ReadySteadyGo

We're Moving!

2011-08-19T11:06:00.000-04:00

After eight long years at this blog address, I have given up on Blogger and am moving to my own damn URL and a Wordpress host. I know, I know, it is a pain in the ass. I hope all seven of you will follow me there: EVERYDAYFOREVER DOT ORG

Don't judge me, Hulu

2011-07-24T16:48:00.000-04:00

Isn't this antithetical to your business model?

Breaking News

2011-07-19T11:24:00.000-04:00

We interrupt this inadvertent blog hiatus to lose our freaking minds at how ugly these Sergio Rossi shoes are. OH MY GOD.

I am a food writer. FAQ.

2011-04-14T14:40:00.002-04:00

Do you eat out, like, all the time?
Yes.

So you review restaurants, right?
No.

Are you a really good cook?
I'm okay.

Are you friends with lots of famous chefs?
Sort of. Not really. Mostly their publicists.

Do you know Mario Batali?
No.

Where should I have dinner on Saturday? We're a group of six, we want somewhere new and hip. Not Brooklyn.
AUTO RESPONSE: I am away from my computer right now.

Where should I have dinner on Saturday? We're a group of six, we want somewhere cool but not aggressively hipster, not crazy loud, under $50/person without alcohol, really excellent food, West Village would be great, we don't mind waiting for a table.
Joseph Leonard

I'm coming to town next month - where can I get a great cupcake?
You can't. Good cupcakes are no longer commercially available in New York because people like you ruined them.

Why is the line at Shake Shack so long?
Eating is a subjective sensory experience, and people are willing to spend time waiting for this particular subjective sensory experience, because it is a fucking delicious one. Time is not as fungible as econ bloggers want you to think it is.

How can I get your job?
You could kill me and wear my skin, I guess? But someone might notice.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

2011-04-06T15:10:00.001-04:00

Everybody feels poor right now. Expensive food writing and expensive clothing writing are fantasy pieces that aren't realistic. We're keeping alive the myth that capitalism is still working, when in fact we've been gutted. Things are closing everywhere and nobody can afford this s--t, unless they're like me at my worst, where say 'f--k it, it's just another credit card.' There's a very small percentage of people who live on the Upper East Side, who can buy these meals and clothes and shoes. I'm not one of them. Most of the people I know aren't these people. They're educated people, they've got PhDs, but they don't have any money.

The inimitable Cintra Wilson (about whom I have written previously, as a result of which she emailed me!) tells it straight in the Huffington Post.

Socio-Literary Criticism Of The Day

2011-03-23T17:32:00.000-04:00

So this blog post was shared in my Google Reader about the tendency of male SF writers to rely on prostitutes as characters and why do men write women poorly and and and. Here is how I feel: Writers who are bad at writing women are often just as bad at writing men. It's just that in contemporary society (blah blah blah), men identify themselves in a more shorthand way (emotional repression, one-note "masculinity", etc.), so a simplistically conceived male character is superficially more similar to how we perceive a conventionally gendered real-life man. We notice poorly-written women more easily because the social construction of femininity is more complex. One of the nice silver linings to the whole being-thought-less-of-because-of-a-biological-propensity-to-show-emotion thing is that we ladies actually get to show emotion. So we're harder to write, in any medium. Which is ... awesome? It's something.

Awesome inside of awesome wrapped in awesome

2011-02-13T23:42:00.000-05:00

I just spent like two minutes on Noir's site and found about a thousand things I would like to be mine. Best of all is the Matryoshka ring:

It's $225. But Noir stuff is on Gilt every so often so it's probably a sucker bet to buy anything here at full price.

Rawr Rawr Nom Nom

2011-02-09T13:34:00.000-05:00

So, this is a ring depicting a dinosaur eating fried chicken.

Oh em gee. A hundred bucks from Verameat.

Ten Legs

2011-01-28T10:55:00.002-05:00

Yesterday Nadarine tweeted "Octopus chair? NO NO NO" and I just want to say, with all love and due respect, she is wrongy wrong wrong wrong wrong. Octopus chair? YES YES YES.

It's by Maximo Riera, who according to his website also has made pieces identified as "Rhino," "Lion," "Beetle," "Whale," and "Walrus," but they are tragically hidden behind a gallerists-only passwall. Grar.

The Drinkable Hippo

2011-01-11T14:30:00.000-05:00

This extraordinary object is, apparently, a Lalanne hippo (I'm guessing artist Francis Xavier, and not my first thought which was creepy-strong old guy Jack), but the important thing is that it is actually a Transformer that turns not from a truck into a giant robot but from a sculpture of a hippo into a freaking bar. A bar! IT IS A HIPPO THAT TRANSFORMS INTO A BAR.

The very fact that this exists has renewed my will to live for at least a week. It is owned, mais oui, by socialite-fashion person Lauren Santo Domingo, who is very happy to display it on the well-manicured pages of Vogue.com.

Now We Are 29

2011-01-07T16:33:00.000-05:00

"Reality Bites, the movie that in my youth I thought was very funny, and in my current state of adult decrepitude makes me want to scream at people about wearing bras, getting a goddamn job, washing their hair (I’m looking at you, Ethan Hawke), and not being pretentious assheads (ditto). Like, when you start rooting for the Taye Diggs character in Rent, and Ben Stiller in Reality Bites, and you cheer for Janeane Garofalo in that movie when she tries to get Wino a job at The Gap, you know you’re inching outside the target demographic. Although, I like to think of it as wisdom. PAY THE RENT, PEOPLE. Pay for your Snickers. God."

This is the other way I know I am getting super old. That I agree with things like this.

I Became Older Yesterday

2011-01-07T13:15:00.000-05:00

Alex: Many happy returns Helen!
me: Thanks!
me: I've always totally loved that phrase
Alex: :)
me: it's like, a, your future birthdays might not be happy
me: or b, you might be dead
me: LET US OFFSET THAT

(p.s. Another way you can tell I am a now wizened old 29, besides the gray hair proliferation and the rapidly declining tolerance for restaurants that don't take reservations, is that on my birthday I was in bed before 10. SUCH A ROCK STAR.)

This Year

2011-01-03T19:09:00.000-05:00

My New Years resolutions this year are mostly aesthetic in nature. Primarily, I want to start doing things with my hair that are more complicated (or at least more interesting) than just "up" and "down." Secondarily, I would like to wear at least one thing a week that I haven't worn before, or haven't worn in a long time.

Thirdly, I would like to have the author of my favorite piece of any sort of literary writing ever write something for me over at my new job. Oh wait, that already happened, and it's awesome.

Two Straws in the Milkshake

2010-12-27T21:35:00.002-05:00

I understand that there's an inherent level of smug dickery inherent in this tote bag, but the more I think about it the more I just love love love it.

$17, McSweeney's. Of course.

2010-12-05T16:16:00.002-05:00

QUESTION: Is Stevie Wonder's "What Christmas Means to Me" the best Christmas song ever?
ANSWER: Yes it is.

QUESTION: What is almost as good, and maybe even better, depending on your mood?
ANSWER: The Hanson version.
I mean really. Yes.

