trend alert: straps!

Suzy Menkes believes that straps are a new trend. She bases her claim upon evidence she finds at the Cannes Film Festival, where a dearth of strapless gowns on the red carpet signal, to her, a shift.

i wonder about the relationship between the Met's superheroes theme and these shoulder-accessorizing (enhancing?) straps. do we want to highlight the shoulder (i.e., strength)? maybe we simply want to call attention upward just a bit (women often long for a more level gaze but tend to default to strapless because attention is, well, attention). still, a bare décolleté is always lovely, gesturing both from and toward confidence and warmth, regardless of age or size or condition.

perhaps we are not, at the moment, feeling quite so warm, so willing to share our vulnerabilities, but instead opt for a powerful shoulder that resists the compulsion to reveal? maybe it's about nostalgia, a retro aesthetic that simply demands its moment. speaking as a woman lacking occasions for gown-wearing at all, i have to wonder, because, well, if i could go gown, i'd go strapless, trend notwithstanding.

msn.com $#@@%#@!!

your "reset my password" instructions would might make sense if a.) the "reset my password" message could go to any other email account except the one for which i have, um, forgotten my password, and b.) my "secret question" were not so damn secret that i'd forgotten it's mysteriously suggestive power.

branching out

i'm thinking of volunteering for Cinevegas this year. we'll see what the housing situation is like and what positions remain open. also thinking Telluride.

working festivals can be insane (i had typo'd "insance," which i kind of love for its traces to "entrance" and "trance" and "transcendental," and . . . stop me . . . ), but it's also fabulous. i know people who make careers out of working festivals; i'm not entirely sold on that idea, but i want to engage more fully and think i can handle adding a few more volunteer gigs to my resume.

happy birthday to me . . .

i tried to love mountain biking. had a diamondback but rarely rode it because i hated hunching over and cramping up my legs like a circus monkey. sold it on craig's list. now, *this* is my new bike, and i *love* it! when they say "cruising," they mean "cruising," with this bike. comfy? absolutely. you can sit up, even back! i couldn't wait until 5/27 (oh, is that me, obliquely dropping my birthday date?).

giant brand, "suede" model in baby blue.

another reason to love sean penn

at the opening ceremony at Cannes, Penn did not so much appeal to the genius of those who would ultimately win prizes (as in a sort of valedictorian's HS speech, sending off the young "geniuses"). instead, he appealed to the distributors of the films that will not win prizes, arguing that by virtue of having been selected to screen at Cannes, the "losers" are deserving of the distributors' passion and care for the works. Penn urged distributors to leave the festival with the same excitement they brought to it. nice.

looking quite well (did he have work done?), speaking smartly and with ease, Penn also remains an unapologetic smoker, which seems oddly brave in today's media landscape (stilll, he's in France, so maybe "brave" is a reach. ha).

not. fair.

dear fellow acting students,

i'm sure that you are all very busy. i'm sure that it is difficult to say "no" to the many calls from your agents (surely for that upcoming booking), or to put off responding to that h-i-l-a-r-i-o-u-s text your bff sent to "keep you grounded," but, um, . . . even on "vibrate" your phone is making it difficult to concentrate and your texting during my scene is just plain rude.

spring, hope, shopping . . .

typing test

82 words

style and "p.c."

over at The Moment, style editor Sandra Ballentine responds to a complaint regarding a layout featuring fur: "[...] I can’t profess to be anti-fur. It would be hypocritical to do so, as I own clothing that incorporates fur, and sometimes we feature it in the pages of T. I also don’t think it’s necessarily part of my job as a style editor to be politically correct" (emphasis mine).

first of all, the strange uses of the term "politically correct" . . . the dismissive moves, as though "p.c." concerns were so trivial as to be irrelevant, have always bothered me, but this is what happens when we sloganize important cultural work. still.

but so, a *style* editor -- someone who manages popular information flows (@ The NY Times) of mass communication -- does not see political correctness as "part of her job"? maybe it's part of your humane calling? but . . . oh right, it's *just* a job; i see this attitude a lot, and it's distressing. it's like saying, "it is what it is" (such a dumb, silencing expression; it says, "pleeeeeezzze take your issues somewhere else").