Episode 13: Hot to (Turkey) Trot

Happy Thanksgiving, you guys! This episode is all about food, movies and parades. What more do you need?

Extra goodness from this episode: you can witness the Barney carnage for yourself in this video from the 1997 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was a day of high winds and calamity.

https://youtu.be/KKBrMMsRY6g

 

Very Best of YouTube: Videos from Episode 8

My picks:

The Day My Kid Went Punk (1987)… a very special After School Special made for the truly special.

Get your med on…

Shit Alexis Says

And the top videos from my esteemed guests:

Katie wants you to learn finally learn how to use Windows 95 (with Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry), ooh and aah over Duck Tales with real ducks (!), and enjoy the wonder of Val Kilmer losing/removing his glasses in just about every movie he’s ever made.

Meister Chimichanga is ready to waste another 30 seconds of your life… or more, if you want to spend some time checking out his YouTube channel!

Jo Ellen is a sucker for Peaches (and now I am, too), the beauty of Murmuration, and relaxing to the sound of clicking stones featured in an ASMR video (close your eyes for this one).

Keith offers up the pageantry of the Freddie Mercury tribute concert in 1992 (you can access all 13 videos through that link – but David Bowie/Annie Lennox are in part 8 and Liza is part 13) as well as possibly the most perfect video in all of YouTube-dom: a horse taking it to the limit.

Ellen introduces us to the wonder of screaming goats in this epic montage.

And Joel directs us to the ultimate YouTube stress-buster (or celebratory video, depending on your mood today): KHAAAAANN! Perfect for any situation.

 

All-Important Videos from Episode 6

Here are some of the segments I reference in the episode:

Mike Love wears many hats on Lifestyles in 1990…

https://youtu.be/dlL7-j-IvVA

Mike Love makes an ass of himself at the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony (you can skip Brian Wilson trying to read his speech while Mike hovers in the background and then adjusts Brian’s mic… oh, just watch the whole thing!):

Things were OK for Vince Neil after he got kicked out of the Crue… No, really, everything was fine!

And here’s the Jackie Zeman video you didn’t know you wanted to see… so steamy.

https://youtu.be/Bi03adLP9T8

Episode 5: The Livin’ Is Easy

It’s finally summer! In this episode, learn how to be a rad wedding guest with advice from the fashion mags, hear about a very shitty summer job, and find out which books made the cut for the Not Shallow Summer Reading List. (Spoiler alert: the books are not very beachy but if you like celebrity tell-alls, you won’t be disappointed).

 

Summer Reads & Dranks

brandy-slushHere’s how to make brandy slush, a frozen summer drank (no blender required):

Combine 7 cups of water with 2 cups of sugar. Boil until sugar dissolves. Let this cool.

Add 2 cups boiling water to 4 black tea bags and let it all steep until cool.

(This is the cooling portion of the recipe. Go read something online or watch Jeopardy.)

Once both of these items (the simple syrup and the tea) are cool, combine them in a container that you can also use to mix the rest of the ingredients and then put in the freezer. A plastic ice cream bucket, if you happen to eat enough ice cream that you purchased a bucket of it, works great.

Add:
1 12-oz. can of lemonade concentrate
1 12-oz. can of OJ concentrate
2 cups brandy

Stir it all up and then freeze until slushy – overnight is preferred.

To serve: fill a water glass 2/3 full with brandy slush and then top it off with ginger ale (you can also try 7Up or Sprite or a diet soda but I think ginger ale is the best, specifically Seagram’s because its not as sweet. There is going to be a lot of sugar in this drank!)

Best if served with a swizzle stick and a straw. Now sit around and talk smart… or read.

Which brings me to the books mentioned in episode 5’s segment “Beach Reads and Blanket Books.”

The Run of His Life: The People vs. OJ Simpson by Jeffrey Toobin (“The inspiration for the first season of American Crime Story on FX, starring Cuba Gooding, Jr., John Travolta, David Schwimmer, and Connie Britton”)

We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction by Joan Didion (this includes the books Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album, both great reads on their own)

Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr by Stephen Michael Shearer

Out Came the Sun: Overcoming the Legacy of Mental Illness, Addiction and Suicide in My Family by Mariel Hemingway

Shirley, I Jest!: A Storied Life by Cindy Williams

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan

Sick In the Head: Conversations About Life & Comedy by Judd Apatow

Primates of Park Avenue: A Memoir by Wednesday Martin, Ph.D. (sorry I forgot to mention the Ph.D. on the show…)

The Wilderness of Ruin: A Tale of Madness, Fire and the Hunt for America’s Youngest Serial Killer by Roseanne Montillo (because what would a summer be without a book about America’s youngest serial killer?)

Re Jane: A Novel by Patricia Park (not sure why this title needs “A Novel” added to it but it must have something to do with the current craze for the colon. That’s the punctuation mark, not the body part)

In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume

Not on our summer lists but some celeb/Old Hollywood memoirs and tell-alls we’ve read that are worth checking out:

Knock Wood by Candice Bergen
This ‘N That by Bette Davis
Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood by Suzanne Finstad
Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford, A Personal Biography by Charlotte Chandler
Johnny Carson by Henry Bushkin
Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford (come on, you haven’t read this yet?)

 

Episode 4: I’ve Got the Music In Me

In this episode, it’s all about the music. Learn about one man’s struggle to come to terms with his love for emergent nightclub dancing, explore reasons why classic rock radio continues to exist, and hear about some first concert experiences. Oh, and a special album recommendation.

Episode 4: Get Your Playlist Here

Michael Hutchence of INXS and his glorious hair.First, glorious Michael Hutchence and his outstanding late 80s hair. Mystify me!

Next, here is a playlist, should you wish to re-create it for yourself, of every song mentioned in Trouble on the Dance Floor: The COMPLETE Guide to Emergent Nightclub Dancing. Perfect for the emergent dance party you now want to have in your backyard this summer.

I Wanna Dance with Somebody – Whitney Houston
When Love Takes Over – Kelly Rowland (David Guetta mix)
Absolutely Not – Deborah Cox
You Won’t Forget Me – Stevie Nicks (I think this is the song referred to – it was mentioned by lyric, not by title)
Sandstorm – Darude
This Joy – Vernessa Mitchell
One More Time – Daft Punk
Thriller – Michael Jackson
Commander – Kelly Rowland
Better Off Alone – Alice Deejay  (Joey’s “signature song”)

And if you want to check out the sweet Moog Cookbook album Ye Olde Space Bande Plays the Classic Rock Hits here it is on iTunes. You can also listen to it on Spotify.

 

Episode 3: Stuff About Stuff

This week it’s all stuff about stuff… The many cars of Keith Pille, a discussion of cleaning up clutter using the Kondo method from the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and a Memorial Day trip to the thrift store that results in some fun summer finds.

If you want links and photos mentioned in the episode, check out this post.

Episode 3: Get More Stuff Here

Stuff from the stuff episode:

Kondo
There is so much being written about the Queen of Tidiness, Marie Kondo, right now. You can also see her in action at the 92nd Street Y (or just get the highlights from New York Magazine). And you can read accounts from people who have Kondo’s much more thoroughly than I have.

Want to fold using the Kondo method? There are tutorials for that:

 

Me, I’m still balling up my socks.

Music!
If you enjoy the music featured in the episodes, you can listen to full versions of the songs, or download them, on derailleurtheband.com or theawesomeboys.com.

Thrifting
A trip to an Arc Value Village thrift never disappoints.

The weirdest thing I found on my recent trip was this guy, encased in a bell jar. His name was Izzy Guilty and he was a Christmas gift that someone seems to have kept, out of guilt or maybe just forgetfulness, since 1984. I imagine that the day came for retirement, the office was cleaned, and this was promptly dropped off at Arc.

izzy-guilty

I also didn’t purchase:

Boy George Coffee Table BookOr

Charlton Heston and The Bible

But this little guy  (he’s a candle!) did get to come home with me, for sure.

Orange dog with big eyes

 

Episode 2: Chicks Keep Getting Younger

Welcome to episode 2 of Not Shallow.

This time out, I share my impressions and deep thoughts about the TV show “Younger,” now airing on TV Land. Yes, I’m watching it. Also, in another daring confession of sorts, I talk about a old love affair of mine… with the body suit. Finally, I send you off with a roll call of some of the pets of Old Hollywood. RIP to those stars and their much-loved furry friends.

Don’t forget to eat some berries and nuts. That stuff is so totally good for you.

Want to be bad and watch “Younger?” You can watch entire episodes here for free. If you have AdBlock installed on your computer, you don’t even have to watch their embedded ads. It’s a victimless crime.

Also, here is a favorite photo of Audrey Hepburn and her pet deer, Pippin:

audrey-hepburn-pippin

Episode 1: R.C. Phone Home

Sometimes cats are a drag.Welcome to Not Shallow, the podcast!
In this first episode, I discuss the @Work section in Marie Claire, Keith Pille and I commiserate over the mental and physical state of our 17-year-old cat, Jones, and Sarah Collins and I unpack some French baggage in lieu of any serious consideration of the book The Little Prince. Please enjoy these visual aids that may (or may not) increase your enjoyment of the topics discussed.

Meet Jones

This is Jones:

This is Jones the cat!

This is also Jones:

Jones the cat on Santa's lap

Brief Jones Update: We forgot to mention that for the first time in our lives we had to purchase a baby gate, although we have no children, to prevent Jones from going out onto our (enclosed) back porch, which has become his preferred litter box (without litter or a box).

Photographic Evidence

I wanted to share with you the 6th grade awkwardness I referred to in the show.

(deep breath)

This is me in 6th grade looking oh-so-awkward.

That’s me in the bright red t-shirt. I used to stand like that a lot, holding my other arm, like it would protect me or make me smaller. The woman with the odd look on her face, far left, is my mom. I’d go so far as to say that’s a smirk on her face, even though she’s not that kind of person. She doesn’t go around smirking… She and I are about the same height and I’m 12. “Forenza” is my sister. I suppose she’s just as awkward, in her way, but to me this photo of her is endearing. On the right in my French exchange student… innocent in all of this.

Standing by bus before departure to Paris

I’ve included this photo, even though it’s not the best quality, to showcase, once again, my size. That’s me, far left, looking into the camera as I stand and hold the flag. I mean, never let it be said that I coasted on my good looks. Zuzu has her back to me, per usual. Girl directly in front of me was one of my best friends on the trip – I’m about a foot taller? The only kids taller are those standing on the steps of the bus. I believe we are getting ready to depart on our trip to France.

But first we did this (performed our talentless talent show for our parents):

Girls passing hats in "New York, New York"

Start spreading the news…

leaving-today

If I can make it there, I’m gonna make it anywhere…

the-statue-of-liberty

NEW YORK! (big finish featuring grumpy Statue of Liberty – this made me incredibly sad and upset but I guess I just sucked it up… how very adult of me.)

Since recording this episode, I was made aware of the upcoming Little Prince movie that is being released this year. I have to admit, the trailer doesn’t look too bad, thanks mostly the addition of a rad little girl into the plot. Still, I guess I’m just not someone who needs to be reminded, ad nauseam, that “what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Like, duh.

What can I say? I’m also the gal who never even made it through the first Harry Potter book.

what-about-do-smallP.S. We also have a dog named Freja, who is now eagerly awaiting her turn for podcast scrutiny. Equal rights for dogs!

Thanks for listening and for reading!

Not Shallow: The Podcast

Not Shallow: The Podcast is on its way!

That’s right, there is a podcast in the works – the first episode will be unveiled this week.

It’s everything you didn’t know you wanted, all that your ears have ever needed.

Dogs everywhere are excited. Not that it has anything to do with dogs, per se, it’s just that dogs are, in general, very excitable. Which is nice.

Maxin’ & Relaxin’: Summer Reading

2014 summer books list
Every summer I have visions of simply collapsing into a lawn chair, lemonade in hand and reading, reading, reading from morning until night, stopping only to eat ice cream.

While the reality is far different, I start off the season with an ambitious list. I tend not to focus on “beach reads” but on books I’ve meant to read and anything that seems like it might be good to get lost in on a hot afternoon.

2014 Summer Reading List

The Musts:
Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov; I’m currently reading this and every time I turn a page I ask myself why I’ve never read this book before. Awesome Russian novel with a “supernatural” bent, especially great if you’re a fan of…

Haruki Murakami: Norwegian Wood, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (will be published in August)

The Goldfinch by Donna Taart; after experiencing bitter disappointment over The Little Friend, her 2002 novel, I’m going to give her another try after her Pultizer win!

Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel; I’ve read articles about Hilary Mantel that have been fascinating but never any Mantel books. If I love it, I’ll definitely read the sequel, Bring Up the Bodies.

Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie books. I read Atkinson’s Life After Life this winter and wish I could rediscover it this summer – it would make a great summer read to get engrossed in while sitting on the porch with no one bothering you. Luckily, Atkinson has written many other books, and her detective novels with Brodie are highly praised.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem – Joan Didion; I simply haven’t read enough Didion and that’s a hole that needs to be filled.

Couples – John Updike; in a recent New Yorker review of the new Updike biography, I learned that it wasn’t all WASPy angst in Updike’s world. Maybe I had him confused with Cheever? In any case, this novel about infidelity in the 1960s is supposed to be more frothy and soap opera than his other work.

The Feminine Mystique – Betty Friedan; not anyone’s idea of a beach read, but I’m curious after not having picked up this groundbreaking work since middle school when I discovered that feminism was a thing.

Memos: The Vogue Years – Diana Vreeland; a read through the entertaining memos Vreeland wrote while helming Vogue in the 60s. Frothy, fun, frenetic.

Super Sad True Love Story – Gary Shteyngart; been promising Keith I’d read this for years – it’s his favorite Shteyngart novel and, he promises, a winner on all front.

Side Orders (Sprinkle into main list generously)

Vampires in the Lemon Grove – Karen Russell
The Double – José Saramago
The Gift – Lewis Hyde
There’s a Road To Everywhere Except Where You Came From: A Memoir – Bryan Charles
The Vacationers – Emma Straub (the closest thing on my list to a beach read)
A Tale for the Time Being – Ruth Ozeki
Dangerous Rhythm: Why Movie Musicals Matter – Richard Barrios (this is also going to be my summer of musicals!)

Research

I’m working on writing some fiction that involves the devil, which gives me a good excuse to read how other writers have imagined him and find out his history. Thus, Master and Margarita, as mentioned above, but also:
Rosemary’s Baby – Ira Levin
The Devil: A Very Short Introduction – Darren Oldridge
Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World – Jeffrey Burton Russell

 

 

The Short Stack: May 23

Every Friday, I share  the pop culture, fashion, lit and randomness that crossed my radar during the week. Enjoy with some coconut water and circus peanuts!

I know I can’t save the world but I can do my part to make it a better place and that’s why I’m leading off with this:

Really ugly jean shorts

This is a mistake. There’s a shop online that’s trying to sell this as a look for summer. No, no, no… this is not a look one purchases. This is a look one arrives at after a series of bad choices that initially have nothing to do with clothing.

To my mind, this is a look we left behind in the 90s, emerging as better, stronger, faster people once this was behind us.

I saw an article in a magazine that asked people, “When did you know you were really an adult?” and, had I been asked as a “woman on the street,”  I would have said, “The day I knew cut-off denim shorts were no longer an option for me, not because I have heavy thighs but because I have taste.”

[OK, I do kind of hate my thighs. I guess I’m not that evolved.]

[Being a “woman on the street” interview would be on my bucket list if I could stand the term “bucket list.” But I don’t want to be asked something like, “What do you think was the most important outcome of The Second Sino-Japanese War?” I want someone to ask me, “What do you think of jean shorts?” so that I can say, ‘I despise them. Jean shorts are everything that’s wrong with our society today.” ]

Wearing
The Murakami t-shirts arrived!

Peter Cat Jazz Murakami tshirt

Internetting
I discovered They Draw and Cook this week and got super excited. They have cool t-shirts with a monkey on them, too. I’m going to make blueberry muffins.

Shopping IRL
The Grand Hand Gallery in St. Paul
Zinnia Folk Arts in Mpls

Shopping Online
A MANO
Chiapas Bazaar

Watching
You probably know this but Orange Is the New Black season deuce comes out at 12:01 am on June 6. But you probably knew. You’re all connected and shit.

Listening
Chromeo’s lastest, White Woman, is out.

Reading
Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words (Yeah, I’m on a kick)
The Origin of Satan (we should all know, right?)
Bibliocraft

*Preparing annual Summer Reading List, to be shared on this site and then (probably) promptly disregarded.

Looking At

Some of the best work I saw at last weekend’s Art-a-Whirl in Northeast Mpls was hanging in a hallway at the California Building – the paintings of Ryan Peltier, an artist and illustrator from Minneapolis.

painting by Ryan Peltier

His work, painted on boards and framed in dark wood, has an otherworldly feel, like you’re looking through a porthole at action you can’t quite understand – it could either be an innocent gathering or happening or very sinister. Maybe it’s both – poised right at the moment when something is about to take a dark turn. It’s hard to tell, which is why you want to keep on studying it and forming a narrative.

There’s something about his style that reminds me a little bit of the work of cartoonist Charles Addams.

When I went online to find his site, I also discovered his awesome illustrations of people in addition to his paintings.

Thinking About
Kanashibari (Sleep Paralysis)

Why my dog likes to roll on top of dead animals with liquified organs that get into the scruff of her neck and are sprayed all over my face when she shakes herself off mid-bath.

What to do when I find out that people I like/respect sincerely believe in astronomy.

Why anyone would throw a “90s Dance Party” and not play a single hip hop song? Few people want to dance to Better Than Ezra, many people want to dance to “Daisy Duks” by Duice. Hey, fat man who hasn’t left his basement since 1997, I don’t make the rules. Listen to the people. I’ll even let you wear those jean shorts.

[Warning: only watch this video if you want this song in your head for the next three days.]

 

 

The Short Stack: May 16

Every Friday (every Friday I can manage it), I share  the pop culture, fashion, lit and randomness that crossed my radar during the week. Enjoy with a banana and a pale ale!

Foot in tennis shoe in grass
I call this “Foot Standing in Grass.”

I don’t even know why I’m writing this. They found Casey Kassem this week and that’s really all that matters. What else is there to say?

Well, I can start by asking if anyone else remembers Casey’s wife, Jean, appearing on episodes of Cheers as Loretta, wife of Carla’s ex, Nick.

You do? Yeah. Wow. Good times, right? Those were the days.

On the www
Have you discovered The Selby yet? I mean, it’s not new, just new to me. It’s interviews with arty/cool people in their arty/cool places. It’s alternately inspiring and annoying – you know, a lot of “so and so makes things out of yarn and moved to London…” without a mention of family money. But that’s a small thing – it’s so well-done and you can get a lot of ideas for your own life and environs from looking at it.

