Tom Ford is Making Me a Movie

You can tell it’s for me, because there are hot dudes making out with each other, a lot of cigarettes, and tight 60’s style.

Check this trailer now and prepare for a screening, my place, on the release date.

How Come No One the Fuck Told Me About Virginia Woolf?

I read somewhere that among academics it’s a kind of party game to compare which canonical, ‘must-read’ books or authors they have never read. Usually someone wins with something like ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Pynchon’. (And then you drink?)

Thank God I finally read ‘To the Lighthouse’. Ginny clearly sees into my soul. All that womanly intuition and what what.

Memento Mori

Just when you thought it was safe to hang textiles...

If you’ve ever been to my room, you’ve noticed this piece of zany cloth. I bought it from a woman in Tanzania who walked up to my car window in order to bargain. I successfully hung it on our landing last week, but it’s so incredibly long I had to stand on a milk crate stacked on top of a suitcase stacked on top of a kitchen chair, all while stretched precariously over a staircase. I didn’t die.

But like, I might have. So appreciate, brah.

Anchors Away

Made this one last summer when I half-convinced myself I needed an anchor tattoo. Finally sprayed it today.

Before

After

Here’s to smooth sailing.

Blang

Picked some up at the Arlington Street Fair. Helps me with my swagga.

SPACE CHAIR!

So, it’s not summer anymore. The blog withers. However, I did do something pretty crafty this afternoon. I found this beat-up Mod chair in a basement. Unfortunately, it was shitty and beige and reeked of Noyes. I bought some spray paint, made some stencils, et voila: space chair.

It's peeking at you

SPACE INVADERS!!1!.

I think it looks pretty fly. Now if they’d just let me paint the walls.

A Page from My Notebook

Ooh. Collagey.

Actually, the front cover. This post is brought to you by: Gauloises, Beacon’s Closet, handmade stencils and cast-offs from the music library.

It’s All in the Details

Some distressing news courtesy of Gawker.

My fave cover. ever.

If you’re not a Conde Nast devotee like myself, you may not have heard this, but the publisher has recently hired McKinsey consultants to come into the offices and do a drastic overhaul in order to make the magazines more cost-effective. For a long time, the luxury mags at Conde were able to maintain huge budgets partly because the same publishing company had a pretty stable income from newspapers sales. Of course, newspapers at this point are starting to look more and more like cave-paintings: unappealing, outdated, and you can see the same thing online for free.

So now the decades-long media/fashion/celebrity blitz seems to be slowing down in the Conde building, and all the perks of working there are dropping away. The majority of the receptionists have already been laid off, and the McK consultants haven’t even given their final report yet. Gawker thinks big-spender Vogue will have it’s budget seriously curtailed. Apparently Details is also in a difficult position, since the consultants are looking to eliminate any redundancy, and as Belonsky writes, “Details should be sweating in its Italian boots, because it’s basically a younger-looking carbon copy of GQ.” I would qualify that. Younger, and slightly gayer.

I interned at Details two years ago, and it was a pretty fantastic experience. I could see how someone could consider the magazine ‘redundant’, existing as it does in the shadow of GQ, but for my money I’d always buy a Details first. Maybe they should take a few tips from Nylon Guys and tackle the hipster market.

Vinyl Overload

So you guys remember this post, when I was drooling over an USB turntable?

Totally bought it. And I’ve spent a lot of time at home ripping songs and editing them on Audacity (which is pretty easy, perhaps thanks to my Intro to Media Studies class, where I spent hours splicing barn animal sounds). Anyway, I’m going to be much more comprehensive about cataloging all of this stuff in the future, but today I buzzed through Lou Rawls, Dakota Staton, Montserrat Caballe, Johnny Hodges, and Fats Domino.

Now it’s all sitting happily on my iPod!

Check it:

Lou Rawls Live

Dakota Staton Sings Ballads and the Blues

Blue Notes

Notebook Page

Or don't. Doesn't matter to me.

