Always remember: life is too short for cheap champagne, and never eat caviar with a metal spoon!
December 31, 2011
Happy New Year from Manolo for the Big Girl!
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December 27, 2011
WTF Results!
Is this thing on?
If you remember, the Miss Plumcake Writing Center and Shirtless Footballer Emporium (aka my laptop) suffered great and woeful, or at least very damp, indignities at the pincers of a scorpion last week. Sadly, the situation has not improved and Im only able to post now through a painstaking copy-and-paste process that makes me wish I were more Hemingway and less Faulkner in my word rationing tendencies.
Last week I came across a pair of shoes so ridiculous I just had to know in what situation you, my lovely and generally not mentally-incapacitated audience, would deem them appropriate.
I was a little (okay a lot) surprised to discover several of you thought they were the best thing since sliced vodka, and to those folks I would like to invite a bit of an old sit-and-ponder on the difference between Fashion and Costume. Don’t worry though, we’ve ALL been on the wrong side of sartorial history on occasion.
Best of All pump from Irregular Choice:
Truth is, it was more challenging than I expected coming up with just one winner.
I wanted to give it to Rachel for her sound logic:
It’s a trick question. There is literally no time or place, real or fantasy, in which these are acceptable.
or Margo A for the most plauisibly realistic:
A costume party where I’m going as a Bowie groupie from 1974.
or even Melissa
My brother-in-laws funeral – paired with a very. red. dress.
(because lets face it, if I didn’t, I would probably come come home one day to a faceful of acid and a photo of my beloved pooch Dozer tied up holding a copy of today’s newspaper.)
but I had to give it up for our own longtime reader and commenter Daisyj for going above and beyond the call of absolute insanity to offer us this little gem.
Evil supervillain is holding my cat hostage in his hollow-volcano lair, demands that I appear in public in these or he will vaporize the shoe floor at Barneys. I slip them on and stroll through Saint Hippolyta’s home for the completely blind, then burn them and sterilize everything they touched with a 20% bleach solution, just to be sure.
Well played, DaisyJ. I thank you and America thanks you. Now I’m off to see if i can get into Witness Protection. Dozer is beginning to look nervous.
Evil supervillain is holding my cat hostage in his hollow-volcano lair, demands that I appear in public in these or he will vaporize the shoe floor at Barneys. I slip them on and stroll through Saint Hippolyta’s home for the completely blind, then burn them and sterilize everything they touched with a 20% bleach solution, just to be sure.
December 25, 2011
Merry Christmas From Manolo for the Big Girl
May your holiday be as fabulous as Harvey in his seasonal drag!
December 24, 2011
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas….
… and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, well, except for Jake the cat chasing a catnip mouse.
Me? I’m finishing up some last-minute baking and watching Christmas movies. There are a lot of great films based on a Christmas theme. You know, like It’s a Wonderful Life:
Treacly? Yes, yes it is. But then Capra’s genius lay not in his subtlety, but in his optimism.
And then there are the not-so-greats, like Santa Claus vs the Martians:
Unforgettably craptastic.
But some of my favorite Christmas films aren’t really recognized as being holiday-centric. And a couple of my other faves… well, the theme is undeniable but they don’t make for the most traditionally heartwarming viewing.
Want to know my top five fave Christmas movies? Read on after the cut… and remember that neither of the above films is on that list.
December 19, 2011
Technical Troubles
Okay campers, due to an unforeseen incident involving a large glass of water and a VERY UNWELCOME SCORPION IN MY BED, my laptop keyboard is no longer cooperating as much as I would like. Please bear with me, I will be back to our regularly scheduled judging as soon as possible.
December 18, 2011
What Makes it the Holidays?
I love that there are so many holidays at this time of year. Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, Solstice… and probably some more that I just don’t know about, too.
Me? I celebrate an entirely secular Christmas. I call it Christmas because that’s what I grew up calling it, and because it’s easier to just call it Christmas than entirely buck the tide, and every twice in a while it really isn’t worth it to me to buck the tide quite so hard. It’s secular because, well, my personal philosophy of the world doesn’t happen to include a godhead. That’s me. I don’t ask anyone else to stop believing what they believe, and I completely respect the religious beliefs of others. I just don’t happen to share them.
And yet the thing that makes it the holidays for me each year is the day after Thanksgiving when I pull out my Christmas music and put The Clancy Brothers’ Christmas album on. Their boisterous rendition of Jingle Bells in Gaelic gets the holiday ball rolling for me in a way that nothing else quite can. The combination of raucous celebration and almost-but-not-quite maudlin reflection on the birth of Jesus grounds me, despite my lack of religious faith.
Why? Because of the way it makes me think of Christmas when I was growing up. That album was central to my family’s Christmas from the day it came into our home, shortly after its release. When I play it, I smell the Douglas fir trees of my childhood, and I can hear my father in the kitchen baking cookies. I can see my mother patiently creating new decorations for the house to go with the theme she’d picked for the party that year. I feel the anticipation of all those lovely packages under the tree. I feel warm, cosy, and entirely protected.
Christmas is different for me now. Oh, there’s still a Douglas fir tree, and it bears many of the old family ornaments. But the cookie factory is no more, and the tree is usually pretty much what I do for decorations. Mr. Twistie is uncomfortable with being given much, so his presents usually go under the tree on Christmas Eve, and he puts off opening them as long as possible.
But I still have The Clancy Brothers and their cheery outro of:
Bottles of whiskey and bottles of beer
We wish you all a happy new year!
So I find myself wondering, what holiday do you celebrate at this time of year, and what gets you in the holiday spirit?
And whatever holiday you celebrate at this time of year, I wish you one filled with happiness, prosperity, and good health.
December 17, 2011
The Gift of Time
‘Tis the season of giving!
Of course, most of us on hearing that phrase think of… stuff. Blu Rays, and X-boxes, and designer scarves, and jewelry, and fine cookware, and… yeah, lots of things. Don’t get me wrong, I love opening a box and finding something shiny in it as much as the next person. Quite possibly I love it more than a fair number of people. I fully expect to spend some time on Christmas morning opening some really superfantastic packages full of things. I expect to put them to use and enjoy the hell out of them, too. I’m giving some pretty awesome things to people, as well.
The anti-material girl I am not, no matter how little other resemblance to Madonna anyone can find in me.
But far too many of us think that if we can’t afford the big ticket items, we have nothing left to give. Really, though, we do. When we don’t have a lot of money, we still can come up with time.’