Manolo says, the Xmas, it is approaching and Goody Glinda at the Teeny Manolo has been bust putting together the lists of toys, to include the list of the hottest video games for 2008. The 12-to-29 year old boy in your life will be certain to thank you profusely.

Manolo says, far be it from the Manolo to take pleasure in the misfortunes of others, but….

Crocs Inc. shares plunged 45% Thursday, stumbling after the colorful sandal maker reported a whopping third-quarter loss and warned of further financial pain as it downsizes what was once a high-flying business to better match sharply reduced demand.

Happy days are here again, the sky o’er head is clear again!
The Crocs are dead this year, Amen! Happy days are here again!

P.S. Many thanks to the Manolo’s internet friend, Aaron, for this good news.

Manolo says, here is the latest column of the Manolo for the Express of the Washington Post.

Dear Manolo,

I’m going to my boyfriend’s parents’ house for Thanksgiving next week. The problem is that I’m a Republican and my boyfriend’s parents are ardent Democrats. They’re very nice, but they are also super-political, so I’m sure I’ll be subjected to lots of gloating. (My boyfriend is no help at all. He’s a libertarian.) What do you recommend to help me get through the weekend?

Cecilia

Manolo says, America, the Manolo begs of you, please, stop! The campaigns are over. Put away the yard signs, and the buttons, and the flyers, and the full-sized votive statue of your favorite candidate that you have carved from sandalwood and hand-painted in realistic colors, and which is now seated in the easy chair in the family room.

Now is the time to come together in the spirit of comity and mutual affection, to remember, during this joyful holiday of Thanksgiving, that we have much for which to be thankful, like roasted turkey, and televised football, and little children who are dressed up like John Smith and Squanto in construction paper costumes.

And so, please, for one weekend, neither gloat, nor grumble. Be happy for the many blessings that have been bestowed upon us.

Blessings such as this handsome, tall, suede boot from Peter Kaiser, the Levke.

Manolo says, if you are not reading the Teeny Manolo, you are missing out. Just this week alone, for the example, our friend Raincoaster has located the video that has elicted the following comment.

He’s going to be really disappointed when he grows up and realizes he’s not a king or some sort of wizard.

While the darling Glinda, is angered by the new internet website.

Yet I have to admit that another part of me is pissed. Angry that a website had to be developed to do something that every single parent should be doing, and doing happily. It really bursts Glinda’s bubbles, if you know what I mean.

Hurry, you are missing the fun at the Teeny Manolo.

Manolo says, behold, the new fashion trend has gripped the nation to it’s bosom.

Why are New York women wearing ankle boots?

“Because we follow trends,” said Maya Beaumier, 18, a college freshman who was hanging out on University Place last Friday night, clad in flat black ankle boots with black leggings and scrubby denim shorts.

“Yeah, we’re followers!” said her friend Maureen Flanagan, also an 18-year-old freshman and also wearing little zip-up ankle boots [...]

The coeds have done their homework. Ankle boots are, in fact, the shoe of the year. (They’re also known as “booties,” but because that word sounds like two different slang terms plus one type of children’s footwear, we’re not going to use it.)

The abbreviated boots can snuggle into the bottom of a pair of skinny jeans like a screw, or cap off a long bare leg like a shiny black cherry. And many are wearing them with shorts and tights, for a kind of cute elf look (it makes sense, since these days, only Santa Claus is hiring). Works if you’re under 30.

Ankle boots can be flat or stiletto (like Jennifer Lopez’s 5.5-inch YSLs); sleek or baroque; buckled (like the witchy red ones strapped on by Kate Bosworth recently), zipped or both. Earthy mauve and camel ankle boots exist, but the up-to-date option is clearly the kind that make you look like a sexy Martian.

So you wish to be the “sexy Martian,” like this, perhaps?

Or, perhaps not.

Sexy Martian girls, aside, the Manolo is himself is the fan of the latest ankle booties. Indeed, after several seasons in which the couture shoes have become increasingly outlandish, perhaps it is time for something fresh.

And yet, who wishes to be the “follower” of trends, for despite the assurances of 18-year-old coeds everywhere, not every style is suitable for everyone, especially for the smart, independent lady of the particular age.

And yet again, ankle booties are tres fun, and so you naturally wish to find the pair that works, but you must also find the pair that does not make you look ridiculous. Ayyy! Such trouble!

Fear not, internet friends, for the Manolo is here to help you find booties that are both au courant, and yet suitable for those who are not the sexy, bubbleheaded, teenaged, Martian coeds.

Look! Here is the serious suede ankle bootie from Gravati

Perhaps, these are too intellectual and somber for you, in which case the Manolo tells you to whoop it up, with these platform booties, the Whoop from Stuart Weitzman.

Or, maybe these, the Lily Boot from Kate Spade.

Ankle booties, trendy, stylish, and fun. What is there not to like?

Manolo asked, whose shoes?

Manolo answers, it is the President-to-be, Barack Obama!

Congratulations to the Manolo’s internet friend Cassandra who was the first to identify this most important personage of note.

P.S. As for the photo below, in which Barack appears to be pantless, the explanation is shown above: he is sitting down.

Manolo says, Look! Shoeblogging from Miss Plumcake.

Manolo asks, whose shoes?

