Alizarine

Paris Part 1

For those of you who have been on pins and needles over the past two weeks, wondering how my Jacksonville show went, it was terrific. My best show so far! I wanted to post about it right after it happened, but I had a cartoon to make followed by a week in Paris, and I didn't have time to add blogging into the mix. But it will happen after this Paris series is over.

So! Paris! How about that?

Jeff and I (mostly Jeff) planned this trip for almost a year. He used his internet-fu to find a modern, inexpensive apartment and credit card frequent flyer mileage-fu to ensure that our flights were free. A former project manager, Jeff figured out a daily plan of action designed to pair places we wanted to visit with nearby, incredible food. I was happy to let him take over because (a) he does it so well, and (b) preparing for two one-person shows in nine months was kind of overwhelming for me. Jeff has helpful travel advice that he will either dispense throughout my posts or write as a stand-alone guest blog. He was sick during the last third of our trip, and he still is, and right now he wants to curl up on the couch and watch Lonesome Dove, and who can blame him?

Both of us had visited Paris before with other people. Jeff was in the process of breaking up with his person, and I had broken up with my person many months before the trip, but tickets had already been purchased, and how often does one get the opportunity to see Paris, anyway? Jeff spent a cold, drizzly week in November walking around by himself during a Metro strike, and I endured blasts of record June heat sandwiched between dutiful visits to every art museum in the city, plus the most important churches and a side-trip to Chartres. All that slogging around meant nonstop McDonald's haute cuisine eaten on the run for me, so I left with no real idea of what French food could truly be, and Jeff's person...let's just say she was a lot more disciplined than some bloggers you might know.

Oh hi.

This time Jeff and I employed a two-pronged plan of attack for Paris. Prong one: romance. Prong two: pleasure. Notice how neither prong involves crying, sweating, angst, boredom, fast food, forced marches, shivering, ennui, disgust, or resentment--I'm telling you, it's hard to have a good vacation with any of those in the mix.

So this time if it was mind-crushingly educational and we had already seen it, we usually skipped it. If someplace fun was a drag years ago, we aimed to right that wrong. Our rose-colored glasses were still firmly on, thank you very much, and we were set to have some damned fun in Paris for a change.

My parents, Melissa, and Jeff's folks kindly offered to watch Bun, Pache, and Q while we were away. Mom and Dad did most of the heavy lifting in that regard as they fed, watered, and medicated the cats (as per my ridiculous three page document's instructions) for five days. I'm so thankful for everyone's help--I don't think I could have boarded Bun at the vet's with a clear conscience. The cats were happy to see us when we returned home last night, and as I type this, Bun is sleeping at my side. We missed them every day we were gone.

Here we are, all smiles and energy at the very beginning of our trip. We flew out of the Champaign airport to O'Hare at around noon last Friday, and from there we traveled to Paris, arriving on Saturday morning.

We packed lightly: Jeff had a backpack and I had a smallish wheeled carry-on and a medium-ish purse. In fact, we packed so lightly that airport officials gave us looks of disbelief on two separate occasions. A Frenchman called us James Bond and Mata Hari--that's right, we pack like spies. I managed to cram four black dresses, extra shoes, and a second coat in my carry on, and I pruned my toiletries down to the bare essentials (tampons had to be included because of course they did).

The eight-hour flight to Paris was tough for me. Jeff fell asleep almost immediately after our kinda-supper. He chose the chicken, and I chose the pasta, but I should have chosen the chicken. A couple of hours later I started to get some low-level "what if it's food poisoning?" feelings. You know the ones. They're sweaty and you feel trapped in your window seat because your darling husband is sound asleep beside you and you can't concentrate on your book and your Kindle's little video game (Bubble Buster, five stars) is making you seasick and you start to think about the best way to throw up in an airplane bathroom and how horrifying that would be and the plane is dark now except for the movie and ugh if it's food poisoning that means you'll be violently ill four or five times before it's all over...what's your only option?

