Books I Have Loved

# 2: TEEN SCENE: 1001 Groovy Hints & Tips, by the Editors of NEW IDEAS FOR TEENS (THIS BOOK IS RATED “T” FOR TUNED-IN TEENS)

Look, I’m not gonna lie to you. This book is hot, unadulterated awesome. It’s chapter after chapter of (hope you’re sitting down!) tips for teens, sorted by category, all of it designed to make you realize that Baby Boomers really did come from a different world.

For instance:

• Boys! Boys! Boys!  WHERE TO FIND YOURS, AND HOW TO KEEP HIM THAT WAY (followed by…)
• Girls Count Too  IN THE GOLDEN CHAIN OF FRIENDSHIP, DON’T BE THE MISSING LINK
• The Hostess With The Mostes’  CAN A GIRL WITH TEN COUPLES COMING OVER HAVE FUN AT HER OWN PARTY? YES! [Ladies' Home Journal of 1953 called about a stolen headline..?]
• What Size? Exercise!  KEEP IN TRIM — OR GET BACK IN

(I do vividly recall that the “Editors” cheated by using a few of the tips in more than one category. Bastards.)

This well-loved, if puzzling, tome belonged to my mom, who read it cover to cover while in junior high. Because I was obsessed with becoming a teenager and waited angrily for my turn, I read this gem repeatedly during grade school. Thankfully, there seems not to have been any lasting damage, so–let’s jump right in, shall we?

Have you been limiting yourself to one, best girl friend? Don’t drop her, but do branch out. Friends lead to other friends and parties and that’s what you’re looking for, right? [Hellz yeah, I'm lookin' for a party! Woo!]

Don’t be afraid to dress dramatic for your own party. Wear a long hostess skirt. Or make yourself black velvet knickers [note to friends outside the US: that does not mean underpants, but rather knee-length trousers.]. Wear bowed patent-leather shoes and a ruffled shirt. [Welcome to me party, mateys! Ah, these black velvet knickers? I just threw them together this afternoon. YARGH!]

Practice painting portraits of yourself to give as gifts. [I am speechless.]

Knit-wits are tie-ing up their gift problems by doing Daddy’s favorite colors on their nimble needles. [I am speechless and gagging.]

Get up a beginners’ bridge game, or find a parent to teach this fascinating game to you and your friends. Knowing how to play can broaden your social horizons now and in the future. [Why, the future certainly sounds absolutely fascinating. Let's hurry and get there, Muffy.]

Note: I’m saving tonight’s best for last. Not for any sort of dramatic effect, no–merely because once I’ve typed this last bit in, I’ll require a bit of a lie-down to recover. Thank you for reading.

And yes. Yes, there will be more.

Want to make him feel protective? Give yourself the “little girl look,” and turn him into your knight in shining armor. Braids will do the trick. Big braids for evening, or thin braids wound into a tiny chignon. During the day, wear your braids either long and tied with big ribbons, or wound around your head peasant-style.

Books I Have Loved

On the heels of a massive weeding-out that took place in the garage of my childhood home (one of them, I should say) came a veritable flood of books I loved as a kid. I was an early reader, a voracious reader, and–I’m only lately realizing–books really helped form a lot of my ideas and preferences.

That said, it turns out that a lot of what I preferred was utter crap. Amazing, hilarious crap. Having not seen these books since the last time I read them, sans irony, I’ve been enjoying the hell out of some of these. Please partake along with me.

#1: I’ll Take Manhattan

High fashion, a cute boy and the big city. Obviously,  I’ll Take Manhattan was written with the me of 1985 in mind. The protagonist, Amanda, is a sweet, smart, spunky and self-possessed 17-year-old (apologies for any spit you may be wiping away due to all that unnecessary sibilance) with big plans: she’s going to interview at FIT and be just like her world-famous designer aunt Roz.

You can read this cover to cover in about 20 minutes, and I don’t want to rob you of that. Instead, please enjoy these, my top three favorite tidbits from the book that made me even more excited about fifth-grade fashion than I already was.

