Faux is a relative term.  It is a term that requires a genuine entity.  It needs context.  This begs the question: If something is the faux version of the original entity, can there be a faux version of the faux entity?  I attempted to prove that there are in fact faux-fauxs.

Are faux-fauxs a no-no?  Does it matter? Am I being douche by asking these questions?  The answers to those questions are:  I don’t know, probably and yes, respectively.

Here is my meditation on this concept of faux-faux.  If you have any others, please feel free to comment and add along.

Original entity: Cage fighting
Faux entity: American Gladiators
Faux-Faux entity: Nickelodeon Guts

Original entity: Bears
Faux entity: Gummy bears
Faux-Faux entity: Teddy Grahams

Original entity: Fatal Attraction
Faux entity: Disclosure
Faux-Faux entity: Milk Money

Original entity: Ike Turner
Faux entity: Bobby Brown
Faux-Faux entity: Chris Brown

Original entity: Boogers
Faux entity:  Eye Boogers
Faux-Faux entity: Boogers in your eye

Original entity: Basketball
Faux entity: Water Basketball
Faux-Faux entity: A McDonald’s commercial

Original entity: The American Flag
Faux entity: The American Flag bumper sticker on the back of a truck
Faux-Faux entity: A wolf howling through a dreamcatcher with an American Flag in the background airbrushed onto the back of a truck

Original entity: Racism
Faux entity: Sexism
Faux-Faux entity: Sexy Racism or Racy Sexism

Original entity: An Apple
Faux entity: A Caramel Apple
Faux-Faux entity: A green Flintstone vitamin

Original entity: Now That’s What I Call Music
Faux entity: Now That’s What I Call Music 47
Faux-Faux entity: A dead puppy

There is no type of poem that stretches the meaning of poetry more than a Haiku.  Let’s be honest with each other, if you read a Haiku that someone wrote you aren’t like “Wow! What a poet.” You are more likely to think “Wow! They know how to count the number of syllables in a sentence.”

Therefore, as a tribute to the fakest type of poetry I can think of, I’ve written Haikus about all things ‘Faux’. Well six things ‘Faux’, but they are some of the better ones.

‘High Fauxfile’
Some wear fake glasses
They give sex very easy
Plan-B, high fashion

“Faux Pas”
Push-up bras are bad
They over sell expectation
under deliver boobs

“Ho-Faux-Sho”
Guys who say they do
Probably don’t get laid much
They only spank themselves

“Fauxmous”
If you’re on Myspace
and have lots of friends online
you don’t in real life

“Faux-sheezy”
The more bling you wear
the worse your rap beats are son.
ask M.C Hammer.

“Radi-faux”
Some enjoy logic.
Others prefer deception.
They like Rush Limbaugh.

If you submit a Haiku in the comments section I will add it to this post.  Just give First name, Age, and City.  I won’t censor as long as they are actually Haikus.

Hey what’s up? I’m Connor…Becca?  Right on. Good to meet you, Becca. So what do you do?…Oh that’s awesome. I shop there all the time. I actually got these jeans there last week…Seriously? Is that a new thing? I swear I got these jeans at that store…Well there was a men’s section when I went there. Weird…What do I do? I mean, you know. A little bit of everything really, haha…No, no. I do have a job. It’s just my job job, you know what I mean?…It’s just a way to pay the bills. My real job is my music…Well I used to be in a band, and we were pretty close to getting signed, but I just got really fed up with the corporate BS of the industry, you know? So I left to focus on my solo stuff…It’s pretty deep. Really personal. Very experimental. Kinda like an Iron & Wine sound fused with, like, Chamillionaire…Oh yeah. It’s totally my passion…How can you not listen to music?…Well, yeah, I understand. I sorta stopped listening to a lot of music too. Too many memories about the band. Plus now I can focus on my writing…I’ve got a few short stories finished, and I’m working on my next screenplay right now…It’s awesome. It’s going to be so good once it’s done. It’s An Affair To Remember meets Donnie Darko meets Another Stakeout…Really?…I don’t have much time to get to the movies these days either. That’s really just a way for me to pass the time when I’m not training…MMA. I’ve got my first fight next month…Yeah, Coach Shamrock says I’m one of the better students he’s had…Oh your brother fought? What’s his record?…Wow. I’m so sorry to hear that. Well at least he’s blinking now. That’s a good sign…I don’t know what time it is, sorry. I guess I left my phone in the car. I swear these new S-Classes have waaay too many compartments…Oh I agree…Yeah, you’re right…Greenhouse gasses…Well it’s my buddy’s car. I’m DD tonight…No, that was a virgin shot…I would have biked here tonight  but I messed up my back tire this morning when I was leading my group of inner-city kids up a mountain pass. It was really beautiful…Orlando does too have beautiful mountain passes…Well it’s been awesome talking to you Becca. Can I call you sometime?…Cool cool. Let me write this down…Ok 8…uh huh 6-7…5 got it…3-0 yup…9. Sweet. I’ll call you soon.

