Ethnic Avenue – The Street That Crosses All the Others

Posts Tagged ‘Douchebags’

I’ve hated UPS for most of my adult life.

Anyone that’s ever lived in an apartment, has had any kind of job that requires they leave the house, or lived in an even remotely ghetto neighborhood, pretty much hates them for the same reasons I do. It’s hard to get your stuff.

The bottom line is this: unless you’re in a mirrored-glass building downtown or in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, UPS doesn’t give a shit about your poor-ass, apartment-dwelling ethnic package. And, unless you’ve rearranged your schedule to get it delivered on the second or third attempt, you’ve had to—on more than one occasion—drive (or take the bus) to the UPS warehouse, on some industrial street you wouldn’t otherwise know existed, to pick up your own damn package.

Frankly, it makes sense UPS doesn’t like ethnic and poor people. If I were them, I wouldn’t like us either. UPS charges three times as much scratch for something the regular-ass post office has been doing for 200 years. There’s a post office in every neighborhood and a mailbox on every street corner. And, the post office (still) delivers on the weekend. Ethnic people are born with the instinct to see through this kind of bullshit, and would never in a million years use UPS given the choice (working there is another story).

Ethnic bargain hunters may not be good business for UPS, but the rich, the corporate, and the exceptionally white are. Those guys roll up into a ball just thinking about the post office, because it’s pretty much exclusively manned by rude, slow-moving ethnic people. (In Los Angeles, mostly impatient black ladies that don’t want to hear your shit.) The post office is inexpensive, and a lot of these types subscribe religiously to the sometimes-very-true notion that “low cost equals low value.” The post office is also the most general-admission place in town. John Q. Homeless can, and often does, stand in line right alongside you.

So imagine the surprised look on my face when I saw the latest series of UPS commercials, featuring an ambiguously ethnic, corporate-looking douchebag drawing pictures on a dry erase board (with a deliciously, and probably unintentionally, ironic choice for background music, a song by The Postal Service band). The craziest part about these commercials is that this douchebag isn’t delivering the packages, he’s the fuckin’ spokesman.

UPS's ambiguously ethnic douchebag spokesman.

I guess that after years of not giving a shit about ethnic people, UPS is finally realizing that brown can do more for them than they can for it.

From: Your Ethnic Friend
To: All White Guys with Faux Hawks
Subject: RE: Your New Haircut

Hey bro,

I hope you know this isn’t an easy e-mail to write. But as your token ethnic friend, I feel it’s my responsibility to tell you this: it’s time to get rid of the faux hawk.

I’ll admit that when they first came out, faux hawks were actually pretty cool. In fact, I thought the concept was nothing short of brilliant. Some genius somehow devised a way to resurrect a kick-ass hairdo from the 80s and adapt it into a tamer, office-friendly version–one that wouldn’t embarrass your girlfriend in front of her parents. It was still edgy, but now it was versatile. You could go straight from work to the hipster bar and not look ridiculous in either place. And, it was easy; all you needed was a quarter-sized portion of hair product and a mirror (and maybe a hair dryer, I’m not sure).

I don’t know the exact history of the do, but I’m pretty sure White guys started it. At least that was my observation. In fact, my buddy Matt—you know, the guy that does the cabbage patch to celebrate everything—was one of first to have one. But regardless of whether or not you guys did it first (and I can be 100-percent comfortable in my manliness when I say this), White guys did it best. That’s not surprising, since I imagine lighter-colored, fine hair is easier to manage and ply into those wild configurations than coarse, ethnic hair like mine.

Then everything changed. Not only did every White guy go out and get a faux hawk, but everyone else did too—in massive numbers. From there, things quickly got out of hand. Nowadays, the faux hawk is the default haircut of choice for douchebags, movie stars, and generic dumb-asses everywhere—regardless of race, age, or the overwhelming abundance of the haircut.

The mighty faux hawk’s been cheapened, my friend. And, worse, it’s not your own, cool-White-guy thing anymore.

So now, if you still have one, you look like an idiot. I know there aren’t that many choices for short and easy (but still manly) haircuts that don’t make you look stupid or dangerous, but there must be something more. I mean, what did you do before?

Look man, I wouldn’t be telling you this if I didn’t care: enough already with the faux hawk.

Sincerely,

Your Ethnic Friend