Something Called "Les Petits Beatles" Exists & It's Everything You Want It To Be!

Society 6 is a great website, and that's high praise coming from me (Laura Jane Faulds). As a rule, I hate websites. They're ugly, and often greyish. Hyperlinks are usually blue! A really flat, tacky blue. Yuck. I hate the word, web-site, and I hate that this is a website. I hate that we call the Internet a "web." It's not a web. A web is a thing a spider knits. There's often dew on a real web. It glimmers.

A lot of shit on Society 6 is lame, but welcome to the world! I think Society 6's deal is that artists/illustrators/graphic designers pay Society 6 I'm assuming a shit ton of $$$ to turn their art into such frivolities as: iPhone cases, t-shirts, hoodies, tote bags, something called "skins" which I believe relate to iPads, and so on and so forth. It's like a classier Zazzle that doesn't blow. These sentences are very boring for me to be writing. I bought my iPhone case from Society 6 a year ago and it looks like this:

It's one of the most heavily-complimented material possessions I've ever owned. What do you think "Society 6" means, by the way? Nothing, right? I'm pretty sure it means nothing. Though I'd be interested to know which are the first 5 societies. I'm assuming actual society is Society 1. Maybe Societies 2 through 5 are cults. 

Recently, I was thinking about maybe buying myself a new iPhone case. I Googled "james joyce iphone case" but the results were all extremely lame if you can believe that. Sad, sad, and bleak. And of such poor quality! So then I just called a spade a spade and looked up "beatles" on reliable ol Society 6, and I found this art a person makes called "Les Petits Beatles." What really drives me crazy about all of this is that I've been alive for twenty-seven years and never once thought up the phrase "Les Petits Beatles" on my own! Sad, sad and bleak. I suck at YOLO. 

Les Petits Beatles is a sweet little shop- no, shoppe- filled with weird/adorable drawings of kiddy-looking Beatles with few or no facial features doing cutesy kid stuff. I like how Abbey Road stretches on forever in the photo ("photo." I think this is a "photo."), although I hate the way the artist represented Ringo. He reminds me of the character Barney from The Simpsons and I feel like that elbow patch is way too high up on his elbow. But it's very cool how George has that balloon and Paul has bunny slippers but John has NOTHING, because even Le Petit John is too cool for petit shit.

A true story from my life is that the other night I dreamed I had a daughter and named her Paper. Paper McCartney Faulds. I was going to try and relate that to the paper cap Paul is wearing in this illustration, but I think the one in the paper cap might be George? Maybe Paul is hanging upside down from the branch and holding a ukelele. Anyway, none of this matters, and we're all going to die one day. 

Now here's one of Les Petits Beatles and Les Petits Rolling Stones standing in front of a Union Jack. Ringo's like "What the fuck?", and John Lennon is a Womble. Is Paul the one in the red turtleneck, or is that George? What is Ringo so confused about? Keith's cheeks are stuffed with acorns. "I've rolled my sleeves up!" cries Ronnie Wood. Charlie Watts is old. 

Let's Start A Line Of Feminist Rock & Roll Candy Bars

I bought this goddamn candy bar the other day at Gelson's. I don't usually shop at Gelson's but I'd heard a rumor that they've got this line of ice cream called Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, and one of the flavors is Sweet Potato with Torched Marshmallows, and I really wanted to eat that. I wanted to eat it for lunch. But there was no Sweet Potato with Torched Marshmallows at Gelson's and none of the flavors made my heart sing enough to spend $11 on a pint of ice cream, and so I ended impulse-buying that stupid candy bar with the terrible packaging that confuses me.

I guess it's for girls who refer to their girl friends as "girlfriends" to give to their girlfriends as some girlfriendy Valentine's gift? Because if there's one thing that girls love more than dudes it's chocolate, so let's just roll the two into one and put some cartoony drawings of sports cars and boxer shorts on the package and semi-ironically use words like "beefcake" and "tiger" and call it a day. I think that's insulting to men, and also to women. I took the above photo in recognition of how very little the most sketchy-about-women Rolling Stones lyrics bother me, compared to the existence of the Cinna-man bar. Plus "cinnamon" is such a beautiful word and why would you ever want to turn it into "cinna-man"? "Cinna-man" is awful. I'm going to say the word "cinnamon" a thousand times this week, to honor its loveliness and expunge "cinna-man" from my brain.

