Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Ring it in- a -ding- ding!

Today we are heading out to Palm Springs with our pals to stay in Steve McQueen's old desert get away. Here's my New Year's Eve daywear. Rockin' the bells w/ houndstooth from head to toe. The closet's ripped apart as I pack my green suitcase.
When we arrive, we all share an amazing meal made by Miss Mindy Le Brock who made our trip to Mr. McQueen's come together. Yea Mindy!
Here's the living room
and this is how it felt.
I know I already wore this dress on Christmas Eve but it finally made it out of the house... and Sam and I break in 2009! I love this man more each year, if that's even possible.Meet Jamie.
See Jamie bodyrock it into 2009. Matt breaks it down in 2009.
Lindsey dances interpretively into 2009 in a "dance" sweatshirt. Thank you, you summed it up Lindsey.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

What blew our way today

Kara and I went into LA to go to galleries, eat at Millie's and generally just let the wind decide our direction. We walked around Sunset Junction and I talked with Laura Howe (who I had not seen in years) about Cuba. I was inspired by her creative drive. She is an artist and now also an amazing fashion designer for her store Matrushka where all clothing is altered to fit. I didn't dare try anything on for fear that she might make it fit like it was never meant for anyone else. I am operating on a $20 budget.
Next we tried to go to the Museum Of Contemporary Art and found no affordable parking and then we headed off to MOCA's Temporary Contemporary only to find it permanantly closed. Dang, end of an era. Kara used to work at Beck's mom and step-dad's Cafe Troy across the street and my ex-boyfriend used to be an art preparator at MOCA. Beck worked in the gift shop there where his co-worker Moises told him how to say "Soy un perdedor" or "I'm a loser". MOCA was the epicenter of our young world and I hope it manages to continue with as independant a spirit as ever.
We then dropped in for a visit with another special friend that spans back to those days. Back in 1990, there was a strange convergence of artists on the most industrial, dead end in Downtown L.A. It was Hunter Street, where Mac trucks loaded and unloaded pallettes next door to artists' shimmy shack, Peewee playhouse loft spaces. Some spaces had no bathrooms, and bags of doodoo had been tossed at the Amtrak trains just in back. Our friend Steve had a pond in his floor space filled with mosquito eating guppies and antique refrigerator doors hanging like trapeze artists serving as a white picket fence. Upstairs there were the beautiful, light filled spaces that are what one might think a conventional loft would look like. This was pre-downtown regentrification and the spaces were cheap and filled with limitless possibilities. We had many Icelandic friends. Our closest were
Stella Dottir, a fashion designer extraordinaire and Friedger Helgason, her son, a talented artist/ photographer/chef. She and Friedger had spent many years, as many of our old downtown friends had, living in New Orleans. They are back and her store is at 430 S. Main St. in downtown L.A. Friedger's incredible b &w photos of Iceland are gracing the walls. Her clothing is indescribably luxurious, the materials very silky and plush or diaphanous and sheer. The styles mix vintage with medieval and modern. She's a haberdasher, too! She dressed me up like a doll and knew what I would like even before I had a chance to find it. These kittens assisted me in the dressing room with their cuteness.


Stella and Kara (in one of Stella's hats)


We then went on to Chinatown and I thought I'd toss in my own boring outfit to illustrate that I should stick to art, music and teaching.


This adorable girl and her bronze pal have really got it going on tho.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Arbuckle rules the roost!



Admittedly, the cats are upstaging this outfit and rightfully so. Today I just hung out and drank coffee all day with my oldest friends Kara and Owen. This is what you'd call the comfort foods of the clothing world. Flannel, felted wool, corduroy and a cozy sweater. Ahhhhh...

Sunday, December 28, 2008





Here's tha 2 live crew [Microdot and Destroyer] and me on Day 5 of my "Fashion Prescription". Saw Gran Torino. Yea boy. Lady at the theater thought my legs were tattooed. Ate spring rolls at VIET w/ Mindy, Anthony and Kirby and drank pennywort green juice. Watched Electrocute or otherwise known as "Electrocutie" on Yo Gabba Gabba, the most demented show for children ever. Electrocute were playing music in outer space and seemed to be enjoying it. Yo Gabba Gabba had Cornelius on a while ago doing their counting song and it was neat. Tonight on YGG, we watched Money Mark counting robots and Paul Williams on a psychadelic adventure singing The Muppets' "Rainbow Connection". I loved that Muppets album when I was a kid. That combined with Mork fever earned me a rainbow bedspread w/ sheets and a pillowcase, a rainbow headband, watchband, barrettes, stickers and unfortunately, suspenders. And yet, I still wasn't particularily into unicorns or ponies.

Saturday, December 27, 2008



It was getting very cold as the sun went down out here in Joshua Tree's lunar landscape. Hung out at Marco's cabins w/ Marteeka, Andy and pals and went swimming in the Miracle Springs owned by Viggo Mortenson in Desert Hot Springs. Many positive ions later and I am restored. I like to think of this as my Mason-Dixon outfit since I am a Marylander. Am I fighting for the confederates or the unionists? You be the judge...

Friday, December 26, 2008

Aye Aye!



Feeling jaunty in my sailing duds and delivering yet a few more Xmas presents! P.S. Don't think my student was there after all. What a debacle, dental records are being used to ID now. It's really tragic.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Sci-Fi Xmas



My mom got me this LCD lightbox. It's good for your skin and giving you energy as well as a sound night's sleep. Letcha know how it works!

May your Xmas be jolly and bright!

I'm heading out for some Christmas festivities here. But first I was researching the deranged Santa in Covina (city just over Kellogg Hill) who opened fire on a Xmas party and then torched the house. He has the same last name as one of my former students' and I hope his family was not at this party!!!!! The bodies are too charred to ID.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Amoxicillin fashionista

Sam and I have been ill for like a week, as have most of our friends. My students were generous with the Yuletide germs as well. So rather than run around before Xmas like a blitzing pathogen, I've decided to stay home mostly and write endless streams of Xmas cards. I got inspired by a 12 year old fashion blogger named Tavi G (no relation,cuz I would be T Tavi) who is adorable and has fun in the snow of NY and raps about Comme des Garcons and other fashion houses. She is precocious and who doesn't remember being that age- all dressed up, nowhere pressing to go, entertaining oneself with recording devices. In my case, it was a tape deck. If only I had kept all of the non-sequitur "interviews" I did with my friends and myself as other characters. Surely they'd be good for a laugh, since 12 year olds have kooky senses of humor in their juvenile grown-up way. In her case, she uses the internet blogdom that transmits to the globe. She has been hailed as a fashion "it" girl and demurely she has resisted the attention. I can only imagine how weird it is to be 12 nowadays. When I first got a video camera before I left for China in 1998, I was filming up everyone's nostril, I was so excited to document something. I recorded punk shows back when they seemed more fun somehow. I even went to my newfound, financially out of bounds favorite clothing store Anthropologie and filmed myself in the dressing room in dresses I would never have the occasion to wear or the funds to buy. This made me feel like I didn't need to own them, just document them. I've never particularly enjoyed getting dressed up, not since I was a reckless teen in the 80's. Then, I wore crazy costumes, some shredded beyond recognition, others sewn, pinned or laced into something like clothes. Thrift stores were raw and untapped as a resource. The makeup was generally spooky style. Black eyeliner looking like lower lashes clockwork orangey and lots of Siouxsie influenced blocks of eyeshadow in all colors. Into the late 80's and eventually I decided I wanted to hide instead. So I stopped wearing makeup for a couple of years and started dressing in monochromes. Before, black, white and gray were natural favorites, then it became forest or olive green. There was baby and navy blue for awhile and even brown which I had once loathed. I still have to resist the urges of black, white, gray, green, blue or brown. My clothes were whatever I could comfortably wear for a few days stretch, despite tatters. I studied in France and this lack of fashion did not go over at all well. I was treated like a wretch and waiters avoided me. I came back to graduate. Nirvana hit big and my friends living in Paris said the whole city was awash in little tattered long haired boys and girls. As anyone who had been punky before Nirvana knows, the times were very confusing. I was sure that no one would copy me if I dressed in plaid kilted school uniforms. That quickly became co-opted as did anything anyone in the scene did. We were forecasters and there were eyes everywhere. Now it is so prevelant in the advertising world, that punky people from that period are no longer surprised to hear Buzzcocks sell cars or see bands reunite without much foresight. I'm sure this topic has been exhausted extensively and at the risk of seeming nostalgic for the bygone days of punk rock purity (of which there probably never really were any) I'll stop waxing. Well, this brings me up to the present. Although I still cannot afford it, I have become a little bit of a clothes horse. I don't like making myself nor anyone else feel awkward so I rarely wear my fancy clothes out the door. Something about the lighting in the dressing rooms convinces me that I will someday find the reason to wear this garment. So like Tavi G dressed up with no particular place to go, I thought I'd take advantage of my bedrest by doing a little daily fashion blog until the prescription ends in 10 days. Then no more amoxicillin fashion days. Here's the dress Sam got me for Christmas and here I am on Christmas Eve in it and then dressed in what I actually wore out of the house.



For Christmas Eve dinner we went to the Mission Inn in Riverside with my mom and her man Richard.




It's lit with an obscene number of lights and has all the animatronic elves you could shake a candy cane at. There is absolutely no way to take an uncreepy picture of these things.





Here are some equally disturbing animatronic miners from Knott's Berry Farm earlier this month.