There are also three Selby books, one of which I’ve read – The Selby Is In Your Place – but the newest one about offbeat world fashion looks the most interesting. It’s got stuff like this:

Screen Shot 2014-05-15 at 3.37.03 PM

Which reminds me of one of my favorite photo books, (un)Fashion, compiled by one of my favorite illustrators Maira Kalman and her (late) husband, Tibor Kalman. It has stuff like this:

Screen Shot 2014-05-15 at 3.42.06 PM
Which now reminds me that Maira Kalman has a new book out, something she did with Daniel Handler, called Girls Standing on Lawns. I first heard about it on The New Yorker’s Culture Desk blog. It’s paintings of historic photos of girls standing on lawns. And short poem-caption thingies.

maira kalman illustration of woman on fence
From Girls Standing on Lawns by Daniel Handler and Maira Kalman

Which leads me to remember something else (this is a LOT of remembering this week). My whole life I have not known where to put my hands when I’m dancing. I mean, not totally-getting-down dancing but more that swagger thing you do at concerts when you’re packed in with other people but the music is good so you want to dance and you’re moving your shoulders and then you realize that your arms are just hanging there like hams strung up in the smokehouse.

So then I try to do something with my hands but everything short of clapping or a fist pump feels so artificial that all I’m thinking about is how lame my hands must look. Then I notice what other people are doing with their hands.

Then I realize that there are a lot of hands in the crowd. Like, if you made a pile of them (if you could safely do that without hurting anyone), it would be a big pile of hands. And also a lot of teeth and hair. A big cavernous room of teeth and hair.

And then, while I’m lost in my own head thinking that, the concert ends and it doesn’t matter WHAT I’m doing with my damn hands.

Doing
People, it’s Art-a-Whirl weekend in Northeast Minneapolis. So much to do, so much to do! This is the time of year when I decide that I’m interested in things like at-home bronze casting.

Indeed Brewing is having music (along with a kabillion other venues) but only they have the Black Eyed Snakes on Saturday night at 8 pm.

And when that’s over with, time to head over to the Video Mania/Art-A-Whirl Dance Party put on by the 90s Preservation Society at Spring Street Tavern. You don’t even have to dress up, you can be all normcore about it!

Dreaming
I’ve been looking for something BIG to do, something that will involve physical fitness and travel, and I think I may have found it in this bike trek through Vietnam. 2015? Anyone??

Retailing
If you’re looking for a cool/pretty case for your iphone, I think these choices from Rifle Paper Co. are some of the best I’ve seen, plus they are sturdy (you can choose from slim or inlay versions). I’ve got my eye on all the flowers, especially Spanish Rose.

Have a happy and stimulating weekend! If you’re in Mpls, see some art.

Murakami Used to Pour Drinks: A T-Shirt Tribute

Before Haruki Murakami was a novelist (I would argue one of the greatest novelists of our time) he owned a jazz club in Tokyo called “Peter-Cat” or “Peter-Cat Jazz“. It was named after his cat. Although the club is no longer there, Keith and I thought it would be fun to make a t-shirt for it. Here is our design:

Peter Cat Jazz t-shirt design

 

Working on getting some shirts printed up.

Harriet the Spy: Still Writing/Still Edgy at 61

In honor of Children’s Book Week and the 50th anniversary of Harriet the Spy (1964), by illustrator/author Louise Fitzhugh, I caught up with Harriet, prickly protagonist extraordinaire, to see what she made of herself in these intervening years.

Q&A with Harriet “The Spy” Welsch

Harriet the Spy at age 61Age: 61
Lives in: New York City, Upper East Side (not far from where she grew up on East Eighty-seventh Street
Education: The Dalton School, class of 1971, Wellesley College, class of 1976
Occupation: writer/novelist/noted satirist

So, for anyone who doesn’t know, you did become a writer. Tell us about your career.
Right after I graduated Wellesly in ’76 I wrote what ended up becoming a very famous article for Time Magazine called “Where Have All the Groovy People Gone?” It was my reaction to coming back to New York to live, after having grown up here in the 60s, and being hit by how absolutely ugly things had become.

So that single article launched your career?
The Time article got the attention of The New Yorker and its editor William Shawn, and he hired me as a staff writer. I might have been the youngest person to ever be hired as a staff writer. Me or John Updike, I’m not sure.

But I wrote for many magazines in the 80s and 90s. New York Magazine, Ms., Rolling Stone… I ended up doing some film criticism for The New York Times for a short time.

How did you get into writing novels?
Well, that was the goal from the beginning. I don’t think I’m any different from any other writer who has to make a living – you write for other people during the day and for yourself at night. Eventually, I was offered a book deal for Secrets, my first novel, and I took myself away to Montauk and finished the damn thing.

I find it delightful that you made good on your promise to publish a book titled Secrets.
Well, its subject matter is not at all what I thought it would be when I was 11. At age 11, I thought the best thing would be to tell other people’s secrets but it turned out that’s it’s much better to tell one’s own.  Secrets is a story about lesbian awakenings among a group of young women in Manhattan in the 1970s. Still in print.

And so it reflects your own experiences?
I hate to sound trite but “write what you know,” and all that… I had a lot of close friendships and relationships with women, really important women, that shaped my life. Some of them gay, some not.

Who are some of these women?
I became very close to Fran Lebowitz. We’re still close and talk on the phone every day and are considering writing a children’s book together. Renata Adler, obviously. I was friends with Ann Magnuson and that whole downtown crowd. Gloria Steinem and her circle.

Do you still write mean things about them in notebooks?
Always. I’m a modern day Cecil Beaton. There’s already a contract in place to publish my private journals posthumously, with all proceeds going to PFLAG. I think Diana Vreeland said it best when she said you need to give people what they don’t know they want.

When you were 11 you had no clue you were a lesbian?
I didn’t even understand that the Boy with the Purple Socks was gay, so to have that much introspection was just beyond me, I’m afraid.

Well, I have to ask: single or taken?
Very much taken with my long-time partner Vera Darkheart. She’s a sculptress and collage artist and my favorite person in the world.

What other stuff have you written?
I’ve written nine plays, all of which have been produced. The most famous is probably Christmas Dinner, an allegory of the Cold War as told by talking Christmas dinner foods. Five novels, countless magazine articles, essays, etc. One book of short stories. And my memoir, Diary of a Spy.

In that book you talk about how your father was a real spy…
Yes. He was a spy during the early part of the Cold War but then came home, somehow got into television, produced some very successful shows, married my mother and they had me blah, blah, blah… but it turned out he also had another family out on Long Island.

So you’re not really an only child?
No, I have two sisters and a brother. He was quite busy out on Long Island, as it turned out, and it absolutely wrecked my mother. She was a bit of a WASP, I’m not really sure that came through in Harriet the Spy, and she was devastated to find out that my father’s other family is Jewish. She literally died when she found out.

She died?
She dropped dead.

How old were you?
I was 28. One of my sisters showed up at my mother’s house and explained who she was and my mother didn’t believe her. So she called this other woman – Rena -  and they had a long talk and when my mother hung up the phone she had a major stroke and died.

How traumatizing. Is your dad still alive?
No, he died of lung failure when I was in my 40s. Our relationship was strained, to say the least.

Changing subjects, I notice that you dress pretty much the same.
I have no patience for shopping. I found this look as a kid and I just thought, “This works for me. It’s comfortable. I’m sticking with it.” I change brands sometimes but I remain true to jeans, a hoodie and sneakers. The big difference now is that my glasses are real – they have lenses in them.

People are going to want to know  – are you still friends with Sport and Janie?
Well, no, but I did run into Sport in maybe 1988? 1989? He went to the University of Michigan on a baseball scholarship but then didn’t…. you know, try to make it in the major league, or whatever it’s called, and became a CPA in Manhattan instead. Janie… I honestly have no idea. I hope she got into the sciences, but she was a troubled person, overall.

Let’s finish this off with some rapid-fire questions and answers.

Favorite New York restaurant?
La Grenouille, because of my mother.

Favorite TV show?
I’m re-watching all of Absolutely Fabulous.

Best place to shop?
When I do shop, I’m partial to the Housing Works Thrift on 2nd Avenue. Also like going to Foot Locker but not Lady Foot Locker.

Best book of 2014 so far?
I live mostly in the past. I haven’t read anything published this year.

Well, do you have any books on your bedside table?
Watchmen by Alan Moore, the plays of Rachel Crothers, the first Harry Potter book because everyone says I should read it but I keep falling asleep whenever I open it. I guess I’m not much for children’s literature.


About Louise Fitzhugh
Author photo of Louise FitzhughLouise Fitzhugh grew up in the South in a wealthy family but unhappy family (her parents divorced when she was two). She escaped to New York City, to become a painter, but made money as an illustrator. After starting in children’s lit with a collaboration with friend Sandra Scoppettone, she published her own first book, Harriet the Spy, in 1964. According to everything I’ve read, adults didn’t love it but critics and kids did. It was awarded a New York Times Outstanding Book Award in 1964. He works include published:

Louise died suddenly and at a young age – she suffered a brain aneurism at age 46. You can read more about her here (or there is this very insightful review of The Long Secret) and see if you can find shades of Harriet.

The Short Stack: May 2

Every Friday (every Friday I can manage it), I share  the pop culture, fashion, lit and randomness that crossed my radar during the week. Enjoy with a crusty bread and citrusy wine!

Let’s get this show on the road. Tomorrow, May 3, is my birthday, but I always start my birthday celebration the day before, at least in my mind.

So, happy birthday to me!

Happy Birthday cat and cupcake!

Reading
It’s been a rough warm-up to the birthday. It’s rained every day, often all day, for the past five days. It is dark, gloomy and wet. Luckily, I’ve had an enthralling book to take my mind off things. So far off things, in fact, that I realized tonight that all I’ve done since Sunday is read about flappers and go to work.

The book is Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation by Judith Mackrell and it tells the stories of Lady Diana Cooper, Nancy Cunard, Zelda Fitzgerald, Tamara de Lempicka, Tallulah Bankhead and Josephine Baker.

painting by Tamara de Lempicka
Detail from painting by Tamara de Lempicka

I’ve learned so much! I’m bursting with so much information that I’ll periodically turn to Keith while I’m reading and announce, “Flapper fact!” before entertaining him with a factoid I’ve just read. Among the interesting flapper facts:

  • There was a lot of undiagnosed and misdiagnosed mental illness in the 20s and 30s. I know that we lament our mental health system today, but it looks like Candyland when compared to a world where one either had a “nervous breakdown,” and went away for a little while, or had a complete breakdown and when away for years, possibly forever.
  • Josephine Baker slept with whoever she had to sleep with to get ahead and get out of the slums of St. Louis and I don’t think she wasted any time feeling bad about it and ended up having a sweet life in Paris (at least as far as I’ve read so far) and that’s refreshing, in a way. I’m not saying fun or cool or deserved but she didn’t waste a lot of time dwelling on things.
  • It was very common and very unsafe and very illegal to have an abortion.
  • Hysterectomies were performed often and liberally.
  • The secret to being successful at something, or at least getting better at it, is to simply do it and keep doing it. You might not find fame and fortune but you’ll probably live a life you can feel good about. And you may find a sliver of fame, a dab of fortune.
  • Cocaine was considered a god-send by many women. Ditto morphine.
  • Being thin was important in the 1920s. Lots of crash diets. So don’t think that just sprang up out of nowhere in the 90s or something.
  • Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald had a horrible, truly depressing marriage, most of which was brought about, in my opinion, because Zelda wasn’t able to be the artist she truly was without the shadow of Scott hanging over her (alcoholism and mental illness also played a role). When she sold stories to magazines they often insisted on having it be in both their names or just his alone! That would be enough for me to go berserk as well.

Anticipating
New Haruki Murakami novel gets released in the U.S. this August! Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Did you know that before Murakami was one of the greatest writers ever he owned a jazz club in Tokyo? It was called Peter Cat Jazz. I’m hoping to make my own Peter Cat Jazz t-shirt with my own design but poking around on the Murakami fan blog I found an image of a coaster from the club with featuring its real “branding”:

Peter Cat Jazz club coaster from Murakami's jazz club in Tokyo

Watching
Fargo, Mad Men, Orphan Black.

Just found out that Sharknado is streaming on Netflix.

If you haven’t seen Purple Rose of Cairo it’s funny and  entertaining and reminded me of Midnight in Paris (which has a great soundtrack, btw, with a song by Josephine Baker on it). Jeff Daniels is young and fresh-faced and Mia Farrow manages not to annoy (but, as Keith pointed out, she’s basically a stand-in for Woody Allen in the movie – since there was no part for him he seems to have made Mia do an impersonation of him the entire time which, oddly enough, didn’t bug me).

Falling Asleep
I can’t get enough sleep. When I’m awake I’m wishing I was asleep. When I’m asleep I pop awake and worry about not sleeping. Tonight, while I was walking the dog, I wondered, “What would it take to really, fully relax?” What would it take to get a full night’s sleep and have oodles of energy? I decided I didn’t have that answer but it’s something I need to figure out in the next year. I suspect that it might involve vitamin D and meditation. And a hot tub.

Strange Book People
I was excited to go to a book sale at my neighborhood library. I love libraries! I’m a Friend of the Library. Once, at this very sale, I came across the entire Doonesbury collection for Keith.

But the sale was overrun by book collectors or sellers, maybe both. The kind of people who run around the sale throwing books into boxes and putting annoying tags on the full boxes that say “Sold,” even though they intend to sit down on the floor and sort through them at their leisure, basically holding a bunch of books hostage so no one else can even look at them.

There were women with those little gadgets attached to their smart phones that allowed them to scan book bar codes and instantly see what the book was worth and they just worked their way down the rows, scanning furiously. There were pasty women in visors and pastel sweatshirts with rolling suitcases stuffed to the gills with books.

And none of them want you to look at anything, lest you get to some prize before they can pile it into their box.

It made me sad. It was not something I wanted to be part of, even if all the money went to the library. Humans always find a way to take something basic and fun and make it suck. It’s not possible to have a book sale to benefit the library without some weirdos turning it into a hoarding spree, piling their cartons high with books.

“Relax,” I wanted to say to the hunched man wearing a sweatband around his head as he humped from table to table. “You don’t need all the books. Be a decent person.”

I can just hear them, “This is how we make our living. It’s a sale – everything is fair game.”

To that I say, I don’t care. This aggression will not stand, man.

Thing I’m Missing This Weekend (That I’m Going to Next Year)
Modern Vintage Chicago

Stuff I Want for My B-day
Dynasty: Seasons 1 & 2 on DVD
Gold shoes
Skinny black pantsBooks, books and more books… but I don’t need all of the books. I’m not going to snatch one out of your hand, for instance.
Cloisonné earrings, preferably of tiny fans or something with flowers. Because you can still find great cloisonné right now, but get it while you can…  Like these babies!

vintage cloisonne earrings of fans with cranes

The Short Stack: April 18

Every Friday, I share  the pop culture, fashion, lit and random goodness that crossed my radar during the week. Enjoy with a glass of wine and some party peanuts!

Interior with Dog by Matisse
Interior with Dog, Henri Matisse

Reading
I did some thrift shopping this week and I stumbled across this:

 Trouble on the Dance Floor by Joey London

That’s right, a self-published memoir about years spent goin’ to da club. Oh, I’m sorry, I mean, “the COMPLETE Guide to Emergent Nightclub Dancing.” People, this is over 25 years of nightclub dancing wisdom in one comprehensive book! I’m talking tips, tricks, techniques, social strategies, outrageous tales, emotional alchemy, physiology, physics, theory of mind, self-preservation and dance archetypes all in one 336 page book.

I want to make the infomercial for this book. I want to sell this book on QVC.

I paid $3.99. It really should have been $1 but it’s like someone in the back room knew I was coming. “Oh, Rebecca’s coming today. Put this thing out for, like, three more dollars than it’s worth so she can have that moment of wrestling with herself before she totally puts it in her cart anyway.

Here’s the last line in the book, “I grabbed a light beer for the hair of the dog thing and jumped in the shower to make ready for heading to the club tonight.”

Epic.

I’m eager to read this densely-typed book that is surely 326 pages longer than it needs to be. Meanwhile, Moby Dick has been sitting on my shelf uncracked for over a year. What can I say,  I’m someone who craves new ideas about what it means to be human.

I will be tweeting the better lines from this book.

Also reading: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, one of my all-time favorite memoirs and  You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz, a novelist who is new to me and one of those writers I find and wonder why I haven’t heard of them before. This always gives me so much hope – so much good reading yet to be discovered!

Interneting
When You’re at the Crossroads of Should and Must – this is where I feel like I am lately. You? Money. Time. Security. Success. Being misunderstood. What are you afraid of?

Watching
I was so excited to watch An Unmarried Woman this week. It was just me and the dog (and the stupid cat, who was upstairs conducting his ongoing love affair with the bathroom faucet) and Netflix. All I knew going in was that the movie was from 1978, takes place in New York and that it got Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Actress. These are all good things!

But the movie is ridiculous to someone who lives in 2014. The world has changed in leaps and bounds and, for better or worse, I don’t know, we do not tolerate knee-high socks in our love scenes anymore. The sweat socks, worn by star Jill Clayburgh in every scene in which she got naked and with every outfit, needed to have their own credit. They actually acted more than she did.

Everyone was so ugly in this film. The hair… Listen, the world before good conditioners and  anti-frizz hair products was a confusing and disappointing place. And the clothing… I know that the Official Palette of the 1970s includes avocado, rust, tan and beige but X took this to the very limit, going from gray sack dress to muted sack shirt to a cape the color of a sad bowl of oatmeal. Did I mention that the socks are also beige, not white?

The therapist in the movie looked like Edie Beale’s uglier cousin visiting from England. And the three best friends… well, I can’t even go there. One of them wears a pantsuit to go ice skating at Rockefeller Center.

You can catch a glimpse of the socks in this trailer, at about 1:35 in:

You could make a drinking game out of taking a drink every time they say, “Make a pass,” in this movie. “Did he make a pass?” “Why, did he make a pass at you?” “Are you making a pass?” “That was a pass!”

I admit I never even found out, in the end, who made the last successful pass because I pulled the plug.

Better ways to spend your viewing time: Broad City, if you, like me, don’t have cable and can just now get around to watching it, and FX’s Fargo, which I was skeptical about but ended up enjoying (first episode, anyway). Mad Men… oh, Peggy.

Doing
Detroit at the Jungle Theater
Antique show at the State Fairgrounds (although odd weekend to have it  – no show on Sunday because Jesus)
Matisse at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Chromeo at First Ave on May 6

I hope that you, like me, have a long weekend in which to put your feet up or set them on some bike pedals or get them out on the dance floor because “deep inside of you there is a great club dancer waiting to emerge.”

Out & About: Stepping Into the (Bathroom) Void at Macy’s

Destination: Women’s Bathrooms, Floors 4 & 12, downtown Minneapolis Macy’s

Hey ladies! Have you ever thought it would be exciting to get on a time machine, travel back to the 1920s and pee? You can do that at Macy’s in downtown Minneapolis.

OK, so there’s no time machine involved. All you have to do is step out of the intimates collection located on the 4th floor and through the portal. Here’s the entrance:

entrance to women's bathroom on 4th floor of macy's downtown minneapolis And you find yourself here:

Art deco bathroom - sink area - in Macy's downtown Minneapolis Don’t worry, the toilets are free! And in this ghostly restroom, there’s never a line!

Row of stalls in 4th floor bathroom Free toilet sign in downtown Minneapolis Macy's 4th floor bathroom. There are, however, lots of women who want to talk to you. The first time I ended up here, completely by happenstance,  there was a woman showing two of her friends the bathroom and I joined their de facto tour group to talk about the amazing tiles, original fixtures and color scheme. I’m so glad this was never renovated.

original prairie school tile over bathroom sink

How many bathrooms do you go into today where you get to enjoy beautiful tiles like these? They don’t have these at Chili’s!

close-up of lily pad tile installed over sink

flower tile over sink

sinks and tiles

The second time I was in the bathroom, I came to take photos and waited for it to be empty. Just as I was beginning to snap pictures, a woman dashed in and locked herself in a stall. When she came out of her stall into the main room, our conversation went like this:

Chatty Woman: I’m so glad I made it in here! Man, there is no place to set your stuff down though. I was running up here, looking for the bathroom, about to pee my pants and this sales clerk was like, “I know your pain! I was just like you when I was pregnant!”

Me: She did not say that! Chatty: Yes, she did!

Much squealing on both our parts at the rudeness and audacity of this woman. Then Chatty Woman pulled up her (tiny) t-shirt to show me her (bulging) stomach.

Chatty: I mean, I know I gotta do something about this but… that’s still rude, right?

Me: I think the rule is that even if someone is pregnant, you don’t bring it up if they’re in the in-between stage where they might be pregnant or might be putting on weight.

Chatty: Yeah, she shouldn’t have said anything. Oh, I just bought this new shirt and I’m gonna put it on and it will cover more of my stomach.

This changing of the shirt took place right in the sink area. Once she was in her bra, she noticed my camera.

Chatty: Hey, you’re not going to take my picture are you?

She struck a pose.

Me: Um, no. Absolutely not. I’m trying to document this bathroom.

Chatty: I didn’t even notice this bathroom. It’s cool. Here’s why I’m so fat: my man keeps on cooking for me! On Sunday we had baked potatoes, steak and salad. Then the next night he makes vegetable fried rice with rib tips!

She put her new sweater on, which was approximately the size of her old shirt and did not cover all of her belly.

Chatty: Damn! I thought this would be bigger. I guess it’s OK. I did have five babies. I’m just not pregnant right now.

She proceeded to tell me that when she was young and in love she had five babies with her man and now she wonders what she was thinking. She was caught up in a love cloud. She’s calculating who will die first. Her kids are almost all grown up except for the 12-year-old, who wears clothing that is too small. Older men ogle her and older men are disgusting.

In the middle of this conversation, it occurred to me that maybe I really had slipped into a vortex and perhaps this woman was not real. Was I imagining her? Was this like the bathroom scene in The Shining between Jack and Grady! Red rum?

Me: Have you ever seen the movie The Shining?

Chatty: Yeah. Why? Is someone going to bust in here and chase us around with an ax?

Eventually, I got Chatty to leave the bathroom so I could take more photos. I didn’t feel right taking them with her in there. But without her the bathroom did seem more gloomy and ominous. It doesn’t have the best lighting and there isn’t anyplace to set your stuff. And I still haven’t been able to figure out this sign, posted on the wall outside the main bathroom. Holly Bell? Red rum?

Sign outside bathroom asking patrons to report unsatisfactory conditions by calling "Holly Bell." So I moved on up to the women’s bathroom on the 12th floor (but not before stopping off to buy some bras. One day sale)!

The 12th floor is home to the Oak Grill, the original restaurant from when Macy’s was Dayton’s. Opened in 1947, it was first a club for men only – women had the space next door for their fluffy luncheons and fashion shows and, you know, all that dumb junk women used to do. If you go past the Oak Grill, you’ll see a small exhibit about the history of the building and it’s progression from Dayton’s to Macy’s and blah, blah, blah. I didn’t read a word of it. I was looking for the bathroom.

This bathroom is much more of a lounge, although it’s been updated. It has extremely good lighting. If you needed to get a sliver out of your finger, you could do so here without a magnifying class. There is so much light that I’m not sure anyone could work up the gumption to to anything tawdry in this bathroom.The updates however, are a bit sad feeling, sort of Vegas meets airport lounge meets clinic.

lounge in womans bathroom 12th floor downtown Macys

However, it does have Room of Mirrors. You can tell that Room of Mirrors used to be part of something really special, before the renovations. At least they left the mirrors , so you can be made dizzy while you wash your hands and see 30 more of you washing their hands and so on and so forth…

room of mirrors in 12th floor bathroom in downtown Macy's

There was a group of women here, too, having a deep conversation when I first came in (to pee – I’d talked to Chatty down on 4 for so long that I had to go again) but by the time I was washing my hands and wondering how I was going to explain my camera, they kindly explained to me that they had to leave because the mirrors were giving one of them a headache. “It’s so crazy standing here,” one of them said.

You should try a few floors down, I thought. And then I went all Vivian Maier on the place:

Taking a photo in front of mirrors

 

Standing in front of mirror taking picture

If you go: Be one of the Ladies Who Lunch and eat at the Oak Grill or The Skyroom, both on 12th floor. Oak Grill is sometimes open for dinner until 7 pm; Skyroom is lunch only. They have a salad bar and a wall of windows. No rib tips though.

Out & About: Wandering the Aisles at Whole Foods

There’s something about Whole Foods that completely throws me off my game. It confounds me like no other grocery store, although I’m not convinced it even is a grocery store. More like an organic fever dream.

Whole Foods sign for organic lemons 89 cents each

I go inside and am immediately confronted by the bakery. Even though I don’t want baked goods (lie) I take the tour, walking around the woman who is assembling an entire muffin from chopped-up samples. I spend a long time studying a loaf of “authentic French brioche,” imagining all the possibilities.

I look at all the fruit and vegetables, do a drive-by of the salad bar and wind up standing in the bulk foods section contemplating raw almonds. I think, “Raw almonds are so good for you. Even though they taste like wooden nothingness it’s good nothingness, the kind of nothingness a body needs.”

I talk to a worker in the vitamins/supplements/body products aisle. Wearing a t-shirt made from hemp that’s trimmed in jute, she stocks tiny bottles of essence of lavender while telling me about the joys of nutritional yeast. “I love to sprinkle it on popcorn!” she says. She is young – maybe 22 – beautiful and fresh-faced. The kind of woman who will very soon drop everything to help dig water wells in sub-Saharan Africa. When I was 22, I survived on peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches and vodka tonics and thought I was hot shit because I bought the book Random Acts of Kindness at a book sale at the student union.

Of course I agree with everything this vixen apothecary is saying. In fact, I tell her I’ll look into the yeast even though this is an untruth. I won’t ever buy the yeast. It seems like an extravagant expenditure, like the time I bought flax to sprinkle on food and it ended up at the back of the cupboard for four years. I just wish I was the person who got excited about yeast.

I move on. A woman hands out samples of yogurt in little cups that look like medical waste. I never try any of the samples. I feel weird about it, as if trying a sample makes me seem desperate. “Yes, I would love to try a quarter of a flax-sesame seed flatbread cracker! My life is boring!”

I put food into my basket. Chunks of pineapple. Vegetarian chili. I end up in front of the case that holds sandwiches.

Confession: I have a horrible, guilt-inducing relationship with the cranberry tuna wrap sandwich at Whole Foods. Here is my history with this sandwich:

Discover sandwich. Eat it with some blue corn tortilla chips. It is amazing.
Eat it again.
Eat it again.
Repeat for 70 more days, although not consecutively.
Eat it again.
Feel horrible, crushing guilt after eating this sandwich for 72nd time.
Stay away from sandwich for weeks.
Eat it again.
Go to look for sandwich and find out they didn’t make it that day. Deflated. Elated. Deflated. Eat something else – marinated tofu, spinach with sesame dressing, thinking I’ll feel virtuous. I feel sad, like I missed out on something.
Check to see if they have sandwich. They do! Eat it again.
Have sandwich in hand, ready to buy, and remember that I don’t eat chicken, pork or beef. Remember that I saw tuna on TV in their whole state, as fish, not chopped up into bits. No animal deserves to end its life in a mayo-based salad.
Put the sandwich back and walk away.

“I have a very strange relationship with that sandwich,” I think. “Is this what it’s like when someone is trying to decide whether or not to buy heroin just one more time?”

The olive bar at Whole Foods

I turn to the salad bar. I pile cubes of marinated tofu into a cardboard container and spend too much time staring at the macaroni and cheese. There are beets. There is kale. There is a vat of potatoes that is crusted-over on top. I’m circulating around with the other lunch shoppers, all of us wearing knit hats that make us look eccentric and entitled, which we are.  There should be more for us here. In the middle of all this abundance, we’re not sure what we want to eat but we’re sure we shouldn’t have to search for it. It should be waiting for us on a (recyclable) tray.

I buy a salad and sparkling water in the express lane. I’ve never had a rude cashier at Whole Foods. This is something they get right – instilling charm and upbeat attitudes in their workers even in the face of women in berets who can afford cheese that is $27 a pound. They never berate me for not remembering to bring  my own bag. On Valentine’s Day, the cashier asked if I had plans but not in a creepy way. It felt very que sera, sera to me.

Also, they have good magazines. Except this one, which, if you read it, turns you into a pretentious asshole:

Clean Eating magazine

I take the salad and water to the little café area to sit with the other weirdos who want to use the tables and chairs for awhile before moving on to the next exhausting aspect of our days. Some college students talk about their impending trip to India. Someone else talks about recycling. I’m not making this up. Most of us talk about nothing because we’re alone, wringing the last bits of freedom out of our lunch hours.

Eating in their café feels like eating in a preschool that serves organic snacks and has only wooden and cloth toys. I keep looking around, waiting for a woman with a tambourine to pop out to lead us in a rendition of “This Land Is Your Land.”

I finish eating and feel dissatisfied. I think about the tuna again. “No, that’s over now. And not a moment too soon.”

I dart back inside and take a muffin sample. What the hell.

 

The Short Stack: April 4

Every Friday, I share  the pop culture, fashion, lit and random goodness that crossed my radar during the week. Enjoy along with a cup of tea and tiny cookies!

yes sail me hot fever sky
April is National Poetry month. Here’s mine. Want to read real poems? Check out http://april-is.tumblr.com/

A week ago, I went to one of my formerly-favorite “stuff shops.” It used to be an antique/vintage shop where a person could buy a cheap sparkly top from the 70s or a band leader hat and is now a place where ladies of a certain age can get great deals on second-hand Chico’s garments. Mixed in between all the sweater jackets and jacket sweaters there are still semi-antiques to browse.

It all adds up to a strange combination and not something of which I approve. Nevertheless, I did become obsessed, for a few days, with a sequined cardigan, not Chico’s, with suns and moons on it, marked $40.

I decided I would pay $40 if the moons and stars were spaced further apart on the cloth. Yes, that’s how finely I slice things.

But while I was deciding this (yes, this anecdote has a point), I was wandering around the store picking up various objects and setting them back down while being trailed by one of several older ladies who clerk the store to make sure I didn’t stuff any overpriced sequin cardigans into my purse.

In a back corner, I found a brass skull of a horned animal. It was shaped like a deer skull but the horns were wide and magnificent. I’d never seen anything like it in brass designed just to sit on a table. It was the best of the zeitgeist: animal skulls, brass, horns, etc. It was $15.

I set it back down and walked away, thinking about that stupid cardigan. Over the weekend I suddenly realized that the skull was the coolest thing in the world. I decided to return to the shop to buy it on Monday.

How does this story end?

Yes, with me skull-less after confirming that it was sold the day before. I went back out to my car to eat a terrible tofu sandwich and sulk. Ultimately, I have to say that it’s a lesson: if there are any brass skulls sitting right in front of you at this moment, grab them. Don’t hesitate. This could be something you want to have just because you like it, or it could be something you’ve wanted to try for years but are afraid to do.

Beware the lesson of the brass skull.

Watching
The documentary Finding Vivian Maier opens in the Twin Cities on April 18 at the Edina Cinema. Not familiar with street photographer Maier? Catch up!

Re-watching season 6 of Mad Men in anticipation of the season 7 premiere on April 13.  If you, like me, can’t wait a week for more Jon Hamm, check out this video of his appearance on USA’s dating game show “The Big Date” in 1996 (brought to my attention by Keith Pille). See, we were all awkward and dorky and had weird hair!

And as a thank you to Keith, I offer up this:

Nostalgia
The last time I got my hair cut my stylist said to me, “I want to try some mousse in your hair,” and I shuddered. I had some rough years in the 1980s when I was definitely into mousse abuse – I would take big handfuls of the stuff and mousse up the sides of my hair that that they dried into crunchy wings while the back of my hair went down. And I had bangs. It was a horrible mess. I think this is what I was striving for:

A 1980s babe in a white leotard, sunglasses and moussed hair.
But believe me when I say it was far, far away from reality. For one thing, it would never have occurred to me to wear a red belt with a white leotard. For another, I’ve never been the kind of gal for whom a white leotard was an option.

Reading
Chocolates for Breakfast by Pamela Moore, originally published in 1956.

Eat Mangoes Naked by SARK (got it at a thrift store for $2.50, may have overpaid by $2). I get a kick out of SARK’s very 1990s self-help outlook. We can be our own dance partner! This book came out in 2001 but I started eating the Inspiration Sandwich long ago and I’m pleased to see that she’s stuck with the same graphic design and color scheme.

eat mangoes naked by Sark
Coveting
I want to go to The End.
Vintage turquoise on Gypsy Hunter.
Painted sneakers on etsy.
Hate to break it to you, but you’re going to need a pair of metallic gold sandals this summer. Platforms? Yeah, even better.

Listening
“Smooth Sailing” by Queens of the Stone Age
“Hundreds of Ways” by Conor Oberst
“Rattlesnake” by St. Vincent

The Short Stack: March 28

Every Friday, I share  the pop culture, fashion, lit and random blips that crossed my radar during the week. Enjoy along with some crackers and cheese and a beverage!

Don't worry be happy in Jamaica

It’s been quite some time since we had a good, inspirational saying we could embrace as a nation, like “Don’t worry, be happy!” or “Life’s a beach!” or “You go, girl!”  Or even “TGIF!” said without irony but with a smile and genuine enthusiasm for the green light to start drinking beer on a Friday afternoon.

Whenever I hear “TGIF!,” I imagine a bunch of co-workers at a 1980s corporation that sells… dot matrix printers… or maybe the paper for dot matrix printers?… high-fiving each other and heading over to the Fuddruckers or Bennigan’s or… TGI Friday’s that’s just down the interstate from their office building and getting drinks that are served in enormous, fun chalices that can be purchased to take home, and feasting on potato skins with a side of ranch dressing. Everything came with a side of ranch.

One of the women in the group is named Debbie and one is Brandy and there’s a guy named Brad. Always a guy named Brad. Their wants are simple and their needs are met because they work at the corporation and one of them, probably Brad, got the Saab convertible he wanted.

Good times.

Looking At
So, it might be hard to explain exactly how and why I ended up on the blog Face Detective. OK, it had to do with Googling the director Michael Cimino, who directed the 1980s flop Heaven’s Gate, only to find out that he no longer looks anything like his 1970s/80s self and now more closely resembles Yoko Ono. Or Sir Paul McCartney.

Example:

Michael Cimino then and now

Anyway, what is a “Face Detective?” Apparently: “One who possesses a particular knack for discovering unlikely “twins” and various other breeds of look-alike both celebrity and mortal.”

First I thought, “Who can devote an entire blog to this pursuit?” but then I kept reading and reading and now, well, it’s on regular rotation. Who knew this detecting could be so addicting…

Reading
Final Cut by Steven Bach, which is an account of the making of the movie Heaven’s Gate, directed by Michael Cimino, thus the Googling. Bach was senior vice-president and head of worldwide productions for United Artists when Heaven’s Gate was made in the late 1970s (it was such a bloated flop that it brought down the entire studio). So far, it’s a book for people who really, really like the details about production and executive life, but I’m hoping that it’s the old “dope-a-rope” tactic Muhammed Ali used with George Foreman during the Rumble in the Jungle – hang back, let the reader get tired, then come out swinging with full force.

Bach went on to be a professor, lecturer and writer of biographies, including one about Leni Riefenstahl that seems to be a must-read.

Are you that special kind of person who has always promised yourself that one day you will conquer Moby Dick? This summer there’s a Twin Cities-based group of Twitterers leading that charge and all doing it together in a read-along. Doesn’t matter where you are, you can join in by following the hashtag #TCMoby. Reading starts May 1. If you want to read more, check out the details on Beth Babbles About Books.

Wearing
I got these vintage house slippers, never worn! They have hard-soled bottoms, so that’s cool. I’m going to rock mine with jeans.

Freja the dog posing with vintage 1960s gold house slippers

Watching
The Grand Budapest Hotel – twice. I admit to never being a huge Wes Anderson fan but this movie won me over. Everything is seamless, it’s funny, the actors are great. The story is fantastic. It’s a joy to look at. It’s like it’s 1944 – you can go to a movie and forget all your troubles, if only for a little while. Then you can go home and add some tin foil to your tin foil ball. (That’s a rationing joke) Go see it.

Possibly-Maybe-Doing
The Mpls/St. Paul International Film Fest gets underway next week, running from April 3-19. I used to make a point of getting the guide to all the films, reading through it pen-in-hand in order to circle the ones I wanted to see. This was more an exercise in being obsessive than because I’m a rabid fan. The most movies I ever saw during one fest was two. Here’s my new approach: look at the documentaries. Which I did today and here are my top three recommendations:
Cavedigger
We Don’t Wanna Make You Dance
Wicker Kittens

Done and done. I always wonder about the fest parties, too. I wish they would have a hot tub party or a roller skating party. Anything other than standing around with a drink in your hand. That being said, check out the photo on the top of this page for the closing night party. One blond woman is giving the bartender a stare that says, “Where’s my frickin’ drink?!” and the other is yammering away to her date/husband, saying something like, “You know you bid too low on that lake house. We’ll never get it!”

I think closing night party should be at TGI Fridays. Chalices of frozen daiquiris for all!

P.S. Mad Men is back April 13!

Cover of Time Magazine featuring Mad Men

P.S.S. Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche
“Real Men do not relate to anything. They do not have meaningful dialogues…. They don’t go for it, catch rays, crash, party, boogie, get down, or kick out the jams.” Besides quiche, they don’t eat bean curd, tofu, pâté or yogurt; they don’t drink light beer. In clothes, they shun “pith helmets, yachting caps, bikini underwear, Sansabelt slacks, gold chains…or anything with more than three zippers.”

P.S.S.S. Dogs in Cars

The Short Stack: March 21

Every Friday, I share  the pop culture, fashion, lit and random blips that crossed my radar during the week. Enjoy! Or don’t. Your choice.

It’s spring! Hooray!

Can I put my puffy coat away now? Actually, let me rephrase that: can I burn my puffy coat now? This thing… it’s ripped, it’s got salt on it, it’s greasy in spots. Basically, it looks less like a coat and more like a blanket that a bear used to hibernate on all winter. I am beyond caring. I no longer even do spot cleaning like I did in January. I just let it all hang out. I think the entire things smells. I can’t put my body into it one more time. Here’s something else I’m not sure I can put my body into: denim overall shorts

I’ve got bad news: overalls are back. It was only a matter of time, right? I’ve noticed some definite overalls creep: first on ASOS, then on Madewell and, of course, Urban Outfitters.

[P.S. If someone I knew showed up wearing this “Chambray Machinist Jumpsuit” I would instantly and forever lose respect for them UNLESS they explained that they were, in fact, in the business of fixing cars and/or small motors and would hook me up for free the next time I had trouble with my washing machine.]

