Stream of Consciousness, Brought to You by The Claw

I’m excruciatingly ticklish. I’d rather be tortured than tickled. Ticking is torture. It’s nothing short of child abuse.

I realize this makes me an outlier. Few people really enjoy being tickled, but even fewer would call it torture.

My father loved to wrestle around with us on the floor. He and my brother even had one of those amateur cirque du living room routines where my father would lie on his back, legs perpendicular to the ground, and my brother would stand, balancing on my father’s feet. Or maybe they just did an airplane thing. Whatever it was, I wanted no part of it because invariably there would be a knock – an audible knock on a wall or piece of furniture – my father would make to signal to us that The Claw was approaching. He’d pin one of us down with his legs and position The Claw high over our heads so we could watch it descend on us in horror movie slow-motion. My brother thought it was awesome, but I hated it so much I’d cry, scream, scream some more, temporarily lose the ability to take air into my lungs and then, when finally released, run screaming up to my room wherein those two assholes my male family members would laugh and actually ask, “Hey, where are you going?”

As horrific as that was, that might be preferable to these Claws:

I remember my reaction to Uggs when I first saw them back in the early Aughties. I thought those were the ugliest things I’d ever seen, but I certainly didn’t worry they’d give me nightmares. These freakish things already have.

What the fug are they? And better yet, WHY the fug are they?

These … these … cloven instruments of sartorial torture were part of Alexander McQueen’s spring/summer 2010 show and fashion bloggers can’t shut up about them. They all wanted to know when Lady Gaga would wear them. (Oh! Squee!)

Ask and you shall receive, Gagettes:
What I want to know is, just how many of these lobster-claw-meets-pointe-shoes things are in production? Were only a few pairs made, like most of the don’t-worry-we-don’t-really-expect-any-of-you-to-WEAR-these costumes that appear on couture runways, or will this style trickle down and a year from now we’ll all be wearing the Nine West version?

I wouldn’t normally wonder if something that appeared in a Lady Gaga video would soon be coming to a preschool drop-off and pick-up near me, but then the once august, now desperately clinging to relevancy New York Times Magazine has called the armadillos, as McQueen himself referred to them, one of greatest ideas in the Ninth Annual Year of Ideas.

I don’t know if the armadillos qualify as an idea, an original notion that did not exist until it was born in a great thinker’s mind. At least not in the same way banning cul-de-sacs in the interest of better suburban planning and the discovery that cows that are named produce more milk are fascinating ideas.

I know a desperate grab at edginess when I see it. Still, I see them, the claws. I keep seeing them, moving. Waving back and forth. But not on someone’s wine-stem-skinny legs. On their hands.

Like the waiters in the background in that scene in at the seafood restaurant in “My Best Friend’s Wedding”! (1:49 and again at 1:58)

I liked that movie more than I thought I would, its earnestness and the fact that the Julia Roberts character got hers but good for being such a conniving bitch. Will any of us say the same about “Eat, Pray, Love,” though? I don’t think I could have come up with a worse choice than Julia Roberts in that role. I picture a much shorter woman learning Italian, meditating in an ashram and listening to some Yoda-like guy spout Balinese wisdom.

Have you seen Rupert Everett lately? He’s now most often seen on bad plastic surgery Web sites, after Burt Reynolds but before Kenny Rogers:
I’m going to have to disagree with you on the “impressive” there, Dr. Glatt.

What’s Rupert Everett been doing lately, I wondered. Poking around, I found that he’s over America, much like Gwyneth is:
Yeah. He’s probably right. We relied on “Sex and the City” for our cultural references for way too long. And it won’t be ending any time soon because there’s another of these damn movies coming next year. Wonder if Carrie will be wearing armadillos in the sequel? Hmm, hmm? Or that Sea of Shoes Jane Aldridge gal? She lives for strange-looking booties.

There will be an entire episode dedicated to them in the next season of “The Rachel Zoe Project.” She’ll tell everyone they’re so tall they exacerbate her vertigo. But she won’t take them off. Then she’ll get a nose bleed.

I die.

I don’t think they look like armadillos, really. But who am I to say? I’m not the one who spent hours sketching and envisioning them into fruition as McQueen did. To me, they look like lobster claws. Like the old married lobsters that Phoebe so lovingly taught us about (0:43 and 1:35):

But do you know what I really think of when I think of The Claws? Those cheesy biscuits at Red Lobster! Can I get an amen on this one? They’re probably a trans fat nightmare but they are yummy. I’m going to All Recipes now to look for a recipe.

As I do, enjoy the campiest song from the campiest musical outfit on this or any planet (including Planet Claire):

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Tagged as: Alexander McQueen armadillos, Alexander McQueen stiletto claws, booties, Lady Gaga, shoes, The Claw