Mind control. Meditation. Go to your happy place and breathe and count. Failing that, watch what's playing on the entertainment screen way over there to your left and try to understand the plot without the aid of your headphones. The movie is a Pixar-wannabe animated feature called Rio and it seems to be about a blue parrot, and there's all kinds of rapid-cut flying sequences involving thousands of birds spiraling down into jungle vortexes and singing a lot...

 

...and best not to watch that anymore so let's meditate. Or maybe watch the moon move across the sky. Spend a couple of hours doing that before you feel like maybe you are out of the food poisoning woods.

We arrived without incident in Paris not too long after sunrise. Charles de Gaulle Airport was alive with a writhing mass of people hell-bent on spending Easter somewhere other than Paris. The intimidatingly long lines gave us no hope for an easy departure a week later, and is it just me or has CDG changed from the futuristic, roomy playground made famous by U2's Beautiful Day video (total dick move at 1:14)...

 

...to a baggage-ridden, concrete hellscape from which there is no escape?

Luckily, we found the right train that would speed us toward our apartment in the 5th arrondissement, a.k.a. the Latin Quarter. I was wearing the coat I wore in Spain--based on weather forecasts (highs in the 50s, lows in the 40s), light wool seemed like my best bet. Except it was red, and every "what to wear in Paris" website suggested that dark neutrals were the way to go. A couple seemed to think that red was borderline acceptable, but one should be prepared to stand out (indeed, this was the case). A few days before we left, I floated the idea of going rogue/rouge on Facebook and received 48 "likes," but by then my mind was already made up. I was wearing red.

Exact shade: effyou red.

We emerged from the appropriate Metro station and boom, we were in Paris, Luxembourg Gardens area. We grabbed an Eric Kayser baguette, rolled our spy luggage down long streets and through a medium-sized open market where some Italian guys applauded my coat, going, "Bella, red!" Ahh, affirmation.

Our apartment was at the top of a building that housed a library on its ground floor. After huffing and puffing our way up 100 spiral steps--Jeff counted--we arrived on time to meet Isabelle, our landlady. Hip, friendly, and speaking impeccable English, she showed us around the tiny but modern and cleverly designed studio apartment (approximately 16 square meters). It included a living area with a pull-out bed, a wee kitchenette, and a bathroom. New appliances. The apartment was spotless and just what we were looking for. A link to it is here. If any of you are interested in renting this space, let me know, and I will pass your info on to Isabelle. You can rent it directly from her if you like.

Everything had a function, and there was no wasted space. Free wi-fi! The ceiling slanted sharply down near the windows, which were flung open to reveal this view to the left...

...and this view to the right.

We were happy, exhausted, and ready to explore Paris.

To be continued!

In case you missed them, here are the other installments. Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.

Taco and Shoe Field Trip!

Last weekend Jeff and I took a mini-mini-trip to Arcola and Tuscola, two small towns about thirty minutes south of Champaign. Mysteriously, both of their names employ the exotic "cola" suffix. Last year we read a stellar restaurant review of Arcola's El Taco Tako, and it had haunted us ever since, because it implied that the little shack was The Second Coming of Tacos:

"...the best tacos you will ever eat...every bite is perfect...culinary gold...the best goddamned taco joint in Illinois..."

"If we're ever down there, we need to try those tacos," we promised each other, and on Valentine's Day weekend, we did it.

The place was a tiny ten-seater, and we were the first lunch customers. As instructed by the review, we ordered a couple of plates of tacos (chicken and pork) from the cheerful owner who spoke about as much English as we speak Spanish. He left to fix them while we took in the kitchy beauty of the place and tried to hear each other speak over the television that was blasting a Spanish-language sports program. Jeff's looking up at it.

The walls were painted a brilliant, some would say gutsy turquoise that I just loved and liberally festooned with all manner of Mexicana.