This is where it’s all been heading, people. First it was rompers, which you could ignore if you were no longer a baby or a very insecure 18-year-old girl who also wears fedoras. Then it was the return of the jumpsuit, which, whatever, if you didn’t live in Flatbush paying attention was optional. But I’ve got a bad feeling about the denim overall. This is the kind of shit Midwesterners will embrace, you know, because there’s a comfort level associated with it, like with flip flops. So… pack up those skinny jeans and find a piece of straw to put between your teeth as you rock your farm-chic this summer.

Look, I had my overalls phase, back in college. Except I kept it super-duper real by going and getting a pair of used overalls that were probably designed for a 300-pound man. Yeah, I have no idea. It looked like I was hauling a 10-lb. sack of potatoes in my ass, which… huh… sort of runs counter to what most 19-year-olds wanted their ass to look like when they’re at a party trying to impress some guys by dancing around like a fool to Ace of Base.

“I did it myyyyyyyy way!”

This leads me to another observation: I believe humans might have run out of things to do with denim. Maybe I’m being short-sighted here. I’m like the person who said TV would never overtake radio, the Internet wouldn’t last, who cares about Xcel spreadsheets… But I’ve got a feeling that if we’re on the second round of acid washing this cloth, we’ve come to the end of the line.

Here’s what I’m going to do: bring back the baggy jean. The kind Denise wore on The Cosby Show, belted at the waist so she got that paper bag effect. Yeah. I’m all about that.

Other Fashion Stuffs
Recently I discovered this company called Black Milk Clothing. They have a Game of Thrones clothing line, complete with models wearing Daenerys Targaryen-inspired wigs. I have to say it’s a bit disappointing – no leather outfits at all but an inexplicable ninja hooded catsuit, which no character has ever worn on any episode. Setting that aside, I’m not sure what to make of this (not Game of Thrones-inspired) swimming suit:

woman wearing a dem guts swimming suit OK, why the boots? Don’t feel like getting cigarette butts caught between your toes when you walk across the sand at the beach?

This is called “dem guts” swimming suit. I would actually pay a lot of money ($10) to see a suburban mom wear this to the water park/zero depth wading pool and stand around talking to other moms. With the boots. Maybe also smoking a Swisher Sweet.

I know, I know, so not their demographic. They actually have some other cute ones, if you are into the look and love R2D2. I’m pretty sure Land’s End is rushing to produce some knock-offs. Their body innards suit is going to depict the lungs of a 30-year smoker, for that edgier look Land’s End is known for.

Watching
I saw the Veronica Mars movie. Is that what it’s called –  Veronica Mars Movie? If it’s not, it should be, because everyone calls it that. It was like a super special, extra-long episode. I thought the plot was a wee bit weak but it was great to see the old gang. The best part was just feeling wrapped up in nostalgia for belly shirts and that Dandy Warhols song.

Next I want to see the Budapest movie. And I would love to see this doc about Elaine Stritch. Trust me, that outfit is exactly what I’m wearing to work today.

Bugging
Email subject lines suddenly irritate me. How about people who send you an email and put whatever they want to ask you or tell you as the subject line:

subject: i will be at the meeting tomorrow, 10:30 am, will you be at the meeting

subject: what do you think of this blue shirt with the stripes on it i like it

subject: can we decide what to do about this problem with the print job that we’re waiting on please?

I think retailers are running out of subject lines to sell their crap. Here are some I got this week:

subject: 25% off new-in hotness + so much swimwear
(I don’t even know what this means)

subject: The Structured Pouch Is Here
(hot damn!) (P.S. can a “pouch” be structured? A pouch is unstructured and… pouchy by nature, isn’t it? If I say you have a pouch, it means you have a saggy tummy, not an angular, well-structured one)

subject: Pedi time! Sandals starting at $49.95
(it’s snowing out right now so please shut up)

Listening
I’ve been thinking a lot about California and Hollywood lately, so I put together a California song playlist. A few of the songs have no specific connection to do California, I just wanted them in the mix because, in my mind, it’s what I would listen to while cruising down a California highway with no traffic.  I thought I’d share it here. Got a CA song for me to add? No Eagles, please!

California Dreamin’ – The Mamas & The Papas (duh)
Say Good-bye to Hollywood – Billy Joel
Love Will Keep Us Together – Captain & Tennille (seems so 1970s L.A. to me)
California Girls – David Lee Roth
Hooray for Hollywood – Nancy Sinatra
Walking in L.A. – Missing Persons
Higher Ground – Red Hot Chili Peppers (because I can’t stand Californication)
Pretty in Pink – The Psychedelic Furs
We Used to Be Friends – The Dandy Warhols
Hollywood – Madonna
Do You Know the Way to San Jose – Dionne Warwick
Free Fallin’ – Tom Petty
Los Angeles – X
Hollywood Freaks – Beck
The Only Place – Best Coast
Los Angeles – Frank Black
In California – Neko Case
California Man – Cheap Trick
California Love – Tupac Shakur (the only American export the Russians need/love/want/give a damn about)
Somewhere Over the Rainbow – Judy Garland

Reading
Little Failure

Tired. Bye y’all.

tupac shakur

The Short Stack: March 7

My 80s Barbies and Ken put their heads together

Old Stuff + My Love of It
Yep, I had the old Barbies out last week. I wanted to see if there were any good disco dresses in their box (coffin?) for spring fashion inspiration but I didn’t find much. Who knows where those hot dresses ended up? I suspect my sister’s basement… that’s where all the good stuff is.

I have all my old Barbies. I just love old stuff. I can’t walk into a thrift store or antiques store and walk out empty handed. If they clean a place up and try to make it more presentable, I no longer like it. This is why I don’t shop at Goodwill – they made it feel like a chain store with bright lighting and clothes that are at most five years old. Yick.

My favorite place in the Twin Cities to browse for stuff in all shapes and forms is the Mall of St. Paul. Stepping in there is like going to an antique mall in a smaller town – there isn’t any pretension and no hipsters (well, a minimum of hipsters) are wandering around looking for jackalopes or whatever else they saw encased in a bell jar on Design Sponge. I’ve been going there long enough now that I know exactly what booths to hit and can case their two floors in less than an hour over lunch.

Recently, they cleaned up their basement. I would be against this except that some booths down there were so crowded and forlorn, and the ceiling so low, that it felt like standing in a hoarders crawl space. Now, entire sections of it are spiffed up with new vendors who have less stuff but very well-curated – notably Rank & File (they have an etsy shop) and Rehomed Retro, who also have an eBay store, although the stuff they have in The Mall is better.

Maybe this is the year I reconsider eBay. I got so excited in 2002 when I won a t-shirt with a photo of President Jimmy Carter’s brother, Billy, on it touting his “Billy Beer.” I thought I was hot shit.

[That t-shirt will be coming out this spring. I learned the danger of storing things too long in a basement when I discovered, to my horror, that my pets.com t-shirt from 2000 (with the dog hand puppet on it – remember him?) got stained while lying in a plastic tub in my basement. I have to get out the bleach to try to save it.]

Anyway, I learned an eBay pro-tip this week on The Look Book at NY Mag that has me fired up. I’m the kind of crazy lady who is just one moto jacket away from spending  A LOT of time creating and saving searches on eBay.

On my last trip to The Mall I got a very homemade braided leather and stone necklace, a skirt with giraffes on it for spring and two coffee mugs, one of which is this:

sun your buns coffee mug

Giraffe print on skirt:

Print of giraffes on a summer skirt

And now, after nattering on for too long about stuff, the rest of The Stack:

Watching
On Sunday, FOX starts broadcasting the new Cosmos hosted by Neil Degrasse Tyson. It’s billed as an epic journey through time and space. Yeah, I could do that! There was just a phenomenal profile of Tyson in The New Yorker and he’s speaking in Minneapolis on May 8 at Beth El Synagogue. Do you follow him on Twitter? You should. If he ran for President, I would vote for him.

Wearing
A slideshow of women in biker jackets will convince you that you need a biker jacket.

If you need vintage-y clothes to wear and don’t mind it already being curated, Rewind is having their Get Pretty sale today through Sunday. They have two locations in Minneapolis – in Northeast and on Lyndale in South Minneapolis. If I go, I’m on the hunt for a sweater coat.

Books
You can’t read it yet, but if you’re a Hollywood Babylon fan (God, I hope you are!) then keep your eye on Scandals of Classic Hollywood book coming out in September. I’m not sure if I can trust it or not – no one does scandal like Kenneth Anger (and Dominick Dunne) but Ken is super old (and Dominick is dead), so we need to get our scandal re-hashes anywhere we can.

Doing
Even though I’m a nonbeliever, the idea of Lent is rather appealing this year. You know, the whole 40 days and 40 nights thing. I think people rather enjoy deprivation, as long as they know it’s not permanent. It’s just enough time to feel transformative. Forty days – that’s how long I need to get my shit together. Lent started on Wednesday and I have yet to decide my course of action, but I say better late than never.

Travel
The Modern Vintage Chicago show, which is associated with the ongoing Randolph Street Market but separate, is the weekend of May 2-4, 2014. That’s my birthday weekend. This show, which happens twice a year, it touted as the “Barney’s  of vintage.” I’m just saying.

The Short Stack: February 28

Every Friday, I share  the pop culture, fashion, lit and random blips that crossed my radar during the week. Enjoy! Or don’t. Your choice.

Listen, sometimes you have a week and sometimes the week has you. I’m sick! Sick, I tell you! It started on Monday with Mysterious Scratchy Throat and by Tuesday night I was in full-on, low-quality Mumble Sleep.

Whenever I’m sick, even with a head cold, I talk and make a lot of noise while trying to fall asleep, which I refer to as Mumble Sleep. I know, you don’t care. Who does? Not the people of Ukraine, where a lot of serious shit is going down.

This is my way of saying: I don’t have much to share this week. I’m dull. A catatonic sick woman staring at the wallpaper. Except…

There is the this amazing book: Life After Life by Kate Atkinson.

book cover of life after life by kate atkinson

I got this book on Monday-ish, started it maybe Tuesday-ish and am almost through it on Friday-ish (about 500 pages but some short sections). I have not read a novel this good in a very long time.

This book has gotten a lot of attention, as it should have, BUT I’m usually not paying attention to that kind of stuff.  I tend to think that books causing a sensation and being made into movies are either NPR-y, lit fiction, twee, I-live-in-a-swamp or I-discovered-a-dead-body-and-my-marriage-is-falling-apart or poorly written sci-fi or young-adult-sensation books.

[Does anyone else question the phrase “young adult?” Really? I never talk to a 16-year-old and think, “Why, you’re a young adult, aren’t you!”]

Which this book is not.

This makes me recall the fact that I often read novels I cherish while ill. Jane Eyre. Catcher in the Rye. I remember reading Donna Tartt’s The Secret History in college during a terrible bout of flu, huddled under my blanket in my bed in the dorm room, next to the window that didn’t prevent any of the cold air outside from rushing in. And I had a roommate. How awful is that? I’m in my death throes in a tiny space and there is still someone else to be conscious of. Someone who wants to watch Friends and try on 30 different shirts for the bar, wondering if she should go conservative or all-out boob shirt. Or body suit.

Full disclosure: I went to college in The Age of the Bodysuit and I owned, oh, maybe eight of them in different styles, colors and sleeve length. Yes, they were a pain to snap and unsnap when one had to pee but I suffered for fashion.

Anyway… what I’m saying is that Life After Life is worth dropping everything for, or being sick for. It’s the kind of book where, if I have five spare minutes I’m opening it up to get a little bit more of the story and I’m already dreading reaching the end. Be forewarned, this isn’t some mamby-pamby (is that a phrase?) “nice” novel about a woman who can’t decide what man to marry. Some of this is so hard to read that you wince. But it’s incredibly good.

So read the damn thing and I’ll work on not having dead eyes anymore or crust  forming on my eyelashes or terrible cold breath and be back next week with more pop culture and randomness than you can handle.

Don’t believe me? You want to hear about this, don’t you?

sun your buns coffee mug

Notice how I didn’t even tell you what the book is about? That’s not my job. That’s what Amazon is for, or Google. Or be an adventuresome person and just GET IT and start reading!

The Short Stack, February 21

Every Friday, I share  the pop culture, fashion, lit and random blips that crossed my radar during the week. Enjoy! Or don’t. Your choice.

Well, well, well, hipsters… look what mainstream culture has done to your precious  totem.

macys long sleve shirt with bikes on it

That’s right. It’s a knit top with bikes all over it, sold at Macy’s. Next month, they’re coming out with a penny farthing version for soccer moms to wear during the Susan G. Komen 3-Day this summer. I’m sure the men’s department is selling suspenders to wear with Calvin Klein boxer briefs.

Shoes
I needed some shoes this week. In fact, I would categorize it as a bit of a shoe emergency. So I went to the one place I thought I’d be in greatest shoe saturation – Mall of America. However, I forgot to calculate in the retail industry’s capriciousness. Although the Midwest has been locked in sub-zero temperatures tempered only by days of snow storms, retailers have decided it’s time to move on. That’s right, time to stick your frozen feet into some open-toed booties or platform sandals with wool socks.

Even DSW, which has the word “warehouse” in its name, was stripped of most weather-appropriate shoes, devoting entire rows to glorified flip flops. One row was stripped bare, as if DSW had thrown up its hands in disgust. “We will stock nothing! We will sell air! You can have Fit Flops or nothing!”

Look, I know what you’re thinking. The stores are selling for spring break (what fashion snobs call “resort season.”) Spring break? Entire stores are making their inventory choices based on the fact that a few of us might go to Orlando for a couple of days? Meanwhile, if you need something to put on your feet while you go to your job, that thing that sort of helps fuel the economy… too bad?

But, like that wise character played by Morgan Freeman in that one movie says, “Get busy living or get busy dying,” so I took to the Internet. Hooray! Lots of closed-toed shoes there. But also a lot of shoe pathos. So much analysis and strangeness that I sat there and read reviews and never bought any shoes. Here’s a sample of what I found:

“I love these shoes, they are so comfortable and edgy.” [the shoes in question could be comfortable but were certainly far from edgy]

“They jingle like you’re wearing spurs.”

“This was the first pair of Pikolinos I ever purchased, and they came out of the box reeking of a minty smell. This was so bad that both of my cats got up and left the room! I held my breath to try them on. They are insanely comfortable, but the style (which I called “prairie” and my husband called “medieval”) just wasn’t me, so I sent them back.”

“If the price dropped, I would consider it again and definitely accept it as a gift.”

“Made in Spain…and you know, Europeans are used to wear better quality shoes than we do. So they produce much better shoes than Chinese or American brands.”

“Unless you have the thinnest, flattest feet around, do not order these shoes.”

So… could Yakky Doodle wear them?

yakky doodle

Planning
Lock-ins for middle aged women called Change Your Life Lock-ins. I haven’t worked out exactly what happens during the lock-in (starting on Friday night at 8 pm and ending on Saturday morning at 10 am with a pancake breakfast) but it has elements of a boot camp for wayward teens, The Crying Game, the Hunger Games, The Breakfast Club and that annual episode of Oprah where she gave away her favorite things to the audience.

Watching
Captain Phillips was stinky. I don’t get why it took the Navy Seals like five days to do anything. Plus, Tom Hanks has very, very strange man nipples that pretty much took over the final scene. Can they be nominated for Best Supporting Actor?

Sunset Boulevard is streaming on Netflix.

The Pajama Game is worth watching, by all accounts, and is next on my musical list. Cuz I have that list. In my purse. Just in case I’m out somewhere and hear about a hot musical.

Cutie and the Boxer is heartbreaking and uplifting in unexpected ways. Right now it has my vote for the Academy Award, although I’ve seen none of the other nominated docs. Somehow I’m never in the mood to watch The Act of Killing after a long day when I could be watching dudes wipe out at the end of their ski cross run at the Olympics.

Reading
The Group by Mary McCarthy. Excellent pessary drama!

The Hare with the Amber Eyes keeps coming up for me over and over again. Does that ever happen to you with a book? You keep seeing it, keep reading about it, keep hearing other people recommend until finally you say, “Fine! Give it here.” Also, related to that, the novel The Exiles Return.

Did you know it’s the 50th anniversary of Harriet the Spy? What the hell? How is that possible?? A special edition is being released on Tuesday, Feb. 25. So, you know, put that shit on your Amazon Wish List and all (to borrow an elegant phrase from Zappos: “I would consider it again and definitely accept it as a gift.”) Here’s a factoid about author Louise Fitzhugh:  she attended three different colleges but never obtained a degree. I’m not sure why that is so very special to me.

Fashion
New York Magazine called my attention to the fact that “Disco Dresses” are a major theme for spring. Did someone say disco dresses?? Let me push my way to the front of the crowd. I’ve been waiting for disco dresses to have a renaissance since I was six and jealous of the slinky, one-armed sequin dresses my Barbie got to wear. Yes, Lanvin, Reem Acra, Gucci and  Versace are pumping out metallic, slinky goodness. But really, why pay thousands when you can get that shit for a few dollars at the thrift? Get down there right now and start snapping up the lamé. Has Macklemore taught us nothing?

A hot mess of disco dresses ready for spring
A hot mess of disco dresses from New York Magazine.

There’s a snow storm raging outside, there’s women’s long program figure skating on TV and it’s time to call it. But before I go, here’s an Olympic memory… Remember Surya Bonaly? Yeah, that back flip. Ah, the 90s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAHn5Aa-NRY

The Short Stack, February 14, Love Day

Every Friday, I share  the pop culture, fashion, lit and random blips that crossed my radar during the week. (+ stuff like art) Except today when I share thoughts about love. Enjoy!

je t'aime valentines day card with cute cat

What a week. I don’t know about you, but I’m plum tuckered out today, Friday, Valentine’s Day. While other people are slipping into things made of lace and silk and getting ready to spend mucho dinero on a fancy dinner, I’m slipping into comfy pajama pants purchased  from The House of Kohl’s.  Hey, work hard, play hard, that’s my motto.

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have two, yes, exactly two, V Day love-related thoughts to share.

Celebrate it, don’t celebrate, sneer at it, call it a Hallmark holiday in front of your co-workers then go home and cry yourself to sleep –  the truth is this is just one day but we all do need love. We don’t need thong underwear that comes balled up and packaged in the shape of a rose.

Love begins with your own self. Learning to love yourself is the greatest gift… well… OK, we all know how that turned out. But still…

My first thought on love is really a thought on celebrating the small things as they pertain to you, an individual in this moment. Not you and Jimmy or you and Lindsay, etc. etc.

“Chocolate is delicious, beautiful sights and sounds are all around, you do get many things done each day, and you do make a difference to others… There are people who wish you well, who like you, who see the good in you. Almost certainly, you are loved. Your kind heart and good intentions are real, they exist. You’ve created much good in the past and you continue to do so in the present. Like me, you’re not a perfect person – no one is – but you are a good one.” – Rick Hanson, Hardwiring Happiness

Thought on love #2: I’ve been married for almost eleven years. It’s edging into the territory where I feel like I have opinions and shit about what makes a good marriage, but I’ve never been able to encapsulate them as well as Ann Patchett does in her essay “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage.”

“Standing waist deep in the swimming pool at Yaddo, I received a gift – it was the first decent piece of instruction about marriage I had ever been given in my twenty-five years of life. ‘Does your husband make you a better person?’ Edra asked.

There I was in that sky-blue pool beneath a bright blue sky, my fingers breaking apart the light on the water, and I had no idea what she was talking about.