Anyway I'd never had a chocolate bar with cinnamon candy before, and I was intrigued, and I bought it and ate it and it was good. But not nearly as good as the cinnamon chocolate bar I made up in my head, which is a Neil Young-inspired chocolate bar called Cinnamon Girl. The cinnamon candy is heart-shaped, unlike the Cinna-man bar, which just has these dumb little shards of cinnamon candy (total missed opportunity, in my opinion). And the chocolate is still dark chocolate but with a really low percentage of cocoa, whatever the lowest percentage is to still qualify as "dark." And the packaging is chill and gorgeous and a much more elegant shade of red, like crimson or carmine or ruby, and instead of bubble letters there's the same font as the font Neiler's name's in on the cover of the "Cinnamon Girl" single. Maybe there's no illustration or maybe there's a picture of Neiler in 1969, being wonderful and beautiful and cool about girls.

I sort of want Cinnamon Girl to be made by Compartes, which is a chocolatier in Los Angeles that makes truffles with flavors like Raspberry Pink Pepper and Browned Butter and Caramelized Plantain and Huckleberry Balsamic, but I'm also open to launching my own line of feminist rock & roll candy bars, with funding from someone filthy-rich (my email's lizbarker77 at gmail.com). We will also make lots of Beatles chocolate bars, like Wild Honey Pie and Strawberry Fields Forever and Strawberry Fields Whatever, and I guess a Rolling Stones chocolate bar called Brown Sugar, and a Paul McCartney chocolate bar called Monkberry Moon Delight. Monkberry Moon Delight will have some kinda of weird and exciting berry, like jostaberries, and the chocolate will be way milky, because "monk" means "milk." It'll be thick and tall, like a Snickers bar, not flat and svelte like one of those self-righteous chocolate bars you get at Whole Foods. Maybe there's also banana and somehow the banana stays fresh forever, all mushy and moist and soft, and maybe there's also caramel or marshmallow or both. The marshmallows would be purple, because "Monkberry Moon Delight" by Paul & Linda McCartney is the purplest song in the whole wide world:

xo Liz

Thing of the Week: Frito Pie & The Rolling Stones, The Best Show

LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Frito Pie & The Rolling Stones

On Sunday night I went to my buddy Sarah's bday party at this newish bar in Highland Park called The Hermosillo. For dinner I had sparkling rose and Frito Pie, which isn't so much an actual pie as just a big dish of Fritos and beans and chilies all glopped together. It was so good! We also ate some fried pickles, and there was this dude there who told me the story about the time he saw the Rolling Stones play a secret show at a dive bar in my hometown in 1981. I've basically been waiting a thousand years for someone to give me a firsthand account of seeing that show, so it was way exciting. My favorite part was when he was like, "I was there with my friend Elliot, who was in this band called The Cars." (OH MY GOD: I love The Cars so much.) I asked the dude if he remembered which song the Rolling Stones opened with and he didn't but thanks to this website I learned it was a cover of "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love" by Solomon Burke. I also learned that they closed with "Jumpin' Jack Flash," and that they played "Let It Bleed," "All Down The Line," and "Under My Thumb" - holy cow! I went to that same bar on my 23rd birthday and saw a killer all-girl Black Sabbath cover band, but I'm guessing they probably weren't quite so good as the Rolling Stones.

Speaking of Keith Richards, another cool thing that happened Sunday was Sarah gave me a belated birthday gift of a Patti Smith postcard and a gigantic ring. This is them:



