This anti-bacterial foam is on promo at Bath and Body Works right now—$3 (usually $4). I fell so hard for the $1-off, I practically fell into the basket full of them at the register last week.
I’ve had Cocunut Lime Verbena in my bag since then and while it didn’t save me from the flu, it has kept my hands unexpectedly soft. And I’m really hoping that it’s keeping my roommate and my family safe from my contagion!
I’ve been down for the count with the flu since Monday night. I’m all torn up about missing out on my very favorite holiday.
Instead, I’m at home drinking hot peach tea, eating strawberry ice cream, and rereading the most romantic passage in Anna Karenina. Kitty and Levin play a game writing notes to each other with chalk on the table at a dinner party. Using only the first letter of every word, they can understand just what the other means. (To skip ahead to that chapter in the Project Gutenberg text, use your browser’s search feature to look for the first line: “When they rose from table”.)
Just knowing that I can’t get out of bed makes it that much more tempting to go see the Times Square Alliance public art project, Free Love in Times Square, which features fifteen banners designed by twelve top graphic designers and illustrators to express their typographic interpretations of LOVE, the word and the emotion.
These three are by Marian Bantjes, Rodrigo Corral, and Goodesign.
Which one will be my Valentine?
link via swissmiss.
On Thursday night, I went out for pre-birthday drinks with a whole host of friends—someone from nearly every walk of my life. On the way home, I had one of those special, unexpected New York moments that I know I won’t ever forget. My very favorite subway performer got on the train. He’s a black man in leather and sunglasses and he plays the electric guitar through a miniature amp strapped to his hip.
He never rushes. I think that’s what I like about him. He played What a Wonderful World.
I said, “since I didn’t buy any drinks tonight [thanks for the beers, by the way], I’m giving him two dollars,” and had Caitlin hold on to the six-foot painter’s brush extension pole (another New York moment, and a story for another day) while I dug for cash in my bag.
“And I’m putting on my tiara for him.”
He strolled down the aisle and I dropped the money in his hat. He moved about two steps passed us, paused, and took two steps back, the amp swaying at his hip. He squinted at a spot about six inches above my eyes to read the hot pink letters on my tiara.
“‘Birthday Girl.’ You know, I just had a birthday.”
“Really? Happy birthday! Belatedly. I’m turning twenty-four.”
“I’m more than twice that,” he grinned. “I just had my double-fives. Have a very happy celebration.”
So I did.
I celebrated my 22nd birthday with a coffee and chocolate “tea” party. The theme of twenty-three was s’Mores and Karaoke. This is The Year of The Cupcake.
I have eaten cupcakes from three different Manhattan bakeries in the last twenty-four hours. Cupcake count unknown. I lost track during the sugar blackout I suffered this afternoon.
I got started last night with a S’mores Cupcake from Crumbs Bakeshop, a surprise from Rachel. A very large, luscious surprise. This confection was as sloppy as a real s’more dressed up as a fancy gourmet cupcake. In less time than it would take for me to set a marshmallow aflame over a campfire, I was covered up to my wrists in milk chocolate frosting. I had mini marshmallows stuck to the tips of my fingers. I had my elbows in fluffy crumbs. And when I finally got halfway through the plush cupcake, I discovered a silky marshmallow bubble hidden in the center. Forget the glass of Six Point Sweet Action; I was drunk on glucose.
Crumbs Bakery get points for the enormous portion, frosting that tastes like whipped up cotton candy, and a menu of extravagant flavors.
Next, Caitlin delivered another surprise: cupcakes for the crowd from Magnolia Bakery. Chocolate and vanilla cake with chocolate and vanilla frosting, respectively. And the vanilla frosting was dyed a lacy light purple—my favorite! Magnolia cupcakes are firm and light, but that swirl of frosting is what’s really special. The texture is sort of crisp around the edge, like a fine shell. Your teeth sink through it like a frosting biscuit with a delicious, fudge center. The chocolate flavor is light and refined, but it has this tangy intensity to it, too. So good.
Magnolia Bakery gets points for pristine presentation, stylish simplicity, and harmonius flavor.
Leftover Magnolia cupcakes came in to work with me this morning. They were gone by lunch—when a box of cupcakes from Billy’s Bakery appeared. These had soft, whipped frosting in a handful of girly colors. Frosting was applied generously and spotted with rainbow polka dot sprinkles. The cake was perfect. I could smell the freshly baked ingredients as I peeled the waxy tissue liner away from the moist pillow of cake. Um. Yum.
Billy’s Bakery gets points for home style appearance and their nostalgic, straight-from-the-oven taste.
I’m so far beyond the sugar capacity in my blood stream. I think my heart has actually been replaced by a cupcake, and now its pumping frosting through my veins. I’m going to have a cupcake attack before my actual birthday! I think I need mouth to mouth.
Lauren: EM LOCKE
Lauren: I have discovered that I have no pictures of you
Me: I don’t have any of you either!
