4 Reasons Why I'm In Love With Alex Chilton

BY LIZ

This is Alex Chilton. You've probably been hearing his voice your whole life, if you've ever heard that song that goes Lonely days are gone, I'm a-goin' home/My baby just-a wrote me a letter. That's "The Letter" by The Box Tops, which Alex was in when he was a baby/teenager. When I first started getting into Big Star I figured someone else in The Box Tops sang on "The Letter" 'cause Alex's voice is usually all high and sweet and weird - but turns out it's totally him, he's just using some growly big-man voice. I like his weird voice about thousand times better, for whatever that's worth.

Anyway I'm desperately love with Alex Chilton now and it's so heavy. Here are four of the things that contributed to his becoming my everything:

i. ASTROLOGY

Alex Chilton and I have the same birthday (December 28th), which means a lot to me. A cool thing about Alex is that birthdays meant a lot to him too. I learned that from this book called Big Star: The Short Life, Painful Death, and Unexpected Resurrection of the Kings of Power Pop, which I read over the past few weeks. Here is a page I love (just read the underlined part):

Haha, my nails are so trashed. Alex is so cool. I love how he didn't share his weed and I love how he's so enlightened in his misanthropy. He cares so much more about the heavens than all the jerks on Earth.

ii. HE WRITES THE BEST SONGS OUT OF ANYONE IN THE WORLD! OR AT LEAST THE BEST SONGS TO ME

I'm not going to write about his music in this post (I'm not ready for that), but it's worth noting that my favorite Alex Chilton solo song today is "Take Me Home and Make Me Like It" (whose title Liz Phair ripped off for the lyrics to "Flower," in that "genius steals" sort of way):

I have so much to say about "Take Me Home and Make Me Like It," but for now I'll just tell you that it's the best mix of fun and fucked-up and perfect I can ever remember hearing in a song. Alex Chilton is the most beautiful sicko.

iii. THAT ENLIGHTENED MISANTHROPY THING I WAS JUST TALKING ABOUT

At first when I started reading the Big Star book I was like, "I hope I don't learn anything bad about Alex Chilton, I hope Alex Chilton doesn't turn out to be a jerk." SPOILER ALERT: Alex Chilton was a total jerk! He was "difficult" and mean and sometimes violent - or at least that's true of what we know of him from the Big Star book, which of course is hardly very much at all. There's this one part where it's 1981 and some fan takes a bus from northern California to Memphis just to try to track down Alex, because he loves Big Star so much, and ends up finding him in a bar and Alex agrees to hang out with him as long as the guy buys all his cigarettes and booze and doesn't talk about music. And they hang out for a week and one night go to the hospital where Jerry Lee Lewis is rumored to be dying and drink beer and eat Taco Bell on the front lawn, and then the dude tells Alex he can't afford to keep paying for his shit, and Alex is like "All right, see ya" and then that's that and the guys gets back on the bus and goes home.

There's also this part earlier in the book where it's the Box Tops days and Alex is hanging out at Dennis Wilson's house and the Manson Family's there, and they send Alex out to buy groceries and he forgets the milk and the Manson Family bugs out, and Alex gets "strange vibes" and decides to leave. I don't know what that has to do with enlightened misanthropy, but I think it's kinda amusing that it took getting yelled at about milk for Alex to realize something a little off about Charles Manson.

Anyway the point is I don't care, even if Alex Chilton was a rotten human being every second of his life. People who put greatness into the world have every right to be ridiculous assholes whenever they feel like it. This is an important truth.

iv. GRACEFULNESS & BEAUTY

I mean look at him for god's sake:

And his voice, his beautiful weird angelic heart-killing heart-saving beautiful beautiful voice. I bet in heaven you just hear "Stroke It Noel" all the time, it just plays from the air.

And speaking of "The Letter" and of gracefulness and beauty, I'm currently addicted to watching this video of The Box Tops lip-synching the letter on some TV show in 1967. Alex is 16 here and it feels a little gross to be in love with a 16-year-old boy but I can't help it, he's perfect. I love his tie, plus his general "tie approach"/style/hotness/legs/self. I love his hair, and how for most of the song he alternates between looking he's about to cry and looking like he hates everything. I love how stoned his eyes are when he's trying not to laugh. I love how he basically has no moves, but then in the last few moments he has ALL THE MOVES. I love his "pointing move," and above all I love how he keeps up the "I hate everything" look even while dancing.

