layering for fun and so parts won't fall off

I was on my knees giving thanks for cheap likker and Trader Joe's cult-like secretive subliminal seductive marketing manifesto (if you smoke the brussel sprouts and listen to the happy consumer muzak slower and backwards while staring stonedly at a Tatty Ho's hawaiian shirt, you'll hear the mind control messages -- I do want every possible permutation of eggs and I'll keep buying the conditioner even though it actually makes my hair so knotty i could cry. or you'll hurl) when i saw john denver's feet walk in.  Sing it with me -- rocky mountain hi-i-i-i-igh colorado. thank god i'm a country boy and not some middle-aged cinnamon broom huffing ruin. 

(I just rediscovered colored text and have determined to do a bit of holiday decorating. note to Booger: where is the blinking function?)

Hot flash: thank god john denver's feet did not come with the rest of that grinning tool and his awesomely large wire-rimmed glasses but rather this warmly dressed child who we will call tiny timette. or cindy lou who. While it's true she may have realized she was dangerously low on alcohol only minutes before the sabbath dry 24 hours so she threw on the closest articles of clothing to rush over for some OK shiraz. But i prefer to imagine she artfully arranged the layers in descending size and entertaining shades of khaki, blue and green, topping it off with a toque knitted with love and skill by a friend, for some creative problem solving, namely how to venture out of the house without losing some aesthetically pleasing body parts.

dig the skirtsky

The way she teamed the elaborately pieced skirt, with denim and boots and silver dollar belt buckle, had me in a Montana state of mind. Well aren't i just as wrong as first cousins. Again. I'll give you ten guesses and you still wouldn't land on the provenance of this anika-get-your-kolishnikov marvel. Give up? 

Warsaw, Poland.

Well raise my rent, right? When I think of Poland, I think of women who look like kruschchev in babushkas, blond achieved by the most toxic means possible and borscht. Cotton? No, cotton doesn't come to mind at all. 

This pioneering woman is in the education arm of Rockford, Illinois' Burpee Museum of Natural History, and was attending a conference in Poland. Skirtsky happened.

a person not at the Mall of America

Let's review the number of ways this woman is a rebel, an outlier, marching to her own little drummer boy (this marks the official start of the dancing santa season). 

1. She is not, like every resident of the upper midwest and a significant percentage of Japan, at the MOA. 

2. She is looking cute, which is to say not succumbing to the slow death and national shame that is Uggs, despite the seasonal apocalypse that just happened.

3. She walked more than a block on that bumpy ice you see here without falling. 

That's a lot of individualism -- i salute you, nanuk, and hope you don't pull a groin muscle on the way back. Because i didn't either.

And now, since i have finally stopped swearing, i will tell you how i know that every resident of the upper midwest and a significant percentage of Japan is at the MOA. Yesterday, when it started sleeting and the roads were 100% ice covered, i decided to run a bunch of errands, ending with a quick trip into the big blue maw of hell that is Ikea to return a twin bottom sheet made of 12 thread count burlap that i never took out of the package that would undoubtedly net me a handy $1.97. or maybe just store credit. worth it. Immediately after exiting 494, i encountered the 3-lane nonmoving line of very smart people waiting to rush into the MOA and buy the Limited sweater that probably won't pill and stretch out and make you look like a nocturnal invertebrate. At this very same moment, I realized my gas tank was empty and my bladder full. What to do? Since i was driving without a loaded firearm or adult diapers, my options were limited to crossing four lanes of traffic, going the wrong way for just the tiniest block(s) and maintaining a stream of cursing unbroken by even one nonswear word. Ikea is a four-letter word.
P.S. in rereading, i have just written and signed an affidavit of mental incompetence with every red flag waving -- poor judgment, paranoia, tenuous grasp on reality, driving sober, veering from one imagined enemy to another, reliance on foul language when a weapon would do. i need to run for office.

walk this way

 

I was going to write, dude sewed on the patches himself because he digs florals, but then i was inhabited by Steven Tyler and wrote, Dude does not look like a lady. i can offer no explanation for this aerosmith riff other than that i too am wearing eyeliner and tight pants. Anyhoo, back in the saddle (somebody stop me), joseph's original plan for his technicolor dreamcoat was to do a matching gun patch (how much do you love a floral gun patch on which to rest your semi-automatic weapon?) on the other shoulder but asymmetry is what actually happened. 

