29 September 2006

Is Modern Un-sexy?



Generally, I try not to post frequently about Stuff I Want, because I believe that's going to lead me into this consumerist cycle where I just wantwantwant and pine for expensive things, and am never happy with what I have. I have a perfectly lovely comforter with a cover by Marimekko, and it's less than a year old. But I can't help but wantwantwant and needneedneed this 400 thread count, silkscreened incredibly gorgeous duvet cover designed by Nicole Chiala and Kristina de Corpo and manufactured by Amenity.

Call me crazy - I think clean, modern and spare is very friggin' sexy! I once briefly dated someone who shuddered when he saw my tidy, un-feminine apartment and said, "Is it okay to sit on your couch?" He then told me my bedroom was "too clean". Too clean for what? For sex, I guess, because we didn't! Well, excuse me for not having pepperoni drippings and crusted underwear between my sheets! Damned twenty-something boys.

28 September 2006

Pink Spider Bites: A 'Zine




Other than blogging and shopping and spying on my neighbors (by the way, I have a new downstairs neighbor and I can't wait to take a photo of her. She looks exactly like the old downstairs neighbor; it's too weird) one of the things I do is write and design 'zines. I've been doing this for around five years and I've made about twenty different 'zines. I love being part of the 'zine culture; people who make 'zines often trade our work with each other or offer the 'zines on a sliding scale; almost every 'zine creator loses money or just breaks even on the production costs. We're engaging in a little bit of alternative commerce, where it's less about money changing hands, and more about the exchange of ideas. 'Zines are a labor of love, and through the trading of them, I get to connect with strangers of different cities and different lives in a way that can feel more tangible and personal than emailing, blogging, myspace-ing, or any of the other internet-cyberspacey types of communication I engage in. With 'zines, there's real paper involved, plus handwritten notes, dollar bills, and postage stamps!

I'm very lucky that I get to exhibit and sell my 'zine Cherry Blossom, Cherry Pie at the APAture 'Zine and Comix expo this upcoming Saturday!

Pink Spider Bites is my newest 'zine. The cover is a collage of artwork, stickers and fancy-ass French paper. The girl cutting her wrist is from Junko Mizuno's book Hellbabies. The inside front cover was done especially for Pink Spider Bites by my friend Dorian Katz, who is a wildly talented artist. The piece is called "The Pink Widow."

If you live in San Francisco, come by and say hi on Saturday. The event is free!

27 September 2006

The Pony Project



If I lived anywhere near New York, I would have gone through Hell or high water to see this exhibit of women artists and designers each designing a My Little Pony for an art show called The Pony Project. I've never been super hot for My Little Pony; I was more a stuffed animal and sports equipment kind of child, and frankly, My Little Pony is a bit creepy in that Stepford Wife-ish sort of way. But you don't have to like My Little Pony to appreciate some of the cool and wild things the artists and designers did with the blank ponies they were given.

Several of the artists and designers I love participated: Fafi, Junko Mizuno, Lisa Petrucci, and Betsey Johnson.

The ponies I like best are the ones by graffiti artist-turned fashion designer Claw Money, Sas Christian, and modern kimono designer Mamechiyo.
The pony pictured here is Mamechiyo's; I think it's my favorite of all of them! The colors and detail are amazing! (Mamechiyo also designed a kimono for crazy Blythe. She is part of the "in-crowd" of young women designers/artist.)

(the photo is not mine; I co-opted it)

The Pony Project Gallery

26 September 2006

Gaslight and Shadows - Revisited





I've written about Gaslight and Shadows, a little antique store in my neighborhood (San Francisco's Outer Richmond District) before, but I can't help doing it again, just as I can't help going there again and again! This time I got these fun dangly earrings; faux ivory and faux tortoise. The tortoise ones only show up if I have my hair up, because my hair is dark and they just kind of blend in if the hair is down, but they do look great when my hair is up, and the ivory ones look great either way.

Gaslight and Shadows is jam-packed with antique lamps, paintings, vintage jewelry and also some new jewelry. It just seems like every time I need a little interesting and inexpensive accessory, I find something perfect there. The tiny one-woman shop is the absolute antithesis of big department store shopping, and that's what I love about it. The owner, Phyllis Nabhan, will spend lots of time helping you and she's very exacting and detailed; she handed me three pink rosette rings to try on, which all looked pretty much the same, so I could pick the exact one I wanted, because each one had a slightly different color and band width. She is great.

Hours are limited - 1pm to 5pm on weekdays.

