Last night Conan O’Brien had Santogold on as the musical guest and she was FANTASTIC. Santi White was amazing-- flanked by Devoesque, back-up divas in Che-colored, silken, new regime military numbers. It was TOO MUCH-- we were all working to keep up with Santogold and her percussive singing style, that musical segment almost made the sun rise, the day begin, I almost couldn’t get to sleep.
I love Santogold’s style-- skinny pants, glitter, ribbed tank tops, puffy satin jackets, a leopard cat suit-- Santi looks like the big sister I never had, the one who left home before I could drive, has an apartment in Amsterdam, and says she’ll come back for me, when I’m old enough.
Santi’s vocals on Les Artistes, a single on the new Santogold album (do people still say album? Well, I do. . .) is slightly reminiscent of Dale Bozzio from Missing Persons (who was also my big sister) but Santogold’s mix of electronic buzzing, fuzz-buster feedback, trance loops, dub, Afro-cuban rhythms, and God only knows what else is in a space-time-continuum all its own.
Listen to Santogold while dressed in clothes from Striking Kittens, straight outta Brisbane, Queensland. Lycra, cat suits, plunging neck lines, purple tiger print hotpants-- these gals ain't messin' around. Striking Kittens is a new streetwear fashion label started by Jade and Alicia two fashion design grads with a knack for hot 80s wear that's FRESH. Got a big butt like mine? Well PLUS is not a four-letter word to Striking Kittens-- send them your dimensions-- everything is handmade by the designers-- they don't quit 'til it fits. Electro Candy, their first collection is perfect for stepping out like the hot ladytron that you are.
Scoot on over to Victoria for a pair of skinny pants from Thrashin' Threads.These metallic pants will complete your retro look-- top it with your favorite vintage tee, and you're Sterling, baby.
Oh my God-- as I write this, KCRW is working me hard with a Santogold remix. Damn-- Santogold is everywhere!
Before I get distracted, I have to mention another etsy store that got me going-- a great etsy shop based in Toronto: Pretty Raccoon Clothing
I'm loving the gold paint on these lovely tops. Le Tour Eiffel, le chandelier, le chevreuil, and many other gorgeous subjects are depicted on soft fabrics, with a draping cascade that looks so rich. Pretty Raccoon Clothing-- chic, a little aloof and sophisticated, surreal, and beautifully designed.
I can't end this post without sharing with you a secret part of my heart that I like to call. . . Spandau Ballet. . .
This is the song I will be listening to as I speed across continents in this year's Gumball 3000 race, in my bio-diesel Aston Martin. Now all I need is an Aston Martin. . . and £60,000 to enter. Hey Max-- how about it? Put an indie-crafter in the race! I will crochet AND felt an electronringfor all of the drivers and their crew before the end of the 3000 mile journey. How's THAT for a challenge. . .
Huh, okay . . . I take that look as a no. All right-- see you in 2012. But I totally intend on winning The Spirit of the Gumball Award.
I was leaving a local live music thing the other night with friends when one of my friends in the car said, “who’s that guy?” She was talking about a stencil on a stop sign. I live in a very arty town, pregnant with artists, making portraits, kinetic sculptures, creative people practically leaving art on the side of the road, in the street, obstructing normal traffic flow. Ceci n'est pas une stop sign, it’s ART. Even so, we were all sober enough to be collectively curious, so we flipped a bitch and doubled back to take a look.
“Marcel Duchamp,” I said, without thinking, like it was my own name. “That’s Marcel Duchamp.” On the stop sign, Duchamp’s disembodied head was in the center of one of his rotoreliefs, his cheeks elongated and sunken, more Voldemort than Duchamp, but there he was, only suggesting that we stop. “You may stop, or you may collide, your choice.” I was a little surprised that the surrealist was sitting cross-legged, on the edge of my tongue like that, and even more surprised that the girl with the unassuming English degree, who’d just swallowed two shots of Jameson (neat) could produce an art history factoid like a retired professor, sans peep. I babbled about the surrealists, Duchamp’s Ready-mades, WWI and Kurt Schwitters on the 4-minute ride home. Thank God for them it was a short journey.