Jeff got a kick out of the curtains in the window behind me. They were decorated with an incongruous John Deere motif. It was a cold, windy day, and I kept my coat on until the tacos arrived.

The wee tacos were indeed very, very good, and just looking at them makes me want some more. But. The amount of time that had elapsed between reading that amazing review and actually eating the food was too long. The glory of these tacos had been built up too much!

 

(ff to 7:35 or so)

"They're great tacos," concluded Jeff, "but in the end they're just tacos."

You know? It was kind of a three-note meal: the spicy meat, the interesting par-fried shell-within-a-shell, and the (fantastic) grilled onions. Plus we each had five of them, and a certain amount of taco fatigue had set in.

So we left feeling slightly non-plussed and bloated, and the tacos came back to say hi to us via a series of burps that lasted well into the afternoon, during which time we hunted for shoes for me.

 

Jeff and I will be visiting Paris in early April (hooray!!), and I've been trying to figure out what shoes and clothes to wear. It is not easy! I wanted some shoes that I could walk for miles in--but I also wanted to wear dresses with them and not look like a complete dork wearing big chubby American sneakers. My feet are huge, flat, and ducklike (wide at the toes, narrow in the heel). I can't wear high heels and walk for more than a few blocks without bitching. I can't wear cute shoes, period. I can wear boots, but I'm not sure if they're appropriate to wear in the early spring. When is it officially springtime in Paris, anyway? Can you wear boots all year? Would they be too hot? What about sandals? Would they be too cold?

So with those problems and more swirling in my mind, I set off to find the perfect dressy-but-comfortable shoe appropriate for the not-exactly-spring week of April 6. Jeff was patient as I tried on and rejected pair after pair through seven stores, most of which were located in an outlet mall in Tuscola. I found only one pair that met my comfort criteria, although style had to take a backseat. Have any of you ever heard of S.A.S. shoes?

I've worn their style-free sandals for years, especially when I was a teacher, because the foot pad was so incredibly comfortable. I believe the pads are made from a combination of Milky Way caramel, saltwater taffy, circus peanuts, marshmallow fluff, and miniature helium balloons. S.A.S. stands for San Antonio Shoes (made in S.A. Texas), and they refuse to sell their products online, so nice people like Joel, the knowledgeable man who helped me find the right size, can keep their jobs. It's adorably 19th Century. The shoes are plain but extremely well-made. I've heard the description "fug" bandied about. Some would call them Old People Shoes.

Actually they're Rich Old People Shoes--most styles cost in the neighborhood of $100-$150, and that was way more than we had planned to spend. As I tried on other, cheaper (cuter) shoes, I was frustrated because nothing came close to the comfort of the S.A.S. shoes. We thought we could try to find them online somehow, like on Ebay, but I've tried that before and failed. After we gave up, I may have admitted to Jeff that I was "slightly disappointed."

We rolled out of Tuscola and were about to get on the interstate when Jeff said, "Damn it! It's Valentine's Day!" and did a quick U-turn. It was downright cinematic. He drove us back to the S.A.S. store and bought me the shoes.

He was richly rewarded once we got home.

I mean, they're not that bad, right? They're so austere that they're actually kind of cool, right?

PS Please do not leave frustrating comments telling me that you have found better, cuter, cheaper, more comfortable, perfect shoes. My feet are freaks and will vary with your mileage, I can almost guarantee you. I've been wearing these in all week and am beginning to bond with them. Thank you for respecting our privacy during this beautiful time in our lives.

My Sister's New York City Moment

Look at that little dynamo up there. Smart, beautiful, hilarious, humble, and sweet...my sister Emily. As some of you may know, her nickname for me is Pup, and my nickname for her is Poof. So I'll be referring to her as Poof, Em, and Emily in this blog if that's all right. Earlier this week we were in New York City for 20 hours, all expenses paid by....someone who wanted us to be there (I don't want to ruin the surprise).

