I TOLD you that Levis aren't your mom's jeans...

My roommate Jess and I were just watching a re-run of the most recent episode of Project Runway (the Levi's 501 challenge). She mentioned a Levi's commercial that she saw last week and I HAD to look it up. Check out this twist on the phone booth ad we've all seen before:



HUGE kudos to Levis. I don't know how this ad will do selling jeans, though I think the two pair of men's 501s side-by-side are pretty effective. I'm really impressed that Levis went there with this commercial. It's high time advertisers changed up the message a little bit. I'm sure the Fred Phelpses of the world will be dragging it through the mud in no time but, for the time being, let's enjoy this little bit of flaming liberal heaven.

The Magnetic Fields- Distortion

Distortion marks singer/writer Stephin Merritt’s return to the indie pop goodness that we’ve been craving ever since the Fields’ 2004 I, a charming collection of love songs, ex-love songs and deliberations of craziness. In the meantime, Merritt gave us the score for the film A Series of Unfortunate Events and an awkward appearance on Fox. I don’t know, I just don’t think that brilliant gay songwriters naturally go hand-in-hand with the home of Bill O’Reilly.

I’m always nervous when a band I love comes back from a great album- Death Cab for Cutie’s Plans taught me not to get my hopes up- but Distortion is nothing short of a treasure trove for old Magnetic Fields fans. Like Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, Merritt was on the receiving end of some voice training before his most recent release. Fortunately, this didn’t rob the distinctive “humanness” from his voice.

The first track, "Three-Way," is a nearly wordless pop riff that I think really showcases the band’s charm. You can leave it on as background music while you’re cleaning your apartment, or blast it through headphones when you don’t want to pay attention to anything else. "California Girls" exemplifies the group’s penchant for combining guitar-driven, upbeat music with surprisingly angsty lyrics (think OK Go on quaaludes). You think “sure, a Counting Crows-esque tribute to the lyposucked babes of the West” but you really get:

They ain't broke, so they put on airs,
the faux folks sans derrieres.
They breathe coke and have affairs
with each passing rock star.
They come on like squares
then get off like squirrels.
I hate California girls.

Lyrics like these are so refreshing to me, especially as the best-written song I’ve heard in the past several years is Rihanna’s “Umbrella” (hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it). I can’t fairly say that the writing on this album is as literary as some of Merritt’s 69 Love Songs, but it’s still pretty delightful.

"Old Fools" lays a dense backdrop of distorted (how convenient) guitars and lazy percussion before pouring on Merritt’s voice, equal parts Michael Buble-young Tom Waits-Robert Smith. Like many of the group’s more buttery classics, this song leaves one wondering whether to slip into something more comfortable or to slip into a coma.

The band will be on a short tour in February. Sadly, Minneapolis and Milwaukee are both absent from the list so I’ll have to get my kicks from the ensuing YouTube videos. If you have the opportunity, though, you should consider it. And if you can find a way to smuggle me in, you know I’m there.

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OH! I almost forgot. If you're not averse to video podcasts, National Public Radio is embarking on "Project Song," in which songwriters are given two prompts and two days to write a song. Merritt was featured on the first installment and comes up with, in my opinion, a charming little piece about a supervillain with a million faces. Check it out.

Intern-al Affairs, OR: Bad Puns Take Over the World

Please forgive my lengthy absence, everyone. I've been getting settled in after moving back to Minneapolis. That means buying books, reuniting with friends and getting fed grapes by my more attractive half during Project Runway marathons.

Spring semester is upon us, which means that about a million kids my age are looking for summer jobs and internships. You've probably heard at least one bright-eyed young person going on about the stack of interviews they plan to arrange, clutching their resume like an 8.5 x 11 inch gold leaf. Some of us, though, are being dragged into the process by our own stupid expectations that someday our lives will mean something beyond school.

