Tarhearted.

BOOTS, BITCH.

That would be my answer if you asked me, "What did you buy while you were out this weekend?"

A few years ago I was known as quite the snappy dresser. Then, without getting too personal, my financial life came crumbling down and I had to worry about stupid, ugly things like eating. Things are getting slightly better, so I decided to treat myself to a pair of much needed boots and got two pair instead.

Exhibit A. These cute Florsheim boots.

Exhibit B. These Frye-esque boots (I totally can't afford the real thing right now.)

Hooray for beautiful things!

That said, it's really hard to be a pinko socialist and root for the fall of capitalism and the redistibution of wealth when shopping for cute stuff is SO MUCH FUN. At least if the revolution comes I'll look adorable and have great boots for kicking in windows.

THE BITCH IS BACK.

Oh my god you guys, I am fagging out.

The BBC aired the first episode of... are you ready for this?... Joan Collins Does Glamour. I know, right? How was this not already a show? How is this not on 24 hours a day? Check it out:

I hope she slaps peopel and  pushes people into pools and stuff. God, I can't WAIT. If this isn't on BBC America when I get home, somebody will pay dearly. 

LIKE DELICATE LADIES.

It occurs to me that i may need to add a tag for "elegance" because sometimes the catch all "fashion" or "health and beauty" tags just won't suffice. Case in point: Allyson White, who even spells her name the elegant way.

I love waht she's wearing. Are thos epants or does she have a tie dyed blanket over her legs? Extra points for the cigarette, beer, and Cyndi Lauper in hard times hairdo. Anyway, Allyson (god, i'm crazy about that spelling) was definately NOT giving a beej when the driver of the car she was riding in crashed.

Quoth Allyson:

"I was not sucking his d*** - and it's pretty obvious that wasn't the case ... you only have to look at the mark on my chest," she said.

"Clearly I had my seatbelt on, so it's impossible that I'd be leaning over sucking his d*** unless he is hung like a donkey or I've got a f****** rubber neck."

"If it was true I'd just cop it sweet and think 'how embarrassing, I got caught sucking someone's d***' - but it is not true and that's what is p****** me off."

"I don't understand where that story has come from," she said.

"It may have looked bad when police first arrived as my girls were hanging out all over the place. I also had a $5 note wedged between my boobs so they probably just assumed I was a sex worker or something and he'd already paid me."

"But $5 is a bit cheap for a head job."

Too true, sister. too true.

Full story here.

GLORIOUS SCARVES.

My friend Zoe is more beautiful than your friend Zoe because she sends me things like this:

We should all be spending more time on things like this and less time on things like this.

JOHN HUGHES AND GINNY.

The passing on John Hughes yesterday hurt my heart more than I thought it would initially. His films were truly cathartic to misunderstood teens everywhere, even those of us watching them a generation or two later.

A lot of people would say that The Breakfast Club is the greatest teen movie off all time, and I'm inclined to agree. Still, Sixteen Candles is my favorite. It has the cutest love interest and includes my favorite denizen of Shermer, Illinois: one Ginny Baker (played brilliantly by Blanche Baker). Her glamour couldn't be stopped:

Firstly, I just love the aesthetic of anybody applying moisturizer to their elbow. I don't know why, but I do. I also love Ginny's soft voice and her ability to rock the soft hands like Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune. Plus, she's got awesome lingerie, takes to many painkillers, and likes The Ronettes. Triple win!

Ginny: I really love Rudy. And he is totally enamored of me. I mean, I've had other men love me before, but not for six months in a row.

-------

[the bride arrives at the church, obviously out of it]
Brenda Baker: Her monthly bill came early. Well, she's fine, she just took a muscle relaxer.
Ginny: Try *four*.

--------

Ginny: Darling is something bothering you?
[pause]
Ginny: ...you're acting like... an asshole. And I think I know what it is.I think you're jealous that I'm getting married and that I'm getting all the attention.

----------

Ginny: No Sam, I think you're just acting selfish and immature.
Samantha: Oh yes that's it. That's exactly it.
Ginny: [to herself] I can't believe it. You make someone a bridesmaid and they shit all over you.

I wonder what Ginny would be up to now.

John, thank you for Ginny and everything else too. I really loved your movies and you will be missed.

WHY DON'T YOU?

Typepad, the service through which I publish my incisive, wise, and elegant blog, always posts a "question of the day" meant to inspire a blog entry. They're totally lame, but you know what? It totally worked today, because I've been meaning to write about this for a long time, but haven't gotten the chance.

Question of the Day:

If you were only allowed to own one book, what book would you choose?

