Thing of the Week: Buying A Bed, Being In Love With Chris Bell, The Coffee Candle

LJ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Buying A Bed

On Wednesday afternoon I bought a bed. In the morning I called my dad on the phone to ask him how to buy a bed, like, I don't fucking know. He asked me where I wanted to go and I said "Sleep Country Canada, because..." and he interjected, "Why buy a mattress anywhere else?" 

"That's what I'm sayin'!" I exclaimed, and, had it been real life and not over the phone, I definitely would've high-fived him. (That whole interaction doesn't make sense if you're not Canadian. Sleep Country Canada's slogan is "Why buy a mattress anywhere else?" and there's a catchy jingle about it. I think it's a brilliant slogan, personally. There is literally no good reason to buy a mattress anywhere else.)

Later on I took a streetcar to my dad's house and I put my whites in the washing machine and then I walked to the Sleep Country Canada on the corner of King & Yonge and I bought myself a bed. The salesman was named James and he was extremely helpful and informative. I got very personal with James. I let him in on a lot of information about my life, my job and my feelings and what-have-you. I told James that, my whole life, I always knew in my heart that as soon as I started making money, the first thing I was going to do was buy myself a bed. Right now my bed is so crappy I can't even tell you. It's a twin. Like, who the fuck has a twin? Besides a kid. Not to mention the fact that it's held together with bungee cord. Anyway, it was really, really heavy and gorgeous to be myself having finally achieved that goal. At Sleep Country Canada. I was wearing a leopard-print t-shirt. 

I definitely spent more money on a bed than a normal person might have. But I suck at sleeping and I just kept thinking about the movie Smiley Face. I want to be like Jane F. in that movie and care about my bed more than anything. My beautiful bed! I'm Laura Jane F. and my bed game is about to get so tight. So soft. My bed is arriving on Wednesday, May 22nd between the hours 5 and 9 PM, which means that next week my Thing of the Week is going to be ACTUAL SLEEPING IN MY ACTUAL BED! I am so excited for my one week from now self. She is the luckiest Laura there ever was. 

PS: My Thing of the Week is accompanied by a picture of Ted Chaough because Ted Chaough is my sub-Thing of the Week. I love him. I have this butterscotch Faber-Castell that I call my Ted Chaough pen because Ted Chaough is always wearing butterscotch- or mustard, if you will. I'll probably write more about Ted Chaough in the future so I don't want to blow my Ted Chaough load right now. Let's just say that I really wish I owned a "WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE ABOUT TED CHAOUGH" tote bag. Chaough. 

LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Being in Love with Chris Bell, For a Change



On Monday night I went to a press screening of the Big Star documentary Nothing Can Hurt Me. It was so sweet! Just a really sweet and lovely movie. I got goosebumps about 97 times and I cried, once, for Chris Bell. Chris Bell was in Big Star but left after the first album, and he died when he was 27. He was a sad boy, it seems; it must've been really hard to be a born-again, probably gay, hypersensitive songwriter with drug problems in the South in the 1970s. There's a part in the movie where the owner of Ardent Studios talks about being at Ardent late at night and hearing all this crazy noise and going into one of those studios and seeing Chris Bell working on I Am The Cosmos all alone, doing everything by himself. That really got me, and I also loved the part where some dude says something about how Chris Bell would always have a "full-body purple aura whenever we'd take acid together." I think it's pretty likely that Chris Bell was an actual angel. 

So yesterday evening I went to the bar where my housemate John works and drank a beer that tastes like roses and finished reading the first draft of my book and inserting notes like "a little more 'Big Black Car'-vibey here." On the walk home I stopped at the hamburger stand and got a grilled cheese sandwich for supper; in front of me in line there was this boringly hot scenester boy in his 20s, talking loudly into his phone while the counter dude was trying to take his order. The boy was meeting up with a friend, apparently, and at some point he shouted into the phone, "Head west? Dude, I don't know what the fuck direction west is." Which is so dumb! The thing about L.A. is there are mountains and, for the most part, the mountains are either in front of you or behind you or to your left or to your right, and you can tell which direction you're facing by where you are in relation to the mountains. We were in Echo Park and the sky was dusty-pink and dusty-purple and the mountains were in front of us; west was to the left. The only way you couldn't know that is if you were just weirdly out of touch with L.A./possibly spiritually diseased/totally not the cosmos. I made fun of the boy in my head and then I got my grilled cheese and walked home eating the grilled cheese, listening to a "genius" playlist based on "My Life Is Right," which was written by the beautiful angel Chris Bell:



"My Life Is Right" is my spirit song right now. I figured that out on my walk home, and also yesterday I figured out that my Rolling Stones spirit song is "It's Only Rock & Roll," and my Beatles spirit song is "Back in the USSR." Everything is pretty cool.

JEN'S THING OF THE WEEK: The Coffee Candle

 

Look at this perfect Coffee Candle I bought at the witch store yesterday with the perfect Witch Store Cat sleeping behind it. I snapped this pic while paying so I would never forget I paid 5$ for The Coffee Candle and handed the money over a sleeping black cat. According to the candle once you burn it you're pretty much set for life. Any spells anyone put on you will be broken, you'll have good luck and money. There's a lucky horse shoe on the bottom of the glass, obviously.