Getting one of these things is a little bit impossible. Within about four square miles of me are literal hundreds of qualified students and I'm sure at least a handful of them look better on paper than I do. It's enough to make one wish she'd toughed it out and gone to that 8a.m. class every day or at least kept in better touch with the professors whom she did choose to grace with her presence.

Oh, and if I haven't already complained to you about this, let me make it known that cover letters are awful things to write.

Dear Sir or Madam,
Allow me to tell you how great I am, since reading my barebones resume might be too ambitious a project for your HR department.

It would be so nice if we could just be honest with each other.

Hi [Name of newspaper or PR agency],
In order to survive in the urban jungle, I need a place to live. A job seemed like a reasonable first step.
<3

So please cross your fingers or, if you're the praying sort, pray for me in my quest for summer employment. Ooh, and send a letter to the Onion and tell them that I'd be a great contribution to the A.V. Club.

Resolved

I don’t usually make New Years Resolutions. I tend to make a bunch of goals at random times during the year and then… not exactly do anything about them. I figured maybe I should take a different approach this year and see how it goes. Besides, maybe recording them here will make me a little bit accountable. So pardon me for being two weeks late. The good news is that there are pretty much exactly 50 weeks left of 2008, which is a nice round number.

1. My first goal for the year is to not suck at my spring semester internship. I’ll be working at a local paper for credit and experience (sadly, I don’t think they’re allowed to pay us for curriculum internships, but oh well). So whether I get stuck making coffee runs for a tyrannical editor or sitting in a closet writing obituaries, I’m really looking forward to some awesome experience and maybe some good connections with the local news media.

2. I’m not sure yet if my schedule for the semester will allow me to be in orchestra or take private violin lessons, so I’m officially resolving now to practice a half-hour every weekday. It’s nothing compared to the hours I used to put in when I was playing really seriously in high school, but it should be enough to keep me in decent form for when I rejoin the musical living. P.S. I taught myself how to play mandolin a couple of days ago and it’s awesome.

3. Going along with number 2, I’d like to get some more paid violin gigs this year. It pays well and it’s a ton of fun, and the people who hire you are usually really ridiculously sweet and give you lots of compliments- best job ever. (Those suckers don’t know I’d happily play violin for them for free, bwahaha.)

4. Maintain a bitchin’ GPA. With all the hot librarian clothes I’ve squandered money on over winter break, this should come pretty naturally. Also, stop buying so many clothes.

5. And lastly (this is the hardest one, I think), I’ve really let myself slip on doing creative things like writing for fun and drawing and painting and all of the stuff I used to be really into when I had more time. So I bought a cheap Moleskine notebook and gathered up a ton of art stuff,
and I’m going to produce two pages a week, of writing or drawing/painting or something else, which should fill up that book in about a year. I actually started last night and, though it looks a tiny little bit like a baby painted it and puked on it, it was a whole lot of fun, which was the whole point.

“Inspiration is for amateurs.”

– Chuck Close, AND Alex Fletcher in Music & Lyrics (see previous entry)

"To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. so do it."

-Kurt Vonnegut, one of my very favorite American heroes

PoP! Goes My Heart

This doesn’t have much to do with anything, except I saw this clip a few days ago and have since felt the uncontrollable urge to share it with the world. Anyway, the movie Music & Lyrics is a movie about an aging 80s pop star (Hugh Grant) who collaborates with a young, hot, totally awesomely-dressed writer (Drew Barrymore) to write a song for a Shakira-esque superstar. It’s pretty cute but the film’s major strength lies in its catchy songs and Hugh Grant’s one-liners.

And THIS video, the first two and a half minutes of the film. So genius:

I think my favorite part is the blinking heart under the sheet at the hospital. Or when Jason from Friday Night Lights does a slowed-down version of the Molly Ringwald dance. Or maaaybe the picture-in-picture. Oh hell, I can’t decide. My favorite part is the entire 150 seconds of faux-80s goodness. I’m still puzzling over Hugh Grant’s cravat- I refuse to believe that dressing like Austin Powers would have gone over well in 1984.

