Wait’ll you hear the new marketing term for ‘metrosexual’, per Kevin Roose at NYMag:
HSBC, the investment bank that is a global leader in helping bad people get money, is making a foray into the slightly less lucrative business of making up nicknames. Today, the bank’s retail whizzes have coined a new acronym, YUM, which stands for “young, urban male,” and which headlines the bank’s most recent research report: “Rise of the Yummy.”
According to HSBC, Yummies – dear God, it hurts to type – are reshaping the retail landscape for luxury goods, thanks to their vanity and penchant for trend-chasing.
In a copy of the report we obtained, the bank issues buy recommendations for fashion brands like Burberry, Richemont, Luxottica, Hugo Boss, and Prada, explaining that the recent trend in status-conscious young men purchasing luxury goods for themselves has made the companies more attractive…
I guess once you’ve established a rep as the megabank that will happily launder drug money, you’ve pretty well lost even the most vestigial remnant of shame.
***********
Apart from disdain, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Applejinx
In fairness, they’re well-marbled with fat and would roast up marvellously
ranchandsyrup
Gonna go for a long walk with the family and the dogs.
Here’s a post from my lovely co-blogger on dealing with anxiety. Proud of her.
Another really good post in a similar vein from Sara Benincasa.
And here are some pairings of famous first literary lines and rap lyrics
BGinCHI
Just disdain.
I haven’t planned any further than that.
Suffern ACE
Man, I’m too old for trend chasing, but I’m still vain. Will someone please segment my cohort and properly market to me?
Elizabelle
@Applejinx:
Delicious comment.
RE Yummy: wait a minute. Isn’t “urban” code for “black”? As in that thug Trayvon, armed with that sidewalk and Skittles?
ruemara
Frightening myself comprehending the ramifications of the Hobby Lobby case if decided for HL, and getting fucking angry at Tennessee’s new religious freedom in school law. WTF is up with our burgeoning religiously fascist country?
Applejinx
@Elizabelle: Not in Burberry and Prada.
BGinCHI
@Suffern ACE: That’s what the Menard’s ads are for.
MikeJ
What was wrong with “chav”?
Villago Delenda Est
Ok, that’s it.
The marketing twits who came up with “yummies” should be vivisected, on pay per view.
geg6
I have been in tears since about 2pm this afternoon. Our campus chancellor, Dr. Gary Keefer, has announced that his ALS has progressed so far and so quickly that he will be retiring as of June 30. And that he may not be able to come in much before that date as it is very difficult and tiring for him. It may seem weird to cry over losing one’s boss, but if you had worked with him, you’d know why I and all my co-workers are just devastated. His announcement really means he is dying and rather quickly at that. He has been the best boss I’ve ever had, a great mentor, and a truly good man. We’ll never see a better one. So glad the Board of Trustees decided to allow the naming of our new wellness center for him, which has never been done at any PSU campus for a current employee who didn’t donate the money for the building. He deserves to be immortal.
MikeJ
BTW, haven’t seen a post about it here yet, but marriage equality comes ot England and Wales on Saturday.
srv
As a MUM (Middle-Aged Urban Male) and pre-hip Coolhunter, these YUMs can get off my sidewalk.
Guess I should get on with that high-fashion flannel line.
Chyron HR
That’s all well and good, but where the Hell are my goddamn core medals, Eiji?
Elizabelle
@geg6:
I’m so sorry to hear that geg. Terrible news, no silver lining except that he’ll learn in life how much he meant to everybody.
That’s great the wellness center will be named for him.
Hugs.
ruemara
@geg6: My deepest sympathy. He must be a fantastic person for you and your coworkers to feel that way.
Here’s the link to the article I was talking about.http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/26/aclu-tennessee-religious-freedom-law-would-turn-public-schools-into-sunday-schools/
Elizabelle
Jon Stewart and Samantha Bee apparently took on Morning Joe last night. Via Erik Wemple’s WaPost blog.
BGinCHI
@MikeJ: The English and Welsh are never going to marry each other, no matter what the law says.