Gaslight & Shadows Antiques
2335 Clement St
San Francisco, CA 94121

25 September 2006

Junko Mizuno and Kawaii Noir



Junko Mizuno is one of the best known manga artists in Japan, and probably throughout the world. She has written and illustrated several books, and designed vinyl toys as well. She also participated the recent Pony Project in NYC, where a few dozen women artists and designers were each invited to design a one-of-a-kind My Little Pony. (Junko Mizuno's sold for something like $5,000.) She came to San Francisco last year to promote the English translation of her book Pure Trance, and I got to meet her and have my books signed by her. I was shaking in my platforms! She is 33 years old, and so tiny and cute that she looks fifteen, and she had a My Little Pony pencil topper stuck onto the top of the permanent marker she was using to autograph the books.

I absolutely LOVE her work. She's got her own radically distinctive style within the genre of kawaii noir (roughly translated to mean both cute and dark) - you can always tell her work apart from that of other manga artists. She has drawn weird characters like The Meat Twins - voluptuous naked doll-like girls with a taste for blood; wielding cleavers, steaks and sausages, and another girl greedily slurping soba noodles with spiders in the noodles. One of my favorites is Miss Mushroom; a purple-haired beauty sitting on a mushroom, showering in a spray of little mushrooms under a mushroom shower. If you're going to buy just one Junko Mizuno book - get Hellbabies! It is filled with full-color illustrations and every single one of them will delight and horrify you!

Visit Junko Mizuno's Official Site here.

23 September 2006

Happy Autumnal Equinox!



Today is the Autumnal Equinox here in the northern hemisphere, on planet Earth. (Yes, I am convinced that there is other intelligent life in the universe and that those creatures read blogs.) Today is the day when the sun passes over the celestial equator and the daylight hours and the nighttime hours are just about equal - 12 hours each. Autumnal equinox is a very important, auspicious day; a good day to finish some unfinished business, throw out some old junk; start something new.

The necklace in the photo is a Tarina Tarantino Pink Head Hello Kitty necklace, with jet black crystals and beads, and something I have coveted and wanted and admired for a long time. And that's my neck! The necklace is an Equinox gift from Dear Daniel!

Excuse me, I'm now going to go and faint from the excitement and giddiness!!!

22 September 2006

Shrimps and Bombshells



Speaking of my height, or lack of it - I am currently reading this adolescent lit novel; Shrimp, by Rachel Cohn. It's the sequel to Gingerbread, by the same author.
Protagonist Cyd Charisse is a smart, rebellious rich teenage girl living in San Francisco. Her boyfriend/ex-boyfriend's nickname is Shrimp, because he's so tiny. (Errr, that's his whole body, not his boy parts.) Cyd Charisse herself is a tall, lanky thing; all fishnets and combat-booted legs, dark hair, and surly attitude. Cyd describes Shrimp as "a pint-sized surfer" but is never negative about his height - she doesn't seem to view it as a detractor from his overall sexiness.

Well, finally! I'm so sick of the notion that women have to be smaller than their male partners - I think it's the stupidest thing in the world. Who came up with that? Why do we buy into it? Why do we perpetuate it? Personally, I think short men are hot. Once or twice, when I've been in very tall shoes, I've been taller than someone I was dating, and it always made me feel like a total bombshell. This pleasant illusion of my own statuesque tallness hasn't repeated itself very often, due to my ridiculous lack of height. I really am a tall woman trapped in a mini body. (I'm also a spiritual D-cup trapped in a B-cup bra, but let's not talk about it. There's no reason to sadden myself unnecessarily.)

(Unfortunately, Dear Daniel is some eight inches taller than I am; oh well, he has other charms. Plus, he sometimes lets me walk on curbs next to him while he walks in the street so that I can feel tall. Dear Daniel, you are the best!)

I like when I see taller women with shorter men; I think it looks good, but it only looks good if they both obviously feel confident about it. No slouching or slumping!

21 September 2006

Comfy 69



These are my new shoes, which are extremely comfortable in addition to being extremely platform-y, and in my opinion, extremely cute! The brand is called "Natural Comfort" and this shoe style is W-69. Not an exciting shoe name at all. Well - maybe the numeric part is. The thing that makes platform shoes so much more comfortable than one would think is that your toes are elevated on a platform, too. So there's not an extreme angle going on with your foot. It's not the same as having your toes at floor-level and your heels five inches higher, which puts an extreme amount of pressure on the ball of your foot. In a platform shoe like this, your weight is much more evenly distributed and you feel balanced. You just have to get used to picking up your feet and clomping about like a prancing pony.

I needed a funky taupe shoe for a new dress I got, which is brown jersey with little taupe polka dots and taupe piping. The dress is ladylike, therefore a ladylike shoe was out of the question... too much "ladylike" at once, and I might vomit! The dress has to be shortened, and because it has a wrap front, I have to have a seamstress or tailor add a little hook or button at the criss-cross to prevent my bra and its contents from exposing themselves. Nearly all my clothes have to be altered, since I'm very short. It makes more sense to buy petites, but sometimes I can find something in a regular size that will fit well after just a little altering. I could go on and on about this topic: the curse of being petite and loving fashion. Another reason I love platforms - they make me tall! Well, sort of tall. I don't hate being petite, but...if there were one thing I could change about myself physically, it would be my lack of height!