Got me thinking about learning French, tho. The thought is IRRITATING, isn’t it, but somehow. . . inevitable. If I could speak French, I could say ever so eloquently. . . well, I could say a lot of things, eloquently, things that in English, sound like a roaring piss. This is as close to French as I can get right now.
Oohh la-la. I love à la mode, and there’s plenty to love: bright and handy bags, light switch covers that make getting turned on and off a lot of fun, and pendants that say it all. à la mode is sophisticated, without taking itself too seriously, which I love-- the image embedded, resin pendants especially. "I'm not listening," "Oh Please,"and "No Whining," on sterling silver chains are defiant and fun, good-natured and stingy.
I can imagine President Sarkozy's new bride, Carla Bruni, wearing an à la mode pendant while meeting the current US President and his wife. "Oh Please" seems right for the occasion. C'est Bon!
YES-- clothes. . .etherealWEAR. I'm getting to it. But I have to tell you something. Stay with me. . .
I go to bed @11pm
2am I wake up to the noise upstairs: voices, stomping, music, movie, some form of merriment. Actually, it sounded like Tomb Raider 2, if it were also a raucous comedy.
4am--ish-- After finding something familiar and slightly ambient to loop (Roxy Music’s Avalon) I finally fall asleep.
5:17am I wake up to the sound of my upstairs neighbor MOVING FURNITURE or bowling with it, in her bedroom, which is right above mine.
5:17am I go upstairs to tell her to please stop doing that. 5:34am I am furiously writing while she pretends to be asleep.
5:37am It took me 3 minutes to write that sentence because I am BLIND with fury. This is the 3rd or 4th time this week she has kept me awake, or got me get up, I can't remember. 8am (FUTURE TIME)-- I will be staggering around trying to pull the shade of the night back down, while my neighbor sleeps. She will seem chipper and rested at noon. I will look OLDER and pissed but, and I will pretend to be normal. I am not feeling normal.
It's just not fair to live like the mother of a new born without the baby. And in fact, I was having a delightful tryst with a shirtless man named Konrad-- yes he was Russian WHEN MY NEIGHBOR DRAGS ME FROM DREAMLAND, AGAIN.
I hear birds chirping and the sun literally standing up, peering over the brick wall, which normally thrills me, but I feel like a werewolf who can't change back into a girl. . .
5:59 am
I go outside to garden to work, like an f-ing farmer. I move stones twice the size of me, I'm drenched in New England fog, plop a piece of sod on the end of a bamboo pole that looks like a severed head-- spoils of war. I dig, cut, slap, and beat the earth until it starts to rain. So, now I’m gardening in the rain. Then a flash of lightning. Marya 0 Mother Nature 1. 6:40 I’m so delirious. You know what I can’t get out of my head? My ridiculous theory that Albrecht Durer and Rick James share the same soul. Sometimes I wake up with this thought. Don’t ask me to produce the paperwork to support my claim-- I can’t. It’s just a feeling.
I mean, how much trouble can a 15th Century man have in Nuremberg? Look at those amazingly violently manic etchings he made-- come on, that man was in need of some F-You-Fun. Wouldn’t you be wicked pissed if at the age of 23, you returned from a too short grand tour only to find that you’ve been promised to the daughter of the local brass maker? BRASS? The Durers were goldsmiths and door makers. Marry the Brass girl? Well, he had to-- couldn’t start his own atelier unless his was a married man. It seems the marriage was loveless and childless, the evidence of the former being the portraits of his wife who appears more frigid than a winter frost. If I were Albrecht, I would definitely start making woodcuts of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, hoping to join their bloodless crew, as soon as possible.
