February 2012
3 posts
5 tags
Disclosure
This morning I said to myself, “DDB, you are totally like Michael Douglas in Falling Down. You are feeling that feeling of the whole world being against you and you are angry and confused and upset and you just think everything is unfair and you are this close to having to repair your shoe with newsprint, and will probably go steal some guns from gang members and then you will shoot those...
7 tags
We could have had it all
After an awards show I usually have a lot of feelings. I mean, sure, I’m talking through the whole thing and shouting at my TV and giving hell and heck and high fives all over the place, but when it’s all over I am amped up and not ready to deal with those feelings and need to get my ass to sleep. Often I go to bed a little tipsy, on opulence and/or drink, and in the morning the...
5 tags
Bonus Time
I don’t know what people be doing when they’re not waiting until Bonus Time to buy their make-up. Bonus Time is a magical period when you can buy fancy department store make-up and get free things! Products! Shiny glosses! Rosy blushes! Shimmering shadows, and glittering highlighters and sleek liners that make eyes look like Bambi’s! Who are these folks buying fancy make-up and...
January 2012
4 posts
6 tags
Old ideas about loving old people
Today Leonard Cohen released his twelfth album. Like Christmas morning I woke early, but instead of staring into the glittering tree and shiny, wrapped packages in predawn darkness I stared at my iTunes account and clicked some buttons to receive my gift. And now this album on repeat. We’ll spend our day together.
It feels like we’re on a date. I brushed my hair, slicked my lips...
6 tags
Mathematics
It’s still the beginning of a new year. Some people want to change themselves from what they were last year. Not really in their heads, not in that way that makes it easier to get on in the world. Like, physically. Like, they want their bodies to look differently. They want there to be less of that body. They want to be less fat or less scrawny. And changing your body can make you feel...
6 tags
Sorry for your loss
On the weekend I got in to a discussion about sending cards. The paper kind. Where you have to have an address with a postal code on it. You know the ones. They arrive in this thing called the mail box that you open with a key and not a password. Yeah. Not email. Not inbox. Don’t get me wrong. If you want to send an e-card, get your hot bitch self to the e-card emporium. We were talking...
4 tags
New Year, New ?
It’s a new year and stuff. I took down my calendar and didn’t put up a new one. Numbers move around or whatever. We measure things. The Mayan calendar is being a total cooze. Persians are all like, ‘you call this a new year?’ Etc.
The only calendars I care about are the broadcast calendar, the publishing calendar, the ‘cram all the good movies into two months...
December 2011
3 posts
4 tags
iRegret (Buy the App)
“Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can’t build on it; it’s only good for wallowing in.” - Katherine Mansfield
“Absolutely no regrets.” - Madonna
This cocky anti-regret philosophy angers me. Really? You don’t have any regrets? Your life is a perfect masterpiece? It’s in...
5 tags
All Star Quotes from the Finale that Changed Lives
“Hold onto the handle bars of fierceness.” - Lisa D’Amato
“She did her thing.” - Tyson Beckford
“Covuh Girrrrl” - Angelea Preston
“I don’t wanna worry about my hair comin’ off.” Angelea Preston
“I’m destined for greatness.” - Angelea Preston
“I felt like I was really good flying in the air.” -...
4 tags
She's a woman now. Right?
Today Ms. Britney Jean Spears, icon of teendom and frayed jean shorts and hair and mental stability, turns thirty. Yes, our dear Brit Brit is not a girl. She is a woman. Finally. I think. I mean, she looks like a woman. She looked like adorable jail bait, then she looked like an adorable sex pot, then she looked like an adorable advertisement for Zoloft. Despite her tragic breakdowns and style...
November 2011
4 posts
8 tags
A bird/dame/skirt in a nest
Oh birds. We have had some rough times together. I do such a good job of never eating you and yet you torment me. Dive bombs. Excrement. Shouting at me through the fire-escape window. Biting. Honking. General rudeness. And yet as days get shorter and colder and I become less inclined to go out of doors (which is, coincidentally, where you reek your havoc, so think about that) I’m inspired...
5 tags
Fashion magazine cover concepts that need to be...
Woman wading in water while wearing a gown.
Really? We are still doing this? Is this boring anyone else to the point of wanting to not ever wear a ball gown? I’m getting there. I tells ya.
Are these some highfalutin allusions? To straight depressed Ophelia drowning in her big fancy dress? To straight depressed Virginia Woolf loaded down with rocks as she enters the river to drown...
4 tags
No thank you, Mr. Sandler
There are, of course, different kinds of heartbreak. Quick snaps like a finger being broken in a mob movie. The pendulum swing of back and forth love that results in alternating feelings of heart pain and elation. The devastating thud followed by ease and relief, knowing you’ve kicked the habit, something bad for you. And then the slow ache of watching your love, maybe your first love,...
6 tags
Help? Hope?
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that I have watched a lot of television. Like, probably my lifetime share plus at least three other peoples’ lifetime shares and I am not even middle-aged yet. So a lot. A. Lot. And yet, I don’t know if I’ve ever encountered a show as dark as Enlightened. It’s been given a short run on HBO, alongside it’s polar opposite...
October 2011
5 posts
6 tags
This week in boobs
Two boob-related ‘news’ stories this week filled me with shock and distress and dry throat sadness. Sure, they made seem like vastly different, unrelated except for their mammary connection, but that’s not the case. Or so my somewhat logical brain would have me have you believe.
This bra costs 2.5 million dollars in US currency, the green stuff that dreams are made of. If I...
7 tags
Addendum to good (current) reasons to be an...
In error I neglected to mention the many charms of this fine anti-hero of our time, Jax Teller, a.k.a. Charlie Hunnam. England-born, Mr. Hunnam here manages to portray a character rife with moral ambiguity, a man living on the fringes, the embodiment of a fractured American dream as though he were born and bred on a Northern California highway, wrapped in a leather vest and left to fend for...
10 tags
Good (current) reasons to be an Anglophile
There are always good reasons to be an Anglophile, but these are good right now reasons. Listen up!
The Hour
Do you like the BBC? Do you like interesting characters? Do you like the 1950s? Do you like excellent costuming? Do you miss Mad Men? Then The Hour will probably fill that cigarette shaped hole in your heart.
A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked In by Magnus Mills
I admit it. I...
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In a galaxy called lame
You know when you’re having a swell day and thinking, oh man I am being so productive and delightful, and you make up a song for yourself in your head about how great that is and how slammdiggity your day is and how the world is full or wonder and awesome stuff and you walk into an art supply store full of pretty things and weird things and things to make other things with and you’re...
September 2011
7 posts
5 tags
Logical and Illogical Reasons for Chest Pains
Logical Reasons for Chest Pains:
Heartburn
Acid reflux
Being punched in the chest
Being kicked in the chest
Being head-butted in the chest
Chest is on fire (not in the medical way, but a real fire started with a blowtorch, barbecue lighter, one of those long matches you don’t see around much these days)
Holding a really fat baby while lying down
Being clawed at by rabid crow
...
3 tags
Do not go gentle into that straight hair (a.k.a....
This has been a really hard day. I’ve been unhunging, folding and storing away my summer frocks. Sun shines, but I know what needs to be done. In their place I’ve pulled out wools, and tweeds and long sleeves (sleeves you are my enemy), sweaters and scarves and while the colours are bold and I do have genuine affection for some pieces, it’s a sad time. Have tears been shed? I...
7 tags
A gChat On Reading Mindy Kaling's "Flick Chicks"...
Mindy Kaling describes types of women in romantic comedies: The Ethereal Weirdo “The smart and funny writer Nathan Rabin coined the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl to describe this archetype after seeing Kirsten Dunst in the movie “Elizabethtown.” This girl can’t be pinned down and may or may not show up when you make concrete plans with her. She wears gauzy blouses and braids. She likes to...
6 tags
Eternal flamer
I was kind of thinking that maybe I would write something about the Emmys, like people were wearing gowns and stuff, which I love, but then I realized I just didn’t care enough, so I’m just going to write about this dress I purchased instead. Oh, saved up gift cards, you make life worth living.
