if marc says hot pink

then hot pink it is

also loving chris kane

one of my favorite times' blogs is proof. lots of insight from those who have spent a lot of time around alcohol and can write about it thoughtfully. highly recommend.

the other one that's high on my google reader list is the moment, the blog for the times' style magazine. lots of cool little readable features here, like scorecard and the hi-lo.

MICK LOVES HIS LIL SMOKIES

I DIE! I DIE! I DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
today's obsession: kate lanphear
next haircut: kate lanphear
fashion blog j'adore: jak & jil

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From Monument To Masses
Noise Pop 2009

with special guests Crime in Choir and Built for the Sea

FMTM will be making an all-too rare SF appearance—the first since December 1, 2007—at the annual Noise Pop Festival in anticipation of the band's long-awaited fourth album entitled "On Little Known Frequencies" (March 10, 2009).

SHOULDER SWIVELING
my room on saturday mornings looks as if i have been robbed. the level of drunkness on thursday and subsequently friday is indicated by:

- whether the clothes are on the ground, thrown into the closet, still on the bed, or all three (trifecta!)
- whether the aforementioned piles of clothes are mysteriously damp with what i hope is water or rain (smell test results inconclusive)
- whether there is an empty plate next to my bed or whether there are nine uneaten tater tots on the plate
- whether i am still wearing my makeup from the previous night and find odd traces of eyeliner on my upper arms
- whether my forehead is tender from banging it on the floor (in a non-falling related incident)

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8 tracks i've been into this month - still trying to figure out the best method for embedding music here, bear with me

murakami on lying and novelists

Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling lies. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?

My answer would be this: Namely, that by telling skillful lies -- which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true -- the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.

SO STEVE
steve: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenchung/3292418202/
ive spent $6 so far trying to win it
i think the lobster is just too heavy

me: omg i thought you meant a plush lobster

steve: real lobster
it fights back too
its a bit inhumane i guess

lay the real thing on me
it rained all night and in the morning there was a strange stillness.

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there are moments at bars when, through the chatter, the peanuts, the clinking ice, the bitten straws and mikey's maniacal laughter, i can faintly hear a song that i have forgotten that i love. i shall share with you as and when this happens.

from homestead last night -

Moonage Daydream - David Bowie

really moving since you asked column

'...for the desire, even in the face of death, to set down, for readers still unborn, all the sweetness of our common life.'

..the sexual explicitness that he pioneered in American fiction was additive, ameliorative—the one thing that had been left undescribed, a piece of the world’s experience previously unfixed. Compared with more obvious pioneers of sex writing, how blended his descriptions are into a larger world of memory: sex in Updike happens not in a stripped-down theatre of two but in a coliseum of many, part of the continuum of sensation in which we live.

Throughout all that varied work, one theme rose and was repeated over and over. Updike’s great subject was the American attempt to fill the gap left by faith with the materials produced by mass culture. He documented how the death of a credible religious belief has been offset by sex and adultery and movies and sports and Toyotas and family love and family obligation. [...] He viewed the material culture of American life with a benign, appreciative ironic eye. But he had no illusions, either, about its ability to cover the failure or wish away mortality. His 1996 novel “In the Beauty of the Lilies” [...] makes this almost schematically apparent: the death of American religion is matched by the rise of American movies.[...]

One has a sense of someone who—as much as, though with more wit than, Andy Warhol—has spent a good deal of his life liking things. Women’s clothes, their hair, the hybridization of American accents; the way that the hyper-cold of the airline baggage compartment can be felt like a secret in the bag as you unpack—all these images and moments, recalled at random from his work, are not just reported but quietly rhapsodized, registered with love. It is his affections that rise, and that we recall.

nonniversary

five years ago, i wrote on a walgreens valentine's card (the tear-off kind you gave and got in fourth grade - i think this one was WWF-themed): "love is for suckers!"

the best advice i've received over the past few months is that there are no rules (i think i got this from benjamin button, but still).

my valentine this year is this dress. i'll have to save two unemployment checks to buy it.

playlist 1