I’m not really urging you to go out and rent Music & Lyrics- though it is a good bet if you really loved The Wedding Singer and similar chick flicks- unless you feel like watching that clip over and over on a big TV. Which I totally do.

From the Archives (and by The Archives, I mean my brother's closet)

I just found an old shirt I figured I might be able to craft a blog post around, so let’s see how it goes.

I actually screenprinted this tee at the apex of the House of Holland craze- hence the huge block letters- but it got lost among my little brother’s things until this morning. (This actually isn't as strange as it sounds- 95% of his wardrobe is black, so it was kind of a natural place for this shirt to end up.) The lettering might be a little passé by now but, fortunately for yours truly, no one in the Midwest really knows who Henry Holland is and they’ll probably just think I bought the shirt at Forever21.

In the future I’ll have to remember that $.99 paint doesn’t show up terribly well on black cotton, but I’m pretty happy with it. It’s a surefire excuse to bust a move AND some witty commentary on fossil fuel dependence. Which reminds me, if you represent a news organization and happened to fall in here by mistake:

Please stop telling me about the primaries. Knowing who won in New Hampshire won’t help me make up my mind, but knowing what the candidates think about things would be incredibly helpful. Oh, I also don’t care if Hillary cries or how many times anyone said “change” in the facebook debate. Kthx.

Honest to Blog?

So after looking forward to it for a month or so, I finally saw the movie Juno on Thursday night with my friends Mark and John. The film stars Ellen Page as a babyfaced sixteen-year-old who gets knocked up after sleeping with her best friend, played by Arrested Development’s winningly awkward Michael Cera (also see: Superbad). She decides to give the baby up for adoption to a seemingly perfect wealthy couple, played by Jennifer Garner and another face from Arrested, Jason Bateman.

I actually have this poster because my awesome friend Lewis stole it for me. A million points to Lewis.

In general, I really really enjoyed this movie. It delivers what I call “the Super Troopers effect,” whereby you’re constantly trying to suppress gales of laughter because you don’t want to miss the next funny thing. Every single character has a host of vulnerable/funny moments, especially Cera as an unwitting father. At one point, during a fight with the heroine, he imitates her by saying “Oh no, let’s make out instead, la la la.” It’s way funnier in the movie than in my blog, I promise.

In fact, these constant verbal acrobatics are almost too perfect. My only real problem with the film was the writer’s endless attempt to make the characters sound quick and hilarious. Juno’s whole “seamonkey” line, which you can hear in the trailer, is way too perfect to have been thought up on the spot by any sixteen-year-old, no matter how clever. The end result is pretty harmless, though- the actors just take on a few exaggerated features, like caricatures. They still manage to keep it real, a testament to the strength of the cast. Oh, another tiny flaw was a bit of “nonodon’tgothereJuno” drama that was pretty contrived. But I don’t want to spoil anything.

Another thing I always have to talk about is the soundtrack. I’d probably put it in my top 10 of all time just because it contained not one, but TWO of my all-time favorite love songs. Early in the film we hear the Velvet Underground’s “I’m Sticking With You,” a really cute waltzy duet and later on we’re gifted with Belle & Sebastian’s “Piazza, New York Catcher.” It’s the sweetest. Song. Ever.

Because the movie is funny and the soundtrack is awesome, Jason (my way-cooler-than-everyone-but-I'm-not-sure-if-he-knows-it boyfriend) has warned me that it’s probably going to be “the next Garden State,” a phrase which sends an icy chill down my pretentious spine. Yeah, Garden State was very sweet and beautifully directed, but I think it’s unfair to call chinless Zach Braff’s assortment of ennui faces a plot. Just saying. If my little brother’s scene friends start putting Belle & Sebastian on their iPods, I might just have to choke a bitch. While wearing running shorts and a yellow sweatband, of course.

