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Thursday, November 21, 2013

Crocs Are For Dorks

My hubby kh would never fail to utter the above line each time he saw somebody with those abominable clogs on their feet walk past us.

Even the Urban Dictionary defines Crocs as "shoes for people with no taste".

Disclaimer:
Before I continue my post, I would like to invite all Crocs lovers to click the x-button on the top right corner of your browser now. Oh well if you are a good sport who love to laugh at yourself, please feel free to linger around. 


Recently, my good friends Cyn and Charlene were casually talking about Crocs over our Watsapp group chat. Cyn was voicing out her thoughts about how Dylan (Charlene's 18-month-old son) is always wearing proper shoes and not Crocs like many kids. Charlene replied that it was because his mum hates Crocs and hence Dylan would never be seen wearing Crocs.

Cyn is all for Crocs and clad my godson, Jase in Crocs whereas Paddy ABHORS Crocs and decreed that their baby would not wear Crocs when he/she starts to walk. Cyn thought it was just a British guy thing and was shocked by Charlene and my vehement abhorrence towards Crocs.

Our casual chat about Crocs jolted my memory of an absolutely side-splitting Croc-bashing article I read a few years back. I remembered reading that article thinking "Hey, that sounds just like me if I were to write a post about Crocs."

The article was written by Steve Tuttle on Newsweek online and it was really difficult retrieving that article. All the newsweek links had since been disabled. That's the disadvantage of respecting the intellectual property of a writer-- one would not reproduce the whole article anywhere on his/her site but to include a link to the actual page and then the page gets removed. I've lost interesting articles whenever I respected intellectual property and because of that, I would sometimes reproduce them on my blog while crediting the author so as to make them accessible for myself and other like-minded people. I was glad when I finally found the article on The Lawson Chronicles.

Do note that the following is a reproduction of Steve Tuttle's article with embedded links and pictures from my own research. I hope that the insertion of pictures would provide a more interesting read for those who could not bear reading mere text.


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The case for ending our long national nightmare
By Steve Tuttle | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Aug 1, 2008


I like to play a game with my son, Joseph. We sit on a bench in touristy Old Town, Alexandria, Va., and we're not allowed to get up until we see a dozen pairs of Crocs. It usually doesn't take long. But the other day we were stuck at eight after a few minutes, and I was getting a little concerned. Just then my boy leaned over and said, "Don't worry, Dad. A family of dorks will come along any minute." To paraphrase Hank Hill, if he wasn't my son, I would have hugged him right then, I was so proud.


I know what you're thinking: what kind of sick father lets his impressionable young son call people dorks because of the shoes they wear? Well, who else will teach him that wearing sweaty bright purple clown shoes in public is not OK? He certainly won't learn that lesson at school. Teachers seem to be some of the biggest abusers of this horrid fad.





I know what else you're thinking: "I like Crocs … they're so comfortable. I'll tell you who the dork is … the guy writing this story, that's who! And who died and made him the fashion authority anyway?" Well, no one. I own pitted-out T shirts that are more than a quarter of a century old, and I've been known to strut around town in some pleated khaki Dockers. I own one belt. A female colleague even told me once I'd be a "perfect candidate for 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy'." I think she was trying to be helpful. My complete lack of fashion sense actually supports my theory, because even I know these things are an abomination.





Yes, I'm really, really late to the Crocs-bashing party. Really late. Plenty of fashionistas have written screeds over the years. But the damn things are still here, so this is no time to stop fighting. To quote the great John Belushi: "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell, no!"


I've been following the good work of Web sites like I Hate Crocs Dot Com for some time, even going so far as to submit a photograph of a stuffed skunk spraying a pair of pink Crocs. The fantastic Best Page In The Universe posted a hilarious rant a while back joking that people who bought Crocs on Amazon.com also bought frozen corn dogs, Pabst Blue Ribbon Light and trucker balls, as well as the CD single "Hey There, Delilah" by the Plain White T's. The rant's author, Maddox, writes: "People who wear Crocs go on and on about how comfortable they are, and how it's supposedly odor resistant because it's made out of some kind of anti-bacterial foam …





You know what else it's resistant to? You getting laid."





