Do You Have Any Leftover Cadbury Creme Eggs? Then Please Make These Amazing Cupcakes, and Listen to Late-Era Replacements

Good Friday was so good. I'm home in Massachusetts right now and I woke up kinda late and made some eggs, got some coffee at Dunkin Donuts, came home, did some work, Skyped with a pop star, then went out thrift-store-shopping with my brother and sister. First we went to Savers, and I got the three books shown in this picture:

Plus a Box Tops tape because of Alex Chilton, who is a sourpuss prince:



And then we went to Salvation Army and I bought some shirts and stuff, and then we went to Dunkin Donuts and I got an Irish creme iced coffee which was a dream. On the way there we drove past a man who was jogging while holding a water bottle in one hand and a McDonald's Shamrock Shake in the other: totally my hero (not really though)! A little while later my sister and her friend from Argentina and I went to the best Italian restaurant in my life and I had spaghetti with artichokes and garlic and tomatoes and chicken, plus red wine. We listened to the new Devendra Banhart record on the drive there. I love the new Devendra record and will review it for you later this week.

Anyway back at home my sister, Carly, made these Cadbury Creme Egg Cupcakes that are the best cupcakes in the world. Like five years ago or something Laura Jane Faulds taught me the word dank and these cupcakes are absolutely the dankest thing I've ever experienced. They weigh like five pounds each and just the frosting and cake alone are so ooey-gooey and heaven and then you get to the Creme Egg baked into the center and it's all too much. Carly made them from scratch, using this recipe, but I bet you could use a cake mix and store-bought frosting and get kinda-similar results. Here are some pix of the cupcake-making process:

1. the unwrapping of the Creme Eggs:

2. the part where you cream the butter for the frosting and then take a picture and Instagram-filter the hell out of it till it looks like clouds or the ocean:

3. the slicing-open of the glorious finished cupcake:

I don't have any pictures of the best part, which was eating my cupcake while lying on the couch and reading the wonderful book Carry the One by Carol Anshaw, with "I'll Be You" by the Replacements stuck in my head. "I'll Be You" is my favorite Replacements song lately; it's sweet as a Creme Egg cupcake but romantic in a slightly-rotten-hearted way and, I don't know: I just really appreciate that.  

xo Liz

Thing of the Week: Sea Anemones & Lana Del Rey, A Salt Lamp

LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Sea Anemones & Lana Del Rey

Before I fell in love with Alex Chilton, I had a couple of days of thinking that maybe my new thing would be Lana Del Rey + sea anemones. A few Fridays ago I went to El Matador beach and took this picture:



And a few nights later I was looking at that picture and listening to "the Paradise edition of Born to Die," which I'd just bought on iTunes. I had a good half-hour to 45 minutes of listening to Lana Del Rey while looking at pictures of sea anemones and reading about sea anemones; it was all very dreamy and creepy and spellbinding. I learned that sea anemones are predators, that they like to eat shrimp, that they get around by somersaulting. I read this cool/horrifying sentence: "The mouth, also the anus of the sea anemone, is in the middle of the oral disc surrounded by tentacles armed with many cnidocytes, which are cells that function as a defense and as a means to capture prey." And I found out that sometimes sea anemones let clown fish live inside them, and in return the clown fish fight off anemone enemies and let the anemones snack on their leftovers. Overall, my review of sea anemones is that they're cute and disgusting, and also totally beautiful. Here are a few more pix, from Tumblr:







And I'm still listening to Born to Die pretty often and it still sounds good: sexy music that feels like being asleep is one of my favorite genres right now. I'm also into that "Chelsea Hotel #2" cover that was a big deal on the Internet yesterday, and I think it's nice that she changed the "babe"s to "baby"s. Basically the whole reason I brought up sea anemones and Lana Del Rey in the first place is that hearing her version of "Chelsea Hotel #2" was the first time I realized that the last line of the song is "That's all, I don't even think of you that often." I'd always thought it was just "That's all, I don't think of you that often," and now I'm annoyed at Leonard Cohen for putting that "even" in there. Wouldn't it be so much more powerful without the "even"? The "even" seems like overkill, but in a way that somehow softens the sting of the whole thing. And I don't want the sting to be softened - so I think I'll probably just pretend he's singing it my way, every time I hear that song for the rest of my life. I just want the last line of "Chelsea Hotel #2" to be mean as mean can be. 

