Dispatches from a second story bedroom

tl;dr: parts 1& 2 AKA L.A. Nadir

Alright, briefly, in pictures here's how it breaks down.

I have to wonder who is buying a 1500GBP jacket on the internet assuming that sizing is consistent season to season. I know, free returns, (thanks Zappos! for your incredible business model.) but Jesú Hache Cristo, get out of my fucking face YSL cotton jacket. I am not waiting up to 2 billing cycles to get reimbursed 3Gs iffin' and whenin' you don't work out. But that's me, I'm sure there are thousands of women who don't care about the cost. Rich people aren't more tasteful as the city of Los Angeles will attest. People there pay for class. Salespeople in high end stores seem to take the responsibility of offering class to the classless very seriously.

How can you feel annoyed with people wanting to ogle the goods that you yourself cannot afford? Not without your employee discount you can't. It's sad to see so many sales gals in H&M jumpsuits giving you the up and down for no reason other than they feel they're tied to a moneyed class in a way that you as a window shopper are not. We are the same, you and I. We both love clothing, so put those tired classist notions to bed, we're in America and it's a fucking sunny 72 god damned degrees and breezy. What are you being so fucking sour for?

On a related note, I bummed around Opening Ceremony in LA for over an hour touching and pulling at all the garments last week. I've got to say, there is absolute shit finishing to many new exciting CFDA noms' garments. Just sayin'. Unfortunately it seemed to be a problem with the Americans and less so with the Europeans. Some shoes from some collaborative brands were so chintzy that I wondered who would ever buy them because they weren't luxurious looking. They looked like little plastic toys made in China.  My brain can't wrap itself around spending 1200 dollars on unfinished organza hems. It makes my heart race in the bad way, like my dreams where people are breaking into my house.

I had this fantasy that the most charismatic and coolest salespeople somehow filtered through the bedrock in some sort of filtered pure form of salespeoplry at the best stores but this is not the case. I had a shit ton of Pretty Woman moments at a bunch of LA places. I can't take snobbery from an idiot in a thrifted denim jacket and Z. Cavarriccis seriously. How do you reconcile yourself with this stuff? Because it frequently brings me down and keeps me from staying interested in the game. It makes everyone here in Portland seem that much cooler and makes me less interested in leaving for LA. I've also noticed that LA always wants to call another store for you but they want to look bored and annoyed while doing it. Mixed message! Don't offer if I have to look at your shitty face!  The bakery staff at Ca'd'Oro were the most helpful of all the places I went and they only sell wholesale bread. Seriously everywhere else in LA, take a page out of their book. Carbs and service!

Kapeesh?

We're balls deep in winter beard season and then this had to go and happen.

A crucial blow for beard lovers everywhere. I'm going to have to go on beard subsidies. 

Dan Auerbach went and frigo'd himself and I'm the one feeling like someone gave me The Stranger. Oof. Bring back the beard, we miss it. Those sad dark under eye circles are not the same without it. 

mental freezedom

Goodbye summer, I'll hardly miss you.

Who's the big winner?

 

Oh hey Rachel Comey clogs that look like the bugs that scared me at six years old.  Wanting to wear these is sooo about mastering that childhood trauma. I step on the tomato hornworm larvae. I win. Do I really win though? I mean, look at them. Objectively I don't see that shoe as a winner, I just like the conjectural satisfaction I have looking at them.  Whoa man, they're just fucking shoes. Calm the fuck down.

it's nice to be nice

 

Supreme went ahead and made 1" badges broadcasting my inner monologue with the world at large. Thanks, guys! 

book bags

 
 
 

VS. 

  

 
While it is true that Olympia Le Tan's clutches are more like cigar boxes with embroidered covers and less functional clutch, they were the first. Plus, they're hand crafted, and her taste in book selections is better. Kate Spade attracts the sort of woman who still considers Prada Sport nylon backpacks as a thing anyone cares about. Consequently she's in that purgatory of brands that are loathesome for possibly the wrong reasons, like Roberto Cavalli and Coach. Secretaries of a certain age who have Costco memberships and scrapbook think those brands matter and I can't enjoy them because of this associative taint. 

Still, there is a small part of me that wants the clutch functionality, (Can you imagine a lipstick rolling around in a Le Tan all night? I'm pre-annoyed just thinking about it.) while retaining the hand embroidered good taste of the originals.  

Then Olympia had to go and make a bag that addresses my nagging doubt. The war is officially won.

  

worst pain there is

Living on the internet can be pretty LOLzebub for those watching it happen. Example:

 

Unfortunately I fall into the vilified category who don't see leaving one polyamorous partner for another to possibly make a go at monogamy (or not) a bad thing. There's nothing here that hints that she's not going to have an open relationship with her l'autre lover. Breaking up is hard to do so why not GTFU and not act like a maudlin teenager about it. You're 45 and throwing a tantrum on the internet about your lover dumping you. I don't think you're a dreamer, I think you're a greedy fucking dog in a manger who got away with it for far too long. One word: Icarus. 

