I Heard A Rumor

Oh yes. I heard a rumor about you and the faces you make when you look at yourself in the mirror! Aha! It's true, isn't it?

Not to worry. I think it's normal. I've tried on a few faces myself. There's the prune. It's celebrity-inspired. All you have to do is hold your breath, bite the insides of your cheeks and pout your lips. The beauty of the prune is it creates cheekbones where there are none. It can also make you look like someone who is desperately hungry and decides to eat the inside of her face.

Or how about this face, the one with the tiniest of close-mouthed smiles, with a little jut of the jaw? Yeah, the one where you end up looking like you've soldiered your way through offensive odors and still maintained a lovely disposition.

Hey, look, it's the creators of the prune:



Be warned, it's tempting to pull a prune in pictures. But it can backfire. I've seen prunes that came out more like raisins.

Speaking of pictures, my best friend has been known to delay clicking her camera before she's positioned properly. And we're both guilty of gasping for air afterwards. What? There's nothing wrong with sucking your gut in for pictures. She's done well for herself in the best-angle department, except for that series of pictures when her hand oddly resembled what can only be described as, "the claw." (The previous sentence was written with love.)

Sometimes those mirror faces are better left in the mirror. I learned this when I decided to debut the raised-eyebrow look on a picture. You know, the one that's supposed to make your eyes look bigger and brighter. It's kind of playful and mysterious. Those were the objectives.

This is the result:



Disaster.

Strangely Appealing

I've been seeing socks in a number of fashion editorials lately. So there's the model, as usual. Her eyes say, "aspire to be me," while her stomach says, "can I haz cheezburger?" Your eyes go down to her feet which are wrapped in thin socks and perched on a pair of HazMat heels. The socks say, "winter just ended." But the shoes say, "don't be stupid, it's spring."

I don't know if I like it. I don't know if I hate it. I want to say it's strangely appealing but when I open my mouth my tongue stops at, "strange..."



It's like this fall when shorts worn over tights were making an appearance. And I cringed yet I thought to myself, it looks kind of interesting, like your thighs say, "I'm warm," but the calves say, "I'm not."

This line of thought reminds me of someone I know who tells stories in the form of dialogue. And yes, the dialogue includes words supposedly spoken by pets and inanimate objects.

I Knew Something Was Off

I knew something was off with that chicken soup I ate last night. I knew it the moment I found myself on a journey I now think of as, "Midnight Express: All Roads Lead to Flatulence."

Oops. I don't mean to gross anyone out. Let's start over. This post is actually about a 1961 William Castle movie called, "Homicidal."




The movie is about Emily, an icy blond caretaker, Helga, her mute, wheelchair-bound charge who herself was a former caretaker and the now grown up Miriam and Warren, the half siblings that Helga used to care for. Miriam is now a budding flower shop owner while Warren, soon to turn 21 years old, is about to inherit his Father's millions... or is he?

Not only is the movie one bizarre scene after another but you will also begin to notice that something is off with Warren. First, he looks vaguely like someone you've seen before. Then, you can't help but wonder about his teeth and how they just don't look right. His voice is suspect. Your mind also flashes back to the opening scene where young Miriam and Warren fight over a doll. And then there's his walk. Strange, very strange.

You know what else is strange? One day, on the number 49 bus, a woman gets on. She's all tatted up with hair dyed in fluoro green, a look that's very appropriate for this bus route. The strange part is, she is holding a dog leash with no dog. My eye follows the leash, from her hand, twisting up to her arm and then on her shoulder where it so gently encircles the neck of a rat. A rat. A RAT!!!

Going back to Homicidal, watch it if you can. It was released a year after Hitchcock's Psycho but Homicidal certainly holds its own, with a feel that is way ahead of its time.

Tiger Vs Rat: A Metric Concert/ Audience Review to the Tune of Stadium Love (Showbox at SODO, March 21, 2010)

Just kidding. You won't really be able to replace Stadium Love's lyrics with the following paragraphs. You could if you wanted to make a youtube video called, "Metric: The Misheard Lyrics."

Nico Vega Vs Codeine Velvet Club

Sorry Codeine Velvet Club. You guys were great but in the battle of opening bands, you were no match for Nico Vega's offloading of craziness. And by craziness I mean crazy eyes and crazy energy. The singer was so into it even the guitarist looked at her strangely for a second or two. She also gets extra points for wearing what appeared to be a moss green velvet cape over a sheer white dress and a sequined neck tie.

Seriously though, they were good. To my limited-musical-knowledge ears they sounded like Bjork and Black Sabbath's children, but raised by wolves... in an abandoned eyeliner factory. Hey, that is a compliment. Feral children are fascinating.