Valentine’s Day. Fun because I get to make a lot of cards, shitty because it’s Valentine’s Day. Note the bottles of alcohol, packs of cigarettes, and marijuanna leaves lovingly swathed in CAUTION tape and used as a garland. Who needs a box of chocolates?

A Little Morning Mendelssohn

So, you may not care, but in addition to researching hot dudes, good books and fine flicks, I do a LOT a lot of singing on the side. I’m gearing up for a senior recital this winter, and one of the top composers on my list? Jakod Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn, aka Felix Mendelssohn, after his name got whiteswashed by a bunch of anti-Semites. I’ve been into this dude for a LONG time, since middle school, when my choir sang a bunch of his music in Carnegie Hall (I know, I know, I peaked early).

He looks like this:

FOX!

He falls into an interesting musical period, and the style of his pieces sort of bridges the gap between Classicism (think Mozart) and Romanticism (think Beethoven). His style happens to be MY style. Other interesting facts: he was a bit of a child prodigy/Renaissance man (he was a really gifted draughtsman, for instance), Wagner hated him (NAZI!) and his sister, Fanny, died while singing (which is ABSOLUTELY the way to go) of a heart attack. This makes sense, because the act of singing is basically a classy version of hyperventilation.

Mostly because I wanted to try posting an MP3 on here, I’m throwing up a recording of me singing “O God Have Mercy” from his oratorio ‘St. Paul’. Ignore the fact that I sound like I’m 15. I’m telling you, I dig this guy’s music. It’s really, uh, Catholic (even though he’s a Jew).

Ya’ dig? How can you not dig? It’s Mendelssohn!

Stuff You Can Grow and Smoke (Legally)

So I got this picture text from my friend Nick the other day:

Aw yeah.

“Biggest leaf is 14 inches long 6 inches wide, 1st harvest is next week. Smokeable tobacco by the end of September or October break.”

I’m going to be the crunchiest fucking hipster around when I start smoking home-grown tobacco. Like this dude:

Damn you look inbred.

Minus Downsface. Plus skinny jeans (skinny overalls? they must be out there).

Old Ads: The Wartime Edition

That silhouette? It's Uncle Sam.

There are a LOT MORE pieces of super gung-ho wartime Americana that I need to dig up. It’s crazy how blatant everything was during WWII, and sort of bizarre how the whole country actually had a consensus on the war effort. Yeah. That’ll never happen again.

Let America sell your product for you!

Most of these are just stamps of approval for food products, I’ll get you the good stuff later this week when I’m home and have all my pack-rat treasures within arm’s reach.

Are you selling me patriotism or caution? Oh, it's insurance

All my captions make me sound like a bitchy, media-savvy hipster. Fair ’nuff.

Man Appreciation Post: Mel Gibson (only in Mad Max)

I know, I know, you’re questioning my taste right now. But if you’ll kindly refer to Man Appreciation Post Numba 1: Bear Grylls, you will recall that I am actually a great judge of the hot. (Coincidentally, Bear Grylls is the search term that comes up most often in this blog, usually in conjunction with words like “naked” and “chest-shaving”).

I know, I know. Mel Gibson has fallen on hard times. Maybe he’s under a gypsy curse. Maybe that wacky Catholic sect of his has been sapping the hot from his bones. Also, he’s pretty old now and clearly hits the bottle way too hard. Believe what you will. But there was a time (specifically, 1979) when Mel Gibson was the top-dawg hottest Australian I was not yet alive to crush on. Behold:

Oh Mel.

Are you seeing this? The leather? The scowl? The shotgun? I realize I’m arriving late to the ‘Mad Max’ game, plus I may write a comprehensive post about Mad Max and ALL of its sequels after I’ve done some serious and probing cinematic research. For now, let’s all take a moment to appreciate Mel Gibson when he was a badass in tight leather, as opposed to an anti-Semite in ill-fitting Hawaiian shirts.