Frankly, I was never really into your whole approach, you gross me out. But Terry Richardson had to take so much shit for bird doggin' 17 year-old models that I figure you need to take a solid hit for this wah-mbulance ride you took on the internet in front of god and everyone. Do what feels good Olivier and that something barely legal. 

 

I mean really, who could resist? 

the howling

 

Did anyone see that awful Burroughs biopic with Courtney Love as his common-law wife he shot in the face? Even though this has the evolution of men aging instead of evolving happily through my bone zone, I still don't want to see it. David Strathairn is 60-plus with that incredible everlasting John Forsythe shock of hair that demands Brylcreem and I still want to hit it. Plus Jon Hamm being Don Draper being a beatnik lawyer and I still don't want to see it. Is Franco tanking my interest by trying to be everything to everyone?

I am pretty sure I've lost my ability to remain hopeful in that things that have a bunch of flavors I already like because they generally don't create a visual salad I want to eat (Poor metaphor!). The fact that James Franco won't get my ass in a seat but David Strathairn might, is indication enough that I need to start pledging to NPR. I am old balls over here. 

The real point is that there was never going to be a better Ginsberg than David Cross in I'm Not There. I know that he's supposed to be pre-beard AG but you're seriously asking us to believe that the same guy who played James Dean in the TNT Original made for TV movie James Dean can also do Ginsberg? 

Where's our Walter Matthau? James Franco is the best you could do? While I'm on the subject, can we give Seth Rogen a vacation? Talk about making a silk purse out of a sow's ear. That kid is a square peg being shoehorned into every round hole Hollywood has to offer (unintentional double entendre!). That kid is always going to be schlubby and perma-stoned. Why make him lose 60 lbs and take a normal human laugh class at the Santa Monica Learning Annex? Why take away his bankable traits just have him star in a summer action blockbuster? Then, simultaneously take a good looking actor and have them play a weird looking dude. God, talk about nerd fantasy fulfillment. It's like Kevin Smith popping up in all his movies for more than a cameo. Egalitarianism in Hollywood is a bummer. Now every leading man is an ugo. Congrats assholes.

Here's my million dollar Hollywood idea. If this ever should happen consider this shit copyrighted as of right now. John Slattery as Dashiell Hammett.  Like a remake of Julia but from the dude's side. There aren't enough stories told from the dude's perspective. I kid, I kid, didn't y'all see Reds?  Hollywood had its floating ribs removed years ago.

don't be a dick

Are we excited about this? There's a lot of bedding. It sort of feels like a Pottery Barn commercial? I think owning ovaries obliges me to see this but I'm not counting down the days. 

This Spike Jonze short film is also available for viewing. It's good like Where The Wild Things Are but I always feel duped by modern sentimentality. I like it as it's evoking a feeling but it's totally useless five minutes later. It tells me nothing about who I am and what I really want. It doesn't even open up the conversation about such things, there is nothing for my brain to chew on. Afterwards I feel like I ate the whole pint of ice cream just to soothe an imaginary hunger. I hate the empty calories of Generation X/Y films. 

We're a generational sect of thumbsuckers who are perma-nostalgic. The problem with our nostalgia is that we're just nostalgic for other good times, we aren't nostalgic because we're living through a collective harsh like the Great Depression or Vietnam. The reason the 60s were so productive is due to all the depression babies hustling towards the future because their past sucked so hard. We're not running away from anything (except growing up) and still, couldn't possibly want more.

One could argue for Iraq: Part Deux as a modern equivalent to Vietnam but our generation's war is socioeconomically segregated.  There is no mandatory conscription to level the field and politically motivate the kids.  It affects a limited population that more than likely isn't stoked on seeing Spike Jonze and Sofia Coppola movies. There isn't a lot of Venn diagram crossover for Sofia Coppola film fans and soldiers in Kabul, I am assuming. She makes films for people who are just like her or people who aspire to be like her. Où est l'égalité, Sofia?  I am your key demographic and I am turned off. If I am turned off, then who the hell is still turned on by this?

Which brings up yet another issue I have with Sofia's films. There's a very strong "beautiful sad girl" bent to all of them that is pretty boring. Still going strong with that theme four films in! Pretty (and most often rich) girls are unsatisfied too. How do we plumb those depths yet again? Why are women (possibly just daughters of famous out-to-pasture directors) given such praise for a continued parade of shallow moving magazine editorials? Why aren't we asking more of her, would we have treated Tarantino's fourth feature with such delicacy and reverence?  I dunno, you can't have it both ways. You can't be down with the cause and critical of women at the same time. We all gotta like each other's garbage and support each other's bullshit, right? I mean, shit you've already got my eleven dollars Sofia, how about you put a little fucking stretch in your game?

step on a crack

                  

 
I cannot believe these two came up with something weird that wasn't more like this. These remind me of James St. James and Michael Alig in the best possible way.