outer: July 2009

Friday, July 31, 2009

Well I'll Tell You What, If There's A Situation That Requires Showing Off Your Upper Body & Boozy Flirting, You're My Guy.

You Were Strangled To Death With A Plastic Sack. That's Probably An Odd Thing To Hear But I Wasn't Sure How To Sugar-Coat It.

Drop Me In The Middle Of The Gobi Desert, Bury Me In A Goddamn Cave On The Moon, & My Mother Will Still Find A Way To Call Me & Ask For A Favor.

Well At Least That Explains Why I Walked In On You Dancin' Around In That Laura Bush Mask Yesterday.

Blog* Or DOES IT? Title is from True Blood.Girly Shit* This does not bode well. John Malkovich is making his own clothing line. First of all, Why? I mean, yes he wears clothes quite frequently, but otherwise John Malkovich isn't someone I'd associate with fashion. The man can wear a suit and all, but... really? Wait, this is his SECOND clothing line? And the new one is called Technobohemian? What is GOING ON? Someone send Cameron Diaz back into his head for further investigation. Because... I just don't get it. If my boyfriend was wearing anything by John Malkovich, I would pause. Also, why isn't he making something really weird? He's John goddamn Malkovich? He should be making filing cabinets with pictures of his thighs, for example. I don't know where that example came from.Music* Lady Gaga was in Maxim:[Found at TheHollywoodGossip]She looks great, and her tattoos are awesome, but I kind of wish she was wearing a muppet-themed outfit. Screw with their heads, Miss Gaga!Technology* It's a wee little counter that tells you how much your passengers should pay when you give them a ride in your car. This would be great as a subtle hint for my grandmother, who insists on me escorting her around in my car whenever she visits. 'Grandma, I love you and cherish our time together. But gas, grass, or ass, nobody rides for free. And I really don't want the last two from you. Look, I don't make the rules! It's technology:[Found at DVICE]Of course, it's in Japanese yen, and I have enough trouble remembering how much shit costs here, so I'd be lazy and just demand $1000 for a ten minute drive. Then the screaming would start.Watchmen* Naturally, I saw this thanks to Puina, who MADE it, which is even more mind-boggling than just FINDING it. HOW DOES SHE DO THESE THINGS?:HOW she doesn't run her own country is a freaking mystery to me. Although then she'd have less time to kick ass on the internet, so I'm going to shut up now.* World Peace Through Jackie Earle Haley. If you don't click that link and listen to the podcast, you HATE world peace. And that's just SICK.Tattoo Of Win* For those people who think I don't post things that upset/alarm/disgust me, I present this tattoo:[Found at LOLTATZ]I don't know you, but I think I hate you. Yes, I still like Green Day. Leave me alone. I'm very sleepy.Food* NASA invented some shitty Gatorade-type drink:[Found at CrunchGear]Now, someone at NASA fucked up meters versus feet, and destroyed a multi-million dollar space thing. I'm not drinking ANYTHING they're involved with. Also, I am not an elite athlete. I'm not even an athlete. Moving is highly overrated. I drink fluids because I'm thirsty, not because I ran five miles. Thirsty from watching Torchwood and crying, or True Blood and drooling. THOSE are my exercises. And yelling. Lots of yelling.Daily Hot Guy[Tom Felton, who plays Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter series. Dude GREW UP. DAMN.]Words of Win[Found at PassiveAggressiveNotes]Books* This is true:see more Funny GraphsNow if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go cry and drink until I can't feel feelings, or my lungs.Harry Potter* So, I saw Twilight last night:see more Lol CelebsYeah. It WAS that bad. Although Peter Facinelli is banging hot. And there was one sexy moment. BUT THAT WAS NOT ENOUGH. NOT ENOUGH AT ALL. I NEED TO SOAK MY BRAIN IN TEQUILA AND JACKIE EARLE HALEY'S ARMS. Sorry. I promised I wouldn't do this. I respect other people's taste and opinion. Even when they suck.Star Trek[Found at ONTD_StarTrek]I love macros. And you KNOW this is canon. More here. Including Serenity ones!Doctor Who* Oh, look, someone who died on Doctor Who is COMING BACK AND FINE. Is THAT dishonoring the character, Russell T. Davies? IS THAT UNDERMINING THE GREAT DEATH SCENE? I'M NOT YELLING. NOT YELLING AT ALL. I'M NOT UPSET. WHY DON'T YOU KILL THE DOCTOR, AND WE CAN SPEND AN HOUR EACH WEEK STARING AT THE VAST EMPTINESS OF SPACE, YOU MEAN LITTLE MAN? ....I forgot what I was yelling about. If Ianto was in this, I would be dead from the happies. DEAD I SAYS. Give thanks to BossMew, who found a link that didn't require technological knowledge to share, and Larissa, who showed me the original. If they joined forces, they could destroy MOUNTAINS. But they wouldn't. That would be RUDE.People I Love* I would marry David Cross.