JEN'S THING OF THE WEEK: The Best Show on WFMU

This week marks the week in history in which I became completely obsessed with the Best Show on WFMU. I'm so glad it's called The Best Show because it's the best show. I don't even want to say/think about how many hours I spent listening to Tom Scharpling & Jon Wurster's voices this week but I will say it's definitely over 6. I had thought/known they were funny before. I had listened a bit. I saw them live at the How Was Your Week thing. I think Gary the Squirrel is really funny and can't even look at his twitter without laughing. This all reached a boiling point for me. I'm now in love. I listened LIVE on Tuesday while drawing coffee cups, how cool is that? Magical. I don't just love this show, specifically the Wurster/Scharpling calls just because they are hilariously funny. They are though, it completely cracks me up. There's a warmth to the show that I can't turn away from. Once it's on I'm there- I hear the intro of a Best Show Gem and there goes an hour. I don't know exactly what it is but here are a few things i think it might be - I think I really like them as humans, I don't feel like there's any misogyny involved at all- my existence is not the butt of any jokes here (which is kind of rare!!!), I like the voices, I like the jokes, I like the anger, I like the love, I like the world of Newbridge, I like the squirrel, I like snacks and I also do really like that it's hilarious. On Tuesday I had a hormonal/existential crisis which I feel like was in some part brought on by my new obsessive love for the Best Show. I feel like this comedy and music radio program makes me want to strive to do better things.

The Cutest Day of Ringo Starr's Entire Life

BY LJ

This week, good old cnn.com posted a really cool article entitled "The Beatles in color: Unseen Photos." I probably would have chosen to capitalize the word "color" in that title, myself, but I guess that's the difference between me and CNN. The sole difference. 

"The Beatles in color" is chock-a-block with myriad colorful and adorable gems of Beatles photos. The colors are particularly beautiful- dull and weird and washed-out in that fabulous 1960s way we all know and love and are nostalgic for even though we didn't exist when colors looked like that and most of our parents probably hadn't even met yet. Tragically, "The Beatles in color" is one of those annoying photo-stories where you can't link to the individual photos, or save the images. I hate when corporations do that! Chill out, CNN. Let me use the photos. Trust me- I am making literally no money off of putting this screen-capped and Photoshop-cropped picture of Ringo Starr on Strawberry Fields Whatever. I'm probably even losing money, somehow.

Anyway, like I said, there's some real gems in this photoset. We've got a nice one of Paul McCartney's upper nose freckles (#3). There's Paul McCartney fake-punching the camera all sly-like with a pink towel wrapped around his neck (#8), Paul McCartney skiing in sunglasses (#12), and Paul McCartney pursing his lips while "venturing into town" (#13). George in the ocean, being the same color as the ocean (#15). Ringo Starr on the 3rd-cutest day of his life (#18), and Ringo Starr on the 2nd-cutest day of his life (#21). But obviously the real starR (I'm dumb. I'm fucking dumb) of "The Beatles in color" is Orange Blanket Ringo, Ringo on the cutest day of his entire life, the snuggest little pal you ever wanted to have playful sex with ever. Like, I want to have sex with him, you know? For a second I just thought "That's kind of gross, Laura. That might qualify as 'TMI' to these people. Maybe change it to 'playfully make out with'?"- but I couldn't, because that would be a lie. I barely even want to playfully make out with this guy at all. Let's just cut to the chase, Ringo. Orange Blanket Ringo. Let's bone and then eat something awesome. Either Eggs Benedict or chicken wings. 

Look At All These Beautiful Pictures Of The Sky

Yesterday Boston.com posted a thing with 23 pictures of the sky and I love them all. They're weird and wild and beautiful and the captions teach you some cool sky trivia -- in picture #7, for example, I learned about noctilucent clouds, which are "a rare super high altitude cloud barely visible from Earth." That's such a pretty word, noctilucent. I just further researched noctilucent clouds and learned they are made of ice crystals and only visible in "deep twilight" and possibly partially caused by frozen exhaust emitted from spaceships*.

Anyway, I wish we were still selling LJ's Because book in our Beatles Etsy Shop so I could tell you to buy it; it's my favorite sky story ever told and it includes the phrase "a babe of skies," which I think about a lot. I love skies and babes and Beatles. They are all my best things. Here are some of my favorite sky pictures from Boston.com:

1. Apparently this is a "storm formation tinged with red dust travel[ing] across the Indian Ocean near Onslow on the Western Australia coast." I don't quite understand what "storm formation" means. It looks like a big peachy-red tidal wave, but apparently it's air? Is that air? I went to pet the air in the top layer of the storm formation. It looks like an angora cat, or "an angora abominable snowman."

