CONSUMED: A PARTIAL LIST.
bones and all (film). i have loved mark rylance's weird magic ever since i saw his shakespeare-on-broadway double-header (twelfth night's viola one night, richard iii's richard the next!) almost a decade ago, so i would have itched to see this knowing only that he was part of it; i also love joy division's "atmosphere," which promos and the film itself use beautifully and, c'mon, timmy chardonnay as a star-crossed cannibal in a luca guadagnino movie? so much to delight. the cinematography is gorgeous, and i loved the little nods to fraught road movies like badlands (which wowed us at a lovely theater in philly when we spent a weekend there for a friend's wedding this fall). as in call me by your name, guadagnino's last set-in-the-'80s doomed love story starring timothée chalamet, the needle drops are fantastic throughout (along with joy division, there's new order, george strait, a-ha's "the sun always shines on tv," a track that should propel every movie henceforth and be recut into all archives*). i'm now reading the camille deangelis YA novel adapted for the movie, which the author herself has said is not her favorite work? digging into how the story changed is entertaining, even though i'm dreadful at fiction and would never write or adapt it myself.
guillermo del toro: crafting pinocchio (exhibit). it would never have occurred to me to see if moma was open on new year's day; why on earth would moma be open on new year's day? hats off to my sister for asking the tough questions so that she could introduce her sons to jackson pollack** and friends; we had two o'clock tickets for the museum on the first and it was delightful. it also would not have occurred to me to go up there for a guillermo del toro show, for while seeing his stuff up close is delightful (i quite enjoyed at home with monsters at lacma back in 2016, also with jo and my older nephew when he was puppet-sized), i sort of figured another exhibit would be more of the same - and i didn't love nightmare alley, his last project i'd seen. but! this joint was organized during film production, and it did a bang-up job of highlighting all the painstaking work that goes into stop-motion animation and del toro's characteristic world-building. jo's sons are six and four, and i think a lot of the show went over their heads, but i think it would blow a crafty tween's mind; if i'd seen that stuff when i was a sprout i'd be a tattoo artist or/and a necromancer today. i also loved the big wall of photos and titles at the end of the exhibition highlighting all of the artisans and technicians that worked on the movie; the whole presentation deconstructs and celebrates passion projects in a way that makes visitors want to make complicated stuff and support other makers. bonus points for making pinocchio about fascist italy! it's time to bring (talking about the horrors of) fascism back.
splat midnight jade (hair dye). my hair has been various shades of platinum-to-plantain blonde and medium-to-light blue for the last few years; since it never gets more than an inch or two long, i bleach and dye all of it without messing around with sectioning and root touchups. i'm pretty good at it! this stuff was supposed to turn my hair an unprecedented dark green, which felt like a festive angle from which to approach the winter. in practice it's vivid cobalt that sizzles into darkness at at the edges, and it runs down my temples and cheekbones when it gets wet two full weeks after application and several enthusiastic shampoos, so when i get caught in the rain i'm a cross between a blue morpho and rudy giuliani (but the good news is that i have some information that will blow the 2020 election wide open). this dye is not the right dye for me! tantalizing teal (and its soul-frying powder bleach) remains the chemical headsuit to beat.
*i really, really love a-ha. it still saddens me that that my trombone champ "take on me" endorsement didn't make it into that new york times newsletter i was talking about two weeks ago, but they did this, and: heh.
**her sons were unimpressed with jackson pollack. they couldn't get enough of yoko ono's film no. 4, though.
Showing posts with label hair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hair. Show all posts
08.07.21
so this comparatively-unknown literary magazine just published this creepy sexual poem named for and about a very well known writer whose bestselling essay collection i read a year or two ago and whose parents, i read last night when i was struggling to fall asleep, were once investigated for human trafficking, as someone discovered last year? (lit twitter and weird twitter and weird lit twitter are all over this, the poem, because it's both unsporting clickbait and because the writing is so bad that it's typically referred to as "the poem," the loose consensus is that one should avoid it if possible, for both reasons).*
when i finally went down around five this morning i dreamed that i went to a new, fancy salon-retail-organic-garden** hybrid place, for i needed a haircut, and my stylist was the writer. i explained to her that i envisioned bangs, but she would have to come up with some way to texturize them because i have a cowlick at my right temple and my hair has always parted like curtains right there. i also wanted a pretty short pixie cut, but skewing femme, please, so go soft at the edges and follow a rounded shape at the back of my head, but otherwise i trusted her to do whatever she thought was right. things started off badly, as she accused me of leaving bleach on for far too long when i prepped for dyeing my hair blue at home (true, i ended up with some little scabs last time after frying myself), and then she kept wandering off. the appointment began in the early afternoon, but by early evening we were under a scraggly live oak in the organic garden and the writer still hadn't gotten to work. i knelt before her as though we were gawain and the green knight*** as she finally, finally, started to razor the back of my neck. "if you had a boob**** that was floating in a vat of fluid, what would you do to make it float higher or lower? that's what you can think about while i do this," she said. one of the dickensian orphans gathered around us piped up: one should add stones to the vat, which would increase the volume of its contents and elevate the boob. that's stupid, i said. i would add a fluid with lower specific gravity than that of the boob-fluid if i wanted the boob to sink, and a fluid with higher specific gravity if i wanted it to rise.
