Leaning over a sticky bar somewhere in Brooklyn, elbowed by the usual Saturday night crowd of alternative dude bros and predictable hipster chicks, I found myself more focused on the completely unnecessary yet somehow excusable flat screen in the corner instead of screaming for the bartender. Fox news was running yet another montage of disturbing images from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico while a girl with a feathered headband next to me looked up sympathetically, "Those poor birds! I heard you can send in your hair to help clean up some of that oil. I was gonna do it but I would look like a lesbian with my hair that short. CAN I GET A PABST!" This was once my place to get away from the horror of everyday and exist for a few short hours in the cozy drunk bubble of self-absorbed 20-somethings, not a place to be reminded of our complete incompetence to fix anything we started in the first place.
Later on in the blogesphere, more sober but equally bitter, no matter where I looked, the spill was everywhere. The bubble had burst and I started noticing that the spill was not just limited to the newspapers and radios, or even neighborhood bars, it was spreading like the goo itself, it was becoming a trend.
With this whole oil spill catastrophe going on, I should be sick looking at these muck-inspired things-I-don't-need. When I see these obvious attempts to turn this disaster into a useless profit, the images of sticky black birds, the news reports of the impending doom of our beaches, and my own anxiety over the state of my beloved seafood should all rise to the surface of my conscious, and stay there like a bad metaphor for oil on water. But I can't look away; why am I so turned on by these drippy designer duds and so turned off by the disaster itself?
t-shirt by Threadless.com
T-shirts packaged in motor oil cans with fake oil stains by Valvoline
water imprint tables by Yaslab
bench by Florent Defour
pendent and ring by Jung Eeeun
Do I blame Tim Curry's raspy voice-over in the early 90s eco-conscious cartoon, Furngully, for wooing me with Toxic Love, an even more racy performance than Britney's comeback? The black blob of Hexxus, shape shifting into all sorts of sexy globules, was enough to make any pre-teen girl with a World Wildlife Fund calendar wonder: "Why do I feel all tingly when that oily man does such bad things?"
Don't worry Tim, you go on singing naughty songs for kids and wearing drag, its not you. How does wearing a shirt with oily penguins help those oily penguins? What does a dripping table have to do with the depleting coastline? Absolutely nothing. None of these products donate to the spill, or even mention any inspiration from it. We are so bombarded with images from this disaster of the moment (just like we were with the last and will be with the next) that its no wonder my guilty consumer unconscious wants to buy all these oil goodies. After 9/11, Bush told America to go shop, that some old fashion retail therapy would do the trick: so maybe that's my way of coping with something I have no way of fixing myself. If I have to see it while I'm at the bar, then I might as well wear it and eat off it too.
But luckily, some people are doing more then just blogging about it. Believe it or not, you CAN send your hair in to help soak up some of the spill, and it seems to work better then most BP efforts. Matter of Trust collects hair from salons and pet groomers and stuff them into panty hose, creating Booms that pick up the oil.
But who donates the hosiery? Hooters of course! These girls have to wear extra strength hosiery to work every day so the company has asked that they donate all the old or ruined pairs to help with the soaking.
And if you still want to wear your support, many clothing companies donate to the cleanup, like this Tim Lahan shirt reading "So long and thanks for all the crude".
Although it pains me to admit that the drunk girl at the bar was much better informed about relief methods for the oil spill then I was, it is slightly comforting to know that these constant images of goo and gunk and all these pointless petroleum inspired products are still pushing all types of people to make what little difference they can. So wether you're a hairdresser, or a well endowed waitress, or a mindless consumers like me, the world has managed to come up with many better ways to face such a prevalent and horrific disaster than being forced to watch it over and over in a bar full of hipsters in fake oil stained t-shirts.
