i got a new car

Smart

how creative is this design? i think all new dorm rooms should go with this. b/c it sucks having a bed up in the air, but a desk? no problem. and storage on the steps & a built in bookcase right next to the desk - brilliant.

thing i'm pissed about today

1) Boy is indeed returning home from his mission on Dec 27th. it's not the mission president's fault so i'll be prank calling the church's Missionary Department instead.

2) my car doesn't work. it spent all week in shop & $500 later, it still doesn't work.

3) one of my co-workers passed away yesterday from a brain hemorrhage. he was only 23. his family had to make the decision to turn off the life support. even if he was totally gone anyway, how freakin terrible would that decision be?

but... i also got to have a picnic in piedmont park this afternoon with my friends. so really, i am pretty happy right now. i just like being dramatic.

Ode to Brooke: 27 Years of Joy

one of my friends plays the banjo. for my birthday, she sang me this song (to the tune of Obladi Oblada). i liked it. a lot.

Brooke it’s your birthday and I’m here to say we really like you in major way.

Even though you’re old now it’s OK we still sing to you on this special day.

27 years ago Brooke was born, grew up in small town Tennessee.

Little did her family know back then what a Mormon hipster she would be.

Indie rock, foreign films, neck scarves. Brooke loves all these things

Indie rock, foreign films, neck scarves. Brooke loves all these things

Tell her she’s pretentious she’ll say go to hell. Honor James Mercer and the Broken Bells. If you’ve seen a film Brooke has seen twice, Talk of HIV adds a little spice.

Indie rock, foreign films, neck scarves. Brooke loves all these things

Indie rock, foreign films, neck scarves. Brooke loves all these things

Some say that the most important day falls in December or the month of May

But I think we can all agree it was the day Brooke came to be.

Coming Soon

Boy only has 4 months left in Albania. i am SO excited for him to come home. like, considering making a tear off chain for each day left excited. sometimes i worry he'll be weird & different when he gets back b/c it is hard to see his funny, immature side through his weekly email. but this week he emailed us all and said he'll arrive in TN on December 26th. which is a Sunday (and more importantly, the day after Christmas). the 'rents think he is serious b/c he said he was "99% positive", but i'm pretty convinced* he's just being the brat he's always been. it's good to see that side is still there.

on my computer, this file is labeled "dork"

*i do still have a small irrational fear he isn't lying. in which case i'll be prank calling a certain mission home in Tirana for the next 4 months to enact my revenge. hey, i never said i was mature.

American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity

The main reason I went to New York last month was to go to this exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art about how American women and fashion have evolved. Each room in the exhibit was designed to show a different era of fashion. It began in 1890 with American fashion moving from the ultra-formal French style toward a more “sporty” style (still with corsets though).

This moved into the 1910s “bohemian” era, when women finally lost their corsets & wore loose kimono-ish dresses.

By the 1920s fashion had started to reflect modern architecture (tall, thin, skyscrapers) with the androgynous flapper ideal.

The last set of clothing reflected the Hollywood stars slinky gowns. That room was cool because behind all of the gowns there were clips of films showing the dresses on display.

The exhibit ended in a room full of constantly changing images of various American women with Lenny Kravitz yelling “American Woman” in the background. The curator wanted to show how at the beginning America was getting its fashion from Europe & by the end Europe was looking to American starlets for fashion. (I can kinda see how that happened by the end, but almost all the dresses in the exhibit were still made in France)

Two things struck me going through the exhibit. First, how cyclical fashion is – for example, puffy sleeves. Modern puff sleeves are not quite as huge as the ones we saw, but they aren’t far off. And the flapper era had those long waistlines that hit almost below the hips – those were all over last summer. Second, how narrow the scope of the exhibit was. I was hoping it would get to more modern fashion. But even as it was, the exhibit only contained dresses (including a wool bathing dress), and most of those dresses were extremely formal dresses. It did not really show the daily fashion of women. More importantly though, it only showed the fashions of the wealthy white elite. The omission of more pedestrian fashion kinda annoys me (what were black women wearing during these times? even if they were poor, they had fashion too). But, I suppose our fashion is still just trickling down from Bryant Park so I don't know why I was expecting anything different. (Except for the hipsters. They are above mainstream fashion.)