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Back By Popular Demand

May 7, 2014

By request, I’ve decided to recreate one of my most popular posts of last year: quick and dirty reviews of Met Ball looks. This year, I’m using the Cut’s slideshow (which is not to say I didn’t use it last year––I genuinely don’t remember) and I have to say, I HAVE A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH YOU PEOPLE:

1. Beyonce: Interesting, I admit begrudgingly

2. Taylor Swift: Dancing with the Stars prom-themed reunion show

3. Lupita Nyong’o: so many feelings

4. Kim and Kanye: boring, as always

5. Anna Wintour: ditto

6. The Olsen Twins: Why do I love this?

7. Rihanna: Hashem WHEN WILL THE CROP TOP TREND DIE?

8. Anne Hathaway: the only good example of a CT I’ve seen in ages

9. Gisele: Yet another reminder that perfection is boring

10. Jessica Lange: Hello eyebrow lift

11. Kristen Stewart, I like parts and hate the whole

12. SJP: I am bizarrely underwhelmed

13. Victoria Beckham: WHY IS EVERYONE SO BORING

14. Naomi Campbell: without the cut-outs this would have been awesome in a Liberace sorta way

15. Karlie Kloss: Hate elbow length gloves on women

16. Amber Valletta: THERE ARE NO PANTS AT THE BALL! (name that movie)

17. Katie Holmes: Why kick her when she’s down?

18. Michelle Williams: I feel like I’ve seen her in this a million times before

19. Amy Adams: The first one I’ve actively liked

20. Rita Ora: Who exactly is Rita Ora?

21. Donatella Versace: Hard to look away from that face

22. Nicole Richie: I know I should hate this more than I do, but it reminds me of 8th grade

23. Jourdan Dunn and Toni Garra: Models? I like both. Then again, hard to go wrong when you’re that tall

24. Emma Stone: She looks pretty great

25. Kate Upton: Chiquita Banana, in mourning

26. Cara Delevingne: Michelle Rodriguez was a bad sartorial influence

27. Kirsten Dunst: Oh please

28. Lena Dunham: What I want to say will certainly not be PC

29. Jenna Lyons: AHHHH IT’S A TALL GOLUM

30. Marion Cotillard: Not so bad from this angle, but I think I’d hate it from a different one

31. Solange: Is that a bad toupee?

32. Joy Bryant: Hello 2001?

33. Chloe Sevigny: forgot the gestalt aspect

34. Jessica Pare: Not bad

35. Kristein Wiig: WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT PANTS

36. Bradley Cooper: skipping stupid boys

37. Shailene Woodley: Disaster

38. Amber Heard: fine, but Johnny Depp looks like Ebenezer Scrooge out on the town

39. Florence Welch: Never change

40. Zoe Saldana: Decent

41. Kate Bosworth: decent, albeit sorta emaciated

42. Stephanie Seymour: Chiquita Banana, at play!
43. Rachel McAdams: too monochrome for her own good

44. Rashida Jones: the ball gown thing doesn’t really work for her

45. Erykah Badu: Pharrell’s hat on steroids

46. Maggie Gyllenhaal: Someone else said it best––a 70s cult leader all dressed up

47. Stella McCartney: Why so glum?

48. Allison Williams: nice

49. Frank Ocean: I think I like him, in general

50. Charlize Theron: lose the jacket

51. Margot Robbie: Oof

52. Miguel: who?

53. Naomi Watts: I’d also like to get rid of this sheer bottom trend thing

54. Claire Danes: I hate it despite the fact that it’s relatively unoffensive

55. Chrissy Teigen: A little strange in the stomach area, but different, so yay?

56. Anna Kendrick: Didn’t she wear this to the Oscars?

57. Emmy Rossum: tablecloth

58. Kate Mara: moss on a rock

59. BOY

60. Chanel Iman: She looks great, but A$AP ROCKY is terrifying

61. Hailee Steinfeld: Um. It’s not doing anything for me.

62. Blake Lively: The usual Barbie fare

63. Elizabeth Olsen: Toddlers & Tiaras (although I dig the shoes)

64. Sarah Silverman: I cannot deal with her in this context

65. Christy Turlington: Well done

66. Rosamund Pike: No

67. Donna Karan: diaphanous ain’t working for her

68. Reese Witherspoon: Yeah I like it

69. Joan Smalls: The lipstick would have worked LAST YEAR

70.Karolina Kurkova: Very… large

71. Adele Exarchopoulos: I didn’t even recognize her. Hm. I need to think about this.

72. Bee Shaffer: Alright

73. Dee Hilfiger: Poorly executed Mad Men reference?

74. Fei Fei Sun, Marina Rust, Tori Burch: Okay for the first two, I take back what I said re: gloves. Tori, on the other hand, looks matronly.