Beautifully dance your way through hating everything, is one of the four best things I've learned since falling in love with Alex Chilton last Friday. I love you Alex, so much.

(P.S. All of the pics in this post came from here.)

My Imaginary Soundtrack to the Beautiful Book 'Uses for Boys'

This me and my copy of Uses for Boys by Erica Lorraine Scheidt, who also does the wonderful blog Royal Quiet DeLuxe. Uses for Boys is the story of Anna, daughter of a single mom who's too caught up with the men in her life to really take care of her kid. By the time Anna's thirteen she's all caught up with boys too, but it's all loveless and joyless and after a while Anna's loneliness is almost unbearable. The book's a goddamn heartbreaker but the dreaminess of Erica's writing sort of sweeps you up and lulls you; it's practically narcotic. I got lost in reading it and now I'm so nostalgic for that feeling.

So I made this playlist of songs for Anna - it starts with "Psychic Hearts" by Thurston Moore because Anna's mom is a mixed-up jerk and the kids at school call her slut and cuz I want to kill all the boys with their fucked-up noise and cuz Laugh all the time, try to get high is good advice for Anna, and for everyone in general. I went to a weird place in putting these songs together, some sad and creepy corner of teenage-girl-dom that I don't access much anymore but felt good to sink into again for a little while. The strangest surprise in all that was remembering how "Sleeping Where I Want" by Veruca Salt is a big ripoff of "Shatter" by Liz Phair but also pretty great. Also also also, This Mortal Coil's cover of "You and Your Sister" by Chris Bell (of Big Star, AKA THE GREATEST BAND IN ROCKANDROLL HISTORY) is gorgeous and perfect and Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly sing it and I'm dying, I'm dead.

READ THIS BOOK

LISTEN TO THESE SONGS

Benjamin Mach Is My Dream Best Friend

BY LAURA JANE

Benjamin Mach got voted off Project Runway two weeks ago, and I can't deal with it. He was my favorite Project Runway contestant of all time, which is a shocker in itself. I thought my fav Project Runway contestant would always be Mondo. 

I started watching Season 11 of Project Runway a little bit after the fact, because in February all I did was watch 30 Rock. It was my everything, and I didn't have time for any other TV shows. I am just going to take this brief moment out of my life to admit to the Internet that I watched the entire series of 30 Rock in twenty-eight days, which averages out to being 4.92 episodes of 30 Rock per day. So how's that for a wake-up call, Laura Jane Faulds? 

It's fine, thank you. It's a very good wake-up call. I put an "all TV except for Project Runway" ban on myself for March. I bought myself a little air organ and in the morning I play T.Rex songs on my air organ. Today I am going to telephone two of my old employers to ask them document-related questions about taxation. I am reading a book about James Joyce. 

Anyway, pre-TV ban, I watched the first seven episodes of Project Runway Season 11 in four days; around halfway through, I started becoming legitimately anxious about the possibility of Benjamin Mach getting voted off. I was like, "How will I even be able to watch this show without him?" I honestly wasn't sure if I'd be able to do that. 

So I Googled Benjamin Mach, and found out that he was RIDICULOUSLY voted off the show for designing a reasonably cute dress for a sassy old lady who loved both Benjamin and her dress. So that's really "fair," Zac Posen and Nina Garcia. That makes all the sense in the world... if you're on DRUGS. Boom! Maybe they're on drugs. Maybe Nina Garcia and Zac Posen dropped acid, and then they went and judged the old lady challenge. Bold move, you two. (Also: Zac Posen looks exactly like a character in a JD Salinger short story! I Tweeted and deleted that statement a few days ago because I don't think it makes any actual sense. But to me it's uncanny. He could be Boo Boo Glass' husband! Nah, fuck it. Go there, LJ. He could be SEYMOUR.)