Manolo says, it is Tuesday, time to see what the Manolo is…

Reading…

Watching…

Listening to…

The Manolo has come to the conclusion that it is impossible to make the fully satisfying cinematic adaptation of the Jane Austen novel. Indeed, only the person who had never read the novel Persuasion could be content with the latest filmic version, staring the Sally Hawkins and Rupert Penry-Jones.

Yes, there were portions of the production that were amusing, but the final fifteen minutes, which showed the Anne Elliot racing about Bath like the Sarah-Connor-style action heroine, were especially absurd. Likewise, the Manolo was annoyed by the frustratingly slow kiss which sealed the relationship between Anne and Captain Wentworth.

This is not how people in love behave, not even those who are fearfully constrained by the formal customs of their age. The Manolo calls these sort of cinematic scenarios “phoney-baloney movie love,” because they are more about the filmmakers wrongheaded notions of how lovers should behave, and are not drawn from life.

Perhaps the problem for the Manolo is that the works of Jane Austen live fully in his mind in ways that cannot be improved upon by the movie adaptation. And while there have been valiant attempts at translation to the screen, ultimately, they have all fallen short.

Manolo says, this week, our darling Ms. Spirit Fingers challenges us to identify the Hollywood Gone Bollywood.

Manolo says, it is Monday, and you are again back at your desk, although, this morning, when the alarm clock went off and you discovered you were still wearing the same underwear you had put on on Friday morning, you almost didn’t get up.

But, what did you expect on Friday morning, shortly after you donned those panties, when the telephone rang and it was your old college friend, the dangerously dangerous Erika announcing she had just arrived in town for one of her semi-irregular visits?

Ericka?

Ayyyyyyy! Ericka!!! Nooooo!

To say that Ericka is “nothing but trouble”, understates the billowing thunderheads of disaster that trail this beautiful young woman of extravagant prevarications and impulsively erratic behavior.

You know you should avoid her, but like the moth to the white-hot flame of fiery death, you are compelled to be near the sturm-und-drang of Ericka. And so, when the phone rang on Friday morning you tried to pre-limit the damage by agreeing to dinner, “just dinner”, after work.

“And drinks,” answers Ericka. “dinner and drinks. You can’t have dinner without a few cocktails.”

But, naturally, at five o’clock, as you were walking to the bus stop to go home to change for dinner, Ericka appears suddenly in the fire-engine red Ferrari 240 GTO, the car so ridiculously beautiful and so ridiculously costly that you just stand on the sidewalk and stare at it, until she finally reaches across the seat and pushes the passenger door open for you.

“Hey, Popsicle, what’s popping? Get in! Get in!”

And you just slide into the buttery leather seat, not even caring that Ericka has called you by your old hated nickname, earned because you lived on almost nothing but orange Creamsicles, one right after the next, for the first four months you were at college. (Finally, when you went home for the holidays, your parents, together with your dentist, organized the intervention.)

So you get into the car, and there is Ericka, more beautiful than ever, and surrounded by her usual eerie nimbus of crackling electricity and vivacity. And, once more you know, even before she stomps on the accelerator, that you are now stuck on the roller coaster, and that the only way to get off is to be flung from it

By late Sunday night you are so exhausted, that you don’t even want to think about what has happened, so alternately horrible and thrilling had it been.

Indeed, it was the blur: starting with the the best restaurant in town (where the maitre d’ greeted Ericka enthusiastically in French as “Mlle. Yaminichi”, even though, as far as you know, her real last name is Papadopoulo), followed by the most exclusive nightclub, then the charter flight to Cabo, the dawn on the beach, the scorpion bite, the lunchtime pitchers of margaritas with the Cornhusker football players, the third-degree sunburn, the stack of credit cards in the variety of names not to include Papadopoulo, the police station, the largish bribe followed by tequila shooters with the police captain, and finally, “hitching” the ride home with the middle-aged Eastern European toilet-paper mogul named Gheorghe, and his “posse” of grotesques, who insisted on having Kid Rock turned all of the way up on the Gulfstream’s sound system. (The phrase “Cowboy, Baby” is now officially anathema to you.)

And now it is Monday, and you are exhausted, and red, and hungover, your skin is peeling, and you should probably go home right now and fall into bed, but there is that project due on Friday, so there you are, once more left in Ericka’s wake.

Look, here are some sweetly, sensible driving moccasins from Geox to soothe your jingly-jangly nerves.

Ahh, sweet normalcy.

Manolo says, here is the Manolo’s latest column for the Express of the Washington Post.

Dear Manolo,

My husband has just gotten the dream job of a lifetime, an assignment that literally puts him at the top of the heap. So now we’re going to celebrate with a giant party in January when the new job officially starts. This party will be a dressy affair, with tons of important people, toasts, dancing, dining, a real blowout. What would you recommend in the way of shoes? I’m thinking of wearing gown by Narciso Rodriguez.

Michelle

Manolo says, ayyyy! Congratulations on your husband’s great success! Undoubtedly you played the major role in bringing him to the place where his sterling qualities could be noticed, and are thus yourself the woman of considerable abilities.

Naturally, you will wish to shine on this most important evening, putting your best feets forward and stepping out in elegance and style.

Of the course, you should also not ignore the symbolism of the moment, which is why the Manolo would recommend pairing your Narciso Rodriguez frock with the shoes of Elie Tahari. Two super fantastic American designers who are immigrant children from disparate backgrounds, what better way to celebrate the diversity of this great land?

Much depends upon the color of your gown, but here is the beautiful and bejeweled strappy Elie Tahari sandal in the color anthracite.