Fri
Nov
6
Semper erit aestas.
Following the opening of Jane LaFarge Hamill’s show at Stricoff Fine Art; following a dive into the psychosis of the male midlife crisis and further proof of my inability to meet anyone in this town who isn’t already somehow connected to me through friends of my parents; following a mean martini and dinner at Tia Pol, he taught me how to tie a bow tie. Thus the evening went from A to A plus.
Thu
Nov
5
“ Always put a tie on. Always. It only takes an extra thirty seconds in the morning, and it’s always the smart move. Old-timers will think you’re an up-and-comer, young folks will know you mean business, and ladies will think you’re the kind of guy who might suddenly take them out to a decent restaurant. It’s always the smart move.
C. Klosterman
C. Klosterman
At four a.m. on Friday morning, we fell out of the (green) cab, stumbled across Ninth Avenue, and ran smack into this pretty face. Wheat paste and paper cut-out still dripped down the plywood wall. Shepard Fairey (of Obama and Pablove fame) had paid my block a visit and swiftly skedaddled, seemingly minutes before our inebriated arrival.
Naturally our first inclination was to pay tribute to vandalism (however sophisticated) with more vandalism. We tore off a tiny corner, saved the rest for the denizens of the crack house against which Fairey’s work was affixed, and fell upstairs to bed.
The next morning as we set out for brunch, we tried to find the spot where this picture had lived, but all that survived were scraps and a splatter of paste on the sidewalk. Within just a few hours unwitting residents of my glittering Midtown block reduced Fairey’s art to trash. It is very likely that we (and Fairey) are the only people in New York - indeed the world! - who know what it was. And all that remains is the corner we saved - a triangle of black with the word OBEY stenciled in white, holding court over my kitchen, awaiting a visit to the framer.
Wed
Nov
4
With Secret Forts and All Plaid Out at the L.L. Bean Signature presentation on October 14.
Relation-shit.
The roommate broke down for me her recent slow demise with the ex. Or was he an ex? Was he ever her boyfriend? For seven months he took her to dinner, helped her move furniture, cooked brunch in his Upper East Side apartment. They watched Netflix together. Her friends dated his friends. Some times they double-dated with her friends and his friends. (I was never one of those friends, although I am sure he has very nice friends.) He made small talk. He paid for the cabs. He popped up in her calendar at least two nights each week. But he wasn’t her boyfriend.
If he walks like a boyfriend, and he talks like a boyfriend, he must be a boyfriend, right? Alas, for Roommate it was not so easy. For approximately half of that seven month period, she and her gentleman played a passive-aggressive game of “Who Can Care Less?” He avoided discussion, and she refused to force the issue, lest she morph into one of those snake-haired, psychotic boyfriend hunters that twenty-something New York men have learned to fear and loathe.
“Feelings” became a pejorative term.
Sometimes I would come home from wherever I had been on whatever night, sobbing about my own melodramatics, and Roommate’s fellow cheered me up with good-natured advice, and then we all laughed and exclaimed, “Feelings!” and I chuckled through my tears and thought about how easy life would be if we could pack the words “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” and “relationships” into a rocket ship and launch them on a collision course with the outer rings of Saturn. Sometimes I would tell Roommate, “[Your fellow] is so great!” and she would fake laugh, like, “If you only knew…” and then we’d sit on the sofa and watch snow fall and paint our toenails, and bitch, bitch, bitch about our love lives, and WHY WOULDN’T HE NUT UP AND CALL HER HIS GIRLFRIEND?
Finally one day in September she pulled the trigger. “Are you dating anyone else?” she asked. He said, “No.”
“Well, do you want to date anyone else?”
He looked at her like she’d grown a dorsal fin and said, “Isn’t that the same thing?”
