The V.I.P. Room

So we've always had this plan to go to a taping of The Tyra Banks Show, but I honestly kind of forgot about it. I'm currently sitting on the couch watching television - Tyra, obvi - waiting for my nails to dry, and a few minutes ago Able reminded me of our grand plan. After semi-hyperventilating from the just-like-new thought, I promptly logged on to Ty-Ty's website to reserve tickets. Sadly, the show is on hiatus until August; but I popped over to the FAQ's and found this beautiful insanity:

What do I wear?
Dress your best! We ask that everyone come in upscale, business, interview attire. Think classy. You'll look best on camera wearing solid colors. Those looking their best are always on camera, we have the right to deny anyone who does not follow guidelines.
PLEASE NOTE: NO EXTREME HAIRSTYLES and NO LOGOS OF ANY KIND.

PLEASE DO NOT WEAR:
Shorts
Capri/Gaucho Pants
T-shirts
Ripped Jeans
Sequins
Hats
Busy Patterns
White/White Tops/White Jeans
Jogging Suits/ Velour pants
Tank Tops
Uggs Boots
Flip Flops (walking around the city in uncomfortable shoes can be a task. Some change their shoes once they arrive to the taping. Please keep in mind ALL bags MUST be able to fit under your seat. We are not responsible for the storing of your items, PLEASE NO BACK PACKS OR LARGE PURSES OF ANY KIND CAN BE ADMITTED.)
Sneakers

No white? No busy patterns? Really? It makes me teary that I couldn't go to a taping of Tyra in one of my going-to-The Peacock-at-ULA-in-1994 shirts. But not teary enough to not go, DUH!

Too Darn Hot

P.M.C., who has set off with his love for their new (oh-my-goodness) home in Lebanon (a French colonial fantasy, among other things), began to peel away the layers of my Anglophilia several years ago. He was feeling uncertain about the island, and I trusted his judgement implicitly (being that he spends much more time/has some ancestors over there). And I could agree that London's profile as playland for the megamega-rich and Euro-trashy was smelling unsavory, smelling wholly unlike, say, a Wodehouse story.

When it comes to Jeeves and Wooster, my Anglophilia knows no bounds (or peeling), responds to no shifts or trends or irritating demi-aristos with weak chins and Mystic Tans. Wodehouse's Britain is one lodged in the era between the Wars in the most essential (and pleasing) way—the din of the Great War at the players' backs wholly ignored for the sake of Fred and Estelle lightness. His stories of town and country, club and breakfast-table are touched with the high style of that moment, the quick, comic, fast, freshness of (new) Modernity. Yet they are also stilted and wholesome, like a film set of a Swiss resort or the jam aisle at Fortnum and Mason—devoid of war, poverty, illness, and sex. The curious (and necessary) *absence of sex* in Bertie Wooster's accounts of bachelorhood is addressed in an odd, smart little Post post from yesterday.

Carry on.

Whenever Pops sends me something from The Forward I end up getting furious about one of the damn ads--

I mean really, what is this caca?!

I'm OK. You're OK.

Sometimes I really really miss them.

Good Morn-ting

I bought this grief with my coffee. Papa Able gets upset when he sees police details holding guard outside of our's and others' synagogues on the High Holidays. But evidently it's necessary. My Grandmother lives in Riverdale...and suddenly I don't think wire-taps are such a bad idea. Uh-oh.

Boricua, Moreno

It's summer in New York so let's talk about Puerto Ricans. Lisa, Lisa you out there?

Badblog

Unlike some snarky smugs, I have no problem with Jared Kushner. Instead, I have a crush on him (obvi). But Max Negatory Nancy over at IvyGate (IvyGate?!) has chosen to belittle his new project. JEALOUS.

The Recentness of Beyoncé Sculpture

On Saturday, we bought sneakers. Pillow, Petrova, and Able ambled (practically skipped) down Fulton Mall. Pet knew the best place (blasting Hot 97). In the space of ten minutes we had each spotted, tried, and purchased our (discounted) favorite pairs. Heaven.

On Sunday, Pillow and I talked about Beyoncé. You see, Pillow had bought House of Deréon high-tops. And I was reading this. And then we started playing the catalogue. And I downloaded two Sasha Fierce (damn that terrible hairdressery title) tracks. "Halo" (which Alpha dropped here first). And "Ego." And I'm serious. I've heard the pair of them about 300 times.

"Halo" kills me with the synth and the sentimentality. It's a discoed spiritual, as I listened to it on the train Monday morning I felt the whole chronology of religious music at my back (or really just Bach). And I thought, "Beyoncé is the truth. I want to hear this song on repeat. And Pillow bought those shoes. And who knew I needed religion so badly."

"Ego" is equally addictive, an anthem of swagger that comes in neat, strutting, aesthetic waves. The lyric poses her (and his?) ego as penis,"It's too biiig./It won't fiiit." Beyoncé's adventures in gender dissolution and mocking critics and marriage to HOVA! And it all sounds so damn good.

No Thanks, I'm Good

Best Thing Going (For Wednesday)

Such an acronym.

Folk Art for Wednesday

This is happening.

Self Actual

So they're advertising this movie called Post-Grad on Pandora (like out loud).

It stars Alexis Bledel (who will always be Rory Gilmore to us, a girl who felt like a real agemate, a sympatica, the young star of the WB's much-loved mothers-and-daughters television saga, Gilmore Girls, the wonderful show [may it forever be in syndication] which was shuttered in its seventh season as Bledel's Rory was leaving Yale and making some really bunk "post-grad" cherr-sez, like not marrying a fictional version of A.G. Sulzberger [who is both a Jew and called A.G.!]). And I'm glad, because I like Alexis Bledel, and I like to see her working. But, as one might expect, her character in this Post-Grad seems an awful lot like Rory or that chick she played in The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants or really her (the actress)--very pretty, kind, humble, smart, occasionally compromised on account of being pretty but maintaining her general air of lily-whiteness. And somehow it never bothered me, until...you know what I'm saying.

I graduated a year ago last weekend. Since then, I've watched Reality Bites (for the trillionth tiempo),which NEVER disappoints (though it makes me feel like I ought to have stayed in Memphis and shacked up with a broody slacker—inherently disappointing!). And I rented Kicking and Screaming, which, Chris Eigeman aside, sucks (Oh G-d how I hate Noah Baumbach!). And I've caught The Devil Wears Prada on the tay-vay a (ahem) couple of times, which is cool because Stanley Tucci and Simon Baker and Meryl Streep and Adrian Grenier and it's pretty innocuous.

And a movie that's actually called Post-Grad. I'll totes go see it, but it will induce a certain kind of dull sadness, a creepy, antiseptic hospital feeling, a glummm. Because graduating from college is trauma. And (G-d strike me down for mentioning this too often) the Recession is more trauma (trauma on trauma!). And, easy as it might have been with all of that youth and credit and time and apathy, college caused for one hell of a letdown/crack-up/hangover once it ditched us into this damn city just when we probably ought to have been returning to nature and during the Recession (ha) at a grey crossroads of limitation and indecision. And that's not what this Alexis Bledel vehicle is about. It's about the same old bait and switch, the here's a movie that is somewhat supposed to be about you and your demographic and here's a heroine who feels like a little bit of a loser and here's her life being overtaken by a love triangle and OH solved, sublimated (with a few laughs along the way). Whatever.

Bizarro Jerry

Quick update before the holiday weekend: my boss is wearing a hoop skirt made out of a dogs playing poker tapestry.

Video Killed the Radio Star

Today I gave in and joined Twitter for about twenty seconds. I did this because I'd heard that Fran Drescher was a frequent Twitterer and the idea of getting little missives sent to my iPhone from The Nanny smelled like fine living.

So I signed up, I picked a name, I accidentally sent an email to everyone in my inbox to follow me on Twitter, and I eagerly went over to Fran's page to see what she had to say.

Verdict: Twitter will kill your idols. While there were some lovely updates (she had dinner with Mr. Sheffield last week, she bought motorcycle boots on QVC) there was also a garbage pile of Deepak Chopra quotes and Chinese proverbs and entirely too much oversharing about her "undefined romance" with a mystery man she only refers to as "the BF."

So in short, Twitter made me cry today. And I bet it makes a lot of people cry every day who misinterpret things other people say because life is an epic and not a series of 15 word or whatever the fuck they castrate you at on that site farts.

Airbrush Very Festive

The Rado Ceramica collection (miles ahead of that tired, JAPpy J12!--which, admittedly, blew mi mente in 2003). Note boundlessly chic website...

I'm OK. You're OK.

Placebo's new album drops 9 June 2009. Around that same time (in one way or another), a lot of people that have been dragging down at least half of the A&P staff will vanish into obscurity. From what I've heard of the album (which we've so gently touched on), it appears frontman Brian Molko has been in the same boat as us. Let us take his constructivism to heart. Summer anthems aplenty here, peoples.

What Happen

Love In This Club

Mayor Wharton.