75. Karen Elson: Kinda love it.

76. Maggie Q: Who?

77. BOY

78. Alexa Chung: I am positive I would have loved this when I was 21

79. Chloe Grace Moretz: I am rooting for this kid, really

80. Amanda Peet: Makes her look dumpy. Which is… crazy.

81. Robin Deardon: Fine

82. Zooey Deschanel: Too prom-y

83. Sofia Coppola: I don’t hate this!

84. Diane Kruger: Nice, but a little old for her?

85. Janelle Monae: Hipster matador

86. DUDE

87. Greta Gerwig: UUUUUUGHHHH

88. Felicity Jones: Coulda used some make-up?

89. Kendall Jenner: I respectfully decline to recognize her existence

90. Natalie Massenet: Her torso looks like book pages flapping in the wind

91. Jessica Alba: Makes her look pregnant, oddly

92. MEN (ish)

93. Lily Allen: Hate. Loathe. Despise.

94. Oh I just can’t

95. Lake Bell: She looks bomb.

96. Elettra Wiedemann: They spelled her last name wrong. That’s all I’ve got.

97. GUGU!?

98. Olivia Munn: Would have been better with slightly less tit

99. Riley Keough: Disqualified for pants

100. Fabiola Beracasa: Uh, sure. Not wild about the color but everything else is pretty glam.

101. Lea Michele: A poor man’s Amy Adams in American Hustle

102. Catherine Martin: Delightfully wacky

103. Kylie Minogue: Yawn

104. Zoe Kravitz: I can actually SEE YOUR VAGINA

105. Hayden Panettiere: Prom in Palm Beach

106.Elaina Watley: I don’t know who this is, and I never want to see her dress again.

107. Leighton Meester: I don’t hate this.

108. Laetitia Casta: Hm. Interesting. The cut on top is a little dumpy but otherwise not bad.

109. Ruth Wilson: I like her face?

110. Selena Gomez: She dresses like a 47 year old

111. Lily Aldridge: She is as exciting to me as Melba toast

112. Ming Xi: My lord she is slim

113. Michelle Monaghan: You go, Maggie!

114. Julie Macklowe: It’s so bright.

115. Ivanka Trump: Rivals #114 for worst color

116. BOY

117. Dree Hemingway: I’ve stayed up since I saw this trying to decipher how I feel about it

118. Imogen Poots: Her last name sounds like how I feel about this dress

119. Livia Guggioli: Orange and black––bold idea

120. Dianna Agron: Feh

121. Georgia May Jagger: My lesbian crush looks awesome

122. Suki Waterhouse: Looks way skinner than she did last week, eh? Dress is fine?

123. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley: Yeah, okay, I’m into it!

124. Liu Wen: A

125. Dita Von Teese: the mermaid tail is amazing

126. Katie Couric: Does nothing for her

127. Emily Cole: Is that his daughter? That’s as much enthusiasm as I can muster

128. Giovanna Battaglia: Looks like it’s going to fall off

129. Gabrielle Union: Burn this

130. BOY

131. Dakota Johnson: Do we just have to lie down and take her fame now?

132. Brie Larson: Clown with a spending problem. Or something. PLEASE KILL ME.

133. Stacy Martin: Man, what a person with a teaspoon of fashion sense could do with her body. Sigh.

134. LaLa Anthony: WOAH

135. Sandra Lee: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

136. Arizona Muse: Yep, awesome

137. Aerin Lauder: Is it weird that I keep thinking about how old we’re all getting?

138. Tabitha Simmons: Interesting but it sort of makes her look… stout?

139. BOY

140. Nancy Chilton: I should know who this is

141. Oof, Anna Wintour’s son looks… not cute

142. BOY

143. Coco Brandolini and Bianca Brandolini: They look just like the D&G ads?

144. Idina Menzel: Lea Michele made bigger

145. Selby Drummond: Thoughtful, at least?

146. Hannah Bagshawe: LIPSTICK: wear it.

147. Sandrina Bencomo: Don’t like the hoop at the waist, but it seems like it would be hard for her to look really horrible.