A popular YouTube video called "Dorcs" parodies the trend: "Wow, but they're so ugly," says an office worker to her friend. "That's how you know they're comfortable," he says. By the end, she's a convert: "I've given fashion the finger, and joined the Dorcs revolution!" The Crocs Empire is acutely aware of us haters. Even their own commercials make fun of the irrational and over-the-top rage their shoes instill in people like me. In one, an unshaven lunatic holds a neon blue Croc in front of his face and screams, "Why are you wearing these!" for 30 seconds. I only wish I'd known about the tryouts for this commercial.


Crocs's stock price has cratered of late, so there is hope. According to the Rocky Mountain News, the shoes, "which were once so popular that the company couldn't keep pace with demand, are now piling up in warehouses." Maybe the company's just a victim of its own success. If practically every person in the U.S. already has a pair and they're indestructible, how many more can you sell? The same thing happened to Wham-O back in the 1950s with the Hula Hoop.


But the company isn't giving up. They've been diversifying, sponsoring Olympic teams and veering off into sandals and other designs, trying to fool us. They've even gone so far as to create a high-heeled Croc. OMG, as the kids say. These have to be seen to be believed. I recommend only the strong of heart should attempt to Google "high-heeled Croc." The company Web site has this ominous warning for us: "Today, Crocs™ Shoes are available all over the world and on the internet as we continue to significantly expand all aspects of our business" (italics added). That sounds like a threat to me. They're even suing other companies like Skechers for allegedly stealing their great idea. Skechers says the lawsuit is "baseless," "outlandish," and "ridiculous." I'll tell you what's outlandish and ridiculous: that these things sell so much that another company would feel compelled to copy them, allegedly. Don't we have enough eye pollution with just the originals still out there? Don't be fooled, America! Soylent Green is CROCS!!!


If you think about it, the Crocs company should really be admired. P. T. Barnum would be proud. They've managed to separate money from the wallets of millions and millions of seemingly sane people who wake up, look in the closet, and actually decide: "Today I'll leave the house wearing these neon-green Dutch bubble shoes with Swiss-cheese holes in them. Maybe I'll even buy some little plastic strawberries or bananas and jam them in the sweat holes, just to jazz things up and make the bacteria incubate faster." That's fine. I say do whatever you want in the privacy of your own home. Let your Crocs freak flag fly. But don't make the rest of us watch.





I realize this article might not go down too well even in my own editorial office and certainly not in our ad sales department. My boss in Washington read an early draft and said it was funny, but that I had a "somewhat demented obsessiveness." At least he threw me a "somewhat." Another editor wondered aloud if I had perhaps been trampled by Crocs at some point in my life. I also worry about writing this because some of my best friends—and their sweet, innocent children—wear them. One of my dearest—the sister I never had—introduced me to the shoes years ago when she waltzed into a garden party in a pair of bright hot-pink Crocs. I couldn't stop staring at them. "What are those things?!" I whimpered nervously, hoping maybe she was rehabbing from some sort of strange Achilles mishap. "Oh, they're called Crocs … I got them for gardening," she said, so innocently.


Oh, if only we'd known what a tsunami of fashion idiocy was about to be unleashed, maybe we could have stopped it somehow, and they would have stayed in the garden where they belong, covered with manure, a trendy item to be featured on www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. If only. Then they wouldn't be out there in the American mainstream, that big, vast, sweaty mainstream traipsing through our airports and over our beaches and around our great shopping malls. Plop, plop, plop, they go, stuffing their Crocs faces with ice cream and Doritos and giant sodas. Plop, plop, plop. Stuff, stuff, stuff. Yuck, yuck, yuck. And the rest of us have to watch. I spent eight hours waiting on a flight at Dulles over the 4th of July week and I was just minutes from tackling the next group of Crocs ploppers I saw. Luckily for me—and the ploppers—my flight finally arrived and I wasn't arrested for assault. Knowing my luck, I'd have shown up in court to find 12 pairs of Crocs sitting in the jury box.