Check out that coat with the fur collar. That’s pretty sexy. I swear he’s wearing an American Apparel T-shirt under there. His face, relaxed and boneless, possibly drunk, a layer of passion buried under misery, asymmetrical eyes devouring you across the aeons of time, throwing his, “I’m great with my hands,” gang sign, or is this the split fingers of some Nuremberg Guild of bad boys? Is that a jheri curl? Oh Lord, I do think so.
But honestly, I have had a hot/cold crush on Albrecht since I was in high school. If I had the chance to meet him, when he was a young man, galavanting around The Netherlands, I would ride my bike (time travel makes bike riding possible) all over town, looking for him. I know exactly what I would be wearing.
I am so smitten with the organic powers of Hierapparel-- check out the etsy store. Based in Philadelphia, Hierapparel’s, art pieces, quite frankly, seem to come with history, as if each item lived with an ancient, magical human, having been preserved just for you-- the rightful descendant to carry on the line. And yet, these clothes don’t just exist on a higher plane-- they aren’t costumes-- worn by extras in an off-off broadway, tribal version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. No. But these tunics, dresses and tribal adornments do seem to encourage the wearer to be ethereal, with emphasis on being REAL, earthy, and very much alive. Hierapparel uses felt, linen, bamboo, leather, canvas, and many other natural fibers to create one-of-a-kind clothing, constructed solidly, but pushing the boundaries of the enveloped body. Being encased in Hierapparel is probably the closest you’ll get to the ease, vulnerability and comfort of being naked. . . while wearing in clothes.
This is what I’m wearing after Albrecht marches up steep hill, breathless, and sees me working in the garden, like a crazy woman, at dawn. He grabs my. . . wait. . .maybe Albrecht likes humans of the male persuasion. . . I hadn’t thought of that. But, I’m so pretty like this, dirty, and beautifully dressed, your cotton-frocked Venus. . .
Some kind of blogger I am-- no posts for nearly a month-- that’s like founding a goldrush town in the Wild West in the 1880s, and then instantly turning it into a ghost town, the wooden doors to the saloon hanging by juicy, loose hinges. But, I have an excuse. I do! I slipped and fell. (Make a sad face now). Yes, yes, it was painful, I could barely see, swept away in the current. See, I was standing on the bank of a river when I put all of my weight on a very slippery rock and fell right in. Oh wait, no, I was standing on a ladder, on that “this is not a step” step, while building an ancient wall, when I leaned forward and(bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner- ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!)
Yes, I slipped and fell into Finnegans Wake.
What’s that? What possessed me to want to read Finnegans Wake? Well, I was trying to summarize the book, which I can honestly say is the literary equivalent to a suicide mission. Something in me has definitely died, only to be reborn, an alien stranger. I have heart palps, I eat strange food, I periodically stumble through my tiny kitchen shaking my EMPTY stainless steel flasks (yes, I have two-- one that is the standard sized, and the other, a small, 1oz. vessel fitted with a keychain loop) crying out, why . . . WHY??
As fate would have it, I found a pristine, old copy of A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, written in 1945. It was just sitting on a shelf at a moldy, used bookstore. Needless to say, the key doesn’t quite fit.Joseph Campbell is involved. . . the "key" is just as maze-like as the Wake. I go back to the store to complain to the management when James Joyce himself comes strolling out of the bathroom.
James: Is there a problem?
Me: Yes, the book doesn’t work. I need a key for the friggin’ key. James: Would you like to borrow my spectacles?
Me: James, you’re blind.
James: So are you, my dear, so are you. . .
He tipped his hat to me and walked back into the toilet.
(Elements of this encounter are true.)
James Joyce did not write Finnegans Wake as much as he gave birth to a sentient being made of text. The novel is a chimera that shifts and changes in meaning, EVERY TIME you look at the book. The cover is the lid to Pandora’s Box. Are you willing to accept an unmoored journey, adrift on a rocky and unrelenting sea of human history, from fall, to resurrection, and rebirth with the emerging and transfiguring “main character” the timeless Everyman, Finnegan. ARE YOU??
