Just Duckie

For once I don't have anything snarky to say on the following topic, because it was genuinely exciting. (don't think I've gone soft, though) I was a dresser at the Duckie Brown show in the tents last Friday, and while I've been backstage at the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week before to do press-type things, actually being involved in the production, under the big top, was such a great experience.

And for those of you who've never been inside the circus, know that the portable johns available are probably nicer than your bathroom at home. Not my bathroom at home, though - there are limits to portable luxury.

One of my little dressing stations:


Lovely fellow dressers. We got there at 10:30 and then just kind of stood around lint-rolling for 3 hours. Not sure why they had us show up so early... The dressing room:
I instructed Blue Steel and they said they only knew Magnum:
There was lots of milling, but not much working:
The ponies at the gate:
praying the free gift at the end of the show isn't the pom pom hat:

It wasn't - it was actually these pretty fabulous Duckie Brown for Florsheim wingtip ankle boots. From the looks of things in the dressing room, though, I hope the boys can trade them on the street for Creatine. Or burgers.

As Cool As Peppermint Ice Cream

Mr. T wants you to be somebody, unless your name is Calvin Klein, Bill Blass, or Gloria Vanderbilt. He also wants you to wear clothes, because otherwise you'll get arrested. Very wise.



I know what you're thinking - WHAT the hell is Mr. T, anyway? Is he a nutjob? An alien? Dutch? Allow me (um...Wikipedia, really) to put dispel these nasty rumors:

-Real name is Laurence Tureaud, from Chicago
-Grew up in housing project with 11 siblings
-Was a military policeman
-Became a bouncer, where "His wearing of gold neck chains and other jewelry was the result of customers losing the items, leaving them behind at the bar/night club after a fight, or being removed from the place. A customer would not have to re-enter or even have to see anyone else again if Mr. T wore their jewelry as he stood out front."
-Eventually the chains took up to an hour to put on.
-The mohawk was inspired by a Mandinka warrior in a National Geographic
-The raps in Mr. T's video "Be Somebody...Or Be Somebody's Fool" were written by IceT...including "Treat Your Mother Right"
-In 1995, he was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma.
-In 2005, Mr. T stated that he would never wear his chains again, in response to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (though he's been spotted with a few chains since)
-He breeds horses

Janice and Donatella, together at last!

I was just perusing Jezebel, and an image they posted of Donatella Versace just, like, slapped me in the face with her resemblance to Ron Perlman in the Beauty and the Beast TV show, in the late 80s. Lookit:










They must have the same special fx makeup artist. Further reserach into darling Dona revealed the internet feels she's been separated at birth a few times...

Eh, maybe:

Definitely not:

OH HELL YEAH:

The Baconator (See also: Bacon Explosion, Redneck Sushi, Arterial Motives)

We accidentally threw ourselves a little Super Bowl party last night. "Accidentally" meaning the attendance had a balloon effect, and suddenly there were 40 people trying to share 4 pairs of 3D glasses. No worries, we love our friends, and their friends, and their friends...and I always overmake chili anyway.

The game was really good (I hear, anyway...it was tough to get near the tv), and Springsteen's ballplant was even better, but I have to say the highlight of the entire event was Alison and Mark's attempt at making the recently famed "Bacon Explosion." Is this the first official food meme? They very gamely photographed the process:

First the bacon weave:

Then you squish a bunch of sausage on top of it, plus more bacon crumbles:

The sausage looked tense:

The you roll it on up:

The little bundle of joy:

Mark demonstrates the lid of the incubator:

unsafe practices:

Tada!! She's born:

Now imagine wrapping that thing up and carrying it to another burrough on the back of a motorcycle. It needs a sidecar!

