Kristen Stewart’s posture

You’re gorgeous, young, and rich. You’re part of the biggest movie franchise around, save maybe Harry Potter. You have a vampire AND a werewolf fighting over you, for chrissakes. Life, unlike the Volturi, doesn’t suck.

Own it.

Stand up straight.

Every time I see you at an schmancy event, hunched over and rocking back and forth like a rhesus monkey who misses its mom, all I think is “Gollum in lipgloss.”

You’re all moody and shit, equating paparazzi photos of you to images of someone being raped. Newsflash, Bella, you don’t get to be emo in Proenza Schouler. You shouldn’t be pissy while getting oxygen facials, being adored by the world's 15 year olds, and macking on R-Patz.

Take some calcium, hit a Pilates Reformer class, and stop looking like you’re itching to ring the bells of Notre Dame at twilight.

(photo: celebrity-mania.com)

Come visit the Facebook fan forum!

TIWTPITF now has a Facebook fan page. I realized that the comments section of the blog really only scratches the surface of the things you'd really like to beat down. Come visit the PITF Facebook community and join the curmudgeonly confab.

City carriages

While I’m not crazy about them, I can cope with seeing a quaint carriage rolling along a dappled Central Park path or through a tiny town’s historical festival. But when I’m on a bus that’s buzzing by a horse-drawn carriage that’s clopping along in the summer heat, pulling blithe tourists pointing out the Hard Rock Café, my heart sinks.

I don't mean to nag but horses and Hummers should not be sharing the roads. I cough up a black lung in the summer when I’m walking around an urban center for just an afternoon. I can only imagine what equine lungs inhale when Nelly is continually staring down the end of a exhaust pipe. Unless you plan on putting a surgical mask over her muzzle Michael Jackson style, she shouldn’t be pounding the pavement. I may not be a horse whisperer but I can hear her silent screams loud and clear.

(photo: latopdog.blogspot.com)

Foodies

Don’t sniff it, don’t eyeball it, don’t comment on how it’s plated like a pagoda or a Zen garden, don’t detail the 39 steps it took to make it, don’t start comparing it to the meal you had at El Bulli, and don’t complain about the new chef while alternately giving me his culinary CV.

I don’t want to hear it. I just want to eat it.

I love food as much as the next person. I like food the way Homer likes his doughnuts and burgers and junk food aisle, oh my.

But a food snob I am not. You’ll never find me asking whether my Copper River salmon was gill-netted and bled and dressed on site. I’ll never lift a fiddlehead fern and wax rhapsodic about hunting the zenmai in East Asia during a trip with Anthony Bourdain. I’ll fork that fern and put it where it belongs: my belly.

Don’t put nettle pasta on a pedestal, put it in your piehole. After all, it’s food. You’re supposed to eat it, not dissect it.

Sometimes, I just want to eat a box of mac and cheese, and not the Annie’s kind. And I don’t need you to tell me how to zest it up with Emmentaler cheese and Linguiça. Don’t take the comfort out of my food or I might have to bust out the mandoline and create a new dish of hurt.

(photo: mmonroedesigninspiration.wordpress.com)

Excessive fragrance

Back in the day, when fresh water and showerheads were a scarce commodity or nonexistent, folks covered their stank with aggressive oils and unguents that were slightly less overwhelming than the B.O. that comes from weeks of schvitzing and lord knows what else.

God bless the modern age and God bless the bathtub. We don’t have to mask our natural funk with a bucket of Estée Lauder’s newest eau de parfum. I don’t need to know you were in a room…three days after you bombed it with your Prince Matchabelli mushroom cloud. Your Wind Song stays on my mind…and my scent receptors.

Scent is like lingerie; only a chosen few (i.e. not your neighborhood) should have the privilege of experiencing it. A stripper once told me that she wears scented powder when she performs because as her body heats up, the scent is released and only those close to her can smell the faint fragrance. Hot.

Not so hot? Dudes doused in cologne. I can smell you too, preening across the room in your spendy CREED aftershave. I was assaulted by Drakkar Noir for pretty much all of the 80s. While all the alcohol in your cologne can be used to sterilize a wound or stoke a fire, it leaves me cold.

(photo: pocketchange.become.com)

Headbands

The age of Aquarius is over, kids. And may the 80s rest in totally rad peace. I may want to get physical, but it won’t be while wearing an Olivia Newton-John headband. These headbands—I'm talking about the dumbass, hippie-dippy, Pocahontas ones that fit across your forehead—are only useful if you are playing tennis against Björn Borg in 1976. They aren’t fashionable, they are barely functional. This leaves me scratching my head, wondering why someone would follow in the misguided footsteps of Mischa Barton and the Sisters Kardashian and strap this sparkly tourniquet around her noggin. Are you trying to cover a zit or draw attention up and away from your muffin top? Compensating for a bad haircut?

Whatever the case, pull that thing off and use it to wrap a present instead of yourself. Looking at your headband is making me itch…or maybe it’s the acrylic legwarmers I suddenly felt the urge to pull on. If only I could find my Jane Fonda Workout Betamax…

(photo: www.mystyle.com/mystyle)

The Ikea habitrail

Confession: My apartment is lousy with Ikea. But it’s not for any love for the brick-and-mortar store (or butik, to the Swedes out there).

Nr.

As I seek out my malm bureau, I realize I should have picked up a bag of meatballs from the giant cooler in the Swedish Food Market so I could leave a trail. Even with the help of the signage that seems to sprout around every corner like skinny kvart lampposts, I’m lost in the mousetrap, or should I say mouseträpp?

The Ikea habitrail is rivaled only by Gaylord Opryland Hotel, a distant second. They should just put a giant hamster wheel and a water dropper by the entrance and make it official. Clogged with kids hopped up on lingonberries and couples quarreling over the merits of vanvik vs. florö bedframes, the aisles of Ikea are sure to bring on a headache faster than the time it takes to fill up your cart with crap that’s not on your list. Instead of monster bags of tealights, Ikea should fill the endcaps with bins of ibuprofin. Ädvil is a name that would be right at home in this Swedish funhouse; just don’t forget the umlaut.

[Thanks to Dave Miller for this suggestion!]

(photo: tlc.howstuffworks.com)