Itinerantdaughter's Blog

“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”

This list of items for sale is posted in my neighborhood and sounds like it could be Dylan Klebold’s autumn purge or something.   (Too soon?)

Star Wars memorabilia

Bruce Lee memorabilia

movie weapon replicas

rare horror magazines

The Joker framed poster

The Punisher framed poster

Marvel Super Heroes framed poster

Brandon Lee’s The Crow clock

skateboard

beanie babies

Elvira figurine

Magic the Gathering cards

trench coats

cloaks

CDs, DVDs, old VHS tapes and cassettes

There were admittedly some more “normal” items on there, like books, but my guess is that his library is full of serials and worn out copies of The Anarchists’ Cookbook.

1. Carrot Top, wearing lots of make-up and a really tight black tee, on Christmas Eve in the lobby of Little Nell’s Hotel in Aspen, Colorado.

2. Woody Allen, Soon-Yi and Diane Keaton eating dinner at Milos Restaurant on Mother’s Day, 2010

3. Robert DeNiro, in my old nutritionist’s office

4. Ryan Gosling (duh!) holding the door for me at the Equinox Gym on Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street in Manhattan

5. Bob Sagat talking to bodyguards and passing to let me by, Los Angeles, 2003

I could go on…and maybe I will later!  But for now, haircut!

1. Reading the audiobook of Infinite Jest

2. Karl Lagerfeld’s letter delivery girl

3. Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale’s nanny

4. Shelving books at the New York Public Library

5. Cleaning the oil off baby animals in New Orleans like in that Dawn Soap commercial

I have maybe five clothing websites I peruse when I’m bored, mostly to fantasize about certain articles and then revisit them and tell them that I love them even though I haven’t/will not purchase them (one of  my New Year’s resolutions for 2010 was not to buy any new clothing ALL YEAR.  Intense, I know.)

Anyway, one of the websites I look at is modcloth.com…totally reasonably priced, cute, faux-vintage hipster dresses and dinky jewelry and home goods, but dear Lord, whoever is in charge of giving the pieces of clothing/accessories titles ought to be slapped upside the head with a flyswatter shaped like a cute cottage complete with trellis, because it’s the cheesiest shit I ever done saw!

Some examples:

Cherry Oh Dress

How Do You Dew? Dress

De Florista Dress

Frankly, I Don’t Give a Dress

Don’t Leaf Without Us Earrings

Welcome to the Club Sandwich Coasters

Boho-ken, New Jersey Dress (in Rail or Ferry, which are supposed to be the colors?)

Top of the Chic Chain Tee

Love is a Bag-lefield

I’m With the Band-eau (in Coral)

Halter, Who Goes There Dress (in White)

Don’t Shoe Want Me Wedge

I can’t do this anymore, I feel ill…

Things that I thought about that made me crack up to myself today while walking down the street probably resulting in me being labeled a neighborhood crackhead:

1. My friend met a dude at her business school (B.S.) orientation whose name…I can’t say it of course, but sans an accent, it sounds like something you could be criminally charged with.

2. Insult from the cult classic Sleepaway Camp:
“Eat shit and die, Rickie!”
“Eat shit and live, Bill.”

3. The poetic lyrics to “Ignition” by R. Kelly:

It’s the remix to ignition
Hot and fresh out the kitchen
Mama rollin that body
got every man in here wishin
Sippin on coke and rum
I’m like so what I’m drunk
It’s the freakin weekend baby
I’m about to have me some fun

4. That cartoon within a cartoon on Animaniacs where a giant chicken does human stuff and nobody notices except for one dude and he’s always like, “It’s a GIANT CHICKEN!  He can’t cook gourmet French food!  HE’S A CHICKEN!  WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!?!”

“Revolution is the ecstasy of history.”
“Open the nurseries, the universities and all the other prisons.”

“It is forbidden to forbid.”

“Down with the spectator commodity society.”

“I take my desires for reality because I believe in the reality of my desires.”

“Underneath the paving stones, the beach!”
“We won’t ask for anything.  We won’t demand anything.  We’ll just take and occupy.”
“Be realistic –– demand the impossible.”

“Humanity will be happy the day the last bureaucrat is hung with the guts of the last capitalist.”
“The tears of a philistine are the nectar of the Gods.”

“Those who go halfway down the path of revolution dig their own graves.”

“Boredom is counterrevolutionary.”
“In a society that has abolished every kind of adventure the only adventure that remains is to abolish society.”

“Don’t liberate me –– I’ll take care of that.”

“We will have good masters as soon as everyone is their own.”

“Never work.”
“Conflict is the origin of everything.”

“Coming soon to this location: charming ruins.”
“The most beautiful structure is a paving stone thrown at a cop’s head.”
“Down with the abstract.  Long live the ephemeral.”
“Practice wishful thinking.”
“Unbutton your mind as often as your fly.”

“Happiness is hanging your landlord.”

“I don’t know how to write but I would like to say beautiful things and I don’t know how.”

(Thanks to Andrew Mueller, Situationist International and Bureau of Public Secrets.

http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/graffiti.htm)

4. Random examples of items which are part of the canon of Camp:

Zuleika Dobson

Tiffany lamps

Scopitone films

The Brown Derby restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in LA

The Enquirer, headlines and stories

Aubrey Beardsley drawings

Swan Lake

Bellini’s operas

Visconti’s direction of Salome and ‘Tis a Pity She’s a Whore

certain turn-of-the-century picture postcards

Schoedsack’s King Kong

The Cuban pop singer La Lupe

Lynn Ward’s novel in woodcuts, God’s Man

the old Flash Gordon comics

women’s clothes of the twenties (feather boas, fringed and beaded dresses, etc.)

the novels of Ronald Firbank and Ivy Compton-Burnett

stag movies seen without lust

From “Notes on Camp” 1964