Leandra Medine's Blog, page 698

Round Table: Is Brunch Really for Jerks?

One of the greatest parts of The New York Times’ Sunday paper is that if you have access to a computer, you can read valuable chunks of it on a screen as early as the preceding Thursday. Where this might present a unique form of turmoil is when the content from said paper includes such headlines as “Brunch Is For Jerks.” As an entity that has commented on the proliferation of the very social event that David Shaftel, caller of the jerk, astutely points out has “spread like a virus from Sunday to Saturday,” but has neither stood firmly against nor for the spectacle of “conspicuous consumption,” Man Repeller is inclined to defend brunch.

Of course, though, anything can happen in the heat of a round table where participants extend beyond the individual — this particular individual being me, Leandra, who relishes laternoon eggs on a Saturday with an 11AM happy hour start time and not, as Shaftel suggests, to reject adulthood but rather because socializing with people who I like, for an extended period of time, in a recreational environment, energizes me.

Leandra Medine: That’s my thing with brunch. I like socializing with people who I like, which is important because socializing/parties can be work, as Glenn O’Brien said. Actually, as Andy Warhol said.

Kate Barnett: I feel like it has nothing to do with brunch. It has everything to do with gentrification, and it’s the same conversation that David Byrne was having when he said New York City wasn’t for artists anymore.

Amelia Diamond: I say, then why do you have to attack brunch? Why don’t you attack gentrification?

Charlotte Fassler: He’s arguing that brunch is an aspect of gentrification.

AD: I mean that Kate says she thinks it’s less about brunch and more about gentrification, I’m saying then argue about gentrification, and not brunch specifically.

LM: I think he’s using brunch as a portal to understand the effects of gentrification.

AD: So don’t use it! I’m gonna be less deep. Technically, I call brunch anything between the hours of breakfast and lunch. That’s where the B comes in. Who’s to say that I don’t have lunch at 3? I don’t like to be confined by the arms of a clock. Now, I think that brunch is the meal that would occur between breakfast and lunch. That’s all brunch is. If you’re eating a meal before 5 PM on a Sunday, it’s brunch. Before 6 PM. The food’s delicious. I wait all week on Seamless and pray that my favorite restaurants will put their egg options up.

LM: You’re talking about the act of eating, it’s actually about the food for you, whereas the article is arguing about what brunch has become, which is a social spectacle. And that’s why my argument is about how socializing recreationally energizes me. I like brunch because it’s an excuse to sit down with my brother for four hours on a Saturday and shoot shit.

AD: My argument is all about the food. I’ve gone to great brunches with terrible people and the good thing about brunch is that I’m eating the whole time, so I don’t have to participate in the conversation. Head down, I order 20 drinks… I recuperate and think about what happened the night before…

Cristina Couri: You’re all business.

AD: I’m all business at brunch.

LM: The other thing that we should take into consideration is that Amelia is the precise specimen of human the article is arguing against.

AD: I would like to point out that I think I earn my brunches because I wake up at 8 am and go to Connecticut and do a physical activity before half of the fellow brunch- goers have woken up.

KB: I’m sorry… You earn your brunches because you go to Connecticut to ride horses?

AD: I wake up and do a physical activity that takes thinking and strategy and strength. Do it while hung-over, often times I’ve just gone to bed three hours before, and then I come back and I think that I deserve a huge fucking meal in the same way that someone who just ran a marathon thinks they can eat a whole shitload of pasta.

CC: It’s your reward. It’s not like brunch is the leisure activity in and of itself.

AD: I just think that brunch is a time to eat.

Kayla Tanenbaum: I think you’re thinking of brunch as a meal while he’s thinking of brunch as a culture.

AD: I don’t see why that’s not okay to argue. I think he’s overthinking brunch. I don’t hate him for overthinking brunch because I overthink everything else otherwise I wouldn’t have anything to write about.

