Rest in peace, sweet prince.

This past year or so has been a really rough one for the deaths of truly iconic people, and I haven't really commented much on any of them, partly because there are so many and partly because I just didn't feel that I had much to say. There were those that I was sad but unsurprised to see go (Norman Mailer, Irving Penn, Dominick Dunne, Howard Zinn & J.D. Salinger just recently), and the big gone-way-too-soon shockers that nobody seemed to see coming (John Hughes was a big one for me, and, of course, Michael Jackson.)

But when I heard that 40-year-old fashion designer Alexander McQueen had died this morning, I knew that this was one upon which I would have to reflect and work through. I was actually a little surprised by how much it had affected me, and I'm still not entirely sure why it did. Suicide in someone so young and so unbelievably talented is always tragic, no matter who they may be, but I didn't expect the oddly visceral feeling of personal loss that the news brought me.

It's always odd and intriguing to me to see how people react to the deaths of famous people - people they knew in a certain way, people to whom they feel a personal connection, but who they didn't really know. When a person feels really affected there's something proprietary about that, claiming that person and their affects on the world for oneself. That's really how I feel about Kurt Cobain - even though I was only four years old when he died, I definitely feel a sense of possession and even a kind of ownership, a way in which I take him for myself.

And as someone who loves the world of fashion, who believes in the power of its art and artifice, of the creativity and its reflection on the world - and how the world appropriates it back again - I am, in a way, claiming the the innovation and genius of McQueen for my own. Maybe that's why it's hitting me hard - that this is a world I really care about, and know that while other people certainly share that, not everyone does, so there's a kind of necessity of appropriation there. Bottom line, I know that McQueen, and his incredible impact on the fashion world, will never be forgotten.

And I know I will never forget the day of his death, either.

Characters: a devolutionary chain.

Okay, so I'm taking a medical leave this semester to try to figure out this body shit. As you might expect, this has led to me having WAY TOO MUCH free time on my hands (and I've only been home again for a few days...) It'll get better, I think - there will be some temping jobs in my future, and my mom is suggesting that I go to bartending school (hooray for marketable skills!) but in the meantime, I'm left to my own devices and coming up with shit like this.

So it has come to my attention recently that pretty much all of my favorite pop culture characters are basically THE SAME PERSON. Charismatic, witty, highly sexualized, and self-absorbed, with terrible pasts, intelligence, and a healthy level of cynicism, and a somewhat sociopathic view of the world. No, seriously, it'll become more and more clear. Let's start with a perennial favorite:


Dr. Gregory House

I love this show a lot, even though it's kind of devolved into mostly shittiness for the last couple of seasons. It basically kind of sucks now, but as long as House himself is there, doing his thing, I will keep watching. I love him so much. He is so funny and brilliant and complex and dynamic and Hugh Laurie plays him so goddamned brilliantly. I have had numerous dreams in which House and I are best friends. (I actually think he and I would get along quite well, as weird as that sounds.)

Okay, so House? Change his occupation from a doctor to an advertising executive, make him about 20 years younger, and make him gay, and we have...


Brian Kinney

Much like House, Queer as Folk's Brian has a strange sort of mythology surrounding him, with an appeal that can only really be understood by a big fan of the show who watches continuously. Deeply cynical and ridiculously selfish, Brian nonetheless has frighteningly keen observational skills (much like House) and an incredibly warm heart that he hides unbelievably well. He also utterly makes the show. I mean, yeah, the smut is fun, but without the character of Brian pretty much all of the emotional and dramatic plots would fall flat. He is just so fucking beautiful. I can't watch the show that much anymore, because it makes me unbelievably depressed, but Brian makes it worth it, as does Gale Harold's acting. In real life, Gale is both very straight and very shy, mild-mannered, and unassuming. Holy. Fuck.

Okay, so take Brian, make him straight again (sorry Bri!), make him a teenager, plop him down in the 80's, and you have...


John Bender

Yes. Evie and I actually discovered this one last summer. I've been in love with Bender for God-knows-how-long, since it's been years and years since I first saw the Breakfast Club, and upon the first viewing I fell hard. There's just nothing like a wrong side of the tracks bad boy with a fucking razor-sharp wit and a hardon for Molly Ringwald. I mean, can you blame me? I'm probably doomed to fall for a hilarious sociopath.