Betty Cracker
@geg6: Man, that sucks. I’m so sorry.
ETA: I lost a boss and mentor several years ago to a sudden, devastating illness, and what I found was that I was mourning the loss of a friend. That’s not weird at all. After awhile, thinking of her brought smiles rather than tears, which would please her (she had a wonderful sense of humor).
SiubhanDuinne
@geg6:
That is devastating news. I’m so sorry. He sounds like a wonderful man, and it’s not at all weird to feel that way about a really good boss. They are few and far between.
As his illness progresses, as it must, I hope that it is with the minimum of discomfort and distress.
BGinCHI
@geg6: Sorry geg. So rare to find an administrator who is a human being, much less a good one.
Glocksman
It’s from the perspective of someone who has no idea of the larger trends, but my employer (TJX) buys Luxottica and Hugo Boss by the trailer load.
IMHO, if an ‘off price’ retailer sells your wares regularly, your brand isn’t all that ‘exclusive’ or prominent.
Interestingly enough, Michael Kors is the sole vendor that we are required to perform 100% counts on because of constant shortages in the cartons.
It raises the question of whether or not trying to shortchange customers is MK’s business model or that they merely use crooked OEM’s.
ranchandsyrup
@geg6: Yikes. Sorry to hear about that. sending good thoughts.
Betty Cracker
@ruemara: That TN law sounds like a double-edged sword to me. I shudder to think how my little heathen would rock the boat in such a setting.
Davis X. Machina
@Glocksman:
Yeah… Burberry in the UK is associated with the deepest-dyed chavs. Hard to picture it as ‘yummy’…
Glocksman
@geg6:
Not at all.
My very first employer came through for me when my mother died by volunteering to be a pallbearer at her funeral, in addition to providing food at the wake.
He and I may not have been the best of friends at all times, but in a crisis I’d be there for him.
Elizabelle
ALS is such a dreadful disease.
Why don’t we at Balloon Juice do a little fundraiser in honor of Dr. Keefer, and make the donation in honor of him and his wonderful staff?
Support R&D to get a handle on ALS, and combat it. Takes people in the prime of their lives.
ETA: And send him a Tunch T shirt so he can look spiffy at home as he rests.
Steeplejack
How is YUM different from yuppie, other than (apparently) men only?
Mnemosyne
So I guess “metrosexual” is passé and they had to come up with a new stupid word to market to the same age group?
BGinCHI
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/mississippi-anchor-gaycation-facebook
I want a gaycation too!
ruemara
Y’all are mostly such good peeps.
PsiFighter37
Apparently Television Without Pity (TWoP, for those down with acronyms) is getting shut down by NBC. I love that website, mainly because the posters are so knowledgeable, and everyone’s snark-meter is through the roof.
Sigh. I remember visiting that site nearly a decade ago to catch up on Alias and 24 recaps.
Mino
Turns out laundering drug money was a good ROI. Hoocoodanode?
Elizabelle
Effing Washington Post.
They have a feature up: “Presidents Who Deceive” — maybe it’s the fruit of Glenn Kessler’s recent request for reader suggestions on presidential lies.
Guess who’s the president to illustrate the story?
WereBear
@geg6: That’s a terrible fate for such a fine mine. I’m sorry.
Wally Ballou
@Elizabelle: A coworker and I were discussing this not long ago, and she proposed “metropolitan” as the proper adjective for city dwellers of the Frasier-and-Niles type.
You could always repurpose the Yummy acronym as “Young Upscale Metropolitan Males”, I suppose,
Violet
@geg6: So sorry to hear about that. What a lovely tribute to him that they’re naming the Wellness Center after him, and how nice that he knows how much he’s appreciated while he’s still here. ALS is not a kind disease. I hope his progresses with a minimal amount of suffering.
p.a.
