The Best Book I Read This Summer: Life Would Be Perfect

I read so many books this summer, so quickly, that it's hard to even keep them straight, but my favorite is Meghan Daum's, Life Would Be Perfect if I Lived in That House.

It's probably because I moved this year that I just wanted to read things about moving. I started with her L.A. Times piece about selling her house and then I moved on to her book. It seemed everyone I knew was buying and/or selling this summer, and I sent the LA Times link out so many times, I lost track. I figured they could use the moral support from her common experience in real estate, "It meant the agents supplied an eye-pleasing duvet and matching pillow set that had to go on the bed every time they showed the house to potential buyers. It meant our own (apparently vile) pillows had to be stuffed into our cars because there was no way to cram them into the closet without breaking the illusion that our lives fit neatly into 890 square feet."

I still have her first novel, The Quality of Life Report (the main character names her dog Sam Shepard), and her collection, My Misspent Youth: Essays, should be handed out with the diplomas at any liberal arts college (she includes the essay on her site).

She's a little younger than I am, but I've watched her career for about a decade, impressed that she found a way to make a living as a writer, and sustain a primary relationship with the concept of "home," all without getting married or having children. (She has since gotten married, but looking at her moving day blog, it appears they're sticking with Rex, the sheepdog. No sign of any kids. At this point, maybe I ought to clarify that I'm not actually stalking her.)

In the book, she housesits at a cottage for a single girl in Venice, prompting this observation of single woman living behavior, "often this woman's furniture is made of wicker (not including the ubiquitous halogen torchiere lamp); other times it's composed of lightly stained pine of the sort that's frequently used for futon frames and collapsible bookshelves...The bad furniture is almost always provisional. As soon as true love -- and a corresponding mortgage -- are reeled in, the wicker and pine will be traded in for items from proper furniture retailers. In the meantime, however, the only things for which the single woman will willingly overpay are scented candles.She will have loads of them: fat and thin, pear scented and vanilla scented and 'rain' scented, in every imaginable color and shape." I have never had a futon. (I have had a candle.)

Her sense of details stick. Of one house hunting episode, she says, "If we had any questions, we could talk to the owners, who, contrary to custom, were actually on the premises. She then gestured to a stained orange couch on which three elderly people of questionable hygiene were staring into space smoking cigarettes, their ashes cascading around a glazed ceramic ashtray on the floor, sometimes landing in it. Sometimes not...The asking price on this house was $425,000."

Because I liked this book so much, I found myself constantly trying to repeat it. Next, I read All Over the Map by Laura Fraser. But I didn't get interested in it until, on page 231, she makes an offer on a house in Mexico that's "three and a half meters wide by fourteen long -- it has potential." By the time she hires an architect on page 249, I'm riveted. But by page 267, the book is over. All the reviews say it's a memoir from a 40-something travel writer and her experiences all over the world -- but to me, it's a book about how she re-built that house in Mexico. Smith Mag did an interview with her which actually talks about what the book is actually about. It turns out, Laura Fraser also has a blog, which is where I'm trying to see if she ever names that architect.

Then I read Sloane Crosley's How Did You Get This Number, which, again, I fell in love with on page 225, for the chapter "Off the Back of a Truck," which is nominally about a one-year relationship with a boyfriend who turned out to have never really left his girlfriend. It's a pretty spectacular story. But it's nothing compared to how she furnishes her apartment with ill-gotten gains off the back of a truck, from a store she refers to as "Out of Your League." In this chapter, she writes, " It's extremely rare to be alone in Midtown Manhattan outside of a post-apocalyptic film. Instead of the silence-inducing panic and an acute curiosity about the edibility of dog meat, it lends itself to everyone's favorite game: What If This Was My House? Often played at art galleries and upstairs bars, it also works for more unexpected spaces. Like botanical gardens. I know this fern terrarium is humid, but will you look at that light? Will you? Look at it. The third floor got a whole lot of light."  What I wrote at the time was it's the best chapter you'll ever read about heartbreak and home decor. It's not a spoiler to reveal the last line of the book, "it was all just a bunch of somebody else's stuff."

