Word: badness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...start of this year, though, was different. "Last year I didn't want to be here," says Joe. "But this year is not so bad. I like it. I've changed." His grades are up, he's doing his homework, and he's been absent only once. He's been coming to hockey practice, hoping that an appeal to the eligibility board will let him rejoin the team. Faye Walker, the Suspension Lady, who saw Joe as a "terror" his freshman year, sees real growth: "Now he knows where he wants to go and who he wants...
...That's bad news in an industry that relies on hits to get kids and parents into the stores. This year, for example, Hasbro and retailers were betting on products licensed from Star Wars' prequel Phantom Menace to drive sales into the crucial fourth quarter, which accounts for half of all toy sales. However, the force has not been with the Star Wars line. "It was very strong in May and June, during the movie's release," says Leslie Rauch, a senior buyer for Target stores. "But since then, it's become nothing more than a boy's action figure...
...look at some of the hit toys of the past few years--Super Soakers, Air Hogs, Beanie Babies, Furby, even Gus Gutz. They came from small companies with no movie licensing tie-ins. That's bad news for Mattel's Barad. She needs a hot toy this holiday season more than any six-year-old does. Otherwise, the only thing Barad may get for Christmas is fired...
With Stiffed, the pity culture comes to its inevitable conclusion: now people are even feeling bad for white men. Stiffed argues that as men stopped making things and focused on buying them, they no longer knew how to be men. For this, Faludi blames "the culture," which, the last time I checked, is controlled by white men. But when I called Faludi, she warned against such finger pointing. "We're all complicit in a culture that disfigures people. Most of us participate as consumers," she said. "The blame game is too easy. People should deal with a more complex dynamic...
...cathartic. "Men need violence. We are very much still animals," he said from his home in Portland, Ore., the least manly city in North America. "We can channel violent feelings into working hard and buying things, but they keep popping up. We need to acknowledge that they are not bad feelings; they are human feelings," he said. I asked him why, in that case, the fight clubs in his novel caused so many problems. "Because it was a book, it had to go somewhere," he explained. "It needed a climax." It was a manly answer. Palahniuk wrote his book...