I think I need them in red, too...

20 September 2006

FCUK French Connection!





Blogger Brae Howard took a photo of two brothers she spotted in a Trader Joe's who were wearing the same tee shirt, and sent it to me. She knows I like to take photos of Fashion Twins. Brae apparently asked them to pose for her, and they actually did. People are less cynical in Maryland, eh, Brae? For I feel certain that if I were to ask someone if I could take their photo here in California, they would ask to see my business card and would demand a contract.

Upon close scrutiny, I noticed that the matching tee shirts they are both wearing are from French Connection, and say HOT AS FCUK. French Connection UK, (or FCUK) has been plastering their oh-so-clever FCUK thing all over their ads, tee shirts, hats, etc., for YEARS. The very first time you see it, you think, "Oh! It looks like fuck but it's really fcuk. Tee hee!" But after you see it about a hundred times you just roll your eyes and sigh at the played-out juvenile humor. Seriously, French Connection needs a new cutesy joke. They cannot rely on this forever!

Even though I said it's annoying, you still want the tee shirt? Oh, all right. Click here.

19 September 2006

Sweet and Macabre: Miss Van


Back to my regularly scheduled programming:

Miss Van is another French woman graffiti artist. There's something of the Fafi about Miss Van's artwork, or perhaps it's the other way around: something of the Miss Van in Fafi's artwork. I believe Miss Van preceded Fafi, but I am not certain.

Miss Van's work is decidedly darker than Fafi's. The faces are more pushed-in, bodies rounder, eyes and lips a little more freaky. Some of the characters Miss Van draws are bloody, and, uh, some have their hands down their panties. There is a surreal, dreamy quality to the images overall, but when you look more intently at them, they are also disturbing. I love the drawings for what I perceive to be their commentary on beauty and femininity.

See More by Miss Van...

Oh, more?! You sicko.

Lt. Ehren Watada

I know there is a world beyond the world inside my head, my head which is filled with exotic flowers, futuristic pop art, gleaming hardwood floors and organic figs. The real world is filled with war, pollution, and insane politicians. I think about it, I read about it, I know about it. I just don't usually blog about it...

But today I'll talk about this man - Lt. Ehren Watada. He's the first officer in the United States' military to refuse deployment to Iraq; he believes the war is an illegal war of occupation. As a result, he's facing charges of "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman", a court martial, and something like 8 years of inprisonment. I heard a recorded interview Amy Goodman did with him, and he is so clearheaded, understated, and yet inspiring. He's willing to go to prison because he knows he's doing the right thing. Jeez, he's a modern-day saint and martyr. He's an American hero!


short video of Lt Watada at thenation.com

Seattle Times article from June of this year

Site where you can sign a petition and donate to his legal defense fund

18 September 2006

Marimekko



I've got a major boner for Marimekko. Marimekko is a Finnish design and textile production house which has been around since the fifties. They still produce retro-mod designs from the 50's, 60's and 70's, as well as brand new modern designs. I have four enormous fabric wall hangings made of Marimekko fabrics, which you can see if you click on the virtual tour of my apartment, in the links at the right. The one in this photo is my favorite; the fabric is called Selanne, and it measures 48" x 48" square. (My shower curtain is also Marimekko, as is my comforter cover!)

It's extremely inexpensive and easy to set up one of Marimekko's wall hangings. They sell you the frame, which is made of lightweight wood, and the fabric. For a hanging the size of mine, it's no more than $150 total. You have to iron the heck out of the fabric, which is the most time-consuming part. Then you lay the fabric face down on the floor, position the frame over it, and staple the fabric to the frame using a staple gun. Then you add your picture hooks and wire and hang it! Since it's just fabric, you don't need to find the stud in the wall; you can hang it on one simple picture hook. And if it falls on your head in an earthquake, you'll be just fine!

17 September 2006

MAC cosmetics Lip Conditioner





I was looking at makeup at the MAC cosmetics counter at Nordstrom, and thought maybe I would buy something. Like perhaps a gel eyeliner and an eyeliner brush, since my favorite eyeliner (which is Anna Sui liquid eyeliner) has recently been discontinued.

Then I looked at the three people who were working at the counter; two women and a man. They were all so ugly and had so much ugly rust-colored makeup on that I started to feel sick, kind of a "car sick" feeling. I think they were all wearing colors from the "Untamed" collection - a lot of rust, orange and gold colors that are supposed to make a person look like a wild bird of prey, I think, because there are feathers in the photos and the eye shadow has names like "well plumed" and "take wing."

"Hiiiii...Can I help you?" asked one of the women, in a really loud, nasal, Stepford wifey kind of way. (Why is she projecting her voice? I wondered. I'm right in front of her.)