Just finishing up an Indian meal, a laignappe of veggie pakoras, tomato soup, and murg malai (I told him American hot). Cook/waiter was alone here, speaks English but very fast (see:alone here) and very accented. I couldn’t understand him, but he understood me, so all’s good. Food excellent. Mango lassi awesome. What would be good in it. Spiced rum? Calvados? Just got the bill. SoB charged me for the pakoras, and I didn’t order them! Stupid Yankee ;-). Place is filling up now. Lots of hipsters. Surprising; this is not that part of town.
Violet
@PsiFighter37: Oh, no. I loved TWoP back in the day. It was classic in the early days of American Idol. How sad they’re shutting it down. The mods there were out of control and wicked funny and smart. Loved that place during its heyday.
mdblanche
Being the President is nice, but some of the perks for being the Vice President are even better.
Ian
@ruemara:
They decided that compassionate conservatism wasn’t selling anymore. Now it is time to try flying the true colors.
SiubhanDuinne
@PsiFighter37: I used to read it to see everything that was being said about The West Wing. Haven’t even thought of it in years, but what pleasure it used to give!
geg6
Thanks all. It sure does feel weird to me to feel this upset over Dr. Keefer. I’ve never been fond of a boss. They’ve usually been total assholes that made my life a nightmare. And Gary could have been that way but chose not to be. His background is in engineering and when I was first hired (he was two years into his tenure), he had difficulty in social situations and was often misunderstood, long winded and stiff. He also wasn’t aware of how to do the little things that build morale. But the directors and administrative staff he hired and promoted were stellar and they encouraged him to loosen up and build his social skills and the importance of praise, humor and gratitude. I’ve been there 16 years come September and watched him become the truly great guy he is now. We will miss him presiding over events, where, against all odds, he became a witty and sincere speaker. And that’s just one thing of many that I can praise about him. I really came to care for him as a person beyond our professional relationship.
? Martin
Working pretty hard there to avoid calling them fags, because you know that’s what the douchebag bankers are calling them back at the office.
Betty Cracker
Regarding the hideous YUM acronym HSBC is attempting to foist upon us, it is within our power to stop them, just as we can tell the Weather Channel to cram the Winter Storm Agamemnon crap. We can just refuse to play their goddamned game. When I go to Starbucks (unavoidable sometimes), I order a LARGE latte, no sugar. “Venti” does not pass my lips, no matter how often the oppressed baristas are forced to say it to me.
Refusal to participate in this dumbassery won’t stop us from being subjected to ridiculous hipsters, rotten weather or great quantities of overpriced, subpar coffee. But goddamn it, at least we’ll call these things by their right names and confront them on our terms!
SatanicPanic
@Elizabelle:
William Howard Taft. Or Chester A Arthur. No, definitly Taft.
J.Ty
@Betty Cracker: I do the same ineffectual thing at Starbucks but man does it feel good.
? Martin
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, I refuse to participate as well. It’s a large coffee. The flavor I want is ‘coffee’. I don’t care if it’s free range or double jointed or whatever. That the interview takes longer than the job is usually enough to stop me from returning.
geg6
@Elizabelle:
That is a very lovely idea. Or, we (faculty, staff, campus supporters) have set up a scholarship in his name for which we had him choose the criteria. He consulted with me about what I thought since I’m the student aid officer. It’s for our campus upperclassmen with academic merit. We have plenty of scholarship money for freshmen and students with high financial need, but not nearly enough for our juniors and seniors who don’t meet the Pell requirements to get one of the awards requiring financial need.
Jay C
Just finished watching Diane Sawyer of ABC News waste 8 minutes of their primetime broadcast “interviewing” Gov. Chris Christie over his latest “exoneration”, via that oh-so-impartial report he commissioned. My own take was that Gov. Fatso has something less than zero credibility (he said he was US Attorney for year, ergo he knows “most” lawyer in NJ – hence, no conflicts: THAT’S his “explanation”???). Sawyer was tougher than I expected, but Big Chris just sloughed it off: he does have big brass ones, that’s sure…
shelly
Sounds like a bad Saturday morning kid’s show from the 1970’s
geg6
@PsiFighter37:
That’s terrible. I used to love, love, love their Survivor recaps. Hilarious snarky goodness.
