One of my favorite stores/brands is Jack Spade. I loved writ­ing about the newly opened shop when I was shop­ping edi­tor at City­search (is that still online? Yes!). Here’s a great video from JS dur­ing Fash­ion Week. Note Andy Spade tak­ing a bow at the end. So cute! Though is it just me, or is he being played by Tommy Hilfiger?

One of my dream rides is a VW Bee­tle convertible–old school, not one of the nou­veau style ones. I mean, those are fine and nice and all, but I just ache for the old ones. Click­ing through one of the local auc­tion house’s upcom­ing sale lists, I just saw not one but two, barely dri­ven, up for the tak­ing. Ryan brought me back to earth by remind­ing me that the cars would likely go for upwards of $20K, but I am hurt­ing for these. We could have match­ing con­vert­ibles! OK, I don’t know if that’s just gild­ing the lily, but one? Please, some­one? Can we reg­is­ter for the brown one and we’ll skip the kitchen stuff?

Some­day some­one will dis­cover the gene sequence for a desire to live in a tele­vi­sion apartment–specifically, Mary Tyler Moore’s. (The sequence MTM? I totally have it, it’s located some­where around MM, the abil­ity to eat one-pound bags of choco­late candy and then three-course meals.) There’s a post-off about TV décor over at Shel­ter­rific, and this has led me to dis­cover an actual blue­print of MTM’s awe­some pad here. So awe­some. All the love for the sunken liv­ing room reminds me of my first single-girl res­i­dence, a sweet and chic stu­dio at the Kens­ing­ton House, chron­i­cled once by the New York Times in a studio-centric piece.

My kitchen sink was so wee that I had to fill my stock pot in the bath­tub, and my clos­ets left a lot to be desired, but I had the glo­ri­ous sunken liv­ing space. No door­man named Carl­ton, how­ever, which reminds me–hey, that was on “Rhoda”!

OK, sorry fel­low read­ers, but this is bull­shit. I am totally in love with recorded books (unabridged, of course) for a mul­ti­tude of rea­sons, but mostly because they allow me to “read” and drive an oth­er­wise unevent­ful com­mute. Why the hate?

This arti­cle from last week’s NYT is a love song to British choco­late. A love song I often sing to any­one who will lis­ten. Now send me your Aero bars, monar­chists. Holla!

I was at Tar­get yes­ter­day, buy­ing Grape Nuts and wait­ing patiently for the Lib­er­tine stuff to arrive, when I real­ized the Great Sum­mer Switch had hap­pened. You know the one–suddenly the gar­den and bar­be­cue aisles become devoted to crayons and back­packs, and every­thing is all about school sup­plies and Fall and things in which one can store said school sup­plies. While I am a lit­tle upset about sum­mer being so cru­elly snatched from those who can enjoy it most (school-age chil­dren and teach­ers), I have to con­fess a deep dark dorky secret: I love back-to-school shop­ping. I have not lived in a dorm room for ages, yet I needed to check out all of Target’s offer­ings for dorm res­i­dents, at some points won­der­ing how I could work items like a hot pink laun­dry bas­ket into my own home.

I don’t do nearly as much dam­age in the gar­den and bar­be­cue aisles.

From an email received ear­lier on the sub­ject of my (other) future hus­band, Joe Per­nice:

Pri­mar­ily known as a record­ing
artist, Joe wrote the novella Meat is Mur­der
for Con­tin­uüm Books’ 33 1/3 series in 2003.  That book remains one of the best­selling
pieces in that series, and Joe is work­ing with Neal Huff, an actor who
appears reg­u­larly on HBO’s The Wire, on
the Meat is Mur­der screen­play.  Again, he is not forth­com­ing on when
that project might see the light of day. 
He also pre­vi­ously pub­lished a vol­ume of poetry called Two Blind Pigeons, on his own Ash­mont Books imprint.  That remains the best­selling (only)
piece on Ash­mont Books.

“The Wire” is con­nected to The Indie Rock and I didn’t even know it. Con­sider my mind blown.

I tried to post this last night from Tre and it didn’t go up. Anyway:

Not
to get all free­gan or any­thing, but I am feel­ing a lit­tle more
waste-weary than usual. That’s part of the rea­son I’ve decided to wear
my mom’s wed­ding dress. Why con­tribute to the myth that you can only be
beau­ti­ful in a dress you only wear once? In stark con­trast, Ryan and I went
to look for suits for him and in my next life, I am com­ing back
as a dude. They include alter­ations in the price–wtf?

We haven’t been so into the show-going lately, mostly because all musi­cal dis­cus­sions end on a “Why can’t Yo La Tengo play our wed­ding?” note, but also because I have a com­fort level these days. If I have to be some­where early the next day and the show’s in Lawrence, I’m not going. Unless it’s some­one I really really like. And then I’ll still need some con­vinc­ing to get my ass out the door. Because I am an old and crotch­ety lady.

But I digress.

Any­way, I saw this old post on John Sell­ers’ blog (has any­one read his book? Should I? I think I would like it based on title alone, but I am an easy mark that way) and found myself nod­ding along. I would prob­a­bly change the reorder­ing a bit, and–sorry rockers–I am not a huge GBVer, but any and all reunions of Unrest, Galaxie 500, Pavement…wait, can I put dead peo­ple on this list? Well, I have a few things I’d pay some absurd sums for. But not super-absurd. I mean, I’ve got a dog to feed.

Hey, if you’re read­ing this and you know a sweet-ass band in the Kansas City area, please tell me.