This particular dress comes from French Connection and I love it. Partly because it is so...
4 tags
Insert obvious curves joke
I am not one for flash, bling, sparkles and crystals, but when those otherwise tacky materials are used to adorn someone this gorgeous, then I can only stand in awe of how that someone, wearing what could look like a pageant gown on a stick model, looks elegant and enviable. It’s like her very skin glimmers. And the red hair, slightly tousled. Sigh. Thank you for existing, Christina...
4 tags
5 tags
Four Hour Tour
No matter what I’m doing with my life, the day after Labour Day will be the first day of school. New pens, binders, notebooks. That carefully selected first day of school outfit, the one bought a month in advance, the one I fought the urge to wear on every other seemingly important (or not important) occasion because the outfit is so beautiful and exciting and transformative, and fighting...
August 2011
8 posts
5 tags
There is a war
Barry. Look. I know. You get a lot of offers. Sure. I’m sure of it. You’re Barry Weiss, breakout star of Storage Wars. I get that. But listen. I think we could have some good times together. You’re a collector and a man about town, an interesting man, a man who searches for treasures, oddities. You like to annoy people and get all up in their business and you don’t watch...
7 tags
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Swedish fish
Yes. Another dream. About a celebrity. This time, however, there was real danger. And not just because Alexander Skarsgard is dangerously good looking.
Lakeside. Friends and I swim, frolic, but the sky is dark. Trees barricade us on one side. We’re circled by mountains. Skarsgard appears, sporting a dusty red-coloured button up and some slim jeans. He looks good, but he’s worried.
...
6 tags
Super sad freedom love story
Last night I had a dream that I was supposed to be going to this big time, like, fancy dancy-style literary event. And the whole point of the thing was that I was going to meet Jonathan Franzen. We were supposed to engage in serious conversation about important stuff, stuff that is important in a dream, but is actually just a feeling, a dream feeling that has no context whatsoever, but compels...
2 tags
Dirt picnic
Remember before Instagram and Hipstamatic, when photos just came out looking awesome? And remember how delicious a nice bowl of dirt soup could be? Just the right graininess, moist but not soggy, not like those unappealing mudpies, no siree. And also, remember how weird and great it felt just to be tiny, to know you were smaller than all those big people who told you when to stop eating dirt...
4 tags
Cakes and Otters
I’m gonna get older in a few days, but you know what cheers me up? OMG and stuff. There are so many otter cakes for me to covet. Like this homemade number with the smiling fish.
I love you too! For this, I would change my name to Jordan.
Hey there, fondant! Nice fish.
Look at this adorable little weirdo.
Sure, this is more of a wedding cake, but c’mon, klassy. With a...
She fights for whimsy
montenegrostyle:
Of course our heroine doesn’t support the war. Which war? Any of them. But she does support the clean lines and dramatic flair of military fashion. Modern, antique, medieval. Only a spiritless fool would call this clashing. if she mixes them, then they match. Some might say without the toothy grin this look would cease to be avant-garde. Those who oppose that theory are...
July 2011
5 posts
5 tags
It's toast
I would assume that 100 of the 101 things in this book are different methods of smashing the toaster oven in a rage, or other modes of destruction of this useless gadget. If you have a toaster or an oven, and do not live in a university dorm or a fridge box-sized home, I see no reason for anyone to own a toaster oven. Bread can go in a toaster. Everything else can be baked or heated in a oven....
7 tags
Goodbye, dear friends
Though I have many friends (sometimes too many, damn it, so would some of you please do something to bump you from the list?) and spend much time with those friends, engaged in very enjoyable activities, I am a selfish ratbag and crave more. My pop culture friends and family, the ones who surround me with love and affection in the glow of my television, commune with darkened theatres or nestle...