ThresherK
@Mnemosyne: Metrosexual is a term dating back to the 90s.
Isn’t there a generational shift here for the term here, like hippie to hipster, rock and roll to rock, or the like?
If I were aiming to sell to young folks I might not want to use a term that they grew up thinking about their parents’ generation with (whether their parents were or not).
It doesn’t make YUM any less stupid. But “preppie” and “yuppie” weren’t going to last forever. Ask “dandy”.
p.a.
@geg6: The building won’t be as important a legacy as the lives he’s touched. Condolences.
Violet
@Betty Cracker: I can never remember which pretentious Italian word is for what sized coffee, so I just order “medium”. I hate that ordering coffee has turned into something that makes me have to think. If I need coffee my brain is not fully awake. That’s what the coffee is for!
Elizabelle
@Wally Ballou:
That’s good. Upscale. Or upscale wannabe.
I loved the Frasier where they found out they got named after lab rats.
Elizabelle
@Violet:
I say Medium even though I know they want me to say “vente” or whatever.
It’s the principle of the thing.
SiubhanDuinne
@ThresherK:
Or dinks. Remember dinks?
smedley the uncertain
Yuppy, Yummy…
I’ve always been partial to YUCCY..
Young Urban Conspicuous Consumer.
ThresherK
@SiubhanDuinne: I remember the term, but don’t read enough AdAge to know if it’s still in use by insiders.
(And my wife and I are that, BTW.)
smedley the uncertain
@Elizabelle: Thank You
Pogonip
@Villago Delenda Est: I’d sign up for cable to see that!
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
Yes, but more and more whites are moving into city centers. They need a term for rich city whites to distinguish them from more traditional urban dwellers.
Cervantes
“Yummies”?
Shoot me now.
Again.
Cervantes
@geg6:
In addition to the new building, I believe there was a scholarship fund established in his name last year. Did you help set that up? We will make a donation.
Really sorry — or rather, sad — to hear you are in pain.
Mary
Kind of weird that this is British. From what I can tell “yummy mummy” has been a thing over there for a while. For example, women’s magazine cover stories “Are you a yummy mummy?” “Miss Washed-Up Pop Star – From Slutty Single to Yummy Mummy!” How do I know this? Too much reading of nail polish blogs – Butter London’s most popular shade is Yummy Mummy, so I started noticing it. Maybe the dudebros at HBSC don’t pay any attention to lady stuff and don’t know.
Chris
I honestly don’t think there’s a better example anywhere of the extent to which the 1% have become a law unto themselves. The fact that you can get off with a slap on the wrist for laundering money for terrorists, of all crimes, in the post-9/11 United States, of all places, something that would land the rest of us either the death penalty, life imprisonment or a cell in Gitmo, is pretty much all you need to know about whether or not there are class differences in America.
RSR
I’m living in a world of YUMMIES. It’s nasty.
Bill Arnold
@? Martin:
“Largest size coffee”, or sometimes “one size smaller than the largest size”.
Or point at a cup. I don’t even do it to make a point, just can’t be bothered to memorize their N size categories. If they assigned them numbers (1 to N) that might be OK.
fidelio
@ruemara: @Betty Cracker: & @ruemara:
You can be sure the Tennessee State Legislature hasn’t thought it though, because as far as they can grasp, there aren’t any real religions except Christianity practiced anywhere in the great state of Tennessee.
There’s the Sri Ganesha Temple about 10 miles from the capitol building, where the lege sits in its unexamined ignorance, at least two mosques within six miles or less, a Buddhist temple under five miles away, and another less than 10 miles away.. But they know they are doing the right thing for Jesus!
Then there’s the court case we’re having over the establishment of a Muslim cemetery…
Bless their hearts. They understand so little and they are convinced they mean only good.
low-tech cyclist
I don’t find the term ‘dudebro’ distasteful so much as stupid in its redundancy. Seriously, is there a ‘bro’ that’s not a ‘dude’?