‘Are you smarter, kinder, more generous, more compassionate, a better writer?’ she said, running down her list. ‘Does he make you better?'”

‘That’s not the question,’ I said. ‘It’s so much more complicated than that.’

‘It’s not more complicated than that,’ she said. ‘That’s all there is: Does he make you better and do you make him better?'”

Yes. That’s really all there is.

And yes, yes, yes, yes and yes, a thousand times yes. Plus, scallops and garlic mashed potatoes.

I would be remiss if I didn’t leave you with a Valentine’s Day gift: best friends who try out tips from the Internet together! Now that’s love.

 

 

 

The Short Stack, February 7

Every Friday, I share  the pop culture, fashion, lit and random blips that crossed my radar during the week. (+ stuff like art) Enjoy!

woman wearing swimming suit on cross country skis in the snow
What? Me, cold? Sick of the winter? Not a chance!

Reading:
My life is being permeated by Frank Sinatra. First, there’s the fact that I’ve been listening to “That’s Life” on repeat as I drive to work in the morning to give myself an extra boost in order to face another sub-zero day. It’s helpful to be reminded that you can be riding high in April, shot down in May.

Frank loomed large in Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations (I need to quit that book like its Brokeback Mountain). She revealed tidbits about their marriage like this:

“Anyway, I heard this gun go off. We’d been fighting, of course. And drinking. Every single night, we would have three or four martinis, big ones, in big champagne glasses, then wine with dinner, then go to a nightclub and start drinking Scotch or bourbon.”

Considering this info, it was a little weird to open New York Magazine this week and see  this ad for Jack Daniels:

jack daniel's ad featuring Frank Sinatra

If you can’t read the paragraph copy it says he was even buried with a bottle of it, I guess to help ease his transition to the after world. Only in America can a person who abused a substance while living become it’s spokesperson and center of its marketing campaign in death.

And then, Keith brought this article from the New York Daily News to my attention – Paul Anka’s got a new memoir out called My Way (Paul Anka?! Sigh. Put it on the reading list. I cannot resist a show biz tell-all) that’s got a lot of Frank (and frank) material, too.

This week, the twists and turns in the Farrow Clan vs. Woody Allen drama were more than I could keep up with. Dylan Farrow in the NYT. The defected Moses Farrow in People. Oy. This whole thing could only be sorted out by one person: Dominick Dunne. Unfortunately, he’s no longer with us, so we’ll never get to read his 50,000-word article about it in Vanity Fair.

That got me thinking about Dominick, so I pulled his book The Way We Lived Then off my bookshelf. It’s a great Hollywood memoir/photo book mixed with his own riches to rags to semi-riches story. He battled alcohol and drug addiction that caused him to lose his wife and his position as a producer in Hollywood only to battle back, recreating himself as a writer.

And, of course, if you’re in the mood for books about out-of-control comedians (who isn’t!?):
Wired
The Chris Farley Show
Furious Cool

Still waiting for something that plumbs the depths of Jerry Lewis.

Watching:
Of course, Phillip Seymour Hoffman. The news had me longing to watch The Talented Mr. Ripley (streaming now on Netflix!) again, which is not just beautifully-shot, excellently cast but also filled with terrific dialog and cringe-worthy moments. This movie has a lot to say about class in America even though it takes place in Italy.  It sucks to be poor, especially when you’re hanging out with rich people, but don’t… ah… murder anyone over it. Who better to play the rich snob Freddie X than PSH? His voice, his inflections, the roll of his eyes – the first time I saw this movie (way back in the day – at the theater with my parents!) I didn’t quite grasp that he was acting, so perfectly did he embody the role.

Which Makes Me Think of More Reading:
Patricia Highsmith (author of Ripley) is on my reading list:  the biography, The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith, plus her books The Two Faces of January (adapted for a movie coming out this year starring Viggo Mortensen, Oscar Isaac and Kirsten Dunst) and The Price of Salt (the first published lesbian love story with a happy ending) which is sometimes called Carol (as it will be when it comes out as a movie starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara and directed by Todd Haynes).

Wearing:
I wish I was wearing any of these costumes French photographer Charles Fréger documented in Europe.

Doing:
We’re heading to the Graves 601 Hotel this weekend for a mini-escape, during which we’ll pretend to be visiting this strange, cold world known as Minneapolis as if visitors from a foreign land. Looking forward to cocktails at Bradstreet and brunch at Hell’s Kitchen.

Next Friday is Valentine’s Day (look forward to a special love edition of Short Stack!). I have to admit I like this holiday. Like many people, I hated it when I was younger and not attached. Now I like it because it’s full of cute things in pink and it really doesn’t require much prep work if you don’t think you have to be cheesy about it. Plus, you can use it to widen the definition of the holiday and celebrate whoever you love, not just your lover. I will be giving my dog a special treat that day for being such a faithful friend.

Be happy we’re all here together. Make it an excuse to wear something bright. Make sure all your Christmas decorations are tucked away. Be bright and full of hope.

Order something cheap and pretty. Like this.

If you’ve got an arty person in your life this V-Day, consider taking them to go see Monuments Men and then buzz on over to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to go on a Monuments Men tour of artwork rescued by this group of art heroes. My favorite kind of heroes. Or go on Valentine’s Day Eve, which is a Thursday night, when the museum is open until 9 pm and you’ll probably have most of the galleries to yourself, which means no one will mind if you steal a kiss in the Prairie School Architecture gallery.

Listening:
Hope my own sister is reading this, because I found our Halloween costumes…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ3FYYTOn5U

You Wanna Hot Body? Call Britney.

black cutout heartThere was a window of time, back in my 20s, when I could have been considered a “gym rat,” meaning I went there a lot because I didn’t have much else to do. As a result, I lost a bunch of weight and fit into a pair of tiny pants that I wore to that one party that one time and never wore again. I found them four years later while cleaning out some old clothes and marveled at the circumference of the waist. It was an oddity, like excavating Pompeii and uncovering the sleeping dog forever frozen in ash.

I know what was motivating me then: I was single. Now that I’ve been married for a long time, I need new motivation and it came in the form of standing in a dressing room and looking at what was becoming of my body. I looked at my back fat and thought, “I’m not ready to give up.” I’m not going quietly out to pasture, or worse, to the glue factory. I can still be foxy.

But I needed a task master. Enter Britney Spears.

Britney Spears, Work Bitch video

If anyone knows what it’s like to go to seed, Britney does. If girl doesn’t watch it, she tends to get a gut. But still, she came back from paunchy, jean-short wearing baldness to be pretty fly, so I feel safe in her hands. That’s why her song “Work Bitch,” is my absolute fav workout song.

heart-2.1You wanna hot body
You wanna Bugatti
You wanna Maserati

You better work bitch

Yes, yes (I had to look up what a Bugatti is but, yeah, it’s pretty hot) and sure, why not? Let’s stay with that hot body for a second. At least Britney is being honest with you… you want a hot body? Look, you gots to put in the time. And if that means you have to stay on that elliptical machine in front of the gym window, staring out into a January night of sub-zero temps wishing for all the world you were at home on the couch with a pint of caramel/cone/fudge/pretzel ice cream, so be it. And for God’s sake don’t be one of those women who read a magazine while they work out.

Look, if you’re tired of the arm flab, if you can’t stand to let your thighs expand one more inch, you better crank that mo-fo up to level 11.

heart-1

You wanna Lamborghini
Sip martinis
Look hot in a bikini

You better work bitch

OK, so there’s more emphasis on cars than I’d like (do you think she had trouble thinking of other things to want?). I drive a Kia. The most envious I can remember being of a car was on a recent snowy day when a woman with a new Subaru Outback plowed right through a snowy parking lot like it was no biggie.

But, hell yes, I want to sip martinis and I want firm arms while doing it. I don’t want to reach for my martini only to have my triceps wobble like I’m doling out mashed potatoes in the lunch room. Double points for me if I’m sipping a martini on someone’s fab yacht while wearing a bikini (in my mind, when I’m on the treadmill, this bikini is always white. A white bikini is super Britney, isn’t it? Maybe I need a white bikini. With little gold stars all over it.)

heart-4

You wanna live fancy
Live in a big mansion
Party in France

You better work bitch

Everyone knows you can’t party in France if you’re fat! They are all skinny over there! Really though, I don’t need a mansion. A house with two bathrooms would be just fine. But I do want to live fancy by having some hot jeans that look great in the butt.

Which brings me to exercise payoff #1: since my renewed attention to exercise, I achieved a dream: I fit into a pair of jeans I’ve been saving because they used to fit me and I was sad that they no longer did. I remember wearing this pair of jeans and having extra room in the ass. Then all the sudden (it seemed) I couldn’t get them over my ass. Now they are up and zipped and just somewhat tight. I can sit in them comfortably.

I am so into them. And these are cheap jeans! These are not Rag and Bone or Hudson or even 7 For All Mankind. I think the brand is TINT, which probably folded up shop after producing jeans in Bangladesh for about 2 months back in 2007. They are not even skinny jeans because skinny jeans weren’t even invented yet when I bought them. I don’t care. I’ve been rocking the TINTs like every other day.

black cutout heartBring it on
Ring the alarm
Don’t stop now
Just be the champion
Work it hard like it’s your profession
Watch out now
‘Cause here it comes

The last time I did my cardio workout and was sucking air in mile two of my run, this song came on and when she sang, “Work it hard like it’s your profession,” I thought, “Hell, yes, working out is like a second job.” I finish work and I go to my part-time job at the gym, which is becoming a hard body.

heart-7Go call the police
Go call the governor
I bring the trouble
That means the trouble y’all
I make it bubble up
Call me the bubbler
I am the bad bitch
The bitch that you love enough

Yes, alert Governor Mark Dayton: I’m working out again. You will want to sip martinis with me and discuss the shortage of propane this winter and if you are super nice I will show you my biceps.

Honestly, this is the most ridiculous part of the song, especially if you grew up in Wisconsin calling a water fountain a “bubbler.”

But it ends on just the right note: be the bitch that you love enough (to whip into shape.)

If you have a hard time working out, I suggest losing yourself in a fantasy. Pretend you’re Britney. It’s 2009 and your hair is almost all grown back in. The meds are working. You divorced Kevin! Now The Circus starring Britney Spears Tour is about to begin and all eyes are on you. You’ve committed to some sexy costumes, including a spangly bikini. If Britney could do this all this stuff (granted she’s got resources, but it still couldn’t have been easy), you can go on the treadmill and pretend to be her for twenty minutes.

So hold your head high
Fingers to the sky
Now they don’t believe ya
But they gonna need ya
Keep it building higher and higher
Keep it building higher and higher

Work work work work work work work work (Work!)

Britney Spears with whip

The Short Stack: January 31 (Finally)

Every Friday, I share  the pop culture, fashion, lit and randomness that crossed my radar during the week. + stuff like food. Enjoy!

First things first… masks and eye coverings are on the rise in fashion…. it’s time to hide your face, I guess.

masks featured on models in fashion ads
Masks in Dior ad, Louis Vuitton ad, Calvin Klein editorial.

Oh Maw Gawd The Weather
Not only does the weather suck, it’s sucking the life out of me. I got stranded in a snowbank trying to go to Body Pump! Not a finer moment. Plus, my hair is gross. My dog is crazy. So crazy I was looking at puppies online today, thinking that if I just gave her something interactive to play with, she’d stop whining. People are mean to each other. There is no civility. Mad Men is not coming back until April? Great, we’ll all be dead by then.

[Favorite Mad Men scene: Don enters a meeting and Lane is going over their expenses from their Baltimore trip and then complains about office supplies and disappearing credenzas. Don leaves the meeting.]

Reading
I’m not sure how anyone who had Ava Gardner calling him at 3 am to slur her deepest, darkest secrets manages to write a boring book but Peter Evans pulled it off. Granted, after she spilled the beans she decided against publishing  – he had to wait until she died and then, after he finished writing it, he died. Makes me wonder if Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations is a first draft. Maybe he sent it to his editor with a note that said, “Here’s something I banged out over the weekend. What do you think?” and then kicked off that very night. In any case, you have to read A LOT of the same conversation before you get to the dirt. Take out all those parts where she’s wondering if she’d doing the right thing by telling her story and you’re left with about 20 pages of what a horn dog Mickey Rooney was, what a brute Artie Shaw and George C Scott were and something about Sinatra having a big dick.

About to embark upon Tori Spelling memoir number 3: uncharted terriTORI. After flipping through it I suspect that it’s about as uncharted as a Sandals resort in the Bahamas: seems like a retread of Mommywood. But I can’t say no to this…

Tori Spelling
Safari, anyone?

Plus, I want to be completely up-to-date when living in purgaTORI, her book about her troubles with Dean cheating and going to rehab, comes out. Christmas, er, Hanukkah, 2014?

Here’s what happened to Charlie from Girls, in case you care.

Wearing
Sweatshirts (or sweaters) with lace fronts. See here. That’s all I have to say. Kind of “Physical” by Olivia Newton John meets Stevie Nicks running errands.

Also, I got back into a pair of jeans I wore in… 2008. They are not in style. They were probably not in style then. I have never been so happy. (see reference to Body Pump above.)

Eating
Do you have a hard time figuring out what to snack on? I spend more time figuring out what is an appropriate snack than worrying about my retirement fund (which I spend zero time thinking about – I’m American!) Now baked pea crisps are sweeping the country. One week I had never had a baked pea and now I’m being offered them by strangers. My boss has an economy-size bag on her desk. And there must be a very effective marketing campaign going on because no fewer than three people have said to me, “Probably not great for you but so much better than eating potato chips.” May I ask when is the last time you saw anyone having a bag of potato chips for a snack? But here’s the truth about the peas.

Meanwhile, I’m falling in love with vegan chef Isa Chandra Moskowitz. I got her recipe book, Isa Does It!, for Xmas and I’ve made meals that have rocked the house. Plus, she has her website, The Post Punk Kitchen, with new recipes all the time, like this one for buffalo chickpea pitas with ranch for Super Bowl/ Puppy Bowl/Kitten Bowl. Get on that Isa train! She’s also on Twitter. And she lives in Omaha.

Doing
Nothing. Everything. Cardio. Staring at the wall. Watching dogs cross country ski.

Keith says, “Everyone should go running this weekend. Running is good.”

The Short Stack: January 24

Every Friday, I share  the pop culture, fashion, lit and random blips that were on my radar during the week. Enjoy! 

Let’s get the important stuff out of the way first. Is it me, or is putting a necklace on a baby, especially a black necklace of, like, a spider, pretty creep?

baby wearing a creepy necklace

Second in importance only to babies wearing costume jewelery, I’ve been exercising. Big deal, right? Well, it’s a big deal when you are starting from ground zero for arm muscles – suddenly you’re in a Body Pump class doing bicep curls in unison with 35 other people, some of whom have something to prove. I’ve now done the class three times and I go home and stand in front of the mirror looking for definition. What gets me through the class is thinking about the day I will wear a tank top, long flowy skirt and some kind of pretentious fedora on a summer day, preferably to an art show in a park, and I look amazing.

Soon I’ll be able to get in on the tail end of the moto craze. I’ll buy cute new clothes from Blank NYC (vegan clothing!) and Everlane (fair trade!).

It’s not all about clothes, even though I make it sound like that. Caring about clothes too much makes you boring, like the intern we just got rid of at work who spent 98% of her free time shopping and getting dressed, 1% sleeping, .5% eating and .5% doing work for us. She would prance into work mid-afternoon in these super cute, trendy outfits (I never saw her in the same outfit in 6 months), full make-up, hair all done up and it would turn out that all the fanfare was so that she could go have coffee with her dad. Hmmm… that brings us to…

Watching
Lifetime: I know the ratings were through the roof, but your Flowers In the Attic was a big yawn. OK, I give you that it was more “true to the book” than the original film adaptation in that you actually followed the plot – mostly – but what’s with no sex scenes? What’s with one little glimpse of Kiernan Shipka in a choppy wig instead of making her shave her head after the hair-cutting scene? Let’s take some cable-sized risks. I’ll tell you one thing: the kid who played Cory in the 1987 movie did a much better job of acting as though he were dying of poisoning:

Cory in Flowers in the attic
Now that’s what I call acting!

All this terribleness, combined with Heather Grahams’ insatiable desire to chew the scenery (I think her sole talent is that she can rock a pencil skirt),  made me wonder what V.C. Andrews would think, which made me wonder about V.C. Andrews, which got me to Googling and then this surprisingly thorough VC Andrews article on BuzzFeed.

Project Runway: Under the Gunn… YES! It started out slow but by the end of episode one, which you can watch for free, it started to look as though mentor Nick Verreos is assembling the Bad News Bears of fashion designers. Must watch.

Following
Bad Banana
Senile Don Draper
We Are New Yorkers

Reading
Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow, a fictional account of New York’s Collyers brothers (hermits and hoarders) that is good to read at 1 am when you can’t sleep.

Conquered Tori Spelling’s Mommywood mountain, though it was tough going and I had to start skimming in order to preserve some faith in humanity. That hasn’t stopped me from reserving Uncharted terriTORI at the library (and yes, the grammar on that, including lack of capitalization, drive me insane).

Going (if I ever recover from exercising)
“Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows” exhibit opens at the Minneapolis Photo Center tonight.
Zinnia Folk Arts is having a series of trunk shows with artist B.J. Christofferson.
Don’t forget this month-long vintage sale – Blacklist Vintage in Mpls is closing!
Show your love for the Mpls Institute of Arts by doing this stamp thingy and you’ll get a big discount in the museum store + be entered to win something fab + you’ll be at the museum and can look at lots of art, like this:

painting by Santos Dumont

Listening
Chromeo!

Making
You could make this Admiral Sackbar puppet for someone and it would be cute.

The Short Stack: January 17

Every Friday, I share  the pop culture, fashion, lit and random blips that were on my radar during the week. Enjoy! 

Reading
Are you guys reading Bitches Gotta Eat? It’s the funniest thing out there. Especially if you’re feeling shitty about stuff. And she’s got a book out called Meaty that is hilarious.

Meaty by Samantha Irby - buy it!

I finished the first Tori Spelling book, sTORI Telling, and I immediately got Mommywood. Why am I doing this to myself? I think I find Tori’s confusion compelling and comforting. When something goes wrong, she never says the things we’re taught to say as adults. Stuff like, “Well, life isn’t fair, so I guess this is just the way it’s gonna be.” Instead, every tiny twist and turn her life takes is dissected, no matter how inconsequential, as if it will suddenly be different if she LiveJournals… I mean writes about it. Her contradictions are endearing – in the first book, she berated her mother for always throwing her Raggedy Ann themed birthday parties; in book two she’s nostalgic for those Raggedy Ann parties. She spends a lot of time talking about the birthday parties she had as a kid  in both books, saying how over-the-top they were. Then she throws her one-year-old an over-the-top party complete with a cake from the same bakery her mother got her cakes from. Oh, Tori.

[Confession: now that things are blowing up with Dean, it seems like the Tori divorce memoir can’t be that far off. One night when I had trouble sleeping I spent my time trying to think of a good title for it that would incorporate “Tori” or “Spelling” (her other books are uncharted terriTORI, celebraTORI and Spelling It Like It Is and was disappointed in myself when I couldn’t come up with anything.]

Watching
Soon I’ll be watching Tim Gunn’s new show Under the Gunn (har?) Finally getting out from underneath the yoke of Heidi, and with Anya Ayoung-Chee and Nick Verreos as mentors? Swaddle me in a chic, tasteful blanket, hand me a glass of pinot and leave me alone with the TV for an hour.