CF: I don’t like brunch because I don’t like eggs. I really like savory food, and so—

LM: You are also arguing for the literal form of brunch. You’re saying you don’ t like brunch because you don’t like eggs. It’s not that you don’t like brunch because you don’t like sitting at a table and communicating while eating with people

CC: That’s why I don’t like it.

AD: You don’t like brunch because you don’t like sitting around with family and friends? [Laughs]

CC: I like to make the most of my Saturdays and Sundays. It does turn into a whole four-hour thing… I like my weekends to be as productive as possible, to get my errands and everything done. I’d much rather catch up with friends during dinner or drinks during the week.

CF: I understand what you’re saying about understating brunch as an experience with socializing because it does remind me of when I studied abroad in France, and this woman would invite me to her home on Sundays for a meal which would essentially take up the entire day and was a huge five-course production. It was family time, and time for people to really be together. It was so nice and low stress. I found the brunch experience in New York to be a stressful one.

LM: How come?

CF: Because I feel like everywhere that serves brunch, if you go on peak brunch hours, is just teeming with people, it’s really hard to sit down, everyone is coordinating with other people, no one’s on time, people are hungover. It winds up being kind of a mess, then people are starving, people are cranky… I don’t find it to be that pleasant of an experience. You sit down and it’s loud, there are always drunk people around. I think that it doesn’t wind up being an enjoyable, leisurely meal.

KB: My only problem with brunch, taking out any social whatever that these people are putting into it, is that I have to wait a while. Actually sitting down with a bunch of people having a good meal and having it last for hours is fantastic. I don’t have any problem with that. That’s wonderful. The problem is that everyone else is also doing it.

AD: Why are long, leisurely, lazy brunches any different from a lazy dinner?

KT: I think it’s because brunch is more of a scene. There are all these Instagrams and hashtags

AD: I just don’t see how dinner’s not a scene.

CC: But that’s a different issue. That’s our foodie obsession, our culture’s obsession with food.

LM: I guess the other thing is that as Americans we do not understand moderation so everything that becomes a vague interest or disinterest is taken to the 110th power

KB: I think also the reason that brunch is kind of being attacked is because of the hedonistic air about it. You start drinking when you wake up… and he, as someone with a kid and whatever else, is less inclined to be generous towards that.

CF: I thought that line that he says rings true… where he says, “Worse than adolescent, it’s an adolescent’s idea of how adults spend their time.”

KB: But that’s fun.

LM: I am a little concerned about the direction in which society is moving. It seems to be much less about people enjoying themselves and much more about them taking take of themselves. Just because I’m the kind of person who is joie-de-vive-ish, I like to know that I can have fun whenever I want to without feeling guilty. It frustrates me that even as a 25 year-old girl I feel, definitely self-inflicted, but still pressure to stop drinking because I know it will better for me if I don’t think. That gets on my nerves.

KB: That is not the direction I thought you were headed.

LM: I think this argument about brunch is –

AD: Anti-hedonism.

LM: I’m not necessarily on board for hedonism, either.

KT: I feel like the author is talking as if all these people who are having brunch are somehow trying to convert him into being a brunch-goer. If you don’t want to have brunch, you don’t want to have brunch.

AD: To his point, to play devil’s advocate, I understand that if he does live in the West Village — so do I — it’s annoying as someone who can’t go restaurants I like between certain hours because there’s a line. That’s annoying to me, and I definitely always say I feel like I don’t dress up on the weekends anymore because I can’t stand all of the people who look like they put on an outfit to go eat. That’s just the nature of being cranky in your environment and shaking the kids off your porch with a broom.

KB: It’s like “not in my backyard” but instead of it being crime and poverty, it’s yuppies.

AD: Yeah, totally.

CC: And brouhaha.

AD: I don’t mind the brouhaha. It makes me feel alive. I like the noise and I like the people around, I like that my neighborhood feels alive. It’s definitely more that I can’t get a reservation.

LM: Well it’s also frustrating because the people populating the neighborhood aren’t the people who live there.