Parody Comes Full Circle

2010-11-30T23:44:00.001-05:00

Um hey. When did Buddy Christ — "a parody religious icon in the film Dogma. In the film, he is part of a campaign ("Catholicism Wow!") to renew the image of (and interest in) the Catholic Church." — become a real image attached to RSS ads for a browser plugin called Daily Bible Guide? And how does Kevin Smith feel about this? (Sorry 'bout the animation.)

Important things that happened this weekend

2010-11-26T21:42:00.004-05:00

Capitol, originally uploaded by helenlikesyou.

1) I went to D.C. for Thanksgiving. 2) I downloaded Hipstamatic for my iPhone.

Tetris Bangle!

2010-11-24T18:47:00.002-05:00

Tragically sold out, but now the song will be in my head all day. ParAmour Design, Etsy

Fundação de Serralves, Porto

2010-11-18T08:50:00.002-05:00

After the wicked rad Vampire Weekend pic, this image of Mr. B is probably my favorite Portugal picture. What do you do when you're at an art museum and the galleries are all closed but the museum is open? You stage an impromptu Caroline Trentini-style jumping-in-the-air photo shoot on their 18-hectare grounds, that's what.

Fundação de Serralves, Porto, originally uploaded by helenlikesyou.

Gun Totin'

2010-11-17T22:09:00.001-05:00

Pretty sure if I carry this around pretty much anywhere I will be detained immediately and it will be taken from me. But oh how glorious the moments will be before that happens! Guardian Angel Clutch, $234; Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art

Rock Gods and Their Worshippers

2010-11-14T20:30:00.000-05:00

Mr. B and I just spent a little over a week in Portugal, and while many many amazing things happened, including much consumption of cod and much consumption of vinho verde, the major highlight, for me, was going to see Vampire Weekend play at the Porto Coliseu. Not so much from a concertgoing perspective (I mean, I like their music — they're like the rich, preppy heirs to Paul Simon's musical legacy) but because I took maybe the most awesome concert photo ever? I expect a call from Rolling Stone any time now. That's still the cool hip music rag, right?

Housekeeping

2010-11-03T23:16:00.002-04:00

Oh hello. I redesigned the header up there (because that whole "overanalysis is the navy blue of India" thing was high-effing-larious like six years ago but now we are over Diana Vreeland, sorry) and considering how this blog has basically become an image dump for things I find online that I want to own, I made the column width bigger so the pictures can be prettier. Applause, please.

Holiday Insanity

2010-11-03T22:47:00.000-04:00

Last year, Mr. B and I had our first Christmas tree. It was his umpteenth, but my first-ever, because of the whole Jew thing, which was kind of a thing, but we won't go into that. But the way I wrapped my head around it was by taking Christmas not as a religious occasion, but as an opportunity to go completely apeshit in the home decor category, which means that now I am kind of obsessed with Christmas ornaments. In particular, I have learned that I am a total sucker for a good minimalist animal. Like so:

Savannah Story Rhino, Millinocket Moose, and Snow Rabbit ornaments, all from Anthropologie

Or maybe this:

Owl Ornament, Jonathan Adler

Or we could just lose our fucking minds on Etsy:

Elephant Christmas Ornament, Sileas Highland Cow, and Lamb With a Blue Tweet Scarf, all Etsy

Because honestly, doesn't that baby elephant holding a candy cane just make you want to claw your own face off with the cuteness? And the lamb? IT IS WEARING A TWEED SCARF. I mean, holy sweet crap. How can anyone not be completely obsessed with Christmas?

Edible Plumage

2010-10-28T14:29:00.000-04:00

So okay, Jonathan Adler now makes a Peacock Lollipop Holder.

It's $98, and I'm not sure if I really want it, or I really don't want it.

Fantasy to Reality?

2010-10-24T15:48:00.001-04:00

I'm for reals thinking about buying these. Ridiculous? Spectacular? Advice welcomed.

Crucial update, 10/26: I bought them.

Wet Circuitry

2010-10-22T11:25:00.002-04:00

Okay fine, if I had to wear a bathing suit at all times, I would probably go with the R2D2 one.

Three's a Trend!

2010-10-13T12:15:00.000-04:00

Speaking as the person who covets coloring-book dresses and marker-bleed dresses, of course I want this dress that mechanically drips paint all over itself.

Helen's Q&A Corner

2010-09-14T22:12:00.000-04:00

Q: Why are French fries called French fries?

A: Because "French frying" is an old-fashioned way to refer to deep-frying. The real term is "French-fried potatoes," but we dropped the descriptor in the same way that "pickled cucumbers" became "pickles," confusing everyone forever. The end, go away.

Not Seeing This One

2010-09-14T14:00:00.000-04:00

A Little Bit of Heaven, starring Kate Hudson as the insufferably happy-go-lucky blonde, and Gael García Bernal as, as far as I can tell, a young Mr. Burns:

Do not want.

Cheating

2010-09-13T00:26:00.002-04:00

I think she is going to need therapy after baking all of these cupcakes in just two days, not to mention printing the toppers

So look, the idea of a cupcake mosaic is cool enough in the everything's-a-pixel! stream of zeitgeist that's going on and all, but it is FLAT-OUT CHEATING when you use printed-out edible paper instead of frosting. Then it's just a friggin paper mosaic where the paper has a piece of cake hanging out between it and the floor. Eff that. Call me when you've whipped up sixty-four batches of precisely hued buttercream.

Behind the Diet: Jeffrey Steingarten

2010-09-03T12:28:00.004-04:00

Grub Street's what-did-you-eat-this-week interview today is with Jeffrey Steingarten, and I basically was almost unable to breathe both before and during our phone call. Quite literally and without any hyperbole, Steingarten is the writer who got me interested in both journalism and food.*

In my awkward early teenage years, before I started religiously reading Esquire and New York and other purveyors of the well-executed long-form essay, my media consumption was limited to Seventeen, Teen — and Vogue, which is where I found Steingarten's essays on bluefin tuna and MSG (both of which were later published in his collection It Must Have Been Something I Ate) tucked between breathless writeups of Aerin Lauder's straightening iron and this season's must-have silk-velvet peplum blazer (it was the 90s). Here were these first-person, know-it-all accounts of completely boring things like salt, and they were riveting; they combined science, culture, history, food, snark, crotchetiness, and a fluid literary sensibility in a way that was, to Young Helen, transformative.

So it was with completely near-death-inducing levels of hero worship that I started arranging the interview, and then during the darn thing — which ran, I am not joking, to 154 minutes long, with a transcript topping 10,000 words. After much picking up of the jaw off the floor, and much post-interview streamlining, there's now a 3,800-word version online (plus an 800-word appendix, because come on), and I highly highly recommend that you read every single word.

*To the point where one of my main justifications for that period in time when I applied to, got in to, and considered going to law school was "Jeffrey Steingarten went to Harvard Law. I'm just following his path." I'm tragic.

Being Like Betty

2010-08-10T14:51:00.000-04:00

I don't know if I should be thrilled or mortified that of all the spectacular items of clothing Betty wears, the one she has that I have too is a totally ridiculous sailor dress. At least mine's navy with white stripes, so folks don't accidentally confuse us with one another.

Sweater Kittens

2010-08-05T11:41:00.000-04:00

So I now own this sweater.

Yes, it has a cat on it. So how do I wear this so as not to look like a creepy old cat lady? Or should I just own the cat lady thing and accessorize with unkempt hair and eau de pisse de chat?