Now, take Bender, make him a girl, make him prettier (because as fuckable as he is, I think we can all agree that Judd Nelson would make a fuggin' fugly girl), put her in modern times and give her a big dose of compassion. What results?


Veronica Mars

Yeah, it all comes back around to Veronica. It's a devolutionary chain, yo! They are all the same.damn.people. And I'm out.

I neglected to mention this before, but my mom got me a cat clock for Christmas:



It's fantastic, and hanging on my wall here at school. It makes this gentle clacking sound as the tail moves back and forth (and the eyes roll, of course), that is both soothing and kind of mesmerizing. It's kind of hard not to let it put me to sleep, hence why I have music on whenever I am trying to work the last couple of days.

(Yeah, back at school. I'm hoping it will get better, and I think it will, but it fucking sucks right now.)

You know who I really, unironically love a whole lot? Kate Moss.




I know she's a cokehead (although why people were ever shocked at that is beyond me, but whatever.) I know she ushered in the super-waif trend among high-fashion models that has plagued the fashion industry ever since. I know she's kinda trashy and something of a train wreck, and that her rough living is totally reflected in her appearance when not in photos. I get it. I love her, and not just because of her breathtaking modeling ability and seemingly effortless personal style that no one else has ever quite pulled off (not that they haven't tried!) Simply put, I love her because, whatever lifestyle she leads, be it shitty or glamorous or both, she doesn't feel the need to talk about it. She doesn't try to be a role model, or talk about her wonderful organic zen life or all of her world-helping charity work, or how she achieves her beauty simply by drinking water and eating vegetables.

Not that there's anything wrong with doing any of that that. I just love that she's out there, doing her thing, be it modeling for the best designers in the world or going on a coke binge with a minor rock star or launching a fashion line, letting people take from it what they will and not shoving anything down anybody's throat about it. It's kind of refreshing, actually. She's one of the most famous, recognizable supermodels of all time for both her public and private life and yet she's managed to remain a creature of mystery. She's a fucking model, and shouldn't be expected to be anything else. She's got a job to do and she does it better than anybody else, every time.



So you go on with your bad self, Kate.

Y'know when you have some caffeine to prepare yourself to work/give yourself more energy, and instead of making you more awake and focused, you just get sort of scatterbrained and sleepily jittery?

Yeah. That's what's happening with me right now. I had some chai to work on this paper (and ugh, I'm tired because the goddamned cats were in and out of my room all night, wanting to CUDDLE and PLAY!) and instead of it increasing my focus, it's just made me kind of jittery and nervous. Besides I'm freaking out a little about going back to school, mostly for various emotional reasons, and this is seriously not helping. At all.

I don't know. I mean, on a certain level I'm glad that I had work to do over this break since it kept my brain from atrophying in absence of school, and all (and obviously I'm grateful that I got the extensions, because there was no way in hell I would have been able to get it done with all the seizures I was having in the last few weeks of the semester), but ugh, it really does suck to have work to do when on winter break like this. I'm freaked, is what I'm saying. I never feel totally comfortable at school, and I'm so much lonelier and sicker there - like, always.

I do always do better spring semester than the fall one, though, because I'm going towards more light and warmth and longer days, as opposed to fall semester, when I'm going towards darker and darker and colder and colder and it's like some kind of hellish descent. Fall semester really fucking sucks. All the time.

Also? Grateful for these paper topics. It's been an American Studies-heavy semester (next semester is going to be an English-heavy one, and I anticipate it being way harder), so in the past couple of weeks I've written on Trainspotting, Citizen Kane, His Girl Friday, Twin Peaks, and now Mad Men. (The Twin Peaks research also got me a chance to correspond with Ms. Sherilyn Fenn, a.k.a. Twin Peaks' Audrey Horne - a fangirl's dream, if ever there was one. She was a peach.) Not that there aren't difficulties associated with this shit, because trust me, there are, but it's much easier when you're studying something you really find to be a lot of fun.

