Thing of the Week: Marc Bolan & A Cat, Seeing for Miles & Miles, Female Trouble

LJ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Marc Bolan & A Cat

If I'm going to be honest with all of you, my Thing of the Week is actually not this picture of baby Marc Bolan with a cat. This picture of baby Marc Bolan with a cat, while great, was my Thing of the Week last week. However, last week I spilled a bottle of water onto my modem and broke my modem, and then I didn't have the Internet for an entire fucking week and it sort of sucked but whatever. I'm a very clumsy woman and I spill liquid on my modem approximately twice a year every year, and this was one of those times. It's fine. I'm used to it. 

So yeah. To give credit where credit is due: this is a great picture of Marc Bolan. I loved it so much last week! He's fucking adorable, probably sixteen years old, and has a really great look in his eyes, a nice mix of fear and resolve. "Don't worry, Baby Marc Bolan!" his eyes make you want to say, "It all works out for you! You become a famous rock star!" 

But on the other side of the coin, he dies very young, so I suppose that fear is founded in something. Ah, the flames that burn the brightest burn the fastest or whatever. What's more, he's hanging out with a black kitten! That's my spirit animal. And I feel like this black kitten is even more my spirit animal than most black kittens. It's so curious, and it appears to be pawing at either a compass or a roulette wheel. There's a metaphor in there somewhere!

Anyway, my actual Thing of the Week is a tie between 1) The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, which proved to me, and I jest, that a book can be as engrossing as the Internet, and also made me care very deeply about the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, a passion I suspect will be fleeting, 2) Snapchat, 3) the part in the season finale of Season 6 of Friends where Joey is trying to convince Monica that Chandler never wants to get married so that she doesn't figure out he's about to propose and says "Chandler's a complex fellow, unlikely to take a wife," and Monica says, "Is that boat talk?" (because it's also the episode of Friends where Joey accidentally buys a boat) and Joey says, "I don't know, I haven't really figured out how I'm gonna talk on my boat yet" and 4) the time I tweeted, "Can everybody just tweet at me their lists of the Friends fav to least-fav? I have no Internet til Monday & I need something cool to look at" and EVERYBODY pulled through and my phone was veritably EXPLODING with all my pals' lists of Friends fav to least-fav, it was so informative and beautiful and as it turned out, I had no Internet til Tuesday. (PS: Ross, Chandler, Joey, Rachel, Phoebe, Monica)

LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Seeing for Miles & Miles

I had a nasty experience yesterday. Some very wealthy people I did some work for tried to weasel me out of some money; it was gross and insulting and pretty pathetic. But the cool part, the reason I'm writing about this in "Thing of the Week," is that I stood my ground and showed them up and ultimately got what I was owed. I was all, "This is the amount of money I was promised and that’s exactly the amount I'm going to get," and it worked. I felt really proud of myself. Immediately afterward I tweeted something about feeling like Pete Campbell when he tells Don Draper "I will shoot you" - which doesn't quite make sense but whatever, I was high off my victory. I drank an iced coffee and ate some almonds and gave myself the present of watching this really boring video of Alex Chilton for like the zillionth time this week (seriously, don't bother watching unless you're obsessed with and/or deeply curious about Alex Chilton - but I'm so crazy about the last 40 seconds, when the MTV dude asks that stupid question and Alex just refuses to play along, in a way that's sorta antagonistic yet somehow completely chill, and the sarcasm of his response to the final question is sooo hot and amazing - bravo, babydoll) and then I went running. I had my iPod on shuffle and one of the first songs to come up was "I Can See for Miles" by The Who, which is one of my favorite songs lately. I made every lyric in the song about how I totally faced those shady people and I felt so unstoppable and it was all just perfect.

So I took this picture two Sundays ago, aka the weekend I fell head over heels for Alex Chilton  - it's a picture of me seeing for miles and miles. My shoes are good and Los Angeles is beautiful and disgusting and there's magic in my eyes. "I Can See for Miles" is the song that made Paul McCartney write "Helter Skelter", and that's very important to me too.

JEN'S THING OF THE WEEK: Female Trouble

 If 2012 was my Lynch Year, 2013 is shaping up to be My Waters Year. I just finished reading Crackpot, which was hilarious, demented & genius, obviously. I have been wanting to see Female Trouble, I think mostly because of the excellent title. I rented it and was kind of bummed to see that it came as a little combo DVD with Pink Flamingos, because that meant I had to watch Pink Flamingos and I wasn't in a huge rush to go there. I watched Female Trouble first and instantly it was one of my favorite movies. I mean, truly instantly, from the second it started, and that's because the opening credit sequence is FLAWLESS. It's perfect. There is NOTHING wrong with it. That font! The colors! The images! The song, "Female Trouble", sung by Divine is my new favorite song. I've probably listened to it at least 30 times this week. Maybe, like, 45. The Melvin's covered it but I've only listened to that version like 4 times. It is a beautiful groove. If I'm listening to it, I have it in my head. "I've got lot's of problems.."