The Pre-Taped Call-in Show from Mr. Show - watch more funny videos

You would, too. POLYGAMY WIN!Why does coffee not love me as I love it? I will drink it until I win its affections.- LV

I Wanna Lick Your Mind!

This Is A Pie Shop, Not An Herbal Crack Den.

There Is No Justice There Is Just Us

Blog* Depending on how you look at it, that's really comforting or deeply, DEEPLY disturbing. Title is from Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett.Movie!Win* I was going to file the remake of Dorian Gray under Movie!Fail, because Oscar Wilde remakes have to legally include Rupert Everett before his face melted, and just on basic principle. Then I saw that Prince 'I Am So Sexy' Caspian from The Chronicles of Narnia was playing Dorian, and I stopped caring about things like plot or acting. Also it has Colin Firth. Mainly, though, sexy British dudes being scandalous and inappropriate. I am THERE:

Vampire* This article, written by the wonderfully talented Dan Faust (who, when he takes over the world, has promised me an army of fedora-wearing monkeys) PROVES that modern vampires suck. They are supposed to be SCARY, not Angsty Teenage Pretties of Angsty Gloomy Angst. Even Angel occasionally went batshit and killed everyone, for fun. Russell Brand* Here is a video of Russell Brand talking about birds. They could live in his hair nest of sexy. Incidentally, Rorschach is alive and well and living in Alan Moore's beard. TRUE.Sherlock Holmes* So the new Sherlock Holmes movie will not be steampunk. Which is disappointing, as I love steampunk. But, as I just told my friend, 'So long as he boxes shirtless and is a rapscallion, I don't really care WHAT the movie is about. Like I said, I am SHALLOW.Jackie Earle Haley* It is hard for me to talk about the new Nightmare On Elm Street movie without being reduced to fangirl squees. This isn't helping:[Found at Collider]It's like porn for sick people. He's even got the Christmas sweater. AND A FEDORA. I'm fine. I'm fine. I also heard that Mr. Haley is all sorts of genius in the trailer for the movie. As if he could be otherwise. So yes. There is much excitement. Wow, I'm proud. I got through that fairly calmly. Success in our time!Whedonverse* So, this weekend, I was the last person on Earth to discover Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. I know, I am a mass of failure. I apologize for letting you all down so very much. BUT I LOVED IT. And Neil Patrick Harris is going to join the pantheon of Daily Hot Guys. And I think if Jackie Earle Haley had shown up as a villain, I'd be dead now from the happy. AND JOSS WHEDON SAYS THERE WILL BE A COMIC. Although the singing won't work as well. Unless it comes with a soundtrack. Or an audio book. All of which I'd buy.There will also be a Shepherd Book comic, which I'm less excited about. I LIKED the mystery about him on Firefly. I LIKE that we never learned his past, because he was MYSTERIOUS. So I'm worried that whatever his back story is, it won't be as good as what's going on in my head. Also, Book is one of the characters that Proves My Theory. Just saying. Daily Hot Guy[Christopher Eccleston, who proved my theory that If I Love A Character, They Will Die Horribly, not once but TWICE: In Cracker and in Doctor Who (regeneration counts as dying if I CRY) Oh, OH and he ran away like an invisible weasel in Heroes, but that may have been due to Peter Petrelli's AWFUL hair]Iron Man* Click here for some pictures from Iron Man 2. Robert Downey Jr.'s facial hair is pornographic. And the ANGST. The angsty angst. But where is Sam Rockwell? Will he slither in and be all skeevy and delightful? Like Charlie's Angels, where he was my favorite part (except for Crispin 'I am frightening AND arousing' Glover, or Matchstick Men, which was the best movie you haven't seen (besides of course Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which featured - aha! - Robert Downey, Jr. SEE HOW CONNECTED EVERYTHING IS?) but at least Don Cheadle is there and looks good in a suit. Animals* I don't know what is worse: That this thing freaking exists and can be bought, for money. (It is RIDICULOUS AND STUPID. No hamster needs this. No ANIMAL needs this):[Found at LikeCool]Or that I really want to buy one in blue, and a hamster, and name it Ianto, and pamper it and smother it with love, until it inevitably dies, as hamsters are wont to do, and I will hold its little body and scream, 'NOOOOOOO!' up at the heavens, and my friends and family will back away slowly, and my therapy bills will be just ASTRONOMICAL. Who wants to go to the pet store?Apocalypse How?* Happy Monday, we're all going to die! So this dude he had the hiccups, right? They're totally annoying. And he's 25 and a musician, so they're SUPER annoying. But instead of going away, they continued on and on. For two years. Constantly. And he had no idea why, but it probably ruined his social life, because after a while you don't want to be NEAR someone with hiccups. He tried everything, but they wouldn't go away. Then he finally said, 'Screw it, I'm off to the doctor to deal with these sodding hiccups,' So he went, and it turned out that it was good news bad news: Good news, we think we know why you have permanent hiccups. Bad news, it's a brain tumor. So hiccups, sleep, and soda can kill you, and we're all doomed forever, the end.TwiHate* This was sent to be my reader and personal guru GeohMetro. Ge Oh's a genius and has an ass-kicking blog, so it would be terribly rude of me not to post this. I take no pleasure in doing it:BAHAHA- I mean, terrible. A poo joke? How inappropriate. And tasteless. Like everything Stephenie Meyers writes ZING.OK, stuff now.- LV