Today was such a special day–both the shoot and the interview… She selected her black jeans and pulled on layers of sweat shirts in hot pink, yellow, and lime green. She cinched the waist with a wide black leather belt studded with shiny metal.

“On to the next problem: Are you all set for tonight? Which dress are you wearing?”

“I thought I’d wear the ankle-length cream organza with the puffed sleeves and the red sash. I love it so–I can’t believe you’re letting me have it!”

As Rachel handed up leg warmers of various colors, Amanda stood in stocking feet on the counter and placed them on the metal tree branches. “This will look terrific.” Rachel said enthusiastically. “Where do the gold lurex ones go?”

“No problem. We’ll put them at the top. They’ll look like the star on the tree,” Amanda answered.

Oh, my friend. You’re welcome. You’re welcome.

Why I Deleted My Facebook Account

Simply: it got to be too much.

Too much noise, too much data, too many people, too many dissenting voices.  It began to seem to me that each time I logged on (which, incidentally, was far too often), there was more to know about everyone I know, and everything everyone was doing was somehow happening with greater and greater speed. And because I knew I was missing updates from many of my nearest and dearest (owing as much to the vast quantities of data scrolling down my monitor as well as to the whimsically sporadic nature of a system keen to capture our every interest and action and then sell them back to us), I felt pressured to catch up with each session. So it began to feel like a chore, albeit one that helped keep me in touch with friends and family.

Except then, in an effort to simplify, I started hiding people. People whose updates annoyed me. For instance, if you quote Mariah Carey or any other singer I dislike, I probably hid you. If all of your profile photos included your cleavage, I probably hid you. If I don’t really know you, I probably hid you. Let me offer my apologies–I really like you and perhaps even love you, but I began to feel that some sort of filter was crucial. And, eventually, I realized the only real solution was to scrap the whole thing.

Inane? Yes. One might say I’ve been doing it wrong, and that would be a fair observation. That’s okay.

Bad for business? Nah, not likely. Most of my business comes from online and word-of-mouth referrals.

Will I be losing touch with some people I genuinely like? This is the only part that concerns me. Yeah, I likely will be losing touch with those people.  But I’m still quite reachable: via phone, via email, via Twitter.

You know what it feels like, since hitting that delete button? Like I turned off a blaring stereo. There’s this gorgeous, rich silence.

Friday Frisson: Early Edition

The last few weeks have sucked. And so I am proposing a nice counterpoint to all that suckage, right here. I know that it’s still only Thursday on my side of the rock, but we’re going to get our Friday Frisson on early. Here, then, are a few small yet very pleasing delights.

CPUs. Getting my fangirl on here. CPUs are Cayce Pollard Units, per William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition–Cayce being the branding-sensitive protagonist with a stringent fashion sense born as much of necessity as of style:

What people take for relentless minimalism is a side effect of too much exposure to the reactor-cores of fashion. This has resulted in a remorseless paring-down of what she can and will wear. She is, literally, allergic to fashion. She can only tolerate things that could have been worn, to a general lack of comment, during any year between 1945 and 2000. She’s a design-free zone, a one-woman school of anti whose very austerity periodically threatens to spawn its own cult.

Given my overwhelming love for the novel and for Cayce in particular, this layout of her wardrobe (and suggested wardrobe items) makes me a little drooly.

Beyond the Pale. Y’all, I am obsessed. Everything about this blog is fantastic. Miss Nightingale, its author, is a perfume-maker (for serious) who curates the tidiest, most excellent collection of Victoriana, fashion, art and assorted oddities.

This house on Design*Sponge. I could look at it for hours. Probably already have, actually.

What small things are you loving? Tell me about them!

Kay Kay’s Divorce: I’d Fall in Love with Anyone

Kay Ballard does not suffer fools gladly. Despite her adorable and modest ways (about which she is happy to tell you), and despite the Twitter avatar that produces in me an unquenchable desire to refer to her as “Dollface”, Kay is a force to be reckoned with. Which is why, when she asked me if I was interested in being a part of her team that would help with her spoken-word comedy CD about her divorce, I said yes, of course.