"Ugh, I mean yes, thank you. I'd like a lip conditioner in Clear," I said. Yes, they were all so ugly and so hideously made up that they made me nauseous and induced me to buy just a clear lipbalm!
"One lip conditioner," she said robotically, walking away to get it.

MAC cosmetics' lipbalm is okay. It's soft and creamy, unlike your average Chapstick, and it smells pleasantly of vanilla. It doesn't make your lips shiny or glossy; it's very invisible. Sadly, it comes in unimpressive cheapie plastic packaging; just white with black writing. Because you stick your finger in to get the product out, I wipe the top of mine off with a tissue a lot, and especially if I've let someone else stick their grubby finger in there. You just don't know where those fingers have been!

16 September 2006

Sakura Souffle Pens





I was having a terrible day at work and my stomach started to hurt, so I left. I think the stomach hurting was purely psychological, because I felt better as soon as I left. Then, as much as I hate malls, I proceeded to one to buy a gift.
True, if I had my sh*t together, I would have ordered a gift and had it delivered, but alas, I did not have my sh*t together, so off to the mall I went.

Predictably, I visted the Sanrio store. I saw some pens, and there was a sign that said, "Write and watch it grow!" Fascinated, I took the pens to the counter and said, "What do these do?"
"I don't know," said the salesperson. "Pens?"
"There's a sign that says, '... watch it grow,'" I told her. "Is it puffy ink?"
"I don't know," she repeated.
So of course my gullible ass buys the pens.

When I got home I searched around on the Internet and found out what the pens do and what they are. They're
Sakura brand "Souffle" pens, for writing on non-porous surfaces, like plastic or glass. The ink is opaque, raised or slightly "puffed", and permanent. Jeez! I don't know when I will ever be writing on plastic or glass. I am sure these pens are very cool, and I did write on a glass jar of chili oil with them to test them out, but they're not anything I need or can use! They got me with the curiosity factor; with their misleading sign that said, "watch it grow!" A sucker for Hello Kitty is born every day.

15 September 2006

A Hostess Gift



Another wrapped gift; it's a hostess gift this time. I love wrapping gifts, and I enjoy giving a pretty hostess gift. A lot of people don't do that anymore, which is really sad. I think people who never cook and entertain don't understand how much planning and work goes into a dinner party. A hostess gift is not about money - it's about showing your gratitude and appreciation for someone who is kind and generous enough to invite you over and prepare dinner for you! Hosting people and entertaining them can be very thankless. But tonight, I'm not the hostess; I'm a guest!

I really like this heavy hot pink and orange paper, and I chose a chocolate brown ribbon with orange edging to go with it. The paper is wild and the ribbon is preppy - I like that.

Poison Oak?





We finally visited the San Francisco Zoo, after having lived here for four years.

The weirdest thing about the Zoo had nothing to do with the animals - it has to do with the fact that I saw what I believe to be poison oak growing right outside one of the animal exhibits, where people can easily touch it. In fact, as I was gaping at the plants and second guessing myself, a woman did touch it - she leaned over, grabbed one of the vines, pushed it out of her way, and then turned around and looked at us. I jabbed Dear Daniel in the ribs with my elbow and hissed, "Did she just touch POISON OAK?"
"It looks like poison oak," he said.
"It IS poison oak," I said, "But there's NO WAY they'd let it grow right here at the Zoo, right?"
"I dunno," he said, "This is kind of the back of the Zoo where all the reject animals are."
After the woman walked away, I went really close to the plants, and I got a good look, and I SWEAR it was poison oak.

I've never had poison oak, thankfully. It grows all over Northern California, and I camped and backpacked with my Dad from a young age, and I've known what the plant looks like since I was a kid. And I'm extremely cautious about it. It's supposed to be the most painful thing you can possibly imagine, outside of childbirth. And the thing with poison oak is the poison is an oil which does not rinse off, and you end up touching yourself all over and spreading the oil around, and then you get these huge, itching, pus-filled welts.

I still can't figure out if there was poison oak at the Zoo - it seems like that would be a liability issue. Maybe it was a plant that looks exactly like poison oak... does such a plant exist?

Another weird thing - I live in a National Park, and there is poison oak EVERYWHERE here. I stick to the trails when hiking here; I'm no fool. From the trails I can see it crawling up trees, forming itself into huge mounds, and growing amongst the wild blackberry bushes. Little fingers of it reach out to the trails, too, so I always wear long pants when walking and hiking.
So I found out they're holding this Bay Area Orienteering event here this weekend. Orienteering is this "sport" in which you're provided with a topographical map, and landmarks, and you have to navigate your way to the landmarks. At each landmark, you obtain proof that you were there. The object is to get to all the landmarks and reach the end first; it's a race. You have to figure out if you're willing to walk the long way around or go charging through a stream to get to a landmark faster, etc.
It's like you're the star of your own adventure movie. On the event website it warns, "Wooded areas may have some poison oak."