I was thrilled to be Em's traveling companion. On Sunday night, I took a long train ride to her home in southern Illinois. It had been three years since Jeff and I were separated for more than a day, and I wished he could have come along. But he stayed home and took care of the cats--thank you, Jeff! We kept in touch via phone, email, and what seemed like a half-dozen social networks, but we missed each other a great deal. When I came home, I was touched to see the Kelly-shaped pillow-and-comforter configuration he had built on my side of the bed.

I arrived at around 10:00 p.m., but I was up again at 2:30 a.m. to go to work with Em. She's an anchorperson for WSIL-TV's morning news, and I had never seen the studio or watched the show from the wings before. A couple of hours of prep work goes into each broadcast. Here's Poof and her co-anchor Kevin working hard at 3:00 in the morning. The little sign taped to their desks says "Anchor Island."

News 3 This Morning runs from 5:30 to 7:00 each weekday, and while there's no way on earth I'd be able to read the news to its rather huge, predawn audience, Em and Kevin (along with weatherman Clint) manage to do a great job, day in and day out. Their small, close-knit crew is professional but laid-back and jokey. Everyone gets along, and Poof feels very much at home there.

After the show, Poof had a few hours of work to get through before we could leave. Again, this is the kind of job I would find difficult: calling complete strangers, setting up meeting times for future interviews, etc. But she took it all in stride while entertaining me and vibrating with excitement for our New York getaway.

We stopped by her house to say goodbye to Tyler, her husband of five years, and Cupcake, her kitty of one year. Cupcake looks a whole lot like Bun, but Bun doesn't have Cupcake's fluffy white patch. Poof improvised a song about the fluffy white patch, a little disco ditty called "Fluffy White Patch."

And then we were off to New York by way of the St. Louis airport, which was some two and a half hours away. Poof drove while I navigated with my phone's map program. We hit a bit of a snag around this bowl-of-spaghetti-looking tangle of interstates near the Mississippi River.

Luckily the phone figured out an alternate route in a hurry. Otherwise we had an absolute blast cracking each other up and enjoying extended conversations about Mad Men, snacks, Jesse Pinkman, top 40 songs, the fabulousness of going to New York on a Monday, and on and on.

Em had only been on an airplane a couple of times in her life and was nervous. Plus it was September 12, and we had each spent the day before watching 9/11 programming. But I helped her make her way through security and to the gate where our small plane was ready to go. We came up with a new tradition: during take-off, it's my job to distract Poof with the most random conversation topics I can think of, such as owls and hot fudge. I kept her laughing and gave her a hand to squeeze, and we arrived at Laguardia at around sunset easily and safely.

Our driver met us near baggage claim holding a sign with her name on it, and he led us to a sleek black town car. He reminded us of our brother and we enjoyed the ride tremendously.

We paused at a toll plaza, and I saw lots of police officers and other security types keeping an eye on things. They seemed beautiful and brave; their mere presence made us feel safe. New York sometimes seems like such an abstraction when you live in the Midwest, but when I spotted a billboard advertising the new 9/11 memorial I realized, Wow, we're really here.

Our hotel (the Sheraton Hotel and Towers) was near Times Square. The snazzy lobby made Poof make a face I've loved since she was little: her excuse me but this is pretty awesome expression.

We snagged a lovely room on the 47th floor, near the top. This was our view.

Exhausted but experiencing our fifth or sixth wind of the day, we decided to go to the pizzeria Jeff basically insisted we visit, John's, just off Times Square [Possibly the only decent pizza near Times Square, plus it's in a renovated church! --Jeff]. I had been there with Jeff a couple of years ago, and this was a great idea because look:

So good! We obliterated this pizza and talked and talked. I almost lost my voice on this trip!

Poof's big event was at 9:00 the next morning, so we got some sleep and woke up bright and early. We caught a cab to the Time Warner building by Columbus Circle. Here's a view from inside the building.

A high-end mall (and Adam and Eve sculptures by contemporary artist Fernando Botero) occupied the bottom floors.

