I counted at least a dozen girls in the audience with bangs perfectly frozen in place. Not a stray hair in sight. This phenomenon unsettles me and yet fascinates me.
Hearing Howard Jones’ “Everlasting Love” between band sets is both a joy and a privilege.
Cut Copy compels my body to move energetically even when clothed in leather and a stifling sweater while being crushed by the drunken, sloppy masses in a restricting space reaching infernal temperatures. This must mean they are good.
I love when Cut Copy emulate ELO. More bands should adopt Jeff Lynne and company’s vocal stylings.
Cut Copy’s lead singer Dan Whitford also apes Bernard Sumner without making it painfully obvious.
Cut Copy dedicated a song to Stevie Nicks. Therefore, they rule.
Cut Copy = Good hair, good looks, good and subtle use of unlikely influences (Fleetwood Mac, ELO, etc.), good tunes = Great, great times.
Upon leaving the venue, it was noted that those girls with immaculate bangs astonishingly still managed to keep all hairs in place. It should also be noted that my hair was a damp, flyaway mess. And I didn’t care; I wore my limp, disturbed tresses with pride —an indicator that I’d rather groove than groom.
I have a lot of faith in the Vernster, but, uh, no. I’m not sure what’s worse: the possibility of seeing Cage’s wee-wee or the fact the EVEN Bad Lieutenant IS FIFTEEN YEARS OLD.
I recently viewed Bad Lieutenant for my first time and have yet to share my thoughts here. But let me just use a popular internet catchphrase to express my feelings about this remake: DO. NOT. WANT.
I was one of those Cure weirdos in high school who thought that Robert Smith was the bard of young solitude for using words like “treachery” and “duplicity” as many times as possible within the same song. Under a canopy of glow-n-the-dark stars, I listened to Disintegration and my 9th grade soul floated from the bed merging with Robert’s wild, mopey howls. I was forever changed.
It’s been over a decade since I faithfully scribbled the lyrics to each and every Cure song in my notebook; the task took up many Friday nights of my freshman and sophomore years. While I still hold a special place in my heart for Robert’s lipstick-smeared laments, I’ve put away the B-sides, posters, and other dark and gloomy trinkets of my miserable past while indulging in the occasional listen to The Top or Head on the Door.
And then I listened to their new song. It’s reminiscent of the giddy pop songs off of Wish or even Wild Mood Swings and I am grateful that Bob and company have moved away from those seemingly endless dirges that bogged down their last few efforts. But the lyrics are still stunted and read like the poetry I wrote when I was 16 and listening to, hah, The Cure.
I’d rather remember how I viewed them when I still thought that misery was the heartbreak of a man-child in kohl eyeliner sitting alone in a dark room and writing music for the fragile hearts of teenage girls sitting alone in their dark bedrooms. Now I know that real anguish and heartbreak is a lot less romantic and a lot more lame.
“ We’re the non-judging Breakfast Club.
Blair Waldorf perfectly capturing what I adore about Gossip Girl. It’s John Hughes without the moral conventions and with Ed Westwick doing a naughtier James Spader than, well, James Spader.
Now that I’ve returned from Florida, I can finally say my belated farewell to Dominique. What will the show be without her trannylicious egoism to fuel catfights and catty comments from the panel? We will no longer hear Miss J utter such witty quips as “That’s why it’s called Cover Girl ‘cause it covers up the man in you” or witness Tyra’s guffaws at suburban mall get-ups and soccer mom hair. There’s something to be said for Dominique’s tacky inappropriateness, her stringent inability to adhere to fashion norms, and her startling self-confidence that extends to her third person narrative about her greatest love of all: herself . Not only does it make for prime reality tv viewing, but it also imbued the competition with an awkward realism born of Dominique’s genuine eccentricities.
Now, we are left with two blondes: one flaky, one fake, and an African queen bitch. These are all archetypes that we’ve seen before in past cycles and frankly, their character arcs have grown stale. Dominique infused the show with something altogether new. Sure, we’ve had androgynous divas in the past, but none with Dominique’s geeky laugh or gauche mannerisms. In her mind, she was “Princess Dominique” but in the harsh reality of the panel and audience, she was nothing more than a pauper blessed with perfect bone structure. And yet sometimes, we really believed she was fashion royalty when confronted with that imposing beauty in her photoshoots.
Dominique embodied the ultimate illusion offered by the fashion industry: any beast can become a beauty. This is not to say that she was a homely wretch, but it’s clear that she wasn’t as refined or feminized as the other girls. She was crude, flamboyant, and incredibly draggish. And yet she was incredibly gorgeous. The loss of Dominique ends this cycle’s celebration of awkward beauties in all their fantastic, self-deluded, exaggerated, eyebrow-arched glory:
Last night the girls did their best imitation of Russell Crowe and battled out as gladiators in Rome’s Coliseum bringing new meaning to the word “fierce”. Anya and Whitney were victorious as fashion warriors while other girls struggled to be simultaneously pretty and violent. It was no surprise that Fatima wielded her sword like it was something awkward, cumbersome and foreign; her style has always been more passive-aggressive anyway.
And how about that backstabbing move she pulled on sweet Katarzyna when she dished to the other girls how the Eastern European beauty had no personality and belonged behind a desk somewhere? I just hoped and hoped that Katarzyna would avenge herself in the photoshoot and smile so hard with her eyes that radioactive beams would emanate from them and incinerate Fatima and maybe even Tyra, too! Sadly, her portrayal of an Italian Renaissance diva left something to be desired: mainly, life.