Marie Antoinette Had Balls Worthy of a Moxie Fashionista

Marie Antionette. We have all heard of her. She was a fashion icon not just from her life in France from 1770-1793 but beyond her day. She denied protocal- screw it! She wore what she wanted, appeasing only when nessassary and boy did she strut her fashion! Moxie Fashionista hello!

About Marie Antionette's Fashion and the fashion in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antionette:

As Queen of France, Marie Antoinette attracted enough public loathing to ensure the French monarchy's downfall. That loathing, as Caroline Weber points out in Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution, was largely focused on the queen's clothes. This book's theme is the way young Queen Marie Antoinette took up pointed, disturbing fashions to give herself a visible autonomy and personal force that tradition didn't provide.

~French queens had no political role, could never inherit the throne or exercise royal power, and this future queen had arrived at Versailles politically ignorant and inept. She found the court riven with faction, she had few reliable supporters of her own, and her distant imperial mother's advice soon proved useless. Marie Antoinette might well have felt that her personal style was all she could manipulate.

Marie had her first child only after eight and a half fruitless years; and after four of them, the new queen began to focus her creative energy on clothes.

~Marie Antionette didn't invent fashions. She promoted radical new ones through her public persona, in the modern, celebrity-culture way—and that's why we like her today, instead of automatically despising her as the last century did. Sofia Coppola's film reflects our present sympathy for an eager-to-please teenager's fashion-addictive responses to unbearable demands, especially when cut off from family love—and we, of course, are safely cut off from the assumptions governing the upbringing of 18th-century royal children.

Marie Antoinette's mother, Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, had destined her for this marriage from birth, grooming her appearance and behavior for all levels of French scrutiny. While commoners hailed her angelic blond looks as an augury of better times, the court delighted in her fine grasp of the French tongue, French manners, and Bourbon history. But the empress may have had an unsubtle sense of current French style. Paris had long since ruled European fashion, regularly sending elegant fashion dolls as models to foreign capitals, including the Vienna of Archduchess Marie Antoinette's childhood. The little girl was always dressed accordingly.

Weber describes a painting of an imperial family group showing the nonmarriageable oldest daughter plainly dressed, while the future dauphine and her toy fashion doll have on the same formal French dress with a train.The empress may not have realized that in teeming Paris, avant-garde fashion then went along with refined sexual license, class intermingling, and free political talk, whereas fashion at Versailles remained chiefly an important aspect of court etiquette. Marie Antoinette's first experience of the difference occurred halfway through her journey from home, at the ceremony called remise, or handover.

In a small pavilion situated between French and Austrian soil, a troupe of French ladies stripped the girl naked, while French and Austrian diplomats watched. Then they replaced every atom of the Paris-inspired finery she had worn out of Austria with similar garments and adornments made in France, symbolically transforming her from an Austrian imperial archduchess into a French royal princess with completely new allegiances.

The dauphine found that her court duties demanded unfashionably heavy dresses supported by old-style, extra-long, extra-rigid corsets, accompanied by thick rouge and stiff curls. These items were ritually applied every day by a phalanx of noblewomen, while lesser court ladies watched; and, at night, the whole process was reversed. She rebelled, soon and permanently, risking her mother's anger, the court's disfavor, eventually the people's scorn, and her own neck.

Once Queen, Marie steadily ordered the newest looks from Rose Bertin, the leading Paris couturiere—among them the provocative "robe a la polonaise," with its bosom-enhancing bodice and its billowy, ankle-baring skirts, the whole crowned by a "pouf," a 3-foot mountain of powdered hair decked with plumes, veils, and other objects arranged as saucy references to current events. All this and more she wore at court and in town, with swiftly contagious effect; and Bertin became known as the Minister of Fashion.

