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In Joshua Tree I Saw Lots of Meteors and Learned That Mick Jagger Is Good

August 15, 2013, 1:55 pm
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BY LIZ

On Sunday my friends and I went to Joshua Tree to see the Perseid Meteor Shower. We stayed at Hicksville, which is a trailer park in a secret location in the middle of nowhere. I'd never been to Joshua Tree before; the last time I'd been out to the desert at all was seven years ago, the time I went nightswimming with the people who were family with Paul McCartney. Hicksville was rad and there's a teepee and a Cramps-themed trailer and a place to shoot BB guns, and on Monday/Tuesday we almost had the whole place to ourselves. Here's a pic of some of the trailers and our pool and the big beautiful terrifying desert:


Maybe my favorite thing about Hicksville was the jukebox, which was free and had amazing music, like the first two Big Star records and a lot of Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin and Beatles, and the Go-Gos and X and the Replacements and Wanda Jackson and Serge Gainsbourg and everything. It had Megan Draper singing "Zou Bisou Bisou"! And Skating Polly! Here's a picture of me picking out jukebox songs:


I was really into picking out songs for breakfast. On Monday we had breakfast quesadillas cooked in a skillet on the grill, and mimosas on ice and strawberries and chocolate, and the first thing I played was "Hey Good Lookin'" by Hank Williams, which is a perfect song for eating eggs and drinking champagne from a plastic cup at a picnic table in a trailer park in the middle of the desert in August when it's a gabillion degrees out. I would really love a job as a desert breakfast DJ, if you know of anything like that. And if you've never gone swimming at dusk to "Coming Down Again" by the Rolling Stones, then you should absolutely do that as soon as possible.


Our trailer was called "The Sweet," it was supposed to be like a van that teenagers would do drugs and make out in circa 1976 or something. The decor was very "stoner Greg Brady." There were lots of eight tracks stashed on one of the shelves, and the ceiling was mirrored plastic:


Hicksville also had some killer vending machines - they sold beer and Dunkin Donuts coffee and moon pies and Tab. On Monday morning/afternoon/whatever I had a chill time drinking Tab and painting my nails coral-with-gold-sparkles and reading fucking Helter Skelter which I can't ever put down despite its leaving me in constant terror:




On Sunday night we had dinner at Pappy & Harriet's, which is a honky tonk/barbecue place in Pioneertown. I loved Pappy & Harriet's so much, I couldn't even waste any time feeling sorry for myself that it's inconveniently located 127.95 miles from my house. It opened in 1972 and it indulged my I'd-rather-be-living-in-1972 brattiness in the warmest, cutest way and there were bats flying around the parking lot. All through dinner there was a beautiful band playing - the singer wore black velvet bellbottoms and had a cool Joni Mitchell-y face that was really pacifying to gaze upon. They covered lots of Band songs and also "Sweet Virginia," which inspired me to reclaim "Sweet Virginia" as my favorite Rolling Stones song forever.


For dinner I had beer and chicken and rice. It was an overwhelmingly huge piece of chicken and at some point I just got sick of eating it and two of my dude friends swooped in and devoured the rest, which impressed me. That's gotta be a cool thing about being a dude: just never giving a second thought to reaching over and tearing the meat off someone else's chicken with your fingers. I also like it when dudes don't ask first before shoving their filthy hands into your bag of potato chips/pretzels/Doritos/what-have-you. "Carefree piggishness" is an A-plus personality trait in my book.

Anyway another great thing about Pappy & Harriet's is the bathroom has really ideal selfie-ing conditions, probably second only to the bar bathroom in my hometown that's got John Lennon Live in New York City posters for wallpaper. I really selfied my heart out on Sunday night.


There was also some Blake Babies graffiti on the bathroom wall - a thing like that! I mean really what are the odds


So the big show with the Perseids was supposed to happen on Monday night, but we ended up seeing meteors on Sunday night too. I halfway wish I had pictures but you can't do that with an iPhone camera, plus it's just cosmically wrong. You can't Instagram the cosmos.

On Monday night I mostly watched the meteors from this deeply uncomfortable bed-thing up on the roof, where the hot tub was. I don't think I've ever seen a night sky that dark before, or stars that bright - it kind of scared the hell out of me, I felt unprotected and terrified by the hugeness of the Milky Way and the universe and everything. At one point I was up on the roof alone and all I could hear in the world were the power lines jangling all around, buzzing in this creepy, snakey way that felt ominous at the time but now seems pretty cool. I wanted to listen to music (I had some idea that it was really important for me to listen to Dinosaur Jr. in the desert, and then Flying Burrito Brothers, and then Dinosaur Jr. covering Flying Burrito Brothers) but I couldn't find my earbuds, which as it turns out were about two inches from my hand the entire time. So I lay there a while and tried to bask in the evil desert energy, then went back down to my friends and lay in the Astroturf and watched some more meteors. Some were so big and bright and shot so far across the sky - I can't even imagine how many zillions of miles they were flying in like one tiny, crazy second. It's just not for me to understand.

The next day we had bagels and coffee and more champagne and strawberries and got packed up and headed out. As we were driving away from the trailer park and back into the world, I put my earbuds on and hit "genius" on "Christine's Tune" by the Flying Burrito Brothers and one of the first things that came up was "Jigsaw Puzzle," which is maybe my third fave Rolling Stones song. I like how the guitar jangles like power lines but not in an evil way. I like how Mick is so sad and dramatic. I love Mick Jagger so much and I felt really protected by him in the desert, and I still feel protected by him now. The desert made me one thousand percent certain that Mick Jagger is good.

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Thing of the Week: Tarot LJ, Mick Jagger Wearing Sweaters, A Cocktail

August 16, 2013, 11:06 am
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LJ'S THING OF THE WEEK: TAROT LIFE


I knew I had to buy a deck of Tarot cards when I got home from Martha's Vineyard. We all read each other's cards while we were there, and I found myself feeling connected to the cards in a way I never had before. It was one of those things you know you need to be around, like hearing the Beatles for the first time. 

I bought my deck two weeks ago, at a little hippie store I'd never been inside called The Rock Store. They mostly sell rocks. I bought myself a little Lapis Lazuli, since someone once told me it'd be good for my writing, and a classic Rider-Waite deck. 

I've been drawing my daily Tarot card every day since; it's becoming very obvious that my life takes place within the Cups suit, which represents my beloved element water. It's about emotion, inner worlds, inner life. I've also drawn the Seven of Pentacles twice, which is about taking a moment out of your journey to reflect upon where you're at, and now the Empress seems to be my new thing. I drew the Empress as my daily card a few days ago, on this day I listened to Isis by Bob Dylan about twenty-five times, and then I came home and put on Desire and realized that there's a picture of the Empress on the back cover, which was neat and spooky but definitely posi-spooky and not-negi spooky. 

Last night I was having a little anxiety about work and also pulled my back out at the gym and was just lying on my couch watching the episode of Mad Men where Peggy smokes pot and decided to be a little bit more action-oriented and a little bit less of a blob, so I did a work-related reading on myself. I found this spiral-bound notebook Liz Barker gave me last time I was in LA, it's the cover of Revolver and she bought it in Buenos Aires. It's my Tarot Notebook now. I took extremely detailed notes of every card and position and then wrote about what I thought they meant. It was highly absorbing and highly non-boring, non-blobby behaviour. The Empress appeared again, in the future/approaching influence/quality to embrace slot. When I saw it, I immediately/instinctively wrote down DRINK WINE, HAVE SEX, EAT DESSERT and YOU WILL ONLY BE HAPPY IF YOU MAKE SOMETHING THAT IS YOURS. Awesome. I am also hoping that the Motherhood aspect of the Empress means that I will buy a black Shiba Inu and name him Arthur. 

PS: Another cute Tarot-related thing is that Jen May and I have been sending each other our daily Tarot cards as Snapchats every morning. Let's do this forever, Jen!!!!

LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Mick Jagger Wearing Sweaters

My thing of the week was going to Joshua Tree and eating chicken at Pappy & Harriet's and being terrified of the desert sky and loving Mick Jagger, which I already wrote about. Since being home from the desert I've really enjoyed looking at pictures of Mick Jagger wearing sweaters. I hate wearing sweaters - I find them oppressive - but I'm hoping to claim Mick as my "sweater muse" for fall:






My third thing of the week is I went to the Dodger game on Wednesday night and Robin Thicke was there! They showed him kissing his kid on the Kiss Cam, and I shrieked and clapped wildly like a weird child. You probably best know Robin Thicke from his performance in the feature film Blurred Lines, directed by Wes Anderson and starring Strawberry Fields Whatever. Such a great film.

JEN'S THING OF THE WEEK: A Cocktail



I tried to relax this week. This is something that does not come naturally for me. I didn't stress out about getting more personal work done after being at work for an entire day. I did whatever. I listened to The Best Show. I made a drawing. I talked with pals. Most importantly though, Charlotte and I made A Cocktail. A Corn Cocktail. A Corn Drink. This cocktail needed to be muddled and I don't own a muddler. The photograph is the aftermath of making 3 drinks, which took approximately 45 minutes. We made these corn, rum lime drinks and trashed my kitchen. They were really good. 
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I Love The Courtneys & Didn't Get Tickets To Courtney

August 19, 2013, 10:31 pm
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BY LIZ

Have you heard the Courtneys? They're this new-ish band from Vancouver: three girls, only of whom is named Courtney. I found them a few weeks ago because someone somewhere said something about they sound how like Blake Babies covering Sonic Youth - which they don't, at all, but I'm still into it. I listened to about half of a song on their Bandcamp page and then immediately bought the whole album and it's been a really chill second-half-of-summer soundtrack so far. They sing a lot about swimming and bodies of water, and about boys and love and being broke, and the songs sort of all sound the same but in a good way that hypnotizes you a little but also gets you hyper. I love these songs the most:

i. "90210." I think this is the one that sold me on the Courtneys. It sounds like summer and like being free, a kind of free-ness that's not hippie-ish or punk or even little-kid-like. It's just dreamy and scrappy and breezy and brash, and I always feel lighter and brighter when the Courtneys all yell "Slow down! Chill out! Breathe in! Breathe out! Kick back, and have a rest! Don't forget/To take a breath!" I like being screamed at to relax. And the video's so rad: it's got a cute fat baby and a cute fat dog, plus the girls in the band playing guitar in the ocean and eating pizza on the beach. You can watch it here.

ii. "K.C. Reeves." It's about Keanu Reeves! Love him so much. The song's a little jokey and that's not really my thing - usually the jokiest I like my songs is, I don't know, "Far Away Eyes." And one of the lyrics is "You are my '90s dream," which is minorly annoying - it bugs me when decades are used as adjectives. But "K.C. Reeves" is still a blast, with cool references to lesser-celebrated Keanu works like the 1986 made-for-TV movie Babes in Toyland. Plus it's got the most exuberant name-spelling-in-song since David Bowie spelling his own name in his cover of "Cactus" by the Pixies. Keanu's middle name is Charles, by the way. Huh.


iii. "Social Anxiety." The chorus goes "NOW WE'RE ON AGAIN, NOW WE'RE OFF AGAIN! NOW WE'RE ONE AGAIN, NOW WE'RE TWO AGAIN!" - and so on and so forth, over and over. It's all very shouty, all three Courtneys shouting together. I love it when bands all shout together, like Big Star shouting every lyric together on "Don't Lie To Me" - it's so tough and kind of aggressive but also playful, like they're playing at being some wild gang. If I were 19-years-old and engaged in a stupid love thing with some hot exciting jerk, I would so leech off that wildness and play the hell out of "Social Anxiety" all day every day.

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So I learned from this fun Vice interview that the Courtneys once made t-shirts with pictures of Courtney Love, Courteney Cox, and Kourtney Kardashian, which is neat. And on Monday Courtney Love is playing at the Troubadour and I tried to get tickets but they sold out in about a minute and I was crushed. The last time I saw Courtney was Halloween weekend nine years ago: she wore a red dress and devil horns and sang "Cod'ine" by Buffy Sainte-Marie, and at one point between songs she said something like, "You guys I'm soooooo sick of going to jail, make it stop!", all fake-whining and stomping her feet. That was cute. I fucking love Courtney. The whole point of my adding this paragraph to this post is I want someone to read it and go, "Oh, here, you can just have my ticket," and then I will get to go see Courtney Love on Monday night and it will totally revitalize me. Here's a great picture of Courtney and her American thighs:


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Excellent, Average, & Terrible Things I've Recently Eaten: Desserts of Summer

August 27, 2013, 11:00 am
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BY LAURA JANE/ILLO BY JEN

A few weeks ago I had a dream where my friend Niki and I went out for dinner at a fictional restaurant where instead of sitting at a table you sat on giant rocks and ate off plates on your lap. She told me what she was going to order and I asked, "Is it okay if I just order two desserts and eat one while you eat your appetizer and the other while you eat your main?"- which is honestly such an excellent fucking idea; I'm very disappointed in my conscious mind for not thinking it up on its own. 

Point is, I love dessert. It's the dreamiest, most romantic part of a meal, and eating it's pretty much the only time I'll allow myself to fully let go- of all of it- and when I bliss out I bliss out, like I'm on a morphine drip dripping into a sleepy secret world where I don't need to care or talk or listen, can't be bothered to try and make any enthralling writery points about "what the sauce is like" just in case anybody forgot that I'm a writer who writes about food for like five fucking seconds of their life God forbid. 




I ordered myself a piece of flan as my staff meal one Sunday evening. I'm not really supposed to do that, since flan is not a very nourishing meal and I don't think it would do a ton to enhance my performance or anything. But I was selling all these people all this flan all night and accidentally sold myself on it too. I had to do it. I think it's fine and normal if I do it every once in a while. 

Our flan has cream cheese in it. It's very rich, as all desserts should be. I hate when people act offended by the richness, by the wealth of their dessert, like duhhhhhh- yeahit's rich! Duh. Who cares if it hurts your stomach? Why are you paying attention to your stomach? Pay attention to your mouth. 

I had my little slice of flan up in one of the windows- there is maybe better terminology to use than "window"; I want to explain it so that people who haven't spent in time in kitchens understand it- it was resting on one of those silver shelves where the cooks put the food up when it's ready, to wait for a runner to come and run it to one of the tables. I had it shoved off to one side so I could take a little bite whenever I had a free moment here or there. I was eating it in the tiniest possible bites. I wanted it to last forever and I was dreading finishing it. I felt like I was going to die once it was gone.  

The curved line running through the lefthand centre of the flan in the flan diagram seen above represents the size of bites I was generally taking, although I feel like the diagram bite I've illustrated is a tad more generous than the bulk of my real-life bites. The crosshatched section at the bottom of the flan diagram and the shaded portion at the upper lefthand corner represents the amount of flan I'd already eaten when the tragic thing that is about to happen happened. 

I was standing by the counter, calmly and peacefully eating a diminutive and ladylike flan bite off a dessert fork, when my sous-chef noticed the flan, yelled, "OOOOH, THERE'S FLAN?", and then, grasping a tablespoon in his fist like a fat king about to dig into a feast involving turkey legs in a Disney cartoon, dug into the flan and took the gargantuan fucking bite, if you can even call a bite that big a bite, denoted by the EXTREMELY LARGE CIRCLE enveloping the ENTIRE TOP HALF OF MY FUCKING PIECE OF FLAN THAT I LOVED SO MUCH AND WANTED SO BAD- 

I screamed, "Nooooooooooooo!" in an arc of a whine that was about 95% pathetic, 5% fierce: a wolf pup's howl. A newborn wolf pup. "There was not flan!" I cried- I was literally crying. I mean, I wasn't crying, but my eyes definitely teared up. It was my flan! It was my meal! I was loving it so much, savoring it, and then he came and swooped up half of the entire thing, and the worst part was, he ate the fucking crust. I mean, it's not a crust, because it's a flan- but it's the edge part, you know? The burnt, sticky, caramelly outer ring that I'd been SAVING FOR LAST because I SAVE THE BEST FOR LAST because THAT'S HOW I EAT MY FUCKING FOOD. He ate the best part of the flan, and it meant nothing to him, and everything to me. I hate him and will never forgive him. I have not shut up about how this happened since it happened and I need to stop writing it right now or else I will wake up seventy years later and realize I just spent my entire life writing about the time my sous-chef stole a bite of my flan and that was how I spent my time on Earth, and then I'll die. 












Oh Christ, just look at these gorgeous little fuckers. Don't you just want to laminate that cone of newspaper into a pouch and carry them around with you everywhere? Like they're your marbles or pennies or whatever. 

I ate this dessert at Terroni with my mom in mid-July; I almost never eat dessert at Terroni, because I allegedly "hate" Italian desserts. So many times in my life, my mother has asked me if I want to get dessert at Terroni, and then I whine, "I haaaaaate Italian desserts," as if I have just been asked if I'd like to pop in to the gynecologist's office for a quick post-prandial look-see. Luckily our server was a great salesperson and, before I even had a chance to roll my eyes at the prospect of tiramisu, tiramisu, or tiramisu, described the feature dessert as being peach fritters, or fritturi or whatever, served with sweet cream gelato. I was like "Sold." Peaches & cream is my everything. She could have been like "We have some peach-flavored barf, served with sweet cream-flavored horse-bones," and I would have been like "Okay fine."

The fritters were, I don't know... fritters. The fritters were fritters. Everything is everything. The other day I was explaining ceviche sizes to a table of at my restaurant and I said, "Well, the small is a small, and the big is a big"- don't think I'll be using that one again! The fritters were fritters. They were fried dough. They were hot. I liked them a great deal. The peaches inside were sliced into cylinders, and they reminded me of gemstones. They made me wonder if there are gemstones the color of peaches. And if so, why don't we care about them more? They seem like something Southern belles would really dig.




The sweet cream gelato was fucking fantastic, rich & light at the same time the same way Pinot Noir is, but it didn't matter- it was one of those things where you just have to accept that the gelato is going to be overshadowed by the fritters, like the fritters were John & Paul and the gelato was George (I guess the powdered sugar is Ringo)- if somebody had given me a bowl of the gelato and said "Hey, here's some vanilla ice cream," I would have lost my fucking mind over it. It would have changed my life. But then you put it next to fried dough, and it just becomes the thing you dip your fried dough in. 



My dad and I went out to a chill little place called Weezie's on the east end. It looked like the kind of restaurant I'd like to own, only blander. I liked that it didn't make a big deal out of itself, but it could have made a bigger deal out of itself. 

I like going out to eat with my dad because he's such a big dessert guy. Even if we don't eat dessert at the restaurant, we'll always stop into the grocery store on the way home to buy some sort of pre-made cheesecake chocolate torte or whatever. When we eat at fancier restaurants, small plates/smaller portions types of places, we both get really jazzed because it means we'll definitely have room for dessert! Weezie's was that sort of deal- we shared a shrimp & avocado salad, which was all my favorite shit in the world- shrimp, avocado, peanut, cilantro, onion, Thai chili, etc- but it was so tiny. One shrimp apiece. And then we shared a whole grilled Branzino with a side of bitter greens, which tasted like how green the trees are after the first day it rains in spring. 

For dessert we had the banana pudding. It tasted like you're eating it out of a mixing bowl. It tasted like you're a little kid over to play at a friend's house whose mother is a way better cook than yours, and she's given you this wooden spoon to lick like it ain't no thing but oh my God, it's a thing. And you're just standing there, a child, blissing out like you won't again until you're twenty-eight years old and have finally started making yourself a decent enough living to go out to restaurants that serve food that tastes as good as what you licked off that spoon that day, existing for one half a second in somebody else's life, in some other home where the walls are made of wood and this kind of thing happens. Where slabs of things, things called breads that are truly cakes, are wrapped up in waxed paper, and spots of oil bleed through the waxed paper, waxpaper, and it looks like a dalmatian's fur. 



I ate this with a boy. We ran into one of my friends along the way and I said "I'm sorry! We can't stay! We have to go eat pastries!", and then I made fun of myself later on- "We have to. We have to go eat pastries- we've really got no choice." 

We hadn't. We hadn't much of a choice. I remembered that Nadege existed at around 2:15, and I had to be at work for 4, or 4:15 at the absolute latest. But I knew that if we made it it would be worth it, and we made it, and it was worth it. 

I looked down at all the pastries at 3:05, all those little rubies lined up beneath a glass pane that somebody'd been paid to shine and somebody else'd been paid to line up with exactitude, maybe not even the same person, a little silver clip holding up a rectangle of thick and expensive cardstock somebody'd been paid to cut to size printed with a sweet, clever name that somebody'd been paid to brainiac up. Everything kept reminding me about all the stupid jobs there are out there. I remembered being a very little kid and playing Monopoly for the first time. I was holding a couple houses and hotels in my sweaty little palm and I told my mother: "Somebody made these," like maybe she'd never thought about that. And I've never stopped thinking about the world that way. When I drink wine- who stepped on the grapes? Because I watched a video of a man stepping on the grapes once. And I've always thought that the feeling of the grapes slurping up between your toes would be like, I don't know, the exact perfect midpoint between peeling glue off your palms and having an orgasm on the General Life Pleasure scale. And because I'm jealous of that guy, I'm jealous of the guy who cares enough about pastries to make them and I'm jealous of how easy of a job the person who named them has if all they had to do was name them. And I'm sorry for the guy who has to wipe down the pane and I'm sorry for the girl who has to use tongs to place the pastry on the plate for some guy and I. I applied for a job there once and hoped I wouldn't get it because I didn't want to wear a white collared shirt. And my wish came true and I didn't get it. I've never worn a plain white collared shirt. 

I was wearing a white collared shirts with little navy blue hearts printed all over it. My pastry was named the "Marie Antoinette." I felt like a girl eating it. The boy I showed up with ate a significantly more masculine square of cheesecake and when the server placed our plates down in front of us she made a joke about how she'd just guessed whose was whose. And I felt like a girl. 

The pastry, the cake, the crust, just tasted like a pie, a very good pie. Like white sugar and white flour that you'd be sad if you found out was cut with lard but because it was cut with lard you're really digging it. Later that night, my co-worker asked me what was the stuff inside the pie crust and I said, "A cloud?" And the macarons were the only macarons I've ever loved. It was weird. They cracked like a joke. 

Macarons, as a rule, remind me of this time I was in the back of a cab with Nadine and Charlie on Hallowe'en, in New York two autumns ago, when they had those little TVs in the back of their cabs before we had those little TVs in the back of our cabs in Toronto. The TVs would play this endless loop of little clips about, like, all the bullshit that's going on in New York right now. And there was this one segment about how macaronswere really hot at the time, the cronuts of their day, ew, and at the beginning of the segment the voiceover was like "MOVE OVER, CUPCAKES"- like, "Move over, cupcakes! Make way for the fucking macaron, like, the fancy new baked good of the moment..." and Nadine and Charlie and I got into a whole bit about it, imagining some, like, chichi Upper East Side-y New York woman, sitting in the back of a taxicab with a box of cupcakes in her lap, hearing "MOVE OVER, CUPCAKES!" and like, throwing the box of cupcakes out of the window and hollering "TAKE ME TO THE NEAREST MACARON PLACE!" at her cabbie. 

I really liked that joke, I really liked that time. I'll think of it every time a cupcake or macaron ever comes up again, seriously, forever. For the entire rest of my life. 



I ate at Chantecler with Suzie and Sadie. It was not really the best night of my entire life. Everybody kept fighting. I'm pretty sure it had something to do with the moon. 

Chantecler is my favorite restaurant in all of Toronto. The morning after that night I first ate there, I felt so bummed out. I was sweeping the floor at work, and I really hated my restaurant, for no reason other than it wasn't Chantecler. A million things went wrong that evening, but zero of them were Chantecler's fault. Chantecler was perfect. 

Our server was an Oliver Twist type. I got a little drunk and asked him if his name was Brian, but as it turned out, he wasn't even Irish. Real curveball. He had freckles, was very knowledgeable about wine in a very unpretentious and non-annoying way. You could tell he was an unpretentious, non-annoying guy, who just happened to give a shit about wine. We had a Blanc de Noir, a white wine made out of Pinot Noir grapes made by a guy named Pierre Frick. I accidentally just found dozens of photos of the real Pierre Frick's face on Google Image Search just now.  He's very handsome. He lives in Alsace. It's a drag to think that there'll never be a wine with my name on it and I'll never be a man and smile and I'll never live in Alsace. I wish I could unsee him. 

Sadie got mad at Suzie. We ate noodles made out of potatoes and the popcorn shrimp had actual popcorn stuck to the shrimp's body, which was fun. Tempura squash blossoms dipped in the least tacky sriracha mayo that made you wish some guy would break your heart and you'd die so you could go drink Pierre Frick wine at a bar in Alsace in heaven where you dunked your own tempuraed heart into that motherfucking mayonnaise infinitely, to a point where you would have rathered it all've worked out that way; you were made to eat your own heart emotionally and dunk it in that Best Case Scenario mayonnaise eternally. Fuck all human beings who hate mayonnaise forever. You will never fully know me. 

I'd been talking about dessert since before I'd eaten dinner. It was two mornings after the night I'd had that dream. Suzie and Sadie ordered oysters, and I ordered an ice cream sundae. They were talking about somebody they went to school with who moved to Scotland and got married. I didn't care about that person. I didn't go to school with either of them. I cracked the caramelized banana in half and made myself a bite of half-cherry, half-banana. Somebody's job was to make that cherry. That cherry-maker was a genius. 

One of them asked me if the malteser was a malteser and I told them it was. I filled up my spoon with the whipped cream and I picked up the lavender froot loop with my fingers and placed it atop the mountain like when they put the flag on top of the moon.
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Being Totally Crushed Out on Kelley Deal & Sarah Silverman Is a Really Good Feeling

September 3, 2013, 10:00 am
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BY LIZ

I saw the Breeders two Saturdays ago! It was my first time seeing them since they opened for Nirvana, 20 years ago this November. They played all of Last Splash and were glorious, just so on and obviously having a really cool and awesome time. They looked happy and it made me happy (did you read that super-sweet Buzzfeed thing that Matthew Perpetua wrote about "being a music fan in your 20s vs. your 30s"? The second half of #4 is absolutely how I feel about the Breeders and so many other bands/musicians I've loved a long time), and every song sounded perfect and better to me than anything on Last Splash had ever sounded before.

And never in my life had I really been like "Yeahhhhh, Kelley Deal!", but now I'm just crazy for her. She was radiant and wearing that goofy "USA" t-shirt with dangly earrings, a sort of jock/middle-school-art-teacher hybrid thing that was very inspiring to me in its what-the-fuck-ness. Kelley was all smiles the whole set and got all dramatic with her hand gestures and vocal delivery when she sang "I Just Wanna Get Along," really acting out the lyrics, really committed. Plus her head-bopping at 0:53 is divine.



P.S. Amazing fact, as semi-recently tweeted by Leah Petrakis who always has amazing things to say about good music: "Kelley learned guitar two weeks before they recorded Last Splash whilst working a full-time job and balancing a heroin addiction as well." Total superhero.

Another rad thing I experienced recently was seeing Sarah Silverman and Jen Kirkman and Jenny Slate at Largo last Thursday night. (Doug Benson and Todd Glass were also there, but the girls were just the best). I'm still as in love with Sarah Silverman as I was when I wrote about her Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee episode in June, only about a thousand times more so, since I've now sat in a small theater and gazed upon her as she told jokes about periods and Annie and sex emails and Zach Galifianakis. She was wearing these tight jeans and near-knee-high lace-up boots and a great grayish-white t-shirt and a red plaid flannel and the most majestic hair poof that I really want to copy. Sorry to be all focused on "looks" but what am I going to do, sit here and try to type up all her jokes for you? No, no way. Although I will say that she told a story about going out to lunch with Kanye West and how they both use the "Notes" app on their phones and ended up sharing their "Notes" notes with each other, which is pretty adorable.

Anyway, isn't this picture of Sarah Silverman and Tig Notaro so beautiful? It is.



Jen Kirkman was so tough too and I just rewatched her Frederick Douglass Drunk History and it remains the best Drunk History and I feel compelled to report that she now has black hair and the freshest bangs. At one point she did an impression of her mom and her Massachusetts accent was brilliant, like the opposite of Jack Nicholson in The Departed/every Hollywood actor who's ever attempted a Boston accent ever except maybe Matt Damon although the jury's still out on that.

Oh and Jenny Slate! One of her opening lines was "Like many Americans, I come from a haunted house from Massachusetts," which I really wish I could say every day and claim as my own. And if you've never seen the Bestie x Bestie episode about "what is wrong with books," it's a real treat. The first 46 seconds are unremarkable but the remaining 55 seconds are gold.





All these magnificent women from New England, and from Ohio, to bring it back to the Breeders. They make me feel like you can just have fun forever, if you're smart and thoughtful and tough about it, and that's a really good feeling.
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Laura Jane's Quitting Smoking Journals: I Quit Smoking One Year Ago Today

September 4, 2013, 8:10 am
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BY LAURA JANE/ ILLO BY JEN

On September 1st I told my co-worker to guess what day it was. He said he didn't know and I was like "Imagine if I made you stand here and guess forever?", but then I just told him- it was the one year anniversary of the day I got George Harrison's name tattooed on my wrist. (You can see a cool pic of my fresh and pink George tattoo here). He said, "Wow, that's pretty important, huh?" and I said, "Mostly I can't believe a week existed in my life where I got George Harrison's name tattooed on my wrist on a Saturday and then quit smoking three days later"- it truly is crazy to think about how much positive energy I must have been swimming inside. Feeling real happiness for the first time, knowing true peace and balance and hitting it. All these wonderful concepts which once were clouds were bones now. I could wrap my hands around them. 

Here is the Quitting Smoking Journal I wrote about quitting smoking one year less five days ago. I am trying to read it so I can write about it but I don't have very much fun reading my old writing. No matter when I wrote it, it's always overwrought. I'm catching snippets of it while skimming it: I definitely remember that I was wearing leopard print on the day I smoked my last cigarette, but I forgot that it was raining. I remember that trying to quit smoking was hard for me and I remember that quitting smoking was one of the easiest things I've ever done. I remember the only time it was hard- when I got promoted in April, I felt very stressed out about a lot of work-related things and I started thinking about cigarettes again. I came very close to smoking one, but put it off because I had to go focus all my energy onto some stressful work-related thing, and then I forgot about it . And then once I zoned back into myself I was all "WHAT WAS I THINKING?!?!?", and then it was gone forever. I never cared again. 

It's weird how easy it all is. I feel like I never smoked. I went into anorexia recovery five years and five months ago yet something eating disorder or body image issue-related still comes up for me at least three times a week, if not day- but I guess the difference is that my eating disorder came from within myself, whereas smoking cigarettes, no matter what kind of lies you tell yourself, is external: you smoke because some corporation told you to do it, because the people who work at cigarette companies or the advertising agencies that work for cigarette companies are all excellent at their jobs. I never believed that when I was a smoker. I thought it was a part of me- I thought I smoked because there was something about me that made me a smoker. But it was only my central nervous system. 

But that doesn't mean that I ever want to be the judgy kind of ex-smoker who cares whether any other person ever does or doesn't smoke. I actually really love it when phonies and assholes smoke; it provides me with some very solid fodder for extra-hating them. And I adore a good passionate smoker- I was a passionate smoker once, and I think that passionate smokers are a faction of society that definitely needs to exist. I like when people arbitrarily stand up for stupid shit for no reason. I'd take an unapologetic smoker over a judgy non-smoker in a heartbeat- judgy non-smokers need to get some cigarette smoke blown in their faces every now and again so they can fake-cough like the delicate sons of bitches they are and remind every cool person in the world how important it is to stay chill. 

Willingly addicting myself to smoking cigarettes was one of the worst decisions I ever made, but I was very young when I made it, and then ended up quitting at twenty-seven anyway, so who even cares. I feel too far away from ever having smoked to be able to explain exactly what I've gotten out of quitting, and that's weird, because I smoked a lot of cigarettes! For a lot of years! And now it's all just become the sentence, "I used to smoke." I suppose I could try and figure out what this past year might have looked like if I was constantly ducking out of work and sex and eating killer dinners to go light some shredded wood, chemicals and paper on fire and then inhale their fumes like I'm the hugest psychotic idiot there ever was, but I don't know. I guess I'm just too busy living. 
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LEE IS FREE: Our 10 Favorite Lee-Sung Sonic Youth Songs

September 5, 2013, 12:26 pm
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WORDS BY JEN MAY & ELIZABETH BARKER, IMAGE BY JEN MAY

Lee Ranaldo and his new band Dust have an album coming out next month, it's called Last Night on Earth and you can listen to the song "Lecce, Leaving" here. But really this post has nothing to do with Last Night on Earth and we're just writing it because WE LOVE LEE RANALDO and all the great songs he wrote in Sonic Youth. Here are our ten faves.

ERIC'S TRIP (Liz)

Last week I read a Pitchfork thing about Daydream Nation, and there's a line about how "Lee, being Lee, exists on some more mystical future/past plane, located in dreams & open fields instead of on the Bowery," which is a very lovely and true sentence. It's fun to make fun of Sonic Youth, but I never want to make fun of Lee: there's so much generosity in his voice and lyrics, and I can't think of many other singers who so consistently communicate wide-eyed-ness in their delivery. Lee is never impressed with himself, and that's a great thing to pull off as a guitar player for Sonic Youth.
       But maybe my favorite thing about Lee is he sings in exclamation points. He sounds so truly excited about everything he's singing! It's very sweet, and it makes me excited too! When Lee sings "My head's on straight! My girlfriend's beautiful! It looks pretty good to me!", I become that boy and I'm also stoked about my mental clarity and my beautiful girlfriend. Lee and his groovy optimism, I'm so eternally into it.

WISH FULFILLMENT was the first Lee song I ever heard. I was sitting on the floor at my friend Pat’s. I picked up the Dirty CD off the floor and sort of absentmindedly looked at it, unfolding the insert. I stared at the Mike Kelley sock people and stuffed animals and wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I think I imagined Sonic Youth as something different. The next day in school Pat gave me the CD to borrow. He saw me looking at it and thought I should listen to it. It’s not an exaggeration to say it changed me as a person. Or maybe it was more like as I listened to it on headphones that night I realized OH MY GOD THIS IS WHO I WANT TO BE. I was already sold listening to "100%". It was so cool. Then "Swimsuit Issue"! Kim! Kim was my everything. I would read interviews with her and seek out whatever she liked and learn about it. I feel like on my first listen "Wish Fulfillment" must have gotten lost in the mix of my unquenchable thirst for more songs by Kim/women in general. I grew to love it.
        Obviously, "Wish Fulfillment" is about a relationship. Maybe it's a romantic one. I associate the song with friendship. I'm still friends with Pat. It was his birthday last week. He lives in Louisville now, not on Long Island.
       As a teen baby I think I thought about movie stars and dream lovers when I heard this song. When I hear it now I think of friendships that don’t exist anymore and also vaguely of the Steely Dan song “Peg” (I think it’s ‘see your face in a magazine’/ ‘your name in lights etc’). I can’t remember exactly who was sitting in Pat’s room when I was looking at the CD, but I have an idea. I don’t talk to my high school BFF anymore. We drifted away from each other in college and I tried to give the relationship a refresh after hearing she was married and feeling so strange that I had no idea. It was very awkward and unfamiliar. It was over. Someone else in that room isn't alive anymore. Another I recently fell out of friendship with for reasons that aren't exactly clear to me.
       Lee's talk/yells to me are all about the heartbreak of being a social being, of loss, of change. It makes me think of missing people you don’t know anymore. (Jen)



IN THE KINGDOM #19 (Liz)

I got Evol for Christmas when I was fifteen. I remember opening my presents Christmas morning and then going back up to my room and lying in my twin bed by the window and reading Lisa Crystal Carver's amazing liner notes and listening to the CD and the light was all bright and white, reflecting the snow outside. "Expressway to Yr Skull" was the first song I loved on Evol ("We're gonna kill the California girls" is a very hot lyric when you're a shy teenager in Massachusetts), but I appreciated what I recognized as the "Kerouac-y-ness" of "In the Kingdom #19."
         When I was 15 I pretended to love Jack Kerouac because I thought it meant I was deep. Lots of kids probably do this, and that's fine - I mean you gotta start somewhere, in terms of finding your way out to something wilder than what you already know. Pretending something means something to you even though it doesn't mean much is still meaningful; it's part of becoming what you are. I didn't like reading On the Road but I liked listening to "In the Kingdom #19": it was fast and crazy and a little bit scary and possibly sexy, a three-and-a-half shortcut to whatever fucked-up wisdom I thought I was supposed to get from Jack Kerouac.
         "In the Kingdom #19" was Lee talking weird shit about "the road," about highways and tunnels and mirages and ghosts, about vehicularly murdering small animals with zero regret. In the liner notes Lisa Crystal Carver said that "Smoke and flames, all right" was "the ultimate hipster response to disaster," and I didn't really get the joke. The song sounded pretty dangerous to me and it still sounds a little dangerous now, even though it also sounds sort of lame. "In the Kingdom #19" is dangerous and lame and what I love most is the last minute, when the drums and guitars get all dramatic and Lee says "In panic I forget it, in despair I need it, in my mind I save it, in death I have it," which is another thing that must mean something about something. The thing about loving Sonic Youth when you're a kid is they talk all this shit you don't understand and you pretend to understand because you want to understand, and then you grow up and you still don't completely understand except now you don't care anymore, because really who gives a fuck, just live your life! And you can be mad at Sonic Youth for making you feel slightly bad about your uncoolness all those years or you can just be okay with the idea of their giving you the feeling that there are unknown worlds out there and that there's something exciting and motivating about the mystery of that. So I pick the latter.
       And then at the very end of "In the Kingdom #19" Thurston says "Never gave a damn about the meter man till I was the man who had to read the meters, man" and his voice is real low and good, creepy and deep. I wrote those words on a bathroom wall once when I was 26 and I've got no idea what they mean either. Oh and did you know the reason Lee screams at 0:55 is Thurston set off a bunch of firecrackers and threw them into the recording booth? God what an asshole JK THURSTON I LOVE YOU FOREVER YOU ARE STILL MY FAVORITE, ALWAYS

SKIP TRACER (Jen)

Lee is from Long Island and lives in New York City. Me too! My love and idealism for The City (that's what it's called if you're from Long Island) is very much entwined with Lee’s lyrics about it, and also Woody Allen movies. Of course, Lee lived in New York City when I was being born and we’ve had vastly different experiences here. Still, his experiences have shaped my Big City thoughts. I don’t listen to Washing Machine too often these days, but the lyrics of "Skip Tracer" & "Saucer-Like" are imprinted in my brain. They got mixed in there with my teenage daydreams of what life in New York would be like. They come out all the time while I’m walking around. In Manhattan on a disgusting summer day when your skin feels like it’s on fire and everything smells like hot garbage I thought of Lee singing "I’m from New York City - breathe it out, and let it in." When I smell bagels in the air on a crisp autumn morning I think of that line.
      Sometimes I realize I’m walking around thinking "soul merge ideas of songforms" or something just over and over again. "Row house Row House pass through!" "Twister, dust buster, hospital bed." His words for the city have seeped into my brain and are now my unconscious daily thoughts.
      The smell of fellow commuters coffee in the morning. The psychotic rage I can feel at the pace someone ahead of me is walking. Seeing Yoko Ono and Patti Smith in the same week. My studio flooding. Friends moving away because it’s too expensive. Friends coming back. Diners. Pizza. Film Forum’s popcorn. Seeing every movie. Cher’s accent in Moonstruck. So many people. My shitty old apartments. My current apartment that feels so right.  Walking to see Weed Hounds. $12 cocktails. $2 PBRs. $6 PBRs. Cats in windows. Stray cats. Bodega cats. Bodegas, in general. My cats. Walking up 4 flights. Chic women in shades. Drunk pervs. The heat, the snow, the fall, the spring. The pond with ducks and remote control sail boats. Trash. Beautiful brownstones. Hideous condos. Museum lunch breaks. So much coffee. Breath it out, and let it in.

KAREN REVISITED (Liz)

When I first moved to L.A. I had a job deep in the Valley and that autumn there were terrible wildfires and from my office you could see the flames out on the horizon, in the mountains to the north. I started loving "Karen Revisited" around the time of the fires, and the lyric that got me the most was "Down beneath the radar screen, she's lit up like gasoline." I had some idea that it was Lee singing for girls who like to hide, and I liked his recognizing girls with secrets. Not in some humblebraggy-annoying way, like how Thurston really goes out of his way to prove he's so down for the girl cause. I love Lee because he seems in awe of girls, instead of constantly reminding us what a rad feminist he is. Lee's songs are my favorite Sonic Youth love songs because they are so much about the object. There's a dreamy passiveness to him that I find honorable and endearing.

HOARFROST (Jen)

I used to listen to "Hoarfrost" on trains. If I was taking a train I brought A Thousand Leaves to listen to on my hot pink discman, end of story. First I’d listen to "Hoarfrost," then the rest of the album. It’s kind of an obvious train song – trees, passing trees, passing signs along the road. Whatever, it felt comforting. It works - riding the train to Long Island or Princeton or Connecticut. Trees passing Trees passing signs along the road.
      At some point in college (just kidding, art school) my friend Adam got really into "Hoarfrost." Adam is super skilled at slightly altering letters/words to make sentences/titles/lyrics more perfect. My perennial favorites are: Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dad and I can still hear you saying you will never break the chair. For a while whenever either of us listened to the song we'd text each other variations on "peas pass the peas pass the ice cream a la mode," "leaves pass the leaves pass the thyme on the go," "sieves draining sieves draining sand upon my toe" or whatever.
      It's a hauntingly beautiful song that makes me feel like I have just come inside from the cold. You’re warm, looking out a window at dark white snow, with images of the lamps from inside reflecting back at you.

WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU (Liz)

I love this version more than the original. I'm not entirely comfortable with those being my feelings, but I'm almost at the point of accepting them. I think it's got a lot to do with the drums, which get really intense halfway through and do something crazy and serious to me. But it's also everything to do with the way Lee sings it - you can feel him believing in the song itself, and that's easier for me to latch onto then George Harrison believing in vedantic philosophy. Believing in Lee Ranaldo believing in George Harrison is my version of spiritualism, or at least it's one dimension of it.

HEY JONI (Jen)

My mom’s name is Joni, J-O-N-I. It’s a name people weirdly have a hard time with and will often read as “Johnny”, even though, hello! Joni Mitchell! It’s not a super common name so I remember thinking it was pretty cool for my mom to have this cool song with her name it. I clearly remember playing it for her in the car as a teenager. She was driving me somewhere, probably to Pat’s or the doctor and I was like, hey mom, check it out! This song is called HEY JONI and it’s SO COOL! She wasn’t as impressed with it as I was, or at all. In retrospect maybe it is weird to have your teen daughter playing you a song sung to someone with your name with lyrics like "your life is such a mess"!

Extra Bonus: My mom’s middle name is Lee.

WHAT WE KNOW (Liz)

The first time I heard "What We Know" was the last time I'll ever see Sonic Youth. It was on the river in Brooklyn in the middle of the August and I'd gotten to the show late because New York confuses me and I never not go the wrong way whenever I'm going anywhere. Anyway, usually I don't like it when bands play songs I don't know, but I loved "What We Know" right off the bat. I like how heavy and in-your-face it is, how Lee sounds like he's singing something really important. It's not that important, though: it's just Lee's weird world. It doesn't have much bearing on anything. I relate to just existing in your weird world and being stoked on it and exuberantly making observations about all the beautiful-to-you shit all around. Lee's just a starry-eyed poet singing nothing-meaning things like "Forever means the night turns gold"; he's a seer. And "I'll drink a case of you" - is that a Joni Mitchell reference? Lee is just the best dude.

PIPLINE/KILLTIME (Jen)

I wanted to write something about Early Lee. Earlier than this, but also this. Something about being really loud and noisy while also gentle and kind. Something about poetry and language and aging. I can't articulate it. I think maybe Lee kind of says it for me at the end of this song:

Endless, revolt
The shifting of light and shadows
No one is right,nothing is solid
Nothing can be held in my hands for long

We should kill time
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Thing of the Week: Tsuki the Shiba Inu, Bradford from Deerhunter, Kim Gordon Everywhere

September 6, 2013, 9:57 am
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LJ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Tsuki the Shiba Inu 


I am obsessed with wanting to buy a black Shiba Inu named Arthur. I mean, I would name him Arthur. I don't care if he came named Arthur or not. I doubt that anyone has ever named a black Shiba Inu Arthur besides me, I mean future-me, anyway; everybody always names their Shiba Inu something Japanese-esque i.e. Tsuki. Ugh. How basic. Why don't you go feed it some okonomiyaki and then name a poodle Fifi while you're at it? Just kidding. You are obviously too basic to have heard of okonomiyaki before this second.  

Anyway, I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that I'm obsessed with wanting Arthur. Whenever work is slow (I really hope my boss isn't reading this!) I stand around and look at pictures of black Shiba Inus on Google Image Search and then I save the pictures of the Shiba Inus who look most like what I want Arthur to look like to my Camera Roll, and then I look through my Camera Roll and pretend that it's the future and I've just asked someone if they'd like to see a picture of my Shiba Inu, Arthur. (I'm just kidding about really hoping that my boss isn't reading this. My boss has an uncanny ability to walk in on me Google Image Searching Shiba Inu puppies on his own. As far as my boss must be concerned, I have never done anything else.) 

My Shiba Inu obsession really took a turn for the more psychotic once I remembered about the website The Daily Puppy. I allowed myself to get to a point where I know the names and individual identities of every Shiba Inu that has ever been featured on Daily Puppy. Obviously they're all winners, to some extent, but Tsuki really brings it home. She's so spritely and alert-seeming. 



There's also this other guy, named Hachi, who I like a lot:



Hachi is disturbingly cute, obviously, but you can tell he's going to grow up to be a bit of a dullard. Just a lumpy old chewer of rawhide who stinks the car up. My Arthur's got to be of above average intelligence levels, one of those dogs who can open a door with his paw and howl the word "Hello." He'll know fifty tricks and won't require a leash. He'll never do anything embarrassing like eat rabbit shit or hump your houseguest's leg. Like my homegirl Tsuki, he'll bring only positive energy to the table:



Unfortunately, I found a very disturbing comment on Tsuki's Daily Puppy profile just now. Tsuki's not actually a puppy- she was rescued by her owner, Jaeby, at age four or five. A man named Steve wrote in saying how he lost a Shiba Inu named Bella on April 11th, 2008, when he was attacked by a pit bull! To make a long story short, he thinks Tsuki is Bella. Then, five years ago, he posts all this sad information like the link to a website he made called Bring Bella Home, and information about Bella's microchip. IS TSUKI BELLA? No more pictures of Tsuki were ever posted after the date Steve left his comment, so probably yeah. Hopefully Tsuki's owners did the right thing and gave Bella back to chill Steve who didn't name her something pseudo-Japanese like an imbecile. Anyway, this is one Shiba Inu-related mystery I sure never wanted to uncover. To end things on a more positive note, here's some really cool motivation for me to end up owning two Shiba Inus:



He ate spices! I love dogs so much! 




LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Bradford from Deerhunter


The first time I saw Deerhunter they were opening for the Ponys sometime six years ago. They came out and Bradford was wearing a dress and kept stumbling around the stage, saying, "Darby Crash...Darby Crash...DARBY CRASH..." over and over again for a really long time. I liked it. I was like, "YOU ARE COOL," in my head. And then I didn't see Deerhunter again until FYF a couple weekends ago, and I missed most of their set because I was watching Devendra Banhart, which was a bad choice. (Not bad because he was bad - I love Devendra, his music is gorgeous and so his face. It was just the wrong venue for him. His songs are very quiet and he probably should have just played in my living room instead.) But the little bit of Deerhunter I saw was terrifying and hypnotizing and amazing, and I was in love with Bradford's wig and crazy dress (as seen in the above photo, which came from here). He's just got this weirdly angelic presence. He's a weird scary angel.

(Also, during the Breeders's set at FYF Bradford came out to sing the chorus to "Saints," and for the verses he crouched down on the stage and stared up at them adoringly, looking like this. So cute. And for the rest of their set he sort of lingered at the edge of the stage and chainsmoked, watching the band super-intently. I took lots of pictures of that too.)

So the next morning I read that BuzzFeed interview where Bradford shit-talks Morrissey the whole time ("Anybody who says they dislike The Beatles is a pretentious jerk. Like me. But I actually like them, I like The Beatles. I like all music, really, except The Smiths") and I loved it, and then I bought Monomania and watched Deerhunter playing "Monomania" on Jimmy Fallon. I watched it like eight hundred times. I love Bradford's bloody mouth and bloody fingers, I love his drama and use of hand movement and how he's always touching his wig. I really like his commitment to the performance. Bradford makes me feel like Commitment is Cool. The last minute of this video's the most exciting:

 


JEN'S THING OF THE WEEK: Kim Gordon Everywhere


Kim Gordon has been everywhere the last few months and I'm loving it. After the Elle article, there was the New Yorker profile. I wish that profile was the length of the entire magazine and the photo was a full page. When I saw there was a profile with her I thought I'm going to hang the photo above my desk before even flipping to the page. All hail the Queen. Unfortunately it was a smaller-ish picture which is NOT what I had in mind. She's cool and smart, we all knew this, but the new info was she has an astrologer and watches TV. She grates beets into salad and dances around. Her new band Body/head has an album coming out next week. You can listen to it online and I have. I love it. I really do. It's my Kim Songs dream come true. I agree with and love Jessica Hopper's gushing  Spin review.  I missed the body/head show that the Julie Ruin ended up playing. Total bummer. I'm also missing the one next week at Union Pool because I guess I forgot to make note of when tickets went on sale and now there are none. She has an art opening on Saturday though, which I will go to. I'm also going to miss her at the New Yorker Festival, but I will try and go to the Kim tribute at Issue Project Room. She's everywhere. Kim Forever. 
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On Sunday Morning I Watched Lots of Sonic Youth Videos & Made Fun of Sonic Youth & Loved Sonic Youth So Much

September 11, 2013, 10:56 am
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BY LIZ

Sunday morning I dug up my DVD of Sonic Youth videos and watched the whole damn thing, in bed, and took lots of pictures and wrote in my notebook and stuff. It was a nice way to begin the end of my weekend: chill and lazy and dreamy, with a little poking-fun. Sonic Youth are an easy target, but obviously I love them. They made beautiful songs and beautiful little movies to go with those songs; they're one of the most consistently beautiful bands I've ever been obsessed with. Watching all those videos in one big chunk, it finally started to hit me that they're gone, that I'll never get to see them again. I saw them eight times and they were always great, even when they were being impossible - like the show on the Brown University quad in spring '98, when they played all of A Thousand Leaves, which hadn't even come out yet and is actually kind of boring anyway.

But yeah the DVD is called Corporate Ghost, because of course it is. It's all the videos they made from 1990 to 2002 and apparently you can buy it on Amazon for about two dollars. It is so worth those two dollars, plus many more dollars. Here are the highlights, according to me:

i. 100%


Thurston has huge hair in the "100%" video. Or it's super-fluffy at least, the kind of fluffy you might call flooffy. And Kim's wearing that "Eat Me" shirt that she's also wearing in a picture I had up in my locker in 11th grade, only it's cooler than I remember, with the Rolling Stones logo and all. Given my memory of my high-school self, I'm really surprised/impressed that I was brazen enough to have put a picture of Kim Gordon in her "Eat Me" shirt up in my locker. Way to go, 15-year-old me.

ii. "KOOL THING"




Here's just Kim being awesome in "Kool Thing." You know what I want? A thing of the cover art for Fear of a Black Planet that's Photoshopped to say Fear of a Female Planet instead. I mean I found one through Google Image Search, but it's not very good. Someone should make another one.


iii. "TUNIC"


And here's just Kim being awesome in "Tunic," which is the weirdest video. I love when the guys all wag their fingers at Kim. I don't love it when the panda bear has lipsticky lips.

iv. "MILDRED PIERCE"


Here is teenage Sofia Coppola in the "Mildred Pierce" video. Cool eyebrows, bro.




And Thurston in "Mildred Pierce": he's self-obsessed and sexxee. When I was having my Sonic Youth-athon on Sunday morning I took a picture of this part with my phone and thought about Instagram-ing it with a caption that just said "You jerk!", but then I didn't. Who cares.

v. "TITANIUM EXPOSE"


At the beginning of "Titanium Exposé" we see someone knitting - at first it's just a closeup of the needles and the working hands, and then there's the big reveal: it's Lee! Lee is the knitter. Lee is so cute at knitting.


I feel like if I were in kindergarten and someone showed me the "Titanium Exposé" video and then asked me to explain French kissing I'd be like, "French kissing is when a man and a lady smoosh their lips together and then the man eats the lady's face." I remember seeing this video for the first time and at the Frenching part being like "Ewwwwww Mom and Dad, stop, you're embarrassing me!" But now I'm just kind of like, "Aww man, you guys. YOU GUYS..."


I sort of want to make another Thurston joke, like "YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT THE BUCK STOPS HERE" but what does that even mean and also I really just like Thurston, I'm so glad he exists. I like his "Titanium Exposé" acting and I like his shirt, I like his stupid tallness and his sense of melody and his cool creepy voice. "Starfield Road," "Dirty Boots," "Theresa's Sound World," "Teen Age Riot," "Disappearer," "Death Valley '69" - these are my favorite Sonic Youth songs. And I care about songs more than I care about lots of other things. Like...way more.


Aww and there's Steve, eating his really good-looking pizza. I think this is probably the first time I've ever had anything to say about Steve Shelley in my life: Steve Shelley is a very good drummer, and his pizza looks terrific. Thanks for being, Steve.


And the "Titanium Exposé" cat is soooo good! Such a good cat actor. It almost looks animatronic - but no, it's real! Totally the best cat actor since Julie Delpy's cat in 2 Days in Paris, in the part where the mom tells Julie Delpy that she's been feeding the cat foie gras. P.S. I can't believe "2 days in paris foie gras cat" isn't a video that exists on YouTube; what a broken world we live in.



Another cool thing about the "Titanium Exposé" video is it makes me want to vandalize a periodic table of elements. I mean, that seriously sounds so tough to me right now. BTW my favorite element is Helium, whom I saw open up for Sonic Youth once in 1996 at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel in the city of Providence.




At the end of the video Lee presents his...shawl? or something? to one of the dudes in the "fake Sonic Youth band." I love the look on his face here - Lee's so proud of his handiwork! As well he should be! And look at that hat!




Just a cool shot of fresh-kissed Goo cover art at the end of the "Titanium Exposé" video. That's all.

vi. "BULL IN THE HEATHER"



Oh my god remember when they played "Bull in the Heather" on Beavis & Butthead and Beavis looks at Kathleen Hanna and goes "Who's this five-year-old girl bouncing around?", and they also make some joke about Romper Room? That always gets me. (Here, here's what I'm talking about.) I like the part when KH murders Thurston and steals his guitar. Apparently she busted his lip, according to Wikipedia. 


Kathleen Hanna is super-individualistic. Duh.


But of course the best thing about "Bull in the Heather" is Lee! That is, all the segments with Lee jumping up and down on the bed, playing his guitar, with whoever that punk dude is. LEE LEE LEE, Lee is the best, we love Lee so much forever.

vii. "LITTLE TROUBLE GIRL"


"Little Trouble Girl"! Here are Kim Gordon and Kim Deal, tra-la-la-ing. One time when I was like 28 or something I went on a date with this guy who was the quintessential good-on-paper dude; it was very boring and depressing. And afterward I called up my friend and made him meet me for a drink in Venice Beach so I could rant about the wrongness of everything, and then "Little Trouble Girl" came on the bar jukebox and I was like, "Ha! Good call, Universe." But really it was validating, to be reminded that I exist on the Kim-and-Kim side of things.

viii. "DISAPPEARER"



Sonic Youth + feelings is a funny thing for me. I think they're one of the few bands I love more for how they sound than for how they make me feel. For the most part I can't really rely on them to shake me out of a black mood or blur bad feelings like heartbreak or homesickness into something sweeter; I just like getting lost in their songs and how they swirl around or scrape against you. But "Disappearer" is heavy on my heart and it always has been. When I was a teenager I loved listening to it in the middle of the night and really indulging its melancholy, to the point where I made myself nostalgic for the version of myself that existed in that moment - kind of insane, but it was wonderful too. And the video is perfect - dreamlike and scary and gorgeous and sad - and Todd Haynes was the perfect person to direct it. You know that part in Velvet Goldmine where the sky's blacker than black but the stars are all shiny and glittery and magic? That's how Sonic Youth makes everything feel sometimes. Dark but shimmering is a good dynamic. It helps.


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Thing of the Week: Guu, Kims & Swims, Jen's Heroes

September 20, 2013, 10:01 am
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LJ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Guu


Guu is the name of a restaurant located very, very close to my house. It's an izakaya. It's as loud as a place could possibly be without making you want to kill yourself, unless you are a Jersey Shore type person who likes to go dancing at very loud nightclubs, or a person who is into noise music. Noise fans and Pauly D would probably walk into Guu and think, "Hmm. What a reasonable volume." 

For no reason other than "I'm stupid," I'd never been to Guu until two weeks ago. It's been open for, like, two and a half years. Very, very weird of me. Very weird choice. 

A cute thing about Guu is, every time a person walks into the restaurant, they cheer for you. Every single staff member. They holler very jovially in Japanese. You have no idea what they're saying, but you can be safe in assuming that it's celebratory. The first time I went to Guu, two weeks ago, was with my Dad. He arrived while I was in the bathroom, and since he can be a little bit gruff sometimes, I was worried that he'd find the greeting obnoxious, but he loved it more than I've ever seen my Dad love something that isn't related to world music, subwoofers, or Breaking Bad. Go Guu! Go Dad! 

The first drink I had at Guu was a sake mojito that comes with a bottle of housemade Guu sodapop. The sodapop tasted like one of those fluoride rinses from a dentist's office, so I switched to Asahi Black, which is now my signature drink (at guu). Asahi Black bottles are made of a very thick black glass. They are a very pleasant weight to hold in one's hands.

My dad and I ordered a set menu plus a side order of the deep-fried octopus balls. One of the first plates we tried was the fried chicken pictured at top left. The batter has soy sauce in it, and it comes with Kewpie mayonnaise for dipping. Not that I'm any huge fried chicken expert or anything, but it's definitely the best fried chicken I've ever eaten. If some Southern-style fried chicken place opened up in Toronto and served Guu's exact fried chicken, everybody would be raving about how it's the best fried chicken in Toronto. Nobody would ever shut up about it. But it kind of flies under the radar at Guu. 

I went back to Guu with Amanda two weeks later (it was yesterday), and we ordered the thing on the right which looks like a candy apple that one of the Lost Boys from Hook would eat. During my Dad and I's Guu experience, the two girls sitting next to us ordered it, and we got really involved in figuring out what it was. We talked to the girls, which is very out of the character for both my father and myself. He's an introvert, and I'm a lone wolf. 

Anyway, it's a deep-fried pumpkin croquette stuffed with a hard-boiled egg and covered with thousand island dressing. I know!!!!

 Here is something called KakiMayo. It is an oyster stuffed with mushrooms, cheese, spinach and garlic mayo. My favorite thing about it was how you could never tell if you were about to eat a mushroom or a chunk of oyster. 

When my dad and I ordered the set menu, it came with a seaweed & tofu salad- the server set it down in front of us and I was like "Boooooooorrrrring," but then I tasted it and realized that it featured the best fucking salad dressing I've ever tasted in my life. I feel like salad dressing at Japanese restaurants is consistently 1 billion times cooler and more delicious than mediocre North American balsamic fucking everything. Can some dipshit at Kraft please figure out that it's time to bottle this shit and then sell it to me? 

My dad and I also had a tuna sashimi that was just so tiny and perfect and elegant that it made me feel comparatively oafish. I feel like a person with more chiseled features should have been eating it. 

And then Amanda and I shared the weirdest thing ever- it's called a Kakuni Pie, and it's a pie, like the little kinds of pies that British and Australian people eat, stuffed with a pork belly that tasted like brisket, served with a gloppyish soy sauce and a little smudge of straight miso paste. While I was eating it I was kind of "Whatevs" but now that it's gone I can't stop thinking about it. The miso against the flaky pastry was one of the least logical flavor combinations I've ever consumed, and I mean that as a compliment.  


The miso black cod on the bottom here was rich and odd as you'd expect. But the sushi on top, which is called Saba Oshizushi, is the real star of the show. It's cured mackerel, pressed and blowtorched. It tastes like ginger and fire and fish. It's light as sunlight and smoky like the smell of a hot dude's leather jacket. And the pressed aspect of it makes the rolls such a joy to eat! They are like little packages, little gifts. My new goal in life is to have tried every single item on the Guu menu, but I'm also going to have to eat the mackerel sushi and fried chicken every time I go. I feel like eating the chicken and the sushi at once, by yourself, would be the most perfect meal known to man, but all the loudness and hijinks are not really conducive to solo dining. 

PS: They also holler when you leave, like they're so sad to see you go, but it's overridden by how INSANELY FUCKING STOKED they were to have had you once at all. 

LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Kims & Swims



On Wednesday last week I saw the Pixies and then on Thursday I saw Body/Head. Both shows were totally killer. I probably never would have gone to see the Pixies but then this guy I'm working for opened up for them (and he was great - he's so great!!) so I went and boy am I glad I did because the Pixies are unstoppable. They just sound really good, like really weirdly good, and this girl next to me brought her dog and another girl held up an actual cigarette lighter during "Hey." I also appreciated that Kim from the Muffs looks pretty much exactly the same now as she did the last time I looked at her, in 1996. Like I think she was wearing the same dress even.

Body/Head was a different experience, more about just leaning against a wall by the side of the stage and drinking this really good/trashy/ice-cold white wine from a plastic tumbler and staring at Kim Gordon and her legs and hands. That's her in that picture, being heavy with her guitar. And here's another picture I took of her. Body/Head was the most intense combination of super-boring and hypnotizing and amazing, I was anxious for it to end and I also wanted it to go on forever. I took like a 17-year break from caring about Kim Gordon but now I just love her more than ever and agree with everything Jen said when she wrote about Kim Gordon in this very space two weeks ago. 

Other things I love right now are chili-powder-dusted watermelon lollipops, the book Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle, Tanya Donelly's new EPs, the grilled cheese + tomato + avocado sandwich at Hermosillo in Highland Park, the spiced peach cobbler at the place next to Hermosillo, and swimming in my pool. I love swimming in my pool, and I love having people over to swim in my pool and drink champagne and making them listen to Helium and Big Star and Devendra and ELO. My friend Anne took this picture of me drinking a cucumber jalapeno margarita after a post-pool shower and I feel pretty encapsulated by it. Summer forevs/JK I'm totally ready for summer to end.


JEN'S THING OF THE WEEK: My Heroes
   


I've been seeing a lot of my heroes lately. Last Friday I saw Tom Scharpling, Julie Klausner, Molly Newman & more reading from music autobiographies. On Sunday I saw YOKO ONO AND THE PLASTIC ONO BAND. I was tearing up before Yoko even got on stage. There were projections of her art films and performances being played before hand. She is such an  inspiration. We are all water. Tonight I'm seeing Patti Smith at the Metropolitan Museum. Next week Divine movies are being played at BAM. I'm absorbing all of this beauty like a sponge or a mushroom.
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Thing of the Week: Manhattans & Justin From Tulsa & More, 300 Feminist Sand Witches, I am Divine

September 27, 2013, 9:49 am
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LJ'S THING OF THE WEEK: It's A Tie Between A Bunch of Different Things



1. Last Sunday I had to run to the Summerhill LCBO in the middle of work to pick us up some fancy tequilas. The Summerhill LCBO is a very fancy place which comes as close as a liquor store can get to feeling exactly like the Metropolitan Museum of Art at Christmastime. While I was there I bought myself a four-pack of mini-bottles of Spumante Bambino. Mini-bottles of Spumante Bambino were what I used to buy from the LCBO near my old house in the dull suburb I was living in the summer I participated in the Ultimate Fashion Challenge. Every Sunday night I would drink three mini-Spumante Bambinos while writing my weekly UFC update and they were perfect then and they are perfect now. On Tuesday night my boyfriend and I chilled on my couch and watched the episode of Mad Men where Abe tells Peggy Olson her shoulders look like an Olympic swimmer's. He drank a can of Stiegl, and I drank a mini-bottle of Spumante Bambino. Life is so fun! 

2. Before my boyfriend and I chilled on my couch and watched the episode of Mad Men where Don Draper grossly bones Megan Calvet for the first time and it's the beginning of the end for old Don Draper, we met for a cocktail at the Hoof Cocktail Bar. I had a Manhattan. Under the menu listing for the Manhattan their cutesy little write-up reads: "Ruins you for other Manhattans," and it's true. I've drank an extremely high amount of Manhattans for being a 28 year old living in the year 2013, and the Hoof Manhattan blows them all out of the water. Today I was walking down the street and I started thinking, "What if this is it for me? What if I'm twenty-eight, and I've already had the best Manhattan I've ever had?" and then I thought, "These are your problems, Laura," and like clicked my heels together in the air or whatever. 

3. Today I was on the phone with iTunes Customer Support for two and a half hours. My customer service representative, or whatever that job is called, was a guy named Justin. He was from Oklahoma- from Tulsa, just outside of Tulsa. I asked him what Tulsa is like, and he said "Not really much of anything," which I thought was cool. But he said that they have a decent music scene, and that a "Hard Rock" was opening soon. When Nadine and Charlie visited me in March we went to the Hard Rock, and I learned a valuable lesson in GENUINELY LOVING Hard Rocks. So I was happy for Justin, about that. Hmmm. What else did I learn about Justin? Well, he's super-polite. He likes working for Apple. His little sister is always trying to encroach upon his employee discount. He called me "Ma'am," and laughed at all my jokes. He asked me a lot of questions about Canada's relationship with the French language. It seemed like "Do all Canadians speak French?" was a question that had been plaguing Justin for his entire life, and today, I answered it for him. While waiting for my computer to reboot after I did a bunch of weird tech support-y shit to it and had recently drank a ton of coffee on a relatively empty stomach, I explained every single detail of the role the French language plays in Canadian culture. No stone was left unturned. I also learned that Justin is working a double today, and as I write this sentence, will be getting off work in exactly nineteen minutes. Bonne nuit, Justin! The excellent customer service you provided was one of the highlights of my week. 

4. Yesterday I read my mom's Tarot cards (I killed it you guys!!!), and today I read my best friend's Tarot cards. It makes so much sense that I do this now. The picture accompanying this article ("article") was taken by my best friend at a Starbucks, earlier tonight. Before I read her Tarot cards in a Starbucks, we went out for dinner at Terroni, where I ate al dente spaghetti with mussels, shrimp, little octopus babies, and squid. Before we ate dinner at Terroni, we sat in the park and drank white wine out of an orange plastic mug and I told her that I want to be a millionaire. She's the King of Swords, and I'm the Queen of Cups. 

5. The scene in the episode of Mad Men called "Tomorrowland" when Peggy finds out Don and Megan are engaged and bursts into Joan's office and Joan asks "Whatever could be on your mind?" and is SO COOL TO ME. Then they talk about some other things, and Joan says "Well, I learned a long time ago not to get all my satisfaction from this job," and Peggy says, "That's bullshit!" and then they laugh together. "Women laughing together" is one of my favorite things in the world. 

LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: 300 Feminist Sand Witches


Someone posted a link on Facebook to an article with "300 Feminist Sandwiches" in the headline and I saw it like three different times and every time I misread it as "300 Feminist Sand Witches." I wish it had said "300 Feminist Sand Witches" - feminists who are not only witches, but witches who live at the beach. Beach witches! What a beautiful concept. But whatever, instead it's a Twitter thing that's a satire of the woman who's making 300 sandwiches so her boyfriend will marry her, and that's fine. There are so many different things to do on the Internet
         Yesterday I finished a really big project and felt great about it, a little worn out but in a satisfying, athletic sort of way, like how male rock critics are always saying The Who make very "athletic rock," which I never understood until writing this sentence. In the afternoon I had an appointment in Santa Monica with a doctor I love so much; I've been going to him since I moved to L.A. ten years ago and he's like if Larry David were a nice, chill, kinda goofy grandpa. Dr. Alfred told me how he'd been very sick ("It almost killed me, kiddo") but now he's on the mend and I'm sad he was sick but so happy he's okay now. After the hospital I walked around a while to wait out rush hour and ended up going down to Santa Monica Pier for the first time in years. My iPod shuffle kept playing Mary Timony, early Madonna, The Stooges, and John Lennon, and it was so windy and the water looked green. Some guy a little or a lot younger than me walked by and held out a rose and asked me for my number but I just took the rose and thanked him and kept walking, which I think was a smart move. I sat and watched the carousel a while and was stoked to see that instead of just all horses there's also a goat and a bunny you can ride on. I love the goat the most since I'm a Capricorn, who are goats that come from the ocean. Then I went to a fried-seafood place and had a plastic cup of wine and read Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle, which is a gorgeous book about poems. My table had a nice view of the roller coaster and I read the words "Painfully shy but with an extraordinary passion for the moors around her" right as "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper came on the jukebox. I liked that. It didn't feel ironic or anything, it just felt sweet and true. A cool day for beach witches.

























JEN'S THING OF THE WEEK: I Am Divine


I saw the documentary I am Divine on Wednesday. It was the New York premiere and it was at BAM. I bought tickets a week in advance, which I felt kind of crazy about since it's a movie. Usually when I buy tickets super early for something no one is there. If I chance it, it sells out. It was so totally sold out by Wednesday morning. I did the right thing! The film was fabulous. I loved it. Divine was/is a national treasure. Like Divine, the movie was hilarious, super fun, outrageous, heartwarming and sad. Divine's death shortly after he received mainstream success in Hairspray and was about to start filming Married with Children (!! I did not know this !!) is so deeply tragic. So unfair! Total bummer. I'm going to continue celebrating Divine this weekend by going to see Female Trouble at BAM on Saturday and listening to the song "I'm So Beautiful"on repeat while I hang up curtain rods on Sunday.
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Thing of the Week: Mary Timony, Video Star; Water

October 4, 2013, 10:05 am
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LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Mary Timony, Video Star


Have you seen the video for "Peace of Mind" by Mikal Cronin? It stars Mary Timony and is beautiful and heartbreaking, but also heart-mending. I watched it when it premiered the other morning and was like, "Ooh, Mary Timony! Mary Timony being a maid, in a motel somewhere in Portland. Mary Timony in a baby-blue maid's uniform being soulful and sad, and then there's also peppermint candies and swimming, and a cool powerful necklace." It seemed predictably lovely and not all that extraordinary, and I loved it but didn't care that much. But then I watched it a second time a little later in the day and it hit me in a different way and I got teary-eyed and loved it a lot, a lot. 


There are so many perfect details. Like, Sprite is a really good choice for a depression soft drink. And of course she would be eating that terrible burrito for lunch. And I love Mary's post-swim shrug, and her hair and her slip, and I love that she cleans up her temper-tantrum mess before she leaves - responsibility is my jam and so punk-rock. And I want that locket, but I also want her to have it. And I don't know anything about Mikal Cronin but that song has really creeped in and this morning I woke up with it in my head: nice achy-hopeful melody, such dreamy violin.






The little girl is so great too. She really got to me. Someone should make a whole movie or novel or story about her and what she's doing in that motel room all alone.



BTW, there's this short film from 2000 that Mary Timony stars in and it's also perfect and wonderful. Mary plays a soulful and sad singer/guitar player who works in a copy shop and loves karaoke, and there's a really adorable scene involving donuts. It's called Dream Machine and you can watch it here.

JEN'S THING OF THE WEEK: Water


1. That's the wikipedia image for water. It's one of my favorite images.
2. I've been sick most of this week, and thus drinking lots of water. And tea. I love water, I drink it all the time like a human should, but whenever I'm sick and I really have to I find it hard to do. Hydrating is fundamental.
3. I started reading Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us this week, which is so beautiful. I started crying reading about the creation of the moon and the ocean. Water, the moon, Mars are all so emotional for me.
4. I started spraying magnesium oil on my legs sometimes in hopes that it helps me sleep better. Magnesium is found in the ocean. Apparently most of us are deficient in it. Somehow, magnesium helps you sleep. I don't know if it works for me.
5. Maybe the first being to walk around on land was a sea-scorpion type deal. A scorpion crab guy, who went between the sea and the land.  When I was reading about this possible sea scorpion I felt so proud to be a water sign.
6. We are all water, duh.

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43 Things We Love About Mary Timony, In Celebration of Mary Timony's 43rd Birthday

October 17, 2013, 10:18 am
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PICTURE BY JEN, WORDS BY JEN & LIZ

1. She makes music that is exactly what I want to hear always at all times.

2. She's a witch magician musician whose songs are spells.

3. She's a Libra.

4. She's got a new band called Ex Hex and their song "Hot/Cold" is a beauty, with serious "Sweet Jane" vibes.

5. One time in Boston in like 2002 she gave me this shirt that she made, because I was nice to her at one of her shows.

6. Another time in Boston in like 2002 or something, Laura Fisher and Marla and Marissa and I went to a thing at the Coolidge Corner Theater where they were showing little puppet-animated movies by Ladislaw Starewicz and Mary Timony did a live score for all of them. It was so neat and fun and the part I remember most vividly is there was a scene where a beautiful girl-puppet went to a ball with a bunch of monster-puppets, and Mary switched the score from her weird Timony-y music to a sample of "You Dropped a Bomb On Me" by the Gap Band. Now every time I hear that song I think of Mary Timony and puppets, and it delights me.

7. Her mind. Her GENIUS MIND.

8. Her hands/fingers working guitar magic

9. She's perfect at doing that Pete Townshend windmill thing when she plays guitar. For some reason there are zero Internet pictures of this happening, but she does it, I swear. I've seen her do it a zillion times.

10. When I saw her play shows after The Golden Dove came out, she used to always do this awesome choreographed dance thing at the end of "Dr. Cat." I can't find any videos of "Dr. Cat" live, because the Internet is apparently mostly useless. But it's always good to watch the "Dr. Cat" video and enjoy the dance routine at the end of that. I like how she's giving a lecture at the beginning, and I like her pajamas and how she sort of looks like Nancy Botwin.

11. The way she hops out of the frame after the first chorus in the video for "Electric Band" is both whimsical and divine. Plus I like how she's superlazy at baseball. FYI, "Electric Band" is directed by the same women who directed Mary in the video for "Peace of Mind" by Mikal Cronin, which I'm still crying over a little.

12. Speaking of "Electric Band," did you know that Mary Timony can make it rain...in your mind? True.



(image courtesy of Laura Fisher)

13. "Look a ghost in the eye everyday" - a beautiful lyric & good life advice

14. I Believe in Elves hat worn in The Golden Dove insert

15. The Cat Mask.

16. The Spells.

17. It's so perfect that The Spells were called The Spells, right?

18. When she wears her hair half-up-half-down, it's transcendent. A prime example is the video for "Pat's Trick," which features some cool angry gardening, and also the video for "Superball." If I were into writing "think pieces," I'd so write a think piece about half-up-half-down hair as power symbol in early- to mid-'90s alt-pop. (See also: Juliana Hatfield in the video for "Out There" by Blake Babies, Evan Dando in the video for "Into Your Arms" by the Lemonheads. POWER. Quiet/heavy/tender power that comes from Massachusetts.) 

19. It should be noted that Mary was also rocking some fierce half-up-half-down hair when she and Rebecca from Wild Flag played the Friendship Game with Laura Fisher for the Huffington Post. Fab fingernails too.

20. Even though she's not from New England she embodies that dreamy-melancholic New England spirit just as good as a native New Englander. I like how she's chosen to show off her Boston pride here, with a gorgeous Aerosmith shirt. 

21. Every lyric on The Magic City

22. Every song on The Magic City

23. Every second of The Magic City

24. The laid-back way in which she invokes the magical

25. She's so ace at writing lyrics that sound really perfect for hating losery-dudes; one of my faves is the line in "I'm a Witch" that goes "Did I tell you I'm not your bitch on loan?" And last year I was going to write a thing about how "XXX" by Helium is a killer breakup song, but then I didn't write it, but Jen made this beautiful thing that everyone should look at:



26. But she's also great at pickup lines. Like, "I wanna fly through all your trees" in "Sharpshooter" off of the amazing album The Shapes We Make is really the only pickup line I'd ever consider using. It's a good progression from "I want you, can't you see how I play dead?" in "The Dryad and the Mule" from The Golden Dove.

27. Autoclave. Just everything about Autoclave.

28. Mary T-$ is her perfect social media name.

29. Her Instagram is adorbs. She takes pix of great things like her cat inside a kick drum, and her beautiful Orange amp. Also because of her Instagram I know that last Saturday she made pear tarts. Pear tarts, guys! From scratch!

30. God, I just found my copy of the No Guitars EP a little while ago and it's so good, such an underappreciated little gem in my life. But I think maybe my favorite Timony album of any kind is Mountains, her first solo record. It's got "The Valley of One Thousand Perfumes," which might be my number-one Mary song, and also "Fire Myself," which for sure is in my top ten. The way she sings the word "fear" at 2:12: god. So deep.

31. Truly walks the valley of 1,000 perfumes and what the scent of her essence is cannot be defined. It's everything at once and also super specific.

32. The scene where she does karaoke in the movie Dream Machine is a heartbreaker and so wonderful. She looks so tough too, waiting for her turn to sing and drinking her Budweiser and writing in her notebook. 

33. She manages to make explosions in songs not annoying at all, but beautiful and funny on "Medieval People."

34. Hard Times Are Hard

35. Her commitment to her fair skin. She must wear SPF always, which is not easy to do, really.


37. Just such rad style in general: these pink pants! This chunky rainbow-y hooded sweater! And the pigtails, oh my gosh. I could write a book about Mary Timony's pigtails and I kind of already did, but it got destroyed when NoGoodForMe.com got hacked. Terrible.

38. A nice showcase for Mary Timony's pigtails: this little MTV clip of her painting pottery and talking about the then-forthcoming Magic City. And, speaking of the time in history when The Magic City was still "forthcoming," my friend Mason sent me this tape last week and I swooned and swooned.


39. So many of the Timony songs that I hold dearest are from this weird batch of pre-Dirt of Luck demos that Laura Fisher sent me a couple years ago. Apparently they're called the Little Bird Girl Demos, and you can listen to lots of them here. Sometimes when I'm writing fiction and I need to slip into a dreamy headspace, I listen to a playlist of all those songs and every Belly B-side I've ever been able to get my hands on. Works like a charm every time.

40. She teaches guitar to young girls. I can't wait to hear and love their bands.

41. She makes October & November sound even better.


43. Her voice when she sings "This life is rough/Be strong, hang tough" in the last seconds of "Friend to J.C.," and also her voice anytime in any song ever, her beautiful wonderful life-changing magic-powerful VOICE that is such a gift to everyone in the whole wide weird world
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Thing of the Week: The Decadence, Richard Hell & Harissa Toast, Salem, MA

October 18, 2013, 10:08 am
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LJ'S THING OF THE WEEK: The Decadence


Last week, I went to London. London, England! The greatest place in the world, or rather, the place in the world that is most like how I need for things to be. I had a lot of "excellent adventures" while I was on my trip (I put "excellent adventures" in quotes to clarify that do I mean it in a Bill & Ted's way), but I've got some more involved writing about my London trip coming up on SFW soon, so I'm not going to blow my blogging-about-my-London-trip load now. I am purposely writing this blog post in a laundromat to prevent myself from getting too London-digressy. 

I went to Harrods on my first day in London. I was deliriously exhausted. Harrods is a good place to go when you're deliriously exhausted: it's both visually-stimulating and warm. It feels like you're hanging out in the grown-up version of Santa's Workshop the way you imagined it as a kid.

I mostly hung out in the food section, where I bought the Harrods-brand version of both my favorite foods: champagne and strawberry jam. I didn't get to taste the strawberry jam until I got home last Sunday. I was totally ready to have it be mostly average but still pretend that it was the best strawberry jam I've ever tasted because I wanted it to be. But as it turned out, it really was the best strawberry jam I've ever tasted! This morning I ate it on an English muffin with dark chocolate almond butter, and then I died. I instinctively died. My brain was like, "Well, I guess that was the point!" and then it shut off. Bye, guys. 

The other thing I got at Harrods was a copy of the Harrods Christmas catalogue, which was free. It's the fanciest free thing I've ever had. It's called "Hampers & Gifts 2013," and it showcases all the different hampers (I guess "hamper" is British for "very intense gift basket") Harrods offers in descending order by price. The hampers all have cool names like "The Opulence," "The Grosvenor," "The Harrodian," and "The Decadence." The Decadence is the most expensive Christmas-hamper in the catalogue. It costs twenty thousand pounds. 

Here is what The Decadence is made up of: one bottle of cognac, one bottle of 30-year-old single malt Scotch, two bottles of champagne, twenty-one bottles of wine, a "top tier tea gift box," some coffee (boring), 8 kg of iberico ham, five other types of fancy cured meats, chorizo, four types of cheese, in addition to another cheese offering named "cheese selection," smoked salmon, duck foie gras with truffle, goose foie gras with truffle, beluga caviar, oscietra caviar, a seasonal fruit selection (boring), a Christmas cake, a Christmas pudding (in a ceramic bowl), marmalade made with gold leaf, some olive oil, 30-year-old balsamic vinegar, a selection of mince pies, three types of biscuits (one is "dark chocolate and violet-coated), two types of jam, brandy butter, honey with lavender blossom, another kind of honey, three types of crackers, blackberry balsamic vinegar, mustard, chutney, a selection of chocolate mints, cocoa-dusted almonds, Christmas crackers, a cheese slate, cheese board, a cheese knife set, a glass dome, and (last but not least) a ham knife. 

Don't you wish you had a Decadence? Who do you think buys the Decadence? The only people I can think of that I am certain buy the Decadence are the Royal Family and Richard Branson. And I suspect that Sting, Mick Jagger, and/or Sir Anthony Hopkins may have bought a Decadence or two in their time. But Paul McCartney has never bought a Decadence, because of the foie. 

Finding out that The Decadence exists has greatly enriched the arena of my life dedicated to fantasizing about extreme wealth. I'd really like to get myself to a place where in about ten years or so I can buy my boyfriend a Decadence for Christmas, but not even as his main Christmas present. It would be more like, "Oh, should we buy a couple of Decadences this year?" "Yeah, sure, they're always nice to have around." And then I'll remember what it felt like to be myself right now, just some poor little sucker writing a blog post about gold leaf marmalade, and I'll glance around the room, taking in the gilt and splendor of all my worldly possessions and wonder if maybe if things were better back when I was young and hungry, full of hopes and dreams. And then the Ghost of Christmas Past arrives, and says something about money being a cruel mistress. Gosh. It's gonna be a real doozy, this life of mine. 


LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Harissa Toast & Richard Hell


On Monday my friends and I went to half-off-oyster night at Hungry Cat in Hollywood. The joke of the evening was "Hey guys remember when we went to half-off-oyster night and ended up spending about eight million dollars?" (Amirah made this joke), due to the fact that we all ate and drank our faces off for hours. My first drink was a greyhound, which came with a svelte piece of candied grapefruit that was like some super-glamorous version of the candied grapefruit at the Sweet Factory at Glendale Galleria. We ordered many oysters and they were exciting and overwhelming in exactly the way you want oysters to be, but my favorite part of that was the shiny-jagged shells all piled up on the plate afterward: having a course end with a tiny mountain of empty seashells makes me feel like some sort of sea-folk royalty, like if Ariel liked to really hog out every now and then - which she probably doesn't, but oh well.
        For dinner I drank a thing of red wine and ate a giant bowl of lamb sausage, clams, garbanzo beans, and charred broccoli, all topped off by two pieces of toast just drowned in harissa aioli. We were sitting outside (at a table behind Dita Von Teese!) and it was dark and I couldn't see a damn thing, so every time I dug my fork into the bowl I had no idea what I'd end up pulling out. It was a cool game, and the lamb was smoky and wonderful, but the toast...OH MY GOD THE TOAST. That harissa aioli was a revelation, like Sydney Fife says about Peter Klaven's sun-dried tomato aioli in I Love You, Man - only there's no way the sun-dried tomato aioli was even one-zillionth as revelatory as my harissa aioli, and not just because sun-dried tomatoes are bullshit. My harissa aioli was creamy-rich but zingy and fiery and wildly garlicky, and the toast was just perf, all crusty and crackly but spongy and so good at soaking up the harissa-aioli perfection. It's kind of insane how much of the sauce they ladled on there - whoever prepped that dish is a generous angel. The dish, by the name, was named Lamb & Clams, which is pretty cute. My supper was poetry and piggy heaven.
        The only thing I love more than harissa toast right now is Richard Hell, whose autobiography I finished on Wednesday and it's a fine read. Also on Wednesday I watched the movie Smithereens, which stars Richard Hell, the My So-Called Life English teacher/yearbook-committee advisor with the depressing bra strap, and Chris Noth, who plays a teenage prostitute with too much eye makeup. Richard Hell plays this caddish punk-singer guy whose apartment walls are plastered with pictures of himself and who is often singing Richard Hell songs under his breath. We're not supposed to like him but I loved him, because Richard Hell has bright, rascally eyes and a cool, easy grace to the way he talks and the way he moves around. There's one part where he's hanging out with a girl in a bar and she gets up from the table and he shakes some of his Budweiser out of the bottle and into his palms and then uses it to style his hair. I really hope that move was improvised on Richard Hell's part, and I'm sure it was. Richard Hell is an elegant genius; I'd share my harissa toast with him anytime.

JEN'S THING OF THE WEEK: Salem, MA

I made my annual sojourn to Salem, MA this week with fellow Scorpios Joan & Caitlin. Regina is currently living in a cabin in the middle of Canada so she couldn't make it. We all love Salem with our entire souls. I think maybe it casts a spell on us. We're really totally obsessed by it.


Something you will learn in Salem is that all houses should be purple or black.


You'll also learn that Hag Stones are things that exist and that your can call your nightmares Night Hags! This name change makes me feel infinitely better about that night hag I had a few months ago where I felt like I needed to cut off my own feet.


I thought I would buy a crystal ball on this trip but they're kind of overpriced. I took this picture and bought a book called Meditation & Astrology, a pink salt candle holder, incense matches, incense, candles, crystals, a moon phase calendar, a map of Salem and a Salem mug instead.


We ate this perfect meal of a delicious split pea soup Caitlin loves with drizzled za-taar oil, a salad, and super thinly sliced roasted turnips and pumpkin beers. Clearly the 3 beautiful candles represent our friendship and our undying love of Salem. 


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Jeff Goldblum Turns 61 Today! Here Are 61 Reasons Why We Are Eternally In Love With Him

October 22, 2013, 10:41 am
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PICTURE BY JEN, WORDS BY JEN & LIZ

1. So tall
2. Crazy eyes
3. Flailing hands and arms at all time
4. eyebrow raise extension of crazy eyes
5. his current haircut
6. his current style
7. his brief marriage to Geena Davis
8. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
9. The Fly, even when he’s so gross
10. Majestic Perviness
13.  as a child he would write "Please God, let me be an actor" in the steam on the shower door every time he showered and then he'd erase it.
14. OMG, Jeff, as a child.
15. Long Legs
16. His way of speaking.
17. The little robe he wears in The Big Chill
18. the glasses he wears in The Big Chill 
19. Plays piano
20. Seems to work his piano playing into anything he can
21. including the failed-sitcom pilot thing that Sarah Silverman just shared with the world this morning, and it's delightful and why can't it be a real show, with Jeff playing piano and singing in every episode?
22. His weirdly dyed hair on Law & Order Criminal Intent
23. HIS STARE
24. Way he moves his fingers when talking/thinking
27. excellent head shot
28. duh
29. Laura Dern water-drop-on-hand scene in Jurassic Park
30. Laura Dern & Jeff Goldblum dated IRL!!!!!
31. "I forgot my mantra"
32. when he adorbs-ly played Bob's long-lost brother on SESAME STREET
34. basically the most beautiful man who's ever existed


36. when I saw his jazz band at Rockwell in the spring and he brought up all these hot women to sing with him and insanely flirted with each of them, including a woman named Ariel, to whom he was all "Ah Ariel, The Little Mermaid, I wanna be part of your world oooh mmmmm, yes..."
37. also at Rockwell he kept scat-singing but not even remotely in time to the music
38. also at some point he sang the Family Ties theme but didn't really know the words
41. aww Jeff and the Wilson Brothers, total dream trio
42. speaking of Wes Anderson: Jeff in the new Wes Anderson! 
43. his facial hair in the new Wes Anderson, WHATTTTTTTT IS HAPPENING
44. oh my god the comedy gold of Jeff on Conan O'Brien's "Secrets" thing
45. has own action figure
47. wears his sunglasses at night which I know from that time I saw him at a party and ran away and died because he was too beautiful
49. Look at those shoes! So whimsical and fly
51. especially the part in "7 Minutes in Heaven" when he pretends to be seductively ordering a meal at Wendy's (it's at the 3:20 mark)
52. I bet that's exactly how Jeff orders his meals at Wendy's
53. Jeff's suit in this beautiful photo that David Brothers so kindly alerted us to
56. looks way cool wearing a cravat
60. MEETING HIM


61. the part when Jen met Jeff and he mimed eating snacks and also everything else about Jeff Goldblum, the most perfect man in the world forever and ever and ever
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The Strawberry Fields Whatever Diet: Laura Jane In London

October 23, 2013, 12:47 pm
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ILLO BY JEN/WORDS BY LJ

Two weeks ago I went on a solo vacay to London! I didn't do a ton of soul-searching, and I mean that as a compliment. I spent a lot of money, and did a lot of writing while drinking. It was heavenly. And now here is the sort of intense journal I kept of everything I ate and drank while I was there:

October 9th, 2013 

The first thing I “ate” in London was an iced Americano from the Gatwick airport Costa. If you've ever been to England, you know what Costa is- they're everywhere. They asked me if I wanted milk in it and I said no but then when they gave it to me it seemed like the entire thing was made of milk. It was very, very foamy. I guess Americano means a different thing here.

I was going to take a taxi straight to my hotel but a very kind elderly gentleman wearing a topaz ring told me it would cost ninety-seven pounds and that I should take a train to Victoria Station and catch a taxi from there instead. I was like “He loves me! He’s the sweetest person ever! What a good omen from London!” but now I am writing these sentences while sitting on that very train, and it seems like maybe it’s just a really obvious thing that everyone knows you’re supposed to do, and it was just sad to him that I'd missed the memo.

At the airport I thought about buying a little meat pie but ultimately decided that wasting a meal in London on eating at the airport would be a very lame thing to do.

The train ride really delivered. There were a couple vistas of the countryside, some hills, a couple cows, scratchy little Paul songs of houses made of brick- it all looked exactly how I needed it to look. I saw a lumpy old man gardening and my knees were aching and I was delirious—half-exhausted, half-jacked on my weird coffee-foam, and also starving— but I was warm inside, and thought of the slogan written on the back of the bottle of my favorite cheap champagne brand: You have made the perfect choice. 

I ate a sandwich at the Pret A Manger in Victoria Station, which was maybe stupider than eating a meat pie at the airport, conceptually stupider. But it was actually a pretty special sandwich: “mature cheddar and pickles.” There was an onion jam, or something that was like an onion jam, involved. It was definitely the number one time in my entire life I’ve needed to pee most while eating.

After eating and peeing I decided to be the coolest person in the world and not take a cab to my hotel. I decided to get myself there by foot and Underground, which I did: confidently, successfully, and carrying along a heavy rolly suitcase. Everyone in the entire world was extremely proud of me. I should be receiving my medal soon.

I got off the tube at Bayswater and hung out at a Starbucks for a bit. I remembered that exact Starbucks from the time my boyfriend and I looked up my hotel on Google Street View and I was like, “Oh cool! And there’s even a Starbucks!”- as if there possibly wouldn’t be. I drank a normal iced Americano and wrote my loved ones some emails to let them know that I didn't die in a plane crash.And then I walked to Boots, where I remembered that British Diet Cherry Coke is the best thing in the world. Now I am drinking it in my hotel lobby, waiting for my room to become available.

Now it’s almost five hours later, and I’m drinking a mini-bottle of Harrods-brand champagne in my hotel room. I was at Harrods several hours ago, and all I did was look at the food- if I wanted to look at handbags I can’t afford, I would have gone to New York City. #boom

I went to the bakery/Dean & DeLuca-y part of Harrods- there were tons of petit-fours and also sushi rolls that looked like petit-fours and brioche stuffed with berries and custard and pretzels stuffed with asiago cheese and some pretty good-lookin’ Iberico ham, but I had to pee so bad that it overruled my hunger that time— a big theme of my day was “hunger vs. peeing.” The washroom was in the wine cellar section and I thought it might be chill to drink a glass of wine in the Harrods wine bar- it was kind of insane to me, at that point, that it was almost 3 PM London time and I still hadn’t had a drink- but I was too preoccupied by my needing a baked good. I rode the escalator back up to the bakery and noticed these doughnuts that were frosted with RED GLITTER FROSTING. 





They were about as Elizabeth Barkery as London has ever been I bet. For some stupid reason I didn’t buy one, nor did I buy one of the aforementioned brioches, nor did I buy a chocolate chip scone. I bought a red velvet brownie; it was boring. In my life I will periodically try and prove to myself that red velvet flavored things are as awesome as they sound like they should be, but they NEVER ARE. 

I bought Harrods-brand champagne and Harrods-brand strawberry jam at Harrods and then wandered around Knightsbridge freaking out over how beautiful Knightsbridge is until I found a pub called The Bunch of Grapes. I ordered a pint of Stella Artois and drank it while freaking out over how beautiful The Bunch of Grapes was. I barely listened to any music the entire time I was in London. I was so overwhelmed by all the beauty that I felt like my head was going to explode. The last thing I needed was further stimulus.


I wandered around and played a game with myself where I wasn’t allowed to ask a stranger where a tube station was, I just had to wander around until I found one. I finally ended up at Earl’s Court and took the train back to Bayswater. I ate Thai food for dinner- green curry chicken with sticky rice, and a hearty glass of rose wine. Liz and I drank rose when we went out for Thai food the first time I ever went to LA, four years ago, and ever since then Thai and rose kind of “go together” in my mind.

The sticky rice came in this cute bamboo pot and inside the pot it was wrapped up in white plastic. It was as good of green curry chicken and sticky rice as I’ve ever had; it’s all about the same. Anyway, now I’m in my hotel room chillin with my Harrods brand champers. It’s pretty bready for champers, or marzipan-y, like some bready dessert with almonds in it, frosted with marzipan. Now I’m going to check in with what British TV is like and if it sucks watch Mad Men.

October 10th

I slept for ten hours and woke up at 7 AM. I thought I was going to take myself out for breakfast at this very fancy-looking place called Hawksmoor that I’d found on the Internet— a section of their cocktail menu is dedicated to “anti-fogmatics,” which are early-morning cocktails: what a concept! One of them is called the Marmalade Cocktail and it’s gin, Campari, lemon juice, orange bitters, and marmalade. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and wanted to get myself one, but then I was scared of being alone in an aggressively male/aggressively rich environment with a million English businessmen in tailored grey suits, surrounded by the din of their accents, occasionally picking out business-y words like "global" and "initiative"--- and also was too hungry to wait for myself to get there. I decided to eat the continental breakfast served in the basement of my hotel, but then I checked it out and it looked really depressing, and was not even free. So I whatevsed it and went to Starbucks. I was sad because they gave me the wrong cookie— I wanted the chocolate chip shortbread, but then they just gave me the boring regular chocolate chip, but then I used it to scoop up my latte foam, which redeemed the whole experience for me. I don’t know why I ordered a latte, though- it’s weird how when you’re in a new place you just do weird outside-your-comfort-zone things for no reason. Your rules all break themselves. But I couldn’t finish my latte, it’s more of an outside-my-liking-zone thing. I’m a grown-ass woman and there’s way better shit to drink out there than milk.

I walked around Hyde Park and took an extremely convoluted tube ride to Covent Garden. I looked around and found a little green Starbucks circle jutting out the side of some beautiful building that has existed for hundreds and hundreds of years and vacillated between feeling sorry for the building and grateful for the Starbucks. An annoying thing about Starbucks in England is they don’t have a bold roast option: it’s Pike Place or nada. Pike Place, nada, or some thing called a “flat white”? I don’t know what a flat white is. 

I wandered around Covent Garden drinking my Pike Place until I became starving and went to Balthazar. My rave review of Balthazar goes: it's the most perfect place I've ever been! And while I was there I ate the most perfect meal I've ever eaten, and had the most perfect time I've ever had! Here are some pictures of Balthazar being so psychotically gorgeous that it makes me want to commit suicide:





There is something about it that just gets into your heart. It gets into your bloodstream and shoulders. Everything about it is right, and it makes you feel like you've done everything right in your life, like how could you not have, to have gotten yourself there. The service steals all the most luxurious and romantic aspects of old-school fine dining and then erases all the stuffy ones. And then the food is just so good that you could be eating it inside a prison cell and you'd still feel like you'd never fucked up once! I drank a mimosa, one of the better mimosas I’ve drunk, though the difference between a good mimosa and a bad mimosa is pretty infinitesimal in my opinion. The dish I ate was a piece of sourdough toast—they bake it in-house— topped with scrambled eggs, which were PERFECT, and then they put a clump of Cornish crab meat on top of the eggs, it was so fishy, and stringy, and PERFECT- and then the whole thing was dressed with watercress and crème fraiche— 

It was PERFECT. Do you understand? I worry that you might not understand. 





The bread was charred and soggy (not “charred but soggy”) and the watercress packed an insane garlic punch. The crème fraiche melted into the eggs, which were PERFECT (I know I already said the eggs were perfect, but I wanted to say it again), and it was the PERFECT amount of rich, a really refined rich that would never make your stomach do weird things— it was the Paul to the crab’s John. Or maybe Paul was the eggs... George was definitely the watercress.

After I finished eating, I asked my server if I could see a wine list. I was pretending like I was the richest and classiest person who ever lived. I think I said, “I’d like to see a wine list, if you don’t mind,” and I ordered myself an eleven-pound glass of Chablis. It was a hefty glass of Chablis. It took me an hour to finish it. I wrote on my laptop, a story about a birthday, and it might have been the happiest I ever was. 

I didn’t have anything again for a lot of hours. I had half a coffee, an Americano, from a place called Caffe Nero. I was like, “Can I get a coffee?” and the girl made me feel so stupid. She was like, “What kind of coffee?” and nodded her chin at the list. Americano, Latte, Cappuccino… it’s really hard to order “a coffee” here. I chose an Americano and then realized they had drip coffee but didn’t care enough to change my order. But it’s insane that they had drip coffee on the menu and she still didn’t understand that that was what I wanted. 

I took a bunch of subways all over the place and ended up at another Caffe Nero. I bought a sparkling water so I could use their Wi-Fi, but then their Wi-Fi was all weird and so I found another Starbucks and just used their Wi-Fi without buying anything. In my head I thought, “HONESTLY, STARBUCKS CORPORATION, I HAVE GIVEN YOU SO MUCH.” I felt a sense of entitlement.

It was a bit of a struggle to get there, but I met my friend Brooke for dinner & drinx at a pub called the Exmouth Arms in Exmouth Market. I had three beers and an order of fish & chips b/c when in rome. All three of the beers were IPAs but I only remember the second two. The first was average but then the second and third were something called the Number Eight, I think? It was light and sweet. Hoppy beers can be so feminine sometimes. The fish component of the fish & chips was a lot better than I expected it to be. I was pretty drunk, but it tasted like something, as in, it didn’t just taste like just fish and oil. Somebody, some chef, had obviously put some effort into coming up with some combination of spices that made it better than your usual fish & chips, and I noticed.


The fries were “moderately better than usual.” I had a third of one of Brooke’s sliders, which was coleslaw and aubergine. It’s so smart to say aubergine instead of eggplant. Brooke helped me out with a lot of the fries. 

We went to another bar, or pub I guess, called the Queen’s Head. I drank a bottle of a darker IPA. I went home and went to sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night, and barfed.




October 11th 

 I was in a shitty mood when I woke up because I barfed. I found it difficult to choose an outfit to wear. 

I went to the Kensington High Street Whole Foods for "brunch" so that I could eat some vegetables and counteract the fish and chips and beer. I swear the Kensington High Street Whole Foods buffet has not changed one single ingredient in their line up since I ate at the Kensington High Street Whole Foods buffet six years ago. I probably ate almost the exact same meal: soba noodles, curried cauliflower, beets & quinoa, one dolma, and a few chunks of teriyaki tofu. I had a blood orange San Pellegrino. And I’d also had a Grande Pike Place on my way, which I drank half of and then threw out because I felt guilty bringing a Starbucks coffee into Whole Foods. I bought an issue of Grazia to read while I ate. Grazia is the best magazine in the world—it’s a tabloid AND a fashion magazine.

I bought an Americano at Whole Foods after I finished eating. Then I went to this really creepy antiques market with incredibly bad vibes, just all these old ladies and no music on, cufflinks that cost two hundred and seventy five pounds and I left and it started raining and got really cold and everything felt pretty terrible. I took the tube to Oxford Circus and tried on a bunch of dresses at Topshop that looked really good on me but didn’t buy them because I was in a headspace of feeling disgusted by the concept of consumerism in general. I thought about going to a museum but instead went home to my hotel so I could dry off and chill out. I stopped into Starbucks on my way, and fulfilled my two-day-long dream of eating the chocolate chip shortbread cookie the Starbucks employee from yesterday didn’t understand that I wanted. I ate it under an awning in the rain and then had my eyebrows threaded. I came home and opened up the door to my hotel room and saw that there was a giant bouquet of flowers on the windowsill. I walked over to check it out and noticed that there was a bottle of champagne in a bag next to the flowers. I figured out that it was from my boyfriend and started to cry. I drank a couple teacups of champagne and then decided to go back to Topshop and buy myself a dress and then stop into this other store I’d walked past which sold a red plaid tie and buy my boyfriend a red plaid tie.

Instead I went to Liberty London and had my life changed in a way that I will explain in a later blog post, or maybe just hold inside my heart. I’m sure a red plaid tie will turn up again.

I took the tube back to good old Bayswater and stopped into my “local,” the Bayswater Arms. It’s a pretty standard pub, but I think that the most standard pub in London is still significantly cooler and more beautiful than the greatest bar in all of Toronto. I don't even know what I think the greatest bar in all of Toronto is. 

I was a little nervous to come into a pub alone on a Friday night and set up shop with my laptop but it’s so different here— I am one of many. I drank a pint of London Pride which was eh, then bought myself a bottle of Stella Artois “Cidre,” which is a thing that exists! It was much bigger than a regular bottle, but much smaller than a forty. I’m just finishing up the end of it now. I’m pretty drunk. The pub is Hallowe’en-themed- I mean, because it’s Hallowe’en. There’s a lot of streamers, of black and orange bats and white and black skulls, and some tissue paper cobwebs. Everyone here is from somewhere else. I was thinking of staying longer and ordering myself a Scotch egg, but I’m not going to. I’ve been here since I wrote the word “anti-fogmatics.” It’s time to move on.

I ended up going to an Indian restaurant down the street. The first time I ever ate Indian food was in London, with my mom when I was eleven. I remember that the restaurant was very skinny and so long, the servers could barely walk down the aisles. We had some chicken in a cream sauce with fruits and nuts and raisins, and it blew the fuck out of our minds. So I guess I kind of wanted to eat Indian food in homage to that. 

My server was obviously the owner of the restaurant and clearly made his living bamboozling tourists out of psychotic amounts of money using his crazy upsells. I watched him do it, and then he tried to do it to me, but once he realized it wasn’t working on me he started ignoring me- like, in the middle of speaking to me. He could not have given less of a fuck about me if he tried. He was so zoned out of interacting with me that he didn’t even notice I ordered sparkling water. He was like “Okay, tap water,” and then brought me a glass of tap water.

I had lamb tikka masala and rice. I wanted it to be bad so I could hate the server more, but it was fucking delicious. The lamb was soft and fragrant and had kind of a pounded out vibe to it. I ate it with pickles and tzatziki. In the end, I kind of respected the server. 

 I went back to my hotel room and drank a cup of ginger tea. I brought it to London with me.

October 12th

I woke up and had a cup of dirty-tasting instant coffee in my hotel room and then walked to the Bayswater Starbucks, where I had a Venti Pike Place and a “granola bar,” which was not something that we’d call a granola bar in North America. We’d call it, like, a harvest square. I took the tube to Bethnel Green and bought a bottle of lemon/lime Volvic to make change for the bus. I had one sip of it and it was disgusting so I threw it out. I rode on the top deck of a double-decker bus and thought how sad it must be to have lived in London for so long that you’ve become dead to the concept of double-decker buses and sit on the bottom deck because it’s easier.

I did a very impressive job of navigating myself by underground, bus, and foot to Jude and Jessica’s house. They opened their door in a very cute way with Jude poking his head around the door like a spy. I met their baby, Sunday; she’s definitely one of the littlest babies I’ve ever interacted with in my life. I never held her. I’m pretty scared of accidentally killing babies.

Jude and Jessica led me through Broadway Market and London Fields to a “surprise” location. There was lots of talk about “the surprise”; it was a sweet and funny joke that we were all immediately comfortable with riffing on. Here was the surprise: It was Violet!




I love Violet. It was cozy and sunny and also delicious, and I’m not just saying that to make Jude and Jessica feel good about the surprise, although they should feel good about the surprise: it was a good surprise. Jessica came up with the very smart idea of having two courses at Violet, so I copied her. I had a slice of quiche with potato, scallion (maybe), and something else, probably a type of cheese. 




It was great, but overshadowed by the cinnamon bun I ate for dessert.




It tasted like Christmas! I think there was some sort of tea in there. Some tea, and maybe allspice. It was particularly satisfying because on my plane ride from Toronto we’d been given a complimentary “continental breakfast” at some cool time like maybe 6 in the morning, which was one of the saddest meals I’d ever eaten in my life: a cup of lukewarm vanilla yogurt served with a little plastic cup of fake orange juice, one of those cups where you peel back a foil top, and then this shitty, dry and tiny cinnamon bun that NOBODY WOULD EVER THINK WAS GOOD EVER. Why would any evil human ever go into business making a piece of food so obviously sawdusty and appealing to NO ONE? So it was very necessary that I exorcise myself of that negative cinnamon bun energy and reclaim The Cinnamon Bun. (Jessica as her sweet had a slice of coconut cake and Jude had a square of carrot cake. I also had a sparkling lemonade. Great choices, everybody.)

After we said goodbye I thought I was going to ride a double-decker train around London but then I was scratching my leg and accidentally opened up an old cut I’d got from shaving a few weeks ago. It bled dramatically. I was really into the bus plan so I tried to ignore it, but then the blood started to itch me, so I got off the bus, and walked to Liverpool Street Station to wash the blood off. Then I walked to Bank Street, where I caught the tube to Oxford Circus, where I bought the dress at Topshop that I hadn’t bought when I was “disgusted by commercialism” one day earlier. I decided that while I was in the nabe I was going to walk to the Air Street Hawksmoor to drink my ear-worm of a Marmalade Cocktail and face my three-day-long fear of feeling vaguely scrappy in a predominantly grey-business-suited environment. I coached myself through my pre-Hawksmoor jitters by reminding myself that it was Saturday and way less people wear business suits on Saturdays than they do on most. But then this crazy thing happened where I walked back and forth up and down Air Street several times and Hawksmoor just WASN'T there! I guess it was like one of those alleys in Harry Potter that disappears for people who aren’t wearing business suits. So then I came up with this very beautiful idea, this very crafty and beautiful idea that the Marmalade Cocktail would now become this sacred thing for me, my Magic Other (of cocktails)— the one thing in the world that would for sure keep me coming back to London.

I took the train to South Kensington and wandered around looking for some place to sit and magically stumbled back upon my favorite pub in the entire world- that’s right, The Bunch of Grapes!! The Bunch of Grapes is a Harry Potter alley that works exclusively in my favor. I found myself a nice little two-seater, set up shop, drank two pints of Strongbow, and got some writing done. I went back to my neighbourhood and ate a really stupid dinner at a really stupid Thai restaurant that was so stupid and shitty I deleted the picture I took of it in protest of my having eaten it. 

October 13th

I woke up at 6:30 in the morning and drank a mud puddle cup of coffee in my hotel room. I took a taxi to Victoria Station in the rain.

On the Gatwick Express I drank a cup of Starbucks-branded coffee that came out of a packet. I took this photo of myself, which my dad called “the humblest selfie ever taken.” 




I arrived at the airport and navigated my way back to the stand that sold little meat pies. It was called “West Cornish Pasty Company,” and is obviously a chain. An interesting fact about pasties is that the a is pronounced like the a in pasta and not like the a in pastry. I only know this is true because when I was coolly chowing down on my pasty while waiting in line at baggage check the Gatwick employee was like “Your pasty sure smells good,” and I coolly responded, “It tastes good, too!” It was a really effective pasty commercial I spontaneously happened to be the star of.

I opted for a medium-size “traditional” pasty, because I was intimidated by the act of ordering a pasty and it seemed like the safest possible combination of words for me to say. My pasty was a flaky yellow half-moon made of buttery dough that sure was born to be penetrated by a person’s teeth, stuffed with skirt steak (I only know that it was “skirt” steak because I’m reading the description of the pasty on the Pasty Company website. Please don’t think I’m some kind of crazy meat aficionado who knows what cut of steak something is just by eating it while navigating my way around an AIRPORT), potatoes (I don’t remember there being potatoes in it. The website is helpful), onions (I remember the onions! They were amazing! They were sweet-sweet and brown.), and swede (“What is this mysterious ingredient?” I wondered to myself while eating a swede bit, “It’s not carrot, but I’m just going to let it be carrot in my mind. I’d rather just go with it rather than contemplate this subject any further.” As it turns out, swede is “turnip.” I might not have ever eaten a turnip before. What a big day I had!)

I was buying some UK tabloids at the airport and I thought about buying some UK candy bars to bring back home with me but I didn't. I flew back home to Canada, and ate Thanksgiving dinner at my Dad's. 

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All The Best Songs I've Eaten This October

October 31, 2013, 11:00 am
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BY LIZ

I don't really believe in "mindful eating," that thing of eating quietly and contemplatively and with total focus on the act of nourishment or whatever. I think it's better and smarter to intensify the goodness of an eating experience with music that makes your head feel full of lovely things. So these are five new-ish songs I was obsessed with this month, along with some food that tasted extra-wonderful while listening to them. I'm really excited to eat November. 

"AVANT GARDNER" BY COURTNEY BARNETT

I feel confident that most people reading this will love the hell out of Courtney Barnett: her vibe strikes me as very Strawberry Fields Whatever-y, it's dreamy and lazy and a little bit kooky but in an entirely chill and heartfelt way. "Avant Gardener" is my favorite track on her EP How to Carve a Carrot into a Rose and it's the best song I've heard about asthma attacks since "Asthma Attack" by the Fiery Furnaces - except I like it way better than "Asthma Attack." Courtney just has a cool way of swirling all these different feelings together, and I can't think of any other song in the world that's such a perfect balance of melancholy and funny. Toward the end of the song there's a lyric that goes "I was never good at smoking bongs..." and she sounds so genuinely wistful and you can really hear her singing the ellipses. She also does lots of weird things with words - she turns "emphysema" into a verb and rhymes "anaphylactic" with "super-hypocondriactic" and at one point lists off all these vegetables, including radishes. Radish is a beautiful word and a beautiful food; I like how its coloring's all cheery and pretty but then it kind of bites you in the mouth as you're eating it.



I guess "Avant Gardener" should be radishes, like watermelon radishes or maybe radish pie, but right now I'd rather make it these sunshine raspberries I bought on Monday at Super King. They look like some boozy drink you'd get in a halfway decent Chinese restaurant, pink and hazy-yellow like if golden raspberries and regular raspberries had some nice little babies. You should buy How to Carve a Carrot into a Rose and buy a pint of sunshine raspberries and eat the whole thing and listen to the whole thing, lying on the floor, not doing anything else.



"BURIED PLANS" BY MINOR ALPS

In my neighborhood there's an adorable little grocery store called Cookbook and they sell these dates called Bahrain dates, which I suppose means they come from Bahrain. Bahrain dates taste like they soaked in honey for about a hundred years, but really there's no honey: they're just that soft and gooey and golden-y on their own.

Minor Alps is a new band with Juliana Hatfield and Matthew Caws from Nada Surf and there's nothing gooey about them but they're definitely golden and soft. "Soft" like "tender" and "quiet" - like soft rock! Seriously. It's soft rock that's deep and powerful, and sometimes devastating, which is an adjective I can never not use when writing about music by Juliana Hatfield. The "honey" part is that the melodies and guitar are sweet and glistening, but it's also about how honey can be medicine (it makes coughs go away and helps cuts get better faster). Minor Alps is less medicinal and more elixir-like, and they can cure headaches and irritability and make you feel warmer and a little lighter and brighter.

"Buried Plans" is the first song on Get There and the vocals in the last 40 seconds are like angels and skies and make me excited about going to church on Christmas Eve. I don't know whether that's a fucked-up thing to say or not.

"MARY MAGDALENE IN THE GREAT SKY" BY TANYA DONELLY




One time I was listening to "Mary Magdalene in the Great Sky" on the swingset by Santa Monica Pier and the next day I had a bruise on my left arm from leaning into the chain and it looked pretty cool. "Mary Magdalene in the Great Sky" feels like swinging on a swing on the beach at nighttime more than it feels like a lavender honey nougat bar but, I don't know, "lavender honey nougat bar" just seems like one of the most quintessentially Tanya Donelly-y things you could possibly ever eat: it's sweet and lovely and kind of weird, and it's delicate but it sinks into your teeth and then just stays there.

"Mary Magdalene in the Great Sky" is from Tanya's Swan Song Series, which are these EPs she's putting out at the beginning of every month from now till early next year. Three have come out so far and I love them all and I got to interview her about them and about Belly and books and other great things for Popdose and that was a dream. BTW if you want an MP3 of Tanya speaking the word "Hunkpapa" in her cool whispery voice from the other end of my phone, I'll send it to you for one million dollars, which is a total bargain.

P.S. I found my lavender honey nougat bar at a wine store on Larchmont that's maybe my favorite place in L.A. right now: it's tiny and smells intensely of expensive cheese and they sell lots of extravagant candies and also make these amazing-looking sandwiches you can eat on the sidewalk. While I was there I also got the most darling bottle of vodka, in the shape of a skull. 

"WITHERING" BY BILL JANOVITZ

Walt Whitman Mall came out last spring but I'm happy I waited until early-autumn to buy it. It's melancholy-making but cozy and it sounds like home, which is my favorite quality in a record lately. The part in "Withering" about getting drunk and crying to the Beach Boys: kills me. I still stand by the thing I said in April in my post about loving Boston, about how Bill Janovitz/Buffalo Tom is warm like whiskey but not too much whiskey, but Walt Whitman Mall is also this crazy-heavy/crumbly homemade Nutter Butter thing I got last Sunday at Cookbook and ate with that cute Asian pear, watching the Red Sox game. It's sweet things that fill you up and are even good for you.


ANY OF THE SONGS ON LEE RANALDO'S NEW ALBUM

There's this new place in L.A. called Donut Friend where you can build your own donut from this insane menu. I went there the other day and got that donut up at the top, which I was trying to make look like the cover of the new Lee Ranaldo album - it's a raised donut with apricot jam, lime custard, strawberry glaze, and lots of rainbow sprinkles. The best thing about my Lee donut was all the different textures - like, the strawberry glaze was very faintly grainy, and I swear I could feel like the individual sugar molecules on my tongue. It tasted like a melted rainbow, like psychedelic Skittles.

I don't really have a favorite song on Last Night on Earth; it's one of those records you let play and do whatever you're doing and slip away from it every once in a while but then something snaps you back and you get all zoned out on the cool psychedelic-Skittle vibes. Before I bought the album I was worried it was going to be all noisy and overly aggressive with the guitars, like this solo-Lee track a dude put on a mixtape for me in 1997. But instead it's Hippie Lee, and the guitars are dreamy and pretty and sometimes even lush. I love Lee's melted-rainbow brain.

Another great point about Last Night on Earth is my friend Danielle Petrosa took some of the photos featured in the album art. Here are a few more groovy Lee pix from Danielle. Lee Is Free x 1,000.




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LOU REED by Elizabeth Barker & Laura Jane Faulds

November 5, 2013, 10:37 am
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LIZ: I already wrote my love letter to Lou Reed, four months ago. I still agree with all of it, especially the part about how I love Lou Reed for never getting over Lou Reed.
       The first song I listened to after I found out Lou Reed died was "I Found a Reason," which I'd just listened to an hour before. I woke up in a very "I Found a Reason"-y mood that morning, and Lou Reed's dying intensified that, and I wanted to write I do believe if you don't like things you leave on every wall in the world. "I Found a Reason" is the holiest Lou Reed/Velvet Underground song for me; in my head it lives next to "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'", which is a little bit holy but mostly my saddest Lou song. "Sweet Jane" is the sweetest, it's angelic and dirty - not "dirty" like "nasty," but just like it's got some dirt on it, a mix of soot and good, minerally soil. "Satellite of Love" is Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Ewan McGregor riding carnival spaceships through the sky, being in love and boys; "Walk on the Wild Side" is still the shitty mustard-yellow/dirt-brown Dodge Dart my dad drove in the late 1980s. "Rock and Roll" is forever and always the song that is most my song of all the songs that have ever been sung.
        And "Sister Ray" is all different things. On Halloween night I went to a party and a guy was dressed as Lou and I never found out his name: I just kept calling him Lou, because if you're going to be Lou Reed for Halloween four days after Lou Reed died, then you have to accept that Lou Reed is the only thing that matters about you. I walked home from the party, up the biggest hill in the world, and I didn't have my earbuds but I wanted to listen to a 21-and-a-half-minute-long version of "Sister Ray" from a show the Velvet Underground played in Boston in 1969. So I just put it on and pressed my phone to my ear like I was talking to Lou Reed singing "Sister Ray," and walked up the hill and down the hill in the big scary dark, full of wine and candy. That version's even more psychotic than the original: it sounds like murdering, but it's also free and dreamy and pretty and heaven-like. I guess I already knew that it's possible to feel all those things at once, but Lou makes it so you don't even need to think about it - he just makes it happen to you. The peak of the murder-y/heaven-y feeling is this part where Lou sings about someone knocking on his chamber door, and then Maureen Tucker beats the drums like a door being knocked, and then Lou does his cool stuttering thing, and the guitars speed up and get extra-insane and extra-psychotic. I want to tell you exactly where it is but I think you have to get through it and find out yourself. All I can say is it's somewhere after the middle but not very close to the end.
       When LJ and I were writing our Beatles book, I was going to have a Lou Reed lyric be my Beatles-book epigraph: it was going to be the part from "Beginning to See the Light" that goes "I met myself in a dream, and I just wanted to tell you everything was all right." It took me a while to figure that out, because "Beginning to See the Light" is so much in my head that sometimes I forget that it's there. I've never not known Lou Reed so I've always taken him for granted and I really like living that way - but I'm also so happy for those moments when I remember the existence of Lou Reed, when a Lou Reed song is the only thing that matters about me or about anything.

LJ: When I found out Lou Reed died, I was sitting at one of the pink-red leather booths at the back of my new restaurant, next to the open kitchen, a silvery metallic blur hovering around one side of my right eye, eating ceviche out of a small white bowl so cute and round it should’ve been called a cup. The cold-station cook at my new restaurant used to be a pastry chef at one of the most famous hotels in Mumbai before she moved here for marriage, and her ceviches are made out of the exact same ingredients as the ceviches at my old restaurant, only she chops them up much tinier and so that all the bits are the exact same size, and when eaten out of a clear vessel, as they are when they’re served to customers, it looks like a goblet crammed full of gemstones.
         My story of how I found out Lou Reed died is not very interesting beyond the ceviche: I was looking at Instagram on my phone while I took a little break from work to chill and eat ceviche, saw a bunch of pictures of Lou Reed or Lou Reed records people’d posted, caught a chill, Googled Lou Reed’s name, and found out that he died. I thought the following thoughts, very quickly, in order: 

 -The possibility of Lou Reed dying never occurred to me before this instant 
 -I’m going to remember that I was eating ceviche when I found out Lou Reed died for the entire rest of my life
-Lou Reed was born the same year as Paul McCartney, which is weird, since the Beatles happened first
-If you’d have asked me to guess, I’d have put him at sixty-six
-Is seventy-one a normal age to die, or is it too soon?
-I feel like when I was a kid more people died at seventy-one than they do today
-I think it’s “on the younger side of average”
-Today must be a really weird day for all the people who were planning on dressing up as Lou Reed for Halloween
-I’m not going to let Lou Reed’s death get to me

And, in the spirit of not letting Lou Reed’s death get to me, I finished eating my ceviche before telling my co-worker that Lou Reed died. I wasn’t going to let Lou Reed’s death prevent me from enjoying my ceviche.


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It’s not that I never loved Lou Reed, it’s that I never thought of myself as being a person who loved Lou Reed. Though if you’d asked me, “Do you love Lou Reed?” I would have spat a venomous “Yes” at you, like a more serious “Duhhhh,” like what kind of idiot are you, like “Of course,” only meaner. But as someone who moved to New York City at eighteen in the hopes of one day self-identifying as “a New Yorker,” only to discover that I’m actually “a New Yorker”’s nameless opposite, I fundamentally can’t relate to anyone as fundamentally New York-y as Lou Reed for crying out loud, and also I love John Cale so much that I can’t help but like Lou Reed a little less in his honor. They’re both Pisces but with Lou you can tell his moon’s in something fiery, something real dominant and aggro, he’s like a fighter, light and sharp, like a boxer the fighter and like a Boxer the dog, but John Cale’s all water, a terrifying yet peaceable Frankenstein who emerged from a lagoon needing nothing more than To Be Loved.
        But mostly it’s that when I think of Lou Reed, I think of BLACK, the non-color black. I think of a bleak, ugly world populated by sex criminals walking other sex criminals around on fraying leashes made of rope colored black with dried-out black Sharpie, the insides of their noses crusted over with bloody brown crud, sharp like all the Clorox chemical drugs they’re always shivering from their having recently taken or direly needing to take, and it’s always either November or February, and Edie Sedgwick’s slumped over in some corner, annoying you by being a wealthy pointless succubus and then dying, making you feel guilty about how you were once annoyed by her being a wealthy pointless succubus, and everybody smokes cigarettes, and there’s cigarette butts floating around in the only water the entire city’s got to drink, and Lou Reed’s like “My week beats your year,” and you’re just like “Euucchh, Lou. No it doesn’t.”
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I came home from the gym, and climbed into bed with my boyfriend. “I think it’s time to wake up,” I said, and he agreed with me. It was one in the afternoon.
        I made him a cup of coffee, and asked, “Do you want to hear what the Velvet Underground sound like?” (It was two days after Lou Reed died, and a lot had happened in between: I’d been very drunk, sobbing to my boyfriend in my black lace dress half-on/half-off, terrified of how many thoughts I’ve been forgetting to think, understanding why I don’t believe in God and why I want to make money, though blown away by how I've stopped believing that writing could give it to me too, confused as to why I didn’t think that I could live a life without God but not be godless, why we all live inside a bubble, and why I ever thought that this bubble meant anything; I woke up at six in the morning and ate a handful of lentil chips to get myself back to sleep, and when we woke up properly we loved each other more than we’d loved ever each other before. We went out for a “fancy-dancy” lunch as he’d adorably say and I recklessly drank two (two!) glasses of wine: one rose, a Syrah, and one of a peppy and dynamic Riesling. We shared a pear and foie gras terrine which we spread onto bread, the French waiter my boyfriend knew dropped the spoon holding the little cubes of dark jelly that I ignored and it shattered; I salted every slice and peppered every slice and then ate them with frisee. I somehow got to work one minute early (work was why the wine was reckless) and sat in the office listening to Sweet Jane on headphones; Lou Reed was in a rock and roll band but I’m more like the girl, Jane, from the couple, “saving up all their monies,” it’s a little condescending the way he talks about them but I’d probably think bankers and clerks were as lame as Lou Reed did if I were Lou Reed too, and I thought about how nice his name is, how nice I’ve always thought his name is, and I thought about how tired I was, how much I missed my boyfriend, how foie gras tastes like earth.)
         He said he did, and I played him Who Loves The Sun. “This is my favorite Velvet Underground song,” I said, “It’s kind of a weird choice to have be your favorite Velvet Underground song. It’s not a very accurate representation of what they actually sound like.”           “It’s nice!” he said, but I take it back- it’s not my favorite Velvet Underground song, though it is the Velvet Underground song that reminds me most of myself: a warm yellow pop song about hating everything. And my favorite Velvet Underground song isn’t Beginning To See The Light either, nor is it She’s My Best Friend, though they're all close seconds, and no song Nico sang’s definitely not my favorite Velvet Underground song- her voice is something to endure, not enjoy- though ever since I fell in love there’s a weirdly stunning line from I’ll Be Your Mirror I refer to at least once a week: I find it hard/ To believe you don’t know/ The beauty you are- 
        But my favorite song from The Velvet Underground & Nico’s got to be There She Goes Again: I’d like to believe that if I were a character in a movie it could maybe play in the background when I first arrived onscreen: I’d like to think that I could be those bam-bam-bam-bam/bam-bam-bam-bams, reclining into a smirk, then coming back to bam-bam-bam all over again, just when you thought everything was gonna be copacetic, it was never gonna be copacetic, the "You better hit her" a nod to my general frustratingness, particularly as a love interest, and I’m partial to any piece of art that talks about flying like There She Goes Again or Norwegian Wood. That’s what flying means for humans, if it doesn’t mean flying in an airplane. It means going away forever.
         And my favorite Velvet Underground song, believe it or not, is Here She Comes Now, but just as my favorite Beatles song isn’t Hey Jude, the best Velvet Underground song is Sister Ray.
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The summer I turned sixteen, my Internet best friend came to visit. I'd never loved her as much as I'd loved the idea of it, and the whole trip- a plodding, excessive three count ‘em three weeks long- was a farce, either of us doing more-or-less half-assed jobs at pretending that we were having as much as fun as I’d inferred from the sourness informing the bulk of her parlance that we were never going to have: it was obvious that she found all details of my life- from my Brutalist high school's poorly-executed open-concept math department, where I went to pick up a near-failure of a trig exam to my ugly dying poodle, my chubby best friends, the pot we smoked out of taped-up bus transfers to impress her- disappointingly unglamorous. She came from privilege, which made me feel poor, and I could tell she was upset that my family didn’t live closer to Toronto’s downtown.
        Her second week here, we stayed at a cottage that belonged to one of my mother’s co-workers; my family didn’t have a cottage; my Internet best friend’s family had a lake house. The cottage was boring, and my mother was afraid that our dogs were going to fall off the balcony and die. My friend and I drank twenty-four cans of Pepsi in three days and talked about how many calories were in the Pepsi. At night we each slept on the bottom bunk of a duo of bunk beds and, once she fell asleep, I’d sneak out and lie on the pier next to the lake or bay or river or whichever it was, probably bay, being eaten alive by skeeters, too bored to write it down in my notebook (“nothing worth documenting,” I would have hummed sedately), listening to Sister Ray on headphones, hating everyone except the moon.
          Sister Ray, broken and majestic, was a secret more illicit than any body part or crazy thing you could do with it, truly more bad than any drug. I didn’t want anyone in the world to know I had it. Some older boys at school I knew had heard the other one, the one with the banana on the cover, but nobody knew about White Light/White Heat except for me.
          It was one of the first songs that took me outside myself- I’d already found the Beatles, but the Beatles drew me deeper within. I didn’t care for many of the words the Velvet Underground sang: Heroin, “It’s my life and it’s my wife” sounded overwrought even to human history’s most dramatic sixteen-year-old; The Gift was like poetry from a long time ago that a nerd would be into, only about Wisconsin, and there was a part about caresses and sexual oblivion that made sex sound really lame; Sister Ray had its moments, but they were burdened by its incessant “sucking on my ding-dong”s, which embarrassed me then, and embarrass me now. It was the guitars I cared about, the music and the noise, the rasp and slur of a Vox Continental organ getting fucked (and I mean that as a compliment) (in the highest regard) by my favorite Welsh Lurch, and it didn’t make me think about life or sex or anything, it just was, and those nights on the pier, amazing to think I didn’t have a glass of wine with me, were the first that I fully understood the vastness and violence with which I would always be a woman who preferred sound to sight, water to air, air to AC. And the ease with which I would always choose solitude.
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10 Bob Dylan Songs I'd Rather Die Than Live Without, Vol. II: Queen Jane Approximately

November 13, 2013, 11:49 am
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ILLUSTRATION BY JEN/ WORDS BY LAURA JANE

I posted the first installment of my ongoing 10 Bob Dylan songs proj back in August; this round was supposed to include the other 5, but instead I got stuck on Queen Jane Approximately. 6 down 4 to go! 

On a Monday afternoon in the middle of high summer, my boyfriend came over to my apartment for the first time. He sent me the text “I’m here,” and I opened my front door expecting to see him on my porch but I couldn’t see him. I was afraid that he wasn’t there and it was all a mean prank. I looked around, and found him out on the sidewalk, leaning against a lamp-post, or maybe fire hydrant, in front of the house next door. He was wearing shorts.
        I waved to him. We kissed hello. The day was quiet, and it was awkward, but it was sweet that it was awkward and I knew that when I was remembering it I’d remember it as being sweet. We were still unsure of how best to show one another that we cared. I led him up to my bedroom and I wanted to show him every single thing I owned. I wanted to explain to him the story of how I came to own all of it, and in intense detail, at that. I’d told him some of the stories in my head already, but in real life I couldn’t make them interesting, or even stories. I picked up an 8-track of All Things Must Pass and said, “This is an 8-track of All Things Must Pass.”
        I led him to my kitchen. “This is my couch-nook,” I said, and pointed to my couch-nook. In my head I’d imagined myself telling him all these snazzy one-liners about how “It’s always 1972 in my couch-nook,” and/or “Nothing says ‘I’m a chill person’ like putting a couch in your kitchen,” but instead I just kind of mumbled “I think it looks really seventies,” and then I put on the first Syd Barrett record, which was dusty. All the dust from the record got caught on the needle and it sounded as scratchy and faraway as if it were broadcasting forward in time from a hundred years ago. 
         I felt like I was the Syd Barrett record and my nerves were the dust on the needle. I delivered a small and shaky monologue that was mostly just facts about Syd Barrett’s life. I stupidly asked my boyfriend, “You know the band Pink Floyd?”
          He said, “Yes,” and we laughed. He wasn’t my boyfriend yet, just a guy I wanted to be in a relationship with who “didn’t really want to be in a relationship right now.” Side A of The Madcap Laughs finished and I couldn’t be bothered to flip or switch it. We kissed in silence. That afternoon was the hottest last summer got, and he kissed me so hard it got my hair wet. My hair was literally soaking wet, from a tiny bit spit but 98% sweat, and my body was covered in little shrapnels of dry grey skin, little eraser crumbs. My mascara got rubbed off my eyes and was now somewhere, nowhere. I asked him, “Do you think I’m pretty?”- I can't help myself, I really can't- and he said “Very, very pretty”- almost gravely.
          Every time ten minutes passed I felt like puking. It was a quarter to three and I had to work at four. I opened my eyes as wide as they’ll go and said, “I’m willing to be ten minutes late!”
         I felt like a very professional lady: he was shy at the beginning, and we needed a bracket of time for him to come visit that wasn’t the night. And this had been my only available opening: Monday, 1:45 PM. And I could tell when I told it to him, the way he smiled, that he liked it about me, what a square I am. One forty five.  



We stood in front of a mirror and laughed at my hair. It had turned into one giant dreadlock. I asked him, “Can you believe hair does this?” and made the dreadlock stand on its end. He laughed so hard- he has one of those whole-souled laughs that makes you feel like you’re much funnier than you are. I scooped the whole dreadlock into a hair-tie and twisted it into a knot. I colored the insides of my eyelids with a black crayon.
        “Eyeliner is a good trick,” I told him, “It tricks people into thinking you put more effort into your appearance than you actually did.”
         I was wearing my Low End Theory t-shirt, which I cut up with scissors.
         “You’re wearing that to work?” he asked.
         Yes, I'd been planning on it, but “No,” I said, and grabbed a plain black v-neck t-shirt out of my closet. I found a big fat gold necklace and shoved them both into my bag. My boyfriend walked me to the subway and we kissed goodbye. The insides of our mouths were as hot as the weather.
        I memorized the taste of his spit and tongue that day. It became a thing I was able to think about, a sense-memory I could call to mind if I was bored. I still do it, all the time. Stand around, space out, conjure up the taste of his mouth. Every time I kiss him I just fall into it. I get so sad when I realize I can’t smell him on my skin.

At work I changed into the t-shirt and necklace. I rolled up the sleeves of my t-shirt to make it a tank top; it looked liked a blouse. I wore black lace shorts and the strappy black clogs I wore to work every day of the summer.
        I wore them until they broke. One shoe literally cracked in half.
        I felt like I smelled like 98% sweat and 2% spit. I felt filthy and spacey. My busser and server showed up. They were both girls. “You look so good!” they enthused. I laughed, and looked in a mirror- it was strange, I’d never seen myself look like that before. I looked like a long and severe person who’d been sweatily making out for hours before work but didn’t look like I’d been sweatily making out for hours before work. I looked like I’d only ever drunk Prosecco and Perrier and had only ever eaten eggs that were either poached or hard-boiled. I looked like my father was the CFO of Citroen and my mother was the concept of a beach.
         I spent the night racking up more twenty percent tips than I knew was possible.
        “Is it because I look sexy?” I asked.
        “Yes,” said Emily.
        “When you look chill, people are more chill with their tips,” said Matt, which I thought was so funny, so easy and funny that I told him, “It seems like you’re in a really good place right now,” which might have seemed condescending if I’d told it to him as regular Laura, but I was something different that day.

The next day, a Tuesday, I was nothing if not a memory of his “Very, very pretty.” As I walked down the street, I felt like strangers could hear it, even see it: there’s a woman somebody told was pretty yesterday, and then there’s a woman a somebody told was “very, very pretty” yesterday- it’s a palpable difference. I was wearing a black shift dress, plain gold bracelet, my strappy black clogs, underwear, a bra, a slouchy red purse, mascara, and nothing else. It was the sexiest and most boring outfit I’d ever worn. But it was me! From that moment on I’d be black and red and gold forever. 

I hadn’t been able to explain any of my possessions to him but the second we stepped out my front door I told him to look up at the canopy of green trees draped over my street and he looked up at them and then back at me and I knew he knew how beautiful they were, and I hoped so hard that we’d walk under the same leaves when they were orange and dying. 

That week I was mostly just listening to Highway 61, over and over again. I like the song From A Buick 6 a lot, but I hate Ballad of a Thin Man. I hate it so much. I hate it when it shows up in Yer Blues, and I hate it as itself. So I skipped over it, and Queen Jane Approximately played.
        I’d been listening to Queen Jane Approximately a couple days earlier, and I was thinking it’d make a really good First Song In A Movie, but only in the kind of movie where the movie starts out with a scene, and then the scene ends abruptly, and then you get the song and the opening credits. And that’s what happened to me: I don’t know which musicless scene my movie would have opened with, if it would have been my boyfriend in my bedroom or my eyeliner at work or whatever I might have done that morning, or it might have just been me getting ready and packing up my things into my bag for work, closing the front door behind me and walking out onto the street. But I knew as soon as that song started playing that it was the opening credits of a new part of my life, that I was living them as I was walking them, and that once the song was over I’d never get that feeling back.
         And that was me, and now I’m still me, living in the movie. Four and a quarter months ago I walked through the opening credits, under those trees, and now I’m just wandering around somewhere inside of it. Right now, I’m probably a part of a montage: Protagonist, in green American Apparel running shorts and a Rolling Stones t-shirt, drinks a glass of Cava cut with Campari while writing about Bob Dylan having recently eaten Thai food. Tomorrow morning she’ll wake up and go to work and solve some problems. Yesterday she bought a jacket, a black trench from Club Monaco; it was three hundred bones and when I looked at the price I thought “Oh, what a good price!” because my job is good and my perspective’s changed and I’m a baller. I bought it and Queen Jane Approximately played in the background, as it does every time a career-oriented woman invests in a new item of clothing or apartment or piece of technology or man or dog. Or opens up a new line of credit, and especially when she buys a bottle of Dior Hypnotiq Poison and decides “Fuck it. I’m just gonna smell like that,” like cherry magic markers, like some sinister, rusted-over version of a pre-teen. The song starts off by talking about your mom being a bitch to you, your sister and father talking about what your life is like while you’re off living it, and The Flower Ladies, who “want back what they have lent you,” are obvious bitches and they’re wearing white, they’re wearing florals, paisleys, light blue, and you’re just like, “Yup, this is true. This is what my life is like. I’m an adult female,” grey as the city, grey as a city.
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Thing of the Week: LJ's United Bamboo Fishtail Parka, Juliana Hatfield & Pizza by the Sea

November 15, 2013, 10:52 am
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LJ'S THING OF THE WEEK: My United Bamboo Fishtail Parka



I found out that United Bamboo fishtail parkas existed either three or four years ago and quickly became obsessed with needing to own one, but tragically had to hold off because truth be told they are expensive fucking parkas and I spent my entire twenties living below the poverty line until last April. This October, I was having that gross and depressing internal dialogue you have to have with yourself every October where you're like, "Okay, Laura [or whatever your name is], winter is coming, I know you can't believe it but, like death, it's actually going to happen, so what are you going to do about boots this year, what are you going to do about mittens," and realized I had unknowingly accomplished my lifelong dream of becoming rich enough to buy myself a United Bamboo fishtail parka. I was just trying to accomplish some other goals the whole time, and then it turned out that I'd killed a couple birds with one stone. That stone, man. It just ricocheted off the one bird's beak, straight into the other one's noggin. 

So, that's nice. Nice use of noggin. I bought myself a United Bamboo fishtail parka over the Internet and it arrived and it was GIGANTIC. I ended up having to send it back to the United Bamboo people and everything about that process was incredibly stressful for me. I wrote on a piece of paper that I'd like to exchange the medium for the extra-small (they're really weirdly-sized jackets) and enclosed it in the box with the coat I sent back, which made me anxious. I was like "Do words written on paper even count as a legitimate transaction in this day and age? Do I need to include a microchip?" and it was raining that day, it was literally Halloween. A few days later they sent me the XS and I had to pay an insane COD, I was at my wit's end at that point but then I tried it on and it fit perfectly and was so adorbs and then I forgot all about the money and felt vindicated. 

The picture of me up there kind of undersells how awesome my coat is because I'm sitting down and truthfully it could be any bland old coat. But it's my day off and I don't feel like participating in a photoshoot with myself, so this is what you get. There's white wine in it, and it shows off the Betty Draper-ness of my kitchen. And here is a model doing a better job of modelling my coat than I did: 


See, it's so cute, right? It's got a really nice A-line shape and the hood stretches out so far so it's like your head is living inside a cave. It's one of the coziest things I've ever owned, according to my cute boyfriend it makes me look like I'm "on the cutting edge of fashion!" and it breaks my heart to think about how by the time March comes I'm going to hate it as much as I've hated every winter coat I've ever had by the time March comes, when you've worn the same fucking jacket every day for the past hundred days, when it ceases to be a coat and instead becomes a damp, crappy emblem of the living fucking hell you've just endured. 

LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Watching Juliana Hatfield Sing "Out There," Pizza by the Sea



On Tuesday night I went to see Minor Alps, starring Juliana Hatfield. Minor Alps is her new band with Matthew Caws from Nada Surf, and their album Get There is an ideal album to fall in love with in November: it's very gray and sweet and cozily sad-making. After seeing them I've built up some deep affection for Matthew Caws, but at the end of the day: Juliana. I'm in it for Juliana. Juliana is all.
      For a good part of the show they went back and forth, playing their solo songs, and at some point Juliana sang "Out There" by Blake Babies. I'd been gunning for "Out There" and it happened and I saw it, but I really and truly have no memory of it. All I can figure is that the "Out There" video is so blue and green and yellow and white, and at the show Juliana was wearing a brown dress, and maybe the color confusion sent me into a fugue-like state. Yeah that's definitely what happened. They also sang "When Will I Be Loved" and I thought of the last scene in Cocktail and a nice warm liquid gold enveloped my heart and will stay there forever.



My other thing is this pizza place in Santa Monica called Wildflour Pizza. Look how cute and bright yellow it is. Last Saturday afternoon I went to Santa Monica because I like to drink hot coffee by the beach when I'm writing, and then after the writing/coffee-drinking I walked down Main Street and decided to give ol' Wildflour Pizza a whirl. I bought an angelically filled-to-the-brim $3 plastic cup of red wine and a piece of margherita pizza and sat at a table near a cute blonde family: a mom and a dad and a boy who was probably like four and a girl who was probably like six. They were talking about how eating vegetables is important and the girl asked, "What if you ate more vegetables than a hundred?" And the dad was all, "A hundred what? A hundred pounds? A hundred ounces?", which I found rather annoying and obtuse. But it was cool 'cause the daughter just blasé-ly ignored him and said, "You'd get very strong and big!", and she seemed pretty stoked on the prospect of that. She was so wise and chill. They were playing The Police on the oldies station and my pizza was perfectly olive-oily and dense and, like, soft, and I took a Post-It from my bag and wrote a couple sentences about a girl eating pizza with her dad and her dad getting all moony and cutely depressed about The Police being played on the oldies station. I'm very excited to write more sentences about all of that.
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