Thing of the Week: All Liz's New $5 T-Shirts, Highbrow & Lowbrow Baked Goods

LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: All My New $5 T-Shirts

On Saturday morning I went to a sample sale at Blood Is The New Black. It was happening at the same time as the Echo Park Christmas parade, which meant that there were lots of Christmas clowns dancing down Sunset Blvd to "Sexy & I Know It" as we shopped. I got four t-shirts for five bucks each: a shirt that says "Good Hearted Woman" (from the Waylon Jennings collection), one of Sterling Bartlett's Metal Bears tank tops, one of Sterling Bartlett's Punk Birds tank tops (v. similar to this muscle tee), and the Jane & Serge muscle tee which is the only one I haven't worn yet. Right now the Waylon Jennings one is my fave:

I don't really know anything about Waylon Jennings, but I love the part in Walk The Line when Johnny Cash is living with Waylon Jennings and they're really down-and-out, and Johnny asks Waylon why the phone's disconnected, and Waylon says the phone company turned it off due to "insufficient fundulation." I always mean to say that whenever I don't have enough money for something, but then I always forget.

Also on Saturday I went to my friends' wedding and it was the raddest wedding ever. The bride walked down the aisle to the music that plays at the end of the original Star Wars:

and at the end of the ceremony they danced back up the aisle together to "Silly Love Songs" by Wings -- so cute! And then later that night I went to a tree-trimming party and ate several of those cookies that're sugar cookies with a Hershey's Kiss pressed into the center, which are definitely the top three holiday cookies of all time. I wore my Punk Birds shirt and it was a hit, and the punch was made with really big slices of green apples. All in all, a very chill and fruitful Darby Crash Death Day.

LJ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Highbrow & Lowbrow Baked Goods

My mom and I went to Nadege. I guess it's fair to point out that these are the highbrow baked goods I'm referring to, in case you're fucking dumb and suck at contextualizing. She had the lil guy on the right, which is adorably named "the Beatrix Potter." Just as everything should be! (I'm naming my kid Beatrix Potter and I'm also naming my dog Beatrix Potter, not to mention my cat. And my bird.) It's hazelnut carrot cake with layered with hazelnut buttercream. I love the way the frosting shines like enamel. I had the La Mancha: saffron creme brulee, honey mousse, blackberry coulis, and a shortbread biscuit. I feel kind of stupid saying "It was delicious" because OBVS! Imagine if it wasn't? "Yeah this delicate yet complex petit-four made out of exclusively delicious ingredients that I bought for $8.50 at a renowned patisserie was fucking revolting. Inedible. Slop, basically."  

Amanda and I went to Glory Hole. A couple weeks ago I met Jenn for brunch at Easy and after eating we walked past Glory Hole and I wanted a donut so bad but I'd just eaten so much brunch and had to go to work kind of soon and I knew that a donut would push my stomach over the edge into really unpleasant territory and I just couldn't do that to myself. So I didn't eat a Glory Hole donut that day; instead I became obsessed with looking at the Glory Hole website like ten thousand times per day. All I wanted in the world was to eat a toast & butter donut, but I also wanted a black forest cake donut, and an Elvis, so I made a plan to go to Glory Hole and try a zillion different flavs with Amanda, my pal who is always game to eat as much food as me. You don't want to go out for donuts with a "light eater." 

The thing with the egg in it was called a breakfast bun and I could eat one of them for breakfast every day for the next ten years probably. There was salami baked into the bread. We ordered the breakfast bun because we wanted to give ourselves some "nutrition." 

