What's This About A New Way?: March 2016

I'm Losing Some Of The Detail.

Is it Thursday? I may have lost count of the days somewhere. Working three jobs is making me all sorts of shaggers. Some would say not to worry and just blaze a trail of burnout, but it's all starting to seem a bit diffy and I'm left wondering who one contacts about adding an extra 14 hours to the day.

I realized things were getting close to the brink of collapse when I capped off the evening in a delerium of Pat Benetar UTube videos. I finally had to slap myself in the face and force myself to my bed.

I'm eating way too much Zankou. Getting way too frustrated with people and situations who couldn't possibly matter less. This is fatigue or the beginnings of it. I may have to turn my attention to some type of delivery service. I'm thinking Crispy Pork Gang or something along those lines. Heavens knows they are open late enough to feed even my third job.

Yesterday I almost walked out of one of my jobs. The only job that actually requires me to show up. I've become a master at deleting emails before I have the time to read them and be annoyed by them. This, I sincerely believe, is the secret to a happy existence. That and a decent Soundcloud feed.

Bordering On Infantile.

Got drunk last night and I started throwing nasty tweets at Debra Messing and, if you can believe this, Jamie Lee Fucking Curtis. Two women with the intellectual capacity of a gnat, who respond to nothing more sophisticated than the presence of a vagina.

I actually had a conversation with someone about this. Voting for someone because and only because of their gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. is just as craven and vile as denouncing someone because of their gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. sensing infringed confusion at this point I went on to explain that it speaks to the level of a persons superficiality, their critical thinking capacity, and their ability to function as a rational actor, or in this case it may or may not be appropriate to say actress. Nothing. I may as well have thrown gang signs to an iguana.

This Twitter rage went on, and to be honest I missed the better part of Mapp & Lucia Series 1, Episode 3 when I snapped out of it. This election show bullshit is starting to impact things that actually matter. That being said, and before I unplug from the election show cycle entirely in favor of baseball and other things that actually mean something I just had to get it off my chest.

Wearing makeup and reciting the words someone else wrote and doing under the most absurdly beneficial lighting conditions in no way imbues one's opinion with any degree of merit or for that matter rationality. Putting that aside for a moment it almost goes without saying, but say it we must, Susan Sarandon is a fucking national treasure.

Backwards Phased Images.

Back in the SouthLAnd and I'm already tempted to order a retreat to a place where WiFi and a $15 an hour minimum wage are considered a human right. It is nice, however, to enter the break room and not be bombarded with a dizzying array of recycling, composting and general refuse bins.

I'm working in a heady mixture of Gawker Media bimbo meets bro-town badinage. No fewer than four Itech-brahs dressed in plaid for casual Friday. Not that such a thing exists on the Wedtside.

PSA billboards read something like 'Real men raise babies' which makes you think fondly of the time when real men just pulled out or even better got head.

It's all a bit of a cultural shock. Something that ready access to Zankou doesn't go all the way to ameliorate. As I ride this rattling barge down Santa Monica I've promised myself the day off if I read a single email that I find even remotely disquieting.

Like so many before me on so many battlefields I sheath myself in Comme Des Garçons, YvesSaintLaurent and I await the dawn.

How Many Days Left.

It takes a very small chunk of a vegan upside down pineapple cake to make me decide I want nothing to do with being a responsible adult.

I stumble downstairs, hungover with a splitting headache. I pour the coffee that is waiting for me. I toast a bagel and slather it with vegan cream cheese (something no law firm has ever offered me in ever), capers and anything else in the refrigerator I can lay my grubby hands on. I mumble something about loving pineapples and pineapple cake. I point to a picture of a pineapple then go back to my room, plug into the internet and spend hours looking through someone's private emails. Several hours later an aroma permeates the house and I decide that the outside of my room may not be as scary as it seems. Then it is waiting for me. What mom made for me just because I said I wanted it. And it doesn't end there. It doesn't even begin there. Homemade biscuits and vegan gravy, navajo tacos with homemade guacamole. I haven't seen a block of tofu in weeks and I feel fine. My childhood home is literally where vegans go to retire and get fat.

Working two jobs from my adolescent bedroom, the Depeche Mode and Morrissey posters have been replaced with muted tones and sensible decor, but here I remain and then someone calls and tells me I should move back to LA and take on the mantle of a responsible legal professional? No offense but you are absolutely and entirely fucking crazy. And while we're on the subject I have been awake for almost an hour, I've downed the coffee that was waiting for me, but I haven't had my bagel yet so fuck off. I may go thrifting on my 'lunch break'. Yesterday I went to Ross and bought some Reeboks because I can and because New Balance supports Republican candidates that promise them military contracts to make boots for soldiers.

Bliss may be a state of mind or it may be something more profound, but until you bite into vegan upside down pineapple cake I'm not entirely sure you have the perspective I care about.

I really think my mom wants me to grow up and do shit and be productive and shit, but before I go and convince myself of shit like that I have to get around things like pineapple cake and navajo fucking tacos. This strug is real.

Playful Like A Cat.

Water Is So Cold I Don't Want To Ruin My Blouse.

Tell Me A Secret.

Sometimes I Forget We Are In Each Other's Arms.

I won't Hide It If you Won't.

Labels: Cooper Cronk

Pause.

I had a complete and teetotal meltdown with AT&T this morning. I don't even remember what it was about although I spoke to someone called 'Essence' and I called her a filthy cunt and all sorts of other expletives. I'm sure I've gotten myself placed on some sort of list, however, I sincerely doubt it's a 'do not call list'.

