Smug Scout loves to find new and (woefully) often expensive food, drinks, and objects that make their consumers feel superior to the rubes who just buy the ordinary, mass-produced, soulless and dreary items. Smug Scout loves to travel to places that confirm her superiority and refined taste, but she will not go to poor countries that mistreat women or animals, require innoculations, and fail to offer their local products in beautiful packaging. Smug Scout does not tolerate primitive conditions, suffocating crowd scenes, or sitting on the ground to eat. Thus, when Smug Scout leaves the country, her destination is Western Europe. Please share with her any Smug sightings or experiences you think might be of interest. She is always looking for new destinations to mock and adore at the same time.
Smug scout: you are all that is right and nothing that is wrong. Smug on, dear smug scout, smug on!
Donovan Keith, Smug Scout thanks you for your praise. She notices that you live in and write a blog dedicated to Silver Lake’s slightly less Smug neighbor. She approves of that and has just added a link on her site. Just one question: between Los Feliz and Echo Park, who would win the Smug Neighbor SmackDown?
Oh, Los Feliz FOR SURE!
Agreed. Echo Park’s version of smug is still a little genuinely hardscrabble whereas Los Feliz is almost entirely affectation at this point.
Smug Scout absolutely adores your use of “hardscrabble.” Have you spent time in New Hampshire?
The commenting system won’t allow me to reply to a third-tier comment, so I now find myself conversing with myself. I don’t have any strong memories of time spent in New Hampshire, so I’m not even sure if I visited the state with my family when we drove through 32 states in one summer when I was a kid. I suspect “hardscrabble” is a word I’ve collected in my life’s effort to be the most charmingly/annoyingly anachronistic person at dinner parties.
Smug Scout finds it charming that you converse with yourself; it seems better than being part of anything “third-tier.” She does not like anyone who would be annoyed by “hardscrabble” or even find it anachronistic. Perhaps you should visit Portsmouth. Then you could use the word “hardscrabble” and be charmingly derogatory.
Smug Scout wants to take you on a research mission. She believes Echo Park has a lot of Smug promise.
Well smug scout, my last comment here miraculously disapperared! Oh, the wonders of blogs!!
Just interested how smug scout is traveling to Europe in a green, sustaineable way?
And as for the beautiful packaging using the latest plastics, inks, etc. how do they really make the product better? Or maybe it is just the large corporate marketing team that brainstorms to arrive at the desirable product that appeals to the smug scout?
Last question: do farmer’s markets offer beautiful packaging when selling their locally harvested/manufactured products?
Well, Ovi, Smug Scout does not know what happened to your previous comment, but rest assured that she did not reject it! She approves of your feisty spirit! She would only like to gently remind you that Smug Scout mocks herself, her taste, her habits, her purchasing choices, and even the frequency with which she is bamboozled by cynical marketing gimmicks. Surely you have noticed that she is an easy mark at a farmers’ market? In Los Angeles, of course, beautiful packaging at FMs is crucial to wooing buyers from other, perhaps less slickly packaged products. Even the produce is often calculatedly displayed; this will in fact be the the subject of her next post. As far as sustainable travel to Europe, she wishes she could hire someone to transport her by rowboat or canoe, but those forms of transportation would not fit the tremendous number of local products she buys over there. She will have to accept, if unhappily, her imperfection in this area as well. But at least she is not a meat-eating Prius driver, a true ecological oxymoron.
Smug scout is most humble and well intentioned…something rare in today’s world.
Insofar as the LA farmer’s markets, they are seem a world onto themselves,quite different from the FMs in other parts of this nation as well as the world.
Smug Scout is just delighted by your generous words. She hopes that you will continue to read her silly/serious musings. She is also a bit curious about farmers’ markets where you live and if they are Smug at all.