If you’re like me, and you're feeling a little weary of the dark, and books that bite, you might want to grab a nightmare journal from Spiderbite. This particular journal’s name is Winston. SEE what I mean about sentient? I love Spiderbite’s journals: they are scary, fuzzy and strangely comforting and FIERCE. These Nightmare Snatchers™ are grizzly protectors of your secret truths. Scribble your fears, your gripes and your bizarre dreams on Winston’s tea-stained pages. Need a bodyguard for your words? Winston is your man.
SIX AND ELM Lovers. . . Lovers write letters. . . They’d better. Can’t just leave your lover’s letters on the kitchen table now can you?
Tuck your treasures in lovely wooden boxes burnished by the Toronto-based by Six and Elm. The details on these boxes are deeply gorgeous, and flawless as Halle Berry's complexion. Want a custom piece created just for you? Six and Elm is happy to oblige. Speaking of love. . .
I slipped on another rock and found the box set of Black Books-- a BBC show co-created by Irish Comedian, Dylan Moran. Moran plays Bernard Black, a miserable bookshop owner in London who's perpetually, hilariously pissed AND pissed-off and so not interesed in selling books. He is buttressed by his tiny circle of friends, (I mean, the only two people in the world who will tolerate him) Manny (Bill Bailey) and Fran (Tamsin Greig).
There’s slapstick, hair-brain schemes, drunken stupors and surrealism-- what more could you want in an entertainment experience?
How did I not know about this show? HOW?! I love Black Books, I feel like I know these crazy people, I LIVE in that bookshop, tomes piled to teetering heights, bread with jam stuck to the ceiling. The show last aired in 2004. Better late than never, I guess. Black Books would have been a hard sell for US television studio execs (excluding some cable shows) you can’t be drunk, depressed, mad and grumpy, unless you f-ing murder someone, hence all of the spin-offs of CSI and Law & Order, in perpetuity.
I’ll take Bernard Black miserable, irritated and hating it, any day of the week. That’s more authentic to me than all the fake hellos and how are you goods, we are socially obliged to say in real life. Makes me feel better about not suppressing my own not-so-sunny outlook that is more than occasional. Happy drugs from a doctor? Oh, that’s okay-- I’ll just keep drinking my drugs in the water from the tap. Thanks.
Eliot "Hot Mess" Spitzer was voted by Time Magazine in 2005 as one of the 100 people to shape our lives. Maybe they should have voted him as one of 100 people to lick our thighs. After hearing/reading about Spitzer the Spritzer every hour on the hour, I feel like I've been sleeping with him, too.
I have to say-- a little bit of scandal is pretty healthy in politics, I think. Keeps things spicy. I mean, there's always a closet with a skeleton in it. My question is who is #8? Who's #10? Are you thinking what I'm thinking?? Yeah, I have a feeling you know just the "john" I'm thinking of who also has a well-worn name. There-- I think I've come to the edge of slander. Don't make me spell it out, but the name I'm thinking of starts with the letter B. . .
Quite honestly, I think all men cheat. Maybe not with women (or men) but there's always something they secretly want as much if not more than you. Like crisp bag of Funyuns. . .
Like never having to say I'm sorry. Like gadgets. Like some video game. Like an interactive version of the epic film, 300 complete with leather codpiece. . . or something.
For a friend of mine, whom I will call . . . binary code 10010101 . . . his "mistress" is a certain comic book series. More like an addiction. Every week he visits his pusher-man in a seedy strip mall on the outskirts of town. His pupils dilate, he's giddy as a school boy, smoothing out each page of the graphic tale as if he's caressing perfectly shaved human flesh. Don't tell him I said that.
