Monday, January 19, 2009
Controversy, fashion, economy, Wikipedia, murder, Baltimore, fame, domestic abuse, MLK Jr., Dubya, Obama, Looney Tunes... all in a day's work for me.
Children (and Mom and Dad and other sensitive people), cover your eyes and ears.
Fuckshitdamnasshell, this shirt from Print Liberation cracks me up.
I am a horrible, horrible person.
The shirt is made by Print Liberation but it is printed on an American Apparel shirt. I mention this because I was on the American Apparel site earlier, looking at this jacket I've wanted from that site (along with a couple of other things). The jacket is awesome, but it's almost $60. Would I actually buy a jacket for $60? Maaaybe. (Although, it's not likely I will anytime soon, given both the US economy and the recent economy of my wallet. My wallet crashed harder than the economy did, I swear.)
Thing is, the coat (and everything else made by American Apparel, too) is made in the USA and the reason it costs that much is because American Apparel actually gives their workers (you know, the cool people that actually make the clothing) decent living wages. They do lots of other good things.
However, the business (at least the advertisements, both in print and online, and the site itself) seem to have a problem with objectifying women (never both men and women, just the women, of course).
I also remember hearing something about the main guy in charge of the business being sued for sexual harassment by several women, I think mostly workers. I don't want to spread rumors or say wrong things, so even though Wikipedia isn't always reliable, the Wikipedia article for American Apparel has the facts (scroll down to the "Branding and advertising" and "Corporate culture and employment" sections).
Yeah, I'm lazy to just direct you to the Wikipedia page, aren't I? Too bad. :P
Also, I'm not going to say what jacket I want yet (it's a secret for now), but a particular celebrity was seen wearing it recently (I didn't realize it until I looked through the reviews) and now all the crazy fan-girls want one (I don't know if I like this celebrity or not yet, but a lot of the fans are annoying). Blech. I'd still get it despite that, and if I don't get it, it's not because of that.
Reading the Baltimore City Paper (the weekly local alternative paper), especially the column Murder Ink, makes me miss home in a weird way. I'm not sure why; it's not that I want to be murdered or have someone I know murdered.
While I love Baltimore, it's my home, at the same time, it makes me sad, and I know in the end, I'm going to have to get out of there if I want to get anywhere in life (literally and metaphorically).
If I got rich enough in achieving my dreams of becoming a rich famous actress on stage and on screen, Hollywood, Broadway, London, etc. (I wish, even if it's so unlikely, but I won't give up, dammit), I'd totally buy a second house in Baltimore. I'd especially like to buy my Mom-mom and Pop-pop's old rowhouse, the house I still consider home in a way.
Crap, I went off on a tangent there. Well, I wanted to post a picture of Mom-mom and Pop-pop's old house, but then I realized that picture was on the old computer, so I can't. :[ Maybe I will later, when I can get all those old photos onto either a flash drive or better yet (since I have so many), my external hard drive. I can't do that until I go home again for spring break, though.
But that's not the point.
I think I like Murder Ink because they explain the murders and make them personal. The murders and the victims are no longer just statistics. If you read about "Tian Zin Wang, a 51-year-old Asian man from Columbia [not the country, an area near Baltimore]" or "David Falkinburg, a 45-year-old Caucasian man" or "Antron Betts, a 35-year-old African-American man" or "Mayresa Craft, a 15-year-old African-American girl from Towson," they become real people who were murdered, they have names, you can try imagining their faces, someone you know might have even known them.
They're no longer just "I'm going to read the paper at breakfast, oh, that's too bad, 5 murders in 3 days, I sure hope they catch the killers, coffee? er, decaf, I guess, thanks, hon, oh, crap, I just dropped some cereal on my shirt so I have to quickly change before going to work, hon, can you put the coffee in a portable thermos or mug or something, thanks, I've got to run" and drop the paper in the recycling bin and erase the memory of any faceless, nameless murder victims read about from your mind.
The City Paper in general is pretty good, especially since it's free and who doesn't like free stuff?
But seriously, sometimes they will run articles that will unexpectedly blow your mind, or at the least, make you think a bit. They ran one recently, in the issue for the week of January 7, 2009, titled "Marked Women" about local domestic violence victims and the new unit created in the Baltimore City Police Department which will help serve domestic violence victims and catch and prosecute the abusers better.
Also, they run some regular comic strips (but unfortunately, the paper retired Perry Bible Fellowship), including one called Lulu Eightball by Emily Flake, which ran this timely comic gem last week (week of 1/7/09 issue), which I think I will use to help me end this blog entry:
Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (God bless that man). And yay for less than a day of George W. Bush left.
The inauguration (see? told you the comic would help me end this entry, and it is) is tomorrow, no, I suppose it's today as it's past 12:30 am now.
You can disregard the following if you don't go to school with me, but it is about the inauguration.
My fellow G-burg students, I would like to invite you to come watch the inauguration with metomorrow today (on TV) starting at 11:30 and going until 1:00 pm in the CUB Ballroom (snacks and desserts will be provided. You can RSVP to this G-burg inauguration viewing event or get more (but not much more) info about it via its Facebook event page.
That's all, folks.
Oh, NO, I didn't!! >_o
(Obviously, I am tired and starting to fall into lunacy. "Curiouser and curiouser." 'Night.)
Fuckshitdamnasshell, this shirt from Print Liberation cracks me up.
I am a horrible, horrible person.
The shirt is made by Print Liberation but it is printed on an American Apparel shirt. I mention this because I was on the American Apparel site earlier, looking at this jacket I've wanted from that site (along with a couple of other things). The jacket is awesome, but it's almost $60. Would I actually buy a jacket for $60? Maaaybe. (Although, it's not likely I will anytime soon, given both the US economy and the recent economy of my wallet. My wallet crashed harder than the economy did, I swear.)
Thing is, the coat (and everything else made by American Apparel, too) is made in the USA and the reason it costs that much is because American Apparel actually gives their workers (you know, the cool people that actually make the clothing) decent living wages. They do lots of other good things.
However, the business (at least the advertisements, both in print and online, and the site itself) seem to have a problem with objectifying women (never both men and women, just the women, of course).
I also remember hearing something about the main guy in charge of the business being sued for sexual harassment by several women, I think mostly workers. I don't want to spread rumors or say wrong things, so even though Wikipedia isn't always reliable, the Wikipedia article for American Apparel has the facts (scroll down to the "Branding and advertising" and "Corporate culture and employment" sections).
Yeah, I'm lazy to just direct you to the Wikipedia page, aren't I? Too bad. :P
Also, I'm not going to say what jacket I want yet (it's a secret for now), but a particular celebrity was seen wearing it recently (I didn't realize it until I looked through the reviews) and now all the crazy fan-girls want one (I don't know if I like this celebrity or not yet, but a lot of the fans are annoying). Blech. I'd still get it despite that, and if I don't get it, it's not because of that.
Reading the Baltimore City Paper (the weekly local alternative paper), especially the column Murder Ink, makes me miss home in a weird way. I'm not sure why; it's not that I want to be murdered or have someone I know murdered.
While I love Baltimore, it's my home, at the same time, it makes me sad, and I know in the end, I'm going to have to get out of there if I want to get anywhere in life (literally and metaphorically).
If I got rich enough in achieving my dreams of becoming a rich famous actress on stage and on screen, Hollywood, Broadway, London, etc. (I wish, even if it's so unlikely, but I won't give up, dammit), I'd totally buy a second house in Baltimore. I'd especially like to buy my Mom-mom and Pop-pop's old rowhouse, the house I still consider home in a way.
Crap, I went off on a tangent there. Well, I wanted to post a picture of Mom-mom and Pop-pop's old house, but then I realized that picture was on the old computer, so I can't. :[ Maybe I will later, when I can get all those old photos onto either a flash drive or better yet (since I have so many), my external hard drive. I can't do that until I go home again for spring break, though.
But that's not the point.
I think I like Murder Ink because they explain the murders and make them personal. The murders and the victims are no longer just statistics. If you read about "Tian Zin Wang, a 51-year-old Asian man from Columbia [not the country, an area near Baltimore]" or "David Falkinburg, a 45-year-old Caucasian man" or "Antron Betts, a 35-year-old African-American man" or "Mayresa Craft, a 15-year-old African-American girl from Towson," they become real people who were murdered, they have names, you can try imagining their faces, someone you know might have even known them.
They're no longer just "I'm going to read the paper at breakfast, oh, that's too bad, 5 murders in 3 days, I sure hope they catch the killers, coffee? er, decaf, I guess, thanks, hon, oh, crap, I just dropped some cereal on my shirt so I have to quickly change before going to work, hon, can you put the coffee in a portable thermos or mug or something, thanks, I've got to run" and drop the paper in the recycling bin and erase the memory of any faceless, nameless murder victims read about from your mind.
The City Paper in general is pretty good, especially since it's free and who doesn't like free stuff?
But seriously, sometimes they will run articles that will unexpectedly blow your mind, or at the least, make you think a bit. They ran one recently, in the issue for the week of January 7, 2009, titled "Marked Women" about local domestic violence victims and the new unit created in the Baltimore City Police Department which will help serve domestic violence victims and catch and prosecute the abusers better.
Also, they run some regular comic strips (but unfortunately, the paper retired Perry Bible Fellowship), including one called Lulu Eightball by Emily Flake, which ran this timely comic gem last week (week of 1/7/09 issue), which I think I will use to help me end this blog entry:
Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (God bless that man). And yay for less than a day of George W. Bush left.
The inauguration (see? told you the comic would help me end this entry, and it is) is tomorrow, no, I suppose it's today as it's past 12:30 am now.
You can disregard the following if you don't go to school with me, but it is about the inauguration.
My fellow G-burg students, I would like to invite you to come watch the inauguration with me
That's all, folks.
Oh, NO, I didn't!! >_o
(Obviously, I am tired and starting to fall into lunacy. "Curiouser and curiouser." 'Night.)
Labels: American Apparel, Baltimore, controversy, domestic abuse, Dubya, economy, fame, fashion, MLK Jr., money, murder, nonsense, Obama, Print Liberation, rants, recession
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Introduction to MY Fashion 101
So I'll post another entry for "Stupid Things White People Like"... eventually.
Anyway, I'm back at school. I found out one of my school friends, Lily, has a cool, mostly fashion-related blog. It's called Strawberry Leather.
So I've decided this can also have fashion things, along with "Stupid Things White People Like," or anything else I want since it's MY blog. It's going to be a random, catch-all blog, I suppose.
Even though (at school, at least) I generally look like I just rolled out of bed and just decided to wear what's comfy, what I won't freeze to death in (winters in G-burg are even colder than winters in B-more) or what I wore yesterday or whatever, I do actually like fashion.
Some of my muses in fashion:
* Audrey Hepburn
(in any movie or any of her fashion eras, except if/when she wore fur and/or leather and/or other dead animal)
Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
* Gwen Stefani
(in any of her fashion eras, except if/when she wore/wears fur and/or leather and/or other dead animal)
Gwen Stefani during her Tragic Kingdom era (circa 1995, when No Doubt released their album Tragic Kingdom)
* Mary-Kate Olsen
(in any of her fashion eras, except when she wore/wears fur and/or leather and/or other dead animal)
Somewhat recent picture of Mary-Kate Olsen, but I'm not sure how recent (circa 2000s).
* Anything Japanese
I love Japanese fashion of all sorts. Whether it be traditional Japanese clothing such as kimono and yukata (a summer garment like a kimono), modern Japanese street fashion (such as the fashion found in the Japanese magazine FRUiTS, or Harajuku fashion, which was introduced to many Americans by Gwen Stefani), fashion from or inspired by Japanese manga (still comic/comic book) and/or anime (animation), Japanese Lolita fashion (for more information on that, go to Wikipedia's "Lolita fashion" entry, Avant Gauche, or LolitaFashion.org), I love it.
This image is called "Tea Ceremony, 1960s-1970s" and it is by (or at least originally uploaded by) tinafish_03 @ Flickr.com.
This is an example of Japanese Lolita Fashion; it is a spread scanned by Avant Gauche and is originally from the Japanese magazine Gosu Loli.
This is a picture from one of my favorite manga, NANA, by Yazawa Ai (or Ai Yazawa in English, since family names go first in Japanese and last in the USA). Yazawa Ai has also done a manga called Paradise Kiss which is actually specifically about fashion.
* Alice in Wonderland
(or anything related to it, the original books, the Disney movie, other versions, etc.)
A movie poster of Disney's Alice in Wonderland
A cover of the two books in one volume, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Alice's Adventures Through the Looking-Glass (and What She Found There), both written by Lewis Carroll (and in this edition of the two books in one volume, and in most of the editions of the books, the illustrator is John Tenniel)
* The Wizard of Oz
(both the L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the 1939 live-action movie, but I only have a picture from the movie)
A DVD cover of the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz
* Peter Pan
(the book, the Disney movie, or the live-action stage production recorded for TV and released on video version starring Mary Martin)
* Period fashion, especially 1960s and 1970s hippie fashion and 1980s fashion, also retro pin-up fashion
* Cruelty-free fashion
(isn't animal fur, leather, skin, etc. - only fake for me [or second-hand/hand-me-downs not supporting the industry, if I have to, such as the leather boots Dad gave me that belonged to him and his father before him])
I'm a vegetarian mostly for the animals, and I figure my fashion should be the same.
* T-shirts
(especially ones with cool/funny slogans, cool pictures, bands that I like on them, etc.)
I'm a sucker for t-shirts. I know for a fact I have over 70 t-shirts (the last time my mom counted, it was around 75, and I know I've bought more since then).
* Ballet/dance/costume fashion
I took ballet for eight years at Peabody when I was younger. We performed a lot and in lots of different ballet costumes.
***
So occasionally, I suppose I'll post fashion stuff I like here, too, along with whatever other crap I feel like posting. Yay. :D
Anyway, I'm back at school. I found out one of my school friends, Lily, has a cool, mostly fashion-related blog. It's called Strawberry Leather.
So I've decided this can also have fashion things, along with "Stupid Things White People Like," or anything else I want since it's MY blog. It's going to be a random, catch-all blog, I suppose.
Even though (at school, at least) I generally look like I just rolled out of bed and just decided to wear what's comfy, what I won't freeze to death in (winters in G-burg are even colder than winters in B-more) or what I wore yesterday or whatever, I do actually like fashion.
Some of my muses in fashion:
* Audrey Hepburn
(in any movie or any of her fashion eras, except if/when she wore fur and/or leather and/or other dead animal)
Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
* Gwen Stefani
(in any of her fashion eras, except if/when she wore/wears fur and/or leather and/or other dead animal)
Gwen Stefani during her Tragic Kingdom era (circa 1995, when No Doubt released their album Tragic Kingdom)
* Mary-Kate Olsen
(in any of her fashion eras, except when she wore/wears fur and/or leather and/or other dead animal)
Somewhat recent picture of Mary-Kate Olsen, but I'm not sure how recent (circa 2000s).
* Anything Japanese
I love Japanese fashion of all sorts. Whether it be traditional Japanese clothing such as kimono and yukata (a summer garment like a kimono), modern Japanese street fashion (such as the fashion found in the Japanese magazine FRUiTS, or Harajuku fashion, which was introduced to many Americans by Gwen Stefani), fashion from or inspired by Japanese manga (still comic/comic book) and/or anime (animation), Japanese Lolita fashion (for more information on that, go to Wikipedia's "Lolita fashion" entry, Avant Gauche, or LolitaFashion.org), I love it.
This image is called "Tea Ceremony, 1960s-1970s" and it is by (or at least originally uploaded by) tinafish_03 @ Flickr.com.
This is an example of Japanese Lolita Fashion; it is a spread scanned by Avant Gauche and is originally from the Japanese magazine Gosu Loli.
This is a picture from one of my favorite manga, NANA, by Yazawa Ai (or Ai Yazawa in English, since family names go first in Japanese and last in the USA). Yazawa Ai has also done a manga called Paradise Kiss which is actually specifically about fashion.
* Alice in Wonderland
(or anything related to it, the original books, the Disney movie, other versions, etc.)
A movie poster of Disney's Alice in Wonderland
A cover of the two books in one volume, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Alice's Adventures Through the Looking-Glass (and What She Found There), both written by Lewis Carroll (and in this edition of the two books in one volume, and in most of the editions of the books, the illustrator is John Tenniel)
* The Wizard of Oz
(both the L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the 1939 live-action movie, but I only have a picture from the movie)
A DVD cover of the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz
* Peter Pan
(the book, the Disney movie, or the live-action stage production recorded for TV and released on video version starring Mary Martin)
* Period fashion, especially 1960s and 1970s hippie fashion and 1980s fashion, also retro pin-up fashion
* Cruelty-free fashion
(isn't animal fur, leather, skin, etc. - only fake for me [or second-hand/hand-me-downs not supporting the industry, if I have to, such as the leather boots Dad gave me that belonged to him and his father before him])
I'm a vegetarian mostly for the animals, and I figure my fashion should be the same.
* T-shirts
(especially ones with cool/funny slogans, cool pictures, bands that I like on them, etc.)
I'm a sucker for t-shirts. I know for a fact I have over 70 t-shirts (the last time my mom counted, it was around 75, and I know I've bought more since then).
* Ballet/dance/costume fashion
I took ballet for eight years at Peabody when I was younger. We performed a lot and in lots of different ballet costumes.
***
So occasionally, I suppose I'll post fashion stuff I like here, too, along with whatever other crap I feel like posting. Yay. :D
Labels: '60s, '70s, '80s, Alice in Wonderland, anime/manga, Audrey Hepburn, ballet, costumes, cruelty-free, fashion, Gwen Stefani, hippies, Japanese, Lolita, Mary-Kate Olsen, Peter Pan, t-shirts, Wizard of Oz