OMG That was painful. Off to have a morning martini…

Posted in Fashion Blogging for Toddlers, Image Craving, It Could Be Worse..., Lists | Leave a Comment »

MY BIRTHDAY

March 25, 2014

When I was a child, I used to pour over the catalogs that came into our house and carefully note the items I wanted to purchase. I’ve always been meticulous in charting my desires, and though my parents and boyfriend (this one’s for you, sweetheart!) make fun of me for obsessively making lists (my book wish list is divided into need to buy and have purchased but not read) I find a great, though empty, comfort in it. Herewith, thirty things you, my loyal readers, are welcome to give me for my 30th birthday, a bit more than one month away:

1. DSM-V

2. P-Touch labelmaker

3. Bensimon sneakers

4. An old school Gameboy with Tetris and ONLY TETRIS

5. Popover tin

6. This mug

7. Tiny sheepskin rug

8. Any piece of jewelry that has a human body part on it (like a hand or an eye.) This sounds cryptic, but examples abound.

9. Gold mascara

10. Any patterned turban

11. A laminating machine

12. Any lounge pants that can be worn on the couch or outside, to fit my freelancer’s lifestyle

13. Mini stairs!!!

14. Dorothy Parker doll

15. The Tenant on DVD (yes, I still want to own physical DVDs)

16. Cool frum skirts

17. Anything from the Evolution Store

18. Le Creuset anything

19. This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen:

20. Illustrated Tender Buttons, as featured on this website

21. New bathing suits (athletic and not)

22. A tray made by my friend EM, mosaic artist

23. an endless supply of Meyer’s candles

24. Bunny chair, also featured on this site

25. A keychain (lame, I know, but you have the potential to get creative with this one!)

26. Chanel pearl bobby pins

27. An assistant (for just one day a week)

28. Millions of pairs of black opaque tights

29. File cabinet

30. A $500 gift certificate to a cool independent bookstore… OH WAIT…

Posted in Buy Me This!, Fashion Blogging for Toddlers, Lists | Leave a Comment »

True Detective Mania

March 4, 2014

From Gothamist’s montage of visual clues:

Books in Rust Cohle’s storage unit.

It would appear that Cohle is interested in the work of one of my favorite poets, Theodore Roethke. As nothing in this show is not connected, I’ve taken the liberty of listing a few possible reasons why his collection is included (as opposed to, say, Whitman’s.) None of these feels like THE answer, though, so if you come up with others, please do send along! I’ll be happy to give you credit in my book-in-progress, The Complete Annotated True Detective.

1. Roethke’s breakthrough book was called The Lost Son. A reference to Errol Childress?

2. From perhaps his most famous poem, “My Papa’s Waltz”:

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt

Perhaps a reference to the abuse Errol Childress’ father inflicted on him?

3. The similar eeriness of Roethke’s “Elegy for Jane”:

A wren, happy, tail into the wind,
Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.
The shade sang with her;
The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing,
And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.

… and the lyrics of The Handsome Family’s “Far From Any Road” (the theme song):

From the dusty May sun
Her looming shadow grows
Hidden in the branches of the poison creosote
She twines her spines up slowly
Towards the boiling sun
And when I touched her skin
My fingers ran with blood

4. Roethke’s major themes: the wildness of nature, and the perils of introspection

5. His obsessive work ethic resembles Cohle’s. From the Poetry Foundation:

Along with these influences, the source of much of Roethke’s poetry was the notes he dutifully kept throughout his life. A measure of the devotion given to his craft can be found in his statement “I’m always working,” and indeed his pockets were seemingly always filled with jottings of striking thoughts and conversations. His less spontaneous reflections found a place in the workbench of his poetry—his notebooks.

6. Of Christ and crucifixion imagery, Roethke was quite familiar. During one of his many nervous breakdowns, he “entered the first class of the 1957-58 University of Washington school year by flinging ‘himself against the blackboard in a kind of crucified pose, muttering incoherently.’

7. Uh, this:

Epidermal Macabre

Indelicate is he who loathes
The aspect of his fleshy clothes, —
The flying fabric stitched on bone,
The vesture of the skeleton,
The garment neither fur nor hair,
The cloak of evil and despair,
The veil long violated by
Caresses of the hand and eye.
Yet such is my unseemliness:
I hate my epidermal dress,
The savage blood’s obscenity,
The rags of my anatomy,
And willingly would I dispense
With false accouterments of sense,
To sleep immodestly, a most
Incarnadine and carnal ghost.

8. And finally, everyone’s favorite color (check out that last line––oo, wee!):

From “The Far Field”

The slightly trembling water
Dropping a fine yellow silt where the sun stays;
And the crabs bask near the edge,
The weedy edge, alive with small snakes and bloodsuckers, —
I have come to a still, but not a deep center,
A point outside the glittering current;
My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,
At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,
My mind moves in more than one place,
In a country half-land, half-water.

Posted in Conspiracy Theories, Image Craving, Lists, Not a Poet | Leave a Comment »

Great Cocktail Names

February 18, 2014

It’s almost as fun a game as “great band names!”

At 282 Burger on Atlantic Avenue, they have a cocktail named the Sally Draper. It is made of Old Overholt Rye, Crème de Cacao, Muddled Oranges and Sour Cherries. Yum!

There were way too many good pics to choose from.

Posted in Fashion Blogging for Toddlers, Image Craving, Lists | Leave a Comment »

Things I Could Judge

October 10, 2013

Things I Feel I Could Competently Judge Based Solely on the Amount of Television I Watch About Them:

Olympic gymnastics

Children’s beauty pageants

Modeling competitions

Any sex-crime court case

Posted in Lists | Leave a Comment »

Celebrity Sightings

September 8, 2013

My father and I have an informal competition that involves acquiring points by spotting the most outrageous or currently interesting celebrities. Each celebrity’s point-worth is assigned based on a completely obvious set of intangible qualifications that the two of us agree on. Last week I saw Katie Holmes, and asked him what he thought she was worth. Here is his answer:

“The scale would probably be like this:

Katie in Manhattan: 50 points

Katie in Brooklyn: 100 points

Katie being followed by Scientology goons: 200 points

Katie and Suri (with or without goons): 250 points

Suri alone: 500 points

Suri with Tom Cruise: 500 points

Suri with Katie and Tom: Game over.”

Posted in Conspiracy Theories, Lists | Leave a Comment »

Three Day Novel Begins Anew

August 31, 2013

Another one! I’m far less prepared this time. Far more nervous. Wish me luck, everyone! Here are some things that are on my mind as I begin:

The Collyer Brothers

This quote, from E.L. Doctorow: Asked about his writing routine, Mr. Doctorow smiled slyly and said: “Here’s how it goes: I’m up at the stroke of 10 or 10:30. I have breakfast and read the papers, and then it’s lunchtime. Then maybe a little nap after lunch and out to the gym, and before I know it, it’s time to have a drink.”

Mid-life crises

The Florida Panhandle

Posted in I Hate Writing, Lists | Leave a Comment »

Authors Who Are Female Despite Misleading Names

August 14, 2013

Lionel Shriver

Edwidge Danticat

Don’t get caught looking the fool!

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Things Prisoners Should Know

August 9, 2013

So I tried to start another blog at one point in my life and *shame* failed pretty miserably. The thrust of it was bad book proposals, but I realize now that I am too scattered to try and take care of seventeen different projects at once (well, maybe seventeen is fine, but EIGHTEEN…) The idea, I maintain, is excellent, so herewith, I include a list of things a young inmate plans to write about in his work THE COMPLETE PRISONERS’ HANDBOOK (I generally am not correcting his errors):

“First day of arrival, code of ethics, BOP rules for inmates, living safe, living smart, commissary sheet help, Trulincs & Trufone set-up manual, useful tips and inspiring quotes, STD & Health advices, Legal advices, distance parenting, distance relationship, About drug program, card games, mind games, Origami, Rec time, exercise programs, jail cook book, Some useful skills and knowledge, jail prayers, re-entry information and advices, financial literacy, positive life style and many more…”

Posted in Conspiracy Theories, It Could Be Worse..., Lists | Leave a Comment »

I KNOW I KNOW

August 5, 2013

I still owe you a post on Iceland. This is really embarrassing and terribly uncharacteristic of me. Usually my blog is the only aspect of my life I have together? In any case, that is coming asap, I promise, but in the interim, two quick thoughts:

1. Why hasn’t anyone teamed up with the MTA to create an app where you can scan your Metrocard and find out the balance?

2. Wouldn’t it have been great if this review (which I think about probably twice a week) had been boring?

Posted in Conspiracy Theories, I Hate Writing, Lists | Leave a Comment »

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