It would have probably been better for my career if I just posted this as an anonymous Craigslist rant as CrocsHatah35 or something. Plenty of others have spouted off about Crocs there. And sure, I would have had a lot more readers. But Craigslist doesn't write my paychecks, and this is just too important to ignore another day. Some times you just have to make a stand, even if it's a few years late. Do we really think we're going to stop global warming if we can't even end this fashion Chernobyl once and for all? I think the U.S. government should institute a Crocs buyback policy, like they do in the inner city for guns. It would do more to beautify this great land than Lady Bird's highway beautification program ever did.


So I'm begging you, America. Just stop. When you wake up tomorrow and look at your options, choose flip-flops. Go barefoot. Wear boots. Anything but Crocs. By next summer—if we all work together—we can have this plague of bad taste virtually eliminated. Yes! We! Can!




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Unlike my hubz kh, Paddy and Charlene, I'm not 100% a Crocs-basher. When Crocs introduced ballerina flats and slippers, I thought that they were quite pretty.


See, the ballerina flats are so sweet right?





And the slippers, they look like what Adidas would produce too! I've seen Adidas slippers remotely similar to these.





The hubz still do not agree with me.

Jo: See, Crocs ballerina flats are so pretty.
Kh: Crocs are for dorks.

Jo: The Crocs slippers don't look like Crocs at all. I like the colour combi.
Kh: Crocs are for dorks.



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Shopping at ZALORA This Christmas


Since we are on the topic of fashion and apparels, I would like to do a little Christmas shoutout for ZALORA!

November is the time where sea of people start to throng the malls for Christmas shopping. I was at Orchard just yesterday evening and the crowd was massive. It was really difficult to shop and I hate to squeeze through the crowd. What else could I do but to take my shopping spree online! ZALORA would be the perfect online destination to do my Christmas shopping as it offers a range of irresistible Christmas gift ideas, promotions and deals to make your Christmas shopping a little merrier. On top of that, ZALORA offers free shipping for orders above $40 (which is easy to hit for Christmas shopping) and 30 days free return policy.


Sign up for ZALORA's newsletter and earn a S$10 cash voucher. I have many spam emails daily and deals, promotions and shopping are just some of my favourite spam emails. I love scrolling through ZALORA's newsletter for various deals and promotions which happen almost every day.





Hop over to ZALORA and start shopping now!

ZALORA's Website: http://www.zalora.sg/
ZALORA's Christmas page: http://www.zalora.sg/christmas/


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Edited to add:
This is a scheduled post. So while this post happily made its way to blogosphere, I was miserably sleeping my ENT infection away with a 38.7 degree fever.

32 comments:

  1. I find Crocs to be absolutely abhorrent (and Uggs as well) so I had a good chuckle at the points made in the article and your exchange with your hubz. I don't know if they're for dorks but I don't think they should be worn by anyone over the age of say 8. The new ballet flat style is a little better but I'm not really sold because it still has that exaggerated toe shape which I'm not fond of. That said, they do look quite comfortable.

    Thank you so much for your very kind words on my blog anniversary post Jo! I didn't know you had been blogging since 2004... you're the blogging pro then :) I'm also glad we found each other and I really appreciate your friendship and support. I'm also glad you enjoy the Asian editorials. I'm pretty picky about only featuring people that I actually like and the photos have to be interesting as well.

    Hope you're having a great week so far!
    Rowena @ rolala loves

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hehehe... I think UGGs are really cute. You don't like them? I've tried on the ballet flats before, I couldn't fit into them. My problematic feet can't fit into ballerina flats. The slippers are really comfortable. Tried on my friend's pair and was surprised.

      Other than your posts, I always love reading your comments coz they are so sweet and it's really interesting to read your insights. My writing style has really changed from 2004 till now. I think I don't write as well as before. And I'm really glad to have found you too!