Which brings me to, the last book I read on this topic, Brooke Berman's No Place Like Home: A Memoir in 39 Apartments -- which has a lot to do with moving, as the title would suggest, but which is also a memoir of coming to terms with her ailing mother; recovering from a rape; how she found her career as a New York playwright; and a conflicted relationship with a longtime on-off macrobiotic chef boyfriend in search of "enlightenment," to whom she tries to explain, "Where I come from, people don't live in vans." I was downright relieved to find her blog, where I learned she eloped last month, (and not with the guy who wanted to live in a van). I wanted a chapter that talked more about the late great Waldorf Hysteria ("tiny white retro kitchen table - a find!") and more about the time she spent temping at House and Garden/HG. It seems she would have been there during the Dominique Browning years -- and Browning wrote the last book about housing that I planned to read this summer but have not yet gotten around to, though I have checked in at her  Slow, Love, Life blog.  I'll get to it, probably on Kindle, but right now I have to fret about Brooke Berman, because on page 169, she says, "I buy myself a vanilla-grapefruit scented candle, which I set on the kitchen table..." and which makes me worry Meghan Daum is NOT going to be happy with her when she finds out about THAT.
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From the Archives. November 2008. Lenny Briscoe, Represent. Step up to the Wu.

Now that I can remote into my office from anywhere in the world, I can fish a few more columns out of the wrecked archives when I have a few minutes and continue the process of loading them here. This was an episode where the TiVo busted and I simultaneously came down with food poisoning. It wasn't pretty.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: November 2008

Lenny Briscoe, Represent. Step Up to the Wu.

"We all know that cash rules everything around us; cash, green, get the money, dollar dollar bill y'all. That's why it's time to enter the 36 chambers and step to the Wu."

—Wu Tang Financial, Chappelle's Show

I woke up on election day with a busted TiVo. As usual, I went to Fast Forward through the bitter, inane, insulting campaign commercials, and…nothing happened. I aimed the remote again. I jabbed the button really HARD for emphasis. Nothing. Impotent! No pause. No rewind. Just live television. In real time. Like. An. Animal. Every box I clicked said, “call your Cable Provider....”

Oh and I did. You betcha I did.

I went to work, and Rodney the Cable Guy called my cell a few hours later. (I don’t like to brag or anything, but....I’ve never waited at home for the recommended 12 hour window. Good ol’ Rodney’s been takin’ care of my box for the last 10 years or so; he knows all my numbers. And henknows I will levitate home to meet him if I have to if it means he can get the cable back before Martha Stewart comes on at two.)

"Protect yo Knight, Bitch." (WuTang Financial)

As he autopsied the box, I knew it was just a matter of time before he admitted the inevitable: it couldn’t be saved. Sure, he’d get me a new one. But the memory—and the memories—would be gone. Could I be sure I would ever retrieve“WuTang Financial” (“protect your knight bitch”) or “white people dancing” from Chappelle? What about my 13 episodes of Yoga Zone (Lime TV isn’t even ON anymore)? Where I will find my Fine Living archives of Dwell Magazine on TV?

Season One of Mad Men? The season 2 finale of 30 Rock? (Yes, I could get the DVDs, but that piece of crap broke a long time ago and I refuse to buy a new one until they swear they won’t invent another thing. I barely resolved VHS or Beta in time for everyone else to fight out Blu-Ray vs HD. You’ll take my 8-tracks when they pry them from my cold dead hands.)

How long would it take me to rebuild?

Rodney installed the new box, and I began the resurrection immediately. I wasn’t picky either. Oprah. The View. Season Passes. Gilmore Girls (at 5, not 11). And of course, the election coverage. Insomniacs know how to hedge desperation. One way or the other, there would always be something on.

Until I got home from work the next day and…there wasn’t. Just another message that said “call your cable operator.”

This time, they sent Doug.

what's left of Cable Guy

Doug’s a good man, but he’s no Rodney.

He didn’t even try to save my election coverage, my paltry episode of Dirty Sexy Money. He went right to the truck; came back with the new box; installed it; and left after showing me only one short-cut feature.

I played with the new buttons for a few minutes and then realized something wasn’t right. Was this box busted too? Was it the tv? Noooo…I was actually dizzy. The room was spinning, and my neck got clammy. Was I taking this harder than I thought?

I had a brief few moments to curse the very existence of Mediterranean food before I was quickly treated to a repeat viewing of the carryout dinner I’d picked up a few hours before. Followed fairly quickly by lunch.

Then breakfast. Then, maybe....was that a candied apple I’d had sometime around Halloween?

In between heaves, I grabbed some pillows, and a comforter, and bedded down on the bathroom floor. (Relax, it’s VERY clean.)