JEN'S THING OF THE WEEK: A Salt Lamp



I am finishing my taxes today and I want a salt lamp.

Everything I Love About Marc Bolan, Pt. II

WORDS BY LJ/ DRAWING BY JEN

8. He wrote a song called Woodland Rock, which includes the gorgeously Joycean lyric Ally bally bash bam rockabilly boom. I feel like James Joyce would be very proud of him for figuring out that word-sequence and I feel like Marc Bolan would be very proud of me for feeling as spiritually connected to the woods as he's recently helped me realize I do. I do! I've never given it enough play in my writing, because the sky and the moon and the ocean make stunningly bigger deals out of themselves and I fall hook, line and sinker every time. 
        I love Woodland Rock because it's a rock and roll song that I imagine takes place in the ravine I grew up a couple blocks away from, there was a stream in that ravine and I'd ask my parents for permission to go for a walk alone and I'd walk down a hilly path made of gravel and hop along the stones deep into where the stream stopped being a stream anymore, I'd lose myself in the woods to scare myself into being lost in the woods and wondering if I'd die or become a feral wolfe childe and nobody'd ever find me. But of course I always found my way.     
         So that's what Woodland Rock sounds like, Marc Bolan in the middle of the clearing past the stream and all the little animals as his back-up band. Badgers. Marc Bolan and a bunch of felt chipmunks playing electric guitars made out of bark and bear cubs in elf caps scratching pussywillows across cat ribs as xylophones and raccoons plucking leather basses featuring a pine marten on the drums, which are acorns. 

9. 75% of T.Rex lyrics are successions of rhyming couplets about What A Given Girl Is Like, and the fictional girl who is always the one thing that rhymes with the other thing is always the cutest coolest-sounding girl I'd ever wish to be, which I guess means that Marc Bolan is the #1 dude I'd ever wish would write songs about me. There's "She's got legs like a railroad, face like a song" (from Woodland Rock), "She lives by the coast, and she's faster than most," from Hot Love, which sounds like the first day of spring, "I'll call you Jag-u-ar, if I may be so bold" from Jeepster and almost all of The Motivator, which I encourage all dudes who have crushes on me to listen to while they're thinking about me. I like the idea of the person you love being called a motivator: one who motivates you to do things. It's a way sexier concept than dull old Muse. Muses are benign; Motivators are alive! 

Girls in T.Rex songs are named Baby Boomerang and Baby Strange and they're built like cars. "You're dirty, sweet and you're my girl" from Bang A Gong is the most important. All the best stuff is dirty and sweet at the same time: James Joyce's letters to Nora Barnacle, Scout Finch, Manhattans the drink, wearing pigtails with sneakers, etc. 

10. I'm really into traditional gender roles, and Marc Bolan is a man. He's a man the way I want all the men I spend my time with to be. I want them to build motorcycles in their bedrooms and have to sleep with the window open all year round so that the motor oil doesn't asphyxiate them to death. I want them to be preternaturally amazing at climbing trees and catching baseballs, own three-legged and/or David Bowie-eyed mutts named names like Skip or Chip or Champion, have a favorite item on the Taco Bell menu and a second-favorite item on the Taco Bell menu, order bacon on the side and drench that shit in hollandaise- 

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.."

