Murphy's (New) Law

It’s the look (it’s the look), the look of love.

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:55:37 -0400

It’s the look (it’s the look), the look of love.

This defines my idea of the perfect relationship.

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:54:40 -0400

This defines my idea of the perfect relationship.

Lunchables is doing the cutest “Keep the Smiles...

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 01:32:40 -0400

Lunchables is doing the cutest “Keep the Smiles Coming” ad campaign right now, with the goal of donating one million pounds of fruit to food banks around the country. After a great dinner at ABC Kitchen, my friend and I discovered a giant Lunchables screen on 18th Street between Park and Broadway. You pose, the software places a piece of fruit (one of 3) on your head/face and if you take the photo and submit it to the Lunchables site, it donates 10 pounds of fruit! It also emails the photo to you, so that you can…oh, say…use it as your Facebook profile shot. SO FUN. DO IT!

Murfee’s Law? I called it first, man…

Wed, 18 May 2011 01:21:22 -0400

Murfee’s Law? I called it first, man…

Where were these kinds of handsome gents when we were at...

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:14:44 -0400

Where were these kinds of handsome gents when we were at Princeton, Kelly? Nevertheless, this girl will keep dreaming of the day…

kmccormi:

Running to catch the Dinky. Sigh.

Too shiny today?

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 10:50:26 -0400

Too shiny today?

"“Thiel isn’t totally alone in the first part of his education bubble assertion. It used to be..."

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 00:14:39 -0400

“

“Thiel isn’t totally alone in the first part of his education bubble assertion. It used to be a given that a college education was always worth the investment– even if you had to take out student loans to get one. But over the last year, as unemployment hovers around double digits, the cost of universities soars and kids graduate and move back home with their parents, the once-heretical question of whether education is worth the exorbitant price has started to be re-examined even by the most hard-core members of American intelligensia.

Making matters worse was a 2005 President George W. Bush decree that student loan debt is the one thing you can’t wriggle away from by declaring personal bankruptcy, says Thiel. “It’s actually worse than a bad mortgage,” he says. “You have to get rid of the future you wanted to pay off all the debt from the fancy school that was supposed to give you that future.”

But Thiel’s issues with education run even deeper. He thinks it’s fundamentally wrong for a society to pin people’s best hope for a better life on something that is by definition exclusionary. “If Harvard were really the best education, if it makes that much of a difference, why not franchise it so more people can attend? Why not create 100 Harvard affiliates?” he says. “It’s something about the scarcity and the status. In education your value depends on other people failing. Whenever Darwinism is invoked it’s usually a justification for doing something mean. It’s a way to ignore that people are falling through the cracks, because you pretend that if they could just go to Harvard, they’d be fine. Maybe that’s not true.”

”

- A Tech Crunch article about Peter Thiel’s thesis that there’s an “Education Bubble.” I may not agree with many of his ideas, but the inflation/devaluation of educational degrees is something that’s weighed on me for some time (and I say this as a Princeton grad!).

As I’ve raved before, “Anything Goes” is a...

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 01:36:50 -0400

As I’ve raved before, “Anything Goes” is a spectacular show—it may even be the best production I’ve ever seen on Broadway. Tonight my friend Cathy and I went for the second time in as many weeks to see our new favorite. In addition to excellent production quality on every level, this show has an incredible cast, and marks the Broadway debut of my childhood schoolmate, Kevin.

Not even a full year out of college, Kevin is already partnering in showstopping dance numbers with Sutton Foster in this Roundabout Production…the dream doesn’t get any bigger than that.

There’s something so satisfying and reassuring about good things happening to good people…it sort of takes the fear out of life.

Here’s wishing Kevin many broken legs and a career as bright as its debut.

"Ms. Poehler and Ms. Fey have been friends since their Chicago days. “She’s the same way back then as..."

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 02:41:20 -0400

“Ms. Poehler and Ms. Fey have been friends since their Chicago days. “She’s the same way back then as she is now,” Ms. Poehler said, “which is really, really funny and incredibly hard-working and a very supportive and loyal friend. But she was a lot less rich. That was the only difference: she was like 100 percent less rich.””

- Amy Poehler, discussing her friend Tina Fey, in the context of their days doing improv in Chicago in the ’90s.

The People’s Princess: She can carry her own...

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:57:00 -0400

The People’s Princess: She can carry her own umbrella-ella-ella.

"This is indefensible, and everyone should be outraged,” Mr. Reid said on the Senate floor. “The..."

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 17:57:38 -0400

““This is indefensible, and everyone should be outraged,” Mr. Reid said on the Senate floor. “The Republican House leadership have only a couple of hours to look in the mirror, snap out of it and realize how truly shameful they have been.””

- The New York Times

Sutton Foster: The cool chick.