MAY have SOME poison oak?! I don't see how anyone can hike anywhere in the forest here off-trail without getting COVERED in poison oak. Well, I wish them luck with their orienteering...

14 September 2006

I Wish Trashy Shoes Came in Half Sizes




Last year I ordered these black and white patent saddle shoes from Trashy.com. (The photo is from their site. This is not my foot.)

They are cheap and tacky, but they are cute, and I needed them to complete a particular outfit. (And hey, I never said I was some blueblood preppy.) At the time, they were backordered beyond the event I needed them for, so I cancelled my order. But I need them again! The thing is, they don't come in half sizes - in fact, cheap slutty shoes always come in whole sizes only. And I really do wear a true size 6.5 shoe - a 6 is almost always too small and a 7 is ALWAYS too large. Cheap tacky shoes are one thing, but cheap tacky shoes that don't fit are just bad. I can't go there. *sigh* But I still need something like this shoe!

13 September 2006

iPod Shuffle, etc. ZZZzzzz



Apple released the new iPod Shuffle and a re-vamped iPod nano yesterday. This is old news, right? The f*cking things are probably already obsolete! Really, I'm kind of sick of Apple and how ubiquitous the iPods are... and how often they re-design them, change the price, add storage, change colors. They're beyond predicatable now. Even as I complain about this, I'm working on an Apple G5, and admittedly, I have an iPod. Mine is one of the minis from the dinosaur era, when they were released in pastel colors. (That was the Christmas I bought my boyfriend one - come to find out my mom bought both my boyfriend AND me one each. So of course we went to the Apple store and exchanged the extra iPod mini for some more Apple stuff.) And I fancy myself a runner, so of course I grudgingly want the new teeny tiny Shuffle. Especially because the old minis skipped, and now they supposedly don't skip. And yet, when I was saying my mini skipped, no one believed me. The peeps at the Apple store just "reset" it, after which it continues to skip!

When my boss and I talked about my laptop for work, I halfheartedly asked for an Apple iBook, but I didn't mind too much when the IT manager said no. (She's pro-PC and our office desktops and laptops are all PC.)

Whatever. I'm fully sucked into the Apple cult and I can still see how stupid it all is.

Now let's talk about important things, like this ad image, which I pulled from Apple's site. Ugly UGLY shirt, ugly jeans, HIDEOUS BRACELETS, and SQUARED-OFF fingernails, and what's with the weird puckering of the tee shirt? Worse, it looks like they broke the model's index finger... whose finger bends at the second joint like that?! Ugly, ugly, ugg.

12 September 2006

Aya Takano



An artist I really like is Aya Takano. Her characters are often naked, but they're innocent and childlike, rather than sexual, and the pictures have a dreamy, futuristic quality to them. Some of her pictures are in a book I have, called
Drop Dead Cute, which is a compilation of several Japanese women artists.
But Aya Takano also has her own monograph, called Hot Banana Fudge. (I want this book!)

See some of Aya Takano's work here, at the Blum and Poe Gallery, in Los Angeles.

11 September 2006

Hellbaby by Hideshi Hino



This is the cover image from a hideously grotesque, digustingly fun comic book I just read. It's called Hellbaby and was written and drawn by a Japanese artist named Hideshi Hino.

Hellbaby is thrown away by her father shortly after her birth because she's been born a monster who is hungry for blood instead of milk.
She grows up alone in a dump, scavenging for food, while her "normal" twin sister and parents happily go about their lives without her.
Eventually she ventures to the city, where she "gets hungry" and eats a few dogs and the arm of a policeman. But she's not evil! She'll starve and decompose without fresh meat. She encounters her family, and her Little Miss Perfect twin sister. Havoc ensues. Hellbaby has blood, the stench of rotting meat, and severed limbs - amongst themes of loneliness and isolation. It's very touching, and you'd have to be a real beast to not want to cry while reading it.

We Interrupt the Shallowness to Bring You...



Long before we US Americans had the connotations with today's date (September 11th) that we do now, September 11th marked the anniversary of the birth of the non-violent resistance movement. On this date in the year 1906, Mohandas K Gandhi asked a gathering of three thousand Indian people living in South Africa to peacefully resist a new apartheid law. Everyone there took an oath that they would do so.

*sigh*

Long live non-violent resistance.

Is it so illogical to believe that we will never have peace till we stop making war?

Read More About Non-Violent Resistance on September 11, 1906.

10 September 2006

The Problem With Unit C




Below us, Unit C is empty. My TV-blasting downstairs neighbors moved out!

The quiet is astounding; at night and in the early morning everything is still and we can hear the pounding of the surf. If you've ever camped at the beach or by a stream, or lived there, you know how wonderful the sounds of natural, moving bodies of water are. You sleep better, you breathe better, you just feel so alive.