KT: But some people want to have a brunch, they want to have the Sex and the City feel in the West Village on a Sunday afternoon.

LM: The thing about the West Village, specifically, it seems to be where the people who come to NY and settle in Murray Hill graduate to. All those people have been able to graduate from Murray Hill and make enough money to move into the West Village, so that’s what they’re doing. It’s sort of become, this emblem for New York transience.

AD: Or fucking Paris, depending on which street you live on. I don’t think there needs to be a solution. What is the solution? Banning brunch?

LM: I’m thinking an intellectual solution. I don’t mean literally.

AD: But what is the intellectual solution? The intellectual solution is that Darwinism is going to occur all on its own. A social Darwinism might occur and all the people who move out of Manhattan because they got so fed up with it, eventually those people are going to move out of the brunch scene. Maybe it’s gonna be about tea time next, maybe will café culture will come back.

KT: I feel like the people who don’t eat brunch are the people who used to eat brunch and don’t like the fact that the people who now eat brunch aren’t exactly cool. It’s a very exclusive thing to not like brunch; just like this guy saying New York has changed isn’t a mindful conversation about gentrification. It’s really just his saying he was there before it was cool.

AD: I was talking to a friend yesterday, and she went to school in Rhode Island and was saying Rhode Island doesn’t have sandwiches, which is a funny concept. But even sandwiches had their trendy moment in food history, and I’m sure there was someone who was like, “ugh, everything’s a sandwich these days.” Maybe that’s when lunch was big. It sounds funny but it’s true. I’m sure sandwiches were a trending food.

CF: People might tire of brunch the same way there is a culture surrounding happy hour, but it’s just blended into something that people do, and it isn’t this big production.

AD: Happy hour is such an interesting thing to compare it to because it’s an off time. I’m sure it was trending at some point.

LM: It had to have been. The only difference is that we didn’t have access to all of these social utilities that galvanize everything we do.

KB: They’re both born of the same idea of restaurants, as far as trying to make money. The reason brunch is a thing is because there’s a huge supply. There’s much more demand, but every restaurant has brunch because they realize they can make a ton of money off of it.

AD: I think what Leandra said is interesting because what actually made brunch annoying is the Instagramming, the tweeting, the checking in, the sort of qualifying your social status by where you ate that morning. I agree that that’s the annoying part of it. All the trendy restaurants have things in front of them that are begging you to Instagram: those little chalkboards, and Jeffrey’s has that thing in front of it that I’ve seen all over my newsfeed where you can put your head through the bodies. So maybe, if you’re asking for a social solution, just like you said you think it’s happening with fashion week, and we talked about this people who go for work and are going to go anyway, you can’t stop going to Fashion Week because it’s not cool anymore—it’s just going to stop being cool to Instagram it, tweet about it, or brag about it. People aren’t going to stop eating brunch but they’re going to stop making a big deal out of it.

CF: I already feel like I see less people Instagramming food, at least the people that I follow, or even my own. When Instagram started, there were certain things they felt were what qualified an Instagram.

KT: And now those same things are embarrassing to Instagram.

CT: Right. I used to Instagram food, I remember.

LM: I Instagram food when I’m the one who made it. That’s much more a testament to my wanting to show people that I’m good at stuff.

AD: I wonder if the next realm is home cooking, like dinner parties are going to become a thing again.

LM: I had a dinner party on Sunday night; none of you guys were invited.

KT: I feel like if everyone treated brunch the way Amelia and Charlotte did, as a meal and as an opportunity to spend time with your friends, no one would find it annoying. It’s the fact that people are so vocal about their brunch.

AD: Totally, Kayla. My argument to most things in life is that if people treated them the way I did the world would be a better place.

KB: I don’t think that’s true necessarily, because I think it’s the actual people who are doing those things.

KT: If there’s an annoying drunk girl at a restaurant and I don’t hear about it, I don’t care. It’s when it’s my friend’s friend who she met on a teen tour that pops up on my feed it’s like, “Come on! I’m really excited about your eggs benedict.”

KB: If you’re walking around outside and every place is spilling out with these groups of people that may be completely content and look like they are having a wonderful time, but they also kind of look like assholes, then your attitude towards the institution is going to change.

LM: I have a problem with this desire to reject adulthood. What’s wrong with people deciding not to feel like adults one day per week? Peter Pan proliferated for a reason. Hellooo!? Duh. Durrr. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here.

CF: I feel like a common argument that we’ve read over and over again about this whole millennial generation is that people seem less inclined to grow up and take on mature responsibilities or what it’s seen as a basic way as social responsibilities. They’re much more supported, and loved in a way, that almost hinders them from growing up and toughening up.

KT: But there’s a lot of stuff feeding into that. A lot of people don’t move out of their parents’ house because they can’t afford it, because they can’t get jobs.

LM: I think the bottom line here, with this brunch story is that what this author doesn’t realize is that he’s calling for exactly what is going to continue to allow brunch to exists in the medium that it exists now, which is saying that it’s out of fashion.

AD: He’s doing what everyone says, which is what Kayla was saying, if you don’t like it, don’t eat it.

KT: Did you see that line where he says brunch is alienating people from their nuclear and extended families?

AD: That’s dramatic. I think it’s interesting though, what he’s saying, he’s 40 and he has a kid. I just read a weird thing on a Mommy blog that my friend posted who has kids, and all her friends with kids liked it. It was about how going out to eat is not fun and it’s very stressful because it adds this element of one more activity where I’m seen as the bad friend because I’m hanging out with my kids. Maybe he feels pressure on that end.

LM: I think his point was just that brunch should not be an excuse to continue to live by the guidelines of that hashtag “pics or it didn’t happen.” He’s not saying damn you if you don’t have a family and fuck your friends, too. He’s saying that if Sundays are traditionally reserved for families and your family is doing something, don’t reject that plan just because your friends are going to brunch and you don’t want to miss out — even though after your night last night you can’t exactly afford a $50 meal.

KB: I feel like he’s just using it as a vehicle to point out gentrification, demographic shift… And the reason he’s writing about it is because it’s a clever way to have the conversation. It will get people talking because they’ll think he’s attacking brunch. He’s really attacking the changes in his neighborhood.

KT: I feel like he needs to be more direct about that because the gentrification argument is one worth having.

AD: Uh, I have a question. Hasn’t the West Village been pretty gentrified for a few years? I’m pretty sure the West Village gentrified when Giuliani kicked all the homeless people out.

CC: All I see is that Café Gitane avocado toast. I think that’s the most Instagrammed brunch.

LM: Yes. People love sharing photos of avocado toast. But whatever, you know? Let them shoot toast. Who cares.

Image via Phoebe Lettice

Cheese-Caked

It’s amazing how the world melts away with the first bite of a deep fried Mexican eggroll; how idealistic morals, like avoiding mega-corporation restaurants that slap ethnic labels on Americanized food with reckless abandon, fall away with the same listless drop of that crunchy morsel’s broken strings of cheddar jack cheese.

There’s beauty in that moment, when all is still.

And then the fusion of warm avocado and chipotle mayo hit the bottom of your gut with such a resounding “thud” that your body takes the noise as preparation for battle. Suddenly you find yourself ravenous, wide eyed and voracious, in search of another sensation like the one you just experienced. You reach for the rolls — those delicious rolls so hot they burn the roof of your mouth before you’ve shoved a full one in, butter doing swan-dives down your throat like shots of whiskey, and despite the knowledge that bread expands in your stomach it seems to be doing so for the sole purpose of room-making, not taking. These rolls are vast and endless.

Salad is less than an afterthought. It’s merely a means to satiate the wild animal you’ve now become from tearing through the booth and into your neighbor’s triple stack burger with giant slabs of fried egg on top, and so you eat the salad, unsatisfied, tempered only by its dressing that’s equal parts mayonnaise and sugar.