They were out of toast & butter donuts, so I a bit wanted to kill myself for a sec, but then I ate a bite of a different donut and then I wanted to live. It's hard to describe the tastes of things. The Elvis is under the breakfast bun. It had peanut butter frosting, chunks of peanuts, banana chips, bacon, and a marshmallow. Amanda asked the Glory Hole employee if the marshmallow was home-made and he said, "I *wish* this was my home!"- it was adorable. And yes, it was. The donut was incredible. The pieces of peanut really pushed it over the edge, texturally. The maple was perfect. I wrote a big part about a maple donut into a story I'm writing because I can't stop thinking about it. But black forest cake was my fav. Just look at that thing! We ate it on stone church steps. I feel so put out, in life, by my always having to eat foods that don't have maraschino cherries on them. I call bullshit on every single thing in the world that isn't a maraschino cherry.

Ravi Shankar & George Harrison Are Both Dead & That's The World We Live In

It is 12:16 AM on Wednesday night or Thursday morning and I am writing this instead of working on the short story I'm supposed to be working on but I'm okay with that about myself. Tonight I had a terrible night at work. I was stressing out about how I was stuck at shitty work instead of working on the short story I'm supposed to be working on and I felt like I was dying and like I couldn't be real with anybody. I was not myself. I've had staggeringly bad headaches all week, headaches so bad you can taste them all gristly at the top of your nose like you just got punched. On the subway home I didn't read and I didn't listen to music, and I thought my feet were going to fall off. 

I came home and took my shoes off. It was one of the most beautiful "taking my shoes off" experiences of my life. I might go bathe my feet in hot water. I poured myself a glass of Sangiovese and found my copy of The Sounds of India on LP. I stole it from my father, P. Faulds. He bought it in 1967, as you can surely see. It's weird to think about my dad making the choice to buy that record 45 years ago and then 45 years passing and Ravi Shankar dying and his daughter blissing out to the very same copy. Though I am 100% sure my dad doesn't find it all as sentimentally gorgeous as I do. My 2012 dad is generally pissed at me for stealing all his records and taking shitty care of them.  

I sat cross-legged on my bed drinking my glass of wine and listening to Side B because there's less of Ravi explaining scales on Side B, more of Ravi playing songs. This music sounds like the sky. The sitar is the sound of the sky; that's my big "sitar opinion." I think it's a little bit sad that the record is called The Sounds of India, since Ravi Shankar was from Bangladesh. He was George Harrison's sitar teacher. Ravi Shankar being from Bangladesh is such a big part of why I have George Harrison's name tattooed on my wrist. I want to be serious like they were serious. 

I felt so warm. The wine was warm and the music was warm and my headache went away but now it's back, obviously, because I'm looking at the staticky abrasive white of a computer screen. I don't know why I'm so stupid that I forced myself to come to my computer and write it down instead of keeping on living it, I guess because it felt like a solid compromise between doing nothing and working on that story, and also because I wanted to remember it. I knew if I saved it writing this down for tomorrow morning it'd be crappier and I probably wouldn't even write it. So here you go, Laura. Always remember sitting on your bed drinking a glass of Sangiovese and listening to Ravi Shankar the day after Ravi Shankar died. You were warm and you thought you might cry but you didn't. You wished you could trap yourself in that moment forever. Then you blogged.

Top 11 Sweetest Rock & Roll Moments From 'Freaks & Geeks'

BY LIZ

If you haven't gotten the Judd Apatow-edited issue of Vanity Fair yet, totally get it as soon as you can. It's so wonderful and my favorite is the oral history of Freaks & Geeks -- after work on Friday afternoon I went Christmas shopping and then bought myself the magazine and read the Freaks & Geeks feature while eating a homemade Pop Tart; it was perfect. I've heard the story of what happened to Freaks & Geeks a zillion times (through other magazine/Internet articles, and DVD commentaries, and the old Freaks & Geeks website which was weirdly exhaustive), but somehow it was still heartbreaking to see how the unraveling of the show sort of devastated nearly everyone involved. 

