Giggle For Saturday

We're big fans of Chris Lilley here at A&P, parking ourselves on the couch and watching his almost metaphysical 2007 mockumentary series Summer Heights High for days on end. Possibly the best character on the series, private school beast Ja'mie, originated on Lilley's 2005 show We Can Be Heroes: Finding the Australian of the Year. Made up of 5 characters, each in the running for the prestigious "Australian of the Year Award" because of a litany of selfless and bizarre acts, We Can Be Heroes really takes it there. My personal favorite is Ricky Wong, a Chinese physics student with a love of musical theater and Aboriginal culture. Unfortunately, I haven't yet found a venue where we American plebes can view this thing of beauty, so YouTube clips will have to suffice for now.

Cartoons

Last night, Petrova and I caught some blessed public access, a compilation of Marc Jacobs runway shows 1986-2005 (from his own line to Perry Ellis and back and then to Vuitton and a bridge—from long hair to short—from crack to Karen Kilimnik). It was a blast to see all of the old familiar faces, models and editors and buyers who have since recessed (these things really didn't used to be about actresses). We were moved by the eighties collections. They were sort of wholesome (full-faced, optimistic). The famous Spring '93 "grunge" collection gets so very much attention, but it did not move me half as much as 1995 (the first mannered stab at vintage dressing) or the somber, hyper-structured (read: masculine) stuff of 2004 and 2005 (a kind of luxe goth opera of a show with a dramatic set and hats and black sequin pants, the whole already funny and foreign). Youtube was not stocked with these gems as I'd imagined it would be, but I did find these: Marc Jacobs (for Marc Jacobs) Spring 1987 and Fall 2001 (preceded by a peak of 1986). The first is wacky and sweet. The second is Jacobs in the very midst of his success, "contemporary" thirties clothes, haughty and grim Marc. What do you think?

Bluff

Some criminals removed a couple of videos from previous posts: Otis Redding at Monterey Pop and Depeche Mode atop the WTC. But in my fruitless search for them—serious consolation, Sam et Dave.

Put A Ring On It

The Bent Pyramid of Sneferu at Dahshur, c. 2596 B.C. I don't know why I like this structure so much, as it's essentially an engineering failure. I guess I find its slopes extremely pleasing, and "bent" is a really hot word. 

The Miraculous Set of Birthdays Celebrated on January 30th:

Thanks to our prince of tides, Michael K of Dlisted--

Christian Bale (35)
Jake Thomas (19)
Wilmer Valderrama (29)
Andy Milonakis (33)
Jemima Khan (35)
Carolyn Kepcher (40)
Prince Felipe de Bourbon (41)
Jody Watley (50)
Brett Butler (51)
Phil Collins (58)
Charles S. Dutton (58)
Dick Cheney (68)
Vanessa Redgrave (72)
Gene Hackman (79)
Harold Prince (81)

"We Tote the Note"

I seem to remember Architectural Digest as a bound paper mecca for grown-up aspirationalism of the highest degree. In its pages, I first discovered teak and infinity pools (kind of big deals circa 1993). I hadn't picked up a copy in some time, and then yesterday I did and ... I witnessed the utter rape of this Park Avenue apartment. Can you stand it? The carpeting of parquet floors! The useless refurbishment of a lovely old fireplace (with mirrors—oh how I love mirrors)! The dismantling of those fantastic fabric wallpapers, the burgundy oriental (it's okay to say that about textiles) and the baby pink damask (suede even?!)! The face-job on that decorator! A (shield my ojos) plasma-screen on the wall! All of that stupid, cartoon-luxe furniture! Yucktown. Shame.

Ana Ana Ana

Behold! The tabs used to track Hollywood eating disorders far more regularly. Now they're all about god damn babies. In the spirit of the olden days, and also to deflect some scrutiny from poor Jessica Simpson (lady can't catch a break!--and, by the way, I remember reading that when she was at her "Daisy Duke weight" she was working out 4 hours a day, 7 days a week, consuming fewer than a 1000 calories ... woof), we're going to put a couple of broads on suicide watch.