When your meal arrives you take zero precautions to avoid biting off chunks of the waitress’s hand that delivered you this long-awaited sustenance, and you’re not even sure if what you’re swallowing by the greedy handful is pasta, or heaven, or crack. All of the above. When you finish your pupils dart left and right to survey the table of unfinished plates, but those surrounding you are barricading their carcass scraps because you’re all hyenas now. You’re all insane.

Yes you’ll have dessert. Yes you’ll have ice cream with that. Yes you’ll take the whipped cream and yes you’ll scream if the shaking, shivering mouse asks you any more questions rather than just depositing the sweetened dairy products directly into your veins, and when the check comes you sign it without looking because when you walk into The Cheesecake Factory you hand over your wallet along with your soul.

Your human form only begins to take shape again as you enter into the night and the cold air gives you a bit of a slap. You’re sleepy with eyes heavy from gluttony, finding your way to the car like a tranquilized elephant.

The key somehow puts itself in the ignition and cranks to the right, the lights come on with the radio you never shut off, and while too stuffed to buckle your seatbelt you begin twisting right to see out of the car’s back window, then realize in violent instant that you can’t.

You are so full that you cannot reverse your car. And that, my friends, means you are Cheese-Caked.

Original image via W Magazine, collage by Krista Anna Lewis

The Comments Section on this NY Mag Post is the Funniest Thing You’ll Read All Day

Other than this morning’s history lesson on sideburns and mutton chops, that is.

While New York City is a fascinating and beautiful place it is also fairly disgusting. That’s not New York’s fault — despite the fact that Sex & the City claims it as its 5th character and 9 out of 10 fans would prefer to be the Manhattan of the group, as opposed to the Miranda, the metropolis is not a live being that can be held responsible for creating filth, humans are. But this isn’t about carbon footprints.

It’s about the fact that someone tied a used condom to the F Train this morning.

You can see the picture here (it’s kind of NSFW depending on where you W, you should probably be 18 to click or something, and you should definitely be operating on an empty stomach), but the real light of this story’s life is the comments section.

A sampling:

And then, there is a bit of a non sequitur about the Folgers coffee jingle which I am sure Folgers will not want to be legally associated with, but hilarious nonetheless:

A few more puns:

Talk about a TGI-F, am I right? I’ll be refreshing NY Mag all day just to read the new comments that come in, so feel free to do so with me and post your favorites below.

Images via Marie Claire Netherlands and NYC Beyond Manhattan

Drunk History: Mutton Chops

Sometimes you’re perusing the world wide web, watching cats befriend dogs while clipping your toenails, when you stumble upon Internet gold, like the Inherent Vice trailer, which dropped last week and provided photographic genius in the form of Joaquin Pheonix’s 1970s mutton chops. Have you seen those babies? They are quite literally furry paws.

They were grown, ostensibly, for his free-wheeling detective character in the upcoming film, but I predict that in 2015, mutton chops will surpass the man-bun as the choice red carpet accessory for men.

The way I see it, sideburns have been poised for a comeback since The King passed (RIP). Sure, Elvis brought us “Love Me Tender,” the Vegas shotgun wedding and Halloween’s number one costume choice among dads, but his greatest contribution to society was undoubtably his sideburns. Nobody could deny that Elvis had the chops. He was pure rock and roll, the leader of facial hair.

Rock icons of future generations knew that on-stage pyrotechnics were visually impressive but didn’t mean shit if they themselves couldn’t grow mutton chops. In fact too much fire could easily spark rumors — “Maybe he’s over compensating for weak hair follicles.” Being a true badass meant ear-beards.

John Lennon staged two week-long stints in bed for peace but kept his burns long as a testament to rebellion. Elton John almost didn’t release “Tiny Dancer.”

“People will think I’m saying ‘Tony Danza!'” he cried, but the sideburns — and I know this to be fictional fact — gave him courage.

The trend grew like Rogaine into the 70s and 80s, giving way to the hirsute world of Disco, where sideburns lived harmoniously among perms and on cops and porn stars and porn star cops. Liam Gallagher of Oasis reinforced the chops in the 90s and even wrote a song dedicated to his muttons. Maybe you’ve heart of it — it’s called Wonderwall.

But the facial hair isn’t reserved for rock gods and disco cops. It’s also highly regarded among quirky hipster types — the kind of men who will argue that the Tahitian ukelele is superior to the guitar — and your local barista. Primarily used for warmth on, say, cold Brooklyn nights, the mutton chop is also an excellent callous remover. Jermaine Clement of Flight of the Concords fame was sporting them and a New Zealand accent before it was cool.

They are registered as a public figure on Facebook and you can befriend them if you’d like.

The most current proponent of the mutton chop has to be Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. With them, he is masculine, not to be fucked with, and in need of a warm bath. The mutton chop is emblematic of bravado and like the man-bun, it will soon move from code red (this man cannot afford a haircut) to red carpet staple.

But like pit hair, sideburns are not exclusively male. So pull your hair up and those little strands you’ve taken to calling “baby hairs” down. You’re trending.

MR Writer’s Club: The Spectacular (Funny) Now

They say that time heals all. “They” often say this when you’re in the thick of something difficult. This could mean, on a marginal scale, a break up, a fight with a friend, or the looping spiral of hot flashes that follow an embarrassing, cringe-worthy event. When it feels like your world is over. A popped balloon. DONE. Those times when you would rather be anyone or anywhere than the person you are in the place that you stand.

But they don’t say this simply because they work at Hallmark or saw it on a pillow once and thought it sounded nice; they speak from experience. They know that hearts mend and arguments dissipate, and that somehow — in what is perhaps the universe proving to doubtful humans that miracles do happen — many awful-in-the-moment-moments have a way of becoming…funny.

Think of the time you got into so much trouble that you were convinced your parents would disown you, or the time you fell off a porch and into a bush because you were doing something stupid, when you hooked up with someone you regretted, peed your pants in public or the time you got lice and then gave it to everyone around you. It was in no way funny then. But now?

Now it’s kind of hilarious.

We want to hear that story. In ~500 words tell us the tale of what was not funny then, but thanks to nature’s Neosporin — time — is not just funny now, but makes for one hell of a story.

All submissions should be e-mailed to write@manrepeller.com by Friday, October 17 at 12:00 PM EST, and if you’re feeling particularly social or need inspiration, the hashtag is #mrwritersclub .

Original image via the Sunday Times Style Magazine

For Your Chatting Pleasure: 6 New Things

LOL: Daniel Franzese, Damian from Mean Girls, makes some minor adjustments to Sam Smith’s “Stay with Me.” 

And they are f-ing awesome. Play this instead of lying about having a doctor’s appointment next time you want your booty call to leave.

GASP: The real Sam Smith faux pas’d. 

It involved Twitter and karaoke, natch. While performing in Nashville, Mr. Smith got caught in a lie. Don’t tweet and go out. It’s dangerous.  [Vulture]

HMM: Learn a little something about breakfast. 

Hannah Whitaker photographs the breakfasts of children from around the world. Very jealous of this Turkish girl’s morning feast. [The New York Times]

WHAT!? How to Train Your Orgasm. 

Popular sex toy company Lelo has created a device that, when inserted, “takes your measurements” and “creates a routine that’s right for you.” We don’t know, either. [Refinery29]

OH! That’s How You’re Supposed to Do It! Thanks to The Cut, you can now master the half-tuck. Because looking nonchalant takes effort. [The Cut]

 

CRY: It’s really real now.

That baby you’ve been in denial about, Ryan Gossling and Eva Mendes’s super daughter? She has a name now.

Waiting For Bae

Bae is the worst boyfriend ever.

It’s our own fault, really — we should never have broken up with Jared Leto. It’s just that Jared avocado’d out of nowhere and got super clingy, plus his hair clogged the drain and his legs made us insecure, so we slow-faded the man who we once dumped Ryan Gosling for. Dumb on our parts, because now that Ryan has a baby it’s not like we can beg him to take us back. And so, we are stuck with Bae.

For one thing, Bae is a terrible name. A unique moniker isn’t the issue — besides, how many more Mikes can one world hold — but unfortunately, Bae, in Danish, means “Poop.” Even worse is that Bae has no last name, like Madonna, and while we’re modern women all for keeping our own surnames names post-marriage, isn’t there something sort of depressing about monogramming Mr. & Mrs. Bae? In Danish, that’s Mr. & Mrs. Poop.

Also, aside from Bae not being particularly stationary-friendly, Bae is dating everyone. Guys, girls, 12-year-olds. It’s weird.

I guess Jared technically was too since we declared him “the Internet’s new boyfriend,” but everyone did not constantly Pin memes about what they looked like when “Jared texted.” Everyone did not flood my Instagram feed with images of them “missing Leto’s bun.” Not the case in this relationship, where I’m forced to scroll through my various feeds and see literally everyone “waiting for Bae.”

And that’s another thing: Bae is always late. Bae’s got more people tapping their foot on his behalf than Godot. Bae is not Kanye — no one feels honored by Bae’s lateness. Since the entire population of Tumblr and Twitter is apparently dating him, can’t someone buy a watch for The Bae?

Bae’s also kind of a dick. When he isn’t late, he’s canceling. He ignores texts for no reason and quite honestly, he seems like he’s leading a lot of people on.

Also — this is super-douchey — but worse than third-person-references is that Bae likes to be addressed with a “The.” 

“The Bae.”

Have you heard of anything more egotistical? Like, if Facebook dropped it, I think you can too, dude.

We could all just break up with him. Or her. (It’s true that Bae’s one redeeming quality is being versatile.) But fall is here, which is more or less the unofficial dating season, so I guess until our next Ryan or Jared comes along we’ll stick it out. Keep our dance cards full. It’s kind of pathetic, but you can’t really Instagram “single,” so until then we’ll just all be waiting. Together. Waiting for our joint boyfriend, Bae.

God damnit.

Feature Image shot by Thomas Babeau

What’s Your “Bed”?

Graduation speeches, man. Even into October, they just keep on giving.

Early last summer, one such address delivered at the University of Texas by U.S. Navy Administrator William H. McRaven went viral. In it, the commander who orchestrated the raid that ultimately killed Osama bin Laden provided one very definitive and streamlined piece of advice: make your bed every morning.

He said:

“If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. And by the end of the day that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you’ll never be able to do the big things right. And if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made — that you made. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.”

It’s a bright concept, the theory is strong and ideally speaking, the bones of the request — to make your bed in order to achieve diligence and the satisfaction that comes with having completed a task, no matter how remedial — are conceivably right. 

For some people, though, making the bed is simply a therapeutic pleasure. My mother, for example,  got upset at me one time for tidying my own bed because it meant that she wouldn’t have the opportunity to flatten my sheets or fluff an extra set of pillows. Her issues extend far beyond a compulsive proclivity for self-constructed tidiness, but that’s a story for another time.

For other people, the completion of a domestic task will do nothing at all for their respective senses of unilateral accomplishment. I happen to really like coming home to a day-old, unmade bed so that I can crawl back in and feel the wrinkled sheets become one with my toes. It is so cozy. Still, though, I get it — I get what Commander McRaven is saying. Everyone has their bed and to overcome the hurdle of making it can and will inform the events of the rest of their days, which become weeks, which become months and eventually, too, lives. It’s just, what is your bed?

For me, it’s exercise. I hate doing it and as a result, most days I don’t want to.When I say I’ll work out but I don’t, the world remains an unfathomable sphere that enjoys propping itself up on my puny shoulders and seems to have found adhesive glue that disables it from being removed, no matter how hard I pull.