when i finally went down around five this morning i dreamed that i went to a new, fancy salon-retail-organic-garden** hybrid place, for i needed a haircut, and my stylist was the writer. i explained to her that i envisioned bangs, but she would have to come up with some way to texturize them because i have a cowlick at my right temple and my hair has always parted like curtains right there. i also wanted a pretty short pixie cut, but skewing femme, please, so go soft at the edges and follow a rounded shape at the back of my head, but otherwise i trusted her to do whatever she thought was right. things started off badly, as she accused me of leaving bleach on for far too long when i prepped for dyeing my hair blue at home (true, i ended up with some little scabs last time after frying myself), and then she kept wandering off. the appointment began in the early afternoon, but by early evening we were under a scraggly live oak in the organic garden and the writer still hadn't gotten to work. i knelt before her as though we were gawain and the green knight*** as she finally, finally, started to razor the back of my neck. "if you had a boob**** that was floating in a vat of fluid, what would you do to make it float higher or lower? that's what you can think about while i do this," she said. one of the dickensian orphans gathered around us piped up: one should add stones to the vat, which would increase the volume of its contents and elevate the boob. that's stupid, i said. i would add a fluid with lower specific gravity than that of the boob-fluid if i wanted the boob to sink, and a fluid with higher specific gravity if i wanted it to rise.
*i immediately found and read it, and i'm now sorry to have given it a click and to have those lines in my head, but here we are.
**i'm on a nordic-authors kick and halfway through auður ava ólafsdóttir's the greenhouse, which i'm enjoying; her miss iceland is a fascinating look at her country's bro-centric midcentury literary culture.
***we saw that movie yesterday; i thought it was quite grand, particularly alicia vikander's green speech, though the CGI fox wasn't animated very realistically.
****ólafsdóttir's hotel silence, also good, concludes with the recovery of three disembodied breasts. like japanese in translation, icelandic in translation has, i find, a very distinctive/characteristic(?) cadence, and it's soothing.
01.26.17
1: your hair is so dark!
2: i know, i decided to let it go.
1: it looks great!2: i was going kind of lori petty, you know?
1: orange is the new black lori petty would be no good. tank girl lori petty would be pretty great, though.
2: a league of their own lori petty did it all.
2: i know, i decided to let it go.
1: it looks great!2: i was going kind of lori petty, you know?
1: orange is the new black lori petty would be no good. tank girl lori petty would be pretty great, though.
2: a league of their own lori petty did it all.
03.02.11: ask kidchamp, round IV {quiffs, magazines, beach reads}
What do you know about gelatin & hair?!?
A: i know that gelatin's the go-to stuff for relatively weatherproof mohawks,* and that it's the styling product of choice for synchronized swimmers (it'll reliquefy with moisture and warmth but stands up to cool water quite well). it's better for your hair than spray (which is often alcohol-based) or glue (which is, you know, glue), as it's related to keratin; it's related to keratin because it's made of bone and connective tissue, unfortunately, which is why vegan punks won't use it and why i can't eat most haribo products.
What do you know about gelatin & hair?!?
A: i know that gelatin's the go-to stuff for relatively weatherproof mohawks,* and that it's the styling product of choice for synchronized swimmers (it'll reliquefy with moisture and warmth but stands up to cool water quite well). it's better for your hair than spray (which is often alcohol-based) or glue (which is, you know, glue), as it's related to keratin; it's related to keratin because it's made of bone and connective tissue, unfortunately, which is why vegan punks won't use it and why i can't eat most haribo products.
saw the devil wears prada for the first time last night. is that really what it's like?