i asked him to stand sideways, and he did. then i told him to face me, and he did. let's stretch our imaginations and think for one minute what might happen next if i was not such a sensitive caring person steven tyler. other than obedience, which i look for in a stranger, this guy is my new BFF because of his this-means-business scarf and orange cap that's doing a salute to the sun. and because he's wearing every article of clothing he owns.

saturday in prospect park

see how i put that saturday in the title? that's because i wanted you to think, dog my cats, did i put on even one item of clothing on saturday (and some of you can stop right there) that did not have EZ-schlub elastic? i wanted you to scratch the old bean and then the old bum in perplexity over the very notion of sanding your callouses and filing your nasty toenails so they won't snag the living daylights out of lacey tights which you delicately wiggle into ON A SATURDAY. WHEN THE QUEEN IS NOT COMING OVER. stretches the imagination to the breaking point, doesn't it? especially if you're a guy.

the dashing hat and dickens-y fingerless gloves are a dead give-away, the siren song of street stylists. and it worked. although i think she was hoping for The Sartorialist or Garance Dore or someone who didn't have to fossick around in a big plastic tote, that held among other victuals a bottle of local merlot, for a camera with no lens and one big red button. lookit-- it really did make a pikchur! whatever, my friends, i was really on my game, layering pattern over pattern, walking very naturally in heels, scaring children and cats.

tribeca two-fer

Actually it was probably Soho by now, deep in The Sartorialist's 'hood. No disrespect, but you'd have to be wasted or lazy not to get an outrageously good shot here by simply staggering out to a corner and remaining vertical for a minute or two. just taking up the slack because Schuman was in Paris or spongeing at The Little Owl, i got two shots fer the price of one (see the guy in the background?). She's European which is to say, used to having her picture taken and comfortable with pattern. I caused her to miss the green light and even as we were chatting, i saw someone better that crazy triple nomened freja beha erichsen go around the corner but i was real nice and only looked out of the corner of my eye at the famous model i was missing. here's the shot i did not take.

i immediately texted everyone i knew, both of them, that i was hanging out with models on spring street. god i am hip, in my wrangler jeans.

how to run a marathon

 

Any questions? It's not about covering a crazy amount of asphalt in less time than happy hour at Liquor Lyle's; it's about not revolting hundreds of thousands of spectators.  Always the professional, Emma employed a swipe of mascara, a little foundation to even out skin tone and a bit of blush to maintain a healthy glow for 26 miles, even as some internal organs were consumed. 

And then, when she didn't have to worry about a pancreas any more, she could focus her energies on styling the king-size piece of tinfoil she won. Here she's realized a hot one-shouldered, asymmetric silhouette.This is how to run a marathon.

feather 'n leather

Look, it's the freedom tower!  psyche. don't be a rube -- it's obviously just the shackled-to-crushing-debt-and-prisoner-of-forever-21 tenement. fresh off the plane, i like to get with the 99% and take pictures from behind like a cringing vermin/smooth operator who is about to trip on some cobblestones. holy coincidences, completely by accident i took a moving shot of someone in a when-animals-attack vest just like my first utterance from the may 2011 visit, cleverly titled NYC!

if i gleaned anything from this visit to the big apple, it's BIG FURRY VESTS. they're sort of sonny & cher, a little bit savage and reproducing like rabbits. remember to wear your flea collar! the freak flag above is not fur but feathers that she accessorized with pink faux leather bun warmers. as you would. with tights and banker-bashin boots, this could be the hooker the occupy wall street movement needs. what? oh hook? hook? they need a hook? oh.

upright and locked

ok, so i haven't posted in a while -- make me. i've been in nyc watching emma run 26.2 miles without pooping herself -- right on sherman!-- though i may have wet my pants the tiniest bit on the 6 train going up to the 20-mile mark because i'd had a lot of coffee and there was a tokyo-style crush of people including someone with a duane read bag applying pressure to my bladder. but enough about street style -- on with bodily functions!

above on the sun country flight, i was just warming up, cracking my knuckles, stretching, loosening up the old stalking skillz with the back of the sucker guy in 4A. whatever, he was asleep and none the wiser. i was awake to the tonal textures of the plane, his herringbone jacket, itty bitty striped hipster hoodie and the seatback pocket. alternately squinting and bugging my eyeballs out a) prepares me for the visual onslaught that is to come, and b) inspires the woman in the seat next to me to beg ask to be moved to the nonreclining seat right next to the bathroom. i heart flying.