Our Heroine Rediscovers The Thrift Store

I’m kind of a merciless shopper. I tend to decide what I want, draw up a detailed plan of attack, and strike each store only long enough to find the object of my desire, try it on, buy it and leave. I’m willing to paw through racks of mismatched clothes to find a special something, but only if I don’t have a firm idea of what I’m looking for. It is for this reason exactly that I’ve almost completely avoided secondhand stores (save a trip to Goodwill when I had to buy dishes for my apartment).

So today when I had to go buy some black tights at Ruby Isle, the shopping center near my house that probably shares its name with a blung-out strip club in Vegas, I was planning to drop into Walgreen’s, grab the same kind I always get, and bolt for the door. On the way there, though, I passed Elite Repeat, the neighborhood consignment “shoppe” (yeah, they spell it that way) and thought “Oh, what the hell.” Recently poking my nose back into the blogosphere has reminded me that thrifting is like, the national sport of semi-educated youth, along with latte-drinking and, well, blogging.

A few words about Elite Repeat: As the name implies, however lamely, it’s a higher-end thrift place. They have a list of brands they don’t accept, on which you’ll find most store brands like Amy Byer (thank god) and Target’s Mossimo (unfortunate, because I love Target and I don’t care who knows it). When I used to walk over there and shop after putting in a day at the ice cream shop a few stores down, it was mostly staffed by middle-aged women who you just knew were trying to slip their old embroidered Christmas sweaters in with the Calvin Klein. When I went today, though, the employees were twenty-something waifs in black leggings and jersey dresses. All the more inspiration to shop fabulously.

Anyway, back to black tights- before I found them, I had a big “squee” moment. Imagine my delight when I found these for A DOLLAR:


That’s right, Evan-Picone hot pink tights in the original package for A FREAKING DOLLAR. I actually ripped the packaging in a frenzy to get them out and try them on before remembering that I should take a picture. I’m still deciding whether they’re legitimately adorable or just awesomely heinous, but you know what? It doesn’t matter because they were a DOLLAR.

So then I found what I had come for- a 2-pair package of Victoria’s Secret black stockings for $7, originally priced at $20. I really should have stopped there, but I was seriously having too much fun. I found an adorable granny cardigan from The Limited, a store I like but usually avoid because I’m cheap as hell. Apologies for the crap lighting- unfortunately, I don’t have a photographer’s studio in my bathroom.


Ever since I saw a Valentine Fillol-Cordier editorial shoot in the most recent Nylon magazine, touting her “sexy librarian style,” I’ve become a little bit obsessed with that intellectual, disheveled aesthetic. In addition to stealing a pair of my mom’s reading glasses (see 2 entries ago), I’ve been searching for pieces like this sweater that scream “Shh.”

And what good is a librarian sweater without a braided faux-pearl necklace? Now I’m outfitted to ace spring midterms (er, in two months) or yell at those punk teenagers to get off my lawn.


The moral of the story is that giving consignment stores a second chance was a really good idea. While the repeater didn’t have the suspenders I was lusting after, it was fun to stumble across treasure I wasn’t even looking for. And I got some awesome pink tights for a dollar.

There probably won't be any posts for a few days since I'll be in frigid Minneapolis, but I'll hopefully be posting a couple new projects and my Ph.D.-worthy thesis on legwarmers sometime after Monday.

Knitted Stuffed Elephant

This is Elgar the Elephant, whom I knitted for my cousin's new baby for Christmas.


I got the pattern from this book, which is full of really beautiful patterns that don't take a lot of time. The stuffed animal patterns (they also include one for a teddy bear and for a bunny) are supposed to take between six and eight hours but Elgar probably took me closer to 10 because I'm not terribly diligent. I'm really happy with how he turned out, especially because the project involved a lot of techniques that I had to learn as I was working on it.

I was pretty sad to see him go, even though it was really rewarding to see the baby laugh and cling to him. I might have to make myself the little bunny to ease the pain.

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This has nothing to do with crafting (except maybe I'll knit on the bus) but I get to see my boyfriend in 3 days and I'm super excited. :)