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05/19/2002 Archived Entry: "Nu Shooz"
It's been seven years since I graduated from high school and that is coincidentally the same amount of time since I last purchased sneakers. I don't care much for shoes and I care even less for the foolish game of purchasing them. However I was pushing the boundaries of acceptable footwear with my last pair of sneakers. The lace of one shoe kept snapping until it became this six inch strand which I had to string through only the top two eyelets and then tie into a knot. It is much the same principle as putting a laceless shoe on your foot and then tying the top around your ankle with a bit of rope or tape.
At the shoe store I was amazed at how much shoe technology has changed in seven years. You wouldn't think that shoes could be improved upon or changed in very many ways seeing as how they just cover your foot from the elements. You would think that every conceivable improvement to the shoe would already have been thought of and implemented circa 1955. Apparently this isn't the case.
The thing that struck me most about all the new lines of shoes is that 90% of them are extremely ugly and that even I--someone who wears holy wrinkled T-shirts advertising products or services that I would either never use or have never even heard of--would not be caught dead in most of these shoes.
Strangely most of these shoes look like what people in the late seventies and early eighties thought that shoes would look like in the year 2000. Instead of making me think: "Good Call." It makes me disgusted with the over-nostalgic nature of this decade. This decade make the unrelenting nostalgia of the nineties look tame by comparison.
The idea of how shoes would look in this time period as presented by movies such as Back to the Future II should not be given into. It isn't really being given into in any other respect. There aren't hovering skateboards. There are no flying cars (and doubtfully will be in ten years), clothes are not as audacious as expected, the Earth is not all of a sudden extremely clean and the Chicago Cubs haven't won the World Series. The fact that this one little tiny prediction has been given into makes me sad. Of all the brilliant ideas of what the future should be like why would you choose to make shoes look dumb?
Here are some predictions about the future that I would much rather see put into place.
Rocket Packs

As late as 1994 people were positive that rocket packs would be a staple of personal transportation in the year 2000. This still has not come to pass. It is unfortunate because strapping on a jet pack to fly to work or elsewhere remains the coolest idea of future society. It's pretty weird that people put so much faith in this concept since it seems like one of the most unpractical and dangerous concepts just by its very nature.
Flying Cars

It is impossible to be stuck in traffic and not think about the glories of having a flying car about seventy or eighty times. The thing that makes this fantasy even sweeter is imagining that no one else would have a flying car so the airways would be completely clear and you could soar above everyone and leave the scene of traffic in a grand scene that would inspire jealousy and rage amongst fellow drivers.
The Female/Black President

In most movies they try to hammer in the fact that it's the future by randomly mentioning in a very unsubtle manner that the president is either female or black. It's a sad testament to our pathetic planet that humanity can only imagine something like this as happening in a futuristic world and not present day. It also disgusts me that in our sad society even the idea of a presidential candidate getting a female or minority running mate is something akin to political suicide and that Ralph Nader, someone who could never win, was the only person brave enough to even try it in the last election. At this rate it will be another two hundred years before we have a female minority president.
Cloning

I'm not talking about cloning as it exists now, I'm talking about that unscientific sort where a person is basically copied and has a full grown duplicate within hours a la The Sixth Day. That type of sci-fi buffoonery would make it possible for identity stealing on a mass scale and undoubtedly force the world to plunge into a dark age of famine and war. Now you can see why I would like this to happen... it sounds GREAT!

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