I know what you're thinking. A book, Josh? But books are boring! But one book is not boring. One book is awesome. What book, you ask? Well, I'll tell you.

Obviously, the answer is Why Don't You..., suggestions by by Diana Vreeland, former editor of Harper's Bazaar and later of Vogue (until she was fired in 1971 by some cuntessa). Ms Vreeland died way back in 1989 because she was too beautiful for the 90's, but her wisdom lives on.

For 26 years she penned the column Why Don't You... which have now been compiled in this book alongside some truly gorgeous photography. Her column was simply a series of suggestions of things to do. Simple activities to help one overcome the boredom that is the human condition.

Why don't you...

tie black tulle bows on your wrists?

have a yellow satin bed entirely quilted in butterflies?

remember how delicious champagne cocktails are after tennis or golf? Indifferent champagne can be used for these.

upholster your car seat in fine camel's hair? Hermes of Paris will do this for you.

wash your blond baby's hair in dead champagne to keep its curl?

Why don't you, indeed? This is the activity book that parents ought to be giving their children on rainy days. Diana Vreeland had the life I want. No fair. Why, oh, why was I born Kentucky trailer trash instead of New York Society?

UPDATE: I just discovered that Vreeland invented the word "pizazz" and also "faction", which is a combination of "fact" and "fiction". SWOON.

 

(The gorgeous Diana Vreeland, 1903-1989.)

So what book would you own?

SMOKING IS GLAMOROUS.

I was a smoker from ages of 13 through 26. I smoked a pack of cigarettes a day all the way through middle school, high school, and college. I grew up in a house where everybody smoked, even indoors. People think I'm kidding when I say that I've seen my mother smoking on her exercise bike, as if the two activities might cancel each other out. In fact, she still smokes and you have to beg her, honestly beg, to get her to crack even one window in her hot boxed Subaru. She thinks it's a nuisance because the wind pulls her majestic Native American woman hair through the crack.

You have to forgive her. My family is from Kentucky, after all, where people smoke inside the grocery store whilst shopping for melons. In short, I felt like smoking was a part of me. Not a behavior, but a characteristic. It's actually why this blog is called Tarhearted.

I tried everything to quit. For me the patches worked as long as I was wearing them, but after the ten week program was over and I was patch free I would just pick up again. The gum was like burning acid. Then I took Chantix, a brand new drug that was supposedly the most effective method of smoke cessation. There were all sorts of stories about people killing themselves or somebody else while on Chantix, but I didn't really care that much. All I experienced was terrible gas, cotton mouth, irritability, and the ability to get blackout drunk on one glass of wine. The drug worked for me and I'm now smoke free and have been for two years (except for one debauched night in Paris.) I never looked back and have never wanted a cigarette since then.

Until now. I don't know why, but I've been craving a cigarette. Maybe it's because I've been watching so much Mad Men? I've been glamorizing it in my head a lot and I keep having dreams that I'm a smoker. I have to remind myself that smokers are less this:

 

And more this:

 

(Incidentally, this woman looks like a billion people I grew up with.)

Anyway, I have to stay strong. I don't want to end up like a sad old secretary condemed to the parking lot. Besides, smokes are ten bucks a pack in New York now.

FAG OUT ON SWIM WEAR!

I'm going to the country this weekend with Youngblood. Yes, the honest-to-god country! Don't ask me where. The Catskills or something. Anyway, a Youngblood member who'd been to said cabin chimed in that the location offered "good swimming". It was then I realized that I don't own a pair of swim trunks and suddenly, out of nowhere, I really, really wanted them.

A quick internet search confirmed my suspicions: in general, swim trunks are made for ugly and/or stupid dudes. Everything they're making is so, so ugly unless its designer and costs $200 or more. Being that i can't wear swim trunks to the bar I refuse to spend more than, say, $50. This is a problem. Also, the cut they're using right now is so blech.

I decided to go vintage. Look at these cute vintage dior trunks:

I love the button detail. These are so, so me and I want them really hard. Too bad these are a large instead of a medium. Boo!

I also found a designer I liked for under $100. I really, really like this pair they sell and will probably be buying them this week:

 

The same designer also does a swim set inspired by the 1920's men's suit. God, I want this so hard. I'd grow a mustache and lift weights on the boardwalk.

 

This might be more my speed anyway, being that I hate my body. I'd wear a turtle neck in the shower if I could.

The problem is that i won't be able to get any of these suits before the weekend, which means I'm just going to have to go to American Apparel or something like all the other shit bags. It's bad enough I have to expose my untanned flesh to my peers. FASHION FAIL.