We window shopped for a while and made sure the camera was ready to go.

Soon it was time for the event! Here's a teaser video Poof put together of the story thus far.

 

And here's why we were in NYC: to meet Mally Roncal, makeup artist to the stars. Such as Beyonce. Such as Jennifer Lopez. Mally, a celebrity in her own right in the world of beauty, has her own line of truly innovative cosmetics, and Poof has been a fan for a long time and knows Mally's products and story inside and out. Mally and her crew had put together a blogger's breakfast and invited beauty writers from Yahoo, MSN, and other big media outlets...and my sister. Em was the only YouTube personality there. Mally--who is beautiful, charismatic, funny, and truly kind--discussed her favorite products and introduced a couple of new ones as some 30 beauty bloggers, Poof, and I ate breakfast and listened from tables in a special events room of the Landmarc restaurant. At one point during her presentation, Mally paused, looked right at Emily, got excited, and exclaimed, "Oh my god you are so BEAUTIFUL!" Poof was in heaven.

About ten minutes into the presentation, Em was taken aside by one of Mally's crew; Mally wanted to demonstrate a "smoky eye" on her for the bloggers! Mally's right hand man Albee Franson removed Poof's painstakingly applied makeup and redid it, leaving the eyes for Mally to finish. (This marks the point in the video above where Poof mouths, "WOW.")

After a few minutes, Mally called Em up to her makeup chair. Adorably starstruck, she told Mally that this was the first time anyone had applied makeup on her, and Mally was like, No way! Pretty amazing that the first people to touch my sister's face with makeup also work on superstars. Excuse the poor photography below; I was videotaping all of this with my right hand while trying to take still photos with my left hand.

Mally demonstrated her products and techniques on three other women in the audience. Her talk went on for about an hour, and then she answered some questions and held an informal meet-and-greet. Mally's team had told Em in advance that she wanted to make a video with her after the event, so Poof hung back at the end of the photo-op line. And I will let this video speak for itself...here is the big meeting of the minds.

 

Seriously, how cute is that?

It was so wonderful to be able to witness this, one of the best days of my sister's life. I wrote to Albee the next day on Facebook:

Em and I are back home and still can't quite believe what just happened! You, Mally, and the whole team made her feel like a princess. That "little girl" means the world to me, and I am so thankful when people she admires treat her with love and respect and bring her joy. That's what you all did! Mally is such a heroine to Em. The mutual admiration the two have for each other was truly beautiful to witness, and I'm so glad I was there! You all gave her such profound validation for all of the hard work she's done over the past four years. She is inspired--refueled! And my goodness, the makeup you gave us was overwhelmingly generous. I am having a blast playing with it. It's honestly better than anything I have ever used, and so innovative. Congratulations to you, Albee, for being part of a very special organization!

After Em's one-on-one with Mally, which was filmed by Mally's people for we-don't-know-what-kind-of-future-use, the two put together a quick, impromptu video for Beauty Broadcast, and that will be posted early next week. Even though it was fashion week in New York and Mally had a QVC session later on, she seemed to have all the time in the world to talk with Em, as did her staff. The entire event was about two and a half hours long, from start to finish.

I was unprepared for how kind everyone was to us at this event. Fully expecting to deal with a bunch of jaded, so-over-it hipsters, I was delighted by how sweet and down to earth Mally and her team were. The compliments flowed like wine from them, including fun comments like, "Emily, we are obsessed with your ponytail." They didn't have to be so nice to the two of us, but they were. Expectations: exceeded and exploded.

After we said goodbye, Poof and I decompressed in Central Park with freaking exquisite macarons from Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery. Jeff messaged me before we left the event and basically said, Yeah, you need to go there. We people-watched and made gleeful phone calls to Mom and Jeff. Poof periodically stared into space, grinning and slowly shaking her head. The next couple of hours and the rest of the trip home were essentially the first section of this blog in reverse. Lots of laughs, lots of OMG THAT HAPPENED. Poof was giddy and so was I.

And finally, I'd like to wrap up this rather long blog with a few words about what it was like to walk around NYC with Em. She's got this undeniable star power that makes people want to look at her, and there's something sweetly childish about her face, especially when she pulls her hair back and especially when she's happy, that makes people want to be nice to her. Any number of people asked us if we were sisters because we share the same smile, and one sweet older gentleman at the airport told us, "No matter what happens to you in your life, ladies, never lose your smiles." Midwesterners are supposedly a lot friendlier than New Yorkers, but I truly can't remember the last time a complete stranger said something like that to me in Illinois.

I've been to New York City a few times, but the people there seemed different on the day after the 10th anniversary of 9/11. More eye contact. Friendlier. Clearly in love with their city. It was as if everyone had spent all day Sunday crying and wanted to make a fresh start on Monday and Tuesday. Any apprehension Em and I may have felt about traveling to New York around the anniversary was replaced with gratefulness and admiration.

Thank you Mally, and thank you New York!

Hilfiger Family Dynamics

Of the hundreds of ads in this month's Harper's Bazaar, the Tommy Hilfiger campaign above held my attention for longer than the usual 2 nanoseconds. Introduced last fall, "The Hilfigers" are a country club-going megafamily styled in the tradition of the (much cooler) Royal Tenenbaums:

And, as I did last fall, I tried to discern the various relationships within the family. Who are the Hilfiger children, and who are their mates and/or hangers-on? I puzzled over this for an embarrassing amount of time until it occurred to me that maybe a commercial existed on YouTube that might help me sort things out.

In fact, there were (at least) three. The first was created for T.H.'s fall collection, and it did not provide any real clues. The second aired around Christmas, and I remember seeing it once or twice on TV. In it, the family is having a wacky holiday meal.

 

Still, which ones were the true Hilfigers? I believe the new spring ad finally sheds some light on this mystery.

 

It is my belief that the ones spelling out H-I-L-F-I-G-E-R at the beginning are Hilfigers and everyone else is not. So I created the following chart.

The faces circled in red are the parents, obviously, and the faces circled in yellow, as suggested by the commercial, are their children. The arrows indicate romantic relationships (click photo to expand).

The two young people seen directly above Pa Hilfiger are employees having affairs with the parents, who are trapped in a loveless marriage ("Hilfigers do NOT get divored!"). Two red arrows indicate heterosexual involvement among the quartet, but it could just as easily have gone the other way. Pa H. certainly likes to show a lot of leg, doesn't he?

I wanted to think that the blonde on the left was a daughter, but the commercial says no, so Sneering Khaki Jacket is a son. Mom is drinking.

I'm going to assume that the Hilfigers adopted (unless...). The young woman in the white hat whose expression says "bish please!" is a gold digger and nowhere near good enough for their classy son. Note how chilly Ma H. has turned her back on this girl.

Not much to say about this trio, other than the fact that Hilfiger men can wear their hair any old way they want, and the commercials are trying very hard to make the little girl seem like Margot Tenenbaum.

And speaking as a high school teacher whose classroom was cruelly located in a junior high building, I think the boy above looks like he'd be completely unbearable.

In the bottom half of the ad, everything begins to fall apart.

OK, we know that the girl on the right and the boy on the far left are Hilfigers. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the girl is single. That's right, she's pulling a Kelly! She's forced to attend these country club family outings all by herself, sans significant other, and she will continue to do so until she is thirty-freaking-eight-years-old.

Exploding Afro Souffle and Dickish Card Player are college friends of Long-haired Son, and this trio's relationship is fluid and ambiguous at best. Ma and Pa Hilfiger keep trying to get Exploding Afro Souffle and Dickish Card Player to pay attention to Kelly, but for some reason they just don't seem all that interested.

The dogs are, of course, awesome.

And that is my breakdown of the Hilfiger family dynamics.