All this popular culture studies stuff has really given me a new appreciation for aesthetics. I've been following lots of variously aesthetic-focused blogs and I really do think it's just as valid as the study of anything else - I don't see why substance and style have to be pried apart and differentiated (they certainly aren't in film), or why styles and aesthetic can't be every bit as thought-provoking as a "higher" form of culture. And I don't think one has to be "trained" in this stuff to appreciate it - you just have to have a good eye for what you find beautiful and visually arresting, and cultivate and seek out what you like and find compelling. Sure, having studied art or film or fashion helps, but I don't think it's a requirement if you have a natural compulsion towards it.

I caught Vertigo on TV the other night after the Golden Globes (which were really good this year! Good show, good show), and it's still one of my favorites. Just hits all the right notes - dramatic and romantic and tragic and deeply creepy. Kim Novak gives the shivers - good AND bad ones! (Jimmy Stewart just gives me the bad ones.) She's exquisite. My favorite scenes are the early ones, seeing her dreamlike, haunted wanderings around San Francisco, her obsession with the portrait (that portrait still gives me major fucking creeps), her almost out-of-body hurling herself into the San Francisco bay. The sensuality, the paranoia, the obsession - it's all some of my favorite stuff.

And who could forget that fucking hair swirl?

More shivers. I read this terrifically creepy short story by Joyce Carol Oates called "Fat Man My Love" about Hitchcock from the perspective of one of his blondes. She's great when she's not completely grossing me out, which can definitely happen. I can kind of overdose on her stories a little bit and end up a bit woozy.

Enough morbidity! Let's see some aesthetic perfection! ANTM again, here. From the "short cycle," Ms. Rae Weisz:

Fucking perfect.

Also, my absolute all-time favorite photo from that show: Cycle 11's Lauren Brie:


I feel a little better now. And now, to the paper-writing!

Scattered thoughts.

So "Rocket Queen" by G n' R came up on my iTunes shuffle (I should be writing a paper, but isn't that sure and always the case?), and remembered this delightful little peace of lore about that girl moaning throughout certain parts of the track. Allegedly, one of the members of the band (I don't remember which at the moment), slept with Axl Rose's girlfriend and Axl, having what is surely a highly overdeveloped sense of revenge, decided to sleep with said fellow band member's girlfriend, tape it, and put her orgasming moans on the song.

That is just such an epic level of out-assholing that it reminds me of that episode of South Park in which Cartman gets back at some kid after a prank by arranging for his parents to be killed, making them into chili, and serving it to the kid. Some serious, House of Atreus, Greek vengeance-type shit. No real point to this, just that I love Axl Rose and I love South Park.

Really love South Park - I watch it a lot late at night while hanging out with the cats. A couple of weeks ago I caught an episode that referenced Fiona Apple. It involves Barbra Streisand as an evil monster, going around town indignant that no one seems to know who she is, to which the police officer responds: "Well, I know you're not Fiona Apple, and if you're not Fiona Apple, I don't really give a rat's ass." Bliss.

Hey, you know what else I've gotten kinda hooked on lately? Six Feet Under. It took me a couple of episodes to warm up to it, but I'm starting to like it a lot. Its combination of dark humor and morbidity is right up my alley, and the cast is really good (with the exception of Rachel Griffiths - can't stand her, and in fact she comes close to ruining the show for me), especially Michael C. Hall. I was in love the moment he appeared on screen, so of course a few minutes later it was revealed that his character is gay. Yes, so it goes.

There's something so odd and chilling about him, like he has the "leading man" looks but not quite, which is what makes him uncanny. Love him a lot. I've been meaning to watch him on Dexter, too, but I'm occupied with Six Feet Under and Ally McBeal at the moment. So much kickass TV to discover, you guys!

(I've also been meaning to get into True Blood. Kinky sex + vampires + violence + Southern Gothic vibe = party, as far as I'm concerned.)

Well, I should get back to work. At least my next few papers will be full of fluff and popular culture (but from an academic perspective, y'all!) Party time for me, for real.

Ranking the ANTM winners

Time to do something useless!

So, I love America's Next Top Model, basically, which I know is ridiculous. And trust me: it is a ridiculous show, if only for the utter absurdity that is Tyra Banks' ego. But I love it, anyway - the show has a knack for providing great entertainment with its mix of beauty, utter train wrecks, ego, idiocy, oversimplification of various social problems, and fascinating, breathtaking photos and photo shoots. I don't know how the producers of this show keep it as fun and entertaining as they do, but it's really pretty damn impressive, as is the level of total absurdity they can produce.