I was happily enjoying the emptiness of Unit C this week, till Thursday, when I came home from work intending to read the last few chapters of a novel and maybe even take a nap before D.D. was to arrive home.
No such luck - a work van was parked in my parking spot, and there was a tremendous amount of banging, slamming, thumping and yelling going on downstairs. Several workers were down there. Not only that, my apartment was full of fumes and vapors - they were refinishing the hardwood floors downstairs.

I was furious, not with the workers, but with the leasing company, for not warning us this work was going to happen.
We live in old military housing, and even though the units are separate, it's almost like you live with your neighbors, because you can hear and smell everything from the other apartment. Their ceiling/our floor seems to have no insulation in it, and there's a big empty wall space between our wall heater and theirs, which is why I used to enjoy saying, "Carol Ann... Carol Annnnnn...." into the heater in a baby voice like that little lady's in Poltergeist. (I was hoping she would hear it and think I was a ghost. ) Anyhow, if they would have warned us, we could have stayed at a hotel or with friends. I'm extremely fearful of toxic chemicals - I use only natural house cleaning supplies, almost all the food I eat is organic, and basically I'm convinced that we're all going to die soon from a combination of global warming and cumulative chemical poisoning!

The only good thing was that the workers opened all the blinds so I was finally able to see into Unit C, for the first time ever.
The old downstairs neighbors ALWAYS kept their blinds closed. I only saw in once, and that was just a peek, when the mailman delivered their mail to our box and I went downstairs to hand it to them. All I could see before the guy shut the door was a giant elliptical exercise machine that took up half their living room. One time Carol Ann and the guy came up to our place to give us a bottle of wine, and she said, "You have such a beautiful place!" I thanked her, but inside I was very startled. I mean, we have the exact same apartment. Since then, I've always wondered what was wrong with their unit.
Well now I know! There's nothing different; empty, It looks exactly like ours did empty! I think her place would have looked better to her without an ELLIPTICAL MACHINE and a huge ugly television in EVERY room.

Anyhow, I took these pictures through the windows right after the floors had been done. They (floors) look great. Glad I'm shaving years off my life and MUTATING MY EGGS by breathing in the varnish...and I'm scared to think: Now who will move in?

09 September 2006

The Elixir of Youth?



Did I say that I work at an organic produce distributor? I do, and everyone there is really, majorly into food. Every day, bottles of wine arrive for our resident wine snobs, perfect peaches are overnighted, the cherry tomatoes are as good as sex, and one of my coworkers was on an obsessive quest to bake the perfect pineapple upside-down cake. She kept bringing the various iterations of the cake to work, much to the glee of the rest of us.

So when I started seeing people drinking out of these little tiny cartons of Harvest Bay Coconut Water, I figured it must be delicious, and I tried it. Ms. Pineapple Upside-Down Cake saw me drinking it my first time, and exclaimed, "You drink it? Have you noticed
a difference yet?"

"A difference in what?" I asked.

"Your skin! It's very hydrating, you know. Brenda and I have noticed our skin has gotten softer and younger. Brenda keeps saying, 'Ooh, feel me!'"

"I just ordered it because I saw you guys drinking it," I replied.

"Well, you'll notice a difference," she said.

Can it be true?! That the elixir of youth is neither Botox nor Restylane - it's the water inside coconuts?!

I order a case of coconut water once every two weeks now. DearDaniel drinks it, too.

I believe in magic!

08 September 2006

Kawaii Sex






My friend Dorian gave this to me; quite possibly the cutest condom in the world...
I've had it for a few weeks, but can't bear too open it yet. But don't worry; it's in a cool, dry place; not in my wallet.
Heh.
;)

07 September 2006

Frolicking Naked In Greece



Last night Dear Daniel and I watched Summer Lovers, which was made in 1982 and stars Peter Gallagher (shockingly young and lean but with the same uni-brow he has now), a VERY young Daryl Hannah, and a French actress named Valerie Quennessen. We rented it because Dear Daniel's boss has a small part in it.

Peter Gallagher and Daryl Hannah play a young American couple who go on a vacation to Greece. They meet a sexy, tanned, NAKED Frenchwoman who sleeps with Peter Gallagher and eventually they become a threesome... blah blah.
It's full of cheesy stuff and bad acting but it's watchable - mostly because the setting is beautiful and everyone in the movie is NAKED. All the women in the beach scenes are topless, there are hundreds of naked butts, and there's pubic hair galore, although you never actually see Peter Gallagher's full frontal.

(The worst thing about Summer Lovers is that you keep waiting for the two women to be sexual together, but they never do. They don't even so much as kiss onscreen, and whenever they're in a sexual situation, Peter Gallagher is in the middle. It's so unrealistic and heteronormative. Really bugged me.)