Honorable mention for making me pause while flipping through Bazaar goes to this Dolce & Gabbana ad:

...in which three classy brunettes gaze upon a yucky Ke$ha type with disdain.

Spain: Planning and Packing

"Got any brothers?" the vivacious O'Hare ticket checker asked Jeff as she looked at our passports, quickly ascertaining that the following day was my birthday and that this man was taking me to Spain.  She and I proceeded to fawn all over bashful Jeff, the good husband, the total fox, and (unfortunately for women everywhere) the only child.

Jeff has given me three unforgettable birthdays prior to this one, but for #42 he went above and beyond.  We wanted to travel during the off-season to save money and avoid crowds and heat, and we booked this trip during the dark days of September.  The deadline for our decision fell on the same day we learned that I was going to need a biopsy to determine if I had breast cancer.  We walked around our small town that afternoon, shell-shocked with the scary news but with this booking deadline still looming. Jeff mentioned that even if I did have cancer, I'd probably still want to take off to Spain; in fact, that could be a good break from whatever dreadful things I might be dealing with.  I agreed.  The correct buttons were pressed, and soon we were looking forward to spending a week in Madrid and Barcelona.  And in case you're new to my blog, I don't have cancer.

Therefore: Spain in January!  World-class art and architecture!  Amazing food!  Not having cancer!  Highs in the low 50s!  We were excited.

Felix to my Oscar, Jeff immediately began planning what and how he would pack.  Within days he located the perfect gray jacket, loaded with inside pockets and neither too formal nor too casual.  He already had a system in place that would allow him to fit everything he would need inside a backpack.  Behold the jacket on St. Jeff:

In contrast, I tossed a bunch of dresses and tights into my wheeled carry-on the day we left.  My coat choices were limited.  I can never find a coat that will work in 50 degree weather, can you?  A trench coat seems too cold, but a winter coat, such as the one I wear to survive in Illinois, seems too hot.  A long time ago I ordered a red wool coat online--it was ill-fitting and not quite warm enough for winter here, but I kept it around thinking that eventually I'd get someone to tailor it for me...which of course I never did, and it languished in my closet for years.  But I felt it was the right weight for 50 degrees.  My mom kindly offered to fix the coat last month, so every day in Spain I wore this screaming red number.

More than any other European country I've visited (France, Italy, Germany, England), I felt different from the natives in Spain, looks-wise.  I am white as a sheet, as you can see, especially in the winter, but in Spain everyone else seemed at least kind of tan.  And nearly everyone wore the muted bruise palette that Jeff prefers: black, gray, blue, olive, and brown.  People stared at me in my red coat, but soon my self-consciousness turned to iconoclastic, freak-flag-wavingness, and as I rode the Metro or toured the museums, I channeled Prince in Versace and Lady Gaga meeting the queen. 

You got some kinda problem with red, Spain? 

And with that, I am happy to officially begin my upcoming series of posts about our trip to Madrid and Barcelona, and I hope you will enjoy reading about our adventures in this beautiful country. 

My sister the makeup genius

 

I just wanted to show you all once again what a superstar my sister Poof/Emily is, totally deserving of your vote in YouTube's "On the Rise" competition, which ends Tuesday.  Please jump through this easy hoop and click on "emilynoel83" in the top-right corner.  Submit your vote and you are DONE. 

Back when Poof was a tiny kid, one of her favorite things to say was, "I need all the encouragement I can get."  Your vote = encouragement of this little dynamo of pure fabulousness.

Here's the backstory on the freaky video above.  A couple of weeks ago I saw a makeup tutorial where a pretty young woman transformed herself into Jared Leto.  It was completely convincing, so I threw down the following gauntlet: "Hey Poof, you can make yourself look beautiful but can you make yourself look like a man?"  She shot back something like, "Yeah, but WHO?"  And after looking through some male celebrity photos, Jeff and I (or maybe it was just Jeff, or maybe it was just me; we can't remember) realized, BOOM!!, How about Russell Brand?