I put on some music and turned it up so the hot sorority girls next door wouldn’t hear me retching and call for an ambulance. Or an Exorcist. Though I kept thinking around 3 am, surely all the Evil had been expelled. I was up at 3 a.m., because even the AMBIEN wouldn’t stay down. The next day dawned with little improvement and I began to cancel things.

Work. The Girls’ Night Dinner Party I’d been planning for weeks.

I couldn’t think clearly, except to admire how lean and taut my stomach muscles were beginning to feel, though I dimly realized that throwing up won’t get you to a six-pack the way say, Pilates, might.

I posted a few facebook entries, a few micro-blogs. I dozed in and out of consciousness. I awoke to the online social circle’s diagnosis that I probably didn’t have food poisoning; it was probably the stomach bug that was going around. (One girl had thrown up four times standing in line to vote. Now THAT is democracy. Though I’m glad she doesn’t live in my precinct.)

When I wasn’t any better the next day, after much agonizing, I asked a friend to drop off supplies. I have a hard time asking anyone to go to the grocery for me. First, the front door to the store is about 100 steps from my front door. That’s just lazy. Second, a grocery list makes me realize how high maintenance I am, and wonder that I have any friends at all. I know that beggars can’t be choosers, but I can’t help myself.

“Wellllll, I need applesauce, but it has to be Mott’s. And it can’t be in a jar, it has to be in those lunchbox size kid packs. I need ginger ale, but it has to be in glass bottles, not plastic. And it can’t be Canada Dry, it has to be Schweppes [though honestly, I think everybody already knows that]. And I need bananas, but....”

Plus, I can’t really stand anyone to be around me when I’m sick, so she basically came in, unpacked enough rations to stock a smallish third world hospital; stored cold spoons in the fridge for me for the Jell-O (don’t ask me why; cold spoons seemed VERY important to me at the time); and skittered right out in a hasty = retreat. I think I said, “go! Save yourself!” before I collapsed in a nap on the kitchen floor, but I don’t remember much beyond making really disgusted faces over the PediaLyte Pops.

When I woke up the next day with a stiff neck (meningitis, I was pretty sure), I gave in and started googling all the medical websites— something I NEVER do, because I’m not ALLOWED to. Whatever I read, I catch.

If I watch an episode of House devoted to a rare form of prostate cancer, I will have every symptom by the end of the show.

But I was beginning to think this wasn’t Normal.

What I discovered was: there is no such thing as the stomach “flu”—if it’s “influenza,” it’s respiratory. WebMD confirmed pretty much what I already knew which is that I’ve never even met anybody who’s had “the Flu.” What everybody gets is a COLD, and they say Flu, because it’s more dramatic.

And then they take antibiotics (which have no effect on ANY viruses), because…they
are stupid. And THAT is why we now have resistant SuperBugs. And that's why we're all goonna die.

What I had was ordinary, garden variety “gastroenteritis.” I wouldn’t die, I’d just bemthirsty, though I should go to the E.R. if I developed “neuro” symptoms, like “dizziness” (who doesn’t get dizzy when they don’t eat for three days?)

I crawled back in bed with a Law & Order marathon (there hadn’t been enough time to amass much else), and figured I should take comfort in attaining my goal weight without bothering to develop an eating disorder.

From what I learned while bedridden, it seems the new TiVo will record TWO shows at the same time while allowing you to WATCH a third. Maybe it’s even time to think about Blu- Ray…Or am I still hallucinating? ■

12 ACE November 13, 2008
COLUMNS.
Lenny Briscoe, Represent
Reality Truck

The Sofa and the Kindle

"I'm not a literary genius...I was not an orphan. I have never blown anyone for coke or let other people do coke off any part of my body. I have never struggled with addiction and I was never molested. Tragically, my life has only been moderately fucked up. I'm not writing this book to share wisdom or to inspire people." 
 -- Sarah Silverman, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee

I am seventeen percent of the way through Sarah Silverman's new book on my new (to me) Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Free 3G, 6" Display, White - 2nd Generation. I think that's right.

Today was a big, big day in that I was lovingly handed down two of my favorite friends' two most cherished possessions. One handed down his kindle, and one handed down her Arhaus sofa (the kind with the down cushions that you squish into). They both seemed a little wistful to see these things go, but I reassured them that this is an Open Adoption. I'll send pictures. They can visit any time they want, confident in the knowledge that these treasures have a home just as loving and appreciative as their own. They won't drive by and see the kindle tied up in the yard, or the sofa sitting on the front porch. 

My quest for the perfect sofa has been in overdrive since I moved last Spring, because I refused to move the old one into the new place. There wasn't anything wrong with it, but I stopped liking it, and I refused to move it.

This has meant a long summer of guests literally sitting on the floor (utterly without complaint...at least not to my face), but I have stuck to my guns. The Big Ass Chair seats two at the most -- and even that requires a certain romantic commitment... not to mention an embrace of certain principles of yoga.

The rule is if I don't love it, it can't live here. I'm not all snooty about it -- I'm happy to go without until the right thing presents itself. I have made one exception for a lamp I like that has an ugly shade, because it seemed a little extreme to light the living room with a bare ass bulb. I can picture the shade I want, but I haven't found it yet.

My bud Ian says my problem is champagne tastes on a beer budget -- and that's part of it -- but that isn't precisely true. I just have very, very specific taste, which I have a very difficult time articulating. I wasn't born speaking Dwell Magazine, I'm learning the vocabulary one painstaking mistake at a time. For a long time when I tried to describe "contemporary," I was saying "modern," and ended up with some terrible Jetsonian errors.

Harriette in her Kitchen

I do know my friend Harriette's house in the country (our bleugrass Hamptons) is perfect, so at least she gives me a jumping-off point, but it's a point of inspiration-only. I know her sofa is a magnificent B & B Italia and that if I had it, the general response would not be "wow!" (as it is when you see Harriette's), but rather "who does she think she's kidding?" It's Art, and I'm not sure I can pull off a room where you sit on the Art.

Luckily, I can read all about it in all the Design Magazines I plan to subscribe to on the new Kindle.

Today is the first time I ever touched one, and yes, I do realize I am several years late to the party. I wasn't boycotting them -- as some writers do -- it was just on the list of things I hadn't gotten around to. I've never had a "sky is falling" philosophical opposition to them "replacing" books. I won't be hauling the kindle to book club. There are books I want to keep and physically annotate and look at on my shelves so I can go back to them over and over again, but honestly, not all that many. I've never been much of a book hoarder.

I am, however, both a compulsive reader, and an insanely fast one. On any given weekend, I can power through a half dozen new releases that have piled up on my desk during the week. If they're good, I try to force myself to slow down because I want to make them last, but I never can. Factor in the insomnia and I constantly run out of things to read in the middle of the night, long after the bookstores are closed and amazon isn't shipping.

The kindle strikes me as a perfect remedy for that. The new Sarah Silverman is a good example. She is way, way too scatological for my taste in humor. Sometimes I think she's funny, and sometimes a little repulsive. I wouldn't take down a tree for this book, but I am happy to read it. Midway through, I did have to text Michael and ask him if the Kindle lit up, or if I was expected to turn on the lamp like a goddamn animal. I can see myself reading it by kerosene during the next Ice Storm.

I am not an early adopter (remember, I insisted writers bring me their stories on disk for years because their stupid attachments wouldn't open and I really didn't see "that whole email thing catching on"), but I'm not a Luddite either. My cousin and I had a long talk yesterday where I explained to him the fax machines of yore with the curly paper, and he made fun of the days when I tied my columns to the ankles of carrier pigeons and dispatched them throughout the city.

Disdain for technology is a luxury for folks way higher up the literary food chain than I am. It's fine to adore Wendell Berry and all, but it's equally fine to remember that his lovely wife types all his manuscripts. I don't have a wife. I have facebook. And if somebody shows me something that makes my life easier and better, I am happy to take them up on it. I love information and I love knowledge (two different things, I realize) and I'm glad to improve my access to both.

As I was typing this, however, I got a voicemail from my BFF that says, "I am calling you on the Gmail."  She said I could call her back on it too. I have no idea what that means, but apparently, somebody has now replaced telephones. Perhaps she will read this blog crudely fashioned from twigs and berries and call me back. Last Thanksgiving, I talked to her on The Skype while she was in Siberia, so if she says phones are over, we'd best believe her.

Between you and me, I suspect It's Like Havin' a Dove Field.

The Tao of Craigslist

I hate my old sofa. It's a good sofa; it probably has a million years of wear left in it, I just don't like it anymore. It was my first grown-up furniture purchase, about 20-some years ago. Up until then, I furnished everything via the design school of "Want this?" which meant my apartment was where all the relatives' cast-offs went to die. So buying the sofa was a big deal -- a proud moment.

At the time, I liked antiques. About 15 years ago, my taste shifted to contemporary. Not crazy-modern, just something you'd see in Dwell or Metropolitan Home (before it went out of business), as opposed to say Southern Living (not that there's anything wrong with that). It's hard to find something simultaneously insanely stylish, dog-resistant, and movie-night-comfortable. This is for the TV room (the living room furniture can afford to just look pretty -- but the TV room is where everybody hangs out most...after the Kitchen.) I've been actively shopping for this dream sofa for at least a decade, but I haven't been able to commit. It's like porn, I can't define it -- but I'll know it when I see it.

This Graham and Green number is nice, for example -- and it'd be great for the parlor -- but this isn't how I dress to lie around and read books in Howard the Home Theater. Also, it was ID'd as a sofa, but I'm pretty sure it's a loveseat, or else she's a GIANT. Although as demonstrated by the BigAssChair purchase, I clearly don't know the difference between the two.

I finally realized that as long as I kept the old, loathed sofa, the law of inertia would keep me from getting a new one. (Or as my Mom put it, I needed to "fung the shway" in this place -- nothing new comes in til something old goes out -- not that she would approve of getting a new sofa when there's still life in the old one.) Maybe sitting on the cold wood floors would be a motivator. So my pals Phoef and Dave dragged the old sofa to the office, and then I posted it on craigslist. (I just saw on the news where somebody got killed when a robber came to his house to buy his craigslist diamond ring -- which is where I feel compelled to point out: I do not have any diamond anything. I don't even have a sofa for chrissake. Keep it movin' pal...nothing to see here.)

So far: not one nibble. Nobody seems to want my old sofa (though it has come in handy a few times at the office, and that will probably end up being its permanent home).

I headed over to craigslist this morning to check out my competition, and I was embarrassed I hadn't done a better job of "selling" it.  Because every sofa (but mine) has a story.

One guy writes elaborately, in defense of his sectional, "I am recently divorced and honestly [would]  just rather have a futon for my place. No other reason I am getting rid of them." (I find myself wondering if he's protesting a little too much? What are the "other reasons" someone might infer? Somebody died on it? Somebody was born on it? Something worse?)

Another owner of a "nice sleeper" discloses,  "There is one small burn hole on the left arm of the sofa but we do not smoke in the house. It's really no big deal." (Points for the correct spelling of It's, but that seems a little antagonistic -- it's probably up to the buyer to determine whether or not burn-holes and smoke damage are "a big deal.") They add, "Also, we have dogs so the couch will need to be vacuumed." OK, I can see that (but I do wonder why they don't just vacuum it themselves?)  They close helpfully with, "The color in the picture looks a little weird but it's just the lighting and the fact that it was taken with a cell phone camera."

Apparently, no one's satisfied with the quality of their cell. Another ad points out, "The pictures make the chairs look worn down. They are not worn, it's just the type of fabric. Kind of like what suede does when brushed different ways?" Fair enough.

The chairs look pretty good actually.

But I wouldn't give $100 bucks for 'em. 

The Voice of Color

I am not the "Voice of Color," but it does now follow me on Twitter. They tagged me yesterday in this post, "@RealityTrucks Uses PPG Porter Paint & NO other! http://is.gd/aUzwO & has color goals in mind before painting. We're swooning! Thanks :)" 

I think they'll be disappointed (much like all the high-style design outfits that followed me after I wrote so frequently about Dwell Magazine -- clearly having no idea the shame I was capable of accidentally wreaking -- it being entirely true that I've based many of my palettes largely on Adrien Lyne movies. Or as one of my DesignGays put it, "I'm not sure 'Bravery' is the word we're going for here.")

"Voice of Color" was referring to a recent blog where I did, in fact say I am a Porter Girl (although I do use Ralph Lauren and other lines as color-whores. Everyone knows I don't feel like a house is a home until the first coat of Glyptek White Umber has been applied to the trim. And I don't want to be...untoward... but yeah, I admit I had a little spring in my step all day just knowing my "color goals" had made a Search Engine Optimizer swoon -- complete with an emoticon no less. (It is much better than all the Lenten entreaties/entweeties begging me not to bring certain industries crashing to their knees, so to speak, depending on what I decided to give up for Lent.)