2. The aurora borealis, near Norway: 



3. A sunset over the ocean in Mazatlan, Mexico, on my birthday eve last year:



4. The San Gabriel Mountains "looming" over Los Angeles:



That one's my favorite because it's Los Angeles. Taking pictures of the Los Angeles sky is one of my favorite hobbies, although I actually wouldn't identify myself as a person who has "hobbies." Here is the prettiest L.A. sky picture I've taken so far in 2013 -- I call it "Fuck Tha Police":



(* "space shuttles," I mean. Whatever.)

xo Liz

I Am A Picnic

(ABOVE: Picnicky on Picnic Day)

I wore this dress to work the other day. It's periwinkle with peach flowers. It looks tremendously bad on me- I'm not kidding. It's an extremely unflattering dress. That's why I'm only putting up a picture of my face and shoulders, because I am in control of my own image and I don't want to look dumpy on my own blog.  But I like to wear light colors this time of year, to cheer myself and the world up. 

My co-worker came into the kitchen and told me I look like a something summer day. I forget what adjective he used. Maybe "brilliant"? I'm like 70% sure it was brilliant. I'm a little bit sorry to be so braggy, but he's a flatterer, this co-worker of mine. 

"I feel like an Australian housewife," I said, because I did. I always feel like an Australian housewife in that dress. A frumpy Australian housewife with sinewy limbs and leather skin. She'd be chill, though, the Australian housewife I sometimes am. 

"That too," said my co-worker. It's truly undeniable. But there's only so much one can say about their co-worker looking like an Australian housewife, so he went back to the summer day thing, and told me I reminded him of a picnic. I was in a terrible mood, so I appreciated that. "A chill picnic," I said, which I guess is a little redundant. There's not too many aggro picnics, I don't think, but there's definitely ostentatious rich people picnics, which are aggro to me. A picnic is the last place where a rich person should be flaunting their wealth around. Rich people should go eat in restaurants at hotels. Leave the fields for the rest of us. 

I made a point about how I wouldn't be a rich people picnic, and I listed off some names of foods that wouldn't be available at the picnic that I am, such as "like, brie." And "like, oysters."In addition to not wanting to be an ostentatious rich people picnic, I even LESS want to be a HEALTHY picnic. Kale and quinoa are fine for a weekday evening, but a picnic deserves better. My co-worker saw my point. He said that there would be fried chicken at my picnic, the Me Picnic, and I said "YES." A yes both capitalized and italicized; a loud, strong YES. He said "homemade fried chicken," and I said "fried chicken eaten off a paper napkin." 

So, I've decided that that's what I'm going to be from now on. That's the experience I want to give to the world. Talking to me will from now on be the talking to a person equivalent of attending a chill picnic where the main course is homemade fried chicken eaten off of a paper napkin. 

I like self-identifying as this kooky idea because, you know, picnics are a little whimsical, a little cutesy, but the fried chicken grosses it up. It's dirty and nasty. It's actually good, not just the idea of good. It would look blah on Instagram. It's REAL.

PS: There would also be pink champagne at my picnic.

Signed,
Laura Jane

Thing of the Week: Banh Mi & Pyjamas Shopping Spree Day, 'Your Sister's Sister' & Magic Marshmallows, Laura Dern

LJ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Banh Mi & Pyjamas Shopping Spree Day

Monday was one of those days when you accidentally catch a glimpse of your reflection in a store window and you look surprisingly way better than you expected. I was wearing a stripey knit dress and a peacoat. My hair was up in a jaw clip. Yup! A jaw clip. That's a thing I do, for work sometimes. Normally it's more of a "Life's too short to care very much about anything" sort of deal, but on Monday it put forward the illusion of a chignon. 

I walked to Banh Mi Boys because I wanted to eat something I'd never eaten before. I'd literally never eaten a Banh Mi in my life. Which is weird. I'm usually pretty up on "cool food trends," I guess. I've eaten a taco, for instance. I've eaten wood-fired pizza. Etc. I think I missed the boat on Banh Mi because I have a preference for eating food out of bowls. I don't like Pho, though- it's too much work. I don't know why I capitalized Pho just there. Once I was on a Pho, pho, date, and the dude made such a big deal over saying it "fuh," like twenty times per sentence. I know that's the proper way to say it and all, but it's just such an ugly sound to hear a man say. 

People shit-talk Banh Mi Boys a lot, I guess because it's a hipster co-opting of a food item that you can get for better and cheaper at someplace more legitimate. But I don't know of any of those places. And now I don't care, because on Monday I fell in love with my pork belly Banh Mi and my jicama papaya salad and I just want to eat that perfect, perfect meal over and over again every day forever and if a Banh Mi Boys doesn't open up next door to my house soon I'm probably going to kill myself. Or die of natural causes. It was one of those insane eating experiences that probably has less to do with the actual food than it does with the Universe lining up to gift you with the right thing at the right time, which is true of just about anything. I was just grinning my face off in that damn Banh Mi restaurant. I wanted to shake my Banh Mi's hand. Punch it in the shoulder. Show it what pals we were. 

After I ate my beautiful Banh Mi I started commuting to work and then got a text from my manager saying my shift got cut. I was stoked rather than bummed. I had to buy some groceries. I was going to buy them on my way home from work- at, like, midnight- which I was really dreading. I decided to go to the big new Loblaws on Queen Street. (I went insane there. I bought every flavor of mini-quiche, and cinnamon tea biscuits. It was adorable) Afterward, I stopped into Joe Fresh, where I went on a "pyjamas shopping spree," which I learned is one of the best things a person can ever do. Pyjamas are hella cheap. 

I bought two pairs of pyjama pants, one pair of pyjama shorts, and one pyjama DRESS. As you can see, these are some solidly George Harrison-y jammers we are talking about here. The other day at work I delivered this weird impassioned monologue about how much I love pyjamas. I was like "YOU MIGHT NOT THINK I LOVE PYJAMAS AS MUCH AS I ACTUALLY LOVE PYJAMAS" and then did not shut up until I'd externalized every single detail of my relationship with pyjamas. "I USED TO GET SO MAD AT MY EX-BOYFRIEND FOR NOT LIKING PYJAMAS AS MUCH AS I THINK A PERSON SHOULD LIKE PYJAMAS." 

The pyjamas dress is super-cute and I have made the choice to wear it as real clothes. The big secret of my personal style is that almost everything I wear is either pyjamas or as close to pyjamas as real clothes can possibly get. That's why I'm such a chill and happy person.  Life is really easy once you get the hang of it. 

LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Emily Blunt in Your Sister's Sister & My Magic Marshmallows

I watched Your Sister's Sister last Saturday morning. It's a really sweet movie, sweet in a totally non-cloying way, and I very much appreciate its smallness. Movies and books and stories and records that are small in scope are my thing lately; I like to curl up inside their tiny worlds. And I was always pretty much pro-Emily Blunt but, holy cow, her performance in Your Sister's Sister is so goddamn endearing. Iris is just so super-lovable: I love when she sneaks into bed with her dehydrated-banana-eating pill of a sister, I love how she wears her little winter hat to sleep, I love that her name's Iris. She's cute without being cutesy and there's so much warmth to her and to the whole movie in general. I watched it in bed and then I got up and had a big tea and a cinnamon-sugar pancake and listened to Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., on the porch couch, in the sun.

My other fave thing this week is the mini-marshmallow portion of my new Swiss Miss "Marshmallow Madness" hot chocolate mix. My mini-marshmallows are for dreamers only.

JEN'S THING OF THE WEEK: Laura Dern

 

I'm really into Laura Dern in general. She's great. I've been extra feeling her this week. I watched a few episodes Enlightened, which I don't have a strong feeling about yet. Probably I like it a lot. Two weeks ago or whatever she let it slip that she & David Lynch are "cooking up something". Awesome. Thanks guys!! I'm hugely looking forward to their next movie(or not movie, whatever they do) even if it's absolutely terrifying. If I could retroactively give big movie awards I'd give her all of them for her performance in INLAND EMPIRE. I mean, oh my god. Last night I watched her in Citizen Ruth. I feel dumb for not seeing this earlier because I loved it. She is an immense talent and her face is cool. She goes there. She also meditates. I like how her mom always plays her mom. Finally, Jeff Goldblum dropped water on the back of her hand that one time!! That must have been so enjoyable for her (maybe?). Laura Dern, I love you. Done.