Since the New York Times stole my friend HR (the artist formerly known as HA) and my idea about having a Moderate Traveler column, we’re thinking maybe we should offer to be the Luxury-addicted, Flashy, Wasteful travelers?! Coming to a manmade-island-shaped-like-a-continent in Dubai near you…
Archive for 2010
“It’s like a BRAIN FACTORY in here…”
September 20, 2010Unintentional Hilarity
September 20, 2010My friend BA and I found a copy of Valerie Solanas’ “SCUM Manifesto” (ManifestA, she should have said) on the street the other day and naturally grabbed it. I read the whole thing in about an hour and seriously considered just re-typing the whole thing here because it’s pretty goddamn hysterical, but excerpts will have to suffice. The introduction:
“Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex.
“It is now technically possible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so. Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.”
Tell us how you REALLY feel, Val!
She also includes some really awesome lists, including a list of “acceptable” and “the most obnoxious and harmful types of” males and strategic ways to overthrow the system. Here is one of my favorite lists, which is ways in which females who “crave absorbing, emotionally satisfying, meaningful activity, but lacking the opportunity or ability for this… prefer to idle and waste away their time”:
“sleeping, shopping, bowling, shooting pool, playing cards and other games, breeding, reading, walking around, daydreaming, eating, playing with themselves, popping pills, going to the movies, getting analyzed, traveling, raising dogs and cats, lolling on the beach, swimming, watching TV, listening to music, decorating their houses, gardening, sewing, nightclubbing, dancing, visiting, “improving their minds” (taking courses), and absorbing “culture” (lectures, plays, concerts, “arty” movies.)
Sometimes I found myself agreeing with Solanas, which is weird for reasons I don’t think I need to delineate. Here is one example of where I think she has a point:
“Looking inside yourself for salvation, contemplating your navel, is not, as the Drop-Out People would have you believe, the answer. Happiness lies outside yourself, is achieved through interacting with others. Self-forgetfulness should be one’s goal, not self-absorption.”
Very Zen of her.
Final point: prostitutes who worked near her in her life post-Warhol-jail-mental hospitals-etc. testified that she “looked elegant and slender, and she always wore a silver lame dress when she worked the street.” Maybe SHE should be my new style icon.
Sunday Sunflowers
September 20, 2010Consumer Anxiety
September 17, 2010My craftiness having been honed as a result of being unemployed, I went yesterday to test a website for a software company (something like that) and was rewarded with a $35 Amazon.com gift card. I use part of it to buy a few (bad) books I need for research but have ten dollars remaining. I don’t want to let the money languish on the card lest I forget I have it, so the question remains: what to buy?
My on-going to read/buy list:
Books to Buy/Read/Read Again
Tatjana in Color
Lost in the Cosmos
McLean book
Lucia Joyce book (In the Wake? Dancing in the Wake?)
Edna Saint Vincent Millay bio
The Lives of the Saints
A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears
fear and loathing in america: gonzo letters 2 by hunter s. thompson
can somebody shout amen? (patsy sims)
coma
frankenstein
Dracula
Sophie’s world
Confederacy of Dunces
Anna Karenina
Silent Twins by Marjorie Wallace
Thy Neighbor’s Wife by Gay Talese
When Marina Abramovic Dies by James Wescott
Mein Kampf
I Jan Cremer by Jan Cremer
flying to america by donald barthelme
wind-up bird chronicles by haruki murakami
the lost weekend by charles jackson
rings of saturn by w.g. sebald
vincent van gogh’s letters to his brother
this warhol book i can’t remember the title of
les enfants terrible by jean cocteau
the naturalist
catch 22 by joseph heller (can you believe i have never read this?)
peeling the onion and
the tin drum both by gunter grass
look homeward, angel by thomas wolfe
books by ingmar bergman (he wrote a bunch!)
collected works of wallace stevens
strangeland by tracy emin
the immoralist
the long sonata of the dead by michael robinson
diane arbus’ biography
in the labyrinth by robbe-grillet
darkness visible by william styron
suite francaise by irene nemirovsky
the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime
margarita and the master bulgokov
autobiography of a face by lucy grealey and
truth and beauty (her biography)
Snippets of This Week’s Dreams
September 16, 2010Some of these things may have happened in real life…
French fries and grilled cheeses, eschewing grilled cheese for caloric reasons? (Which seems ridiculous… I mean, if dream me is going to eat the french fries, might as well eat the grilled cheese! At least it has some redeeming nutritional value.)
Commercial with a song from Jesus Christ Superstar in it. Someone asked, “Name this movie!” I answered correctly. (Real me has since added to Netflix queue.)
Ordering porn and running a marathon on an abandoned highway
Planning a trip down South, to Savannah, hopefully…
To Pack and Wear/Carry:
September 15, 2010“TO PACK AND WEAR:
2 skirts
2 jerseys or leotards
1 pullover sweater
2 pair shoes
stockings
bra
nightgown, robe, slippers
cigarettes
bourbon
bag with:
shampoo
toothbrush and paste
Basis soap
razor, deodorant
aspirin, prescriptions, Tampax
face cream, powder, baby oil
TO CARRY:
mohair throw
typewriter
2 legal pads and pens
files
house key
This is a list which was taped inside my closet door in Hollywood during those years when I was reporting more or less steadily. The list enabled me to pack, without thinking, for any piece I was likely to do. Notice the deliberate anonymity of costume: in a skirt, a leotard, and stockings, I could pass on either side of the culture. Notice the mohair throw for trunk-line flights (i.e., no blankets) and for the motel room in which the air conditioning could not be turned off. Notice the bourbon for the same motel room. Notice the typewriter for the airport, coming home: the idea was to turn in the Hertz car, check in, find an empty bench, and start typing the day’s notes.