I'm being forced to watch The Voice and I have almost just about had it. In addition to developing simultaneous crushes on Blake Shelton and Adam Levine who appear to be overwhelmed with people with a vocal range of 6 notes I occasionally have to listen to Christina Aguilera caterwaul down a microphone. There's a black homosexual who occasionally provides some comic relief. I suppose we all have to start somewhere, but it is beyond precious.

I blame PBS for this. While they are out trolling for cash from private individuals they rake it in from the military industrial complex and air the most pointless drivel. BAE Systems, BNSF Railways are their largest contributors, and I'm actually suppose to take Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff seriously. There is suppose to be some type of excuse for Mr. Selfridge?

No. PBS is the antichrist.

Labels: idiocy

A Remainder Of Instincts.

The novels of P.G. Wodehouse have been charming the pants off me lately. I haven't even begun to delve into the Jeeves oeuvre and have been absolutely taken. Not that he is an altogether scintillating storyteller. The stories are prosaic and often meandering, sometimes covering little more ground than the confines of an ocean liner. They are definitely from an age before television and when the 'wireless' was a bit of an extravagance. The dialogue, however, cuts sharply and lends itself to a quick read.

You have to look past a lot of bigotry and old fashioned fuddy-duddiness but hardly nothing more than you get in Trollope or other writers of that era.

His life is fascinating as well. I've been waiting to see the film Wodehouse in Exile which presumably tells his life post World War II exile after he was forced to deliver on-air propaganda while in Nazi captivity. His popularity at least in his native UK plummeted in the aftermath and I'm sure is a powerful insight into the way tastes can be influenced by notions of nationalistic jingoism. I placed it in someone else's Nefflix queue. I won't do the Netflix or support the GDA in any way I can avoid.

I snagged a first edition of The Girl in Blue while on another thrifting voyage and it appears to be about some people and a Gainsborough. See what I'm telling you about the storyline? Not a lot to get on with so if you're used to Palahniuk or Pynchon or DeLillo for that matter you may just want to move along and enjoy your dinner conversation with all the like minded people you've become comfortable surrounding yourself with.

Labels: thrifting

She Read It In The Prologue.

I rarely wear neckties, but when I do I tend to opt for something on the special side. A simple pattern, sometimes solid, but rarely and even then only Prada and always on the most rarest of occasions.

I never did get on board with the whole overdressing for the sake of overdressing meme, and in all honesty I haven't even started dropping the word 'meme' in casual conversation even though the person heading the blisteringly dull teleconference yesterday managed to do just that and congratulate himself for his verbal dexterity quite almost in the same breath,

That, however, is a digression.

The point is that you can usually find something altogether functional and appropriate in the thrift store and if like me you can count the number of times you wear a necktie per anum on a single hand it isn't something you want to spend the farm on.

I recently scored some respectable neckties. Hermes and Lanvin, and although a perusal of eBay shows the Hermes to be a rather popular pattern it isn't possible to pick it up for 99 cents like I did. The Lanvin, albeit more scarce, was similarly 99 cents.

Labels: thrifting

Somebody That I Used To Know.

I believe I have gone into some detail, if not here then certainly elsewhere, about vexatious I find it when someone up and breaks up a set. The last time as I recall was a set of Royal Doulton at the Capitol Hill Value Village. (1.)

I was poking around the local used book store, clearly in the search of something specific when I came upon something intriguing in almost the same measure as it was irritating. Two books of what is clearly a trilogy. In this case it is the Sword of Honour Trilogy from Evelyn Waugh. Evelyn Waugh of Brideshead Revisited fame. Yes.

And you can imagine the conflict. Who is actually breaking up the set here? Moi ou vous? Had someone simply picked up one of the books and intends to come back for the other two? Will their disappointment be palpable? If that were the case I failed to see why they would start with the final book in the trilogy unless they had already read the first two and were simply completing their read before completing their set.

If that were the case I'm afraid I have just up and disappointed them because with the store credit I had lurking about on the smallest whisp of card paper just waiting to be misplaced or sent through the gentle cycle I snagged the only two remaining books in the trilogy after souring up and down the aisles in hopes that the other had simply been mislaid. As I did with the aforementioned Royal Doulton with no success.

If my worst fears are true then of course there are two people now with an incomplete set, and it would seem that both of us are entirely to blame.

In such a situation you would think that the GDA (2.) would be of some assistance in completing the trilogy, but alas no. Unless of course I want to round off my set with an nonmatching third which would be as pointless as it is tacky or something called a 'Kindle Edition' which would just be roundly pointless.

_________________________________________________________

(1.) Now closed and probably for the best for reasons I may choose to go into later.
(2.) Great Devil Amazon

Collisions Of Discovery.

Dead stock vintage Benetton with the original tag. I will never wear this baby. I may place it in something protective and only admire it occasionally. I have two more like it so it isn't that I actually wanted to wear it; just needed it in the collection.

I don't actually have a piece with the original tag in the collection so I feel very fortunate, and the prices people are charging for vintage Benetton on eBay is just mind boggling. And you can scarcely find anything in thrift stores anymore. I blame myself really. I was the one the started the Vintage Benetton blog, and now I have lost control of it entirely. Forgot my password, login and all of that and no amount of pleading with google will help. I even threatened legal action, but if it is one thing the people are not afraid of besides poor punctuation is legal action. In fact I am beginning to think they crave it. Which in the end just means more work for me. And more work for me means more bitcoins and more vintage tat!!

Yes. vintagebenetton@blogspot.com is mine. Everything on there is mine. Photos taken from 3 separate flats in 2 different cities. Los Angeles and Seattle of course. I may start another just to put the other to rest. It is really the only thing I can think of, but when I do you will hear about it here first. Did you read that? That little play with homophones is something few people at google could manage.

And when I say you will hear about it first I am of course referring to both of you.