This one comes to us from Michael Usinger of the Georgia Straight:
Who would bring a toddler to Virgin Fest?
By Mike UsingerJust a question–who drags a toddler to these things?
The answer is obvious: ask any Aztec. You can’t have a virgin festival without a single virgin! It’s probably a City of Vancouver licensing requirement.
This is a Blogathon post. Don’t just sit there, SPONSOR ME!
Literati are perhaps the least respected of professionals. Oh, sure, every doctor gets hit up at parties for a snap diagnosis freebie (Miss Manners’ advice? Reply “certainly, now if you’ll just disrobe I’ll examine you.” Hey, it WOULD liven up a party) but how many of them get “I’ve always been good with cutlery, probably would make a pretty snappy surgeon, doncha think?”
Writers? Editors? Every feeb who knows the alphabet has internalized that old “Everyone has one novel in them.” Yeah, maybe. But whoever said that (Confucius? Hesiod? Boccaccio? I wanna give that man a swiftian kick in the legpit region, I’m telling you) was careful not to claim it would be a good novel. Or even a novel one.
You see what I’m getting at here?
Few indeed are even the true the classics of literature that couldn’t be improved by the judicious exercise of editorial oversight. Think, for instance, how much better most of Thomas Hardy would be with a restrained sprinkling of snappy musical numbers. Think of how much more eagerly students would tear through The Canterbury Tales if they were a Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys mystery instead. Think: The Gulag Archipelago With Zombies.
Oh hey…
Where was I? Right, editors and improvement. Longtime readers of the ol’ raincoaster blog (for what crime can this be the inhuman sentence? I ask yez) will be aware that we at raincoaster HQ have long cherished a fondness for the old-fashioned Yankee consumptive Howard Phillips Lovecraft; fewer, however, will realize that in addition to being a talented author of eldritch tales™ Lovecraft was also an editor and collaborator of prolixity and profound talent.
Climb with us into the Wayback Machine, set the dial for “Arkham,” and behold the birth of a career:
reposted from TeenyManolo, because I’m lazy
Attention, stage parents everywhere! Your sprog has yet another chance to make up for your own inadequacies by prancing in front of uncaring ad executives for an opportunity to enter the glamorous world of professional entertainment:
The Potty Dance
Details on the soul-crushing, future-adolescence-blighting contest here. Via MomFuse.
cross-posted from TeenyManolo, because this is too good not to share
How many Barbie-related posts have there been by that title? Surely they number in the thousands, for Barbara Millicent Rogers is the most famous doll the world has ever seen, and in a world of implants and lipo, Ken Paves extensions and MAC cosmetics, what’s historically understood to be the Barbie look is more attainable than ever before.
For good or ill.
But on the Good side of the equation, we grown women can now purchase actual clothes inspired by Barbie and – wait, wait, come back YOU HAVE TO SEE THESE! – they’re actually quite lovely.
For Barbie’s 50th birthday, Mattel commissioned some of the top designers in the world to make Barbie-inspired outfits: Past Barbie, Present Barbie, or Future Barbie, and these, shown Saturday at New York Fashion Week, were the result. Yes, Barbie finally had a full-on fashion show, complete with swag bag. Despite the sneers of a few hardened cynics, the collection was generally well-received.
All photos by my homeboy Kris Krug of Static Photography.
Past Barbie had some snappy, sexy outfits in the Marilyn Monroe vein:
Lyn Devon for Barbie. Past Barbie rocked the Black and White hard!
I don’t know who designed this one but I WANT it!
A classic Barbie look, and one I could really use for this Thursday. Hmmmm…
Not sure if this is Past or Present Barbie, but it’s very reminiscent of early Bruce Oldfield, before he hooked up with Princess Diana and became all about the bling. I’d wear this every damn day if I could afford the cleaning bill, and that goes DOUBLE for the hat.
Moving into Present Barbie era, the colours are softer and there’s enough pink to satisfy even Carey Hart. Am I just old-fashioned, or are the clothes less wearable? Because I do indeed wear a lot of cocktail dresses, but I prefer the kind that stay closed until you decide to open them and whose hems don’t come infused with antigravity devices.
Juicy Couture, but you could probably tell without reading. This girl has to be the Barbiest Barbie in the entire show, and the hair and makeup are perfect. But…is she wearing stencilled socks with open-toed pumps? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, I don’t think even a Betsey Johnson Barbie would wear those!
ThreeAsFour, and easily an eight in my book. The Big Hair is just Too Big, of course, but I might dig out the mousse and see what I can do in the way of a modified Barbie Do. What else am I gonna do with it, use it as improvised weather stripping?
Kenneth Cole did Ken (so to speak). If black tie with jeans is wrong, I don’t want to be right!
Future Barbie needs a blue eyeshadow intervention, but the clothes were imaginative, sexy and generally wearable, if you happen to be an ageless plastic doll whose life is a cross between a Monte Carlo cabaret and a Malibu beach party.
You can just tell, she’s the fiercest bitch in the square dancing club.
Bob Mackie. Of course! I love this, it’s just so completely Cher Starring As Crazy Horse Stripper Barbie.
And last but not least, the finale, in which each model re-emerged, holding the hand of a little girl wearing a Barbie t-shirt and a coloured tutu, while heart-shaped confetti fell from the ceiling and digital fireworks went off in the background.
From Bunkbeds, probably the coolest sales site I’ve ever seen. Because why? Because hellOOOOOO, what other children’s furniture site offers hawt, bleeding edge internet quiz goodness like How Long Could You Survive Chained To A Bunkbed With A Velociraptor? Eh? I ask you.
Try and outlast me, gentle readers! I make that velociraptor my bitch for a full minute and nineteen juicy seconds!
I could survive for 1 minute, 19 seconds chained to a bunkbed with a velociraptor.
via Cvxn
raincoaster 