Copy Check

2010-07-16T17:25:00.000-04:00

You are VISA. You are a GIGANTIC, INSANELY PROFITABLE,
MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION. Spend twenty bucks and
HIRE A FREAKING COPY EDITOR for your Facebook ads, okay?

OKAY. THANKS.

:(

2010-07-14T20:01:00.000-04:00

Is anyone else out there just sort of stunned and saddened that the subtitle of the new Cats & Dogs movie is "The Revenge of Kitty Galore"? Was this necessary? I get the whole "let's put some wink wink nudge jokes into the kiddie movie so the parents get a laugh too" thing, but this feels a wee bit excessive? And why hasn't whoever owns the rights to Pussy Galore sued the pants off of Warner Brothers? I refuse to believe the estates of Ian Fleming or Albert Broccoli or whoever signed off on this. ALSO: I dislike that if I ever see this movie (which god willing will not ever happen), I will spend the entire time looking at this main villain cat and thinking "VAGINA."

Priorities

2010-07-09T11:34:00.001-04:00

Let's play a game called Which Should I Buy.

1. The $595 Tsumori Chisato dress with an outer space/clouds pattern and a cloud-shaped obi patch, above.

2. Modernist Cuisine, Nathan Myhrvold's 2,200-page, four-volume, $625 mega-cookbook.

And the answer is Ha ha, neither, I have $67 in my checking account.

Conspiracy Theory

2010-06-24T17:37:00.000-04:00

This image shows up ALL THE TIME on stories about McDonalds, kids, fatness, and fat kids at McDonald's. And I just now had this weird realization: is he wearing a fat suit? Check out the seams at the neck and wrists. Or maybe, no, he's just a really fat kid at McDonald's.

Phrasal Synchronicity

2010-06-16T10:25:00.001-04:00

Well I guess we're using the verb "to diss" again.

(From top: Eater NY, Village Voice, Grub Street. No aspersions cast here; pretty sure everyone involved wrote these headlines entirely independently of one another.)

Small World

2010-06-13T15:21:00.000-04:00

I know some or all of the individuals in three of the couples profiled in today's New York Times weddings section. Maybe four, depending on how you count it. Sigh.

"If I wasn't rich, I'd definitely just kill myself right away with a knife!"

2010-05-27T09:28:00.002-04:00

Hello! If you haven't read Lindy West's epic, spectacular, hilarious takedown of Sex and the City 2, go do it right now. Yes, I linked to the same thing twice. That should indicate how strongly I feel about its wonderment.

I would quote indicative passages but really it'd just all end up here in a giant blockquote and no one wants that.

Bugs

2010-05-24T01:17:00.001-04:00

the bug, originally uploaded by helenlikesyou.

I was in South Carolina last weekend, and saw this red bug futzing around with what appears to be a larval cocoon of some sort? And despite the fact that bugs make me want to bathe myself in bleach, I overcame my fear and engaged my camera's finicky macro setting. In related news, if you have any idea what kind of insect this is, I'd be much obliged to know.

Why are there no great women?

2010-05-11T22:52:00.002-04:00

If you're one of the six people who read this blog, then you are probably already aware that on Friday I wrote a minor feminist polemic on the subject of sexism in the culinary world. It's inspired by a blog post put up by Dirt Candy chef Amanda Cohen, who's been historically unafraid to speak truth to power. I'm pretty chuffed by the whole everything.

While the public commentary around the issue (which was totally not limited to conversation on Grub Street) has died down pretty much, I've still been talking pretty extensively about the matter via email with a number of lovely folks who've written to me either with support or criticism of my position. A particular note that I keep coming back to - and something that was left out of the Grub post for obvious reasons - are the striking similarities between the operation of the culinary world and the operation of the fashion world.

In both cooking and fashion, the chef/designer is in the curious position of being both the executor of the brand and the brand itself, a balancing act whose successful execution requires a tremendous support team and dedicated financial backers. And because investors, for whatever reason, tend to prefer to throw their money behind dudes, we see more dudes rising to the top in both fields — this despite matters of both food and clothing being ostensibly "women's work."

And thanks to the food world's predominantly male A-list, as my pal Charlotte Druckman masterfully laid out in her recent article for Gastronomica [PDF], the kitchen - once the provenance of women - has been masculinized. The experience of the kitchen and the very parameters of culinary success have been redefined along stereotypically masculine lines. I imagine it's very easy to take these arguments and map them onto the world of fashion - we could as easily ask "why are there no great women designers?" as we could, as Charlotte does, as "why are there no great women chefs?" Well there would be great of each, only that as a culture we've redefined greatness to categorically exclude them.

Occupational Hazards

2010-05-04T11:33:00.001-04:00

Jonathan Benno, Patina Group Restaurant at Lincoln Center, originally uploaded by helenlikesyou.

At the Beard Awards last night, I took one bite of Jonathan Benno's vitello tonnato sandwich and the tonnato part squirted out all over the left side of my dress. It was really, really good, though, so I forgive him.

Let us now weep silently at our workplaces

2010-04-30T12:05:00.000-04:00

Home Pantry Fail

2010-04-23T17:08:00.000-04:00

This might not be a proper usage of the word "ironic," but it is certainly uniquely exasperating that last summer I went to all the trouble of making and freezing a giant batch of squash-blossom sauce to last me through the winter, promptly forgot about all the containers in the back of my freezer, and now squash blossoms are showing up on menus again. Blerg.

Piece of Cake

2010-04-20T12:04:00.000-04:00

This objet you see above is a dining table from the Versace home collection. But how insanely awesome would it be if it were shrunk down to 1/10th its size and were a cake stand? [via]

Symphony on Ice

2010-04-17T14:41:00.001-04:00

Men Spy On Icy Ho, originally uploaded by Epiclectic.

Mr. B and I ducked into a charity shop near our house that we'd never noticed before, where I found this utterly spectacular gem of an old record. This is totally being framed and hung up in the bathroom. Come visit and you can stare at it while you pee! $2 well spent indeed.

(Not my image - obviously someone else has already discovered this glory.)

Magnolias

2010-04-16T10:40:00.001-04:00

Magnolias, originally uploaded by helenlikesyou.

A few weekends ago. Heaven, no?

Old Art, New Art

2010-04-14T21:54:00.001-04:00

I wonder if at a certain point, paintings get too old to be considered "modern" and MoMA will send them off to the Met or some other "old art" museum. Kind of the opposite of the way the oldies station now plays stuff from the early 80s. (Which, it goes without saying, is completely unacceptable.)

Anyway it comes to mind in the course of watching this spectacular clip cycle of every painting at MoMA in two minutes. Also distracting: how similar the music is (intentionally?) to the soundtrack to the same-yet-different movie of Noah Kalina taking his self portrait every day for a million years.

Nasal Ability vs. Stinkiness

2010-04-12T21:18:00.001-04:00

I had this moment of sort of huffy self-righteousness when I saw this (otherwise hilarious) Onion headline in my RSS reader today:

And then just now when I settled in for my ritual post-dinner RSS updatery, I was overjoyed to find that the error, unlike so many other things in life, corrected itself.

It's been a good day.

A Last Look at Doyers

2010-04-12T12:13:00.001-04:00

Doyers, originally uploaded by helenlikesyou.