But when I do get it done, I feel fucking great. Like I have just lifted this world from off my shoulders to find that the sphere is merely the size of a basketball. As a result, I resolve to bounce this ball and for the duration of the day, shoot it into hoops that I am certain will go through the net swiftly.

Even if they don’t.

Know what I mean?

One more time — what’s your bed? Make it.

Denim PSA Pt. II: These Seem Like a Solid Alternative to Time Travel

I wear a pair of jeans that I have been told are a terrible idea by carriers of the Y chromosome (this includes my own husband, four out of five brothers — two have adopted their relationships to me by marriage — my father and at least 15 men I don’t actually know but who feel comfortable enough to comment on the state of my legs while they’re in pants) for as long as I’ve had them. They are these:

What is particularly interesting about the posterior jeans is that when I am in the presence of double x-carriers, the inverse reaction is rendered in what I like to call a fupa fest for the women, by the women. I’ve had at least twelve female strangers ask me where I got my jeans.

My own close friends have tried to steal them from my closet and one designer who shall remain nameless took their measurements in order to approximate them for her own line. Of course, the male reaction is immediately cancelled out when considering the female reaction but the sad reality is, they’re impossible to find.

I’ve had them since 2009, when by a fluke, I bought them from The Outnet thinking they were another pair of skinnier pants. When they came, I wondered how I’d wear them — whether with their awkward leg length (they hit just two inches above ground) they’d look okay with heels or flat shoes. Then the 70s came roaring in and just like that: throw me a turtleneck, a v-neck sweater, some white sneakers and at last: no better jeans have ever walked the interwebs. Until, that is, last Monday found me moseying through ASOS.com where I found this pair for $66 moonlighting as a solid alternative to both time travel and the departed Outnet jeans.

So bad, they’re good — you know? And because I am your BFF, here are also complimenting garments to wear with your jeans. Chin chin, cheers cheers.

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Babies Who Literally Can’t Even

Queen of the celebrity babies (or potential-future-actual-Queen if that whole monarchy thing makes a comeback), North West, has a stylist. As in, her own stylist — an employed person whose sole job is to dress a toddler for public appearances. Considering the fact that I have fully developed motor skills yet still can’t get dressed without having an existential crisis, I’m jealous. I could use a stylist too, you know.

The worst part is that North West doesn’t seem to appreciate her wardrobe. She’s always crying about it.

Come to think of it, babies never appreciate their wardrobes. They’re always taking off those strawberry hats that probably took someone’s grandma at least 4 hours of Murder She Wrote to knit. They hate socks. Pants? I mean who hates pants that snap off? No one. Except babies. And when it comes to high fashion, they’re even worse. Have you ever seen a glossy, couture-packed magazine editorial featuring a baby who’s actually smiling? Probably not.

So what’s their deal? Why do babies hate fashion and the accompanying magazine spreads so much? A few hypotheses:

1. They’re cold. When they’re not completely naked in fashion magazines, babies are at most topless in a pair of teeny tiny (so cute) jeans. Meanwhile, the women holding them are always dressed to the nines. They would like an on-trend cape, at the very least.

2. They’re afraid they’re hitting their peak under 3 years old.

3. They didn’t make the cover.

4. Fashion is frivolous; they have block towers to knock down.

5. They could have pulled off the veil and PVC skirt combo better than the model holding them.

6. There is only green juice and, like, six grapes at craft services. Where’s the milk? Where’s the smashed bananas mixed with yams? They’re hungry.

7. They were told that extensions don’t work with their current hair situation.

8. Would it have killed the stylist to add a red lip?

9. They can’t read and don’t have credit cards, so being featured in a magazine isn’t even exciting.

10. Like North, they want to be their own stylists.

Or who knows. Maybe they’re just total babies.

(And now, if you feel so inclined, since babies can’t speak but definitely have an opinion, caption your pick for most over-it baby in the comments below.)