And just to change it up with a little vid content, here’s the last scene in the movie. It’s not exactly a spoiler, so just enjoy Mel Gibson’s soulless cool and try to decide if the dudes behind ‘Saw’ are total poseurs.

I would definitely be Mad Max for Halloween, but everyone would confuse me for a leather daddy. May still be worth it.

Saint Becca: Giver of Gifts You Already Have

Wednesday was my friend Rebecca’s birthday.

Giver of Gifts You Already Have

One night, Becca was spooning in my bed. It was chilly, so she offered me some covers. “I’m really good at sharing stuff,” she said. Genuinely. And then I said “Why, thank you Becca, for so selflessly giving me MY OWN COVERS from MY OWN BED.” Thus, a saint was born.

Here’s an early draft that I sort of like more.

Is anyone feeling some old school 1930’s glamor in this broad? Maybe it’s the teardrop.

Blog Love: Fashion for Writers

It’s summer. All I do is blog and drink coffee. And one of my favorite blogs is Fashion for Writers. It’s written by a grad student, Meggy Wang, who is currently working on a novel (on top of the usual grad school activities) and she updates every few days with snippets of interesting photos and content from her life. It’s about writing, it’s about the blogger, but 80% of the time it’s about fashion: not your typical reviews of trends-of-the-moment, but stuff that veers more towards the cerebral. You have to ask: is there really a specific fashion for writers? This blog convinces me that there is.

Lit crush

For instance, she highlights this necklace from Urban Outfitters, partly for the cute factor, but mostly because it references the sweet pendant that Bastian uses in ‘The Neverending Story.’ If you’ve seen the movie, please go read the book. It’s got a lot more interesting content that never made it into the film (the undead, for instance). For Vassar students, most of whom consider themselves writers to some extent, this may be something you’re into. Check her out here: http://fashionforwriters.com/

JD would rock this look.

Reading Rainbow: Mitchell’s ‘Up in the Old Hotel”

Dames and sirs, I read a look of books when I was way too young, and this is the best one of them. I remember buying it at 14, because I liked the description and the cover, and got really into it. Before I know that ‘literary journalism’ was a thing, I just thought “Hey, I want to write articles like Joseph Mitchell.”

Then I lent my copy to a friend and lost it freshman year of high school, and have barely thought about it since. Then I saw it in Border last month, right next to a (really fucking funny) copy of “Things White People Like” (no, I don’t know who the hell is in charge of shelving books in these places). I bought it hoping, all Harold-Bloom-style, that I would maybe notice his influence in all my own writing.

I’m so dumb.

Anyway, if you, dear reader, are in your local artsy mom & pop bookstore (or a shitty Borders, like me), the book will look like this:

This is what real reporters look like.

If you see it, you should pick it up, buy it, and run to your Barcalounger, cuz you’re rarin’ for a literary treat.

“Up in the Old Hotel” is actually a collection of four shorter books, which collect the articles of New York reporter Joseph Mitchell, written between the 1930’s and the 50’s. The subjects of his short articles are various and unusual: street corner Doomsday prophets and burlesque dancers, bearded women, Gypsy chiefs, bartenders and bums. What really gets you is his prose: it’s actually detached, but you read so much nostalgia and and loss in between the lines. I’m excerpting my favorite section, here, about Mazie, a ticket-taker:

“Mazie has a telephone in her booth, of course, and in June, 1929, a man whose voice she did not recognize began calling her daily at 5 PM, asking for a date or making cryptic remarks, such as “They got the road closed, Mazie. They won’t let nobody through.” He has been calling intermittently ever since. “I won’t hear from him for maybe six months,” Mazie says. “Then, one day around five, the phone will ring and this voice will say, ‘All the clocks have stopped running’ or ‘Mazie, they cut down the big oak tree’ or some other dopey remark.One afternoon he gave me the shakes. He called up and said, ‘Mazie, I got a newphew studying to be an undertaker and he needs somebody to practice on.’ Then he hung up. A minute later he called again and said “You’ll do! You’ll do!”"

