bex’s blog

Set 'Em Up, Jack

nobody@vox.com(bex) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:28:39 -0700

One of my favorite stores/brands is Jack Spade. I loved writing about the newly opened shop when I was shopping editor at Citysearch (is that still online? Yes!). Here's a great video from JS during Fashion Week. Note Andy Spade taking a bow at the end. So cute! Though is it just me, or is he being played by Tommy Hilfiger?

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I Think I'm Different; Really We're All The Same

nobody@vox.com(bex) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 07:59:18 -0700

Someday someone will discover the gene sequence for a desire to live in a television apartment--specifically, Mary Tyler Moore's. (The sequence MTM? I totally have it, it's located somewhere around MM, the ability to eat one-pound bags of chocolate candy and then three-course meals.) There's a post-off about TV decor over at Shelterrific, and this has led me to discover an actual blueprint of MTM's awesome pad here. So awesome. All the love for the sunken living room reminds me of my first single-girl residence, a sweet and chic studio at the Kensington House, chronicled once by the New York Times in a studio-centric piece.

My kitchen sink was so wee that I had to fill my stock pot in the bathtub, and my closets left a lot to be desired, but I had the glorious sunken living space. No doorman named Carlton, however, which reminds me--hey, that was on "Rhoda"!

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When Did it Get So Hard to be Cool?

nobody@vox.com(bex) — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 09:12:56 -0800

Mike Mills' new book

Travel back with me, friends, to New York in the early '90s. The internet was used for emailing and alt.something newsgroups. (OK, maybe not for you, Al Gore, you were blogging or creating Amazon. Me, I was posting to the Pavement fan list and emailing. That's all.)

Record and comic book and zine stores: a handful. In other words, to stay up on non-mainstream media, you could take a walk around lower Manhattan for a few hours, have a couple conversations, flip through your preferred publications and feel pretty secure in your awareness of what was happening via CD, seven inch, etc.

These days? Even alt-biggies like Mike Mills are producing shit I don't know about any more over here. No one tells me anything! I browse around and it dawns on me that there's a whole world of books I don't know about. Not in the "Books are being written by Hungarian authors in basements" sense, but in the "There's an entire world of Japanese craft books that I was OK without but now I am convinced I must have to live a complete life." (Ask my mom--I am convinced that my entrance to heaven lies in making animals out of pom-poms. What?) My completist tendencies, the ones that were kept in check with vague ignorance, are wholly out of control when the internet is involved.

(Also, shouldn't Kim Gordon like, I don't know, send me a letter when she puts books out? I'm just saying.)

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Older, Wiser?

nobody@vox.com(bex) — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 08:16:00 -0800

Thirty-one came and went without too much trauma--in fact, it was kind of nice. Kelly Sue and I were ladies who lunched, Ryan and I had a quiet night since we're having our official birthday dinner Monday and my family celebrates tonight.

But I am suddenly aware, maybe even hyper-aware, of the fact that I am no longer 21. Actually, 21 seems very very near (Remember that time we were walking up Avenue A at 4am and we saw Mark Ibold and I decided we should follow him?) but awfully far away, like those were scenes from someone else's life. Or a movie. A slow-moving biographical tale that follows our heroine as she stumbles through attempts at romance and career advancement while taking advantage of parties with goodie bags and open bars. It's not the most interesting movie, but there are some funny parts.

They're little reminders: the fact that my stack of CDs at Love Garden is no longer an indicator of release dates and hipsterdom (I'm a good six months behind on everything, not to mention I get really outraged when I browse the used section and find perfectly good things--the entire career output of Polvo--there. Who would sell Polvo? Who?). Or that I find myself starting sentences about how I don't understand what the kids are into. I like going to bed early. Just someone stop me if I pull out the mom jeans, OK?

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