Nonsense is the new sense
It was a week ago today that I opened up my favorite newspaper to read the headline ''Small is the new big." In the article, architect Sarah Susanka recommended that people buy houses only one-third as large as they think they need. This sounds like a great way to offload one-third of my family, although if a vote were held, I might find myself in the disposable 33 percent.
The article inspired me to scribble in the margins: ''Yes! Up is the new down. Right is the new wrong. Is poor the new rich?" My, I'm feeling flush.
''Small/Big" was following up on an earlier Globe outing, ''Early is the new late." ''Early/Late" revealed that modern Americans now prefer to spend the early morning doing errands and chores previously relegated to the late afternoon. The story related that people got up early, exhausted themselves during the day, and by evening had attained the necessary state of catatonia to appreciate ''CSI: More Senseless Gore" and other prime-time fare.
We live in a curious age of relettering (''Hi! I'm Cyndee!"), reversals (Red Sox = world champions), and rejiggering. Paid flacks are the new journalists, fiction is the new truth, war is the new peace. The New York Times announced this week that Kiev is the new Prague. Does that mean we have to start drinking Ukrainian beer? I hope not. Osama bin Laden has famously declared that America is the new Rome.
If you go to tennispromusic.com, you can hear some pretty lively music from Tennis Pro, a Seattle-based rock band. The name of their new album? ''Happy is the New Sad."
Renumbering, too, is the order of the day. ''Twelve is the new Eleven," was the mantra for ''Ocean's Twelve," the recently released sequel to ''Ocean's Eleven." Much has been made of our new chronology. I'm 51, but 51 is the new 40. Do I have to surrender 11 years' worth of pay?
Slate magazine writer Mickey Kaus and I noticed how hot the overage actresses looked on the cover of the monthly magazine of the American Association of Retired Persons. (Indeed, one of the featured actresses was Marcia Gay Harden, at 45 still five years away from AARP's official membership age.) The AARP has been lobbying ferociously against President Bush's Social Security ''reform" -- is ''privatization" the new theft? -- but Kaus thinks they may be wasting their breath. ''If 70 is the new 40," he writes, ''what's the justification for spending trillions to let people retire at 65?"
Perhaps you are familiar with the ladies' apparel phenomenon known as vanity sizing. Here is all you need to know: Size 6 is the new 8. The current issue of Consumer Reports tests 10 brands of size-10 women's pants and found that the waists ranged from 30 to 33 inches. Size-10 shirts, the magazine reports, ranged from 39 to 43 inches in the chest. Their bottom line: ''If in Nordstrom you buy a pair of size 6 pants that fit, you will probably have to move up to size 8 or 10 for a similar size at
But they stop short of saying ''Wal-Mart is the new Nordstrom."
There was a time when brown was the new black, which refers to the universal advisability of wearing black in moments of fashion indecision. But a New Zealand-based webmaster named Matthew Thomas has cataloged a dizzying array of other ''new blacks," including David Beckham (''Black Like Beckham" was the title of a British television special), outsourcing, and fat. ''Fat is the new black," according to Richard Reeves, writing in The New Statesman.
Also: ''Sperm whales are the new black," a blogger declared in 2004; ''Poverty is the New Black," the always contrarian Guardian newspaper declared in 2001. Likewise, Thomas unearthed declarations that maroon, purple, orange, pink, and green were the new black.
As your eye meanders to the bottom of the page, you might be thinking: This is the end of the column.
But this isn't the end. In 2005, the end is the new beginning.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 