As the active head of my own in-home child-care program — which includes my own two girls and three others under the age of four — I welcomed the cargo pant as an excellent way to supplement the hideously humiliating stylings of the diaper bag, whose more pared and chic cuts have not yet been transformed into line-by-line copies available to us lowly masses at Target. So I figured by co-opting the cargo pant in the service of the sundry necessities of my small group, I could still carry a mere micro-purse rather than a handy-dandy vinyl monolith covered in teddy bears. I pinned all my naive hopes on the cargo pant, thinking its seemingly discreet cavernousness offered me a chance to lead my charges on a tour of the local swing sets while still exuding the shining, effortless, confident womanliness I was sure must be evident, in spite of being unable to squeeze in a shower before I passed out each night. Well, take it from Mama, thighs and calves protruding with three baby bottles, two sippie cups, a diaper or four, burp clothes, baby wipes, a rattle, a board book, and small first-aid kit somehow do not say, "Chic 1999!" Sure, my homegrown commitment to keeping my children intimate within their own family structure and the entrepreneurial panache of running my own program that allows me as a single parent to keep the entire works afloat without ever leaving home, is about as progressive as it gets as far as taking the parenting route in this late century, but finding the right garments and accessories to scream this out to the world for the validation that cannot be bought is still too progressive for fashion world. So the final scoop is: Let no woman make the blunder of actually using this season's must have cargo pants for anything. That would be so working-class crass! Believe me — I've felt the pain of that Fashion Don't! Lindsay Cook It is Official Suck Policy to never refuse an opportunity to refer to diapers, poop, and "active heads," so of course your letter drew some attention. While we admire your ingenuity in actually trying to use work pants for work, we sigh knowingly nonetheless. The only women who look good in cargo pants are barely off the bottle themselves; child-bearing women find the baggy pockets and billowing fabric multiply the thighs and add pads to areas padded enough already. As for the general issue you raise, we simply nod in agreement: The paucity of (affordable) baby gear that accessories well with a Baby G-Shock is an insult to all the women whose fashion sense stays intact long after the water breaks. Nonetheless, we read your letter with some hope: You are obviously a go-to gal with entrepreneurial instincts as sharp as your eye. There must be a market for cheap, chic child-care carriers, so though you may not be the one to do it, we think that surely you or some like you must be in her basement, building the better bag. Ann I enjoyed your write or rant about bags and the excessorization of our days. I must admit, I read New York, New York in it — or at least East Coast. While completely agreeing with your comments, I have to speak up and say that all those compartments can and will be used. I have one of those and I can and do use all that stuff in all those compartments — and with some regularity. Then again, my bag is nylon and canvas and comes from the hardware store, and I thought it pricey at 25 bucks. All the best, and keep those Suck muscles strong. Kurt Madison <punctum@tctc.com> So you sense I am writing from New York, eh? Tell me, what tipped you off? Was it the numerous links to The New York Observer? Perhaps it was the mysterious name check of Manhattan Portage. Or was it that I let slip a reference to the Prada on Madison Avenue, a well-known street in New York? Never let it be said that Suck readers are not alert — alert and well compartmentalized. Ann O'Tate |
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