Lauren Mechling

Why e-commerce + coffee is dangerous

December 3, 2008 8:28 AM

Is it just me or did I just buy a "feltidermy" object for a to-be-determined lucky friend? Maybe this is what personal shoppers were invented for. I must be stopped.

Two (very stubby) thumbs up

December 2, 2008 9:45 AM

Back in the dinosaur ages, when I was a pesky little film critic, I'd go to 10am press screenings, decided if I liked what I saw, and then had to come up with 1000 words to pad out my verdict. Now I'm old and liberated (if you can use such a word to describe no longer having the second best job in the universe (first best: the king's food taster)) and it gives me great joy to present this review of Slumdog Millionaire:

Totally worth it!

Num num

November 25, 2008 8:55 AM

My favorite thing about Thanksgiving: That it's my birthday? No way. That some of my favorite people will be gathered around my parents' long mahogany table that doesn't get used nearly enough? Yeah, yeah, whatever. The real best thing: that all anyone's talking about is food!

Being a "food person" who doesn't actually have the digestive capacity to be a Food Person, my favorite things are looking at pictures of food, fantasizing about menus, reading blogs about new restaurants that I'll get around to checking out in three years, subscribing to magazines that cater to Midwestern housewives, belonging to the Park Slope Food Coop even though I work more often that I actually shop, and sticking my fingers in things before they're ready and tasting them. All this to say, this is my lucky week. Everywhere I go, it's roasting-this and brining-that. At work, when my colleagues aren't watching the Puppycam, they're showing me the new cookbooks they just bought. The podcasts are filled with dispatches from my longtime hero Nigella and her soon-to-be-replacement the casserole girl. And running back from the gym this morning, I overheard a Brooklyn-blooded neighbor who's always standing outside his building, looking burly and silent in his Police Athletic League jacket, call out to a passing guy: "Heeeahs what you do: you heat up da oven to foh-hundred, you unwrap da cheesecakes, and you stick 'em in!"

Oh, my world, how I love you!

This announcement is brought to you by Dayquil

November 20, 2008 8:42 AM

Dear faithful readers,

apologies for my being quiet. I've been down with the flu, which is less fun than one might think. True, it gives you license to watch more television in five hours than you had in the past month. But it also has a way of giving your face a green cast and reducing your brain to the size of a pea, thereby making Shape Magazine as easy to slog through as Tolstoy.

That said, I'm going to endorse a few things that you should be reading instead of my blog. Things that I read before I got sick and single-brain-celled. When my sunny disposition and charming personality return, I promise to come back here and entertain you like nobody's business.

1. Hell Week by Rosemary Clement-Moore. This is the terrifically enjoyable sequel to Prom Dates From Hell. Maggie Quinn rushes a sorority for a newspaper article, and realizes she's in for more than taffeta dresses and cheesy mixers. Clement-Moore is at her quick-witted and goofy best.

2. The Anglo Files by Sarah Lyall. London-based New York Times reporter takes it upon herself to explain why the Brits are so obsessed with hedgehogs, rear ends, and marmalade.

3. Best for last: Jane Eyre, the greatest YA book ever. It's taken me thirty years to realize this story is not just the instrument of bossy schoolteachers. It's fast-paced and delicious and kind of hilarious. This is the kind of teenage narrator who deserves to outlast us all:

Probably, if I had lately left a good home and kind parents, this would have been the hour when I should most keenly have regretted the separation: that wind would have saddened my heart; this obscure chaos would have disturbed my peace: as it was I derived both a strange excitement, and reckless and feverish, I wished the wind to howl more wildly, the gloom to deepen to darkness, and the confusion to rise to clamor.

W. W. J*. D. ?

November 9, 2008 12:28 PM

After this morning's all-too half-baked gym visit, I was thumbing through books at my local indie bookstore. This Punky Brewsterish girl, with a dark bob and striped socks that stretched past her knees, was shopping for a book. I could tell she was cool because I overheard her tell her big sister than she loved The Phantom Tollbooth and From the Mixed Up Files of Basel E Frankweiler, and bemoan that Nancy Drew books would be awesome of only they didn't suck so bad. Just as I was about to leave the section, she picked up Dream Girl and brought it over to her dad. So OF COURSE I kept eavesdropping.

Girl: Hey, Dad, can I get this?

Dad (looks at the jacket copy): Uh. . . I  don't think this is right for you. It's by the 10th Grade Social Climber author.

Girl: C'mon, Brittany Finkelstein read it and she said it's really good.

Dad: I don't care what Brittany Finkelstein says. It looks too old for you. There are references to (pauses as he flips through the pages) . . . there's "Cobb salad" in here! You don't even know what Cobb Salad is. You're not going to understand any of this.

Girl (rolling eyes): Yes I am, Dad. I promise.

