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.

"Looks like it's gonna be another one of them hot summers."

Verses

THE CRASS MENAGERIE

PELT-MAD BILLIONAIRE IN YACHTS OF TROUBLE

Which one of you #$%%**s took the last doughnut?

Verses

This week-ish, 3/4 of A&P are moving into a new apartment. And it's been a little hectic, and, if you can believe it, I JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT PAULA ABDUL (FINALLY) ADMITTING TO A PAST (HA) PAINKILLER ADDICTION! In honor of Paula and her fatty morphine patches, a poem:

"HEY PAULA"
Paul & Paula
(1963)

Hey hey Paula, I wanna marry you.
Hey hey Paula, no one else could ever do.
I've been waiting so long for school to be through,
Paula, I can wait no more for you,
my love, my love.

Hey Paul, I've been waiting for you.
Hey hey Paul, I wanna marry you too.
If you love me true, if you love me still,
our love will always be real,
my love, my love.

True love means planning our life for two,
being together the whole day through.
True love means waiting and hoping that soon
wishes we made, will come true,
my love, my love.

Friends, I'll be wearing some version of this ensemble everyday this summer.

Excuse My Beauty

I Feel Better?

Bloomberg spent 74 million on his first campaign, 77 on his second. He intends to spend 80-100 on this next push. What a waste. What an idiot. What a billionaire! But really, these figures have somehow helped me to appreciate not being a megalomaniacal turtle-man with too much money (There is such a thing as too much, right? He just seems to have too damn much!). Spending $250,000,000 to get people to vote for you smacks of student council or greek council, or desperation or something.

Founding Fathers

Stephanie Lynn Nicks: The original blonde-new age-hippie-goth. She allows me to believe that all things are possible, and that I can be whoever I want to be; depsite my fair hair and fuzzy mind.

On Liberty (II)

Above is an image of Ellsworth Kelly's ultra-elegant solution to the problem of "developing" the WTC site. Papa Able has kept the clipping in his office since 2003, and I find I'm moved each time I see it. There will simply never be any buildings better-looking than the originals, perfect twin icons of a certain 60s/70s sensibility long gone (leave the new sorts to Shanghai and the Emirates). And, honestly, any effort to fill them up with offices, theaters, malls (?) would be a bit gross. However, an entirely spare, green, open field, a "collage" conceived by one of our greatest painters would be something rather holy, a clear reminder of the loss, the scale, as well as a point of renewal, pleasure, oxygen in the midst of grey Lower Manhattan.

Raggedy Ants

I discerned a characteristic of Portland that would enchant me over the course of a week, as I explored restaurants and bars, artisanal cafes and mushrooming food carts, funky neighborhoods and weird little museums. Amid economic catastrophe — Oregon has the country’s second-highest unemployment rate — there was a general indifference to wealth. In its place was a dedication to the things that really matter: hearty food and drink, cultural pursuits both high and low, days in the outdoors and evenings out with friends. It’s the good life, and in Portland it still comes cheap.

This dumb speech is nestled somewheres in the first paragraphs of Matt Gross: Frugal Traveller's Times ditty on "Frugal Portland." And G-d but isn't that picture the most clunky/fugly/irritating thing you've seen in days?! And G-d but isn't Matt Gross the biggest Pollyanna alive?! You see, this "good life" stuff throws me off. I know Portland is physically beautiful and rents are low, which is cool, but that unemployment rate is no joke. And, though I've never been, alls I know about it (from friends, acquaintances, and Elliot Smith) is junkies and strippers and dead ends (for reals). And I'm pretty certain that they're not so much indifferent to wealth, as petulant at wealth, each with a Middle West blue-collar childhood-sized chip on their shoulders. People who live this sort of self-consciously cobbled together, socialist-ish existence do so in clear opposition to the bourgeois and slick, ever-aware of those they wish to be unlike. Also, I really just don't trust this guy to tell me what looks and feels and tastes good. Done.

Irregular Verbs

I got sucked into Vice-land again on Friday, perusing the Dos/Don'ts from last summer/fall, the photographs of folks doing what I wasn't (Dos: night-milling around Willbur' and Lower Manhattan in "outfits"/Don'ts: looking bad). But this parenthetical description of what Don'ts do is not wholly accurate; sometimes (lotstimes), these boys get it way wrong. Sometimes, they put this Mami in "WHO CARES?" pants on the bad list with some glib, sizist bullshit non-funny epitaph, when really she's a subversive genius, making the sweatpant-with-text-on-ass avant and existential--WHO KNEW? And I'm not going to get into why the aging heputzes at Vice make bad choices, because duh and I've tried to before (with ishy success). I just want to talk about pants-Mami and our 24th birthdays and how much I don't want to talk about heputzes (also see: dandelion dipshits and boxcar children) anymore. But of course I will (talk about them, I mean). I plan to in my next post even. I'll just try not to pose questions in a ho-hum-I-feel-old sort of way--because oh-my, we, at 24, certainly are not--or in a I-hate-my-ex-boys sort of way--because, word, I do (with good reason), but I'm tired of talking about those old shoes (and so are you).

I felt too old to attend the "illegal party" that Petrova did on Saturday (I've been on the outs with uppers since '06). And I've been a tricky post-birthday case, feeling sorry for myself about not being a kid anymore and getting crushes on boys who look like boys I got crushes on in 8th grade and acting indignant when they hook up with 18-year-olds instead of me. But it's getting warm and I'm feeling cheerier and I just want to celebrate how much easier my life is now that I don't really CARE about what others think as much as I used to, as much as aforementioned 18-year-olds must still. At A&P, we are young enough to expertly navigate contemporary pop culture, but old enough to have something to say about what came before. And we don't have kids yet. So, there's that. And if we wanted to do something, like write a book about the early aughts or open a bar, we could, and maybe be taken seriously. And I can't help but think (forgive Bradshawism) about the year when Oprah was always gloating about turning fifty and being wise and knowing thyself. Maybe what I miss most about my yout' (15-23) is the occasional, theatrical rush of mis-identity (and eating whatever I wanted). But if I'm being honest, that mis-identity rush is more like losing your lunch and feeling like a fraud than having a nice time. Knowing what I like to wear and drink and think is a damn blessing.

Bless.

Happy Mother's Day! (III)

We'd be doing a disservice to ourselves if we ignored ABBA today. So, Happy Mother's day, Mama Able, Mama Petrova, Mama Pillow, and Mama Alpha! We love you very much; please send money.