Speaking of flesh, I found something on etsy that I find arresting, tasteful, intriguing, and a little dirty. I include it here, as body art, as exquisite, photographic intimacy, freeing the female form, enacting her own desires. Check out Belles Lettres. We know that some people just like to watch, voyeurs craving what they can't have. Then I dare you to purchase 365 days of portraits from Belles Lettres. . . for one year, the images are for your eyes only. There are lots of other mod, hip, sassy, things to buy in this store, collages of modern life, quaffed playboys, pouting fashion models from the 50s as nesting dolls, laminated flip books for your pleasure, but the 365 days photographic project is exciting. NO-- the 365 days aren't a bunch of nekkid pictures-- some, maybe. . . it's about mystery, it's about curiosity, and it's out of your control, which absolutely delights me. . . This is a project/product I think Anaïs Nin would be super proud of.
Another etsy store caught my eye:
Grey Goat boasts a panty style to fit all bottoms and all budgets. All handmade, in sumptuous satin, Grey Goat panties are flirty-- I can easily imagine my ass bouncing around in those cute booty wraps, and I'm not really an underwear kinda girl. I mean, I like somewhat pedestrian underwear, I'm more into cotton comfort, underwear to run from zombies in, unless I'm in a hot, sexy zombie film. But . . . hmmm. . .I feel a sensual awakening coming on. . . I like the idea of Grey Goat's timeless, stylish, custom made knickers. How much fun would it be for your special someone to find a pair of these panties hiding under your skirt. Or do what I plan to do when I get mine-- stare at my big, pretty ass in the mirror, and do a little dancin'.
. . .
Anyway. . . Spitzer. I know, as a woman and a feminist, I should be more upset, right? I should be PISSED. Livid, and the only justice is rough justice. On your knees, foul creature! Hmmm. . . WHY can't we be more like the French? Meeting a mistress/call girl/gigolo is not le scandal. It's what rich and powerful men (and women) do . . . on Tuesdays. . .
I guess I'm a little desensitized. A) Because I feel like upholding some pristine image of our puritan past as if it were our raison d'etre has made us complete and utter hypocrites-- we break moral, spiritual and Constitutional laws all the time. Go ahead, call me a card-carrying member of the Sisters of Hester Prine. What happens within the bounds of the Spitzer marriage is really none of our business, and if his ho (and I write this with all due respect)had not crossed state lines to service her client (somewhere in there a felony lies) ye old Spitz would still be tripping the light fantastic in a rented bed as Mr. #9. B) Because I started watching The Secret Diary of a Call Girl-- a BBC program featuring British actor Billie Piper, (teen pop-star turned faithful assistant to Dr. Who) as Hannah a.k.a. Belle-- a high-priced ho, living and working in London. Swinging London, indeed.
(Hannah and best mate Ben in Secret Diary . . .)
The Secret Diary of a Call Girl (I like "call girl" better than prostitute) is based on a collection of blogs written by Belle du Jour, a real London call girl. A brilliant team of writer/producers compiled the loose tales into a great story . . . about some tail. Hannah, the main character is a throw-back to the ancient courtesans: educated, lovely and talented. And, if you look under that tight skirt of hers (pay first) you'll find the girl next door who's just great at her job. When she's not working hard for the money, she's hanging out with her best mate, Ben, played by actor Iddo Goldberg, who is really almost too hot to live. DAMN!
I have to say, the show not only turns me on-- it has enlightened me-- I mean, I never really thought much of men who pay to play. But, after breathlessly watching Secret Diary. . . I realize there a lots of reasons why men (and women) pay for sex. Sometimes it's sex, sometimes it's about living out some fantasy without shame, sometimes it's freedom from having to talk about who's picking up James from school tomorrow. Who knows why Eliot Hot Mess Spitzer strayed. Maybe he was always that kind of man.
So, what do we do now? Go on a witch-hunt, further diverting the Nation's attention from the race for the presidency, and the inevitable recession and the on-going bloody war? What about the people of Tibet pushing back against Chinese rule? Exactly who in the hell do I need to blow to find out more about THAT story, lost in the deep, daily annals of our scandal-hungry media outlets?