And so, in that spirit, I am going to personally rank the winners of the show, in order of least to most favorite. (The fact that the show can go through two "cycles" a year is also impressive.) It's also an excuse to look at pretty pictures.

13. Naima Mora - Cycle 4

Oh, Naima. While I admit that she gave good face in her pictures while on the show, her unbelievably dull personality, awkwardness, and odd looks while in motion pretty much served to convince me that runner-up Kahlen was robbed. Also, she just depresses me, especially when she inexplicably had sideburns, post-show.

12. Nicole Linkletter - Cycle 5

Pretty as Nicole was, and as photogenic as she could be, she never really looked like a model to me, either in print or on the moving camera (certainly not nearly as much as runner-up Nik), nor did she have a particularly good runway walk. Still, I have to admit that she could be pretty hot sometimes. (Also, so not my favorite: notorious lesbian Kim was, who was, in my opinion, possibly the most beautiful girl ever on the show.) Her look is very Covergirl, though, which I'm sure played a large part in her win.

11. Saleisha Stowers - Cycle 9

I must admit that Saleisha would probably rank higher if her win didn't absolutely reek of a setup. Not only has an African-American girl won every third cycle so far, she went to Tyra's camp years before and, although she'd had previous modeling experience that probably should have disqualified her, she was cast (and won!) anyway. Also, while I admit that she does make sense as a winner, she won over two girls (Jenah and Heather) who were far better models, but were, admittedly, not particularly Covergirl-employable.

10. McKey Sullivan - Cycle 11

Although McKey seemed to have an incredibly dull personality (again, one can never really know this, it being TV and all), and was pretty awkward-looking in motion, she really did have a killer face in front of the camera. She wasn't exactly terribly memorable, but she's probably more likely than some of the others to be able to make a real career out of this thing.

9. Teyona Anderson - Cycle 12

Like McKey, Teyona isn't exactly "classically pretty" in motion, but in pictures? Takes my breath away. She most certainly wasn't my favorite of Cycle 12, but she and her alien-like face earned her win.

8. Yoanna House - Cycle 2

Yoanna was never my favorite - I was madly in love with Miss Shandi - but she possibly had the most striking, stunning face out of all the winners, ever. Goddamned breathtaking.

7. Whitney Thompson - Cycle 10

While I don't doubt that Whitney won more for the plus-size tokenism than for her actual modeling ability, she's a good winner nonetheless. She was fun and funny, seemed to actually have a sharp wit, and is definitely one of the sexiest, if not *the* sexiest, of the winners, and her appeal is very Covergirl-appropriate. In terms of commercial success, she has a good shot, since she can win the straight men over with her sexiness and the women with her admittedly killer, but still not scrawny body.

6. Nicole "Bloody Eyeball" Fox - Cycle 13

Ah, good old Bloody Eyeball, winner of the "short" cycle. I love this girl for her stoned-seeming weirdness, the fact that she is a self-proclaimed dork, and that she's goddamn flawless in pictures. I love weird, intense, stoic ginger girls, I gotta say, and I love her bloody eyeball.

5. Danielle Evans - Cycle 6

Danielle is probably the overall audience's all-time favorite, and it's easy to see why: she's gorgeous, she's funny and endlessly quotable ("Shut cho mouth and say it ain't so!"), and she's a people's champ, with her love of her arthritis-suffering mother and her dedication to the competition, dealing with a sprained toe, having painful surgery to get the gap between her teeth closed, and checking out of the hospital early from dehydration and food poisoning to go to her photo shoot. And even though I was pulling for runner-up Joanie, I had to admit I got teary-eyed when she burst out with "I'm a Covergirl, mommy! I'm a Covergirl!"

4. Adrianne Curry - Cycle 1

Adrianne was the perfect winner of ANTM's inaugural season - a little vulgar, a little rough around the edges, and unaware of her own incredible charisma and hotness. Plus, her status as an outspoken anti-ANTM alum who was then blacklisted by Tyra because of it? Makes me love her even more.