7 Scoops

Scoop 1: Rosie (Lucy Stoner?) was kind enough to share a photo from the Museum of Natural History last week, where she fell upon a fashion shoot amongst the stuffed animals. I appreciate things like this, i.e. the intersection of 17 year-olds in 35K wedding dresses and artist's liberal recreation of paleo-critters, born from the discovery of a thigh bone in Minnesota. Ahh Spring fashion issues.

model museum-goers
Originally uploaded by trixiebedlam

It's kind of pointless to guess what magazine this is for (of course I must anyway: Elle?), but the museum can't come cheap ($15 museum admission, but if you wanna see the butterflies it's $24 more?!), and who's got money to throw around these days? Domino folded yesterday, which is the last place I worked before I became a moderately successful sell-out. Moderately successful meaning I can pay my bills comfortably for the first time...um...ever. I'm going to think of 2008 as the year I learned how to dodge bullets. And moved to Park Slope. And you know what? I'm ok with that. Yuppies live gooood. They buy things like Scoops 2 through 7:






And who doesn't need 6 scoops? I know what you're thinking - the only scoop you really need is for cat litter, right? Well you know what? Stay in Bushwick.

Bunny Bonus

I don't mean to go all cute overload on you, but I came across this, and, like...have you ever? I mean really, HAVE YOU EVER??



I bet he'd be divine with a mustard sauce.

I Stand Ammended

First, a moment of totally rad silence, in observance of another beautiful Freddie Mercury Friday.


...



...

Moving on. Over a slimy green meal at Kenka Wednesday night, Gabe suggested I might have missed the mark on my compendium of the pretty young things of fashion design. Apparently I don't know everything. Weird.

There was a notable lack of male representation, further confirming our suspicions that Gabe doesn't have teh geigh. Check out these total babes:

Abigail Lorick:



Truus and Riet Spijkers of Spijkers and Spijkers:



Lisa Mayock and Sophie Buhai of Vena Cava (the only truly grievous omissions from my original list):




Chrissie Miller of Sophomore:

Redheaded Steppinoutchildren

I can't say what it is exactly, but I love the ethereal glow of a good-looking redhead. Toss it in the "Different is Beautiful" file, along with grey eyes, aquiline noses and high, transparent foreheads (on the ladies, anyway). I dyed my hair red for years, albeit with limited success - it usually faded to a rosy taupe in a couple weeks. Yeah. All the ladies with a Tori Amos phase, holler back.

Fortunately, my advancing years have taught me the two things I was doing wrong:

1) I wasn't born a Finnish sprite(from Hel-looks),



and 2) I wasn't born English dandy candy. (from Face Hunter)

Iceland street fashion

Did you know all Icelandic girls look like fairies? They're all scathingly hot with perfect noses, and dress solely to amuse themselves. There's not enough room in the suitcase to keep up with them if you're just visiting, so it's probably just best to wear your little black outfit every night until it's too beer-stiff to climb into anymore, and leave the fantasy costuming to the professional elves.

Gabe, this is the only street photo I took, and also the point at which I decided that I was going to stop trying, because I'm no photographer, and just soak it alllll in, man.

La Mode Est Agaçante

I'm not going to apologize for being away for so long. I'm just not.

I am going to give you a special treat, however.

A peek into the world of fashion which you did not ask for and I very much doubt will appreciate: the incredible phenomena of the fashion aristocracy trying to out-do and out-irritate each other. Observing it in the wild, as the below video shows, is especially striking - watch how the children loiter in innocence and curiosity, so unknowingly close to the heart of darkness-of-indeterminate-age.

Fear not, you really only need to watch the first 15 seconds:



IN THE LEFT CORNER, we have Diane Pernet, who made her name as a fashion designer in the 80s, as a fashion journalist with Vogue and Elle, and with her fairy popular fashion blog, A Shaded View.

IN THE RIGHT CORNER, weighing in at what must be 400 lbs with that seasonably inappropriate fur, we have Catherine Baba, a widely recognized, though biographically stunted, stylist. Pretty sure she lives in France at the moment, but I would bet dollars to donuts she's American, somewhere deep, deep down. The accent sounds somewhat like a Long Island grandmother extolling the virtues of her French Provincial divan cover.

Who won, here? I think we should have a vote on this...

