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Let’s Play Dress Up!

I grew up in a family business centered around women’s apparel.
This does a lot to f you up.
You have mini moms and mini grandmas forever hovering over your shoulder every morning as you get ready for the day.
“Brush that hair!”
“Fix your lapel!”
“You’re slowly disgracing the family name by wearing those holey socks! Do you want to kill the family name, Lauren?! DO YOU?!”
I do not like fashion.
I will never pretend that I know anything about fashion designers, fashion blogs, or America’s Next Model Top Runway Style Show.
However, I do like dressing up.
Suspenders, ties, hats, mustaches, scarves, skirts, pantyhose, you name it.
In the want to streamline my blog a bit more, I will be doing a weekly “dress up” post. This will be my version of a fashion post but without the vacant stares, sour pusses, pigeon toes, and scoliosis legs.
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Like any good hipstercrite, I wear a lot of American Apparel and make fun of people who wear it.

However, all joking (more…)
October 15, 2010 by
Writing

Sailor

Occasionally when I’m feeling uninspired, I will peruse my drafted posts to see if there is anything worthwhile that I had abandoned. Sometimes, by giving the subject matter time, I end up writing my favorite pieces by doing this.

Sometimes they were left for dead for a reason.

I found this short essay dated back to June of this year. I didn’t post it simply because I didn’t view it as worth sharing. It was a throwaway. Reminiscent of a schoolgirl diary entry that didn’t hold much value.

However, for some reason, I just couldn’t delete it.

Unfortunately, the specifics of the essay mean less to me now than the greater point I was trying to make: Attempting to capture an emotion that you are trying to forget.

__________________________
Sailor

When is it that you have realized you’ve moved on?

Is it when you run into that person and saying hello holds the same indifference towards an acquaintance on the street?
Or is it when you meet someone new who reminds you what it should feel like?
Maybe it’s (more…)

October 14, 2010 by
Writing

David Lynch and The Cow

Last night I attended a screening of David Lynch’s 1990 film, Wild at Heart, with the author of the book, Barry Gifford, in attendance. Being a devoted Lynch fan, I typically tell people it’s my favorite film of his. The over-the-top performances, the brightness, the landscape- I appreciated more than any other Lynch film. However, after a many a year gap in between the last time I saw it, I was slightly disappointed this time around. Though the performances and aesthetic still work for me, many other aspects of the film- more specifically the sound design and dialogue- didn’t. In fact, thought I love the setting, it’s the story that really doesn’t jibe with me, and that maybe explains why I’ve never been able to finish the book. For such shining characters, their story was often dull.
Nonetheless, watching Nic Cage in his snakeskin jacket and Laura Dern in her skin tight velour bodysuit cruise down the open road in a convertible with Chris Isaak as their soundtrack, I was reminded of how (more…)
October 13, 2010 by
Writing

Dating, Technology, and You

You’ve been in a threesome before.

It wasn’t that time in high school you got drunk of off 40s with a waitress from Crackle Barrel and her boyfriend out behind the 7-Eleven. Or that night at the bar you mistook two middle-aged men from Bulgaria as two thirds of the Jonas Brothers.

The threesome I’m talking about is you, your partner, and technology.

The gigantic fat and smelly 1200 pound gorilla flingin’ his poop across the room.

It is impossible in this day and age to not have technology and social media dictate at least some fraction of young peoples’ romantic and sexual relationships. Every day we are reminded of the role it plays in our lives. From the positive- Twitter flirting, the changing of the Facebook relationship status, iPhone app or Google map wedding proposals, to the negative- flame wars, stalking, kids killing themselves over leaked sexting or videos.

For bad or for good, technology is here to stay, so it’s probably best that we learn how to offer it a beverage, stroke its hair, (more…)

October 12, 2010 by
Writing

Marfa in Texas

Ever since I discovered Marfa, Texas almost two years ago, I’d been dying to visit it. About once a month I’d get an itch to finally go, make an announcement to everyone that I’m going, am reminded that it’s an eight hour trek from Austin to Marfa, still announce that I’m going, wake up the next morning thinking about driving in a car for eight hours only to drive back the next day for another eight hours, and go back to sleep.

Finally after two years of this repetitive behavior, I finally made it to my beloved Marfa.

It was everything I hoped for and more.

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If you live in Austin, Texas, you know what Marfa is. It’s kind of like the Palm Springs to Los Angeles or the Coney Island to New York City.

Actually it’s none of those places at all.

If you live outside of Texas, you may have heard of Marfa because of the famous films shot there, Prada Marfa, The Chinati Foundation, The Marfa Film Festival, or The Marfa Mystery Lights.