Everything I Love About Marc Bolan, Pt. I

WORDS BY LJ/ DRAWING BY JEN

1. There's nothing I don't love about Marc Bolan, I realized at the gym this morning, working out to Jeepster and trying to think of a thing I don't love about Marc Bolan. I mean I'm sure if he and I were for some reason forced to spend an extended period of time in a high-pressure situation together some trait of his would emerge as being my least-favorite, but I get the general impression that he wouldn't ever annoy me very much, which is more than I can say about most sixties rock guys I absently idolize. In real life I can't deal with 95% of people and can totally see myself being all "Ugh, John Lennon's such a drama queen," "Ray Davies feels so unnecessarily sorry for himself," "Keith Richards is late for EVERYTHING," etc. 

2. Today it was sort of semi-warm out, I was really proud of the weather for stepping up to the plate and being like "WHAT'S UP I'm March now, and I'm going to act like March, the interim month between winter and spring, and not just be all lame and winter about it like I usually am." So I went for a nice meandering walk down my soggy grey street, impulse-bought a gold-and-blue Missoni-striped cardigan and  listened to the twenty-minute-long interview with Marc Bolan that comes as a bonus track on whichever luxury edition of Electric Warrior I happen to own, I guess it's from 1971- I just wanted to make double-sure that there's nothing I don't love about Marc Bolan. I knew that there wouldn't be and I'm happy it's official now; Marc Bolan is fucking delightful. Over the course of the interview, he: 

- exclusively refers to money as "bread"
- reveals that Cosmic Dancer is about reincarnation, which is the obvious best case scenario outcome of what Cosmic Dancer could possibly be about
- says the word "jive" an insane amount of times and
- "boogie" almost as much and
- "heavy-headed" to mean "thoughtful," which is really cool and I'm gonna steal it from him, and
- "headless" to mean dumb.

3. He's very polite, somewhat soft-spoken, and refers to a bunch of different people, such as Randy Newman and Cat Stevens, as being a "good guy" or "good person," which is a trait I really admire in others and am presently trying to cultivate in myself. I never notice if anyone's "good" or not; it's just not built into my nature to care. I think Marc Bolan is maybe the first person I ever noticed was good or not. He's good. 

Playing The Friendship Game With Kathleen Hanna & Kathi Wilcox (Plus: The 5 Bikini Kill Songs That Mean The Most To Me)

Hi! So our beautiful buddy Laura Fisher did this thing for the Huffington Post where she and her friend Kathleen challenged Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna and Kathi Wilcox to "The Friendship Game" (basically a twist on The Newlywed Game, with BFFs answering intimate and important questions about each other). It's really sweet and funny and I love Kathleen Hanna's sweater and Laura's lipstick and luminous hair, and also the Annie mug and cute Christmasy cookies. Watch the video here, because Blogspot suxxx and won't let me embed it. Oh and you should also watch Laura and Kathleen's Friendship Game with Wild Flag, including the amazing genius Mary Timony and her adorable lisp. 

I don't listen to Bikini Kill much anymore but Laura's video made me a little nostalgic for when I loved them. Here are the five Bikini Kill songs that still mean a lot to me today:

i. "FEELS BLIND"

I can't remember if it was me, my ex-boyfriend, or some dumb rock critic who once said that that "Feels Blind" has the same epic vibe as the Patti Smith Group's version of "Gloria." Whoever it was, I kinda get the point. "Feels Blind" isn't nearly glorious as "Gloria" but it's got a similar power to make me feel unstoppable: I can't listen to it and not rise above whatever bullshit might be getting me down at the moment. And remember the issue of Sassy where "We eat your hate like love" was written on the spine? I do - I remember that. I still use "I eat your hate like love" all the time, especially when people are being assholes about Los Angeles. Los Angeles so eats your fucking hate up like love. 

ii. "OUTTA ME"

Oh man: such a killer breakup jam. At the coffeehouse in high school my friend Dave (whom I wrote about when I wrote a big thing about Nirvana) used to play a cover of "Outta Me" and it was a real heartbreaker. Later on Dave and I were roommates in Boston and he kept his drums in the living room and sometimes he'd randomly break into the "Dog Show" theme. That was pretty killer too.