No, son. It isn’t. And by the end of the conversation all they had determined was that a) his romantic inertia did not a boyfriend make, and b) he just didn’t give a goddamn. Roommate did not particularly want a future husband, but she did want to know if he wanted a girlfriend or wanted to be her boyfriend so that she could then take new opportunities should they fly in her direction because deep down maybe she did want a boyfriend, and the non-ex-but-really-an-ex just wanted someone to come over three nights a week and cook him pasta and pie and shut the fuck up about feelings.
Tue
Nov
3
Battlefield.
- The National: Walk away now, and you're gonna start a war.
- Jordin Sparks: I never meant to start a war.
“ Hey, where did everybody go? Everyone I know has blown the coast. Shiver in the wind, it shows. All I have are summer clothes. Oh, and it brings me down when it’s winter time in a summer town. Standing by the old beach house where we stood outside and sang out loud. Now I shiver like a ghost. I remember the time that we drew a crowd, and I told you everything I knew in one manic rushing line. I wonder now if I’m the kind that you’d leave behind because after Halloween everything starts fading. My whole life is a summer town.
S. Jenkins, “Summer Town”
S. Jenkins, “Summer Town”
Semper erit sartorial.
I don’t wear the most popular clothes. My mother and girl friends would like to burn these utilitarian layers and stuff me in a bandage dress. Thus whenever I feel compelled to defend what has become my go-to get-up, I point to the fashion greats. Designers and creative directors are proof positive that great sartorial minds cultivate closets with little variation, eschewing the trends for their own take on the “classic”. Tonne Goodman, Tom Ford, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan - all have a signature style that rarely wavers, year in, year out.
My uniform happened by accident; for the past eight months I have just refused to wear anything other than the pieces shown above. Night and day. Work and play. I make it black-tie appropriate with a champagne sequin tank, and I winterize it with a scarf. Should opportunity arise to hit the skateboard, I swap brogues for Converse. If the temp rises the jeans come off and chino shorts jump on. Say what you will about my Tradette fatigues; to me this uniform is double-stitched American perfection.
All items I own are bolded. Others are substitutes. Clockwise from top:
- Ralph Lauren pearl studs
- J. Crew boyfriend fatigue jacket
- Louis Vuitton Speedy (I carry my grandmother’s hand-me-down.)
- J. Crew Pearl Ring (I wear Kenneth Jay Lane’s version.)
- Pedro Garcia leather brogue pumps
- J. Crew selvedge chambray shirt
- Libertine distressed jean
- J. Crew skinny metallic leather belt
By the end of most nights out, I also tend to wear Tanqueray gin, but that is always a happy accident.
I feel most like myself in these duds - the sartorial daughter of Jane Goodall and Mary Randolph Carter, of the elements and the seasons and the outdoors, as proper at a cocktail party as on the deck of a sailboat. Ça look, c’est moi.
"So if she has one hanging in her closet, you know she's dope as shit."
I’ve owned mine for four weeks and haven’t gone a day without wearing it.
Dirty? Yes.
Dope? As shit.
Sun
Nov
1
Halloween: By the numbers
* (47) Wrong turns on my way to find a subway that wasn’t completely blocked off
* (Innumerable) rain drops that pelted my costume and forced me to borrow (2) hairstyling tools once at my destination
* At least (7) pictures I wish I hadn’t found myself in due to my wet hair
* (23) jokes involving continued close proximity to the cheese plate
* (1) Cracker Jack box attached to a cup of wine
* (700) near death experiences on the hip-hop rickshaw we, in an act of desperation, chose to ride across town. This resulted in (2) gauge marks left in my arm by Liz’s nails
* (Several) life lessons dropped by Jordan to us younger 20-somethings
* (3) Groups of trick-or-treaters in my building I hid from like the Halloween deadbeat that I am
* (86) “Meowwwwwwws” before the night was over
* (+/- 500 times) Kate the Julia Allison cab driver heard the line “Can I ride you?”
* (2) Boots with the fur…on
* (9) Open-palmed waves by Cary
* (10) much-needed hours of sleep I finally got last night after the insane-o week I had
* (1) distinct smell that will always remind me of walking through Halloween in Chelsea!