I think about Freaks & Geeks a lot; its funny-melancholy vibe and its unabashed yet elegant huge-heartedness are something I forever aspire to in my own writing. I also romanticize the hell out of the rock-and-roll era it's set in, and ended up stealing that setting for my own book, which was a smart move. There are so many songs I intensely love because of hearing them on Freaks & Geeks, but here's just a little top 11 of my favorite rock & roll moments from the show. Oh and I just made this Spotify playlist of every song ever played on Freaks & Geeks - so merry Christmas to all, and to all a sweetly painful yet subtly restorative night.

i. The fakeout opening scene with the Van Halen and the hotness. When I hear "Runnin' with the Devil," the first thing I think of is my first date with my Van Halen boyfriend, which I wrote about in our "10 Beatles Songs We'd Rather Die Than Live Without" post. But the second and sweeter thing I think of is the opening scene of the Freaks & Geeks pilot, and how genius and beautiful and hot it is when the camera pans away from the jock and the cheerleader and heads down under the bleachers, with the freaks shooting the shit about Molly Hatchet. They will never stop seeming so cool to me, those kids under the bleachers, especially Daniel Desario. And I know James Franco's kind of a pill but I've resigned myself to loving him forever, 97 percent of Daniel and 3 percent because of Pineapple Express. I will forever be 100 percent Franco-positive. 




ii. When the freaks all sing "Gonna Raise Hell" by Cheap Trick in Daniel's car on Halloween. I feel bad for Lindsey, that she's so anxious about skipping out on handing out candy with her mom, but mostly I'm just overwhelmed with love for Jason Segel and James Franco and Seth Rogen. They all look so tough! Even though they're little babies! When the chorus starts up and they all sing together I'm like, "Oh, you guys are all gonna be so famous someday soon! I'm just so proud of all of you!"

iii. That Dazed & Confused-y scene with "Free-For-All" by Ted Nugent. Also from the Halloween episode. Dazed & Confused-y because of the smashing-mailboxes-with-baseball-bats, I mean. And Ted Nugent's the worst person in the world but I love his rock & roll, and "Free-For-All" is in my Ted Nugent top five. A couple years ago it was about 100 degrees out a week before Christmas and I put on a t-shirt that was ripped-up in a semi-trampish way, and some jeans and "warrior princess" headband, and got an ice cream cone at the drugstore and walked all around my neighborhood listening to "Free-For-All," feeling so tough. That was back when I was in my "aspiring to be the world's most sweethearted sleazebag phase," which I've totally outgrown, but it was fun while it lasted. P.S. Is it true that Ted Nugent never even smoked pot? Kind of a drag, that the dude who sang a line as great as "Stakes are high and so am I" never did any drugs.

iv. Kim Kelly almost running James Franco over after Ann Perkins sucks on his thumb in the park. "Kim Kelly's My Friend" is my favorite episode, cuz of riot grrrl, sort of. That part with the thumb-sucking (3:10 of the video below) is way intense and I totally get the chills when Kim bugs out and starts screaming and being psychotic -- "Ice Cream Man" by Van Halen is such a rad song to nearly commit vehicular homicide to. One time I was in Starbucks and Busy Philips sat down next to me with her little daughter, and Busy Phillips was telling the daughter about how she'd messed up the start date of the daughter's dance class, and the class didn't actually start till September. It was like May or June at the time and the daughter asked, "DOES SEPTEMBER MEAN TOMORROW?" and it was so sweet. I was like, "Holy shit, Kim Kelly, could your kid be any goddamn cuter?" All in all, a cool day at Starbucks.

The Best Gift Anyone Has Ever Given Me

Amanda gave me these Beatles Matryoshka dolls on Sunday afternoon. We were walking down the street in Parkdale and I lost my shit. I definitely overreacted. I mean obviously Beatles Matryoshka dolls are something that I would like, like it would be really strange if I was given Beatles Matryoshkas and just said, "Um, thanks. That's very generous of you, but these don't really appeal to me." But even I was surprised by how intensely I started freaking out over loving them. They are literally the best gift anyone has ever given me, right down to how they're even the Sgt. Pepper Beatles! Which is way cooler than if they were the 1964 Beatles. And look at the benevolent look in Matryoshka Paul's eyes! The tiniest Matryoshka is a guitar neck. 