iii. "TELL ME SO"

It's just a bitchin' song and the bassline is like whoa. Its lyrics make me think of math paper and then weirdly miss tenth-grade geometry. It's funny how you never see math paper again after age 18. I'm so nostalgic for math paper and "Dog Show" right now.

iv. "FALSE START"

"Jet Ski" is probably my fave song on Reject All American but I'm more sentimental about "False Start"; it's softer and sweeter and more easily sweeps me back to the Friday afternoon in autumn 1996 when my then-boyfriend and two of his besties (including a really good-looking dude named George Harrison!) and I drove half an hour to the nearest good record store and I bought that album. It was so ugly and gray and Rhode-Island-in-November-y out, and I think we maybe also went to Burger King, or McDonald's, and afterward went back to the dorm and listened to our CDs and had a typically boring "sophomore-year Friday night." When we got to my CD everyone laughed at me at the part in "R.I.P." where Kathleen starts shouting, the part that goes "And I wouldn't be SO FUCKING MAD, SO FUCKING PISSED OFF, IF IT WASN'T SO FUCKING WRONG, IT'S ALL FUCKING WRONG! IT'S NOT FAIR, IT'S NOT FAIR, IT'S NOT FAIR!!!!!" - which I can't really blame them for. I mean, I'd laugh at me too.

v. "REBEL GIRL"

Obviously! Did you ever see that video where Kathleen Hanna's talking about getting drunk on Canadian Club with Kurt Cobain and vandalizing a "fake abortion clinic" and she sings "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and then "Rebel Girl"? It's beautiful and inspiring and makes me cry about "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and I don't even like that song. Watch it; it'll exhilarate you and maybe you'll cry too - a nice, joyful, cleansing sort of cry:



P.S. After writing this entry I got up to make popcorn and looked in the mirror and my hair had magically rearranged itself into this side-pony/updo thing that I never would have thought to attempt on my own. I'm so into it. Thanks, Bikini Kill. Thanks, Laura Fisher! See you soon, I hope. xo Liza

A little goodbye to sweet Jason Molina

Jason Molina from Songs: Ohia/Magnolia Electric Co. died over the weekend. I didn't know his music all that well, but the album Magnolia Electric Co. came out just before I moved to Los Angeles and I reviewed it for a magazine and fell deep in love with "Farewell Transmission." Along with Elephant by the White Stripes, that song was my leaving-Boston-for-L.A. soundtrack; I'm sure I played it a thousand times while driving home along the Mass Pike, from my office on the Charles River to my parents' house where I was living for the summer. Massachusetts in summer is so hot and green and when I hear "Farewell Transmission" now I can feel the nasty/perfect July air exactly as it felt in my little red Honda with no air conditioning in the summer of 2003. It feels good and it makes me sad.

Moving to Los Angeles is possibly the bravest thing I've ever done in my life but at the time I had almost no fear about it: I just knew it was going to be really good. But even though I wasn't scared I was heartbroken to leave behind everyone I loved. Listening to "Farewell Transmission" intensified the heartbreak, but the lyric "I will be gone but not forever" made it all right. That's my second favorite line from the song, and my first favorite is the part that goes:

"The real truth about is, no one gets it right/The real truth about is, we're all supposed to try" 

I like music because you can use it to turn all the little things you feel into something big and important and beautiful in an incorruptible sort of way. One of my favorite kinds of music is the kind that pulls off earnestness with zero fear of coming off all hokey and sentimental; it's just totally unembarrassed about its big messy heart. I woke up in a rotten mood this morning and then I read about Jason Molina and then I listened to "Farewell Transmission" for the first time in maybe five years and it felt good and made me sad all over again. So I just wanted to say thank you to Jason Molina here, for being sweet and earnest and so completely brave. Here's that beautiful song:

xo Liz