Behold, Nico Vega:



Emily Haines with musical instrument Vs Emily Haines without

I am tempted to say it's a tie but I think without wins. She's brilliant either way but without means she can dance and her dance moves are very entertaining. Plus, she gets to move from stage left to stage right to give the audience equal attention. One more thing, they sound a lot like they do on their album and that is a good thing. Their fantastic performance can only be summed up by a youtube comment I chanced upon. It was probably written, and this is a guess, by someone whose first language may not be English. It goes, "they play to the best they can to the festival."



Blond Sisters: Drunk Vs Sober

Drunk wins. She looked like she was having a lot of fun dancing with strangers while periodically turning to her sister to say, "Look at me! I love you!" Sober, on the other hand, just got crabbier by the minute, threatening an uppercut to the face to the lady who allegedly elbowed her in the ribs. Drunk's margin of victory also increased the moment she pulled out a disposable camera and uttered, "elephants on a pancake," to no one in particular.

Elbow Vs Armpit Vs Boobs Vs Sweat

Yeah, I'm talking to Mr. Chubbs in the turquoise shirt aka Elvis the Pelvis, and his girlfriend who used her boobs as a battering ram to get to the rail (they didn't make it, haha). Getting jostled and mildly assaulted by random body parts is a given at a concert of this sort so let's just call them all winners, with sweat at a slight advantage. Yes, that would be you, Mr. Curly Hair in a tank top. You get to bring home the trophy!

I would like to close this little ditty with a moment of silence for this pair of glasses which, though bold and brave, lost in the battle of Eyewear Vs Footwear.




* all photos by I.P.

Brief, Crazy Encounters

I like old movies. I especially like it when a seemingly proper lady or gentleman character suddenly blurts out something wicked. Which is why I couldn't help laughing to myself at some scenes from Brief Encounter. When Celia Johnson, as Laura, is forced to share a train car with her neighbor who won't stop yammering, she thinks to herself, "I wish you were dead." And then she feels guilty and takes it back with a, "that was silly and unkind." Funny, a similar line of thought used to pop in my head when our former neighbor, at five in the morning, would rap along to Chamillionaire with his apartment windows wide open. Whaaat? I was just kidding. Really, I don't mean that.

There's also that scene when Laura and Alec share a table together for lunch and a trio of musicians start hammering their music out. They look at each other and laugh. And he goes, "there should be a society for the prevention of cruelty to musical instruments."

I also really like how Laura rocked that head scarf in one scene. I too, have imagined a scenario where I would wear a head scarf in public. This scenario is often followed by the realization that instead of looking like a super stylish woman of the world, I will end up looking like this:





Another thing that's extra shocking? Novels written years and years ago that have a bunch of crazy things going on. I mean, there you are working your way through Tender is the Night and then - spoiler alert - the incest bomb is dropped. Crazy times.

Or, how about Anna Karenina? Drugs. Lots of drugs. And adultery. And suicide.

Eight, Again

I've been thinking about rompers, also known as a playsuit, jumpsuit and catsuit. I almost put, "the," before, "catsuit," but obviously we are not talking about the actual suit that Catwoman wore.

So, I've been thinking about this clothing item and the grown women who wear them.


It kind of bothers me. It doesn't matter if the silhouette is slinky and very adult, or that the crotch is dropped or the hems are gathered. It still looks wrong. Is there something about their Oshkosh B'Gosh years that they would like to recapture? When maneuvering out of a romper to take a piss, does a shot of youthful energy go through one's being? Does the feel of overalls on skin bring back memories of imaginary friends named Vivica and Doris?

I must admit, those years gone by were magical times. I've always wondered what it would feel like to have my mother put a bib around my neck again and force feed me liquid vitamins from a bottle. Plus, Vivica and I used to terrorize my neighborhood of stuffed animals. However, I am not putting a romper on.

And one other thing I'm not doing at my age? Putting my hair in pigtails, braided or otherwise. No. Just, no.

It Doesn't Count

In the same vein, chicharon doesn't count as fat if I dip it in vinegar. Everyone knows the acidity cancels out the cholesterol. Yeah, it just melts all that fat away. Like magic.

Also, karaoke doesn't count as real singing which is why you don't have to be in tune when you sing along, right? Right?

Oh, Hello

Some of my notebook doodle-personalities would like to say hello.

This also applies to wearing sunglasses indoors. Just kidding (but not really).

Yeah. It happens. Some clothes only look good in your mind. Or in a slightly angled mirror that makes you look thinner than you really are. And then you talk yourself into believing that, noooo what you see in the mirror is what you look like in real life, no joke.

That's my problem with belts. In my mind I think, "oooh... such lovely buckles and notches." But all I end up with when I put them on is the sartorial equivalent of an underline that says, "this woman has no waist."

On a cheerful note, I don't have cankles.