Word: shampoos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There are funny passages (about the made-at-home shampoo that attracts flies) as well as depressing ones (Ping-Pong paddles used for oars by desperate rafters fleeing to Miami). The author's encounter with the grouchy Cuban TV chef Nitza Villapol, who teaches a country without food how to cook, is deliciously absurd. Oppenheimer adroitly picks up nuances: for example, how , in a country with no food, everybody's main concern seems to be getting deodorant and toothpaste. From Jose, a welder in Cienfuegos, he learns the sign language used when discussing the forbidden subject of Fidel: an imaginary...
These passages are the high points of Shampoo Planet, the moments when Coupland is at his wittiest and cruellest. This is the spirit of the "thought bombs" splattered in the margins of Generation X. ("Pull-the-Plug, Slice-The Pie: a fantasy in which an offspring mentally tallies up the net worth of his parents...
...Shampoo Planet allegory? Tyler's hippie mom, Jasmine, may represent a generation of parents more confused and childlike than their progeny. His crunchy sister, Daisy, is one of those high-schoolers who echoes the hippies, self-righteously dedicating their lives and hairstyles to their doomed planet...
...Shampoo Planet meant to be biting parody? Descriptions of Tyler's pride and joy, his collection of hair-care products, attack the image-consciousness and blatant consumerism of today's post-teens. There is "SlimeWarrior...the shampoo of conquerors with patented ten-minute algaeplasma slime formula." And there's "HairHenge, containing folliclemaintenance secrets devised by the ancient druids." Not to mention "Monk-on-Fire, containing placenta, nectarine-pit extract, and B vitamins...
...these nuggets of satire appear too seldom. While it paints a flashy picture, Shampoo Planet is weighed down by slightly-overwritten prose and a less-than-enthralling plot. Its sardonic ideas don't come along quite often enough to satisfy our hunger for a quick-and-easy definition of ourselves...