Part of the reason I was in Chicago, besides to eat too much hummus (the hummus of my youth! before the disappointing de-tahinification of hummus) with R, a good friend from Chile who has since relocated to Chicago and who also flew to DC to help me empty the house I had with my ex of this and that and that and this (and wow, is that a long tangent or what, I think I’ll stop) was to go to Blogher and TBEX.
What? Blogher and TBEX are not on your radar? snff. Well, then you and I are just not the same. As though that were in doubt.
Blogher was a giant, sprawling affair at the Sheraton on the other side of the river with walking and escalators and not a small number of less-than-three-month-old babies and lots of good talks and an exhibition hall where swag was being thrust at the participants.
I wish I’d already uploaded pictures so I could show you some of what I saw, but I am operating from the distant moon of a satellite office right now, so I am in no condition to do so. But there was a man dressed like a fairy that had something to do with All detergent, the Michelin Man, Ronald McDonald and a few other furries that I’m not even sure what they were.
And then there was the swag. Things that light up and wheels that spin, Mr. Potato Head and boxes of mints, detergent, chances to win things, golden kiwis with spifes/spives (spoon plus knife) sticking out of them.
And it occurs to me that we have been given this stuff, this swag, this shwag (or is it schwag?) so that we will become consumers of said product, and so that we will tout their qualities far and wide and I missed the Mr. Potato head and I’m not sure how I ended up with so many luggage tags and I’m sure the Eucerin cream is great, and actually, the Mary Kay lipgloss is sparkleriffic and the little case it came in very handy.
But.
The thing I want to talk about is a mousse that I picked up from the Suave setup. They were giving away this and that (but sadly, no deodorant, as that had been a big “seller” and I was a day late and a stick short, so I picked up some Suave Healthy Curls Scrunching Mousse. For free! Because I am a person who takes free stuff unabashedly, providing it is not too large, too heavy or very smelly because, well, who likes that?
I am not a user of mousse. I would describe my style as wash and go, give or take the wash. But I am also a lioness. Not in the hear-me-roar kind of way, but in the curly-hair-fought-the-humidity and the humidity won kind of way. In preparation for my trip to DC, I was armed with a hat, some hair ties, and a lot of dirty looks towards my hair. It’s not particularly unruly most of the time, it’s just that DC is a hair battleground. You know how you’re not supposed to talk to black women about their hair? Anyone’s hair in the summertime in DC is off limits. Don’t try. You’ll just make enemies.
So here’s where I tell you that this mousse kind of rocks. After a sweaty day out and about in somewhere between 91 and 97 degrees and approximately 1,000 percent humidity, I still had curls. Individual ones. Without a messy mane of a doorway-challenging flyway frizzy halo upon my head.
So. Mousse. Approved.
Also, a shout out to my illustrious sister, who traveled far and with empty space in her suitcase, and who also reminded me that during the year when she was working the land on behalf of her kibbutznikim and the promotion of communal living, and drinking (I suspect) not just a little beer in the bomb-shelter-turned-bar there on the kibbutz, the great mousse revolution was taking place. That is to say, she left the United States in 198X, and returned in 198X+1 and mousse was everywhere it had not previously been. I also remember she tried to get us on the avocado tip when she came back, but we were not convinced for many, many years. Turns out she was right.
Yay mousse.
