tell me, tell me, tell me, c'mon tell me the answer

Both the fabby Nicole of Twist and shout! and lovely Luna of Child of the Moon (whose blog was the one that inspired me to create DRG many moons ago) gave me the Tell Me About Yourself Award, where you tell seven things about yourself and share your favorite blogs. Well, I'm very excited because I looove talking about myself, as well as my fave bloggers. 

So, here are the facts ...

1. I have an obsession with boys in white v-necks. 

Seriously - who can resist the power of the v-neck?

2. I am on a constant search for the ultimate everything - the ultimate perfume, book, lip gloss, person ... 

3. I want to be Karen Elson. 

She's British, she's a gorgeous glamazon model, friends with Anna Sui, is an incredible singer,  and has the most enviable wardrobe. I would be mentally unhinged to not be jealous of her

4. "Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I've ever known." Actually said by Chuck Palahniuk in Invisible Monsters, which shows exactly how unoriginal I can be. 

5. I have a dream to travel just to get lost. 

6. I fully relish in the fact that a lot of people think I'm a bit kooky and out-there, especially in the way I dress and what I think. I like that I tread the line between here and insanity. 

My inner voice is narrated by Michelle Tanner. You got it, dude!

7. I have no clue what I'm doing with my life. I have so many dreams, ambitions, things I want to learn and places I want to go that, as a result, I have no clear direction.


Blogs:
All Babes are Wolves
Ashen Lady
Being Blinge
Born Late
Charlotte's Attic
ChicGeek
Eloise
Glamoretta
London Calling 
Lost Muse
Lovely Bohemia
musings & inspiration
Restless Summers
You've got the silver

on the beach you'll find them there in the sun and salty air, the girls on the beach

I am gearing up for a trip to the beach next week and I've gotten to thinking about how to survive the ocean. As I've said before I hate the ocean, but this time I'll be there with some friends from university so I'm going to buck up and give the beach a second try. While in the process of doing that, I've started contemplating my beach essentials. 

1. Retro-inspired swimsuits like this one from ModCloth, the 'Bathing Beauty' two-piece in black. I own this swimsuit, as well as the 'Beach Blanket Bingo' one-piece in black with white polka-dots and its two-piece version in red.

2. A wide-brimmed floppy straw hat to keep your eyes and skin shaded from those damaging sun rays.

3. A speaker to play music - I am partial to the Yuen'to Balloon USB portable speaker because it reminds me of a clown's nose. Also the sound is incredible.
4. A good book, like Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse, which I currently have stashed away in my bag.
5. Cute straw beach bags like this one from Tory Burch.
6. A good sunscreen - I love this Kiehl's Super Fluid formula because it doesn't pill like a lot of other sunblocks out there. And with an SPF of +50 I feel confident that I'm getting good protection.
7. A couple of pairs of oversized sunglasses - the bigger, the better I say! So these sunnies by House of Harlow 1960 more than fit the bill.

Do you have any summertime beach essentials? 

Title: "Girls on the Beach" (Beach Boys)

the british (birds) are coming!

This photo is a testament to my supreme nerdiness; and to assure that this moment - as captured on my computer - will not be used against me as blackmail in future I am sharing it with the entirety of the interwebs. Also, because I am a bragging lil bitch. 

Today I experienced my version of Christmas morning - I received a copy of the much sought-after, hard-to-find coffee table book / dolly girl bible Birds of Britain in the mail today. As you could guess, I am beyond excited about it. The copy I purchased in excellent condition that it doesn't look like it's been around for almost forty-five years - the pages are unwrinkled and the binding is in great condition (this is the nerdy vintage archiver in me coming out now). The photographs are so excellent that they surpass all of my expectations and anticipations. I have seen many of the photos on various websites and blogs discussing the book by John D. Green (or as credited in the book 'John d Green' ... yeah, the sixties were too cool for proper grammar), but the images are such high quality works of art that my retinas are exhausted just looking over the book from cover to cover. 

What I love a lot is the text here - it's amazing on so on-the-nose about all of these girls and the scene they were a part of. The inner flap of the book starts, "Miniskirts and the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and now the Birds. That means girls - feathery and soft, swinging and defiantly independent. London has cracked out of its sober chrysalis into an ultravisual supersonic capital-of-all-the-arts, whose theatre annually swamps Broadway, whose fashions ripple down the Main Streets of the world, and whose girls are its most visible assets." And those are just the first three sentences! I wish I could write that gorgeously all the time - seriously, the mind reels. How can so much excellence and beauty be in one book?! Yeah, I'm not exaggerating in the slightest.  

Tomorrow and the next few days, I will start covering various aspects of the book - including photographs and text regarding this "incandescent maelstrom" of British birds. 

now baby i believe this is real, so take a chance and don't ever look back

Seemingly improbable things have happened to me throughout my life - I've had interactions with people that I know I am not cool enough to be even six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon from. For starters, when I was a just a little whip of a thing, I fell down in front of Sidney Poitier and then proceeded to have a hissy fit in front of him at the Brown Derby restaurant in California (did I mention this was the Hollywood episode of I Love Lucy?). I only calmed down when he told the waitress to give me straws with Disney characters on them. Honestly, I still redden with embarrassment when I watch Lilies of the Field. A few years after that, I flew on Jack Abramoff's jet. Granted it wasn't until watching a certain Kevin Spacey movie with my parents that I was informed whose jet it even was. When I was a teenager, Sophia Bush told me she liked my sweater (well duh, it was a really cute sweater - so that's more props to her I suppose). Most recently in February at the Lucky FABB event, I accidentally insinuated to Brandon Holley and Rebecca Minkoff that my father was gay (he's not - he just really does love Fashion Police). 

I'm not saying any of this to sound braggy or bitchy because, honestly, a lot of these moments are kinda embarrassing to me and I have no reason to boast about my inability to socially interact with people. Telling y'all this is a build-up to what I found today - an event that constitutes one of my most surreal experiences with someone who shouldn't even know I'm alive, that I'm writing blog. Mainly because I sometimes write about them on the site. 

So, just for some more backstory, I'll tell you this: Folks, I don't understand Twitter. I'm intrigued by it, and open to using one, but it's reaaaaally hard for me. I don't know how to use it, how to interpret it, how to understand the '@' signs and hasthtags. And don't even get me started on 'trending' - seriously, don't. So much confusion has stemmed from this phenomenon that apparently everyone else in the universe understands. But being a Twitter twit doesn't stop me from reading other peoples' Twitters. I love to read through the 160-character musings of Kanye West, the humor of Aziz Ansari and Donald Glover, and the sometimes too-true revelations of White Girl Problems. I also occasionally like to search around to see if some of my icons from retrodom have entered the Twitterverse. So imagine my excitement when I come across the twitter site for Bebe Buell. Here I can read goofy comments and muse-ful musings (excuse the corniness of that) of a true rock goddess. I know that there were comments exchanged on this site many, many months ago regarding Buell's book, with my stating that what I liked least about the book was that I didn't feel that it captured her voice as authentically as it could have. But with Twitter - minus rewrites, editors, co-authors, publishers and such - we can take a look at the full-on fabulosity of Miss Buell all by herself. 

So, of course, I stalked the hell of her Twitter. I read as many postings as I could - just one right after the other - until I stopped dead in my Tweet-tracks. What, may you ask, captured my attention so? This glorious little link staring back at me:

A million and a half thoughts came rushing in my head: How did she find my post? What did she think of it? Did she like it? Did she hate it? Was she offended that I thought there could be a style "now" to her "then"? Was this a fake Twitter account and maybe just a fan / loon was acting as her? 

I know I'll never have answers to my questions, and I know it's not nearly the big deal I am making it out to be. It's just a link. But I know I am going to continue to nerd-out and be obsessed with this. Why? Because I really am a huge fan of Bebe Buell, and this is such an awesome thing to me, because I think that this will be as close as I'll get to ever meeting one of my heroes. That ... and because it's summer and I don't have much else going on. 

Title: from "Teenage Dream" (Katy Perry)

the top ten award

I want to thank the fabulously fashionable Jessica of ChicGeek for giving me the Top 10 Award. This is one of my favorite kinds of awards because it consists of you listing your favorite cosmetics. I am a total beauty product junkie, so I had quite a bit of fun going through all my goodies and deciding which ones I would choose. I had to make some very difficult decisions - choosing Buxom Lips gloss over my trusty Sexy Motherpucker, and opting for my fragrance obsession of the moment (D&G The One) instead of one of my favorite summer scents - a toss-up between Marc Jacobs Blush and Stella by Stella McCartney, and the dirty rose fragrance of my recent go-to for spring, Kate Moss's original scent, which is a bit of a rock'n'roll floral. But these are the crucial choices that every one has to make in their lives.
I kid ... but beauty products do offer considerable importance to me, no matter how vain that sounds. The word 'cosmetic' comes from the Greek word 'kosmos', which means "the order of the universe"*, and makeup products actually do have a mystical hold over my life. I love reading blogs (Into the Gloss is my girl-porn - I'm addicted), magazines, various articles, books and such regarding the world of cosmetics and beauty. I adore women like Eva Chen, the Beauty Editor at Teen Vogue, for making such an interest into a full-fledged job. During my too-regular-for-own-good visits to department store beauty counters and my mecca Sephora, I make out like a pirate with all my goodies; and sometimes look like a pirate too - that much kohl eyeliner is good for Jack Sparrow, but not so good for me. So right now I'll play Beauty Editor pretend and offer my bits of 'wisdom' regarding the best of my beauty booty:

1. Temptu Airbrush Foundation in 002 Ivory: I love how evenly and flawlessly this foundation applies. It's super easy to use - just a few swooshes around the face, and my skin looks better than I've seen it in years. The only downside - I'm unable to apply normal foundation and be satisfied with it anymore. Guess Temptu and I are for life.
2. Covergirl Lash Blast Fusion in Black Brown: I prefer drugstore brands for mascara because why spend twenty-plus dollars on something you have to toss in a few months anyways? I'll admit I still have Benefit BadGal mascara, Urban Decay's Big Fatty and a Lancôme mascara with a scary brush (I'm a bit of an eye makeup whore) but ever since I first had my 'lashes blasted', I've been hooked. I don't think I've found a mascara that is so consistently non-clumpy than this one. It's great to apply on both sides of lashes to make your eyes pop and look like you just stepped out of a Latisse ad.
3. Smashbox Artificial Light Flash Luminizing Lotion: technically a lotion to be mixed with or applied underneath foundation, I actually use this light formula as an illuminator after I've applied foundation and blush. I dab a bit across my cheekbones, my nose, eyelids, forehead and right above my cupid's bow. It's shimmery enough to make my skin look glowy and a bit shimmery without looking like I raided the body glitter collection I hoarded in the third grade.
4. Anastasia Beverly Hills Perfect Brow Pencil in Blonde: since I have naturally light blonde hair, I also was given matching blonde eyebrows. It never bothered me until recent years, when I noticed in photographs my brows looked like Whoopi Goldberg (have you ever noticed that she doesn't have eyebrows?). Now, since I've darkened my hair, I hardly ever leave the house without using this light pencil and grooming my brows with its dual-ended comb.
5. Make Up For Ever HD Microfinish Powder: I'm obsessed with the idea of perfect-looking skin. This translucent powder is perfect for all skin tones and literally makes every pore imperfection go away. The powder is loose white (but immediately goes away) and reminds me of the story Kenneth Anger told about the filming of Lucifer Rising that he warned Marianne Faithfull not to bring drugs into Egypt at risk of execution. Faithfull hid the drugs in her makeup box under her face powder, and Anger alleged Faithfull "powdered her face with heroin." ... but that has nothing to do with this.
6. Maybelline The Falsies Volum'Express in Brownish Black: when I want mega-lashes without the added effort of applying actual falsies, I again turn to a trusty drugstore brand. I think it was Cindy Crawford who said that unless you have ultra-dark hair it's better to use brown mascara as it's not so severe. I like brown-black mascaras because I like being just a little bit severe.
7. Clinique Colour Surge Eye Shadow Velvet in Bewitched: a rich chocolate shadow; I apply this to the upper lash line (and to my bottom lash line when I want an uber-dolly look) with a MAC 263 brush.
8. BareMinerals Buxom Lips in Dolly: ahh the name of this gloss's shade says it all for me. Though it doesn't produce the same über-beestung look (or cheekiness in the packaging) as Soap & Glory's Sexy Motherpucker (my fave shade is What a Melon, btw), this gloss is the perfect there-but-not-there shade with just a hint of color, tingle (a bit minty), and shimmer. It's perfect for any occasion. I always have it in my bag.
9. Dolce & Gabanna The One: simply just one of the best smelling fragrances I've had the pleasure of sniffing in my life. One of my friends wears it regularly, and I was obsessed with it and begged her to tell me what she was wearing. She said, "The One." It was as though that's all that needed to be said. Everywhere I went after that when I would smell a hint of it, I would freak out until I sought out the wearer of the perfume ... seriously in order to chat with her about the scent. I love it ... and unless I find a different perfume that I fall in love with more than this, I think I may have found "The One" I want to be my signature scent.
10. Peter Thomas Roth Instant Mineral SPF 30: it would be a vast understatement to say that I'm not a sun worshipper. I wear sunscreen and sunnies everyday in order to protect my visage from the the damaging rays of le soleil. This brush-on sun protection powder is such a lifesaver for someone like I, who doesn't reapply sunscreen every few hours and tends to get a bit shiny during the day. I discovered it at Bliss Spa in NYC senior year of high school and I have been a loyal user ever since.

My Awardees:

Gloria of musings & inspiration

JessM of You've Got the Silver

Kaitlyn of Born Late

Kirby of Lost Muse

Louloublue of All Babes are Wolves

Lucia of Who The Fuck Is Mick Jagger

Melissa of Glamoretta

Raquel of Eloise

Smashingbird of Smashingbird

Summer.B of ..Summer Baby

Here's what you do:
- Thank the person who tagged you and link to their blog
- Put the Top 10 Award logo on your blog (the logo is under my 'Kind Words' section if you want to snag it)
- List your top ten favorite cosmetics
- Choose ten bloggers to tag, link to their blogs, and let them know about their award!

* thanks to the book Life is a Movie Starring You by Jennifur Brandt for this fun fact

"the nature of society is to create"

Let me explain the James Baldwin quote I so lazily and pretentiously made to be the title. You see, I was nominated by the lovely Miss Jess from You've Got the Silver for the 'Creative Blogger' Award. This award, in addition to pumping up my ego, entails that I list ten things about myself and then nominate more bloggers that I adore to have the award as well. 

So to get back to Mr. Baldwin, while this sentiment was not the one he was necessarily trying to communicate (the quote continues "...an illusion of safety" - yep, the nature of society is to create an illusion of safety, apparently) but this is the sentiment that I - a twenty-year-old chick who not just passed, but aced, her intro to philosophy class - is making. And we all know that the musings of a self-involved blonde girl are much more interesting than the political insights of a Baldwin not on 30 Rock.

I think that the nature of society - at least the blogosphere society - is to create wonderful works of art, writing, photography, poetry, or (in my case) really fabulous collages, and we share our genius with each other. I think this ability to have a communal use, love and appreciation of each other's work is incredible. Even more incredible is that it's in our very nature. 

Without further ado, here's the main attraction: ten fascinating facts about Barbara Walter's Most Fascinating Person of 2011 

1. I am double jointed. So is my grandmother, but it freaks her out. 

Note: this is not a photograph of me or my grandmother. Neither of us can play the piano. 

2. I am a member of a very eccentric family. We have the type of personalities and dynamics that would only be found on a prime time sitcom (or an E! reality show), in the best possible sense. 

I would be Kim, obvs. 

3. During my brief stint modeling during the ages of 14-16, the agency photographer told me I looked like Christie Brinkley. I was incredibly flattered. Not that I actually knew who that was at the time, though. I have also been told I could be a foot model (And by non-foot fetishists, to boot!)  

4. I love the smell of gasoline. No worries though, apparently so does Kate Moss. 

5. It breaks my heart to eat anything remotely resembling an animal. I can barely bring myself to eat a bunny-shaped chocolate for Easter.

Nor do I encourage the consumption of pug loaf. But this pup is too darn cute to not put up here

6. I think that tuberculosis is a very romantic disease. 

Like Greta Garbo in Camille and Nicole Kidman as Satine in Moulin Rouge. Minus the part where they both die in the end. 

7. I have a not-so-secret desire to be a hip-hop wife. 

I want this to be my life. Just Kidding. Not Really. 

8. I am the biggest wimp when it comes to wearing high heels. With the amount of complaining I do, you'd think that Kathy Bates had gone all Misery on my feet. 

9. When I was much, much younger, I fell into a table that Sidney Poitier was sitting at, and proceeded to cry obnoxiously as Mr. Poitier tried to comfort me. This was at the Brown Derby Restaurant. (Did I mention that this happened in 1954?)

10. One day, I am going to live in Paris. 

In the forthcoming hours, I will include my list of bloggers I would love to nominate for the Creative Blogger Award 

(I know, you're all at the edge of your seats in anticipation)

* I am being entirely sarcastic in the first paragraphs. I love James Baldwin and I know he's not related to Alec. Just throwing that out there. *

pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name

Hello everyone, I don't think we've ever been formally introduced. My name is Alexis, and I am the Dolly Rocker Girl.
Over the last two years that I've had this site, I've played around with different noms de plume - Jane, Queen Jane (I got a wee bit more creative there), I think I was Astrid for a time, the list goes on and on - until I finally just went back to Dolly Rocker Girl as my profile name.
It seemed simple enough - I wanted to be anonymous and to keep the site unattached from my own life, and having the nameless DRG at the helm of these posts seemed like the best option. It was not for the sake of mystery or interest à la Banksy, but there has been a bit of interest in the past about who I was (more often and not, the question was whether or not I was truly a Dolly Rocker Boy). 
But with the appearance in Lucky (after which I did the Facebook equivalent of screaming from the top of a mountaintop about) and the recent influx of emails that I've been getting, it seemed a bit ridiculous to still think I had a 'secret' to keep. All of my friends and family now know that I have a blog, and I felt a bit shady that the great dialogue I was having in these email correspondences was then made awkward when I would sign, "xxo DRG"
Not cool, former shady self.
Because each and every one of you have been so open and lovely and candid with me, I feel like the very least I can do is own up to my own name. While I don't think I'm at the point where I'm comfortable enough to post pictures that I myself take (I'm such a little worry-wart!), I do think that this is a step in a positive direction for DRG. The great thing about this site and so many others like it is that it inspires conversations to be had - on line, in emails, or in person. Knocking down that unnecessary, extra wall that separated us retro-groupies was a healthy, natural progression for the site. I hope that this step is just the start of many more to come - and I hope that you aren't too disappointed that I've destroyed any remaining allure of mystique in the site!

Title: from "Sympathy for the Devil" (The Rolling Stones)

and they say, she's so lucky

I started sneaking issues of Lucky Magazine when I was in the eighth grade. The library at my school had subscriptions to every magazine under the sun and I remember my friends and I spending our precious study hall hours pouring over the latest Seventeens, Elles, and Teen Peoples. My monthly of choice was Lucky. A shopping-and-style-centric magazine was perfect for the shopaholic young pubescent I was (and still am). Like a kid who steals cigarettes from his father's packs of Marlboros, I felt sneaky reading a magazine that I considered so mature and sophisticated. Though I could never realistically afford anything in the magazine based on my $40-a-month allowance, I used every last one of those stickers to mark every gorgeous cocktail dress (an essential for a fourteen-year-old) and all the obscenely priced shoes I would never be able to walk in.
At sixteen, I got my own subscription to Lucky. Four years later, I'm still as addicted to the magazine as the day I received an issue with my name in the bottom right corner. My attachment to the magazine was made all the more special when, about a month ago, I was contacted by a photography assistant with the possibility of having DRG featured in the magazine. Well, I just about flipped! While the Dolly Rocker Girl blog is such a consuming passion of mine, I still feel like a very small part of the blogging world, and I definite do not hold a candle to all of these other fantastic writers.
I received my issue of the February 2011 magazine in the mail today and squealed at decibels so loud I swear every dog on the block could hear me. On the Editor's Letter page, Brandon Holley, the editrix of the magazine, wrote a piece about the power of the blogosphere. I was beyond honored to see that Dolly Rocker Girl was listed alongside blogs that I am obsessed with. The very fact that I was mentioned on the same page as Anna Dello Russo, whom I am infatuated with, simply sent me to the moon!
This may be a little self-serving, but I hope anyone out there who reads this post can go to their local newsstand and pick up a copy. Though, unfortunately for those who live in my area, my mother may have cleared out magazine stands of the issue. Nicole Richie is on the cover, which is so perfect because I absolutely adore Nicole. I maintain that her being the cover girl this month is way beyond wonderful to simply be a coincidence. The question now is - can Nicole and I become friends now on this basis?

Title: from "Lucky" (Britney Spears) - the anthem of my life circa 2000

well, i heard so much about london, i decided to check it out

I hope everyone is having a fab start to the New Year. I certainly am. I got news today that I was accepted in a study abroad program, which means that by this time next year I will be living in London. It would be nothing revolutionary if I were to tell you that I have always dreamed of living in London. My infatuation with the country is well-known and longstanding. Even as a little girl, I was quite the Anglophile. Around the age I entered kindergarten, I adopted a terrible Cockney accent that would give Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins a run for his money. My peculiar penchant for British slang terms (chips were now ‘crisps,’ my sweaters were ‘jumpers,’ and I wouldn’t dare calling my mother anything other than ‘mum’) could only be explained by one thing: I was destined to live in England.

To me, London is the Beatles performing atop the roof of Apple Corps. It’s Virginia Woolf holing up with the rest of the Bloomsbury group to discuss the curiosities of human behavior of the day. It’s Jean Shrimpton and David Bailey walking arm-in-arm down Carnaby Street, looking in the boutique windows of Mary Quant and Ossie Clark. It’s been the home and hideaway to Keats and Shelley, Shakespeare and the Sex Pistols. The birthplace of some of the most progressive thinkers in politics and poetry, London is filled with history and yet it is always on the brink of something new.

I have travelled to London twice with my family over the past few years, and though the time we spent there was short, it gave me memories that I still revisit regularly. London was the most wonderful paradox for me - I felt simultaneously that I was such a little part of that living, exciting city, and yet there was a part of me that felt like it was a homecoming. In a way, London has always been my home. I'm excited to be given the chance to live there for six months. I have a chance to be like and live like the British babes I so admire. Sure, the times have a-changed since the days when Julie Christie was the 'Darling' of the town, and Pattie Boyd and Jane Asher hung on the arms of their Beatle boys, but there's such magic in that city that I hope will rub off on me. 
I always knew that I was going to study English, and become a writer of some sort. It was never a question. Some people believe they were born to be doctors or lawyers; it was the fate Brahma wrote on their foreheads upon birth. But I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I have journals upon journals filled with my juvenile short stories, poetry, and lyrics, all ranging from the ages six through sixteen. A Dolly Rocker Girl’s literary canon, of sorts. During high school, perhaps there was a part of me that was caught up with the romanticism of it all, imagining myself as a modern-day Sylvia Plath (minus the part about the oven) or Colette (minus the lesbian tendencies). It seemed like such a gorgeous idea to a bored suburban teenager – I would become an artiste, someone who was far more intellectual and worldly than any of my more plebian classmates. But I’ve grown past the mere idea of pursuing English as a career post-university, I want now to make it a reality. Studying in London will be the most wonderful opportunity for me in working towards my goal. To live in a culture where my favorite books were penned and plays performed, I cannot help but hope to soak up some of the creative energy of my surroundings. London offers itself so much to exploration – not just of its surroundings, but also exploration of your own self. All of the dreams I have for my future are intertwined in one way or another, and all of their roads lead back to the one place where I can grow and become who I want to be: London. 

My girls: Pattie Boyd, Jean Shrimpton, Jane Birkin, Marianne Faithfull, Julie Christie, and Twiggy

Title: from "Cocksucker Blues" (The Rolling Stones)

i thought it was strange, you said everything changed

The final hours of my teenage life are coming to a close. By the time I wake up in the morning, I will be twenty years old. Ugh, twenty. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around it.

This is the single most depressing event that has happened to me in a long time. To me, birthdays are always similar to New Year’s – they are always hyped up to be something great, but they always just end up making you disappointed. Because as many times as you tell yourself that you don’t care, that it’s just a day like any other, there is a secret part of you – the part that makes you feel butterflies in your stomach when the most-out-of-your-league guy in the universe walks past you, the part that always hopes for an A right before you find out you got a B, the part that makes you cross your fingers and wish to win an award even when you’re pretty sure you weren’t even nominated … basically the part of you that you never want to acknowledge – that part is telling you that this year could be something different.

You are supposed to feel special and recognized on your birthday – it’s your day, after all! The one day out of the entire year that people should lavish attention on you. But that is never truly the case for me.

Getting older has always seemed so depressing and un-celebratory to me. Its one of the few things Bella Swan and I have in common. Except my desire to stay young has nothing to do with wanting to get busy with a member of the undead.

Besides the fact that no exciting privilege comes along with turning the big 2-0, this is such a sad number for me to be at. When I was a precociously OCD little girl, I made goals for myself, I structured my life by the things I wanted to do according to each year of my life. These goals were usually outlandish and nearly impossible, but hey what’s all too new with that? I promised myself that I would become a success by twenty years old. I have no clue why I chose twenty to be the peak of my achievements, but it was probably because I assumed youth ended once entering your twenties. But with the looming arrival of my twentieth year, I don’t feel any different from any other day.

Being twenty is particularly troubling for me because in so many of the biographies that I’ve read, the person has achieved something stellar by the age of nineteen. By nineteen, Rimbaud has already written his greatest masterpieces. Marie Antoinette became the Queen of France. Marianne Faithfull had already gotten married, had a kid, slept with three Rolling Stones, and was shacking up with Mick by the time she was nineteen. Pattie Boyd was a famous model and being lusted after by George freaking Harrison. And I’m pretty sure Lindsay Lohan already had at least one or two breakdowns at nineteen.

Even the less high-profile people that I admire had done something when they were younger than me. Catherine James was living (platonically) with Eric Clapton, helping him cope with his unrequited love for Pattie. Bebe Buell was signed to Ford Models and being wooed by Todd Rundgren (not my cup of tea, but still – it’s the principal of the matter). I, on the other hand, was not crushed on by any musicians, nor was I even asked to move in with any of them to help them do the dishes!

And the time comes closer when I have to give up my title as a nineteen-year-old, I’m forced to ask myself: where am I? Who am I? 

nothing from nothing leaves nothing

Thank you to all your dolly girls for your advice during my quarter-life crisis in my previous post. I have a lot to think over in regard to this site - I love blogging and it's such a great outlet for me, but I want to make sure that it's not a one-way street and that y'all can actually have fun reading this as well. There are so many blogs out there that I envy/lust after and I hope to one day become that site for at least one young doll (or dude) who is beginning their journey into retro-dom and has no clue who Marianne Faithfull is and can't tell their Godard from their Truffaut.
For me, while feedback and comments are always nice, what people say isn't what takes the cake for me at the end of the day. I love knowing that there are kids out there just like me that care about this stuff just as much, if not more, than I do. I'm obsessive about things that my real-life friends deem strange (too random to be 'quirky' I suppose), so more often than not I don't tell them about what I'm into at the moment. In fact, none of my real-life friends know that I have a blog. But knowing there are people who emulate Penny Lane, who lust after Anita Pallenberg's jewelry and want to sleep with Serge Gainsbourg and George Harrison as much as I do is really comforting for me, because it lets me know that we are not alone. Maybe all we have to link us to one another is this strange, strange thing called the internet world, but thank God for it! I would be so scared if this were an alternate universe where I didn't have this outlet and I ended up like one of my Sperry's-and-Nike-shorts-wearing former classmates who only listen to rap and think black-and-white movies are terrible based upon some messed-up principle that black-and-white movies are outdated and lame. And the fact that these fantastic bloggers out there have cared enough to click the 'follow' button means a lot to me.
I don't know, but that's just me. Anyways, I'll get back to regular, non-moping, non-pseudo intellectual blogging very soon!

The unintended hipster

I am not a hipster, nor have I ever claimed to be. Everyone else seems to think I am, just because I love classic rock, black-and-white movies, and avoid wearing clothes from massive chain-stores (those ones that are real dark and pound music out into the mall really scare me). I embrace the fact that I am opposed to the typical. But does this make me a hipster?

Maybe I have it wrong and I don't even properly know what a hipster really is. Apart from what I have gathered from urban dictionary and American Apparel ads, there's a kind of vagueness in that whole world that I can't begin to understand.

But here is what I do know: I don't value 'ironic' eighties fashion or eye glasses as accessories. I look for the whimsical and beautiful, not the ironic and hip. I do buy a lot of things that I think are funny or amusing, but I also on some level think they are beautiful as well. I purchase things that are furry, metallic, plastic, glittery, floaty, studded, insane, bohemian - the things I would wear if I was five years old again. Or a tranny.

My look changes so many times a day, sometimes I can barely keep up. I want to be an impish Parisian in ballerina flats and boatneck shirts, then a tough rock 'n' roller in my leather motorcycle jacket and never-brushed hair, then Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, but then why not Anita Pallenberg, or Grace Kelly? And then I wind up at the end of the day wishing I was a glamorous as Marie Antoinette.

My head is entirely in the clouds, my heart in my dreams. I wish I could say my look is entirely carefree, but if it was I wouldn't care so much about being labeled a 'hipster'. Maybe I've got it all wrong and I am, in fact, a hipster and I didn't even know it. Are there any hep cats out there with an answer?