On many Sunday evenings throughout childhood, my family and I would go to our favorite restaurant on Mott Street in Chinatown. It was called Wo Hop, and—despite being one of those slummy, basement-type joints with pictures of B-list actors adorning the walls and the same elderly Chinese men working year-after-year that you always recognize even though they never seem to recognize you—their food was delicious on a level I can’t properly put into words.

The place was so well-known for its fare that on evenings when the weather was nice, the line would stretch out the door and up the stairs, full of would-be-diners staring in the windows, their eyes telling the actual diners to hurry their fat asses so their own fat asses could experience the food for themselves.

On one such night in middle school, with the line being longer than usual, my dad did his patriarchal duty and volunteered to wait for the family while my mom, brothers and I went off to experience the second best thing Chinatown has to offer besides delicious Chinese food: Cheap Chinese shit.

After a few blocks of plastic remote-controlled swimming frogs, bootleg CDs and VHS movies (I believe we purchased a copy of the epic failure, Romeo Must Die), I found a table of watches. The watches were fake, but the Tommy, Nautica, Polo and Gucci logos on them seemed pretty real to me. So did their $10 price tag to a kid who has no money of his own. Sensing an opportunity to supply bling-like objects to my brand-obsessed 7th grade idiot compatriots, I asked my mother for a $100 loan.

My naïve entrepreneurial spirit won her over, and she allowed me to pick out 10.

When we got home I riffled through boxes of old crap until I found what I hoped would be an ingenious displayer of merchandise: one of those plastic dummy arms kids hang out the trunk of moving cars. I carefully wrapped each of the fake watches around the fake arm and gently placed it in my bag.

The next day, I sold all 10 fake watches for $20 a piece.

The day after that, the Vice Principal suspended me for selling fake watches. 1 day. In school. And I was forced to give everyone their money back.

A week later, every single fake watch stopped working.

I still have them in a box somewhere.

I dated this girl for five years.  Her name was Sheila and she was fantastic.  She had really great sweaters and the best shoes ever.  They were high tops and kind of white.  They had a velcro strip on top of the laces that made them extra snug.  They were so snug!  Those things were never coming off, even if she was being chased by something in a rain storm.

Sheila and I did everything together.  We rode tandem bikes through the park and on the streets.  We ate new, gross foods like caviar and snow cones.  We watched all sorts of movies.  And we made beaded key chains.  My favorite was the In ‘Plane’ Sight one because it was always uplifting.

Sheila was the perfect lady for me.  She was in all my fantasies and dreams.  I fit into all her clothes and she let me wear those super snug shoes if she was happy.  She made me happy everyday.

But October 12 was not a good day.  Sheila told me a secret.

She was not really Sheila.  She was not even a she.  She was a fake she.

She was really a he.

Moments away from a post about dissociative fugues, I swerved back towards the sunny side and remembered that my favorite part about faux is how good it is in wordplay.  By replacing anything that makes an ‘O’ sound, you can basically create a mildly clever term for any doppelgänger.

Let’s do a few:

Fauxmance: touchy flirting even though she has a boyfriend.

Fauxtown: white guys singing Marvin Gaye.

Aprofaux: something that’s fitting that never actually happened.

Fauxjob: getting touched over boxers.

Faux-truck: a car with a big mean hook on the front.

Fauxbot: cardboard and duct tape.

Faux-Magnon Man: fat guys with ironic beards.

Fauxnail: what grows back after you slam your hand in the door.

Fauxdo Baggins: the guys camped out in front of the theatre.

Not bad.  Commenters, top me.