I was looking at all of this on ebay when I came across the hottest swim set ever:

I was just about to hit "bid" when I realized that it was too small. Way too small. In fact it was Ken's original swim set. No fair! That plastic faggot gets all the good clothes.

I wish I were this dude. His suit is the hotness:

TWO OF MY FAVORITE HOUSEWIVES.

Many thanks to reader Meg, who pointed me in the direction of this amazing Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman parody a mid 70's episode The Carol Burnett Show. God, I wish I were alive in the 70's.

I'm sorry, but I can't stop obsessing about this. Attempts to find bootlegs have been fruitless. I suppose I could go to the Museum of Television & Radio, but there's 310 episodes to watch. Maybe I could watch three or four episodes a week? For a hundred weeks?

Sigh. I wish there were shows this good on the air now.

Speaking of housewives, NeNe's hair looks good this season.

Well played, NeNe. Weaves are whack.

I SMELL CRAZY.

I had an incredibly stressful day yesterday and (like a lady) I decided to take a piping hot bath, give myself a facial, and go to bed with a book. All that was missing was the candlelight and Feist album!

Anyway, I was lying there in the bath when I noticed that my hippie soap bottle was covered in craziness. Actually, that's not quite true. I'm sensitive to aesthetics and I work in Marketing for a living, so if an ad is chock full of copy to the point where it's jumbled or "busy" it's as if I don't see it. It's a sort of willful ignorance. I guess the warm water relaxed me enough to actually give the bottle a look-see though, because I spent a full five minutes wondering what the fuck I was reading. "The earth is god's spaceship." Say what? This is some heaven's gate shit. I could have spent ten or twenty minutes reading it.

Today I followed up with some research. Who is the Dr. Bronner and how does he make his magical soap? The Straight Dope clears it up:

Bronner is an 85-year old (as of 1993) German immigrant who hangs out in Escondido, California. He's not an MD or strictly speaking a rabbi, but claims he's got the equivalent of a PhD in chemistry, which I guess makes him a master chemist. He's also not your average soap maker. Whereas Messrs. Procter and Gamble dream (well, dreamt) of enzymes and long-chain fatty acids, Bronner dreams of world peace.

Bronner wants to convince mankind of the virtues of the "All-One-God-Faith," which, together with the "Moral ABC," his answer to the Ten Commandments, will unite the human race. The details of this can be a bit hard to follow. For example: "Replace half-true Socialist-fluoride poison & tax-slavery with full-truth, work-speech-press & profitsharing Socialaction! All-One! So, help build 4 billion Hannibal wind-power plants, charging 96 billion battery-banks, powering every car-factory-farm-home-monorail & pump, watering Babylon-roof-gardens & 800 billion Israel-Milorganite fruit trees, guarded by Swiss 6000 year Universal Military Training," etc.

Talking to the doc on the phone is the audio equivalent of reading one of his labels. He can be pretty linear when he wants to be, but eventually always veers off into a rap about the Essene rabbis and whatnot, delivered in a nutty-professor German accent. Believe me, it's an experience.

Bronner has had an eventful life. The son of a Jewish German soap maker, he emigrated to the U.S. and pleaded with his father to do the same when the Nazis came to power. The old man refused. One day Bronner got a postcard with the words, "You were right. --Your loving father." He never heard from his parents again.

Initially settling in the midwest, Bronner married the illegitimate daughter of a nun, who eventually became suicidal and died in a mental hospital. (He says she was tortured by the hospital guards.) He also began devising his plan for world peace. Fittingly, he took to the soapbox to promote it. One of his listeners, Fred Walcher, was so inspired that in 1945 he had himself crucified in Chicago in order to publicize the plan. (He survived.)

Later Bronner was arrested while trying to promote his plan at the University of Chicago and was committed to a mental hospital. He escaped three times, finally fleeing to California in 1947. He's been there cranking out soap and soap labels ever since.

Despite his eccentricities, Dr. Bronner has built his soap company into a prosperous concern, mostly by sheer force of personality. In the early days he would set up a table at health food conventions. If a dealer strayed within ten feet, Bronner would pounce and not let go until he'd gotten an order.

But things didn't really take off until he was discovered by the counterculture during the 60s. With the aid of his sons Jim and Ralph, who handle production and sales, he currently sells some 400,000 gallons of liquid soap and 600,000 pounds of bar soap a year. He says he's now worth $6 million--not bad, he notes drily, for somebody who's supposedly nuts.

Amazing. Dr. Bronner also has his own birth control method for you lady readers:

Bronner's birth control method involves using lemon juice and Vaseline as a spermicide.

I love you, Dr. Bronner!