What really struck me - the women all have natural breasts in the late 70's and early 80's, instead of the ubiquitous, perfectly round, half-circle breasts in media images of women today. Also, women actors looked much less worked-out muscular than they do now. Then, there were no Jennifer Aniston six pack abs, no muscular corded necks ala Jessica Simpson, no rippling back muscles like Madonna's. Furthermore, many of the women seem to still have their natural noses. Consequently, to me, all the women in Summer Lovers looked twiggy-skinny, with small breasts and big noses. This just goes to show how warped by TV and movies I have become... Rent Summer Lovers if you want to see what I'm talking about.

But if you want to watch something more explicit, try the old porn movie Insatiable, starring Marilyn Chambers. It was made in 1980. You'll see the same interesting body things I noticed in Summer Lovers, and one could argue that it's a more satisfying film.

Too Young To Die



This enormous ashtray (10" diameter) features a version of Yoshitomo Nara's artwork entitled, "Too Young To Die". The irony of this being on an ashtray... I like it! (I don't smoke cigarettes regularly, by the way. Once in a great while, and I mean VERY rarely, I smoke a clove cigarette. They've got cloves in them; tobacco too. Tobacco is bad, kids! Don't smoke! You can still have a nice ashtray, and put your jewelry or coins in it.)

Alright, enough hipocrisy.

The Nara ashtray is available at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

06 September 2006

Crazy-Eyed Blythe






I just received a "Hello, Blythe" postcard book in the mail, which I'd ordered recently. Blythe is a strange doll, originally made in 1972, and only produced for one year, apparently due to low sales. Her eyes change colors when you pull a string on the back of her head. Yes, you read that correctly! You pull a string and her eyes are blue. Pull the string and they turn PINK. Pull again and you get a brown-eyed girl, and so forth. FREAKY!!!

Gina Garan began the Blythe comeback by taking photos of Blythe in different situations and in different outfits. Blythe enjoyed a Blythe Renaissance - she was produced again, in limited-edition batches, and then a bunch of famous designers designed outfits for her. Prints of Gina Garan's Blythe photos are available for sale starting at around $100, and there are photo books, postcard books, like the one I bought ("used" but in perfect condition, for less than four dollars, by the way!), and outfits. An original 1972 Blythe can sell for thousands of dollars. Personally, I don't desire a Blythe doll, but I like the photos, mostly because the whole thing is sort of nonsensical and macabre, and that tickles me. Blythe is an expressionless, enormous-eyed, tiny-bodied inanimate DOLL, all dressed up and looking good. And I think she's the perfect metaphor for what mainstream America wants American women to be - mindless, little girl-like, all of us with different hair color and eye color and different outfits, but basically cast from the same mold. The photos of Blythe are so weird and creepy that I think the whole Blythe thing is subversive in its way. Or just in my way, maybe.

P.S. For Meagan - do you think the first photo looks like a certain Assistant Manager you and I once worked beneath? Is she not BLYTHE BATOR?!

Visit Blythe Here.

05 September 2006

Pure Abundance or Pure Bullshit?




This is an image used to advertise Aveda's Pure Abundance line of volumizing hair products. It seems I'm always bitching about Aveda; their crappy ads, their crappy in-store customer service - and yet I still use their things. Sucker = me.

I saw the ad, which is a model OBVIOUSLY wearing MANY hair extensions, and yet rather than getting hair extensions, I bought the friggin' Pure Abundance hairspray. This was because the one NICE person at the Aveda store near me (she no longer works there, because she's NICE, and no nice people can work there!) did a demonstration for me - she fluffed up my hair while I was bent over and my head was upside down, and she sprayed the stuff all over the underside of my hair. When I flipped my hair back over, it was big and fluffy. I bought the spray.
But my hair still deflated rather quickly, as it always does.

The spray works decently, but not better than any other hairspray. It's not a magical thickener. My hair is straight and it lies down flat, and nothing but curling it with hot rollers makes it otherwise. Since then, Aveda has come out with the matching Pure Abundance shampoo, conditioner and something called "Potion". So the last time I went into Aveda (for candles, not for hair product) the gal working there spotted my flat, straight hair and my gullible face and told me in her chirpy cheerleader voice, "You should try the new Abundance Potion!"
"I already have the spray and I like it but it's not all that volumizing," I replied politely.
"That's because you're not using the WHOLE SYSTEM," she snapped, glaring at me.

Jeez! So rude! Someone needs to sip some more of that lukewarm organic licorice-peppermint tea they always serve you there in tiny, tiny paper cups.

04 September 2006

Stila Lip Glaze Stick




I reorganized my makeup case again. Here it is. This is not all my stuff - I keep pencils and brushes upright in glasses, and I also have a smaller case with makeup I use less frequently. I sharpened all my pencils and washed my brushes, too.