      Delete
  2. Hate Crocs! I see many chefs wearing them on the various cooking shows we watch. That seems dangerous.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's the first time I hear/read of chefs wearing them! Which cooking shows are those? Now I'm imagining Gordon Ramsay in Crocs... No I can't imagine.

      Delete
  3. Lol at Adam Sandler's comment...ha. That is funny. Ugly or not I am not sure but never thought about buying a pair for my little one (most likely not due to hazard that associates with the design). Interesting and fun read, Jo. Long time no see. Hope you are well. I have been WAY too lazy this year as far as blogging.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have been checking your blog every now and then to see what's new but I'm so upset to see the same post, Nelah. It's ok if you are really busy but let's not lose each other! I'm really happy to see you here after missing you for so long.

      Delete
  4. Hahaha! Oh man, this made me laugh. Crocs definitely have a bad rep, and I have to agree...I hate them

    Enter to win a $50 or $30 coupon to Oasap!
    The Dragonfruit Diaries

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hahaha... Yes, you sound like you really hate them!

      Delete
  5. LOL at your crocs post... you literally made me spew out my coffee at work!! <3 hahaha

    xoxo, Mango ❤
    MangoRabbitRabbit's Blog | Holiday Party Outfit: Little White Dress

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hahaha... Too bad the article wasn't written by me or I would have chuckled at my brilliance.

      Delete
  6. Love those tongue in cheek pics from the Crocs entry, especially the Adam Sandler one, Funny!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hehehe... Yeah, his tweet made me laugh out literally!

      Delete
  7. I do appreciate Crocs branching out and making shoes for people who are not blind. What a bold marketing concept. Pretty sure they will have to change their name though because, attractive or not, Crocs are indeed eternally for dorks :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. High 5 on that. No no no... I'm still ok with some crocs. High 5 kh and my friends on that.

      Delete
  8. hey jo! i have never warmed up to them. i already have a long foot and they would do nothing for them. lol the ballerina one's look better. i'm glad you posted them because i didn't know they made them. they have a funny toe though, so i doubt i would wear those. reading this was so funny. i'm in complete agreement with your hubby.
    http://www.averysweetblog.com/

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Everyone who thought the ballerina flats were still alright also felt the same way about the funny toe. I hadn't noticed them till you all pointed it out. My hubby would be so glad to have gathered so many allies. I'm really ok with their slippers, just not the clogs.

      Delete
  9. Hahah Jo, the article made me smile! Well, here how I think about Crocs: no no no!:) I like them on kids maybe but really cannot see them on adults. Maybe to go to the beach as sometimes it happened I also wore a pair but you know, in summer they made warm!^^' The ballerina design is better, I agree, but I really cannot like them. Btw, I still have to start the Xmas shopping..I know the malls are so crowdy in this time of the year, online shopping is better at the end!:) Kisses dear! xo

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Hohoho... So you have a pair of crocs that you would wear on the sly to the beach. I wonder what colour is yours. I read of many westerners wearing them for gardening. Probably we aren't too much into gardening here.

      Delete
  10. Very well written and exceelnty research post sweety. I personally can't handle those clunky crocs, they are tractors for your feet, yes I understand that they are comfortable and food for your posture but does it have to be so ugly looking. The newer more sleeker pairs are far far improved.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Hahaha... Too bad the article wasn't written by me or I would have chuckled at my brilliance. I shall chuckle at my research for the pictures though. Tractors for your feet is a good one! I like that.

      Delete
  11. HAHAHAHA Jo, this post was hilarious xD Even the bits where you were being serious, I just sat there laughing to myself!
    Personally, not a huge fan of Crocs, but hey ho, I'm a very big believer in live-and-let-other-people-wear-whatever-they-want
    Have a great Friday!

    Hayfa
    http://www.londonloafers.com

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Too bad the article wasn't written by me or I would have chuckled at my brilliance. Hahahaha... Oh yes, let others be! Just laugh at them secretly... hiak hiak hiak.