They've got the same coloring, plus he wears makeup too!  So we let Poof think about this for a while, and then the big YouTube contest hit.  Jeff and I geeked out about this contest, trying to come up with ways to help Poof win it.  Conveniently enough, the contest is taking place during Halloween weekend, and we figured a splashy, costume-y video was in order. 

K: Hey, how about that Russell Brand thing?...Heh, and Tyler (Poof's giant husband) could be Katy Perry!

J: Or she could do both on her face, half-and-half!

K: YES!

Poof loved the half-and-half thing.  I sent her the following mashup of their faces.

And damn if the kid didn't totally pick up my gauntlet and run with it all the way to Crazytown.  She said that she spent at least two hours creating the look while taping it; then she edited it way down to fifteen minutes.  What you see in the video is basically Poof figuring it out as she went along.  Some of her ideas, such as removing beard areas with eye makeup remover, are original inventions and are indicative of the kind of problem solving that goes on in her brain at all times.  I'm so proud of her fearlessness and creativity.  That's my girl! 

Vote for her, please, and if you already have, thank you very very much!

Trench coat mini-rant

What do the above images have in common?  If you said, "Everybody is wearing some kind of trench coat," you are only partially right.  If you said, "Everybody is wearing some kind of trench coat, and they have chosen to ignore its belt buckle and are leaving it to flop and jangle in the breeze," you are exactly right and I bet this bugs you and you are probably me.

I guess I'm just one of those people who chooses to obey belt buckles.  If a coat of mine has a buckle, I will go that extra mile and feed the end of the other side through it, insert the metal pointy thing into the notch that works for me, pull the belt through, and figure out what to do with the floppy end.  Usually there's a belt loop nearby and I'll tuck it in there. 

What is so hard about that?  And who are these devil-may-care types who simply cannot be bothered to devote the five seconds it takes to use the buckle?  Are they that strapped for time?  And how many valuable seconds are they wasting during that to-buckle-or-not-to-buckle decision making process?  Just buckle it and get on with your day, or buy a coat that has a sash tie and no buckle if you hate them so much.  Here's my trench coat, which I happen to love but I suspect Jeff secretly hates due to its brazen print and supercute pink stripe on the sash:

Sash belt: problem solved! 

I realize that I have now ruined trench coats for everyone.  The next time you're flipping through a catalog, you'll spot a trench coat, check the buckle, and think of this post.  You used to ignore them.  You used to not care.  But now you kind of do.  You won't even be able to watch movies without looking at trench coat belts...

...and for this, I humbly apologize.  But I'm glad this important matter is finally out in the open.

Camel pants

Hey everybody, ya gotta get some high-waisted camel pants!*

Today I read the August 2010 issue of Harper's Bazaar.  Well, I sort of read it, as Bazaar is about 15% text.  I mostly looked at pictures.  The editors really wanted to make sure I knew that if I plan on doing any walking this fall--especially any left-to-right striding while blond--I'd better have plenty of camel pants on hand.  I found the above full-length photos within the same 35-pages of each other in the magazine's editorial (i.e. non-ad) section near the end. 

How could that happen?  I'm not in the fashion business and I barely pay attention to women's magazines anymore (I don't remember signing up for a lifetime subscription, but Harper's Bazaar just keeps coming to me).  How is it that I was able to spot this completely jarring repetition while zonked out on the couch and just about to fall asleep, but no one at the magazine, whom you'd think would care, was able to spot it?  It's basically the same look in the same pose with (pretty much) the same woman shot from the same angle with the same wind machine!  Three times in a chunk of the magazine no thicker than 1/16th of an inch!  I'd write a letter to the editor about it, but H.B. hasn't had that feature in years.

It kind of goes without saying, but there's no way you can tuck a denim shirt into pants like those without serious lines, blousing, gut-enhancement and/or bunching. 

[insert your own camel toe joke here]

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