I'm not sure what got into me the other night, but I decided I needed to wear one of my vintage ties to my new temp job (they already think I'm a bit of a weirdo, so why not). I work in a law office as an office assistant, floater, (the more popular name for the position, however gross it may sound) a Girl Friday (the name I prefer, but of course no one calls me this). Since few people call me by my name anyway, why not play with gender, identity, and fashion in one grand swoop?!! I thought I'd get a few nods-- a few "well dones" for tying one on. But. . .
It was like I had a third boob tucked neatly under my neck. Seriously. Come on-- a woman in a tie is not revolutionary-- Queen/King Hatshepsut was a hep cat-- I think she wore her tie way back in the ancient day. . . to compliment her beard. What about the tie worn by every student at Hogwarts? I just wanted to feel what is was like to hit the financial district of town in my pinstripe shirt and smart tie-- to make an adjustment when things got hot under the collar. I wanted to tie one on.
But I had to learn to tie a tie first. I tried hunting down a few sites but let me tell you, unless you remember studying Macramé in an after school program, or you happen to have spent some time on the sea, making knots and such, tying a tie is ever so foreign. It's no wonder that clip-ons were born. . .
No clip ons for me. No easy, cheap-ass knots. I mean I could have stopped at the average fold'em and hold'em it's a tie, what do you want? sort of thing. But, after finding out that when not sporting a bow tie, 007 prefers a Windsor knot, and I had to have it. It's a wider, square finish with the knot underneath-- perfect for wrangling a wide collar shirt. Okay, I'm not going to lie-- I was not ready for the full Windsor, named after Edward VII, the Duke of Windsor's grandpa (you know, the Ed.3 who abdicated the thrown for love). When folded correctly, the Windsor comes with a cute, elongated "dimple," which is really quite sexy, I must say.
Look at the rebuked Duke's fat, fat tie. . . okay, so I tried to learn to tie a tie using graphic images:
I pretty much fried my internal mother board, trying to follow graphic instructions. I decided to try a different route-- I wanted to follow along. I wanted a man to teach me. Is that so wrong? I just kind of thought that, having a man teach you how to tie an tie, even in the virtual world, is, to quote Paris Hilton. . . hot. So, I went straight to You Tube.
After wading through a few somewhat creepy dudes, tying their ties in not so clean, well-lighted places, I opted to study under the tutelage of an older gentleman with a lovely Scottish accent. I figured of all people, this man would have a Windsor knot down pat. And he did. But it took more than 7 minutes to make his knot. Meanwhile, I meandered, got lost, started to day dream about Robert Louis Stevenson, my great lost love, and sweet Jesus-- the stunning Mr. McAvoy. By the time the teacher was done with the lesson, it was me who found herself in a knot. HUZZAH! Check out these Windsors. . . and the resemblance. . .
Anyway. . . I found a coupla clever frat boys with their clever music, and their clever, stop-motion animation. But in the end their knots were conventional-- tied before you could say Beau Brummel.
I'd almost given up on my dandy-girl look when I found this:
Leave it to a lady to explain the technique, and in 1:17. I learned the half Windsor with her voice and male hands, tying the tie. I got it on the first try. Without looking at my own hands, I watched his-- it was kind of like crocheting without the needle.
Every woman should know how to tie a tie, whether you have a male sig/other or a son, or a lady friend. It's kind of a fun way of connecting with your "manly" side. Not to mention that a well-done knot could get you some. . . interesting attention. Depending on your preference. Forget those who respond with shock and confusion at your attire. I talked to THREE men in my tie who were intrigued by my knot. If she can tie an intricate knot,what else can she do?
This crazy, yall-- I should have been in bed about three hours ago. BUT FIRST, before the fairies take me, I wanted to show you my new rings! I'm calling them electronrings mound: aerial views. They are inspired by the ancient people of the world who built/build mounds as part of their ritual lives.
These rings are in "neutral" colors. I do have an up-coming rant about people wearing black all the time, but, I still wanted to make some rings that were more in a "natural" state, so here they are.
They're asymmetrical, and seem to have a mind of their own. So does my body-- and it wants SLEEP. . .ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz. . .