      Delete
  12. I detest those crocs, hahah. Fantastic research doll, I don't mind the slipper ones so much, but I have never seen them anywhere, haha!! Super post. I hope you have a great weekend xx

    The Dainty Dolls House

    ReplyDelete
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    1. I think the ballerina flats and slippers are not easily found. I'm so glad we have them here though the hubz wouldn't let me buy the slippers. Even if they look sporty and adidas-looking, he insists they are still crocs.

      Delete
  13. Hahaha oh goodness, you sure have some strong feelings for them, dontcha? Ah well, if people wanna wear them, let them be! ;)

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    1. Only for those clogs ones. I'm ok with the ballerina flats and slippers. Oh yes, let others be! Just laugh at them secretly... hiak hiak hiak.

      Delete
  14. Nope I don't get them either! I could not agree more.

    ReplyDelete
  15. :DD OMG JO this post is awesome!! Well done :D I am showing this to my friends at the moment haha I sent them a whatsapp message with the link to your post :) The quote "do you know what else they prevent you from? from getting laid"is just so funny. I like a bit of sarcasm here and there so I completely love your post :)
    okay enough of that haha I am getting embarassing.

    Okay one more compliment though. I like how you respond to comments in detail. Maybe I've said that alright but this really makes you stand out from all the bloggers who simply put "hey, great shirt. visit my blog please!" under a post.

    What you say about how words can make all the difference is very much true. Today I discussed with a friend how so many people are too shy to make compliments. I guess no one wants to be labeled an "ass licker" (sorry for that word) or a hypocrate so we don't always say what we think. Aw haha it's so lovely of you to say that you think German people must be quite nice haha :) I think Europeans are all a bit similar ~ and I can't generalize but I always feel "very German" or at least "very European" when I am abroad. My friends is family with an American family and they are sooo different haha. But overall I'd say the way people act always depends on their personality and not on their nationality.

    And about my cat :( she died yesterday. She was very very sick and she had stopped eating and drinking. After she broke down in the toilet we went to the vet so that he could give her a certain drug which caused her to first fall asleep and then to die. So we put her to sleep (I don't like the word "to euthanize" because there was nothing posive to what happened yesterday). :(( my parents and I are super upset but I try to see the positive thing about this :) she is in cat-heaven now and she doesn't have to suffer anymore :) but thanks for asking and caring ♥♥

    hugs and kisses ♥

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Too bad the article wasn't written by me or I would have chuckled at my brilliance. Hahahaha... I shall chuckle at my research for the pictures though. I think the pictures added a lot more humour to Steve's long post.

      Thank you for your lovely words. There are a couple of really sweet blogger friends whom I've encountered and since befriended and they are really lovely. I also learned a lot from these people. If lovely words/comments/replies make my day, they would also make the day of others too if we were to do the same! And yes, I really cannot stand cursory comment like "Great post! Follow me!" like hello? You don;t even bother to read my post, why should I want to spend the time to read yours and follow you?

      I'm sooooooo sorry to hear about your cat. *big hugz* In the end, did the vet diagnose anything? When my cat had liver failure, she suddenly could not walk too and had to undergo dialysis. After some time at the vet, we decided to bring her home to rest in a place she is familiar with as we knew she did not have much time left. She died not long after that. I was wondering if your cat had some organ failure too as what you described before her leaving seemed the same as my Simba. The symptom is really sudden which leave us with not much time to anticipate her departure. Putting your cat to sleep is the right choice as she would be suffering before that. I think you would take some time to really get over your cat's departure and it is ok to grieve. And yes, I believe that there is a heaven for animals!

      Delete
  16. Hahaha I really enjoyed that, that was hilarious! Love the pictures too, especially the Adam Sandler tweet. I agree with him, crocs are awful. I will admit though, a very long time ago I owned a pair of blue tie-dye fake crocs. Not too proud of that haha. :)

    Francesca

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Hmm... I wonder what a blue tie-dye fake crocs look like.

      Delete

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