A: my first magazine job bore an unfortunate resemblance; i spent a miserable summer afternoon sprinting around the city in search of a particular kind of vitamin water, and i was frequently frostbitten for missing references to peripheral media properties in the dozen newspapers i had to skim before leaving for the office each morning (or for forwarding those references a minute or two late). i was tempted to expense my cigarettes that year, and i still feel queasy panic when i read certain new york papers. my current job is almost nothing like lauren weisberger's at vogue: my coworkers occasionally wear flats, are frequently pregnant, and are almost always considerate. that said, there is a fairly constant stream of weird free stuff, i quarter cupcakes without irony, and i've lost count of the number of times i've shared an elevator with someone who suddenly whipped off their pants.
can you recommend some beach reading? i'd like something fun to read that isn't trashy.
A: well, i continue to think raymond chandler turned out some of the tastiest prose in town. though his novels are detective stories, i don't think you have to worry about putting him down and losing your place as you vacation; he's a stickler for continuity, and his eye for detail is so bleary-perfect that you can return to his settings in a blink. try the big sleep, and maybe have farewell, my lovely on hand for emergencies. if you want to stretch a bit more, several of the essays in DFW's a supposedly fun thing i'll never do again are great fun; try the title piece (re: a caribbean cruise), or "getting away from already being pretty much away from it all," on the illinois state fair (pdf here). i also conferred with some bookish locals on your behalf: our lovely entertainment editor recommends the paris wife (a fictionalization of hemingway's relationship with hadley richardson), a novelist friend says that she "kind of liked/hated" j courtney sullivan's commencement (about four women who meet as undergrads at smith) and notes that freedom moves along at a good clip; maddie dawson's the stuff that never happened is a big favorite with my lady the book editor, and said editor's upcoming thriller (cara hoffman's so much pretty) is "amazing." i also think you should make a grab for my itinerant copy of a discovery of witches, which has, i believe, recently returned from thailand.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 how big was/is your biggest hair?
02 would you be more likely to need gelatin for a mohawk or for synchronized swimming?
03 worst job you ever had?
04 should i bring a book to iceland? one could need a beach read for the blue lagoon, no?
*a friend of mine dated this kid called ender who'd slather his hair with gelatin and iron out his foot-tall mohawk on a board. that's neither here nor there, i just thought you should know.
10.29.09
ours is a short-haired marriage (for demonstrable reasons), exhibit A:
anne geddes, watch your ass.
ours is a short-haired marriage (for demonstrable reasons), exhibit A:
anne geddes, watch your ass.
10.28.09: "it is not to me."
1: ...and besides, spending days and days making a really lovely detailed cloth version of a log instead of carrying a real log is kind of lynchian,* wouldn't you say?
2: [silent]
1: what if i told you it was stuffed with severed ears?
in other Lauren's Log Lady Halloween Costume news, i got a note from the ebay seller from whom i purchased a brown wig two weeks ago: alas, the wig is still without a tracking number somewhere in guangzhou province (notes to self: read fine print in item listings. do not buy fake hair from china.). it will, however, be here by 11/14! (do not buy fake hair from china.) happily, my friend sarah has an extra brown wig that she dug out of her closet on my behalf last night; judd (her husband; yep, same judd) brought it to work today and will be messengering it up here. is messengering fake hair lynchian?
1: ...and besides, spending days and days making a really lovely detailed cloth version of a log instead of carrying a real log is kind of lynchian,* wouldn't you say?
2: [silent]
1: what if i told you it was stuffed with severed ears?
in other Lauren's Log Lady Halloween Costume news, i got a note from the ebay seller from whom i purchased a brown wig two weeks ago: alas, the wig is still without a tracking number somewhere in guangzhou province (notes to self: read fine print in item listings. do not buy fake hair from china.). it will, however, be here by 11/14! (do not buy fake hair from china.) happily, my friend sarah has an extra brown wig that she dug out of her closet on my behalf last night; judd (her husband; yep, same judd) brought it to work today and will be messengering it up here. is messengering fake hair lynchian?
*from "david lynch keeps his head," one of my all-time favorite david foster wallace essays:
A Rotary luncheon where everybody's got a comb-over and a polyester sport coat and is eating bland Rotarian chicken and exchanging Republican platitudes with heartfelt sincerity and yet all are either amputees or neurologically damaged or both would be more Lynchian than not. A hideously bloody street fight over an insult would be a Lynchian street fight if and only if the insultee punctuates every kick and blow with an injunction not to say fucking anything if you can't say something fucking nice.
02.25.09: lau rouge
i've developed a few theories about short hair over the decade or so that i've had it (off and on, disastrously, from ages 8 to 12 or so, and off and on again from my early twenties 'til now). most women wouldn't have it themselves, but are very invested in knowing a woman who does: whenever mine goes short again, everyone tells me how happy they are about it, like i've relieved some sort of collective lady-tension. women also like to tell me about how they want short hair but couldn't pull it off or, most commonly, "don't have the face for it" (which is patently false: if i can do it with this crazy german profile, anyone can). it's a lot of responsibility, shouldering girlfriends' and coworkers' and clerks' issues with a mia farrow 'do. it has its perks, though: when my hair is this short, nothing is too girly. i can wear ridiculous little sundresses, doll shoes, a bright purple track jacket - you name it. i wore a glittery silver cardigan to the office today.
red! hair has its own peanut gallery and associated issues, things i'd forgotten about until i accidentally nuked my head saturday afternoon (my color has faded pretty quickly the last few times i've dyed it, and i overcompensated this time by picking an especially vivacious shade at the drugstore). some of the random new york attention is very sweet: as i came home from pho-errands the other night, a doorman called out, "it is a beautiful color, lady, beautiful!" in a thick caribbean accent. all of the reactions have been good, in fact, except for at the office, which is what i feared when i first realized i was going to be en fuego for a while. i don't know that it's officially unprofessional, but it's close enough that i've been a bit tentative about sitting in the ol' power T at meetings this week. i was already the only short-haired woman on staff, and now...i haven't stuck out this much in a while, and it's taking a while to get comfortable. the parts of me that are getting old on schedule will be relieved when i dull back down, and the part of me that's still thirteen is thrilled to look like a cartoon. is that sentence depressing?
at the other end of the spectrum, an unequivocally heartening offering from a short-haired woman: i give you rachel maddow, mixologist (preparing the jack rose, one of her favorite cocktails, at the air america studios). on distractions, rebecca traister on gwyneth paltrow's GOOP (after the valentine's day edition of the newsletter featured especially bank-breaking recipes):
i've developed a few theories about short hair over the decade or so that i've had it (off and on, disastrously, from ages 8 to 12 or so, and off and on again from my early twenties 'til now). most women wouldn't have it themselves, but are very invested in knowing a woman who does: whenever mine goes short again, everyone tells me how happy they are about it, like i've relieved some sort of collective lady-tension. women also like to tell me about how they want short hair but couldn't pull it off or, most commonly, "don't have the face for it" (which is patently false: if i can do it with this crazy german profile, anyone can). it's a lot of responsibility, shouldering girlfriends' and coworkers' and clerks' issues with a mia farrow 'do. it has its perks, though: when my hair is this short, nothing is too girly. i can wear ridiculous little sundresses, doll shoes, a bright purple track jacket - you name it. i wore a glittery silver cardigan to the office today.
red! hair has its own peanut gallery and associated issues, things i'd forgotten about until i accidentally nuked my head saturday afternoon (my color has faded pretty quickly the last few times i've dyed it, and i overcompensated this time by picking an especially vivacious shade at the drugstore). some of the random new york attention is very sweet: as i came home from pho-errands the other night, a doorman called out, "it is a beautiful color, lady, beautiful!" in a thick caribbean accent. all of the reactions have been good, in fact, except for at the office, which is what i feared when i first realized i was going to be en fuego for a while. i don't know that it's officially unprofessional, but it's close enough that i've been a bit tentative about sitting in the ol' power T at meetings this week. i was already the only short-haired woman on staff, and now...i haven't stuck out this much in a while, and it's taking a while to get comfortable. the parts of me that are getting old on schedule will be relieved when i dull back down, and the part of me that's still thirteen is thrilled to look like a cartoon. is that sentence depressing?
at the other end of the spectrum, an unequivocally heartening offering from a short-haired woman: i give you rachel maddow, mixologist (preparing the jack rose, one of her favorite cocktails, at the air america studios). on distractions, rebecca traister on gwyneth paltrow's GOOP (after the valentine's day edition of the newsletter featured especially bank-breaking recipes):
But today, I just had to shake my head in something like admiration. It's almost enough to convince me that La Paltrow is performing some kind of service with GOOP. Whether she's offering champagne-wishes-and-caviar-dreams escapism or just the opportunity to hate a stranger every Thursday, she's distracting us from the worries of not being able to afford our caviar this week. And so I say, perhaps for the only time ever: Gwyneth, you go! Fuck the haters! Shine on, you crazy rich girl!i concur, r-traist. i concur.
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