My most recent acquisition is this Stila Lip Glaze Stick. It's a gloss but it's packaged in a chubby stick, and it comes with a nice sharpener. I'm always looking for lip glosses that aren't sticky-feeling; something between a gloss and a balm; Cargo's feel really good, but they have very little color to them. I like the Stila Lip Glaze Stick because I like sharpening makeup pencils - it seems so clean to just sharpen it and have fresh stuff all the time, instead of sticking the applicator wand or brush back into the product over and over. It also has very little color (the color I chose is "Starfruit" - a rosy pink with reflective particles), but more than Cargo, and it feels very moisturizing and light.

Now that I think about it, Origins used to have a chubby stick lipstick I liked... wonder what happened to that product. They're always discontinuing the things I like! Pfft.

03 September 2006

The Bare Necessities





You can have a lot of fun spending one hundred dollars. It's not that much, but if you spent it at, say, the MAC Cosmetics counter - that would be really fun. If you spent it at your massage therapist's office - that is heavenly! If you spent it on flowers - your house would be amazing for a few days. And if you spent it on one pair of La Perla panties, well... now THAT is fun!

I have discovered that the LEAST fun you can have spending one hundred dollars is at a sporting goods store called "Sports Basement", where you spent the money on boring necessities such as a Champion sports bra that flattens your already-small breasts and makes you look like a boy, and a pair of Ryka running tights with reflective stuff on the back of the calves.

Eew, necessities.

02 September 2006

Whose Fault?



Dear Daniel and I sort of have these various "understandings" about certain household things; we do a lot for each other; we've each had to babysit the other when the other had had WAY too much to drink; he will buy tampons for me. However, I will not plunge a toilet someone else stopped up. That's just unfair and crosses a line with the whole domestic intimacy thing. We've never talked about it or spelled it out, but I think this is one of our understandings.

The other morning, the toilet was stopped up. Looking into it, I could see nothing; no paper, nothing gross.
Lo and behold, I could not find a plunger. We haven't lived in our apartment very long and apparently we have no plunger.
I have to be at work at 6:45am; he has to be at work at 8:30. He gallantly went off in search of an early-morning plunger purchase. I really didn't feel guilty because I believed with 100% certainty that I was not the person who had stopped up the toilet.

Ten minutes later he arrived home with this white thing - see above. What the Hell is it? Is it modern art? Nay, it is a newfangled toilet plunger.
"Are you serious?!" I asked.
"Well, it's the only one they had," he said. "It was eight dollars, too."

"Okay, move, I'll plunge it," I offered.
"Naw, just get ready for work - I'll do it," he replied, as well he should, since I was not the one who stopped up the toilet.

Turns out this plunger is the worst-designed tool ever invented; it won't form a seal, it sucks water into the chamber and doesn't create any air pressure whatsoever! Ten minutes later Dear Daniel was still at it.
"Lemme do it," I said, kind of wanting to try the new plunger. I got tired of that quickly. The plunger was half working and half NOT working.

Dear Daniel successfully unstuck the toilet. The pink-tinged water pointed to me as the culprit. Okay, so I threw a bloody tampon down the toilet! It was 100% organic cotton, and it said "flushable and biodegradable"! Who knew the plumbing was THAT delicate? Jeez.

We got rid of the fancy white plunger and bought a regular round rubber one with a stick handle.

01 September 2006

You Say Potato, I Say Po TAH toe





I'm always struggling with what to call the man I live with. We've been together for five years and have lived together for four.
"Boyfriend" sounds a bit temporary and flighty, and "husband" - well, we're not married and I'm not sure that marriage is my thing. (I definitely don't see myself starring in a Big White Wedding; I've never had that particular dream, and all my experiences as a flower girl or a bridesmaid have shown me that brides are ordinarily nice women who get selfish, mean and nasty when trying to plan their big day.) And "husband" just sounds like some doddering asshole who is permanently attached to the TV remote and whose only skills are barbequeing and mowing a lawn.

"Partner" seems the most neutral, but that's exactly what's wrong with it - it's SO neutral. It can be mistaken for business alliances, as in, "My partner invested the initial 15k in 1999, and now we're millionaires!" (See, those are the dreams I have, not Vera Wang cream-colored sheath dress dreams.)

You could say "my man" but you might as well say, "my caveman" because that's how primitive and backward saying, "my man" sounds. "Yeah, MY MAN gave me my allowance today."

I work with a very young woman intern who called her boyfriend, "my special friend." Aww, sweet. Too bad they broke up.

Another woman I know through work startled me by coming to pick up vegetables ordered by the chef at one restaurant; not her restaurant. I expressed my confusion and she cleared it up by stating clearly that she and that chef are LOVERS. "He's my LOVER," she said, with a smile. An image of them DOING IT (not cooking... doing IT) flashed in my mind, despite the fact that I've never even met the chef, only spoken to him on the phone!

Okay, so I've decided to refer to him as Dear Daniel, after Hello Kitty's boyfriend. Dear Daniel's name is actually "Daniel Star", and like my LOVER he's lived in New York, is a great dancer and he loves fashion.