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:53:00 -0400

Sutton Foster: The cool chick.

Girl Crushin': Sutton Foster

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:50:00 -0400

On Tuesday I saw a preview performance of “Anything Goes,” starring Sutton Foster, whose Broadway status was cemented in 2002 when she won a Tony for her role as the title character in “Thoroughly Modern Millie.” I saw Sutton two years ago in “Shrek: The Musical,” and have enjoyed every recorded performance of her work that I’ve seen. Yet nothing prepared me for her incredible turn as Reno Sweeney in “Anything Goes.” GET YOURSELF A TICKET. My friend and I (both frequent Broadway-goers and former amateur actresses) agreed that it was the best B’way production we’ve ever seen.

I’ve been captivated by Sutton’s talent, but also her ability to inject humor into any part she does, seemingly without concern about how that will affect the glamour of what her Broadway stardom represents (though, have no doubt, she is almost infuriatingly beautiful, tall and thin). In my creepy search to feed the fuel of my Foster addiction, I found a wonderful video interview she did with Playbill. You get the sense that she actually is—in addition to being lovely and talented—a very real, funny, practical and COOL chick. Sometimes I wish I could curate a collection of my favorite people and submerge myself in the most kickass salon (see: French, not: hair & nail). Sutton’s at the top of that list. Check out the interview in the following post.

I love this isolated animation of Bill; in a way, the rest...

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:36:33 -0400

I love this isolated animation of Bill; in a way, the rest really is noise, and he’s the single one who’s capturing the best of the best.

fromme-toyou:

“We all get dressed for Bill”

— Anna Wintour

"Behind Cunningham, the windows of Bergdorf’s were festooned with blow-ups of his columns. Linda..."

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 23:38:01 -0400

“Behind Cunningham, the windows of Bergdorf’s were festooned with blow-ups of his columns. Linda Fargo, the store’s vice-president of visual merchandising, said it had taken ten years to persuade Cunningham to agree to the exhibit. “Bill is not somebody you can ever press yourself on,” Fargo said. “I once, to thank him for something, gave him a very small box of chocolates, and he personally delivered it back to my office two days later.” In one of the windows, there was a red bicycle with silver fenders, in tribute to his customary means of conveyance. There was confetti made from shredded newspapers. “I’m delighted, but also a little embarrassed, because you try to be invisible, and this blows your cover!” Cunningham said, hoisting the Nikon to his eye and darting off, mid-sentence, in pursuit of a woman with a fetching fur-lined handbag.”

- A 2009 New Yorker profile on Bill Cunningham

BCNY

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 23:37:00 -0400

I saw “Bill Cunningham New York” tonight and it moved me to my core. This man is a god among men, for a million varied reasons. Perhaps I will find a way to adequately and eloquently express how I feel in the aftermath of seeing this film, but more importantly I hope I carry with me for the rest of my life the lessons of what this man stands for and how he lives with integrity, day after day, year after year, for decades. Acclaim, respect, honors, and fame haven’t affected one ounce of who he believes is his best self, and the man he must be. That just doesn’t really happen; he is a beacon.

"I spent time on the aesthetics, and Anna did the phone calls and was really responsible for the..."

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:59:00 -0400

““I spent time on the aesthetics, and Anna did the phone calls and was really responsible for the funds. She was a powerhouse, this tiny, beautiful woman who you think just lives and dies for fashion.””

- Calvin Klein, discussing in the WSJ his work with Anna Wintour on a 2008 Obama fundraiser.

Every shoe that Valentino showed for Fall 2011 is exemplary in...

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 22:38:34 -0500

Every shoe that Valentino showed for Fall 2011 is exemplary in shape, color, craftsmanship and creativity. My crush on Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli grows with each season.

"I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find..."

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 00:35:00 -0500

“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be; one of them, a seventeen-year-old, presents little threat, although it would be of some interest to me to know again what it feels like to sit on a river levee drinking vodka-and-orange-juice and listening to Les Paul and Mary Ford and their echoes sing ‘How High the Moon’ on the car radio. (You see I still have the scenes, but I no longer perceive myself among those present, no longer could even improvise the dialogue.) The other one, a twenty-three-year-old, bothers me more. She was always a good deal of trouble, and I suspect she will reappear when I least want to see her, skirts too long, shy to the point of aggravation, always the injured party, full of recriminations and little hurts and stories I do not want to hear again, at once saddening me and angering me with her vulnerability and ignorance, an apparition all the more insistent for being so long banished.””

- Joan Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook,” from “Slouching Towards Bethlehem.”

The girl imagined by Behnaz Sarafpour for Autumn 2011 is the...

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

The girl imagined by Behnaz Sarafpour for Autumn 2011 is the only girl I want to be.