“It should be clear that this was a list made by someone who prized control, yearned after momentum, someone determined to play her role as if she had the script, heard her cues, knew the narrative. There is on this list one significant omission, one article I needed and never had: a watch. I needed a watch not during the day, when I could turn on the car radio or ask someone, but at night, in the motel. Quite often I would ask the desk for the time every half hour or so, until finally, embarrassed to ask again, I would call Los Angeles and ask my husband. In other words I had skirts, jerseys, leotards, pullover sweater, shoes, stockings, bra, nightgown, robe, slippers, cigarettes, bourbon, shampoo, toothbrush and paste, Basis soap, razor, deodorant, aspirin, prescriptions, Tampax, face cream, powder, baby oil, ,mohair throw, typewriter, legal pads, pens, files and a house key, but I didn’t know what time it was. This may be a parable, either of my life as a reporter during the period or of the period itself.”
~ Joan Didion, “The White Album”
PS
September 13, 2010Anyone else think Department of Children and Family Services ought to be alerted to Tavi Gevinson’s underage e-reference to J.T. Leroy? I think that must fall under the “parental neglect” category somehow, non?
Neonatal Fashion Blogging
September 13, 2010Move over, Tavi! Hold on to your highchair, “Katie”! There’s a new fashion blogger in town –– and compared to her, you girls are older than Larry King. This four-month-old as-of-yet-unnamed female fetus is hitting the Big Apple and aiming her keen (if slightly underdeveloped) eye toward the runways at Lincoln Center.
Watch as this blip on the radar screen takes on Spring RTW 2011 collections and the parties in between…
***
I’m sloshing around my mom’s uterus as the taxi speeds down 7th Avenue toward SoHo. Even without the stop-and-go traffic, I’d still be reeling from today’s Peter Som show. The vivid pastel 50’s prints were so Sally Draper and would look fantastic against my near-translucent epidermis, if I do say so myself. Tonight we’re on our way to see Hamish Bowles, European editor-at-large of Vogue magazine, perform a cabaret show at the Rug Co. Not surprisingly, his repertoire consists of mostly Noel Coward songs.
Mommy is wearing a diaphanous Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti number. I’m draped in amniotic fluid. We’re both looking chic and formless this evening. To our right I see gamine Meredith Melling Burke perched on a stack of rugs. Her look is very Rasputin-in-an-opium-den-surrounded-by-Russian-twinks, and she looks, as always, FAB. Beside her, Diane Kruger, donning a Jason Wu magenta chiffon Grecian wrap and sipping from a glass of Pimm’s. Looking slightly bewildered in an outfit reminiscent of Joe Pesci’s wardrobe in With Honors is the delightful pumpkin Lynn Yaeger. Perhaps the absence of her Village Voice paycheck is hitting her harder than she thought it would. Either that or “bobo” style is coming back!
Hamish is mingling with guests looking ever the dandy in a Tom Ford tux with a big green flower pinned to his jacket. Mommy grabs a glass of Veuve (good thing I’m barely visible, or she’d be hit with some seriously disapproving looks) and swigs it while fondling $350 needlepoint pillows decorated with sunglasses and Union Jacks. Terence Koh grabs her butt and tells her she looks like a “ravaged peacock –– a vision in derangement” and then begins to squawk as he skips back toward the bar. His look is a contrived eccentricity –– a jacket covered with white bulbous protrusions and a black cloth wrapped around half his face. He looks like the prematurely-delivered offspring of the Human Centipede, and all I want is to orchestrate a photo shoot in which he and a small army of midget Chinese women model Richie Rich clothing in the Syrian desert. Tavi Gevinson, I will beat you some day!
There is a trio of adorable girls nearby, one of whom wears white rabbit fur and looks like the second coming of Kristy Swanson circa Flowers in the Attic. Fall 2011, I’m predicting a return of the ashen dead-look complete with decaying flesh. My new style icon is the Cryptkeeper from Tales from the Crypt. If you’re wondering how I know so much despite the fact that I’m still in utero, one word: reincarnation. Fuckers.
See, the thing I love about fashion is that while many feel it’s a realm only for the elite, it’s actually something that is accessible to everyone, even unborn worm-like creatures with primitive brain functioning like me. I can’t count, but I can assert that Vena Cava’s recent collection was matronly at its most divine. I barely have a body, but I can celebrate the way Doo Ri’s designs fit them.
Hamish has disappeared, which makes me think the show is about to begin, and Mommy is sloshed, which makes me think I may have to repeat kindergarten. Suddenly a havoc breaks out around the door. It seems Anna Wintour, the queen of fashion herself, has arrived! I covet her ubiquitous bob, the way it accentuates her face, which is fetus-like and alien in a way I obvi relate to. Her plain Jane daughter Bee trails behind her looking about as exciting as as rubber cement. Following the two and a small entourage of lanky women is Andre Leon Talley wearing the fluffy hide of an indistinguishable animal. My God, what I wouldn’t give to be swaddled in that garment.
The show begins and Mommy stumbles to a seat. Time for me to turn off my Twitter and listen to the sweet crooning of Bowles and the accompanying piano. If I had lips, I’d kiss all my dear readers! Tomorrow’s post is Alexander Wang from a fetus’ eye view: a critique of the outfits from mid-thigh down.
Back-to-School Reading
September 11, 2010Bathos
September 9, 2010I’m writing a review of a really difficult book of poetry by a TOO knowledgeable Pulitzer Prize winner and the only phrase I can think to describe the first draft is “top-heavy.”



