Ranting roundup
Hating Heelys, Queen City curfew and more
by Regan White
regan@thecharlotteweekly.com

This, combined with my pack rat tendencies (see the March 23 rant), easily explains the scribbled rant reminders on Post-it notes, napkins and small bits of torn paper all over my desk, in my purse and in my car. Many of these will never see the light of day. Some of them never can see the light of day – slander is a tricky word, you see, and I imagine many people wouldn’t relish reading what I have to say about them. I plan on outliving every single one of them so I can print every word.

But today is a lucky day for a number of those rants – nuggets of angst and insight that have been just waiting to sear the page. Many have sprung from conversations with friends and co-workers. (I bring out the rant in those I meet.) These are tiny tirades, distilled down into digestible morsels and presented in as scattered a fashion as I am thinking lately.

Pop a Heely
What’s up with these Heelys? Every child in Charlotte appears to be racing around on those sneakers with the concealed wheels. It’s driving me nuts! Talk about an intoxicating blend of weird and dangerous, all in one little footwear package. They always catch me by surprise. As I’m shopping and some kid glides past, I’ll do a triple take and think, “My, that kid moves smoothly.” And then I realize that those Jetson-esque moves are courtesy of these ridiculous sneakers.

I don’t mean to sound old, but what are these parents thinking? Ten-year-olds are generally a liability without wheels attached to their soles. Now they’re zooming around malls, parking lots and shopping centers. It’s a recipe for disaster.

Always open late
Why does the Queen City close up shop at 10 on weeknights? I understand we used to be a big little town of sorts, but there’s no excuse anymore. Charlotte’s population grew by the size of Asheville in 2005. I guess none of those 80,000 people are interested in going out after 10. I’m not asking for whole rows of restaurants to stay open late, but somewhere to get coffee or dessert would be nice.
Going to a movie? Want dessert or coffee afterward? You’d better stop at the supermarket (choose wisely; even some of these close at 10), buy a piece of cake and eat it with your date in your car because that’s pretty much your only option. Burning the not-quite midnight oil? Forget getting any late-night work done at some quaint, neighborhood coffee shop; they’re all closed too. The other night at about 10:45, I spent 37 minutes stopping at five locations looking for hot coffee. I walked away with a bottled cold frappuccino from a gas station and some lukewarm water with a packet of Sanka crystals from Wendy’s, which is open late but not too useful when it comes to coffee.

You can’t call yourself a city if nothing stays open past 10. That’s just the way it is.

C is for cookie
I was never a Girl Scout. I wasn’t into the uniform and found all those little patches disconcerting. I also hated the color brown when I was young. Still, I understand Girl Scouts do good work – great work, even. But let’s be honest here. There are a few little girls going door to door selling cookies. But the girls who win the awards for racking up $8 billion in sales are the ones whose parents are shilling the cookies for them, people who run companies and sit in public office and force the cookies on others. It’s not everyone, but it’s a lot of them. If I were a Girl Scout, or a Brownie, or a Honeybee or whatever they call them, I’d be mad. It’s not right. Some little girl is spending 10 hours walking her neighborhood and she’ll be robbed of that little patch with the cookie on it. It’s shameful.

Have you ever checked the nutritional content in those cookies? You might as well warm up a Samoa and serve it for Thanksgiving dinner for all the calories that are in it. There’s no way these little girls can lose. While the rest of the world scrambles to secure low-fat, sugar-substitute options, those Girl Scouts just keep on cramming their cookies with 10 sticks of butter. You’ve got to respect that.

Hardboiled anger
I’m running out of room and there’s still so much to complain about! I will stick to bullet points for the remaining three.

• Why do Pop-Tarts have crust? Sure, they need to contain the filling – but really, does the crust need to be so wide? At least slap some icing on there. None of the normal people I know eat the crust. It just sits there in a little crusty pile, all useless and cold.

• I’ve heard the aluminum in deodorant is once again giving cause for concern in connection to breast cancer. I considered doing something about it, but the only alternatives are a deodorant by Tom’s of Maine (in which case I’d smell like apricots and still sweat profusely because it’s not an antiperspirant) or those freaky quartz crystal rocks sold by health food retailers. I’m sure a few other options exist, but the point is they don’t work as well as this aluminum chemical combination we have going on. And with my luck, I’d rub lavender leaves under my arms for 15 years and still meet an untimely death by getting run over by a bread truck.

• During a recent visit to the supermarket, I saw bags of hardboiled eggs for sale in the dairy section. Yes, that is how lazy Americans have become. We can’t even stand around and wait for water to boil anymore. What’s worse is that American capitalism and marketing are so effective that the longer I stand in front of the refrigerator case making fun of these hardboiled gems, the greater my desire to buy them becomes.