The news that spectacular Chinatown Vietnamese restaurant Doyers is probably closed is all the reason I need to revisit one of my favorite photos that I've taken. Something about the fuzzy neon really gets me going.

Bottoms Up

2010-04-07T12:27:00.000-04:00

My latest object of interior decor lust: Jonathan Adler's Kiki's Derriere vase. I realize having a circle of porcelain asses in my living room might make some guests uncomfortable, but they need to man up. (When Mr. B's parents come visit, we can just hide it in the closet.)

2010-04-02T13:45:00.000-04:00

Super-Important Update: I just got an email from the website from which I bought the dress with boats on it informing me that there has been some kind of error and whatever and as a result I do not get my dress with boats on it. I'm stunned that they expect a $25 gift voucher to mend my broken heart.

Boats!

2010-03-24T11:06:00.005-04:00

I may have just bought a dress bearing a Jessica Simpson label, and that may be shameful, but goddamnit it has sailboats on it. And it was very on sale.

Tower of Bread

2010-03-23T19:56:00.001-04:00

Tower of Bread, originally uploaded by helenlikesyou.

I spent most of my Sunday afternoon in the company of my friends and loved one, pounding McSorley's and loudly demanding more beef. Yes, I was at the Brooklyn Beefsteak, and yes, I believe the hipster-servers were personally avoiding serving me specifically. Also, we built the best damn tower of bread ever.

How Nerds Brine Meat

2010-03-23T19:48:00.000-04:00

In the grand tradition of my (in)famous attempt to determine via math the amount of zest you can get from a grapefruit based on the amount of zest you can get from a lemon, the inimitable Francis Lam dives into the question of exactly how much salt your meat picks up when you brine it. It's over at Salon.com, and reading it felt like taking a vacation into my own mind.

By the Numbers

2010-03-19T16:52:00.001-04:00

There is this one particular shopping website that I love, which I will not name here because I don't want to embarrass it. Somehow (for the life of me, I can't remember where I heard about it) I was one of the very first people to visit this shop when it opened over the summer, and I wound up buying a very cute shirt, for which the email confirmation was sent to me with the header "New Order # 100000032." And I was like SO EXCITED that I was only the THIRTY-SECOND PERSON to order something from this neato torpedo site.

That was in July. Just now, eight months later, I made my second purchase from this site. And my order number was 100000201. You guys, is that not so tragic? This great website — which did I mention I LOVE? Like they donate a portion of your purchase to charity, kind of love? — has only made 169 sales in eight months? I mean I guess that averages to one every business day but still. This site deserves better. And also maybe I wasn't one of the very first people to visit it back in the day, maybe I was just one of the very first to buy from it. I feel so much less cool.

Okay, fine, it's Tra Tutti, an online consignment shop that has surprisingly good wares (though, ew, some Ed Hardy) and gives 20% of the purchase price to the charity of your choice.

Big Star, Soul Deep

2010-03-17T22:10:00.000-04:00

Alex Chilton, terrific musician who everyone should love, has died at the age of 59.

Special ways I am connected to Alex Chilton: he was the lead singer of the Box Tops, the group that sings "Soul Deep," the song I have always misheard as being "so deep"; one of Chilton's later groups, Big Star, was the inspiration for the name of Paul Kahan's Chicago taco joint, at which I have eaten seriously spectacular pork belly tacos.

Beef Stew Empanadas

2010-02-27T22:01:00.001-05:00

Sometimes you will have a terrific dinner party and you'll make boeuf bourguignon (kind of Julia Child's recipe, but quicker, and because you're running low on beef broth you'll substitute something else in that you'll never, ever reveal, but it turns out amazing, way better than you expected) and you'll find yourself with leftovers at the end of the night.

When that happens you could have the stew for dinner the next day. Or you could realize that you have leftover pie crust (because that stupid snowstorm delayed the delivery of those crawfish tails you ordered, no joke, so no crawfish pie for those guests), and put the pie crust with the stew together, to make ...

BEEF STEW EMPANADAS. I am not kidding.

And you know, if you love your boyfriend a whole lot, and you have a little dough left over, you could make him feel a little special while you're at it.

As an aside, and this is wholly unrelated to culinary brilliance except that in a counterpointy kind of way it's about my tech idiocy, but can anyone tell me why the eff Blogger insists on robbing the saturation out of my photos? I do not get it. In contrast, here are the originals, on Flickr: Beef Stew Empanadas. Three of 'em. Total color. I DON'T GET IT.

The Absolute Best

2010-02-26T10:37:00.000-05:00

Helen's all-time favorite artist, Alex Katz, paints the London National Portrait Gallery image of Helen's all-time favorite person to read about in any medium, Anna Wintour.

Could the world be any better? Not at this moment, no.

Mental Relocation

2010-02-22T17:36:00.001-05:00

If you point your internet over to Grub Street New York and scroll down a bit until the masthead reveals itself on the right, you just might notice my name there. Yep, my head gets to live in New York alongside the rest of me now. The upsides are myriad. The downside is that I no longer have my failproof excuse for not going to events and parties.

Some Sort of Monster

2010-02-22T11:07:00.001-05:00

By all accounts, Treat Trucks proprietor Kim Ima has a pretty perfect life. Hip and delicious mobile-bakery business? Check. Tweely adorbale, fully paid-for West Village apartment that's profiled in the New York Times? Check. Home furnishings that befit her status as a maker of sweets? Mais oui:

But dudes, New York Times, what are you smoking with that caption?

So all blue Muppets look the same to you? I'm sure some of your best friends are blue Muppets and all, guys, but that is definitely not Grover. Hint: Kim Ima bakes cookies for a living.

When Your Girl Is Gone

2010-02-18T22:39:00.002-05:00

Almost exactly two years ago I shared in this space the fact that for my entire freaking life I have misheard the lyrics to the classic Box Tops song as "My love is a river running [pause] so deep" instead of the actual lyrics ("soul deep," which can shove it).

And now, just now, in this very moment, I have learned that for the past twenty eight goddamn years I have also misheard the first line of the second verse of "Little Bit O Soul," the 1967 hit from The Music Explosion. The line is, apparently, "When your girl is gone and you're broke in two." (Spoiler: the prescription for this situation is a little bit o soul.) For absolutely ever I have heard this line as "When your girl is gone and your boogie too," implying that, you know, the dude is ladyless and also does not got his Gershwinesque rhythm and music. And it appears that, as with a "so deep" love-river, I am the only person on the internet who has aired this mishearing in public.

I would like the record to show that I think my lyric is much better.

Mrs. Helen Downey Jr.

2010-02-16T13:08:00.000-05:00

It's time for me to publicly acknowledge that after Mr. B, this man has pretty solidly displaced Alan Rickman, Hugh Laurie, and other cranky old Brits and is currently foremost in my affections.

Call me, RDJ. xoxo

The Destruction of the Written Word?

2010-02-09T14:59:00.001-05:00

From Publisher's Marketplace (sub req'd):

HCI Books has announced a new line, Vows, combining romance and memoir, to launch in October 2010. They dub it "reality-based romance," producing novels "based on personal interviews with real couples whose love stories read like the best in romantic fiction."