On Sunday night I was on the phone with Elizabeth Barker and I was like "Today Amanda gave me the best gift anyone has ever given me! Beatles Babushkas!" and Liz asked, "What's a Babushka?" and I said, "You know, those Russian stacking dolls." She said, "Oh, I've always called those Matryoshka dolls," and I said "Huh. Oh. You're probably right." This morning I Wikipediaed the whole shebang, and here is a direct quote from Wikipedia: "They are sometimes incorrectly referred to as babushka dolls (headscarf dolls)," so there you go. Wikipedia sure showed me. 

-LJ

We Just Saw Neil Young + Patti Smith & We Believe Forever

BY JEN MAY & ELIZABETH BARKER

JEN (WHO SAW NEIL & PATTI ON NOVEMBER 27 AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN): This was my first time seeing Neil Young. I love Neil Young. I have VERY LITTLE criticism here. My love may be blinding or maybe Neil is just in a really excellent and generous place right now.

LIZ (WHO SAW NEIL & PATTI ON NOVEMBER 26 AT THE BOSTON GARDEN): This was my second time seeing Neil Young! The first time was 15 years ago, as part of the H.O.R.D.E. festival. But back then I was a dumb teenager who didn't care about Neil Young, and this sweet dude I had a crush on was there, so for most of Neil's set I just hung out with the dude and didn't pay attention to Neil. I too have very little criticism of my November 2012 Neiler experience. I too am full of love.

HERE IS A LIST OF OUR FAVORITE NEIL MOMENTS & THINGS:

(Liz's Neil show, shortly before Patti Smith came on)

i. How they played all of "A Day In The Life" by The Beatles just before Neil came out. I got wicked emotional. At first I was scared they were just going to play the beginning and cut it off before Paul's part but, no, of course Neil let the entire song play. It reminded me of when I went to see U2 a month after September 11th and before they came out they played all of "All You Need Is Love" and I totally cried and it was so cathartic. I love The Beatles. I love when other bands I love do a great job of using The Beatles for emotional manipulation. (Liz)

ii. Fabulous stage design. The signature Neil Giant Amps. Cute. Love it. The stage crew in lab coats or construction outfits? Mega love it. My dad saw Neil in 1978 (I think), he had third row seats. Whenever he talks about the show he talks about the hooded red eyed demons that dragged out the prop amps. I love how Neil puts in effort to make even the stage setup be something unforgettable. During "Born in Ontario" when there was an organ on stage being played by no one but was in the spotlight during the organ solos? Oh my god. I was weirdly super into trash paper blowing around during the noise freak out of "Walk Like a Giant." He's so visual! Neil follows is heart, which is really respectable. He goes with it even if the idea is totally lame, like when he had a woman carrying a guitar case slowly wander the stage during  "Singer Without a Song." That was deeply uncool. (Jen)

Dub of Norwegian Wood

By Laura Jane Faulds

(Illustrated by Jen May)

That beautiful wife of his was absurdly pretty and I loved her. It was dumb of me to love her but I couldn’t help myself- 
        “I love the wife!” I told Adelaide.
        “That makes no sense,” she said.
        “Good!” I cried, “Good. Good, then! Nothing makes sense! Nothing of this entire situation makes any sense at all, so cool! Let’s just go with it! Let’s go with the flow! Who even knows, at this point? I may as well just go the fuck ahead and love his wife; who cares? All bets are off! I love his wife!”
        “I see your point,” she said-
        Her hips looked very wide to me, so Beyonce-brand slammin’ in that purple or blue or pink or green dress she wore: 1970s polyester, patterned with toucans or pansies or birds of paradise or just as likely something else. I would guess her Zodiac sign as being either Pisces or Virgo. I imagined a (maybe?)-inevitable future wherein my longer-haired self would already have stolen him away from her and, using all the imaginary money I believed he’d give me, would take her out for lunch. A nice lunch. Tucking wispy strands of hair behind my ears although my hair was never that texture, smoking cigarettes because in the story we’re either outdoors and it’s summer or, more interestingly, inside in some weird city where you’re still allowed to smoke indoors- I smoked then, and believed I never wouldn’t- and that’s when she’d forgive me. She would’ve forgiven me in her head a long time ago, but on that shining smoking afternoon she'd tell me and I'd be graceful while eating petit-fours in a world where I’d be graceful, where it’d be so easy for her to forgive me in a world where the Beatles were right and love mattered most, where we’d believe love mattered most because we’d have money, a world wherein I’d love him and he’d love me and she’d see it and she’d love us and we’d love her. 
        And in this world I invented she was the honey in honeymoon and I was the moon. Where shit makes more sense this way and every perfect thing always happens for the right reasons, where she’d find someone better, and fast. At tea I’d pour more tea into her cup and over its arc we’d unload tales of his most irritating he-isms until I’m crying for laughing and she’d have crow’s feet, I’d touch her ears and using my shoulders for leverage he’d rock back and forth on the balls of his feet and she’d be happy, I’d be happy, he’d be happy, and my belief in the probability of that perverse and dazzling happiness was the defining characteristic of who and how I was that summer. 

Kurt Cobain Lives in Mary Timony's Valley of One Thousand Perfumes and He Likes It

BY LIZ

I've been thinking about Kurt Cobain a lot lately and decided I'm going to write a bunch of little posts about relating to him in a positive/energizing/edifying way. It started with my "13 Nirvana Songs That Make Me Feel Happy & Free & Full of Light" list and it'll end when I figure out "what Kurt Cobain means to me" or when I get sick of writing about Kurt Cobain -- whichever comes first. This one's about Mary Timony and her song "The Valley of One Thousand Perfumes."

---

On Friday I was running and listening to my iPod on shuffle and "The Valley of One Thousand Perfumes" came on. It's on Mary Timony's first solo record Mountains and it goes like this:



Because I like to make things up, I made up a thing about how "The Valley of One Thousand Perfumes" was written by my 16-year-old self soon after Kurt Cobain's death. There are lots of lyrics you can easily twist into being about Kurt Cobain, like:

-"But you are sadder than the setting sun, and more beautiful than anyone"

-"Today our music doesn't have enough style, we're gonna to the country from a suicide"

-"Don't you know much you mean to me? It makes me wanna kill myself"

-"All I ever wanted was to talk to you/It's all I really still want to do"

Mary Timony's the songwriter I most relate to, out of all the songwriters I have ever loved. She builds make-believe worlds with her songs and I love this interview where she talks about how that world-building is "attractive to me because you can imagine being in this place that's far away from reality and thus far away from the pain of everyday life":



I love the idea of purposeful escapism, escapism as self-preservation. There's no world-building in Kurt Cobain's lyrics: he's just entirely stuck and sunk into this world, and the pain of that is what drives most of his songs. The only escape in his lyrics is death and dying ("Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld so I can sigh eternally," "Look on the bright side, suicide," etc etc etc etc etc), but it seems like there was some escape for him in actually playing music. So many of my favorite Kurt moments are the ones when he seems completely lost in messing around with his guitar, like that "Scentless Apprentice" video I wrote about and can't stop watching. Dave Grohl once said this great thing about how Kurt would always grind his teeth in time with the drums when he was playing -- he's doing that here and I bet it was hell on his jaw (I'm a teeth-grinder too, it hurts), but there's something deep and meditative about it. And I love what Kurt says about punk rock, in this video of him playing a mega-fucked-up version of "Come As You Are":



I think it's so cool when he's sincere about things like freedom and passion, and I'm happy he got to have those moments of being free. When I'm "in the right place" and I listen to Nirvana super-loud, the crazy and brutal/beautiful energy of it rips me out of myself, but also makes me feel so wholly myself in a really powerful and electrifying way, and that makes me feel free too.