OK I hate italics too, but I had to set off the text somehow. Creepiness aside, his writing is great for its economy, precision and humor. The essays, mostly written for the New Yorker, are so beautifully plotted and described they read like works of fiction. It’s also a lucid modern view of an age far removed from our own. In this New York, there are large bands of Gypsies living in Brooklyn, and women aren’t allowed in some bars. Read it as a novel of the city hidden beneath what’s there today.

Aight aight I’ll lay off the reverance. He’s a baller. AND, I like to think some of his exact prose comes across in my own writing tone. Right. And if all that worship doesn’t convince you to buy the book, check out the dude’s pic:

Hey stranger.

If all reporters looked like that, they could stop flipping out about their dying industry and moonlight as matinee idols.

Old Ads: The Offensive Issue!

You can happify me anytime.

Thank God we’re all post-racial and shit now.

That's not eyeshadow, folks

And that Hill’s got the women’s issues thing covered.

A Page from My Notebook

Mixed media, bitchezzz

This one is actually from highschool, just after I got back from visiting the Alhambra in Spain. It’s where the Arabs got down back in the day.

Movie Masochism: Visconti’s ‘The Damned’

That's a man. A Nazi man.

So, it’s true. I tend to like movies that are relentlessly bleak, downward spirals into catastrophe. And a movie about the eve of the Nazi regime seems to fit that bill perfectly! When I try to sell my friends on this film, I say stuff like “It’s a high-art soap opera about aristocrats and Nazis!” and/or “It’s the only Nazi movie I’ve seen that only references the Jews, obliquely, once.” Both of which are true. The story follows the fortunes of the Essenbecks, a wealthy family who owns the largest steel mill in Germany. There’s a lot of inter-family backstabbing, ruthless Nazi logic, cross-dressing, and sexual subversion of all sorts (including the end-all of perversity, mother/son rape (so you KNOW it’s artsy). Check the trailer here:

The voice-over and insistent signage of ‘The Damned’ makes it sound a little cheesier than it actually is. My favorite scene comes up about halfway through the movie. My Nazi history isn’t so sharp, but it seems like the military and the brown-shirts (a national police-keeping force?) are at odds about who really has the power in the state. In a mini-coup, the brown shirts go off-duty for a retreat in a quiet German town. They all get incredibly drunk, sing the national anthem with the usual Nazi movie ardour, and manhandle a few buxom barmaids. Then, once the girls are away, the boys start to play. All the young, hot brownshirts dress up in drag to do a kickline, and before long all the soldiers are so wasted they start hooking up with each other, and (as is the usual gay dynamic) the older soldiers each pick an attractive younger soldier (still in heels and make up) and they pair off for a night of gay sex in the bedroom. A clip here:

It says something interesting about the homosexual dynamic in the army, and you’re not exactly impressed with the behavior of the brownshirts. But then, during the barely-there daylight of a hungover morning, the ACTUAL Nazi military arrives with machine guns and massacres all the brown shirts in their sleep. A sort of Bacchanalian, sexual permissive free-for-all gets replaced by completely emotionless mass murder. Neither option is great, but one is clearly better than the other.

I will also mention in rapid fire: fabulous 1930’s costumes and jewelry, several gorgeous (but evil) male leads who get naked, and a (sort of) hilarious Nazi marriage.

Hands down the most interesting Nazi movie I’ve ever seen. And probably the best movie I’ve seen. Period. All summer.

SIDE NOTE: There’s a scene towards the beginning of the movie, where someone says “We’ve become so afraid of Communism in this country, that we are plunging headlong into a Fascist regime.” It reminds me a bit of the health-care protesters, who are so threatened by Obama that they happily form militant mobs. Just sayin…