I think it's pretty clear that this is a non-commercial blog, but I felt compelled to promptly post on the blog's facebook fan page (which never links correctly here, so consider that a non-endorsement) that Porter Paint did not pay me to say that (I am sure if they had paid me, they might have asked me to phrase things differently), while adding (in what could be construed as a disgruntled tone) that I didn't even get any free paint from them either. (Where's the love?) Just like none of us ever got any free boxed wine after the famous Bandit boxed wine blog which I wrote right after all the FTC disclosure notices made the news, even though I had never been a recipient of what the NYT characterized as "the days of an unimpeded flow of giveaways," which were evidently grinding to a close.

But no,  my Porter-commitment is based on years of hard-won experience and is one of those things in life I just expect everyone to treat as if it's now established empirical fact, and is neither a matter of opinion, nor up for debate, i.e., Coke is better than Pepsi. It's just true. I was raised in a Pepsi household. As soon as I grew up (and realized I was free to go), I moved out, and switched to Coke. I also grew up in a household that painted every few years, but only ever in May, after the Sears Annual Memorial Day Paint Sale. I grew up, and painted my first apartment one Memorial Day weekend, and that was my last trip to Sears.

My understanding is that "monetizing" frequently leads to "tacky," and while I never say never to selling out (if anybody ever asked dammit, and the price was right), I think I can safely avoid the temptation as long as I can resist 17 cents a month for the privilege of pop-ups like this one turning up in the margins.

So, to this day, I remain uncompensated by Ambien, Bacon, or Sam Shepard, which shocks (shocks) me, and to that I would add, Man, I can't even get arrested at Hermes (...except for the fact that, somehow...I feel sure I could. If they locked Oprah out, prison is probably the least they have in store for me.

Harriette's Kitchen

Ian took this photo in Harriette's Kitchen this weekend. Harriette has my dream kitchen, and my dream house -- which she and her late husband designed and built around a subzero and viking stove they found at an Auction. Her house looks like it would be more at home in Seattle than here, and would fit right in on the pages of Dwell Magazine.

If she were anybody else, I'd probably be consumed with bitter, bitter envy -- but Harriette is who I want to be when (and if) I grow up, and a picture here and there just reminds me it's good to have goals.

I'm posting a few more photos I took on the way to their place in the woods in a driving rain during this past Fall's Flood Season. High Water is on my list of phobias (I can't help but flash on poor 1970s anchorwoman Jessica Savitch drowning in her car, in a ditch, with her dog, who died too), but if you're lucky enough to get invited to The Woods, you go.  (You just don't watch The Strangers for awhile after you get back.)

The pictures don't do it justice. (Well, my pictures don't anyway. But I'm working on my photography skills -- for which Chef Tom has prescribed thyroid medication, because clearly, I come down with the shakes everytime I'm behind the lens.)

The Right Stuff

I ran across this link on pal Kimmy's facebook page today and it cracked me up. I'm sure the link won't post right, but you can get the gist from the headline alone:




What The Daily Mail article suggests is that there's something in the Pill that has made women turn from manly men to girlie men.

Taking the pill for past 40 years 'has put women off masculine men'By David Derbyshire

It ushered in the 1960s sexual revolution and gave women control over their own fertility.

But the Pill may also have changed women's taste in men, according to a study.

Scientists say the hormones in the oral contraceptive suppress a woman's interest in masculine men and make boyish men more attractive. Although the change occurs for just a few days each month, it may have been highly influential since use of the Pill began more than 40 years ago.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1218808/Contraceptive-pill-women-attracted-masculine-men--interested-boyish-looks.html#ixzz0TZ2rKfHe

All I can say is, my obsession with Sam Shepard is as stalwart as it ever was, and there's no one more manly, and less pretty than him. (I coulda posted his mugshot to really reinforce that fact, but I don't like it when that's done to me, so I typically don't do it to anyone else.)

Admittedly, it's probably the whole sordid Sam Shepard package that does it for me -- writer, drummer, almost irresponsibly tall (does he have a drinking problem toooo? Bring it.) -- but I can't think of a single pretty boy I consider remotely attractive.

(Brad Pitt only makes it worse when he tries to talk about architecture. He seems to make it thinks him deep, or smart. Please. I'll stick with Dwell Magazine thanks.)

The alarming thing was, when I looked for an image of my particular brand choice (which doesn't seem to have the girlie-man effect, and that's all I was going to say), I kept finding pictures of BABIES. Which definitely doesn't suggest a vote of confidence in the product.

(I finally just snapped an image of the lovely gift-pak the stooopid P.A. gave me on Thursday. I'm not going to be using it as a Clutch or anything.)