Maybe you’ve never heard of (more…)

October 11, 2010 by
Writing

Let’s Take a Moment For Local Natives


We’ve all been complaining about the lackluster line-up at this year’s Austin City Limits festival, but one band that is still wowing audiences with their impressive record debut, is the Los Angeles’ band Local Natives. Hopefully if you’re at ACL today, you will check out Local Natives at 4:45PM on the Austin Ventures Stage. Not only will their freshman album, Gorilla Manor, knock your socks off but their live performances are just as capitivating.

It is difficult to describe Local Natives’ music. It would be just as easy to say, “Oh, it sounds like dreamy rock music”, but it’s so much more than that. Every single song instantly takes you to someplace in your head. Someplace you’re nostalgic for. Someplace long ago. Every song paints an etheral landscape that you just can’t wait to travel down. It would be fair to say that they are an inspiring band, one that reminds you of the wonderful talent that exists in the world. I have no doubt that they won’t become one of the biggest bands next (more…)

October 9, 2010 by
Writing

Austin City Limits: What To See In The Finer Print Pt. 2

Yesterday, I started a post reviewing the lesser known acts at this year’s ACL line-up. Today, I’m exhausted because I didn’t realize how many freakin’ bands were playing and I only touched the tip of the iceberg here. Please find a continuation of the “finer print” bands below…the rest you’re just going to have to check out for yourself..

Ponderosa– The ACL website compares these guys to an earlier Kings of Leon. They even have the look down. They only have two songs on their Myspace page, but it appears that ACL is right. Unfortunately, the spark that early Kings of Leon had seems to be missing from these guys.
Friday 12:40PM BMI Stage

The Kicks– These guys picked the worst band name because as I discovered while trying to Google them, there are 400 other “The Kicks” playing music out there in the world. They’re also a little too hipster looking for their own good, buuutttt…their harmonies and use of Moog mixed with some hard rock guitar chords and raspy vocals makes for this band an (more…)

October 8, 2010 by
Writing

Austin City Limits: What To See In the Finer Print

Oh, Austin City Limits Festival is this weekend.

I’m not going.

The line-up is, let’s say, a little lackluster. Not that there aren’t wonderful and talented acts playing in Zilker Park this year. It’s just that, well, it’s about the same 15 bands who’ve been rotating the circuit for the past year (Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Yeasayer, The XX) playing alongside their parents (Flaming Lips, Phish) and their grandparents (The Eagles, Sonic Youth). The advantage and disadvantage to living in the “Live Music Capital of the Universe” is that we get to see a lot of wonderful acts before they’re big. Then we see them again. And again.

I can’t count how many bands on the ACL line-up were just here for SXSW in March and a million times in between.

So, in a desperate attempt to see what the heck else if playing at ACL, I checked out the music of the bands that appear, like the bottom row of an eye chart, in the finer print on the ACL line-up page. You know, the bands that play at 11AM on (more…)

October 7, 2010 by
Writing

My Fake Diana

Still not acclimated to being back in Austin, so while I get up to speed in Bloggy World, please view my already out-dated love for the Hipstmatic iPhone app (a.k.a. no longer liked by the hipsters, but too new to be liked again in the retro sense).
It just makes everything look so shiny and pretty. I even brought my Diana on this trip, but was too lazy to use her.
My apologies if you’ve already seen these photos on my Twitter.
Doorway in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Back window of gas station in Lone Butte, New Mexico

View from top of Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico

Outside house in Cerrillos, New Mexico

Off of Interstate 25 somewhere between Madrid and Truth or Consequences, New Mexico

Route 90 to Marfa, Texas
Church in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Cafe Paris in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Pecos, Texas

Abandoned Main Street in Pecos, Texas


Marfa, Texas

Route 285 somewhere between Roswell and Santa Fe, New Mexico

Hotel Paisano, Marfa, Texas

Hotel Paisano, Marfa, Texas
Prada Marfa, Marfa, Texas
October 5, 2010 by
Writing

What I Learned on My Journey Through West Texas and New Mexico

Vacation are always an excellent way to discover more about yourself, the people that you love, and the people of America. In fact, sometimes you learn a little too much when you’re crammed into a compact car with your mother and driving through mile after mile of barren New Mexico landscape- like what your tolerance threshold is for taking a crap and whether or not you can listen to your mother gush on and on about Jason Mraz for hours.
Here are a few lessons I learned on this wonderful trip with my mother through West Texas and most of New Mexico.
Lessons I Learned: West Texas and New Mexico Trip with Mother
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1.) That My Father Used to Wear Make-Up– I’m not even sure how this came up.

Ext. Car- Day

Mother and Daughter are driving on an endless stretch of New Mexico freeway with nothing but desert and big sky in the background.

Daughter
“Oh God, we’ve been driving through this desolate desert for hours and hours, through run-down town after another! (more…)
October 4, 2010 by