And this Flowers in the Attic thingy too, also on Lifetime? Wow, Lifetime. Are you reading my mind? Next thing you know they’re going to give Tori a talk show.

Flowers in the Attic cast

Resolutioning
No big surprise, I’d love to lose some lbs. in 2014, just like the rest of America. So I went to Body Pump and made myself really sore as punishment. Raising my arms up more than a few inches made me grunt with pain for several days. I had to look up exactly which muscles were sore in my arms: apparently I haven’t been giving my deltoids, brachialis or brachioradialis enough to do in the past fifteen years. I WILL NOT BE DETERRED!

I have to say I can’t wait until all the weak-willed people give up and I can get a parking spot at the gym. By late February I’ll be parking in the front row. And while I’m complaining, let me add that the track at the gym is not the place to conduct your lover’s spat. A couple on Tuesday night managed to have a fight while walking the track, then started jogging, gave each other the cold shoulder while doing a million crunches while side-by-side on mats in the stretching area, then headed out for some more laps, during which the woman walked like she was sleepwalking, weaving into other people’s paths as she contemplated what an asshole her boyfriend is. I have to hand it to them though – they were there to exercise and, by god, they did it.

We’ve been eating more vegan-y. This is the cookbook where I’m getting all my good ideas these days – Isa Does It! It is amazing. It is wildly delicious. Double the pancake recipes.

Happening
It is winter. I hardly leave the house. I am boring and going insane. I am reading Tori Spelling memoirs as if they matter.

Unfortunately, Blacklist Vintage in Minneapolis is closing. Bad if you want some vintage come spring. Good if you want to go to a big sale starting January 25. OK, some Mary Tyler Moore-style blouses might get me out of the house.

Do you totally hate all your clothes right now? I have nothing to wear to go see 12 Years a Slave.

Listening
This song, originally from Karate Kid, is the best workout song there is. Why this is set to Rocky in this video, I don’t know  – the rippling thigh scene on the beach is cool though.

This is the song they’re going to play when I show up at Body Pump from now on:

Breakroom Clown Salad

The winter days tumble by, one after another in a stupefying daze of cold and wind. Sometimes the only sure way to be sure that time is passing is to check the break room offerings:

Apple, orange, thin mints
Pick your poison…
Box of half-eaten Russell Stover candies
Russell Stover… when you couldn’t care less about giving the very best and you don’t care that it ends up in some break room.
leaking-cupcakes
I’m hungry, I’m bored, I want… a leaky cupcake. Or maybe a half-eaten muffin discarded in a plastic bag.
Boxes of Twix, Nestle Crunch, Kit Kats
Someone’s getting started on their resolution… by pushing their candy off on the rest of us.
book called Viral Hate
You wanted chips… maybe an Oreo… bagels and cream cheese… But all you get is Viral Hate.
A coke and a diet coke and a note that says "Take one!"
In case you weren’t sure what to do…

 

 

 

 

The Short Stack: January 10

Every Friday, I share  the pop culture, fashion, lit and random blips that were on my radar during the week. Enjoy! 

Books
Sometimes  you read a book because you’re looking for answers but you’ll only end up with more questions when you read The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell. I first saw The Room in 2009 and it replaced Deep Blue Sea as my favorite terrible movie –  I got my prized DVD signed by Tommy Wiseau at a midnight screening at the Uptown Theater in Minneapolis. After reading this book I want to know:  what does Tommy think of it? And is he ever going to make that vampire movie? Could he please, please be on The Bachelor?

Look deep into my eyes:

tommy wiseau of The Rooom

A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940 is only the first volume of this new biography and the brick is 1056 pages long. This is my beach read for 2014 since I plan to spend a lot of time working on my tan. I mean a lot of time. If I want a shorter, trashier read I’ll go with Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations.

Just finished Johnny Carson by his lawyer Henry Bushkin. Ultimately a sad portrait of a tormented man but Bushkin is equally as pathetic, giving up his family to trail around after Johnny like a puppy. Lots of boring details about their business dealings, not enough juicy Ed McMahon tidbits. Also question Bushkin’s taste in girlfriends: Joyce DeWitt and Mary Hart (from Entertainment Tonight?). Yick.

Fashion
I first looked at the book (un)fashion a couple of years ago, after I learned that Maira Kalman, one of my favorite illustrators, put it together with her husband. It’s a strange collection of, well,  unfashion photos from around the world that seem random at first except for the one or two word headings they’re grouped by, like “headgear” and “wedding.” I couldn’t stop thinking about it the book so I checked it out from the library again, trying to decode its message. I think maybe fashion can only be headed this way, into a disjointed but global, ethnic, freestyle vibe. Unfashion is the next, last, thing.

So in 2014 I’ll try to start cultivating my look of plaid pants, shawl, basket hat and mask now so as to be part of the first wave. The look is hard to explain but there’s something to this sweater:

child wearing hat, sweater and amulet necklace

Or this headgear:

sweet headgear, shirt, tie, cane combo

On the other hand, can someone bring riding habits back for, like, everyday wear, no horse required?

vintage riding habit, top hat and crop

Crafting Front
I’m trying to figure out if there is some way to make macrame truly cool. In my quest I spent a lot of time on etsy, where I stumbled into a nest of hundreds of macrame owls. Why the owl? Why no other animal?? I want to buy them all and make one gigantic exhibit.

OK, here is one thing you can do with macrame knots that could kick some ass.

If you’re looking for a craft project, ornamental knots (I wish I was “respected internationally” for my knotting skills) offer some potential coolness. Rock an ornamental knot necklace with your cape and rag & bone jeans with your hair tied up in a rag and you got it – unfashion!

Places To Be
On January 29, Jake Rudh’s Transmission at the Varsity Theater is a tribute to Bowie. Start crafting your costume immediately.

Random
Um… who is in this photo and is it really possible for breasts to be this far apart and this perky at the same time?? Doesn’t even look like the blowsy Brit we’ve come to know and love. This looks like some woman named Candy waiting for her curtain call in Vegas Atlantic City Des Moines. But that “Work B**ch?” Very fine tune for running.

Work Bitch album cover Britney Spears

It may be 2014 but Homey still don’t play that.

The Short Stack: January 3, 2014

Every Friday, I share  the pop culture, fashion, lit and random blips that were on my radar during the week. Enjoy! 

Stuff To Do
When I was in Chicago last spring, one of the best things I saw was the Vivian Maier photography exhibit at the Chicago History Museum. Maier was a nanny in the suburbs of Chicago who took photos in her spare time – thousands of them. She was a street photographer who could put many professionals to shame – but no one knew while she was alive. Now Minneapolis is going to have a Maier exhibit of its own when the Minneapolis Photography Center opens Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows this month. Exhibit preview night ($25)  is Friday, January 17 and features a book signing and talks with author Richard Cahan and Jeffrey Goldstein, owner of the collection. Free opening reception is Friday, January 24. Cool documentary screening is Saturday, January 25.

Articulture in the Seward neighborhood is having a Bad Drawing class for adults. About bloody time. I don’t know about you but I have a lot of bad drawings in me. Starts January 23.

If you’re fancy, you can take a bronze casting class at MCAD through their continuing ed program. How f’ing cool would you be? Starts February 12. Someone please cast a raccoon penis.

Aaaaand, you may as well mark your calendar now with a reminder to leave work early on April 9 in order to snag some seats for An Evening with Novelist David Mitchell at Northrop at the UofM. Cuz it’s free and open to the public and there are a lot of Cloud Atlas fans in these here parts. Although all the cool kids will ask him about Black Swan Green.

Things Floating Through My Mind
Hand of Fatima. Also known as hamsa. Get jiggy with it.  It’s said that the fingers of the hand can poke or pluck out the evil eye. Don’t we all need that in our lives?

I was at the airport recently and a guy walked by me wearing a Keith Haring t-shirt – black raglan sleeves (you really like clothes if you know what a raglan sleeve is), gray shirt featuring the image of the heart being held up by the Haring-esque people.

Keith Haring heart t-shirt by OBEY

You ever have one of those moments when you go from having no desire for something at all,  because you don’t even know if exits, to wanting it so bad it’s all you think about? Heavy googling led me to the knowledge that the shirt was made by OBEY and that it’s sold out everywhere because it came out in Fall of ’12. Yeah, eBay is my new best friend.

What was Annie Lennox thinking when she did this to her face for the Freddie Mercury tribute concert and why does it look so awesome? And why don’t we talk more about how awesome Annie is in general? This is my new look for the grocery store.

Annie Lennox in gray eyeshadow mask at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert.

I have decided something about the 1980s. It was a time of outstanding sunglasses. Or, as the French would say, les lunettes fantastiques!

1989 cutlter and gross sunglasses

 But then the 80s also gave us L.A. Gear, so go figure.

I’ve never read The Group by Mary McCarthy. Or The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe. I need to get going on my ensemble-cast novels from the 1950s and 60s, people!

Don’t even get me started on Tori Spelling. Ripping my way through her first book even though I made a promise to myself back in 2009 I would never do that. Well, the hell with 2009! I already put her second book on hold at the library. What, did you think I was going to pay for that shit?

Anyway, if you need a good cry going into the new year or just cuz its Friday and the weather sux so bad… spend a minute or two missing Freddie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9ICO-RfjAU

The 12 Dog Days of Christmas, Part 1

On the first day of Christmas, my human gave to me…

Fat squirrel sitting in a tree.

A fat squirrel in a small tree.

On the second day of Christmas, my human gave to me…

two hunks of cheese and a mouse

Two hunks of cheese
And a fat squirrel in a small tree.

On the third day of Christmas, my human gave to me…

Cat pooping

Three cat turds
Two hunks of cheese
And a fat squirrel in a small tree.

On the fourth day of Christmas, my human gave to me…

falling dog surrounded by falling pizzas

Four falling pizzas
Three cat turds
Two hunks of cheese
And a fat squirrel in a small tree.

On the fifth day of Christmas, my human gave to me…

five french fries

FIVE GOL-DEN FRIES!!!
Four falling pizzas
Three cat turds
Two hunks of cheese
And a fat squirrel in a small tree.

On the sixth day of Christmas, my human gave to me…

six eggs dancing around getting scrambled

Six scrambled eggs
FIVE GOL-DEN fries
Four falling pizzas
Three cat turds
Two hunks of cheese
And a fat squirrel in a small tree…

Clown Salad In the Locker Room

A Collection of Atrocities Committed in Men’s Locker Rooms at Gyms in Middle America

[There are no illustrations to accompany this post and soon you will be thanking me for that.]

*As reported by Keith Pille and Matt Waite

Sweaty, paunchy dude walking around the locker room naked, walks past a bin of dirty towels, shrugs, reaches in, grabs one, and starts wiping himself down.

Man blow-drying his balls with the wall-mounted hand dryer.

Old man applying some kind of liniment that smelled like cat piss.

Went to take sweater out of locker while getting dressed after working out only to find a nasty, used Q-tip left inside the locker by some sick fuck stuck to it.

Old man clipping nasty, thick yellow toenails and leaving them on the carpet. Bonus: he clips too close and starts bleeding. Another variation: old, naked man bent over clipping his toenails while pointing the wrong end at you as you walk in the door.

Old naked men watching Fox News – my God, do they watch Fox News in resplendent wrinkly nakedness. Or sports. One guy sat butt nekkid watching Oprah.

The Naked Man Gossip Circle. Talking. Laughing. Naked.
An oldie but goodie from the Bally Total Fitness days: old man taking a shower and using his tighty whiteys as a washcloth.

Old man sleeping naked on locker room couch.

Man shaving in steam room, just tapping the razor onto the bench tiles after each pass so that his hairs are scattered there. Bonus: he leaves the razor in the steam room.

Old naked man eating a bag of potato chips… naked… in the locker room… at the gym. Why, God, why?

Old men spritzing their balls with cologne… Septuagenarians hosing themselves down with Axe Body Spray.

Note: Although I’ve worked out at various gyms and taken many exercise classes throughout the years, I was not able to come up with anything from a women’s locker room that would rival these anecdotes (I did once have a disturbing encounter with a woman who was having some sort of mental break while in an empty studio, stretching, but that’s another story) So, are women just cleaner? More courteous? More inhibited? If you have a woman’s locker room atrocity to share, comment!

2014: Bringing Clown Salad Back

2014 is the Year of Clown Salad

Here’s today’s pic:

Tiny moccasin keychain abandoned in snow.

So, what’s clown salad? Back in 2011, I described it this way:

  • Any time you see one of those plastic teeth flossers lying in a gutter or on the sidewalk, that’s total clown salad.
  • A band-aid floating in a pool is clown salad.
  • Mel Gibson is clown salad. So is Brett Favre, apparently.
  • When you get trapped trying to exit a parking ramp after a big event lets out, that’s total clown salad. As you sit in your car, inching forward, you may say to your companions, “Will you look at this clown salad?”
  • Twinkies are not clown salad but those circus peanut candies are.
  • The Twilight movies are clown salad. Scott Baio is also clown salad.

To update this list for 2014 I would like to add:

  • Most sad, abandoned things you find on the ground (except money) are clown salad.
  • Any shoe you see on the side of the highway is clown salad.
  • People who write checks in the grocery store check-out lane are clown salad. Double clown salad: they don’t start writing it out until they get their total.
  • Pumping gas in below zero temps is clown salad, especially if the sad man in the Buick LaSabre one pump over is sitting in his car scratching lottery cards.
  • That duck hunting family of rubes who have a reality show are clown salad.
  • Otis Spunkmeyer muffins are clown salad.
  • The real name for ham salad or, heaven forbid, beef salad, is clown salad. Seriously, don’t eat that stuff.

Be on the lookout for clown salad and you’ll start to see it everywhere. Think of it as a zen experience – you are merely noting and documenting the clown salad. YOU ARE NOT THE CLOWN SALAD.

Got a photo you want to share? Send to reebs73 at gmail dot com.

Dreams of a Holiday Hottie Wannabe

Woman exercising with top hat and cane.Monday after Thanksgiving. Yep. Tough day made tougher by coming off a candy and pie bender that actually felt good, like it’s my birthright to stuff dark chocolate-sea salt caramels into my mouth while standing in the kitchen staring into the fridge looking for something to eat. Oh, I forgot to say I was in my pajamas.

And this is just the beginning of the holiday season, a fever dream we don’t wake up from until January. Every year I say, “I’m not letting that happen to me, dammit! I will be awake and present and going to the gym while the rest of the sheeple are drinking eggnog milkshakes and waddling through the mall!”

But every year I fail.

When I read magazine articles or blog posts with titles like, “25 Ways to Survive the Holidays,” I actually believe I will eat a big plate of carrots before a holiday party in order to arrive full and therefore not subject to the temptation of hot dips made with cheese. It seems as if drinking three glasses of water for every one alcoholic beverage is indeed the way to comport oneself.  And there is no better way to start the day after a big holiday humdinger of a party than by going outside for some resistance training through snow drifts.

After a few minutes of self-righteous reading I’m wondering, “Who are the assholes still gorging themselves on those peanut butter cookies with the stars in the middle and washing them down with glasses of scotch while watching It’s a Wonderful Life for the 42nd time?”

Because it turns out all the skinny bitches are making chips out of  kale to munch while they watch Elf and craft a gigantic bow to place on top of the Lexus they bought their live-in boyfriend of three weeks. They can withstand fudge and those cakes in the shapes of logs – they simply put bananas slathered in nut butter in the freezer for dessert instead. They’re ordering fancy, sparkly barrettes to wear to their holiday parties, to which they bring a hostess gift that is not a candle from Target.

I tell myself I should do this. After all, it’s not as easy as it once was for me to shed that holiday weight. I’m still carrying around some lbs. from last year’s cheese-balls-and-holiday-M&Ms debacle. And I know that my muscles are atrophying at a rate of, like, 30% a year or some shit like that, so that by the time I’m 55 I expect to be a pile of ectoplasm riding around on a Lark at the grocery store annoying the other customers. “Excuse me, my good man, could you reach me that box of Cap’n Crunch for me? I used to be able to do it, back when I had arms, but I never did enough push-ups, dead lifts and lateral raises and now look at me!”

“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.” – Vince Lombardi

“Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow.” – Rebecca Collins

My holiday wish is to get through them without going up a pants size.  And world peace.

But there are some things working against me. There is the fact that Whole Foods makes those chocolate-covered caramels. There is my predilection for anything ginger, whether in bread or snap form. There is the fact that Christmas overwhelms me just by its very presence, much like a tiresome co-worker who can come and stand in your office and stare, not saying anything, and send you over the edge. “I know you’re there! Say something! Anything!”

There is the fact that, when it comes to exercise, I’m always of two minds. The part of me that wants to bust that fat and the part of me that wants to bust open that bag of chips.

Two women exercising - one wants to be home watching TV and the other wants to work out harder!

But, like Blag Flag, I need to rise above. See me at the gym on a cold and grim December night, working out like a madwoman on the elliptical machine while outside carolers glide from house to house, cups of hot chocolate firmly in hand.

I’m the one stringing air-popped popcorn (10 calories a cup!) onto string to decorate the Christmas tree while watching reruns of Cheers (and I’m not even nibbling on the popcorn)!

Catch me turning down the plate of holiday cookies in favor of a honeycrisp apple I bought in September.

I’m the one at the holiday bash asking for an O’Douls. On the rocks.

And, yeah, I’m the one who comes to the New Year’s party in a half-shirt I cut off myself, not realizing they’re best left to the 21-year-old. What the what? I didn’t do all those crunches and step-kick-mind-body-crossfit classes only to put on an oversized sweatshirt and some leggings.

I’m glad we had this talk. Let the holiday season begin.

Library Lovers Unite!

Unlike health care, no one ever complains about socialism when it comes to the library. Everybody loves the library. Where else can you hang out all day long without having to buy a vanilla latte and a chocolate-covered graham cracker?

Medieval girl loves free stuff!And it’s all free! All of it: whatever you want to take, take it, check it out! Yeah, you gotta bring it back, but by then your big idea to do the exercises in Shape-Up Shortcuts is played out anyway and you want to get that book that might supposedly explain wtf was up with that movie The Room.

My History At the Library

I progressed from picture books and story hour to checking out enormous stacks of books. Sixteen books at once was pretty much my speed. When we weren’t at the library my sister and I often set up our own library at home and took turns being “patron” and “librarian,” using a flashlight to check out books.

I became obsessed with books about whales. Then I became obsessed with a particular biography of Hitler, which I checked out seven times, probably baffled that it wasn’t fiction. From there the world cracked open: Anne Frank, Judy Blume, books of dirty cartoons, the mafia, the Impressionists, children who solved mysteries…

The library was a safe place and a refuge. I made my first phone call to a boy at the public library (first call that was not a prank), calling up some guy I thought was hot, although now I really only remember that he had brown hair, and asking him to homecoming even though I’d never had a date to anywhere, not even a study date at the library. He had a friend over and they both got on the line, making fun of me for calling, crushing me.

I so didn’t get how things worked in a small-to-medium-sized city in Wisconsin in the late 80’s.

Most likely I retreated to the aisle where the dirty cartoon books were. Half of the cartoons I didn’t get, a quarter of them were ripped out of the book by some pervert and the other ones were not funny. But that didn’t stop me from looking.