That genius of stage and screen Lindsay Morgan Lohan seemed like a new womyn in 2008 with her hot girlfriend and relative sobriety, but that relative sobriety/nuevo-lesbianism has clearly dovetailed into some kind of raw vegan bullshit unhealthy "healthfulness" (this is the brand newest strain of bony disease).

And that dumpster-person Mischa Barton (who makes movies in The Soviet Union?) was just photographed in Paris marked with all of the signs of the classic (c. 2005) style of disease, the "my stylist sells me meth and unemployment has driven me to the party-for-pay circuit' strain.

Now I'm not above it. Lord knows I need to get on board one of these sickness trains bound for New Pants, but I'm somehow more interested in what this gentlewoman is (not)eating.

Where have you been, Memphis of 1959?

"What Watch"

Thanks Pillow dear, for your last post. Not only because we love to love the fox-and-hound friendship struck between Clinton and H.W., but also because we need to talk about Jezebel.com (and how they're, you know, really irritating...er...difficult). Advance apologies, the following is gonna be a doozy (with a possible sequel)—this diatribe/exploration has been coming for a long time.

Megan Carpentier, D.C. political correspondent to the Gawker owned "neo-feminist" blog, wrote about the ex-president joke curfuffle: This whole thing went down, I shit you not, at a National Automobile Dealers Association conference, where the ugliness of feminists is obviously an important topic. Those guys laughing in the background? Those are the dudes that want to sell you your next car, con you into the undercoat you don't need and generally treat you as an inferior being because you're a female who, naturally, knows nothing about big, complex machines. Oh!—the ever-so-self-conscious "dudely" tone! Oh!—the anger and bile! Oh!—the hypocrisy of defining yourselves as "neo-feminists" and spurning the veteran leaders of Women's Lib (Tracie, née Slut Machine, famously posts that Gloria Steinem and co. are "dinosaurs"—[though I must note that her television posts are the best thing on the site]), all the while behaving as knee-jerk, glib watchdogs (dinosaurish maybe?).

Now, I don't have the tiempo or energía to sift through all of their recent posts (of which there are many many), but I seem to recall a regular commentor recently saying of the site's newest contributor, "she's too pretty to be a feminist, but we'll trust her anyway." It was typed in jest, but problematic whatever the intention. We needn't tackle beauty+liberation (and further hypocrisies), because it should be obvious to anyone (including Papa Bush) that ALL WOMEN ARE INJURED BY THE PATRIARCHY AND THUS SHOULD BE AND ARE FEMINISTS (and—shit, I can't help it!—physical beauty is not a thing that causes women to somehow be "in cahoots" with men, but something that causes further painful entanglement in/by their muddled, oft cruel desires and suppositions).

Let's instead (ha!) pause to be grossed out by the tribal "we." At A&P, we say "we" a good bit. We refer to we writers, a group of dear old friends, constant conversational companions since we were in Airwalks and/or shooting room temperature peach Schnapps (you devils). At Jezebel "we" refers to a bonafide online community, a bunch of broads who are technically (or untechnically?) strangers experiencing a kind of "group mind." Sometimes I find that Jezebel addresses a mixture of things that are endearingly pertinent to we (our generation, that is), and anyone who blogs owes a thing or ten to the Gawker franchise for slickening and standardizing the medium. But the four of us, Alpha, Pillow, myself, and silent partner, Petrova, spurn "communities." We have loved each other through and often because of our rejection of "the group" and its "mind." And this discourse is drawn from the real thing, real human contact.

Props to Jezebel for taking a stab at blogging feminism. One is bound to be inconsistent when approaching such a whale-of-a-notion daily. Generally, I don't like to engender things, and I don't like any ethos that polarizes. But it is damn necessary to address women's issues, and to resuscitate that tarnished moniker, feminist. For truths—I think my beef with Jezebel is down to (god bless you, PMC) poor taste. Their name and graphics are horrible. Their sycophantic, commenting followers are downright loserly (and/or in high school).Their ideas about clothes are super(duuuuper) embarrassing. Their use of language is bland and watery. Call me a snob (it's accurate), but I can't be havin' that.

Queen Bee's and Wannabes

While most of last night's episode of Nip/Tuck restored my faith in the series (Annalynne McCord may have beat out Famke Janssen as baddest bitch ever on that show), I was a little disappointed in Jennifer Coolidge. Her character was supposed to be a bad actress, and thus very bad at acting "ghetto." I felt like she wasn't committed to the part in the least, and the whole joke fell flat. Fortunately, Coolidge was parodying real-life superstarlet, Wendy Ho, whom I was unaware of until last night...

Love in this Club

Oooooh, Jack Dempsey.
Born to be a dancer.

The Best Thing Going (For Wednesday)

Also thanks to thems Wiki-people--
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Muybridge_Buffalo_galloping.gif

Eadweard!

Admittedly, Wikipedia makes for a poor scholarly resource, but look!:

In 1874, still living in the San Francisco Bay Area, Muybridge discovered that his wife had a lover, a Major Harry Larkyns. On October 17, 1874, he sought out Larkyns; said, "Good evening, Major, my name is Muybridge and here is the answer to the letter you sent my wife"; he then killed the Major with a gunshot.^[2]

Muybridge believed Larkyns to be his son's true father, although as an adult, the son bore a remarkable resemblance to Muybridge. Muybridge was put on trial for murder, but was acquitted as a "justifiable homicide." The inquiry interrupted his horse photography experiment, but not his relationship with Stanford, who paid for his criminal defense.

An interesting aspect of Muybridge's defense was a plea of insanity due to a head injury Muybridge sustained following his stagecoach accident. Friends testified that the accident dramatically changed Muybridge's personality from genial and pleasant to unstable and erratic. Although the jury dismissed the insanity plea, it is not unlikely that Muybridge had experienced emotional changes due to brain damage in the frontal cortex, often associated with traumatic head injuries. {For a description of Muybridge's suggested neurological injury, see Shimamura, 2002.)

After the acquittal, Muybridge left the United States for a time to take photographs in Central America, returning in 1877. He had his son, Florado Helios Muybridge (nicknamed "Floddie" by friends), put in an orphanage. As an adult, Floddie worked as a ranch hand and gardener. In 1944 he was hit by a car in Sacramento and killed.^[3]

Bathroom Ham Party

Culled from this morning's Jezebel. They're livid, naturally.

Fine Form

Dowd isn't always my favorite of the Times Op-Ed squad (that would be Krugman), but this is damn good. It made me do a righteous anger jig.

Sartor Resartus

There's been a lot of talk of clothing choices recently, so I though I'd share my current style dilemma. I am an inherently lazy gal. There is no shame in this distinction—I always seem to get the job done—but it does mean that as I force myself into a post-collegial world there's a few things I need to brush up on. The most obvious victim of my sloth is any kind of stylish or interesting sartorial choices.

When I left the big, important university in the big city, I was no longer a nearly emaciated scenester who only went to school so I didn't have to get a job. I was suddenly an academic, shuffling from home to class to neighborhood bar with neither the time nor the energy to change clothes or care about what clothes I was wearing. Heels, once an absolute staple in any ensemble, were the first to go. And save 2 weddings, 1 Valentine's Day, and my own graduation, I haven't donned a pair in over three years.

I look back on my last few years of college in Memphis fondly. It was quiet and lovely, and pretty damn fun (without landing anyone in rehab or the looney bin). Perhaps this is why I start to hyperventilate when I contemplate wearing heels out in public. Like Dorothy, I fear I'll click my glitter pink Miu Miu t-straps and suddenly be transported from my couch to some Lower East Side drug den, the dawn chasing me, dice clacking in the background. Now this is obviously ridiculous, and lately I've been feeling the tug of style, so I buckled and grabbed a few pairs of heels on eBay:

I just found these Miu Miu spectator booties really special. I have no idea how I'll wear them but the price was right, and Miu Miu shoes are always stunning and modern-classic.

I have a feeling if I really stick with it, these Marni kicks from Spring '07 could replace my Tom's and flip flops as my staple summer shoe. I love the dark brown leather. And the lucite!!

Poet of the Sound

We are very doleful at the news of John Updike's passing. He is among my most favorite authors (though I have mostly spent time with his early novels and not been so good as to catch up with recent work). Updike was a master (a prolific one) at making Connecticut and its citizens seem vivid, difficult, and passionate, like heroes and heroines of the French and Italian New Wave. What an achievement: to catch an American region and moment in deep and poignant frieze. Much miss, Sir. Love, affection, and appreciation.

Liking and Liking and Liking

More snaps! We have mentioned our gratitude to Pepsi Co. for their smart new packaging. Now, we turn to Tropicana. I think both redesigns are (shock me! shock me!) fresh and modern--not ugly, not over-referential, just clean and good! Thanks, y'all.

Pollyanna

We have mentioned MTV's The City at this here school newspaper once before--I believe I termed it "the ultimate jumping of [Manhattan's] heptitude shark." I generally have less to say about it than I thought I would. It's parent programs (same premise, methods, producers, etc.) Laguna Beach and The Hills are utter gems, aesthetic marvels top full of a truer "nothingness" than Larry David could ever muster (being he's cerebral and all). And The City is about here, this, my town (not the inner and outer Los Angeles of the other two). It is also about Whitney Port, who was my very favorite Hillsean (the seemingly savvy, disinterested one) until she branched out to my coast. But yes, despite these factors, I find the whole quite dull and repugnant (still watching, poor me!).

I was present for a a bit of filming in early Fall. Two characters, heroine Whitney and half-baked sidekick Erin, live near my office, and a beloved diner (The Lyric, at 22nd and 3rd) was chosen as set-for-a-day. It was bizarre. I had to sign all kinds of paperwork and was barred from my usual booth. The "actors" were not speaking or eating (you know, playing the "scene") while I was there, but checking the monitor to see "if their tans looked funny" (which they most certainly did). I just think being on a reality show is super-trashy (duh). The transplant characters lead gross existences in Murray Hillish end-of-days condominium towers and SoHo bars. The native characters are the worst sort of dumpster people, claiming Uptown/socialite identities, dwelling in the filthiest new developments in TriBeCa (I take this quite personally being that these stupid bastards ousted my family from that lovely old district and chose to live in glass and sheen rather than the warm, beamed industrial spaces of its inception and true artist's golden age). If these clowns were in any way legitimate, they WOULD NOT BE ON TELEVISION.

Preamble preamble preamble (my greatest fault)! What I really meant to say in the first place is that you should watch last night's saga {right here}. Because it contains a thing so remarkable, so rare, so very very strange: an actually, plainly nice person on a reality program. Of course, she, Allie (the knife-boned international model), is being trod upon by Adam, her loserly, scum-times boyfriend (a dippy model/promoter person-thing). Adam has cheated on her and in his hair-jellyed sociopathy is denying and denying it. Poor little, gawky, gorgeous Allie believes and disbelieves him (in that way that only lovers of losers can comprehend). Her pain and insecurity are the most stunning jolt of reality in a universe of camera tricks and dull fakery, an accident of heartedness from an otherwise distended, cynically crafted teen-bop T.V. network. I feel for her, and you will too.

Cottage Cheese (Folk Art for Monday Evening)

The Youths (Kulture)

I had just turned eighteen. But I was deep in my Eurotrash (that word is simply not global enough) phase, in its imprecise, gooey center, really. In school outside of Boston, I frequented a handful of clubs near that city's Chinatown (Aria, Venu, pron. Venue [which became Rumor, where Paris is pictured above], Whiskey Bar, and Pravda) with my new best friends, a girl from Warsaw who was fresh from Le Rosey and a boy from Palm Beach via Caracas (from which his powerful familia fled when ousted by the populist Chavez). The Swiss boarding school and South American politico connections brought us into contact with a constant stream of Dior-eyewear-sporting Turks and Indians and Colombians and Russians and Mexicans and Saudis and Koreans and indeterminate Middle-Europeans (I suppose you call those Swiss?).

My weekends had an architecture especially formed for nightlife. When I wasn't dancing or sleeping or brunching at Armani Cafe (such shames), I was at Copley Plaza or along Newbury Street buying new get-ups--bags and bags of mini minis and premium denims and plunging little tops and throwaway stilettos and synthetic fabric dresses and giant earrings and clutches in various skins and truly stupid pink and red underthings.

When we two girls, one blond and one brunette, had grabbed prime spots, atop platforms, lifted from the fray in order to perform beneath the lights, to sometimes jump up and down to climactic stretches of electro symphony, I felt as if the ecstatic music was made to celebrate us and and keep us company. And by us, I meant: youths.

The old axiom, "youth is wasted on the young" may well be true, but as a youth, I was always terribly aware of my own little powers and freedoms. As I was easy with time and money and people, I was ever ever winkingly, gigglingly, jumping-up-and-downedly pleased with myself (you know, whenever I wasn't listening to The Velvet Underground and weeping or checking into mental hospitals). And every now and then, these Euros would bring their parents. Bring their parents to the club. I understand that "over there" people don't consider aging such a punishment as we do, and I'm sure that's quite proper and healthy. But a great deal of that smugness in my own youth was to do with how fleeting I assumed it would (or ought to?) be, my American-ness I suppose, my Puritan-feelings (those I thought I was too semitic to feel), the notion that I was doing something wrong in the absence of my parents and some future "adult" seriousness. These dancing, shot-taking parents alarmed me (in no small part because they were wholly unlike the wholesome academics what borned me).

I would soon move on from that Euro stuff in Boston to more exclusive addresses in la Nueva, shedding the costumes and customs of others for clothes and conversations far more like myself. This was only a svelter, stronger stab at youth-ness. At 19 and 20, I was even more certain that I was experiencing/making something finite, dancing and drugging and loving and squealing and paining like I rarely would again, pitying the old scenesters all about me. I would never be them, them that kept company with kids in order to feel relevant. And of course, at 21, back in Memphis, an art student, I self-fulfilled that prophecy. A few days after my great legalization, I stopped. I stopped smoking cigarettes (or buying them at least—sorry all); I stopped taking cocaine (mostly); I stopped talking to a few people; I stopped demanding of myself that I have some wild social life. I focused more heartily on my work and my true friends and my mornings and my maudlin hometown.

And sometimes I wonder if any of it was right. I think, at 23, I'm far too "young" to feel so removed, "old," so like a fried, sleepy hippie. I see agemates still chasing the proverbial dragon (opiates and attention), a few because they're addicts and a few because they have not yet had such a dumb, bright and explosive time as I used to (I guess). Should I let myself feel that callow youth-ness again? Or, was it always a rather unworthy pursuit? There's the rub. You see, this narcissistic rambling was all due to a song, an album really—Passion Pit's (oh the name!) Chunk of Change, six tracks and a remix. They're not the first clever techno outfit that has made me want to dance and sing and generally revel. But as I walked up Park Avenue this morning listening to this stuff, I was full of such a jarring mixture of joy and regret. Joy at the noise, regret at the ebbing feeling, the feeling that the noise was not made to "celebrate us" so much anymore. Listen friends and tell me what you think of them and this aging psychosis. Love.

Naturally

Naturally, people liken relationships to watercraft.

Founding Fathers: Northern State

Our prodigal sister, Corsica (too badass to keep up with A or P pseudonyms), first introduced me to Northern State in 2003 with the single, "The Man's Dollar". I was instantly won over by their ability to be silly, profound and (dare I say it) thuggish within a line (to quote Corsica, they had me at "I'ma' break that shit up like Brenda and Dylan").

Brief history. Northern State are three nice girls from Long Island, life-long friends who briefly separated after high school to become three very different women: DJ Sprout, a lesbian hippie at Oberlin; Hesta Prynne, a protege of Senator Hillary Clinton; and Spero (formerly Guinea Love), whose college career is rather muddled, so I like to think that she drank too much and dropped out (Alpha, whut!). The three of them eventually realized they pretty much only liked hanging out with each other (like you might do), and formed a rap trio.

With two major label records under their belts, and a brand new album, Can I Keep This Pen?, just released by the independent Ipecac Records, the ladies of Northern State have proven that it is A-OK to be trivial, political, self-loathing, and self-loving all at the same time--as long as you always remember where you came from and OWN it. As Spero says, "I don't do this for you. I do this shit 'cuz it's the shit I do."

Northern State, "Girl For All Seasons" from ALL CITY:




Northern State, "Better Already" from Can I Keep This Pen?: