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Look at what’s in store for SCIENCE!

Monday, March 8, 2010

HEY EVERYONE HAVE YOU SEEN THIS:

Yeah, so, that’s a Cherpumple.  I’m going to make one!  Maybe later this week or sometime next week!  And obviously this process will be live-blogged, because I haven’t done any cardiac-inducing science experiments for the internet for a while.  So you have that to look forward to.  Awesome, right?  If I had my druthers it would be dessert following a main course of a giant boiled ostrich egg, sliced like a ham.  Sadly, though, I do not always have my druthers, nor do I have an ostrich egg because they were charging $40 for them at the ostrich farm.

Ok, other awesome:  saw a screening of the Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts the other night and they were so great.  In my opinion, though, the Irish were ROBBED of that Oscar by the French, but what do I know?

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Someone give this lady a cookie.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

This quarter could end just about now, as far as I’m concerned.

I did my exams!  Writing my exams was seriously the best week of my entire life.  Imagine, if you will, being given seven days in which you do not have to go anywhere nor talk to anyone whom you do not wish to; imagine that during those seven days your task is to write and write and write about the things that you love the most in the world; imagine that during this time people just bring you food so you don’t actually have to cook anything; imagine that it is really the way you would live your life, given the opportunity.  Basically, it was so good.  My exam questions were great and made me feel really happy about my dissertation committee, and I got to write about Dusty Springfield and Lady Gaga in the same essay.

So, the transition back to real life has been weird and stupid, mostly.  Mostly I resent all the dumb crap I have to do even more than I did before, and I’m so stressed out that my entire body hurts, and all I want to do is finalize the goddamn reading list for my class next quarter, but do you think I have time for that?  Of course I don’t have time for that.  ALSO, I am mad at the post office because apparently my mailing address has become a black hole into which things that are mailed to me (ie:  Valentine’s presents special ordered for Gentlemen Callers, polka-dotted vintage dresses from Etsy, birthday cheques from Grandmothers) disappear, never to be seen from again, which is obnoxious and stupid.

On the bright side, this movie arrived in the mail today (I had it sent to me at school, where mail still works, despite the budget cuts), and, when I finally have time to sit down and watch it (ie: when my dissertation is finished) I’m sure it will be the best night of my life because it is the Lost Skeleton of spy thrillers:

Oh, I feel better knowing that I’ve blogged.  I’ve been feeling majorly angsty about not blogging lately.  What a weird thing to feel angsty about!  Could I be addicted to the internet?  Oh, heavens no.

THINGS THAT ARE GOOD THAT I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO:

Friday night quality time with best friends Mulder and Scully;

We are going to San Diego over spring break and I get to go see panda bears at the zoo;

Making Out!  Let’s hear it for making out with a nice beardy boy on a regular basis;

Gin martinis!  These exist, thank the lord.

Oh, also, THINGS THAT WERE GREAT THAT HAPPENED EARLIER THIS WEEK:

Met Marilyn Wann!  Super duper fat activist who invented the muumuu of the month club and is thus a true heroine, if ever there was one;

Ok, fine, I’m going to bed now.

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Once upon a time, I had a birthday

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Some people may or may not have been whisked away by enterprising gentlemen for a weekend of birthday adventures.

Some of those adventures may or may not have included:

Chancing upon some Spudnuts in Santa Barbara;

Scenery of a jaw-dropping nature;

SOLVANG!  Solvang is like a town in Denmark, via Disneyland.  In Solvang, some people may or may not have actually seen Arnold Schwarzenegger (we totally did see Arnold Schwarzenegger in Solvang, and, ever the eloquent soul, my immediate statement was “that man’s skin is so taut his face looks like a fine saddle.”  In case you were wondering, he and his retinue of bodyguards went to the Bit O’ Denmark Restaurant);

The Madonna Inn.  Dreams really do come true, friends, and the Madonna Inn is basically the physical manifestation of all of my dreams.  For the uninitiated:  the Madonna Inn is a hotel near San Luis Obispo that was built in the 1950s, and every room is uniquely themed and decorated to be as kitschy as possible.  It is WONDERFUL.

And we stayed in this room.  The bed is ROUND.  Some people may or may not have spent all weekend jumping up and down, excitedly, in the manner of a five year old, going “Circle bed circle bed! We get to sleep in a circle bed!”

And IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, the next day we went to Ostrich Land.  Did you know that an ostrich egg costs $40?  This is upsetting, because my current dream is to host a dinner party at which I serve a single, giant boiled egg, which I will slice and serve to my guests like a ham.  I am currently on a quest to source cheaper ostrich eggs somewhere in Los Angeles.

And then there was pea soup, at Pea Soup Anderson’s, a restaurant that proves that the best business model is to have cartoon character mascots from the 1950s, and be famous for one thing, even if it is a thing that most people probably don’t generally want (ie: pea soup).

And then we went dancing in the 1940s and it was so, so, so wonderful, and I wore my best dress and ate flan.  THE END.

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Dress and a Song Episode 14: The Satisfactions – Daddy, You’ve Just Gotta Let Him In

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Ok, I swear to god I am still blogging for realz.  This quarter is just eating my brain alive – my exams are coming up, which is, you know, stressful and stuff.  So I apologize for the lack of dress blogging as of late.

But anyhow!

The Satisfactions have proven a bit tough to track down.  By all accounts, they were actually The Blossoms, a girl group who didn’t have that many hits of their own, but who recorded backup vocals for Phil Spector-produced tracks by bands like the Ronnettes and the Crystals, and they worked with artists including Elvis, Sonny and Cher, and the Beach Boys.  Darlene Love, who’s now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, got her start with the Blossoms, and Gracia Nitzsche, who was married to superstar producer Jack Nitzsche, was also a member, and seems to have been the lead vocalist for this particular song.  There isn’t a lot of information, though, on which incarnation of the Blossoms made up the Satisfactions, and they don’t seem to have recorded much else under that name.

But this song . . . is amazing.  It’s a tragic, poignant narrative about a very difficult rite of passage that young women have gone through since the dawn of time:  breaking the news to dad that your boyfriend is a member of the Hell’s Angels.

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Things that make this awesome:

i) The growling vocal delivery on “Hell’s Angels,”

ii)  The ascending vocal line on the word “in” at the end of the verse:  it really goes much, much higher than is necessary, and I am totally ok with that,

iii)  So many things left unexplained!  Who is he on the run from?  Where did she find a member of the Hell’s Angels?  Is he actually a member of the Hell’s Angels, or is “one of hell’s angels” just a terrible metaphor for being a bad boy?  I have obviously decided that he is actually an outlaw biker, because that is the more exciting option.  And HOW AWKWRD will it be when he meets her dad?  “Oh, I hear you’re a member of a biker gang.  What are your intentions vis-a-vis my daughter?”  Thank god I’ve never had to tell my dad that my boyfriend is a member of the Hell’s Angels.  Thank god my boyfriend is a librarian instead.

But just remember:  if you’re the kind of teenage girl who’s going to run away with the Hell’s Angels, be sure to pick a skirt that will match nicely with your boyfriend’s leather jacket, which, if he’s any sort of gentleman, he would do well to lend you, because I hear it gets pretty breezy on the back of a motorcycle.

Vintage biker jacket from Jack Rabbit Vintage

Pink and black circle skirt from Stella Ranae Vintage

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Very secret confessions

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

The past few months have been so lovely, because I met a nice boy, and he plays the accordion and he has a beard, and he makes me so, so happy.

And my hair is longer than it has been in years, and it’s going to stay that way because I love when he runs his fingers through it.

Shhh!  Don’t tell.

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Breakfasttime Adventure!

Sunday, January 31, 2010

A couple weeks ago, the Estimable Miss VV and I arose with the sun (or, well, clouds, actually – it was SoCal’s semi-annual Rain Week – not as exciting as Shark Week, but just as wet) and ventured forth for a double-whammy of giant, round breakfast foods with holes in the middle.  This was an exciting event, because it means that finally we have eaten at all of the former Big Donut locations that remain in SoCal.

First stop –  Bellflower Bagels, a former Big Donut, repurposed in the only possible way in which one can repurpose a giant donut:

And then we got lost!  But not very lost.  Only a little bit lost.  But it was lucky that we did get lost, otherwise we would never have discovered that Norwalk, California, is a secret mecca of totally great mid-century architecture.

We discovered, for instance, this total gem of an old grocery store, now a swap meet:

And the truly, truly glorious Cerritos College gymnasium:

More photos of the gymnasium, one of the bestest examples of 50s architechture that I ever did see.

We quickly found ourselves back on track, and donuts loomed large on the horizon!

A well deserved second breakfast, if ever there was one.

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Dress and a song super special happy new year Lady Gaga edition

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Happy New Year to all of my multitudes of fans, friends, and lovers!  Yes, all seven of you!  I am here, back in sunny Los Angeles, thank god, because winter is so overrated that it’s not even funny.

Anyhow, I took a bit of a holiday break from this blog, mostly because not much goes on in Portelginland that’s worth blogging about.  I missed my semi-annual letter to Santa post, but rest assured, there’s a thank you letter to Santa in the pipeline, because this year I managed to actually get everything I could ever have wanted for Christmas (except for a unicorn, but what else is new?)

ANYHOW, I really want to jump right back into my regularly scheduled musical dress blogging, because somebody once told me that the only way I would ever become a CBC radio celebrity was if I actually blogged regularly and kept this project going.  So I am going to start off the new year on a timely and surreal note, with a series of disconnected meditations on Lady Gaga.

i) I first heard of Lady Gaga from my students last year in the LGBT Pop class.  I got a dozen papers about Poker Face (typical thesis statement:  “This song is kinda gay, or something,” only less grammatically correct).  And so I went onto The Internets to find out what the fuss was about, and watched the video and was completely baffled because the song was sort of weirdly unpleasant and the video was kind of ugly.  So I immediately dismissed Ms. Gaga as alluring, but not my cup of tea UNTIL ONE DAY when I was poking around her youtube channel and found a video transmission wherein she proclaimed that she was from outer space and was going to save the world with fashion and glamour and sequins, or something.  I can’t actually find the clip in question anymore.  But anyhow, that was the moment when I realized that she was a hilarious genius, and from that moment on, my fascination with Ms. Gaga has bordered on obsession.

ii)  The thing I like the  most about the Bad Romance video (apart from all of that Alexander McQueen gloriousness) is when Gaga and her retinue of zombie dancers flail awkardly around the dance floor.  I like it because that is basically how I dance, so seeing my particular dance aesthetic thus represented makes me feel less like an uncoordinated awkward person, and more like someone who could potentially appear in a music video.

iii)  We are reaching a point where the avant-garde and the massively popular are becoming increasingly indistinguishable.  I like this a lot.

iv)  What do you think of the vocal stutter that appears in so many Gaga songs?  It’s all over the place.  This is actually a serious question and I’m wondering what people think.  I just submitted a Gaga abstract to a conference, and in the paper I will theoretically write, I want to talk about that stutter.  Sometimes it’s, liked, auto-tuned in or something and sometimes it’s, you know, the pa-pa-pa-poker face thing.  I have my own theory, but I’d like to hear what others think.

v)  How ridiculous would she have to get before she got too ridiculous?  I am just so happy that there is a pop culture phenomenon out there right now that is so completely absurd and challenging, and yet I heard her playing on the radio at Tim Hortons in Parry Sound, Ontario, and she is my 13 year old cousin’s favorite singer.

vi)  Dear Lady Gaga:  ”Funny” is not an appropriate rhyme for “funny,” as heard in the lines “Met somebody cute and funny, got each other and that’s funny,” but I will forgive you for it just this once because I like your style.  (My illustrious roommate has suggested “Got each other, look a bunny” as an alternative.  You should considering hiring him for your production team.)

vii)  The Fame Monster, with its eight nuggets of sparkling awesome, arguably works better as an album than The Fame, which could have been edited down a little because it sometimes gets a bit redundant (much like certain David Lynch films).

viii)  Thank you, Lady Gaga, for introducing the phrase “paper gangster” into my vocabulary.  I don’t want one of those either.

xi) There is a lot of rather pronounced idiocy in Lady Gaga’s oeuvre, but it is very self-aware idiocy.  For instance, the song “Boys, Boys, Boys” (sample lyric:  ”Baby is a bad boy with some retro sneakers, let’s go see The Killers and make out in the bleachers”) is profoundly stupid.  But you can’t get that stupid without knowing you’re being that stupid, right?  So actually it’s brilliant.  That is my official scholarly opinion.

x) Once upon a time, in a Women’s Studies class way back in my undergrad, it was Madonna day.  We were talking about La Isla Bonita.  The prof suggested that La Isla Bonita would never fly anymore (this would have been in about 2003 or 2004) because we had just experienced that surge in Latin popstars (think:  Ricky Martin, J-Lo, Shakira) who were doing it for realz and not just appropriating (and I would be interested in debating this particular theory as it is interesting but I can see some holes in it.  But that is another blog post for another time).  Now, it is 2010, and we have Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro,” which opens with a spoken monologue in fake Spanish accent and has lyrics that are mostly nonsense with the names Alejandro, Fernando, and Roberto repeated ad nauseum, possibly just to sound fake Spanishy?  Difficult to say.  Is pop music cyclical, and have we come full circle, back to La Isla Bonita?  Difficult to say.  Is it politically incorrect that I really love both songs?  Probably.

xi)  Here is a picture of me in a silver and blue lame space dress, which I inherited from a drag performer, and which is obviously what I would wear if I was ever to meet Lady Gaga.  I am standing in front of a rare space ficus.  This is the one and only time I will be featuring myself as a model on this blog, and it’s only because I’m too tired to care, so eat it up, kids:

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And then we found an old juice bottle in the basement that was actually full of Galliano, and then it became a very merry Christmas indeed.

Friday, December 25, 2009

My sister, displaying wisdom beyond her scant 19 years, thoughtfully got me a giant book entitled “501 Must-Drink Cocktails!” for Christmas.  So with the Christmas Miracle Galliano, this is what I made:

The Moon River

1/2 measure dry gin

1/2 measure Cointreau

1/2 measure apricot brandy

1/4 measure Galliano

1/4 measure lemon juice

Pour over ice, stir, strain into a cocktail glass.

And that is what I am sipping as I sit here editing html for the scholarly journal, possibly not the wisest choice of beverage to accompany my editorly duties, but, heck, it’s the holidays, let’s throw caution to the wind!

Hilarious, and unrelated:  I put out an ISO for Christmas movies about Los Angeles, and the majority opinion seems to be that the best one is Die Hard.  Personally, I prefer L.A. Confidential, but what do I know?  I think, though, that my Gentleman Caller’s pick – Edward Scissorhands – trumps them all, even though it’s really set in Fantasy Bizzarro-World Burbank, not really in L.A. proper.  But that magical combination of artifice and dreaminess really is what Los Angeles is all about.

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Well, pardon my french.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Holy fuck.  What is up with winter?  Seriously?  It cannot be possible that Southern California has made me weak.  No.  That cannot possibly be true.  It must just be that winter is truly, truly, a terrible thing, the wrath of god come down upon the earth.  That must be what it is.

Today I put on my sweater and my coat and my scarf and my hats and my mittens and my boots in preparation for my trek downtown to get my driver’s license renewed (nothing but excitement going on around these parts, folks).  And I opened the door and stepped out onto the porch and then…just stood there…for about ten minutes, trying to decide if it was really worth it.  Like, I don’t really need to be able to drive a car, right?  There are buses.  And there was just so much snow blowing around and everything just looked so cold and wet and winter boots are just so ugly, you know?  Staying home would mean avoiding wearing ugly footwear.  And everything was so grey and miserable and then I remembered why I used to always be in a foul mood for six months of the year.  But then I told myself that I was a big girl now and that I could do it because we wouldn’t want anyone thinking Southern California had made me weak, now would we?  So I steeled myself for the hike downtown and then when I got to the license office, they told me that I couldn’t even renew my license today because their camera was broken so I would have to come back tomorrow.  GOOD STORY.

Also, it is always winter when I have to renew my license, which is unfortunate because in my picture I always end up looking like an ill-tempered, heavily bundled up Woman of the Woods, which is not necessarily my look of choice.

BUT ANYHOW.  Enough moaning.  Right now I am sitting in Port Elgin’s totally lovely coffee shop having a totally lovely cappucino, feeling very pleased that I am indoors.  And tonight I think I will decorate the Christmas tree!  Or rather:  tonight I will decorate both Christmas trees, because my parents accidentally bought two, so I am going to transform the living room into a festive wooded glade.  I have already done my part to make the house more festive by putting a ceramic hippopotamus in the manger scene to commemorate The Adoration of the Hippo, my most favorite part of the Christmas story (ie: the part of the Christmas story that I invented myself).

Hey, also:  I’m now writing for LA Metblogs, which is super cool!  So you should head on over there and visit!  My first post went up today.  It’s kind of daunting, because now I’m writing for people who aren’t my real life friends, but I think it’s going to be fun and neat, and hopefully I will do a series on LA donut shops.

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Once upon a time, I flew to Canada!

Sunday, December 13, 2009

First, Paul Gross was on my flight, and I was going to tell him about how Slings and Arrows saved our lives, but then he wasn’t at baggage claim, and so I didn’t tell him anything.

And then!  I discovered that hip hop karaoke is not, in fact, horrifying, but is wonderful because it is not, in fact, karaoke:  there is a live band that can miraculously play every hip hop track ever recorded, and instead of using a screen with scrolling words, the singers just memorize entire raps and also choreograph their own dance routines.  Also, everyone is amazingly dorky but capable of totally throwing down.  Dear musicologists:  discuss.

And then and then!  We went dancing.  Thank god, we went dancing.  I haven’t been dancing in so many moons, and it was the best kind of dancing, ie: dancing to music from the 1960s.

And, happily, I caught up with all my best girls in Toronto, who came and hung out with me at (almost literally) a minute’s notice.  I feel bad that I didn’t have time to see everyone, but it was a very last minute trip (a result of scheduling weirdness courtesy of Air Canada) so hopefully I will be back in the city again before I head back to Californialand.

And now:  I am in Port Elgin, there’s a lot of snow (fun fact:  I hadn’t seen snow for two entire years) and I think I’m going to grade some papers now, because it never, ever ends, does it?

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