Seen above is a picture of the dress Benjamin Mach made during this season's "flowers & hardware challenge," in which the designers had to make dresses out of flowers and hardware. Speaking of acid, do you think the person who thought of the idea for the flowers and hardware challenge was on acid? I sort of do. One last thing about acid: wouldn't it be great if Tim Gunn waltzed on into the workroom and was like "Hi, Designers- this challenge has a twist," and the designers would be all "Aw, man," thinking the twist would be, like, having less time or having to make another garment, and then Tim would say "You'll have to completely the remainder of this challenge high on acid," and then they'd all drop out of the competition because thinking about the concept of reality TV on acid while on a reality TV show is obviously too much for the human mind to handle. Also, why was Tu on the show? He didn't speak English. It was really weird. All of his voiceovers were just a bunch of strung-together prepositions accented by the occasional "girl" or "hot mess." 

Point being, Benjamin's flower dress was fucking adorable, one of the Top 5 Project Runway dresses of all-time that I'd actually pay money to wear in real life. I want to wear it! I want to wear it to work tonight. I want to bartend in this dress. OH and the coolest part of the dress is that Benjamin constructed his own LOOM to make it. Great time management, Benjamin. Very efficient loom-making. God! Loom-making. "Making your own loom" is such a cool thing  for a human being to do. It's so Vashti Bunyan. 

Benjamin also has killer personal style. Sometimes he'll wear a fancy tailored suit with a bow-tie but not in a prissy way that makes you feel like he'd ever judge you for wearing the same exact black stockings thirteen days in a row. Fashion people are so often unbearable but Benjamin Mach is really chill about it. Most days of my life I wear a giant Kinks or Rolling Stones t-shirt with a short skirt and lace-up boots and I think Benjamin would GET IT, unlike Richard Hallmarq or Stanley Hudson who would obviously want me to do an Old Hollywood glam thing. Sometimes Benjamin wears a floral t-shirt that looks like it might be made out of sweatshirt material and sometimes he wears a t-shirt with hearts all over it. Either way, Benjamin has great taste in t-shirts. He also has the best accent I've ever heard in my life.  He's from Australia but lived in London for eight years and speaks in dazzingly perfect received pronunciation which occasionally takes a turn toward the1964 Paul McCartney. He also makes these very lovely Japanese glass bead necklaces: 

I am totally going to buy one next time I get paid, because supporting Benjamin Mach is very important to me. I love him dearly. In one episode, there's a little bit where he talks about how he used to be in an emotionally abusive relationship, and starts to cry. I started crying watching it! I don't want Benjamin Mach to ever feel any pain ever. I hope the person who emotionally abused  Benjamin Mach never crosses my path because I swear to God I will fuck that jerk's face up. Oh and of course Ben was SUPER-elegant about getting voted off Project Runway. What a mensch.

Anyway, Ben, if you're reading this (which I hope you are because I am definitely planning on Tweeting it at you), I just wanted to let you know that I am moving to London next year, so hopefully we can hang out and set this whole "being best friends" plan of my mine into motion. Let's drink hella white wine, talk about what life is like, and dance really stupidly to "Freaks". 

When Life Gives You Lemons, Listen to 'Come On Feel The Lemonheads'

WORDS BY ELIZABETH BARKER, ILLUSTRATION BY JEN MAY

It was Evan Dando's birthday on Monday. Happy birthday, Evan! Here are four little stories about some kids and a supermodel and a cute jar of juice:

i. I went to Laurel Canyon Country Store a couple Tuesdays ago - I was coming home from the Valley, and you can't drive down Laurel Canyon Boulevard and not stop at the Canyon Store. I bought a bottle of Canyon Store wine and a bag of mini-marshmallows, and also some nag champa incense. There was a little boy in front of me in line and his name was Jagger, he looked like if Thurston Moore was blonde and a five-year-old. Jagger couldn't decide between M&Ms and Starburst and his mom was trying to hurry him along, for my sake, and I smiled at her like "No, it's cool, I am more than happy to stand here forever and watch your adorable child pick out his candy," which was true: Jagger seemed like a great kid and had such good energy; he was genuinely torn between the M&Ms and the Starburst and I identified with that. In the end he got the M&Ms, and as they walked out he turned to his mom and asked, "Do you know what size these M&Ms are? SHARING SIZE." And then I died, and smiled at the mom again, like "Seriously? Your child is FUCKING DELIGHTFUL" and felt really happy about everything for many minutes. Then I took this picture in the mirror outside the store:

ii. A few Fridays ago I went to Venice after class and I got lunch at a new-ish health-food place on Abbot Kinney. My lunch was a plate of grains and greens and beans and beets and a sauce made of yellow bell pepper, which was a weird choice; I kind of impulse-ordered it. After lunch I was walking to my car and there were three little girls (about ten-years-old, I think?) hanging out on a bench on the corner and they asked if they could sing me a song. I said sure in a drawl that was such a ripoff of the way Evan Dando said "sure" to me, on that night I already told you about. So the girls started the song and two of them sang while the third played drums on an overturned plastic cup - every few beats she'd pick up the cup, slide it to the edge of the bench, flip it over and start drumming on it again. The song was a breakup song and there was a line like "You're gonna miss me by my hair, you're gonna miss me everywhere" and there was another lyric about leaving town with nothing but two bottles of whiskey. The drummer had crimped white-blonde hair and the lead singer had a retainer and they were all wearing babydoll dresses and leggings. When they were done I gave them two bucks, which wasn't nearly enough, and asked "How long you guys been doing this?" - meaning, like, how long had they been a singing group? They all yelled "HOURS AND HOURS!!" and then told me how they lived nearby and they loved to sing on the sidewalk, it was one of their favorite things. I told them to keep it up, and once I left I instantly regretted not inventing a label and signing them right there, like Rob did with the Kinky Wizards in High Fidelity.

iii. The Saturday morning/afternoon before I left Los Angeles for Christmas, I walked down Sunset Boulevard for a really long time. I had no idea where I was going, but I walked and walked and after about four miles I peeked into the window of a restaurant that specializes in locally grown foods or whatever the fuck. In line there was the woman whose physical appearance I stole for the main character in my book, back when I first started writing my book. That woman and my girl don't look that much alike anymore, but they’ve got the same general facial structure and hair and willowiness. The woman’s kind of famous, I met her twice in 2007 and she’s so cool and so I went into the restaurant just to stand next to her. She was wearing a cashmere trenchcoat and Lakers sweatpants and she was by herself and dancing to "The Little Drummer Boy." She looked gorgeous and awesome and I felt so grateful and charmed, that I happened to be walking past the restaurant right at that moment. I got a ham and cheese croissant and ate it while walking down the street, and as she drove past me in her silver Porsche I thought how she's one of the two most beautiful people I've ever met in my life, the other being Evan Dando.

iv. Last Monday I bought a jar of juice for 10 dollars. I had a doctor's appointment in Santa Monica and I ended up waiting in the waiting room for an hour and fifteen minutes. It was lame but I dealt with it, I used my phone to read a Bullett interview with Cat Marnell and look at pictures of Ben Affleck decorating tiny cakes with his wife and daughters. After the doctor I went to Venice, to a place on Abbot Kinney called Local 1205. I got an iced coffee and did some work and on the way out bought a jar of juice because it was called Lush Meadow. Ten dollars is so much money to spend on juice, at least for me: I don't really care about juicing, I like to gnaw on my vegetables and fruits, I like to use my teeth. (I'm also of the opinion that smoothies are bullshit, although of course milkshakes are wonderful and heaven.) But anyway the juice was in a jar and it was named Lush Meadow and that's a really pretty name for something you're going to drink, and to be honest I was kind of already sold at "jar of juice": so many things in my life I'm drawn to because they sound cool, because I like the way the words and the syllables go together in my mouth. "I'm going to drink a lush meadow" - that sounds so sweet and magical.

Lush Meadow is made of turmeric, cucumber, kale, green apple, celery, and parsley. It tastes like grass, of course, though I can kinda taste the apple. Here is a picture of my Lush Meadow jar and a bottle of bear wine:

Basically I just wish Lush Meadow were a lemonade, maybe lemonade with green apple, or maybe Green Apple Lemonade with Strawberry and Other Things. On Sunday I bought lemonade from a little boy's lemonade stand down the block and it wasn't very good, but it was nice just to give some kid some money and then walk down the street drinking lemonade from a big red plastic cup. Maybe I should go into business with that kid, and we'll call our lemonade Lush Meadow, and it will be The Most Lovely and Lemonheadsy Lemonade In The Land.

So What Are You Wearing To Your Own Funeral?

A WEIRD ART PROJECT BY LAURA JANE FAULDS

A few weeks ago I posted this thing about dresses, in which I somehow managed to find a way to relate blogging about dresses to dying, because I am a real-life superhero and my super-power is figuring out how to relate every single thing about life to death. It's so cool. My entire creative output/social life is one neverending memento mori. 

Anyway, I don't feel like reiterating an idea I've already written about because I like to move FORWARD, so I'm just going to cut and paste exactly what I already said: ...and then I was like, maybe I should make the post about how these three dresses are all dresses that I'd want to get buried in, in my coffin, and then I started thinking about how maybe that's the ultimate mark of whether a dress is Great or not, and then I thought it might be cool to ask a bunch of people what outfit they'd like to be buried in and then blog about it. So maybe I'll do that!  

So yeah, I'm doing that. This post is a... CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS! I am going to give you a totally reasonable deadline for this one. Your deadline is... APRIL 8th, 2013! That is more than enough time for you to get your shit together and email me a picture of your bad dead self wearing a cool outfit that represents who you were and how your rolled during the amount of time you spent living on this crazy old planet of ours. You have almost the entire month of March to mull it all over, and then you can procrastinate working on it for most of the first week of April- April 8th falls a Monday, which gives you the weekend of April 6th and 7th to get 'er done. But I just want to warn you that April 7th is the night of the season premiere of Mad Men so don't procrastinate taking your death photo until that night! Take it that afternoon. Sunday afternoons are so boring anyway! You just ate brunch and now you're bored and tired, counting down the hours until the Mad Men premiere. Take a picture of yourself and send it to me! BONUS POINTS IF YOU LOOK DEAD IN YOUR PHOTO. 

This is neither the time nor the place for cute selfies. I don't want to see your motherfucking cheekbones (unless they are naturally prominent). Don't do that dumb 2001 supermodel jutty shoulders thing. Pretend you're DEAD! I want to see you lying down with your eyes closed. I mean if you don't feel comfortable doing that, that's cool too, but just make sure YOUR ACCOMPANYING PARAGRAPH IS SOLID and also MORBID. Just write a little thing about why you'd want your dead self to be buried in this outfit and really get into the DEATH aspect of it! Pretend you're me and death is all you want to talk about ever. Just go there. Confront it! The Great Unknown! 

Also, the convenient part of participating in this creepy little project of mine is that if you do die, in the next little while I mean, people will know what to do. Because think about what would happen if you died in the near future and never told anyone what outfit you want to be buried in. Seriously. Think about it. Think about who would have to choose your dead self's outfit. Yup. That's right, you guys! It would be YOUR MOM. Your mother, left up to her own devices. So unless you want to be buried in something SO traditionally feminine that accentuates your curves plus MATCHING HANDBAG

CONTRIBUTE TO MY WEIRD ART PROJECT AND SAVE YOURSELF

April 8th, 2013. Please send all submissions to laurajanefaulds at gmail dot com. 

Here Are Some Beautiful and Adorable Postcards Sent to Ringo Starr from John & Paul & George

Last weekend there was a sale at this bookstore in my neighborhood that I generally try to avoid on account of its bad vibes and also because it was featured in the movie Celeste and Jesse Forever, which is some of the lamest and most anti-feminist bullshit I've experienced so far in 2013. However! On Saturday I passed by on my way home from buying an apple and a Snoopy t-shirt at the Silver Lake farmers market, and in the window there was a book called Postcards from the Boys by Ringo Starr. It was part of the sale and I got it for nine bucks and it's definitely the best and most delightful nine bucks I've ever spent in my life. It's a collection of postcards that John and Paul and George sent Ringo "through the years," and each postcard is accompanied by some bonkers story from Richie -- here's a pretty solid example of his storytelling approach:

"The sad thing about going to Wales was that was when Brian died. Later we went to Rishikesh and it was amazing. It was always difficult for me because I had this food situation so I always took a suitcase full of clothes and a suitcase full of beans so I could eat! Now I take all those great protein bars. There was so much good music in Rishikesh."

I also really like this sentence: "The first German I learnt was the word for 'cornflakes' and Stu Sutcliffe took me to this Chinese restaurant that did pfannkuchen - pancakes - and they were like eight inches thick with lemon and sugar."

Eight-inch-thick lemony/sugary Chinese pancakes in Germany! Holy cow. Anyway this page with a postcard from Paul (aka 'you-know-who') sheds some light on Ringo's love of postcards and makes me cry a little because, hi, how sweet is it that "Ringo loves postcards" was something the other Beatles cared about and totally indulged? It's so sweet. A little while ago my housemate John said something about how "It seems like the Beatles took care of each other in a way that the Rolling Stones didn't" and that's such a nice point.

This is the front of Paul's "Woof! Woof" card, btdubs:

Paul's kind of a goofball! Here's another 'you-know-who' card:

Paul's also a big fan of the "apology postcard":

And this one just kills me: 



Paul even sends postcards in rebus form! I mean, of course he does. If there wasn't a rebus postcard I'd be like "WHAT THE FUCK PAUL MCCARTNEY. Slacker," and he'd totally agree with me.

Thing Of The Week: Weed Hounds, "Putty In Your Hands" by Jean & the Statesides/ Drumstick Cat, Necklaces & A Shirt & A Song

JEN'S THING OF THE WEEK: Weed Hounds

Last night Weed Hounds (best band ever) played a show for the first time in 2 years! It was a big one, too. Sold out! I love the hounds. They were so good. One of my best buds Laura is in the band, but I swear I would love them even if I didn't know her. It is a fun element though, going to support your friend be incredible. And I'm really glad to know her. Anyway! I am the #1 Weed Hounds fan so I pretty much go to every show I can. I'm feeling really tired and unable to describe music. I can say they're genuinely dreamy and if you wanted to listen to them you could here or here.


LJ'S THING OF THE WEEK: "Putty In Your Hands" by Jean & the Statesides/ Drumstick Cat

"Putty In Your Hands" is perfect and chirpy. It's really great to put on at the exact second you're walking out your front door. It makes you feel like leaving your house is an incredibly ballsy and go get 'em move. It makes you feel like you're walking through the opening credits of a TV show about the go get 'em-est ballsy person there ever was.

Also, here's Drumstick Cat. He (or she) does not have one single thing to do with "Putty In Your Hands" by Jean & the Statesides, but I've been meaning to blog him forevs, and this feels like the right moment.

My friend Christine Instagrammed Drumstick Cat at the end of last year and I asked her to email me this picture because I see a lot of myself in Drumstick Cat. I don't care if spirit animals are played; Drumstick Cat is my obvious spirit animal. He's a black cat with mad feral vibes and he's hanging out with ice cream because ice cream is the best sweet treat and Drumstick Cat knows it. Anyway, it weirdly took my phone a month and a half for me to receive the Facebook message of Drumstick Cat's photo Christine sent me on December 30th, which was kind of the worst thing that ever happened because it means phones are capable of fucking up that bad, which means that, from now on, every time a dude I have a crush on doesn't immediately respond to some form of e-comm I've sent him I'm going to be all, "What if it's a Drumstick Cat situation?", so that's a thing now: "Drumstick Cat Situation." Let's make it happen.  

LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Things I Bought This Week

I love my pot leaf necklace + strawberry necklace, which I bought at Lemon Frog Shop:

 

and my shirt with Keith Richards's giant face on it:



I also really love the Lemonheads's cover of "Step By Step" by New Kids On The Block, which I'd never heard before last Monday and is pretty much exactly the same as the original: