First Lady Vintage

I thought that looked like a vintage dress.
Mrs. Obama is on the cover of next month's Essence Magazine wearing a lovely vintage 50's dress from New York Vintage.
She makes it look totally modern.
Via Mrs. O.

Amelia's Fashions

Interesting article on Huffington Post about Amelia Earhart's Fashion Line.
Nice bit of vintage fashion history.

The above is a 30's pattern available at Vintage Fashion Library.

Via ArtFire Vintage on Twitter.

To Bed....

For the Sherlock fans out there, they have finished shooting the second season which will run in 2012 here in the US on PBS. If you have not watched season one yet, I think it is one Netflix streaming.

Vintage London

Wonderful film of very early 1950's London via author Christopher Fowler's blog.

Still Hard

I've had so many pets die (mostly because I've had so many) over the past 10 years, but it is still heartbreaking when it happens.

A friend had to put a lovely kitty to sleep yesterday (?) which reminded me that I had not posted that Alley Cat died about a month ago. Old age, over 100 degree weather and a ninja like ability to slip outside and disappear for days on end did her in.

Sweet kitty.

I'll miss her.

Change in the Light

There is a lovely phenomenon that happens in the summer when the air changes overnight from heavy and overbearing to, well, normal. When that happens breathing becomes less of a chore, the contrast between shade and light is more pronounced, colors richer.

That happened today.

It was still cool enough when I woke at 10 am (stop judging people) to catch a few morning glories still open.

I love the way the light illuminates the back of this flower.

 Angus in his jungle getting his chow on.

A cup of tea and I already feel less bitter.

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Argument

I keep having this argument with my husband about women.

He is disappointed that once women go into management most of them act just like the male soul crushers at work.

He uses the C word...a lot....I do too, but that is besides the point.

His argument is that after all the trouble getting equal rights and feminism and all that that women have gone though to get where we, are we should be better people.

At least as management.

My argument is that it would be nice if that happened, but women are human beings and there are just as many douchey women* as men and in the end the women's rights movement is about women having the right to be an ass* as much as a man.

One of my favorite writers, Caitlin Moran summed my point up in her book How To Be a Woman:

“The purpose of feminism isn’t to make a particular type of woman. The idea that there are inherently wrong and inherently right ‘types’ of women is what’s screwed feminism for so long – this belief that ‘we’ wouldn’t accept slaggy birds, dim birds, birds that bitch, birds that hire cleaners, birds that stay at home with their kids, birds that have pink Mini Metros with ‘Powered By Fairy Dust!’ bumper stickers, birds in burkas, or birds that like to pretend, in their heads, that they’re married to Zach Braff from Scrubs, and that you sometimes have sex in an ambulance while the rest of the cast watch and, latterly, clap. You know what? Feminism will have all of you.
What is feminism? Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be.

*see Palin and/or Bachmen

*recent studies have shown that assholes actual make more money then nice people so that is probably why we all tend to end up working for such cunts (used in the more British way to signify male and/or female ass) in the end.

I Would Sell My Son For This

Or even my right boob.

Anyway, it has a habit of getting in the way.

Kuma Komet Television.....

Via @retroruth (No Pattern Required) on Twitter.

Also.

I am old.

How old you may ask.

So old that when the news (which also leads to the question of why would this story be on the news) "The Smiths" I think of this:

Not Will and Jada Smith.

Seriously, I just don't care.

New Links

I added a couple of links to the roll.

* Skeptical Science, it will help you deal with the conservatives in your family who do not think there is such a thing as Global Warming and if we pray enough Jesus will save us from it anyway. It is listed under the heading; Truth in Politics or How to Deal with the TeaBaggers in your Life.

* Christopher Fowler, an English author who writes the cracking good Bryant and May mystery novels. For Anglophiles his blog is a great mix of London past and present with other odd bits and pieces thrown in.

*John Finnemore, the comedy genius who writes my favorite BBC radio show "Cabin Pressure", has a nice little blog. I like him so I read it. The last few posts have included pictures of his notebooks for each show which is really a gift to budding writers to actually see how his creative process on paper works. Plus he is a really funny man.

That's it.

I think I will leave you with Craig T. Nelson being a douchebag on Glenn Beck.

"Spoilers"

Now that I've thought about it all morning, had my tea and started eating one of the banana and choc chip muffins I had to make last night because the 'nanna was going bad (which had presented me with the dilemma of making muffins or trashing said banana muffins of course....DON't JUDGE ME) I feel sufficiently fortified to discuss today's Sherlock fandom outrage.

Surprise, it has nothing to do with which is the hotter better Sherlock Holmes (sorry RDJ) but specifically with Spoilers.

Playing the "Luke I am your Father"/"Rosebud was his SLED" game on internet message boards in response to a "OMG! You just spoiled the ending of LOST for me!!!!!" when the show has been off the air and discussed ad nauseum can be fun.

But yeah, spoilers suck, even when a book is over 100 years old and you know that while for all intents and purposes Sherlock Holmes was dead at the end of Reichenbach Falls (that is what Conan Doyle wanted) he ended up not being completely dead and was cleverly (of course) resurrected in The Empty House.

Why do they suck?*

Because you are watching Sherlock for a wholly new and creative interpretation of the canon, well that and because Cumberbatch makes you all wobbly inside, but still, it is about doing something new and different with very well known material.

I know something bad might happen at the end of Season 2, but I don't want to know what and how it will happen.

This angst all came about because of filming in London and digital cameras and the internet and it seems a couple of "newspapers" (I think I might be using the term loosely) may have written published pictures and/or written what they think is the ending to the last episode of the next season.

Hell, Benedict Cumberbatch himself let go a juicy spoiler (and in his last interview Le Carre did say he approved all changes that have been made in the movie) about his character in Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, Peter Guillan, in a recent interview. A spoiler that is a departure from the novel.

And yeah, I was a bit annoyed....not because "there is anything wrong with that" but because it does change the character, plus it won't be a new twist when I see the movie.

AND it did effect my second read though of the novel.

Which was perfect as I had just dickishly said on Twitter "can you be spoiled if a book has been out 40 years or so?"

Well fuck you Julie, yes you can.

*I already know I will get spoiled because while those bastards in the UK will see Sherlock in 2012, I will have to illegaly legally view it somewhere on the intertubes PBS in 2013 and....nevermind. Though I do still think that whining you found out that Snape killed Dumbldore before the movie came out but years after the book makes you a prat. Especially if you spend time on the intertubes. I do promise not to tell how Bella has Edward's baby because ( A) It is redonkulous and disgusting and (B) BECAUSE TWILIGHT SUCKS PEOPLE.....WHY ARE YOU WATCHING THOSE MOVIES?

Coat Love

I love this coat.

If I owned this vintage coat I would move someplace very chilly so I could wear it everyday.

Coat via OldRags on Tumbler.

Folded

Evening dress by Charles James, 1950 United States (NYC), MFA Boston

I saw this glorious gown on Tumbler this morning. It made me think of all the designers out there in the last few years with their folding and poofing of evening gowns and how in the end none of them could manipulate fabric the way Charles James could.

Lists

So there are lists that people want you to make.

Normally I won't, but I will do two for you.

The first is what's the most played songs on your iPod. Well I don't have an iPod, but I do have a iTouch and these are the top 20:

1 Songbird (Fleetwood Mac)
2 Hymn to Love (Cyndi Lauper)
3 One and Only (Adele)
4 You Belong to Me (Jason Wade)
5 The Cave (Mumford & Sons)
6 Carved in Stone (The Subdudes)
7 Love of My Life (Queen)
8 Bad Romance (Gaga)
9 Mr. Blue Sky (ELO)
10 The Way You Look Tonight (Sinatra)
11 Not Ready to Make Nice (Dixie Chicks)
12 Me and Mr. Jones (Amy Winehouse)
13 You Know I’m No Good (Amy Winehouse)
14 When I Fall In Love (Nat King Cole)
15 Don’t Stop Me Now (Queen)
16 Rainy Night in Soho (Pouges)
17 Viva Gloria (Greenday)
18 Sigh No More (Mumford and Sons)
19 Elenore (Turtles)
20 The Irish Rover (Pogues)

The other list is inspired by Pajiba's yearly Top 10 Celebrates we want to shag in which we post our top 5 freebies list. Here is mine.

1. Benedict Cumberbatch

2. Idris Elba

3. Alexander Skarsgard

4. Timothy Olyphant

5. Robert Downey Jr.

I guess this was just an excuse to post picture of pretty manly men.

Blast From The Past

Vintage Playboy Bunny Manual has been scanned and added to the intertubes.

It's a bit of a hoot.

And yeah, sexist.

Via Jezebel.

Cocktails and Culture

North Star Vintage just sent out a Tweet:

An exhibit about two of my favorite things - vintage and cocktails!

I agree. What a fabulous combination for an exhibit:

As you enter Cocktail Culture, an intoxicating exhibit of apparel, accoutrement and ephemera at the Rhode Island School of Design's Museum of Art, it's hard not to think of Billy Strayhorn's lyrics in his jazz standard "Lush Life":....

The exhibit feels like an elegant and witty party that can be followed over six decades, from 1920 to 1980. You can almost hear the chatter. Think of it this way, say Kate Irvin and Laurie Brewer, both curators with the museum's Costumes and Textile Department. Cocktails — the word might be from the docked tail of a certain kind of show horse — are about mixing. Which, during Prohibition, was necessary to cover up the awful taste of bathtub gin......

Cocktail Culture: Ritual and Invention in American Fashion, 1920–1980 will be on display at the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, R.I., until July 31.

How can this not be wonderful?

Wish it was a travelling exhibit....

As always my favorite scenes mixing wonderful vintage and liquor come from The Thin Man movies:

My Wild Jungle Cat

Opinions Are Like Assholes

because every fucker has one.

The most cringe worthy quote from this review of Bridesmaids?

This one:

About the only things all the bridesmaids have in common is that they talk like truck drivers and have low moral tones.

I like the old fashioned idea of looking up to women. They are our mothers and the mothers of our children. In almost every society they are placed on a pedestal. The idea here is to take away from women this respect they are due as mothers, and to view them as just no different from some bum in a bar. No need for a man to treat them special, like a lady, because that idea is passé.

I would respond but then I would be painted as "no lady" with low morals who talks like a truck driver & does not deserve to be treated special by all the manly men in my life.

So yeah, I'll be a good little woman who keeps her mouth shut so I can be put on a pedestal because I am a fucking mother.

Sheesh....

How Much Do I love Stephen Fry?

So much:

On Language

(So, to the pedants I say)

But above all let there be pleasure. Let there be textural delight, let there be silken words and flinty words and sodden speeches and soaking speeches and crackling utterance and utterance that quivers and wobbles like rennet.

Let there be rapid firecracker phrases and language that oozes like a lake of lava.

Words are your birthright. Unlike music, painting, dance and raffia work, you don’t have to be taught any part of language or buy any equipment to use it, all the power of it was in you from the moment the head of daddy’s little wiggler fused with the wall of mummy’s little bubble.

So if you’ve got it, use it. Don’t be afraid of it, don’t believe it belongs to anyone else, don’t let anyone bully you into believing that there are rules and secrets of grammar and verbal deployment that you are not privy to. Don’t be humiliated by dinosaurs into thinking yourself inferior because you can’t spell broccoli or moccasins. Just let the words fly from your lips and your pen.

Give them rhythm and depth and height and silliness. Give them filth and form and noble stupidity.

Words are free and all words, light and frothy, firm and sculpted as they may be, bear the history of their passage from lip to lip over thousands of years. How they feel to us now tells us whole stories of our ancestors.

Words to live by....

And Still Alive...

Really this year has just sucked in so many ways and I've just been unable to work though it for the past few months.

But that does not mean that there are not things to blog about.

Benedict Cumberbatch is adorkable and lovely with either his natural ginger with the epic sideburns or the dark locks of Sherlock Holmes.

I wish I lived in the UK so I could be a proper crazy old lady stalker.

He's in a small independent film, Third Star, that has a limited release in the US and will be in a couple of other "larger" films later in the year and of course Sherlock: Season 2 is filming right now in Wales.

Also Mrs. Obama makes me all kinds of happy:

And while I thought Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows part one was BORING and had NOT ENOUGH SNAPE, I am looking forward to the end and will probably join some friends at the midnight showing next month.

AND I hear that Crazy Sarah Palin has made a movie about...herself!