Marie Antoinette was an enchantress, effortlessly wearing the wildest fashions with the utter conviction of a star. The fashion she followed was moreover the new commercial mode of the larger society, not the old hermetic style of courtiers using their rich garb to reflect the Sun King's glory. It was soon obvious that her expensive modern glamour was enhancing only herself, not the monarchy.

It hadn't occurred to Empress Maria Theresa that by training her pliable daughter from age 3 to sit, stand, walk, and bow gracefully—and dance divinely—wearing tight stays, long trains, and wide skirts with all eyes upon her, she was giving her the tools of self-creation and self-possession wholly in terms of striking costume and polished movement, as if preparing her for professional ballet or competitive ice-skating.

Marie began clothing and wielding her body to attract the forms of respect she understood: wonder and delight, shock and awe, the sincere flattery of imitation.

The dauphine's sartorial boldness emerged early, and drew swift disapproval. She went riding astride with her husband's grandfather, the libertine Louis XV, wearing a man-tailored habit with breeches; and she even wore the shocking outfit for an equestrian portrait, modeled on one of Louis XIV. After that, the flavor of forbidden sexual adventure, and of poaching on royal male preserves, tainted her reputation and never disappeared.

~Marie flouted court etiquette when she drove off her noble dressers, sacrilegiously inviting plebeian Bertin (even plebeian Leonard, the chic male hairdresser) daily into her private apartments to clothe, coif, and advise her behind closed doors.

~She offended French patriots when she adopted Anglophile fashions and spent her time with congenial foreign nobility. At the Petit Trianon—a small palace with its own grounds that served as Marie Antoinette's personal retreat—she introduced thin muslin chemises with sashes, linen caps, or straw hats above lightly powdered fluffy hair, no jewelry. This casual look, worn by countless European ladies, seemed shameless on the French queen, who (naturally) had her portrait painted in it. Her little palace was closed to the public, and her total privacy there (conspiratorial? sexual?) made a scandal of the queen's flimsy foreign clothes and foreign friends.

~Most shocking in Queen Marie Antoinette was her extravagance, well-documented in the yearly records of her clothing expenses, in dressmakers' accounts, and in memoirs saying that the queen wore nothing twice. Worse was the expensive toy farm she built at the Petit Trianon, complete with livestock and crops, where her friends played at being milkmaids and shepherdesses. It's still considered her chief crime, but the queen had no sense of its effect.

The French treasury was depleted, the deficit increasing, the people protesting against unbearable taxes and shortages, but Marie Antoinette, never taught to consider the people's troubles, had no clue.

While fashion plates wore her face, pamphlets and pornography made her a monster—dissolute Messalina, lesbian predator, traitorous conspirator, snake-haired Medusa, harpy with claws, vampire in foreign muslin spending state millions to mock local rustics, wasting pounds of flour on her hair while the people starved for bread. Once angelic, Marie Antoinette was now plotting with hostile powers, including Lucifer, to undermine the well-being of France.

When the Revolution exploded and prevailed, she instinctively abandoned new trends. Nervous burghers and nobles, even the king, sported Republican tricolor cockades with modishly simple tricolor outfits. But the queen's cockade was Bourbon white, her rich new dresses were purple and gold, and she got out her diamonds. Everyone could see that Marie Antoinette had no politics, only blind faith in royal privilege. Her fate, more firmly than the accommodating king's, was sealed when the Bastille fell.

~The modest "Republican" dresses worn by most women in the early 1790s resembled those Marie Antoinette had introduced as avant-garde among aristocrats in the early 1780s, as though the queen personally influenced even the fashion of her enemies.

~Fashion runs under its own power, compelled toward desirable new forms. In fact, thin white chemises came into fashion everywhere in Europe around 1780 and stayed for nearly 40 years, no matter who was attaching what significance to them. This probably had more to do with the invention of chlorine bleach in 1774 than with anyone's fashion influence.

~Queen Marie Antionette's solitary imprisonment after the king's execution. Visible to curious onlookers, Marie Antoinette wore her one increasingly stained and frayed black mourning ensemble day and night for two long months, even though her daughter had sent her some other clothes. At her trial, its tattered blackness aroused considerable sympathy, and she was forbidden to wear it to her execution—no public mourning for the tyrant.

~Marie Antoinette rode to her death wearing a brand-new white chemise she had secretly saved, a pretty white fichu around her shoulders, and a pleated white cap on her prematurely white hair (she was two weeks short of 38), while thousands of dazzled citizens watched in stunned silence. The queen showed her unquenchable talent for inspired public display in all her last costumes, a sign of her true self-possession.