I suppose I could have intervened and assured the dad that Cobb salad is as racy as the book gets. But I stayed in place, pretending to read the first page of an ethnography of Snorks. Something tells me that girl will get her hands on the book, by hook or by crook or by Brittany Finkenstein's lending library.

*Juby/Judy Blume, my two heroes

I'm not sure what's more stupid

November 6, 2008 8:11 AM

 

That the Strapperfect TM bra contraption they're peddling on the political cable networks amounts to a plastic shower curtain ring that will set you back $19.99 or . . . 

that the ad promises that the contraption will keep your shoulder blades pulled back far enough to make you look a full cup size bigger. It's like a back brace except your doctor didn't tell you that you had to wear it--you just felt like putting it on for squirts and giggles (and a B+ cup). Ouch and ouch!






  

Presto Halloween Costume

November 3, 2008 9:30 AM

Separate your hair into sections and pin them close to your head.
Put on an oxford shirt, a cardigan, and pearls.
Stuff a pillow up the back of your shirt to give the hunchback effect.
Place an apron over it all.
Smear lipstick over your mouth area, but don't be limited to the lip lines.
Grab the nearest stuffed duck and whisk.
Talk like an excited turkey with a tennis ball stuck in its throat.
Make a point of dropping the duck and whisk from time to time.
And voila--you are Julia Child!

Living like a tourist

October 31, 2008 8:09 AM

I constantly forget how big and open and ripe-for-adventure my hometown is. It wasn't until my recent trip to Rome, where I must've covered the entire area of the city in two mere days, that I realized I've been fro-ing from one key New York point (work!) to the next (supermarket!) like a drugged-out rat in a maze.

All this to say, when long-lost friend S and I had plans to hang out, I suggested that rather than just stuff our faces in some dark Soho restaurant, we go to the New Museum's free Thursday night and check out the Elizabeth Peyton show that we'd both read about in The New Yorker.

I showed up a little early. The lobby was semi-crowded with other self-improvement seekers, as well as a circle of sixty-something French tourists who actually looked anything but French (many an orthopedic shoe). At 5 to 7, the museum management made everyone exit the lobby and wait on the street, as if we were queueing up to vote early in Colorado, and it wasn't just the Elizabeth Peyton show that not a whole lot of people had turned out for. I guess it made the museum feel important.

Six minutes later, we were at the show's starting point on the fourth floor. You know how there are people who photograph better than they look in person? Same goes for the paintings, which always strike me as pretty on postcards or the side of buses, but feel sort-of flat and sketchy up close. Peyton paints pictures of pop stars and Jackie O and the men she beds, on fancy hotel stationary. My favorite thing about her is that she got together with her now-ex boyfriend because his face reminded her of Napoleon's. Anyway, S and I made out way through the show incredibly quickly, which we realized wasn't very cool, but when we got back to the lobby we saw that pretty much everyone who'd been waiting outside was done too.

Our consciences thus cleared, we spent the next four hours nursing glasses of wine and eating pretentious sandwiches (they were listed as "Breads" on the menu) at a dark restaurant in Soho.

Retraction

October 26, 2008 10:00 AM

All those times I said reality tv is really boring? I take it back. I'm sorry! Reality tv is only boring when it isn't THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ATLANTA, the umpteenth iteration of the "Real Housewives" franchise. This brilliant series is set in Atlanta (duh) and, apologies to the Hills girls, is the first reality show I've come across where the subjects are more than walking pots of lip gloss.























 

Of course I knew Atlanta was "hotlanta," but I'd never stopped to think about what that means. If you were a Hotlantan, you'd have the wit and chutzpah of a Dallas socialite circa 1982 and you'd spend your days lunching on vertical cuisine and shopping for hot handbags and when you finally found the model you wanted, you'd buy its duplicate in the store to make sure you get "an exclusive," even if the total comes out to $10,000. Oh--you'd also get to be married to a guy you've never heard of who plays for the NBA or the NFL and who's never home so you have the 45 bedroom house all to yourself and even though you're a grown woman, you'd have a phalynx of squealing friends who were ever-ready to get their party on, and if you so chose, you'd all put on your sequined miniskirts and go riding around in your awesome cars and doing weird dances where you sit perfectly still and hypnotize your boobs into jiggling like buouys in a storm.

And then there's Kim, the riesling-swilling, pneumatic, Anna Nicole Smithesque self-described "black woman trapped in a white girl's body." She who won't reveal the name of the guy who babkrolls her $87,000 Escalade and $18,000 11th birthday party sprees because he "respects his privacy." Not respecting his privacy too much myself, I turned to my friend Google, who was happy to pull back the curtain. Looks like her dude is married, which is kinda sad, but gives me hope that one of these days she might have room in her schedule for a new best friend. Hi, Kim!

The best thing about having a doozer of a memory

October 24, 2008 9:01 AM

is you can keep returning to your favorite things (like this, this, or this) again and again and they never lose their luster.