By junior high I had long-since ditched the children’s section and even most of the teen fare, preferring to spend my time in the adult fiction aisles. My mom had to give permission for me to go into the adult section. I guess maybe they were worried that I’d stumble upon The Clan of the Cave Bear or something.

In college I spent a lot of time hiding at the library. I wouldn’t do much studying. Mostly I dragged the enormous reference books that listed other colleges into a study carrel and tried to plot my escape. Or I looked at listings for international cooking schools.

Once, I persuaded a boyfriend to help  me steal a book I thought was important – The Decade of Women: A Ms. Book, edited by Gloria Steinem. I guess my Women’s Studies classes inspired a life of crime instead of fighting for social justice.

We had getaway bikes and everything, which we jumped on just as the alarm went off and pedaled for our lives. Then I did something stupid and cut pictures out of the book for the purpose of a womyn-centered collage.

I still have the book, holes and all. It’s sitting on my shelf:

Photo of books including Decade of Women a Ms Book

I would never steal from the library now. That is literally one of the dumbest things a person could do – steal from the library, where all the information is free. All you have to do is slide your card and you’ve got five vegan cookbooks and a novel about a family that fights all the time. Just bring them back in a reasonable amount of time, like after you’ve renewed them 4 times and kept them two weeks past the due date…

But no one asks you where the hell it is. They don’t call you up and say, “Are you ever bringing that book about the Gabors back? Huh? Are you? You are not even reading it.” But the cover is rad…

photo of the Gabor sisters

Today, I’m a Friend of the Hennepin County Library (my neighborhood library is Washburn in south Minneapolis. Represent!) which means that I pay a membership fee in the hope that they can put that money to use buying more stuff for us all to feast our eyes on. Or whatever they need to do with it – clean the bathrooms? I don’t care!

Today HCL is participating in Give To the Max Day, a 24-hour fundraiser for Minnesota nonprofits. I don’t know about you, but I want the library to have millions of dollars for books and programs – who knows, if we all give a little bit maybe more Minneapolis libraries can be open on Sundays. Education is what’s going to change the world. Plus, People magazine for free, yo.

Want to learn more about HCL and Give to the Max? Please go here and DONATE. Because where else am I going to spend three hours on a winter afternoon reading about the Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871?

Overheard From the Stall

I was in a public bathroom with three stalls. Two women come in and go into stalls on either side of me, continuing their conversation.

Woman 1: So… We know that she’s a bitch, right?

Woman 2: We know that she is not a nice person.

Woman 1: It’s such a shame. Rachel loves French but she treated her like the lazy twin.
[I’m not sure what this is in reference to… if Rachel is a twin and the less productive of the pair or if calling someone a Lazy Twin is a slur I’m not familiar with.]

Woman 2: How horrible.

Conversation interrupted by explosive farting from Woman 1, with no apologies or requests to be excused.

Woman 1: I’m mean, she’s a solid B student. Always gets B’s. I get the report card… (dramatic pause) and she gave her a C+. I called her up…

Woman 2: How unfair.

Woman 1: I called her up and I said, ‘What is the meaning of this?’ and she said, ‘Listen, middle school records don’t count toward college admissions and we’re done here.’

Woman 2: Oh my God!

Woman 1: I said, ‘We’re not done here.’

At this point I exited the bathroom, very uncomfortable. Part of me wishes I would have stayed, maybe got into the conversation. I, too, had a very bitchy French teacher. However, part of me thinks the true bitches were in that bathroom.

And, just for the record, middle school grades really don’t matter, unless those grades are F’s that make it impossible to progress beyond middle school. There is a reason for the phrase “Gentleman’s C.”

Please Join Your Party In The Gold Room

I saw The Shining for the first time ever last night (except for the parts where I hid my face behind a comforter). I slept well last night and woke up feeling refreshed and with a new appreciation for Shelley Duval’s face.

I think there’s been a lot written about Shelley Duval’s acting in this movie, as in it was less than stellar. But if she was cast purely for her face, I say well played Kubrick.

Happy Halloween!

collage of shelley duval's faces in The Shining

What We’re Gonna Do Right Here Is Go Back

The Way Where Were cat with colored bubblesBack.
I’m back.
What we’re gonna do right here is go back.
Back into time. To when Not Shallow was a blog.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Where have I been?

I’ll tell you where I’ve been most recently – on a trip to the most ghetto Burlington Coat Factory on the face of planet Earth. I haven’t been that on guard since I lived outside of Detroit. Going in the front door, aka running the gauntlet, I actually thought to myself, “Better be on your game. Stone face. Walk to the coats with purpose.”

And, no, it wasn’t because there were black people there. In fact, it was the scary white folks, with dead eyes and contusions on their faces.

It was the little kid trailing after his dad saying, “Daaaaadddy, am I a retard?”

Oh God, all I wanted was a cheap coat. And I got one, thanks. And so what if I had to try it on in the midst of old Starbucks cups, gum wrappers and a guy who smelled like a skunk wearing an ashtray as a hat?

Something solidified in that Burlington Coat Factory.

What’s normal? I think it’s normal to make vegan soup and go to yoga on Sunday nights. The woman standing outside Burlington Coat Factory (oh, it’s more than just coats, folks, it’s squalor) screaming into her cell phone so loudly that even when she went around the corner of the building and I was in my car, driving, with the radio on, I could still hear her, thinks that kind of conversation is normal.

What do you think is normal? Because it’s a complex world and not shallow at all, once you start looking. Have you stopped looking? I haven’t.

I’m back, I tell you. Because we all live in our  bubbles and start to think that whatever we live is normal and then – shock – Burlington Coat Factory. Or a beautiful beach with a sea turtle laying eggs. There is so much more… Don’t put your head down.

What we’re gonna do right here is go back.

 

Dead at the Movies: Hitchcock

Drawing of the director Alfred Hitchcock.

Oh, the agony of trying to draw Hitchcock. You can’t see it here, but there were practically holes in the paper from erasing.

Hitchcock, our third biopic this week about someone famous + dead, tells the story of “the influential filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock and wife Alma Reville during the filming of Psycho in 1959.”

While the study of the relationship between Hitchcock and his wife is probably highly entertaining, I think the real reason for the entire movie was so that they could cast Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh in Psycho and get her in that shower scene. That’s got Maxim Magazine cover written all over it.

Also, I’ve read that the Hitchcock and Alma relationship is surface at best – no dark demons here. There is another Hitchcock biopic out on HBO called The Girl (didn’t something like this happen with two Truman Capote biopics at the same time a number of years ago – both of them regrettably forgettable?), which movie critic Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune says is about the harassing relationship between Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren during the two films following Psycho: The Birds and Marnie. It’s a lot darker than Hitchcock, so if you’re looking for dirt, plan on watching The Girl.

Or wait for my scathing, no-hold-barred biopic about the making of Vertigo and Hitchcock’s inappropriate,  Svengali-like relationship with Jimmy Stewart.

Dead At the Movies: Lincoln

Number 2 on my list of biopics to see this fall: Lincoln!

Drawing of Abraham Lincoln, the greatest American president of all time.

This one speaks for itself – or has already been spoken of enough by others that, if you are at all inclined to see a 2 hour and 20 minute film about Lincoln, you would at least be aware that it was released. If it needed a harder sell in the first place, Spielberg wouldn’t have called his movie just Lincoln. He would had to have found another title to enthrall us. Guess What Happened in 1865? or Back When Things Were Less Cool Than They Are Now or Patriotism Unveiled.

Really, I just wanted to draw a picture of Lincoln. But I did see this movie over Thanksgiving weekend and I gave it a “B.” Daniel Day Lewis will of course take home an Oscar but I wanted him to turn that folksy dial down just a few notches. I haven’t seen that much walking around with a blanket wrapped around one’s shoulders since the days of Newlyweds with Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey.

But still… Lincoln!

P.S. If you’re a Mary Todd Lincoln fan, I invite you to read my post about her from back when I was examining the First Ladies and their cookery.

Dead At the Movies: Diana Vreeland

This fall there are plenty of docs and biopics to see if you want to learn more about famous, beloved, dead people. This week I’ll highlight five, kicking off with my personal fave, Diana Vreeland.

A sketch of Diana Vreeland, fashion icon and bon vivant.

The documentary Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel is about the iconic editor-in-chief of Vogue who was actually so much more. Made by a filmmaker who married one of Vreeland’s grandsons, the film is billed as an “intimate portrait” and celebration of her life and legacy.

Official Synopsis: During Diana Vreeland’s fifty year reign as the “Empress of Fashion,” she launched Twiggy, advised Jackie Onassis, and established countless trends that have withstood the test of time. She was the fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar where she worked for twenty-five years before becoming editor-in-chief ofVogue, followed by a remarkable stint at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, where she helped popularize its historical collections.

Awesome Stuff: She worked hard and established herself in an era when it was more common for a woman not to work and not to be able to rise to such a position of power.

She started the trend of wearing bright red nail polish, which I believe she called “laquer”

She said many cool things, one of which I have posted over my desk: “I’m looking for the suggestion of a thing I’ve never seen before.”

In photos, her clothing and jewelry look as fresh as they did 50 years ago. She had a living room that was all red. She was no great beauty and it didn’t matter – as it shouldn’t for any of us – what mattered was her style and her eye.

She had a gift for giving the people what they didn’t even know they wanted – before the rest of the world had even imagined it, Vreeland was capturing it and putting it in her magazines. For many years, she was the zeitgeist.

If you want to read more about D.V., here’s a post I wrote about her in 2011.

Who should go: Anyone who loves history, fashion and who welcomes an opportunity to learn more about an influential woman in American history. If you don’t think clothes matter, or that style matters, maybe this will open up some doors that have been closed for you. As we all know, the eye takes in the true story – what message are you sending out?

To see photos of Vreeland, go to dianavreeland.com.

It’s Almost Here!

Frankenstein's monster and a bunch of kids - looks like trouble to me!

Happy Halloweeen Eve from Frankenstein’s monster and some little kids from the 1970’s!

Where did he get those sweet shoes??

Take cover before he starts tossing those kids like rocks.

 

*Frankenstein and friends at Universal Studios in California, 1977

 

Monday, Monday, Can’t Trust That Day

Woman sitting in a chair with her head in her hands, lamenting Monday.

Oh, Monday, she’s such a bitch. She comes around and ruins everything once a week.

I hate her.

But, well… without her there would be no real beginning to the week. I do like a little bit of structure.

And it’s good to have a nemesis. It gives you something to rise up against. To push back on. To say, “You’ll never destroy me!” to.

How to get through a Monday? Sit down and collect your thoughts. Then proceed very slowly. Pace yourself – there is an entire week sprawling out before you. No need to be hasty or get too much done at one time. Check e-mail. Check your favorite websites. Do little tasks – pay a bill, dust off a shelf, return that pair of shoes you don’t really like.

Oh, look, it’s lunchtime.

In the afternoon, do one thing that you’ve been avoiding in your life or in your work. One task that you put off for all of the previous week, even on Friday when you actually had time but didn’t do it because it was Friday, practically the weekend, and why should you do something icky when it’s practically the weekend?

Then you’re done for the day. Coast on through. Go home. Don’t watch too much TV, or any at all.

Without you even realizing it, (because if you’re lucky you are fast asleep), the best part of Monday will arrive: 11:59 pm.

Hello, Tuesday.

Bringing Sexy Back (Yet Again) This Halloween

woman wearing a sexy debit card costume and asking for Jell-O shots

You’ve seen them. We’ve ALL seen them. They bring forth in us, depending upon our outlook and motives, either outrage or appreciation. Sometimes we put them down but we all know that, no matter what, they aren’t going home alone on Halloween night.

It’s the Sexy Ladies of Halloween. Women who can turn any costume into a wonder of titillation.

Not all of us have that ability, you know. We don’t have the body or the will or the drive. Some of us would maintain that we don’t have the cheapness, the sluttiness, required to take part in such a thing.

My days of slutty Halloween-ness are long gone. Let me amend that – my day of slutty Halloween. For I only attempted sexy once, as a freshman in college, when I went as a hooker and my then-boyfriend went as a pimp. I know. They took away my Take Back the Night card for that one. I never, ever mentioned it in any of my Women’s Studies classes. Don’t ask, don’t tell, was the sexy Halloween policy back then.

But now it’s rampant. “When did sexy Halloween costumes become a thing?” Keith asked me the other day. “It seems like there was a time when that wasn’t the case.”

I’ll tell you the very first time I realized that Halloween costumes could be sexy. It was while watching E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. In the Halloween scenes the mom, played by Dee Wallace, dresses up as a sexy cat. And when I say “sexy” by today’s standards it was actually very demure. She’d be shunned at the club for dressing “all Amish and shit.” But, yeah, I thought she looked kinda hot.

My friend JoEllen has a tumblr called Miss Guised that pays “homage” to sexy Halloween costumes. Each day  this month, she’s posted yet another ridiculous sexy costume, from Sexy Sriracha Sauce to a sexy highlighter pen – she’s truly found the best of the worst. Go take a look if you need some sexy inspiration – I think you’ll find that if you can’t think of a sexy costume, you’re just not trying hard enough.

As for me, I’m struggling (yet again) to come up with any costume, let alone a sexy one. But whatever I come up with I’m pretty sure I’ll be fully clothed. Just call my Sexy Otter.

Me dressed in a head-to-toe otter costume.

 

 

In Our World, There Lives a Little Mountain

I’ve shared my portrait of Bob Ross before but I want to revisit him today.

I’ve been in a weird sleeping pattern lately. I go to sleep easily only to wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning, wide awake and thinking. It’s the low-quality thinking, repetitive, that accomplishes nothing. I’m certainly not solving anything.

But it’s hard to break the thought cycle on your own, especially at that time of night.

So I’ve been trying to think of things to help me get back to sleep. Suddenly I remembered Bob Ross because of his voice. He had one of the calmest voices I’ve ever heard. I thought, “If I could listen to Bob Ross in the dark, I could fall back asleep.”

I finally got around to Googling “Bob Ross mp3” tonight.

BINGO.

Someone in the world is super awesome. Because they put up free mp3s of a full season of Bob Ross’s Joy of Painting TV show right here. I’m listening to an episode called “Blue Winter” now.

So if you’re ever having one of those nights, embrace Bob. Put on the headphones and lie back. He’s no longer physically with us but he’s so with us.

Happy little clouds this Friday.

I Got Your Whimsy Right Here

An elephant driving a Mini Cooper convertible.

 

I’ve noticed that many successful blogs are built upon whimsy.

If you know me, or even if you’ve read some of these posts, I’m not very whimsical.

I would not, for example, bite the pattern of a heart into an apple and then cup it in my hands and take a photo of it to post here.

I don’t have any cute kids I can press into blogging service.

I could take photos of delicious food, or show you how I delicately dab butter onto my pastry dough with a pastry brush. If only I had a brush. And some dough.

I’m not obsessed with the color turquoise or white (which, when I was in school, was not even a color.)

I don’t even enjoy coffee, so I can’t whip up a late and draw a picture in the foam (another heart?) for you to enjoy with the caption “I love love”.

Hell, I don’t even live each day in the moment. Like a lot of humans, I’m usually living in the past or contemplating a fantastic, fanciful future.

So. Here. Here is the whimsy I can give – a drawing of an elephant driving a car that may or may not be a Mini Cooper convertible.

Ta da!

Monday In the Woodlands

I drew these sketches of woodland animals over the weekend and then it occurred to me that they all have a very deadpan, It’s-Monday-morning-I’m-so-over-it expression on their faces.

FOXY

Line drawing of a bored looking fox.
"I can't do any work before noon today."

SQUIRREL

Line drawing of squirrel.
"So, ah... Only five more days until the weekend, huh?"

RABBIT

Line drawing of rabbit.
"Meh."

RACCOON

Line drawing of a raccoon.
"It is what it is, guys. And what it is, is Monday."

There Are No More Needs

Yes, it is worth destroying the rainforest and using tons and tons of energy to produce these items. Clearly, all are must-haves.

Pajamas for dogs, wavy cat scratcher and a giant tennis shoe for cats to sit in.

Printed in someone’s basement:

Whoa! Slow Down For a Moment with God and Paws for a moment with God books.

For the confused person(s) in your life:

A connection for your cell phone to make it like an old-timey phone and gigantic playing cards.

If this doesn’t convince you the world is over, I don’t know what will:

Papers to place under your fat rolls and a toilet paper dispenser that plays Christmast carols.

The oceans? Fuck the oceans. I don’t want no more “Raccoon” eyes.

A foam thing so you don't get mascara on your face and a "hair umbrella" to catch hair clippings.

P.S. The Hair Umbrella is my favorite.

Thanks, C. Ramirez

The best thing I got on our recent trip to NYC was a belt purchased at the Brooklyn Flea.

Leather and brass belt, made in Italy, purchased at the Brooklyn Flea.

I saw it sitting on a table and grabbed it in one of those “this is totally mine” moments.  The buckle and the decorative front piece are made of brass and the belt part is worn brown leather. Someone wore the hell out of this belt already.

Actually, I know who had this belt, at least for awhile. On the inside, in marker, it says “C. Ramirez.”

I could have stayed at the Brooklyn Flea for an entire day, looking at all the clothes (I also got a skirt). The prices were “meh” – you’re not going to find great deals here – but duh.

What I didn’t enjoy so much were the overflowing Port-O-Pots. An old man opened the door to one, looked inside and walked away shaking his head. I really had to pee so I went in holding my breath and keeping my eyes level with the door.

Still, my cool belt is worth a minute of crouching over a pile of shit.

My belt raised security concerns on the way home. It was in my suitcase but the pointed and crossed brass horns raised the alert and my suitcase had to be searched, the belt extracted and run through the x-ray on it’s own, to make sure the horns weren’t really poison daggers or knives or tiny guns.

Which needs to be in a Bond movie.

 

The Disrespectful Centipede

Yesterday morning I went into our basement and saw a big centipede but I didn’t kill it because I couldn’t deal.

Yesterday afternoon I went back down there and the same centipede was hanging out on a ledge. He did not run away when I turned on the light and came down. He moved his legs (antennae? who can tell) like he was waving hello. Then he watched me feed the cat and clean out the cat’s box. Like we’re friends or something.

A drawing of a centipede.

Centipede’s are disgusting. Grosser than millipedes. Plus, I read once that centipede’s can bite. It won’t hurt very much but imagining something like that chomping on me makes me uncomfortable.

When centipede’s reach a certain size, they get a swagger. They think they’re Big Bug on Campus and don’t have to worry. About anything. I wonder if centipedes and spiders ever get into epic battles, like giant squids and sperm whales.

One time I was working at the computer in the basement of our last place. I was alone down there but I suddenly had the feeling that I was being watched. It was the weirdest thing. There were those little basement half-windows and I kept looking up at the one over my desk, thinking I’d catch someone peering in.

Then I looked down at my feet and saw a big centipede  along with a beetle friend.

A centipede and a beetle at my feet, watching me.

They were both watching me. It nervous-making. I don’t think bugs should take up so much space that you can sense their presence without them making a sound.

Abiding With the Buddha & Books

A drawing of a joyful Buddha, arms raised over head, laughing.

“We realize that all the ways we’ve kept ourselves asleep have led nowhere.” – Sakyong Mipham

When I first tried to sit down and draw something again, since not trying to draw anything since high school, I drew a statue of the Buddha that I have. Drawing it just made me very happy.

I have some books, many of them with a Buddhist bent,  that I always turn to in times of trouble or depression or even just moments of feeling lost. Suddenly, while looking at my bookshelf, it occurred to me that I should share some of that list here, with the idea that we’re all looking for good books that can serve as a guide when things get rough or even if it’s just a particularly bad day.

Turning the Mind Into an Ally – Sakyong Mipham
Running With the Mind of Meditation – also by Mipham

The Not So Big Life – Sarah Susanka

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – Haruki Murakami
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – also by Murakami

A Buddha Walks into a Bar –  A Guide to Life for a New Generation – Lodro Rinzler

The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets: A Self-Help Memoir – Jeffrey Skinner (I just discovered this and it’s a fantastic book – if you’re not a poet, like me,  just put in a different word for whatever kind of art or venture you’re engaged with and it still all makes sense.)

Just Kids – Patti Smith

The Freedom Manifesto – Tom Hodgkinson (kind of silly but also a breath of fresh air)

 

Floating

A woman floating underwater, surrounded by bubbles.

I did this drawing working from a photograph by a Minnesotan photographer I admire very much named Rhea Pappas. A few years ago she had a show called Beneath The Surface at Ice Box Gallery in Minneapolis – large scale photos of women underwater. Although I couldn’t afford to buy one of the photos, I have a postcard of one of my favorites that I’ve kept on my bulletin board ever since.

There is something about being suspended underwater that appeals to a lot of us. Perhaps it is best summed up by that very famous scene in The Graduate, when Dustin Hoffman sinks to the bottom of the pool just to hang for awhile and escape the pressure of the adult world. When you’re underwater, you’re in a liminal space, neither here nor there. It’s an in-between state and it can be a welcome respite, a chance to hit the reset button.

But it’s also a way, for just as long as you can hold your breath, to get lost.

Hot Tub Revival

My long-time listeners (first time callers) may remember my Hot Tub People and More Hot Tub People series from earlier this year, waaaaay before I decided to try to draw. This was one of my favorite things EVER on Not Shallow.

So imagine my immense pleasure when I found this in a magazine from the 1970s:

Strange hot tub scenario from Apartment Living Magazine, 1976.

This is from an ad for Seagram’s 7 Crown – specifically for Seven & Sevens.

Whoah, baby.

I can attest to the fact that when one starts drinking Seven & Sevens, things get out of hand. I had one, debauched night of Seven & Sevens in college and that was that. Halfway through the night I decided that mixing the drink was too much work – far too many ingredients – and it was much better to simply take a sip of 7UP and then a sip of Seagram’s right from the bottle.

So the guy in this photo is going to be feeling some pain.

Speaking of pain… what the hell is going on here? Seagram’s wants you to believe that drinking their drink is going to lead to good times… but is sitting in a hot tub alone while a fully clothed woman pours cold water on your head Good Times? Maybe in feudal Japan.

Here’s the ad copy (Yeah, I can’t read it without hearing Don Draper’s voice in my head, either.)

Seagram’s 7 Crown and 7UP was invented for times like these. Not just good times. Great times.

Crisp. Refreshing. It’s the drink Americans enjoy when they’re enjoying themselves. To enjoy one yourself, simply pour an ounce and a half of Seagram’s 7 Crown over ice and add 7UP.

When you’re having fun, have Seven & Seven… America’s favorite drink.

SAY SEAGRAM’S AND BE SURE.

Here’s my ad copy:

Seagram’s 7 Crown and 7UP was invented for times when you want to get laid but she wants to sit on the edge of the hot tub and play stupid water games.

Crisp. Deceptive. It’s the drink Americans turn to when they want to believe they’re enjoying themselves. To make one, fill a glass with about two-thirds Seagram’s  and a dash of 7UP, just enough to cut that alcohol taste.

When you think you might just possibly, after a few more drinks, have a moment of fun… turn to Seagram’s.

SAY SEAGRAM’S AND BE SURE. TO GET A WICKED HANGOVER.

BTW, my hot tub palace, which I will open in 2016, will be called Sevens & Sevens’ 7 Crown.

Mannequin

Some people in Grand Marais love to perch creepy mannequins or dolls in upstairs windows.

I’m not sure if this is suposed to be funny, frightening or transforming, as in – “I’m lost in time, visiting this little town and, oh look, there’s a person in a nightdress looking out at the harbor.”

What I mean is this:

A creepy mannequin looks out a window in Grand Marais, Minnesota.

This is a mannequin that was perched in a second-story window over a shop. It was a male mannequin, which perhaps my limited drawing skills don’t portray properly, that had a long-haired, white wig perched on its head.

Ben Franklin?

Norman Bates?

My cross-dressing neighbor?

The mannequin was wearing a very fancy nightshirt and grinning out to sea; Lake Superior to be more exact. In my mind, I’ve made a scenario in which these shop owners were hoping to create a tableaux in which a wistful wife waits for her sailor husband to return from a long voyage. Unfortunately, they only had a male mannequin and a wig from some long-ago Halloween with which to make it happen.

When I see things like this, I imagine  the particular day someone set this up in the window. Think of the time involved. Get the wig, dress the dummy in the period-appropriate nightgown and then run down to the street to look up and see if it’s placed to your satisfaction. And then… wander off to watch TV or something, I guess. Judging from the dusty look and the faded nightshirt, this all happened in 1991 and has remained, frozen in time, since.

Baked Good Monsters

When we were in Grand Marais, we pulled up at a cafe at the same time as a pick-up truck. Two couples, probably in their 60s, jumped out and hustled in so they could get ahead of us. In their haste, one of them got left behind.

The other three descended on the bakery case, pressing against it with their girth. It was 10:00 in the morning but there wasn’t much left in the way of baked goods. As they barked out possible orders to the Eastern European help the fourth member of their group straggled in and his wife yelled at him.

“What do you want? What do you want? What do you want?” she said. “Cherry Danish? Caramel roll? Doughnut?”

“Cherry Danish!” he said. “Caramel roll. Doughnut.”

The other couple chimed in, “Cherry Danish, caramel roll, doughnut, nut roll, muffin!” like a chant.

Cherry Danish, caramel roll, doughnut, nut roll, muffin. CherryDanishcaramelrolldoughnutnutrollmuffin.

It was like this:

 

Baked Goods Monsters eating baked goods in Grand Marais.

 

We were lucky to get out of there with the last two caramel rolls and our lives.

Eating Grand Marais

World's Best Donuts in Grand Marais, Minnesota.Grand Marais is a tiny town far away from the Big Cities.

But don’t think that, if you go there, you’ll go hungry. Fear not, there is a lot to eat in the GM.

Here’s the rundown of eating from our recent weekend trip.

World’s Best Donuts
Glazed Raised
Bismark, round, filled with raspberry jelly
Mini bismark, filled with lemon
Chocolate cake donut with chocolate icing

The Pie Place Cafe
Crab cakes with wild rice and asparagus
Wild mushroom lasagna
Vanilla & white chocolate cheesecake

Sign for Angry Trout Cafe in Grand Marais, Minnesota.

 

Angry Trout Cafe
Fried, bread herring* with wild rice and salad
Apple pie with vanilla ice cream

Gunflint Tavern
Black bean burritos with blue corn chips, pico de gallo and sour cream, beer!

Blue Water Cafe
Eggs, hash browns, toast, coffee, tea
Mural of Lake Superior**

* I never really knew that you could have herring just as a cooked fish. My only experience with it has been looking down at it in a weird, cold broth of pickling and feeling ill.

** Lake Superior is a big lake. I mean, like, really big.

Inheritance

Drawing of a scythe, a tool used on farms to cut grass or reap crops.

My parents recently sold their house and most of their belongings.

Along with the scythe, I inherited a corn cutter, a pitchfork, some walking sticks (gifts from some hippie friends they don’t see much anymore), a bedroom set, a cabinet to hold one’s curios and lots of other odds-n-ends.

Keith and I are wondering if one of us should dress up as the Grim Reaper on Halloween and jump out at trick-or-treaters with the scythe in hand.

I think we’d get in a lot of trouble with parents but some of the kids would love it.

Crime Report: Line Cutter at Cub Foods

For Keith and the People of Cub

Two guys fight at Cub Foods over one of them cutting in line.

WINDOM NEIGHBORHOOD
Cub Foods
August 14, 2 p.m.

A man was waiting in line to make a purchase when another person cut in front of him to pay for his own products. The man in line told the person to please wait for his or her turn. The man walked toward the door to leave after paying for his items, at which point the other person followed him. The suspect then hit the man in the face and said, “Don’t tell me not to butt in line.” Store employees broke up the fight.

- From The Southwest Journal, Crime Reports, Sept. 3-16, 2012

Meet Catorpion!

Catorpion is a creature that is a cat in front and a scorpion in back.I had a bad dream. Nightmare, really. It featured Catorpion – a creature that is half cat and half scorpion.

In my dream I was in a bedroom and I pointed at the wall, where a giant scorpion was crawling.

“What’s that?” I said.

The scorpion fell off the wall and onto my arm, where it promptly morphed into Catorpion.

When it attacked me, it was biting and clawing me with it’s front, cat half and stinging me with its back, scorpion half.

Yes, it hurt quite a bit. I was screaming in pain. My arm was in shreds.

That’s all I remember.

But isn’t that enough?

The Evil of Comfort

The ubiquitous Croc shoe, made of plastic, a sure sign someone has given up on life.

“You’re abandoning a lot of ideas when you are too into comfort. ‘Comfy’ – that’s one of the worst words! I just picture a woman feeling bad, with a big bottle of alcohol, really puffy. It’s really depressing, but she likes her life because she has comfortable clogs.”

– Christian Louboutin, The New Yorker, March 28, 2011

Dog-Hearted

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Drawing of a normal human heart.

When we first got our dog, Freja, I was worried about stuff like dog hair on my clothes and that “doggie smell” that can pervade everything. I found it annoying to get up at 2 a.m. to take her outside to pee because she couldn’t make it all the way through the night.

A drawing of a heart that is growing some hair.

Soon, a routine was established. There were favorite toys. She learned her name and came running when I called. I tried to snuggle; she resisted. She barked at me when she wanted a bone.

A drawing of a human heart that's getting furry.

We ran errands together. Walked. Hiked. Walked some more. She learned to read my expression and watch my hands for signals. She can smile. And often does.

A drawing of a furry human heart full of love for dogs.

There are 205 steps in every city block I walk with her. We walk in rain, snow, wind and heat. Sometimes I stalk along, wondering what the hell I’m doing out there. Then I look down at her as she trots along, stopping to nose something in the leaves, and realize that it’s because I’ve become truly dog-hearted.

More Than A Feeling

A man paints his garage on a sunny day while listening to "More Than A Feeling" on the radio.Keith and I were driving and the song “More Than A Feeling” by Boston came on the radio.

Keith said it sucks.

A few days later I went to eat my lunch outside at a playground. From across the soccer field I heard the sound of “More Than A Feeling.” I walked to the edge of a hill and looked down at a man painting his garage while listening to tunes on a radio.

On a sunny, late summer day, “More Than A Feeling” didn’t suck.

Testing… Testing… 1, 2, 3…

A drawing of comedian Phyllis Diller, 1917 to 2012.

A few weeks ago, Phyllis Diller died. One thing I always loved about Phyllis, besides that hair and the crazy laugh, was that she didn’t start her stand-up career until she was 37. Since she lived to be 95, that means she enjoyed a 58-year career in comedy.

We hear a lot about young people making it big. There are all kinds of lists honoring “30 Under 30” or “40 Under 40.”

What about the late bloomers?

Recently, I decided I want to draw more despite the fact that I don’t draw well. But I like to do it.

The thing I’m good at is observing the world. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. Once, at a nature program when all the other kids were playing a prey/predator game, I hung back and watched, not wanting to take part. A man on the sidelines said to me, “It’s OK, the world needs doers and it needs watchers.”

I see now that he’s right. At the time I thought it meant that I was deficient somehow. I longed to be a doer. But I’m a watcher. I observe human nature. I notice when someone paints the shutters on their house. It makes me a better writer. I hear what people are saying. And maybe, just maybe, it will make me a better drawer.

Not Shallow has taken a couple different formats over the years and now it becomes a respository for my drawings and accompanying observations. I know I have at least 5 fans, because they’ve told me they like the site and, when I took a break, asked me when it was coming back. I hope that those 5 fans will join me by checking in every so often and sharing it with some more people.

Here’s to all the late bloomers.

Friday Is For Fashion

We’re well into spring. Do you have your spring wardrobe together? No? Well, here are some suggestions for items you might gather up on this last weekend of April.

Drawing of a peplum skirt.PEPLUMS are back. Or, more accurately, they are now joining us from the 80s. The peplum, in case you don’t know, is an over-skirt. So, if it’s attached to a full skirt, it’s a tiny skirt that only grew partway down.

You can get skirts with peplums or shirts/jackets with peplums – it doesn’t matter what your peplum is attached to, as long as it springs out from around your hips and makes them look wide. Which is what you’ve always wanted, right? To look wider than you are?

SEE-THROUGH PURSES are the must-have accessory. This makes it much easier for Drawing of a see-through bag with all its contents on display.strangers to assess so many things about you – if you have anything worth stealing, if you have any spare change  and if you’re on prescription drugs.

If I wanted to be all English major about this, I would say that the see-through bag is a response to our ever-more-transparent society. We overshare online and now we can overshare with fashion. Nothing is off-limits!

Continue reading Friday Is For Fashion

Friday Is For Fashion

A round-up of fashion-y stuff to take you into the weekend. Don’t get too excited.

What’s wrong with this picture from a Ralph Lauren ad?

Colorful shirts and pants by Ralph Lauren. Let's hear it for color blocking!

If you said, “Everything,” you’re wrong. Not everything. The orange pants, for example, would be quite lovely paired with a shirt that covered one’s middriff.

The correct answer is, “Those green garbage bag pants.” After staring at this photo for awhile, I realized that those are not pants. It’s a jumpsuit, made out of an old parachute, worn as pants.

Continue reading Friday Is For Fashion

The Rules of Classic Rock

Classic Rock band logos.

I grew up listening to 105.7 WAPL, “The Rockin’ Apple”  in Neenah, Wisconsin. It wasn’t exactly my station of choice but it was the station of choice for a lot of the teen boys and college dudes who worked at my dad’s store/produce farm during the summer months.

Ted Nugent, the Rolling Stones, The Who and Aerosmith all provided the soundtrack to which I washed cucumbers, beets and carrots or bagged potatoes or popcorn. I put together bunches of asparagus while listening to Jim Morrison wail about an L.A. Woman and heaved crates of sweet corn onto flat carts while Sting pleaded with Roxanne.

This was a long time ago now. All those teen and college guys have long since become adults with jobs, families, houses of their own.

What hasn’t changed, it seems, is “Classic Rock.”

Continue reading The Rules of Classic Rock

Terry-fied

I’ve been racking my brain for an hour trying to come up with some witty commentary for this.

But it speaks for itself.

Mens' Terry-go-Round from Sears catalog from 1976.

I do have questions.

Why the pocket?

Was there a 1970s post-shower situation during which a man would hang out in the Terry-Go-Round to shave, check the mail, count change (in his pocket)? Was it a simpler,  less-hurried time when a man didn’t feel the need to rush from naked directly into clothes?

If you ordered the  7Up version, were you admitting to not being macho? And WTF, Alabama and Virginia? Your citizens can’t show their Budweiser pride?

Smash Notes: “The Movie Star” Episode 11

Logo for the TV show Smash on NBC.

If you tried to watch episode 11 of Smash but fell asleep, partly because your life is busy and full but also because the show lulled you into a comatose state, it’s OK.

You didn’t miss much. And I’m here to tell you about it.

Here are this week’s Smash Notes.

Julia: Someone has her Smart Girl glasses on! Ready to move on from her other personas (40-ish Suburban Nester, Irresponsible Creative Type and Bad Girl, respectively), this week Julia donned glasses and turtleneck sweaters in order to broadcast that she’s a bad person, everything is her fault and that she must now put her child first. There must have been a lot of downtime on the train this week and the self-help books came out of the expensive handbag.

Continue reading Smash Notes: “The Movie Star” Episode 11

Celebrate Pre-Washed Denim!

Sometimes, in terms of fashion, it can feel as if our society is falling down into a black hole.

But maybe, just maybe, we are climbing up out of one. I mean, it’s not this bad anymore, right?

Page from 1976 Sears catalog featuring prewashed denim for gals and guys.

Guys, maybe you sometimes feel like you’re not the most fashionable. Maybe you feel schlubby or dorky or mismatched.

Remember that, no matter what, you’re not this guy.

You are not this guy.

That counts for something.

Note: Yeah, I found a Sears catalog from 1976 for $1.60 at an antique store. That’s a lot of fun for only $1.60. And I’ll pass the savings on to you!

99 Projects: Coen Bros Movie Magnets

Project #9: The Coen Movies Magnets.

Not all projects have to be big to bring great joy. I made these magnets featuring Coen Brothers films for our refrigerator:

Refrigerator magnets of Coen brothers movie stills.

A few years ago, the Walker Art Center did a Regis Dialogue and Film Retrospective of the films of Joel & Ethan Coen. I kept the program, which had high-quality, rectangular photo stills of their films. I thought it would be cool to make magnets but I didn’t have a laminating machine.

Note: save programs or books for art exhibits you love. The production and paper are generally high quality (better than, say, saving magazine images) and will make great images for magnets!

Continue reading 99 Projects: Coen Bros Movie Magnets

Friday Is For Fashion

Images to inspire you over the weekend.

Big Eyelet is taking over – covering skirts, dresses, gowns, blouses and… pants.

I would wear these pants by Alberta Ferretti. Especially on that terrace. Looks like something Betty Draper would have loved to wear back when she was thin.

Model wearing eyelet pants by Alberta Ferretti. Continue reading Friday Is For Fashion

Smash Cram Session: Episodes 9, 10

Logo for Smash, TV show on NBC.

Maybe it was because of that Bed Debacle in episode 8 but I took a week away from Smash and then Smash Crammed last night. Watching back-to-back episodes is an interesting experience, to say the least. You pick up on a lot of nuances. The ins and the outs. The what-have-yous.

Here are this (and last) week’s Smash Notes.

EPISODE 9 “Hell on Earth”

Julia -n- Frank: Frank put down the chemistry textbooks and realized, through some sheet music he found on Julia’s side of the bed, that she had an affair! Bravo, Frank!

When confronted, Julia initially said, “Nothing is going on!” but what she should have said was, “Remember that night I got out of bed to go for a walk at 10 p.m. in my pajamas and you said, ‘Have a nice time,’ and I didn’t come back until 4 a.m.? Yeah, that was an affair happening.”

I mean, the guy is stupid, right?

I think it was a play to our sympathies that, when he found the incriminating show tune, he was looking for the adoption paperwork. Ah, the adoption. I don’t know about you but I think they should definitely go through with it.

Duel, Lack Of: Frank goes and confronts Michael about the affair. It ends with Frank punching Michael. Yawn. I wanted Frank to challenge him to a duel with broadswords. The guy brought Frank’s honor as a husband, father and preoccupied chemistry professor into question. Also, they missed an opportunity to have Michael sing a song about dueling and anguishing over the logistics of the impending duel while dancing alone in a studio with rain pouring down outside.

Continue reading Smash Cram Session: Episodes 9, 10