12 tags
Some TV awards stuff happened
This morning the Primetime Emmy nominations were announced and as usual it was a mixed bag of awesome and suck. For the most part, pretty awesome. Like, my buddy Louis C.K. here being nominated (Outstanding Actor in a Comedy) for his show Louie, which he writes, produces, directs, stars in and edits. No big deal. Just a totally big deal.
And my usual favourites are in the mix: the beautiful and...
4 tags
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To Lilo, on her 25th birthday
Maybe it’s because her mother and I share the same name, maybe it’s watching her from young pup to fox, but I have lotsa feelings saved up in my heart for Lilo. And when I see her cry in court, or tweet about her father, or captured by paparazzi in one of her many bikinis, my chest aches.
So naive. Every time she emerges from jail, or rehab or house arrest, armed with a fresh dye...
June 2011
8 posts
4 tags
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Strike a pose
From Wikipedia:
Vogue is a slightly upmarket brand of cigarette coming in several varieties, including regular, menthol and lights. Vogue cigarettes are marketed in both king size and super slim, which is about 100mm long and thinner than a standard size cigarette.
When I read the words “slightly upmarket” and “menthol” and “superslims” I really miss...
3 tags
No 'Hot For Teacher' Jokes Here
I went to see Bad Teacher on Friday morning which is a strange, yet lovely time slot to watch a raunchy comedy. Near empty theatre, strange moments of raucous laughter, popcorn before noon. Excellent. And just in case we needed more reasons to want women to headline comedies (I know, I know, get off your soapbox you cray cray feminazi!) but Cameron Diaz was like early 80’s Bill Murray,...
7 tags
Mad Republic
Banana Republic has partnered with costume designer extraordinaire, Janie Bryant (who also created costumes for Deadwood, Swearengen shout out!) to create a line of Mad Men inspired clothes and oh man, this is some real good action up in here. It’s all I want in clothes. Hour-glass emphasis everywhere, tiny waists and not a hint of shapelessness or drape of trapeze swinging, boob muddling...
4 tags
More like manuricure
All the women in the world who have beautiful, long nails (not claw-like, porn-star nails, but a decent length, you know what I mean) are fake right? Because my personal experience leads me to believe that it’s impossible to grow lovely, strong nails that don’t peel in layers like flakes of onion skin, or smash on impact with medium to hard surfaces, like my thigh or the keys on my...
3 tags
Patchy McPatchersons
I haven’t read the books because I’m not a masochist who enjoys long, fantasy-laden literary commitments, but are all the male characters in Game of Thrones described as having the most disgusting pseudo-beards? Because, on the HBO show, they all have that type of facial hair. Well most of them do. And I understand if they have full on, like, burly muskrat faces. They’re...
6 tags
Soothing Friday fashion
To counter those pants of doom I present a much more reasonable use of whimsy: the penguin dress from Charlotte Taylor’s Autumn/Winter 2011 collection. Now, this is what I’m talking about. This is how you make silk into something fun and flattering and not pants. You warm my heart, penguin dress. Let’s get together.
4 tags
Friday morning fashion rage
Good morning. This is reason #1045 why I hate pants. I mean, these are suitable for working out on the old treadmill, but not for leaving the house. They are made out of silk, so if you’re a Real Housewife, or Rue McLanahan (RIP) bust these out for lounging and seducing. Otherwise, I would suggest you spend your extra $560 (oh, yeah, no big deal, whatevs and stuff) on something else. Me,...
May 2011
13 posts
4 tags
Don't look at me with your dead, plastic eyes
So, this is the man who created these horrifying monsters known as Cabbage Patch Kids. This is the man whose brain came up with the idea that really ugly baby dolls grew out of a cabbage field. This is the man who had his name stitched on the ass of every single doll churned out and sold to millions of parents and given to children who then (I assume) learned how to love the wrong way and this...
7 tags
Ha! Huh?
Yeah, I saw Bridesmaids. Of course I did. It’s a comedy. That makes fun of people and weddings and feelings. We all like to make fun of that stuff. And yeah. I identified with certain elements of the protagonist in a way that some might find disturbing, but so what? Also, and this is really important, this movie was a test. It is supposed to prove that women are funny, which is funny,...