The Lightness

Oh yes!

The Darkness

Almost October. Autumn is only ever one thing for me: Eastern Massachusetts. Aspirational like book-shopping and Commuter Rails and being teen*aged, dismal like exams and infirmaries and being teen*aged. I'm drawn in. Even as anxieties up and over an approaching winter mount, I crave wind rain and grey grey grey. I've been positively wishing away the sun (a thing I know I'll soon regret). The first Darkness has taken hold, and I am trying to conjure it fuller (heady, concussively), though it will surely expand on its own, suffocate us all until a trip to the Islands is the ONLY KIND OF FIX (thank G-d for New Year).

Though, post Yom Kippur, I'd imagined something like this. Today, I got my nails painted thus. German vamp.

Verses

"I Can't Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)"
James Brown
(1968)

When you touch me
When you touch me
Good God

When you touch me
Lookie here
I can't stand it
Can't stand it
I can't stand your love
I can't stand your love

You don't love nobody else
Get back, I can't stand myself
Can't stand your love
Good God

Early in the morning
Can't get it right
Had a little time
With my baby last night

Early in the morning
Gotta do the walk
My baby, just let me talk

When you touch me, good God
When you touch me, alright
Come on, baby, hold my hand
Just want you to know
I'm a soul man

Can't stand it
Can't stand it
Can't stand it, lookie here

Can't stand it, baby
Can't stand it
Can't stand your love
Can't stand it
I can't stand your love

Lookie here, baby
What you want me to do
Baby, what you want me to do
You made me, made me love you

You give me fever, my body's wet
You give me fever, break out
In a cold sweat

Baby, good God
Baby, lookie here
Sometimes I want you
Sometime I call
Sometimes I ring so hard

Come on, good God
Baby lookie here
Can't stand your love
Can't stand your love
Can't try a new love
Can't stand your love

I can't stand it
I can't stand it, good God
Can't stand it, alright
I can't stand it, alright

Bass, lookie here
Bass, Tim
Help me out, Tim
Show me how you work
A little bit Tim

Good God, Good God
All right, can't stand it

Wait a minute time, Tim
Let me get this whole thing
Together over here

Can't stand it

Folk Art For Tuesday (and a little more germans)

Verses

Excerpt from Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, 1927 (trans. H.T. Lowe-Porter)--

"This being carried upward into regions where he had never before drawn breath, and where he knew that unusual living conditions prevailed, such as could only be described as sparse or scanty--it began to work upon him, to fill him with a certain concern. Home and regular living lay not only far behind, they lay fathoms deep beneath him, and he continued to mount above them. Poised between them and the unknown, he asked himself how he was going to fare. Perhaps it had been ill-advised of him, born as he was a few feet above sea-level, to come immediately to these great heights, without stopping at least a day or so at some point in between. He wished he were at the end of his journey; for once there he could begin to live as he would anywhere else, and not be reminded of this continual climbing, of the incongruous situation he found himself in. He looked out. The train wound in curves along the narrow pass; he could see the front carriages and the labouring engine vomiting great masses of brown, black, and greenish smoke, that floated away. Water roared in the abysses on the right; on the left, among rocks, dark fir-trees aspired toward a stone-grey sky.The train passed through pitch-black tunnels, and when daylight came again it showed wide chasms, with villages nestled in their depths. Then the pass closed in again; they wound along narrow defiles, with traces of snow in chinks and crannies. There were halts at wretched little shanties of stations; also at more important ones, which the train left in the opposite direction, making one lose the points of the compass. A magnificent succession of vistas opened before the awed eye, of the solemn, phantasmagorical world of towering peaks, into which their route wove and wormed itself: vistas that appeared and disappeared with each new winding of the path. Hans Castorp reflected that they must have got above the zone of shade-trees, also probably of song-birds; whereupon he felt such a sense of the impoverishment of life as gave him a slight attack of giddiness and nausea and made him put his hand over his eyes for a few seconds. It passed. He perceived that they had stopped climbing. The top of the col was reached; the train rolled smoothly along the level valley floor."

OFF WITH THEIR SHARK EYES!

I'm actually pretty inspired by Kristin Cavallari's new promo for The Hills. I've loved this Yeah Yeah Yeah's songs since the album dropped, and while this "bitch" never quite left, I like to think I'm getting a new groove with my birthday approaching. And juxtaposed with Olivia Palermo and her overly complex shoe choices both trying to be badass, it's kind of gorgeous in its second viewing...

"It turned out to be horse de-wormer, but we still tripped for 14 hours"

Here We Go Again

Love in this Club

George Ashley Wilkes—what a mighty, mighty good man. These rough and dark days cause me to dream about long, sunny, boozy days at Twelve Oaks (or somewhere like it).

Three Cheers for Paris H.

Fair Padua

Fay-shun has resurfaced en Italia!

Luv

Lately, when it comes to pop, I've been pretty open (hello Miley). I'm just not so consumed with style or ethics in the face of a good/fun song. I am leery of this fella's overcooked costumes, but the tune is a total charmer. It's been stuck in my head all day (almost made me skip down First Avenue). That line about sunscreen is a cube of sugar!

We've preached an odd mixture of temperance and total embrace of 90's redux at A&P (see directly below for another of the trillion mentions of the stuff). It's just an odd experience, seeing the very items that I bought at Contempo Casuals on the backs of high school girls who've now picked them up at thrift shops. But, of course, at the top of this decade, we redid the eighties, despite hardly remembering them (and we looked good)...anyhow, when it comes to musics, I have no fear or trepidation. I am very ready to hear the 90's again, though less grunge, more Garbage or Elastica or 'what have you'-style pop rock, comme ça (oh Yes!)--

Nail Color For the Days of Awe

Essie's "Loophole" (with moderate chipping)












I suppose one could go about this many ways. There are those who, admirably and age-appropriately, live with permanent nail uniforms (be they red or ivory), not to be shifted on account of any old tea-dance, trend, holy day. For the young (or young-at-heart) and changeable, I think a snazzy/garish set of neon or primary digits is a no no--not only because they reek of non-atonement, but also because summer is ovahh.

Yom Kippur is a day of 'decking' with heels and hair-sheen, a girl's luxe but sober autumnal best. I fully intended to get a manicure today, a flat beige or a russet or a forest green (the colors I'll be opting for all season). But as lunch left me with less and less cash, I found last week's 90's redux-obvious (yet handsome) silver paintjob, about 30% chipped away, looked just right--ragged, full of yesterday's intentions. And the name of the varnish is just too too hilariously correct for the occasion!

Sex and Scotland

Henry Fuseli
Macbeth and The Witches
1793-4

Whatta Schmata

I really think she looks tremendous.

Verses

A chart of symbols found in the 'Tarocchi of Mantegna'--

Iliaco       Sun disc
Chronico     Ouroboros Dragon
Cosmico      Heavenly Globe
Temperance   Two vases                 Dog, Cat, weasel,
                                      or stoat/ermine
Prudence     Mirror                    Dragon
Strength     Sceptre                   Lion
Justice      Sword and scales          Crane
Charity      Wallet, offering charity  Pelican
Hope         in attitude of prayer     phoenix
Faith        Chalice and Host          Dog

Luna           Moon disc
Mercury        Flute Caduceus with two
           intertwined dragons     Cock
Venus          Seashell                Ducks
Sun            Sun disc                Scorpion Crabs
Mars           Sword                   Dogs (hunting)
Jupiter        Arrow (thunderbolt)     Eagle
Saturn         Scythe                  Ouroboros
Eighth Sphere  Starry Disc
Prime Mover    Empty Sphere
First Cause    Cosmos

Waxing Moon

I'm mad suspicious of MacKenzie Phillips's claims of an affair with her Pops, and even more suspicious of her story that brilliant modelizer, Mick Jagger, wanted to boff her since she was ten. Clearly I'm having a rough week, and I'm being cruel but...why won't anyone talk about how ridiculously unattractive she was(is)?! She's an actress and a junkie and not so pretty, methinks she has plenty reason to lie about this stuff for attention/benjamins. Her poor siblings. Or poor her? Whatever.

Hotness for Thursday

Gorgeous Google search.

Wednesday is About Protest Songs

Have you seen the video of Hiram Mon. dragging his girlfriend through their lobby? He best get at least 2 years, because he's a violent scumbag who's trying to topple the New York State government as well as cut-up women who love him, and because that's what Plaxico got. Plaxico had a gun, an illegal gun. I know. I'm clearly effected by how good-looking and young he is, how he's a baller. But isn't shooting yourself in the leg punishment enough? Two years at Rikers for a guy who harmed himself (and who has small children). It's awful. No other developed nation imprisons the high percentage of its population that we do, or at the cost that we do. This seems sad, expensive, dumb.

And that's the end of my kvetching for this week (ha).

When I first spotted one of these print ads I was struck with fear---did Budweiser redesign their packaging??!!! But no. It's some new red ale stuff. Fine. I hate hate this label (it looks like Boston, beneath the E*Trade building or along the Harbor). And if they even think about changing the original lager label...

As The World Turns

Woah! When I praised Jay-Z's recent "Empire State of Mind" (see below) I knew nothing of this----
---his new and pisspoooooooor track that makes use of that odious cover-sample-thing of/from Alphaville's "Forever Young". It's gross. And foolish. And disrespectful. And not even a little bit in keeping with what makes the original so good. Eww.

Welcome to La Nueva, "Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution."

Fuck Fay-shun Week...it's Diplomacy Week!
I suggest you read all of this.
And then look at all of these.
And then, can we talk about it?
xo

p.s. This shit is an ABOMINATION.

...as far as I can tell, this incessant pairing of his name with Ahmadinejad's by the media, is rather crude. Opposition to Israel is not necessarily anti-Semitic (obviously the Iranian leader's Holocaust denial is). Am I wrong?------He's so glamorous.

View of a Demolished Building

The Charles Schwab Mansion, West Manhattan (Riverside Drive and 73rd St.), built 1901, gutted and fashioned into apartments in 1930, wholly demolished and replaced comme ça c.1950.

Snap

I've always admired/feared the way the English grip their celebrities. It's such a very small island with just so maaaannnnyyyy tabloids. If you are famous at one time, even for one thing, you will continue to be covered, regardless of your having any sort of career, for many eons. If you are "of the moment" you will be covered to death. So, if you're among those soignée Harry Potter children (relevant, present, A-list) or if you were once a one-hit wonder or soap (or reality) actor who now has got gouty and unemployed, either way, you will be in magazines and papers, receiving all form of publicity, great and small. It's a shame how ready to out-mode--in general--Americans are, positively exiling all who/anything that lacks "freshness" or "power." But, however charmingly encompassing their coverage, it's also a shame how ruthless English schlock journalists can be, most likely to attack or smear, outright lie-tell. Anyhow...this above lady, Nicola Roberts, is a member of Girls Aloud, the most successful of a spate of U.K. reality television bands from the early aughts (como Danity Kane). They've had something like twenty top ten hits in the U.K., though a glance at the numbers, shows them peaking at #10 and #11 in 2008. They are reaching "the end of a glittery reign" perhaps? I'm out of touch with these dynamics overseas, but I get the distinct impression that Ms. Roberts is entering the "famous as a former famous person" phase of her Brit celebrity story arc. And--mall makeup aside--she has never looked better. There should be more breasts addressed this way in fay-shun, not as overspill, but as form, through sheer fabric, or none at all (como las Minoans). It's stripper by way of Mary Quant by way of Poiret, absolutely charming. And I imagine it's being roundly mocked (that's always a good sign). Here are some more views.

Monday

William Henry Fox Talbot
Breakfast Table
Photogenic drawing
c. 1841