A big day for sticks everywhere

This isn't JUST an important time in American politics. This week the stick was inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame, joining other childhood favorites such as the bicycle and the...um...cardboard box.



Don't worry matches, your number will be up soon enough.

My Extremely Fierce Friend Deirdre and I Do Iceland Airwaves Blue Lagoon Party

D and I went to the Iceland Airwaves music festival. I could tell you that she's my 24-Hour-Party Partner-In-Crime, but you really just have to look at this face to know you've got a fierce competitor here:



Most of the music-viewing kind of looked and felt like this:


Considering portraits of modestly successful Indie musicians are dull even when they're NOT taken from the back of the venue, I'll spare you those, and give you instead these photos of a rave on the moon.



Every year the Blue Lagoon hosts a dance/hangover party on Saturday - they bus you out from Reykjavik about 45 minutes to this spa facility. It's pretty much just for the tourists, but whatever.



The air was probably in the mid-30s, and the water was bath-warm but not hot. Deirdre says it's the only place you can get pregnant without having intercourse. It doesn't help that the mud at the bottom is this white, slimy silt.

Here she is, pondering immaculate conception:

Everyone was friendly...

...in a weird kind of Burning Man way, if Burning Man was high on arctic circle air and Viking beer instead of idiotic legwear.



DJ Margeir was spinning housey stuff. It was ok - coulda done with maybe a little rock or hip hop, but the only move you could do in the water, really, was to jump up and down. Jay-Z probably would've just lead to confusion.


You had to get out of the water to get beer, which seemed somewhat sadistic of the planners.

By the end you were treading on plastic cups, but I don't want to sound like a hater (as per usual). It was nice and surreal.

Firm Grasp on Foreign Policy Also Not Required

los angeles craigslist > SF valley > adult gigs

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NEED SARAH PALIN LOOKALIKE ASAP FOR ADULT FILM (LA)

---

Reply to: gigs-836109998@craigslist.org ^[?]
Date: 2008-09-10, 8:20PM PDT


Looking for a Sarah Palin lookalike for an adult film to be shot in next 10 days.

Major adult studio.

Please send pix, stats etc. ASAP

Pay: $2000-3000

No anal required







Phew. That is WAYYY better.

Yes, There Were Penis Straws, But Not That Many.

Ok. I realize two in a row is excessive, but bear with me - this is the last time I mention this stuff for a while. I attended a bachelorette party this weekend, which was mostly populated by women who are allergic to the very concept of bachelorette parties:



As you can see, nobody died from Sarcastic Ego Inflamation. In fact, I'd say we handled ourselves admirably, with a high ratio of karaoke/dancing/bull-riding participation.

While I'm loathe to burden this blog with the gritty little details of my daily life, please allow me to make this one exception, because I'm pretty sure if you actually have A VIDEO OF YOURSELF RIDING A MECHANICAL BULL, you really ought to put it on your blog.



Especially if you're this fly doing it.

To Have And To Holding Pattern

Ok, seriously. What IS this?? All the girls around me suddenly have the Matrimonial Fever. It's not Spring and it's not the mid-20th Century, so why are so many of my snarky sisteren suddenly married, engaged, as-good-as-engaged, or at least trying on wedding dresses "just for fun"?!

I say it's either a heretofore undocumented effect of global warming (and we're unconsciously scrambling to git all the gittin' done before we're toaster strudels), or, and this is a bit more frightening, I'm beginning to think maybe 28 is our generation's Event Horizon...that at this point you either make a really big deal about your pairing off (the wedding) or you resign yourself to the serial monogamist perm-circuit, squeezing back into those J Brands year after year until the apple bottom falls out.

If the following gown from Monique Lhuilier's Spring 09 collection looks like a hot wedding dress to you (like it does to me and Deirdre), you may be a latter transitioning to a former...


...and you could probably benefit from a bit of reprogramming.

I want you to meditate on the following images, and when you're done, I want you to go to the bank, withdraw that 10K dress-fund, and do the following:

1. buy a motorcycle
2. kidnap best friend
3. drive to Mexico