Do”man”ique bowled over the judges with her marvelous photoshoot. Tyra admitted that she expected nothing less than suck from our “undercover brother”, Ms. Dominique prior to her playing photographer (as she does once every cycle) and shooting the girls for her first time in artificial light. Wow, Tyra surely is a Renaissance woman! Anya gave pleasantly awkward poses and Fatima was all Iman if Iman was in a water ballet, which I suppose is good. Whitney couldn’t extricate herself from cheesecake mode and once again found herself in the bottom two with Top Model of the Week Katarzyna.
It was our Juliette Binoche doppelganger that was sent home because she “thought too much” while taking her photos. I guess she was too busy making mathematical calculations, solving the current economic crisis, or pondering the mind/body dichotomy when she should have been exaggerating her poses, figuring out ways to elongate her limbs, and smiling seductively with her orbs. Wow, what a loser.
“ The tension between “actual” memory and our translation of that memory into words is not, despite the public’s perennially fresh outrage, a new problem, nor one that has an easy answer. Every memoir depends on a loose cognitive partnership between notoriously sketchy processes: the subjectivity of memory itself, the spotty and biased power of recall, the translation of images into language. Memory is chaotic, nonsequential, and spotty; marketable narrative is easy, clean, and quick.
New York magazine’s profile of prolific memoirist/liar? Augusten Burroughs. I think it’s important that they addressed the nature of Memory because, funnily enough, its inherent malleability is often forgotten as the media continues to undermine the memoir as a genre.
Lately, I’ve felt a lot dumber than usual. I don’t claim to be particularly brilliant, but usually I can muster enough mental energy to pass for someone with actual thoughts, or rather thoughts that extend into some sort of sphere of respected intelligence. Therefore, I know that my cognitive abilities are seriously malfunctioning when I take immense pleasure in discovering that What Not to Wear will be on for the next four hours on a Sunday afternoon. My usual response is to pump my fist in the air a la lil’ Mac Culkin when he’s home alone and kicking burglar ass. Yeeesss!
I’ve found solace within the snarky company of Clinton and Stacy, hosts of TLC’s makeover program intended to make less-fashionable folk feel incredibly ugly, lazy, and all-around pathetic for not knowing how to wear a wide-leg trouser or a fitted jacket in order to de-emphasize those very, very prominent “problem areas”. Ick, their sartorial rules have been so thoroughly inculcated into my brain.
I don’t even approve of their sense of style, which is corporate-oriented, conservative and based entirely around neutral pieces from overpriced swindlers that operate as high-end boutiques and department stores. I vehemently disagree with every aesthetic decision made on the show and yet the idea of a What Not to Wear marathon makes me giddy and lightheaded. So, then what explains this grotesque fascination?
I wish that, after parsing my strange attachment to this program, I could say it has to do with schadenfreude or my latent anxieties about change or evolving. But the truth is I embrace change but sympathize with the sad sacks on this show who are uncomfortable in their own skin but comfortable in stained sweatpants and shrunken baby-tees. I want to defend them against Clinton and Stacy’s nasty repartee and fashion know-how and salvage all their fashion blunders from the TLC garbage pit of humilation. I want to do this because deep down, or rather on the surface, I am Clinton or Stacy. I’d prefer to be Clinton as he seems slightly more benevolent than his Cruella-esque sidekick.
I might not be a fan of the walking short or consider a “pretty cami” to be the foundation of one’s look, but I do love shopping. I love buying pretty, stylish items. I love combining these items and making outfits. I love color and texture and shoes and accessories. I believe in the possibilities offered by one’s appearance and I think this is at the root at both my self-loathing and my love for this show. I use the show to punish myself for my superficial desires. Instead of buying a shiny new pair of spring heels, I’ll watch Stacy sink her derisive fangs into someone’s modest wardrobe and rip it and its owner to shreds. Instead of lusting after some outrageously priced designer frock, I’ll watch Clinton mock a harried single mother for her footwear choices.
What Not to Wear is self-flaggelation for the fashion-savvy.
Here’s C & S talking about something “important”: Necklines and collars
Oh, Lauren: so awkward, so edgy, so gorgeous, and so very GONE. I thought that she would eventually pull through, drop the Andre the Giant gait, and win this thang! Sadly, she lumbered and nervously ticked her way through the Cover Girl commercial segment. It was like watching Lurch pretend to be Isabella Rosselini.
Almost all the girls were just as horrendous whether they were butchering the Italian language or severely overacting. Only Katarzyna (who resembles Juliette Binoche more and more, does she not?) and Fatima played the part of Italian ingenue at all convincingly. Even though the commercial was hawking some gaudy vino-colored lipstick, I was more in love with the animal print dresses and magenta accessories the girls wore than anything else. They had more personality than their owners. It was like Sophia Loren meets Peg Bundy in haute couture bliss.
When in Rome…you must be fresh, skinny, and blonde. That’s what we’ve all learned based on the models’ meeting with some famous Italian designer. He only had eyes for Anya: beady, lecherous eyes that bleed at the sight of anything over 18 and a size 2. His condescending remarks about Whitney being able to get by with her pretty face were priceless.
Besides the departure of Lauren, this episode took a long gondola ride through Dullsville. The only fierce moment was when Juliette…Katarzyna once again corrected Tyra on the pronounciation of her name. I want to see more of her Eastern European insolence! Oh, and Miss J once again proved that he needs his own show when he said that he still thought Dominique “was a brother”. Seriously, the man is a camp genius.