It’s okay. Take a minute.

Yep. A spoken-word comedy CD about her divorce. It’s called Kay Kay’s Divorce: I’d Fall in Love with Anyone. She explains it this way: “I imagined myself telling people that I had a comedy CD about my divorce on iTunes. And in my imagination, people understood the joke and laughed uproariously. They were charmed by it. In fact, the imaginary people in my imagination were so delighted by the very idea of my divorce CD, that the only way they could have found me more charming was if I had told them I owned a potato chip factory.”

Well, even after toiling on the project, I was pretty charmed by it myself, and I’m mostly not imaginary. Kay is hilarious in a sort of shocking way I have a hard time explaining. She makes me scream a little when I laugh at what she’s saying. So I suggested to Kay that we do a bit of a Q&A here. She liked the idea, and so I send my questions over to her. What follows is her response, complete with commentary.

I am a lawyer.  You must forgive me for what can only be considered a youthful indiscretion.  But since I am a lawyer, I must, from time to time, do what I am compelled to do by my training and experience, which is be annoying in a lawyerly fashion.

That is why I am prepared to say that your questions assume facts not in evidence.  Lots.  Cut that out!  The annoying Ann Curry does the very same thing and we must try not to be like her, even though we are.

So having kindly pointed out that your questions are, well, stupid, here goes with the answers.

1. Most people simply suffer through a divorce and then try to get on with their lives. But you’ve taken this unfortunate event and turned it into an offbeat comedy! What gives? Where did you find the gumption for it?

My divorce was not an unfortunate event, although, like most divorces, in the beginning, it disguised itself as an unfortunate event.  As time progressed, it revealed itself for what it really was, a fortunate event—an opportunity.  My divorce provided me with the freedom to love another, to open my heart to the possibility of love.  My divorce also developed a personality, a life of its own.  In fact, my divorce became highly desirable and worthy of attention—not unlike the attention it is receiving today, here on this very blog.

2. Have you always been so full of the aforementioned gumption?

Gumption is an old fashioned word.  I like it just fine.  But I think a better description of me is that I am bold.  I have the ability to be bold.  Have I always had that ability?  Probably, but I simply can’t remember all the way back to always.  Please ask Daniel Thurston.  He has me memorized.

3. Did you know anything about recording before you embarked on this project?

I have known about recording since I was a child and my father permitted me to screw up his expensive reel to reel recorder, just for the fun of it.  However, perhaps your question is meant to elicit information about whether Kay Kay’s Divorce: I’d Fall In Love With Anyone is my company’s first foray into the commercial production of comedy CD’s.  Obviously we knew something about it or we wouldn’t have proceeded. We knew enough to establish a record label and to hire a producer and other professionals to help us get it done.  And the things we have learned and continue to learn as we go through the process of bring our divorce comedy CD to market have great value to us going forward.

4. Given that Kay Kay’s Divorce was almost completely a virtual project, how did you go about finding people to work with you?

I wouldn’t describe Kay Kay’s Divorce: I’d Fall In Love With Anyone as a virtual project.  It is true that most of the people who are involved in the project are people who we met online and that we are using online vendors and online distributors in the promotion and distribution of the CD.  So perhaps I should describe it as a virtual project.  As far as the people involved, with a few notable exceptions—you being one of them—we hired people we have worked with before, like our producer, the fabulous Paula Kelley and our graphic designer, the fabulous Kate Carpenter.  We have an entire team of talented professionals who really know how to play the A-game.

5. What would be the ultimate, dreamy, ideal goal for Kay Kay’s Divorce? A Grammy? To have an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical based upon it? The sky’s the limit.

Honestly, I just want people to have fun with it and to be captured, as I was, by the idea that my divorce, Kay Kay’s Divorce, belongs on Itunes.

And, oh yes, I hope we sell a boatload.

***

Buy Kay Kay’s Divorce: I’d Fall in Love with Anyone here!