3. Eva Pigford - Cycle 3

As hot as Eva and her pictures were, there's really one word and one word only for why she ranks so high: charisma. There's a certain "it" that you have or you don't, and Eva had it. In spades. She rocked her horrible curly blonde haircut and whenever the camera was on her, I couldn't take my eyes off of her. Even though she was the shortest girl of the cycle, she filled up a whole room.

2. Jaslene Gonzalez - Cycle 8

God, I love this girl, with her almost indecipherable accent and stunning closeups. I love that she looks like an amalgamation of Janice Dickinson and a drag queen. I love that I've run into her twice while in New York and I love how unexpectedly, unconventionally gorgeous she is. Latina tokenism? Maybe, but the girl is amazing.

1. CariDee English - Cycle 7

Oh, CariDee. How do I love thee?

She's the rare girl on this show who looked just as gorgeous both in motion and on print. Plus she's downright adorable, albeit totally vulgar (which makes me love her even more), and is pretty much the very definition of "bubbly." (Plus she bears a very strong resemblance to a family friend.) Cycle 7 may have been one of the weaker cycles in terms of watchability, but her immense beauty and hilarity made it all worth it.

Semi-rhetorical questions about the Twilight franchise.

So I'm pretty much indifferent to the whole Twilight phenomenon. I mean, it definitely gets on my nerves, but I don't especially care about it. I've never read any of the books or seen any of the movies, and I just generally attempt to ignore its existence.

A sidebar, though: The other night I had a dream that I went on a date with Edward Cullen/Robert Pattinson (he was a sort of hybrid of the character and the actor, if that makes any sense.) He went to my high school for some reason, and asked me out in the middle of class, to which my reaction was at first WTF-ery and then shrugging acceptance. This all happened in my home town, and yet I saw a Smith professor while I was waiting for our date, who was very enthusiastic about the whole thing, which was kind of weird even in the context of the dream. In any case, we had a picnic for our date and it was all quite pleasant, until I had a bloody nose and his immediate reaction was OMG CAN I EAT IT?!?!?! I was a little surprised, but allowed it. I didn't want it to go to waste, anyway. Perfectly good blood, and all.

Anyway: Twilight. I have some serious questions.

- Why is it that no one ever thinks it's maybe a bit shady that this is a group of "adopted siblings," and yet they're all coupled off? Like...they're brothers and sisters, and yet dating? Are there no eyebrows raised about that? Or the fact that their non-biological parents are, like, in their 30s? And collecting teenagers and only teenagers to turn into vampires? Just seems a bit...well, shady, to me.
- Speaking of which, are there serious orgies going on in that house? Because, seriously, they're a bunch of wildly attractive, eternally youthful teenagers who have no threat of pregnancy hanging over them. If at least some of them aren't sleeping together, I would seriously question their hormone levels.
- This is a slightly more general question, but why don't vampires, in this modern day and age, just, like, rob blood banks? I mean, that probably has less of an erotic/possessive thrill than biting someone, but if you're the sort of vampire who's all AHH I DON'T WANT TO BITE PEOPLE HUMANS ARE FRIEND NOT FOOD ANGST ANGST, wouldn't that seem like a more natural solution? Or I'm sure they could find a whole posse of morbid goth girls to help them out by donating some of their blood once in a while. Hell, I'd donate a vial of my O-neg if it would keep vampire murders down, or prevent them from eyeing their classmates like they're a pound of raw sirloin. For the good of the world, right?
- My biggest question, really - how the hell is it that no one gets suspicious of these teenagers being ETERNALLY YOUTHFUL? I mean, do they relocate every couple of years? (This may have been explained in the books, I dunno.) And if they don't, how fucking stupid must the locals be that they don't think there's something weird about these eternal high schoolers?
- Speaking of which: eternal high schoolers? For fucking serious? Holy shit, I'd have been begging for someone to stake me decades ago if that was my fate.
I also think that the way Edward behaves, what with the mind-reading and the stalking and the watching while the girl sleeps, is creepy as hell, but that's more of an observation than a question - well, other than "WTF is she thinking?" And, well, she's a teenage girl. I can say that we're not exactly known for our rational, wise decisions all the time.