Personally I am not super into this, because love is gross, especially in written form, but: (A) "reality-based" fiction, oh my god, is this going to destroy books the way reality television destroyed TV? (B) Cue the personal-submission clusterfuck that will probably seriously surpass the query inbox for the NYT's Modern Love column. (C) VOWS. Vows! What a barfy imprint title. SPOILER: ALL OF THESE BOOKS PROBABLY END IN MARRIAGE.

In the Red

2010-02-08T13:23:00.002-05:00

Redheads have all the luck. Not only do they have a monopoly on those rare and coveted hair color hues from auburn to ginger ...

That's Style.com, the web presence of respected fashion mags like Vogue and W, noting in a brilliant fit of tautology that a set of individuals defined by possessing a certain characteristic ... are the only people possessing that characteristic. Helpful!

Separated at Birth: Christoph Waltz and The Sartorialist

2010-02-07T23:32:00.002-05:00

I loved Inglorious Basterds and all (omfg the Bear Jew, take me now), but most of the time I was sitting in that dark room watching the blood spurt all over Diane Kruger's pretty, pretty wartime clothes I was unable to shake the mental picture of The Sartorialist as a chillingly terrifying Nazi overlord. Having finally pulled my act together a full many months after having this thought, I present proof: Doesn't Christoph Waltz so totally look like Scott Schuman?

Ironically, the one who played the Nazi to wild acclaim is not the one with eyes as blue as a German sky. (Helpful hint: Waltz is on the left in both of the above images.)

Tangy Tortilla Soup

2010-02-07T17:20:00.006-05:00

Tortilla Soup, originally uploaded by helenlikesyou.

Last Thursday I was, as a delightfully supportive friend pointed out to me, the least-illustrious of ten cooks contributing soup to the Brooklyn iteration of Soup & Bread, the awesome Chicago event that's every Wednesday night at the Hideout. The deal is you go to the bar and the soup (and bread) is free, but the bar benefits because you buy drinks, and then also you put some cash in the hat to support anti-hunger efforts. Yay! If I do say so myself, my soup was quite lovely, and stood its own against the more pedigreed contributions on hand from folks from places like Roberta's and Jimmy's No. 43.

It's an ugly picture (tortilla soup is never pretty, guys) but it's super delish, basically a kluged-together Mexican iteration of Tom Yum soup. Mr. B christened it "tangy tortilla soup," thanks probably to the vast quantities of lime juice, and so be it.

Marvelously, it only takes about 20 minutes to prepare (30 if you haven't pre-shredded the chicken) and only dirties one pot. It's very easily scalable.

Keep reading »

Tangy Tortilla Soup
4 tbs olive oil
One store-bought rotisserie chicken, skin discarded and meat coarsely shredded (about 3 cups) (Keep the carcass to make stock!)
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 small jalapeno, seeds and ribs removed, minced
8 cups chicken stock
1 14oz can diced tomatoes (or, if it's summer, fresh tomatoes: skinned, seeded, and diced, juice reserved)
Pinch cumin
Pinch onion powder (not onion salt)
2 tbs salt
Juice of 4 limes (about 1/2 cup)
1 tsp hot sauce
1 tsp white wine vinegar

For garnish:
Tortilla chips
Diced avocado
Minced cilantro
Sour cream
Lime wedges
Hot sauce

In a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium-low heat, sautee the garlic until fragrant, about 20-30 seconds. Add the minced jalapeno and sautee another 10-15 seconds. Dump in the shredded chicken and incorporate the garlic/pepper mixture, turn up the heat to medium. Folding constantly, sautee until the garlic is just barely browning, then remove from the pot and reserve.

Combine the chicken stock, tomatoes, spices, salt, and lime juice in the pot and heat until simmering. Add the lime juice and hot sauce and return to a simmer, skimming any foam. Stir in the reserved chicken/garlic/chili mixture. Return to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes, or until the tomatoes and chicken are slightly disintegrated.

While the soup is simmering, prepare the garnishes: Dice avocado (toss it with lime juice to keep it from browning), mince the cilantro, slice limes into wedges, crush your tortilla chips, whatever is to your taste.

Just before serving, remove the soup from the heat and stir in the white wine vinegar. Serve: I prefer to fill the bowls with the tortilla chips first, then the soup, then the other garnishes, but it's all the same in the end. Serves 6-10, depending on how hungry you are.

Daddy, I Want a Pony

2010-02-01T17:17:00.001-05:00

I'm oddly compelled by the Jessica Simpson fake ponytail. I might want this in my life. It might change everything. Everything.

If I get it, you'll still love me, right?

Colombian Hot Dogs

2010-01-28T09:59:00.006-05:00

Mr. B and I ate these in Miami. They are a garlic-bread bun filled with split-griddled hot dogs topped with pineapple, chimichurri, "pink sauce," and shoestring potatoes. My world may never be the same.

This Particular Girl

2010-01-21T22:55:00.000-05:00

I picked up a galley the other day of the memoir Some Girls, by Jillian Lauren, and I basically haven't been able to put it down until just now, when I finished it. Here's the deal: Lauren is now a heavily tattooed hot mom who is married to the bassist for Weezer. But! At at eighteen years old, in the mid-90s, she was recruited to go to Brunei to be part of the harem of the brother of the Sultan. For reals. Crazy jewels and envelopes of cash and no-limit Singaporean shopping sprees and weird royal hate-sex and intense dormitory-style psychological catfighting amongst the ladies and wow.

Of course a female memoir wouldn't be a female memoir without at least a few of the following: eating disorders, fraught parental relationships, a search for a birth mother, odd interactions with predatory pedophiles, spiritual self-discovery, meaningful tattoos, drugs, alcohol, experimental theater, and lucid fluency in the language of psychotherapy. All of which are, of course, present in Some Girls in abundance. (Think Girl, Interrupted: Malaysian Crypto-Whorehouse Unit.) I might or might not have flipped through some of the framing-devices-of-self-discovery and gone straight for the E: True Hollywood Story-style descriptions of harem lavishness, but I am not ashamed of that fact.

The book doesn't come out until April (I'm so cool, I know, shut up) and 2010 predix, y'all, it will be the chic beach read this summer. Get up on that.

Wishlist

2010-01-15T21:25:00.000-05:00

My culinary fantasies, in no particular order:

• A popcorn-tub-sized serving of Eric Ripert's tuna tartare, minus the wasabi.

• Buying a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, going home, and eating nothing but the skin. With my hands.

• A full dinnerplate serving of Alinea's black truffle explosion.

• A brown-bagged lunch containing a foie gras and pineapple jam sandwich, in manner of a pb&j, possibly with potato chips crushed into the sandwich.

• Chicken fingers breaded in crushed white-cheddar Cheez-Its.

• The best Italian sub in the history of the world.

Thou Shalt Not Garden

2010-01-12T16:53:00.004-05:00

I generally really hate the idea of siding with Caitlin Flanagan about anything, and this is probably going to lose me some of my more militant friends, but I have a sneaking suspicion that when it comes to Alice Waters's Edible Schoolyard program, Flanagan may be exactly right with the calling of bullshit. Maybe not so much with the outright accusations of racial suppression, but there's something rotten in the state of California.

Plenty of people I respect disagree vehemently with Flanagan (and, by extension, my agreement with her), but there are a couple who are on the same side I am. I think the folks who are disagreeing, and taking the anti-Flanagan stance, are generally responding to a perceived argument that teaching kids to garden is a bad idea. That's not Flanagan's point: her point is that the Waters-created curriculum has basically taken over a significant proportion of California schools, to absolutely no measurable effect in terms of improved testing and graduation rates. If you dig past some of Flanagan's more intentionally incendiary bits (the ludicrous opening paragraph, the Jim Crow analogy), there's some good truth-to-power happening here.

If you want the short version (girlfriend is long-winded), I pretty much summarized it for my day job.

I Can't Cook

2010-01-11T23:06:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I read a post put up by one of my absolute favorite food people, the marvy Carol Blymire of Alinea at Home, about how she suddenly hated food. This bout of loathing was brought on by a series of kitchen misfires: a powder failed to be powdery, a delicious-sounding recipe came out tasting awful, myriad petty culinary mistakes all conspired against her, which is kind of a thing, because Carol is an amazing cook, and for that much stuff to go wrong clearly there is something, as the kids say, afoot.

And I was like "aw," and "heh," and sympathetic if not entirely empathetic, but then this evening happened and you guys I am SUFFUSED WITH EMPATHY because the last four hours have been the most culinarily depressing perhaps OF MY ENTIRE LIFE. And, you know, I am not really such a shoddy cook. I'm in fact pretty darn good. OR AM I?

• A simple dinner of ground turkey and marinara over pasta went horrifically awry: the turkey somehow steamed in the skillet, I accidentally added garam masala instead of cinnamon to the sauce, resulting in a weird Indo-dessert-y situation that I misguidedly tried to remedy with capers in brine, which was REPULSIVE. Like, gag-inducingly so.

• So I threw away the meat sauce and sauteed some garlic and red pepper flakes in olive oil, meanwhile the pasta overcooked and became gross and gummy, and while tending to the pasta the garlic overcooked and became rancid, but by then we were dying of hunger so we ate it anyway. BUT THEN the parmesan came off the microplane in clumps instead of the usual snowy shavings, and that was also gross.

• So I put all that behind me and turned to the cupcakes I was making for my boss's birthday tomorrow. Eggs, butter, flour, sugar, milk, vanilla. Batter was delicious. Poured into cups. Popped into the oven. 16 minutes, perfectly browned, out to cool. And once they were cool Mr. B and I tore into a sample one to find a sticky sponge that was full of holes and wouldn't detach from the paper and tasted like scrambled eggs.

• ...And which couldn't be masked by the chocolate buttercream, which I make so often and with such consistent success that SERIOUSLY I COULD MAKE IT IN MY SLEEP, except that for some unknown reason the sifted powdered sugar was grainy and crunchy and you know, that didn't even matter, because instead of using cocoa powder I accidentally used mocha powder and the result tasted like a burnt cup of coffee.

AND THIS HAS ALL BEEN SINCE 7 PM.

So anyway all of this would be fine and I would give up completely, and resign myself to a temporary exile to a land of Chinese takeout and Lean Cuisine, were it not for the fact that, oh, of course, I'm throwing this ludicrous dinner party this weekend for which I am, of course, cooking effing everything. GOD HELP US ALL.

The Author's Résumé

2010-01-05T15:59:00.001-05:00

The UK Guardian's books blog (my favorite blog on the internet? maybe!) turns its attention to the curious habit of author-bio pages to read like a litany of wacky employment:

Writers and readers alike remain fascinated, and a little bit in love, with the idea of the novelist as a sort of picaresque hero who struggles against all odds – once signified by a garret, now more likely to be illustrated by a string of character-building jobs – in order to make ends meet in the course of the journey to resolution and redemption in the form of publication. For those aspirant writers who are stuck working in jobs that are far from dreamy, I suppose it's encouraging to think that they, too, might rise above their current lot.

I remember reading an author bio when I was very young (pretty sure it was Louis Sachar's) and being stunned by how many jobs he'd had. I vowed that I, too, would have at least a dozen totally weird, awesome jobs to which I would bring dignity and joie de vivre and wisdom.

And then I grew up and became a blogger, which is a job that requires none of those three qualities, and in fact actively cultivates their opposites.

How Not To Be Fat

2010-01-02T15:22:00.002-05:00

Were it not for the fact that I have absolutely no idea where the closest Taco Bells are located vis a vis my home and office, and I don't have a spare hundo to drop on Wii Fit, I would totally take the advice of 96% of the commercials airing during yesterday's Law & Order: SVU marathon on USA and attempt to lose weight in the new year by doing nothing but eating tacos and playing video games.

Helen vs. Tilt Shift

2010-01-02T01:44:00.003-05:00

Tilt Shift: Japantown, San Francisco, originally uploaded by helenlikesyou.

Today I taught myself how to fake tilt-shift in Photoshop! Other things I have done on my vacation: start and defeat New Super Mario Bros. Wii, bike in the snow, wear red lipstick three days in a row. Productive!

The Magicians

2009-12-28T03:28:00.000-05:00

If you like Harry Potter, but you don't love it, because you can't really get past the fact that while the story is gripping in an opiates-are-addicting kind of way the writing is, frankly, pretty terrible, what with the paper-thin characterization and the hamfisted retconning and the way that in a world allegedly torn apart by dark and violent magic not a single one of the A- or B-tier central characters bites it (come on, at least Neville or Luna should've gone in for a heroic act of self-sacrifice) — and also if you were one of those kids who devoured all those fantasy novels with literary integrity, like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, but also read all the marvelous crap, too, like Tamora Pierce and David Eddings — and then you grew up and never actually stopped reading books about people discovering that magic is real, but it was the forty to a sixty of zeitgeisty literary fiction, through which you wound up discovering that, cliches be damned, your favorite books of the last decade have been A Home at the End of the World and The Corrections — guys, if this is you, get off the computer and go read The Magicians by Lev Grossman right this very fucking second, because the reason I'm writing a stupid blog post at 3:24 in the morning is because I absolutely completely could not put this book down until I finished it, and now that I'm done I don't want to stop thinking about it. I don't know yet if I loved this book, but it definitely ate me alive.

Soap on a Rope

2009-12-19T23:02:00.002-05:00

I would think Tom Ford would be kind of in favor of dropping the soap. IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

Elsewhere

2009-12-15T13:34:00.002-05:00

The UK Daily Mail writes today about this amazing black-and-white shift dress that comes with markers so you can color it in yourself and isn't that amazing and ... yeah, isn't it? So eight months ago.

Topsy Perfect

2009-12-09T08:50:00.000-05:00

Behold, the solution to all my "I will die if I have to wear my hair down, but a ponytail is too sporty-casual" dilemmas (which, shut up, happen way more often than I care to admit, and then go totally unresolved):

GUYS. A SIDE TOPSY-TAIL. Not even kidding. It's brilliant. I'm going to wear it tomorrow.

(No, the photo is not me. It's a model from RueLala.)

Bowled Over

2009-12-08T14:20:00.000-05:00

Want of the day: this stacked set combines so many things that I love (okay, three: optical illusions, the color yellow, bowls) into one pretty pretty package. And it is a mere $45, which means if someone doesn't buy it for me (hint), I could reasonably buy it for myself.

Stackable Yellow Bowl Set, The Curiosity Shoppe

Everybody is NOT Fine

2009-12-07T16:37:00.002-05:00

We went to the movies last night to celebrate Mr. B's dad's birthday. He picked Everybody's Fine, on the premise that it is a heartwarming holiday movie about a dad and, you know, it was a heartwarming holiday-season day for us, celebrating a dad. Before we left I watched the trailer:

Guys. THIS TRAILER IS A LIE. First of all, and I know this is nitpicky, but this is not a holiday movie. It takes place during August. Second and more importantly, there is absolutely nothing uplifting about this movie whatsoever. It is not a rollicking family comedy about coming together and love conquering all. It is not an adorable movie in which the importance of a good father is reaffirmed.

It does, however, feature (spoiler alert but this doesn't matter because do not go see this movie, it is terrible) lots and lots of lies, lots of silence and loneliness, intensely unsympathetic characters, vague homophobia, way too many telephone voiceovers, a flashback/dream sequence in which narrative loose ends are hamfistedly resolved and — bonus! — one of Robert DeNiro's kids being unable to come home because he is in a Mexican jail. And just when the other kids are about to tell their dad where the fourth sibling is, and I was thinking to myself "how on earth are they going to say 'David is in a Mexican jail' without this sounding completely ridiculous?" it turned out that the screenwriters got around that by making David die. He died in a Mexican jail. Oh also the very last line uttered in the movie is the movie's title. I hate that.

Ira Glass Made of Legos

2009-12-04T11:34:00.001-05:00

CubeDude Ira Glass, originally uploaded by MacLane.

I think I just died of happiness in my mouth a little.

Make Your Own Macs

2009-11-23T12:51:00.003-05:00

Oh and that book review for which I made the macarons? Is now live on EMD. Go read it and win a free book!

Mac Daddy

2009-11-22T19:53:00.001-05:00

I made macarons last night for an upcoming book review, and for a first try they turned out near-perfect. This can't be right. But it is delicious.

Want Your Bad

2009-11-17T08:55:00.000-05:00

File under: shirts that will only really matter for about two more weeks. File under: shirts I actually can never wear, ever, because it is too much the torso version of Frank Rossitano's hats. File under: awesome.

Via the aptly named Relevant Now.

Publicists, Journalists, Twitter, Attribution, Blogging, Oh My

2009-11-13T16:23:00.005-05:00

For reasons various and stupid, I was reading through the twitter feed this morning of one of my favorite restaurant writers, Julia Kramer, and I noticed this tweet, directed at me, that I had completely missed like three months ago: "@ellit, re: content shortage+lots of blogs=qs about attribution etiquette. <--pls to write a blog post about this?? [really.]"And then later this afternoon, completely out of the blue, came an email from another restaurant writer in my personal A list, asking a related question: Why (on my work blog) do I give credit in certain posts to Ellen Malloy, who's a publicist? It's her job to get the word out about her restaurants. Why do I, asked this writer, "give her double play"?

So then I wrote this epically long email response, in which I started to crystallize all sorts of abstract thoughts that had been swirling around in my head about Twitter, and blog citation, and the blurring line between PR and journalism.

The first question is one of crediting sources. If I get a story from Twitter, no matter who it's from, I'll credit that tweet as my source, because it's public communication. Anyone can see what Ellen tweets, for example, and she does that on purpose: part of her (well-publicized) philosophy of PR is to cut out the journalistic middleman. My post about Dale Levitski taking over at Sprout is a good example: if Ellen had emailed a press release or posted information behind RIA's password-protection, I might not have credited her by name. But Twitter's public, just as public as sourcing my info from the Tribune or TOC, so it gets cited.

For stuff that appears on RIA, Ellen's members-only aggregation of news and information about her restaurant clients, the ethics of attribution is a little cloudier. The stories that are posted there are press releases, yes. But on one hand, they have a public component to them - they're linkable as sources even if you're not a journalist with a password. On the other hand, that public component isn't RSSable and it's unlikely that non-journalists are reading it.

(Still, I feel uncomfortable omitting credit, because it is essentially publicly available information. I wouldn't, for example, upload the PDF of an emailed PR blast, and I get twitchy when I see blogs that just repost release text wholesale. Even when I get a newsy press release I'll often attribute it to [Inbox] or mention that it came over the wire - I think that kind of transparency is important when it comes to creating trust between me and my readers. Off the high horse now.)

But then there is the question of attributing biased sources. While Ellen's game-changing approach to restaurant public relatinos often blurs the lines between PR and journalism, there is that fundamental thing that separates what Ellen does from what I do (or the Trib or TOC or someone with a Yelp account or whoever): she's being paid by the restaurants. As publicists go, I trust what Ellen sells me - unlike many other PRs, I don't think she tries to pass off non-stories as incredibly important breaking news - but I can't forget that it's her job to make sure that the stories that get out about her clients are positive. The objective measure of her doing her job well, as she's pointed out to me before, is butts in seats.

That's where I (and other journalists, bloggers, and people who get press releases) come in: our goal isn't butts in seats, it's to dig up news and - in some cases - to express our opinions about it. So when Ellen hands me a story (or really, since most of what RIA does is non-exclusive, I should say: when Ellen broadcasts a story and I pick up on it), my job ought to be to look at it with skepticism and then, if it passes muster, to take it beyond the press release: calling chefs for comment, providing broader-picture context (there's an example of a RIA-sourced story I didn't attribute), or - occasionally, if it's warrented - just being like "hey, this is awesome."

When I reblog folks like TOC, the Reader, etc., that additional legwork has often been done already - they start with a news nugget and garnish it with their own editorial perspective - so I don't necessarily feel obligated to embellish, just to point my readers to their insights. But with press releases, Ellen's or otherwise, I do think I've got an obligation to take it a step beyond the information I (and everyone else on the bcc list) am handed. That doesn't always happen (sometimes a release is just facts. Sometimes it's a tiny story and there isn't more to add. Sometimes it's just a painfully busy day and I literally don't have time), but I like to think that I add something to the conversation more often than not.

So then let's go off in another direction: there is, of course, always that bcc list to keep in mind. It's rare that I get my hands on a piece of information - big or small - that half a dozen other people covering my beat don't also have at the same time. Taking a release (or even an exclusive) as just a starting point is, I think, good practice among journalists in order to account for redundancy. I can't count the number of times I've stared at an empty MT input field with no idea what to do, simply because other bloggers who got the same PR blast I did had just gotten the information online faster than I could. (Argh, lunch breaks, so dangerous.)

In those cases, I'm unsure what to do. Do I kill the story completely, and hope my readers pick it up elsewhere? Do I just run the same set of facts that's already been put out there, credit the press release, and pretend I haven't seen that, say, Julia Kramer already put it up on TOC? Do I run the facts but link to TOC as a source? It's not accurate - I didn't get the news from Kramer, after all - but it makes me look like less of a dick. Is the goal here to avoid looking like a dick?

But if I stick to the high-hat tenets of journalistic obligation that I got into above, this "take the facts and then add value" thing, then it alleviates that concern: I've got my own angle to add to the story ("angle" in this case could be as little as a stupid pun or as big as an interview with the chef), so my readers (who probably overlap significantly with TOC's, LTH's, Gaper's Block's, Chicagoist's, the Reader's, the Stew's, and probably Ellen's) don't feel like they're trapped in an echo chamber.

Of course all this depends on news being good and interesting, and sources being compliant, and the internet not failing, and people caring about what I have to say, and my mental bad-pun-generator firing on all cylinders. It's not perfect. It never is.

Decent Enough Hair

2009-11-02T13:59:00.000-05:00

Mr. B and I went to see Good Hair last night. It was, well, good. Observations:

1. We were at the Magic Johnson Movie Theater on 125th St, in Harlem. 125th St is mentioned multiple times during the movie, and a number of the salons Chris Rock stopped by are within spitting distance of the theater.

2. And yet, more than half the (admittedly small) audience was white.

3. Even in the darkened theater, I felt self-conscious and strange that I had blow-dried straight my (naturally curly) hair that day.

4. After the movie, four women other from the theater and I were all in the bathroom staring at ourselves in the mirror and touching our own hair in complete silence. It was David Lynchian.

Fewer Clicks

2009-10-31T17:47:00.001-04:00

This ad for Windows 7 (a) features a guy I went to summer camp with a million years ago (hi, Jack! Don't unfriend me on Facebook for this!) and (b) uses the mass adjective "less" when it should be the count adjective "fewer."

Because of these two things, I now feel surprisingly connected to Windows 7. Probably not in the way Microsoft wants me to be, but whatever.

Infinitely Recursive Jewelry

2009-10-28T00:24:00.001-04:00

For as long as I have been alive I have hated wearing necklaces. Even the lightest, most ephemeral versions make me want to claw at them in a terrifically unladylike way until the damn things are ripped off my neck. Just thinking about it, seriously, just typing this is making me get all agitated and have creepy-crawly feelings growing up from my collarbone. Obviously I have problems. One of them, also necklace-related, is that I don't own this:

This is a diamond and sapphire necklace designed by Mark Newson for Boucheron. It's inspired by fractals, uses a particularly minimal setting "so the stones appear to float on the wearer’s throat," took 1500 hours of labor to craft, and is one of the most expensive pieces Boucheron has ever produced. Some lucky tycoon's wife gets to wear this, and that is all the proof I need that the world is horribly unfair.

[via The Moment]

The Tetris Dress

2009-10-25T00:45:00.003-04:00

It's a dress with Tetris on it.

I've really got nothing more to say on the matter except that now that song will be stuck in my head FOREVER.

(via the inimitable A Dress A Day)

Dreamy Dream Computer

2009-10-22T17:13:00.007-04:00

I'm home sick today with this epic cold that, last night, led me to stay up until 5am drifting in and out of fever-dreams about David Chang (no joke, and it's less fun than it sounds). After finally caving to a double dose of Nyquil I've spent the rest of the day cocooned in bed feeling sorry for myself and wanting to die.

This all has nothing to do with the fact that the latest in HP's attempts to sexify their netbook (Vivienne Tam, really?) has me completely enraptured. The darn thing is designed by Tord Boontje, which means it's one of the few things in the past day that's warmed my little Moss-obsessing design-snob techie heart enough to cut through the fog of this cold.

It's also delightfully in line with my realization that what I need, computer-wise, is not actually a tricked-out laptop, but instead a serviceable desktop machine and a nice handbag-friendly netbook. And a wee little netbook laser-etched in Boontje's awesome techno-flora graphics, cute enough to get me to abandon the Apple brand-loyalty I've carried for all twenty-seven years of my life? Yes and yes and yes, please.

Helen vs. The Piglet

2009-10-15T10:17:00.002-04:00

I wrote a cookbook review-slash-judgment for Food52.com that's up today in their March Madness-style cookbook tournament: Well-Preserved vs. Babycakes.

Go read it and help me put up a feeble defense against the crushingly massive pageviews that will no doubt ensue from the tournament's later judges, who include folks like Grant Achatz, Gwyneth Paltrow, Nora Ephron, and Harold McGee. I know, right — how did I get invited to this party?

Pump It Up

2009-09-24T16:17:00.001-04:00

The Lo Res pump from United Nude is the result of a pump being digitally scanned into 3D modeling sofware and then adjusted to (get it?) a lower resolution. Translated: The Lo Res pump from United Nude is what your shoes would look like if you lived in a 1980s computer.

Obviously I want them.

The King Of Consumer Rights

2009-09-15T15:10:00.004-04:00

My friend Paul bought a Kindle from Amazon, and he dropped it one day, and it sort of broke but not entirely, and Amazon wanted $200 to replace it. Paul is generally speaking a very smart cookie, plus he went to law school, so he sent them a very strongly worded letter noting that Amazon falsely indicated the device's durability, and he would be willing to settle the matter for a payment of $400 ($200 to cover his replacement fee and $200 for incidental mucketymuck). He told Amazon they had 30 days to agree to his settlement offer, after which point he would file suit. Twenty days later, Amazon sent him a $400 check.

I am so impressed right now.

The Rainbow Cake In Real Life

2009-09-14T15:12:00.004-04:00

The intrepid Nadarine has done what I have only dreamed of doing, where by "dreamed of doing" I mean "saw a picture on Flickr, emailed the photographer for instructions, he said he was just the photographer and didn't know how it was done, googled like a mofo, looked into buying industrial-grade food coloring, talked about it incessantly with various friends, and never actually got off my ass to do." Specifically, she has made the rainbow cake, and she has done a kick-ass job:
Plus her post is headed with a Raffi lyric, which is win.

Grokking Grok

2009-09-10T13:16:00.005-04:00

It's not so much that I'm gleeful when I catch a typo in the New York Times. It's a big paper, it publishes daily, spelling errors are bound to slip through the cracks. But if you are verbally in-the-know enough to be familiar with the verb to grok (a sci-fi neologism coined by author Robert Heinlein to mean something on the order of "comprehending something so intimately that it is a part of you," here used quite aptly in Cintra Wilson's critical shopper review of Comme des Garçons, a label requiring sci-fi verbs if there ever was one) then I would imagine you should realize that its past tense formation is grokked.

It's not as if the Times doesn't know what it's doing. If you double-click on any word in any article you are directed to a definition page, and "grocked" turns up nothing. Grok, meanwhile, is defined as "To understand profoundly through intuition or empathy," and we are given its tense-dependent variants: "grok·ked, grok·king, groks." If you're going to use grok, Times, please attempt to grok it first.

Floaty Dresses

2009-08-20T18:09:00.004-04:00

Adding this inflatable kayak dress (okay, it's a skirt, inspired by Hurricane Katrina blah blah blah) by Yael Mer to my fantasy dress closet, where it will hang alongside the balloon dress and the 3D bird dress and the bleeding markers dress and the color-it-in dress. In fact now that I think of it, I should mash them all together in a new category I am calling fantasy closet. Done! Poof!

The Thought Process

2009-08-17T11:28:00.002-04:00

I should get a shirt that says the name of my college on it.
Everything Smith College officially sells is hideous.
I should design my own Smith shirt.
I should design my shirt to say "Smif"! Thus killing the college-allegiance and webcomic-reader-nerd birds with one stone!
Oh no, if I get a shirt that says SMIF in large block letters, everyone will think it stands for "single mom I'd fuck."
Never mind, I will not get a shirt that says the name of my college on it.