Lauren: it’s so sad
Me: gosh, I wish I’d said yes when you suggested we snap a quick picture that first night we went out for drinks in DC…
Me: oh wait, other way around
Lauren: hahaha fine fine
Me: yeah that’s what I thought
One coworker affronted me on Post-Super Bowl Monday: “E. Locke! Did you watch the game?” “I watched the last second of it. Which lasted for about twelve minutes. So, Go Giants?” Then another coworker asked who had watched The Puppy Bowl. “On Animal Planet? Anybody? Em?” YES. Now we’re talking. About puppies.
Though I am impressed by The Giants, no Super Bowl will ever compare to XXVII, when Michael Jackson performed at halftime. I was a third grader with no interest in sporting events or beer commercials, but I remember when my mom called me into the family room at halftime to watch the King of Pop in his breezy white shirt and black pants that looked too short. He sang a medley of Billy Jean and Black or White (my favorite, favorite song at the time, second only maybe to Say You’ll Be There from the Free Willy movie) and then Heal the World.
These were the days before I’d ever seen a music video. I experienced all of my MJ through the headphones of my Walkman, in which I played and rewound and played and rewound the Dangerous cassette tape at every opportunity: at the bus stop, on the way home from dance class, while I waited for my family after Sunday School.
I didn’t know all the words; I couldn’t make a lot of them out and I didn’t have many reference points to help me put them into context. What I couldn’t decipher, I made up, and then I listened to the tape and “heard” those lyrics so many times that I won’t ever be able to learn the songs another way (“I ain’t scared of your body”—I’m just never going to let that one go because it makes sense.)
Then in January 1993, he appeared on TV, amidst a cast of choreographed dancers and thousands of children—it was the pyrotechnic pop remix of It’s A Small World. With strobe lights.
I still remember getting chills over one of the first “live” performances I’d ever seen, and the realization that I wasn’t the only person who liked Michael Jackson or Dangerous or Black or White. When all those kids held up their cards to show that giant mosaic picture in the stands, it seemed like that was the whole point of the game. I remember thinking that the Super Bowl might be an event worth watching after all, because those twenty minutes were pretty exhilarating.
And then the second half of the game started and, oh, wait! Nope, it’s boring again.
And has been, ever since.
Eventually, I retired my Dangerous tape. Next went the Walkman.
But puppies have never let me down.
If you thought that stockings fell into that small category of clothing that has no strict backward or forward, you were wrong. I was wrong. I know because I had to go turn mine around halfway through the morning today.
If you thought stockings were dull and practical, you were wrong again. Here are some outside-the-box styles from Urban Outfitters.
1. Crochet textures are surprisingly flattering. Two Tone Crochet Tights, $14
2. Nothing fancy, just like the nylons that used to come in those eggs, except they’re VIOLET (or orange or red or teal). Opaque Tights, $12 or 2 for $20
3. Cable knit stockings to give bare legs a little more protection from the cold wind the comes up Fifth Avenue. Chunky Ribbed Tights, $11.99
4. Delicate pointelle adds interest without demanding attention. Crochet Sweater Tights, $9.99
5. The girly allover polka dot print disguises the weight of these chunky tights. Dot Sweaterknit Tights, $11.99
Can you find the future world leader in this photo from this past Tuesday’s New York Times?
Photo by Damon Winter, The New York Times
Here he is:
That’s my little brother Will at Barack Obama’s rally at American University on Tuesday. My dad spotted him in this photo in the first section of the Times. It’s also on the NYT Caucus blog: Obama, Kennedys Resonate with Youth.
And now I’m the only member of my family who hasn’t made a nearly negligible appearance in the Gray Lady.
P.S. Will brought his own camera to the big event on his campus (he sort of looks like he’s scoping an angle in the Times photo).  His best shots are of AU a capella group On a Sensual Note, but this is my favorite photo of actual political personalities.
Photo by Will White, My Brother
I remember a dream about underpainting.
It is a classical technique that requires heightened understanding of medium, of color value, of lighting; and the ability to predict the future, to see what’s not there and to know what could be.
It must have been right after I spent a couple of hours in Photoshop, rearranging layers and adjusting opacities and experimenting with blending modes and lighting effects. Those hundred thousand square pixels became imprinted in my vision but I couldn’t tear myself away. I hoped to achieve an appearance comprised of varying degrees of ishes—pinkish, roughish, sweetish. My eyes strained toward objectivity.
It’s no wonder my subjective conscious took it to sleep. In my dream, I faced the same quandries—how to intend without belying intention; how to see deeper into a flat surface; how to recall all that is underneath that top layer and understand the way it blends to create the image the eye sees at a glance.
And a few days later, in one of those moments when I’m convinced I’m either psychic or suffering a brain hemorrhage, I started reading Calvin Tomkins’ profile of American painter John Currin in The New Yorker. Tomkins writes at length about Currin’s Old Master technique and its contrast with his subject matter: skillfully rendered paintings inspired by pornography.
Currin is especially interested in underpainting and near the end of the article, which I finally finished yesterday, he demonstrates the technique for Tomkins. He adds a bruise to one of his girls’ legs. Then he sort of says, “See? So . . . that’s how it’s done,” and without an undo button on which to click, he cleans up the bruise. And then he explains that the girl’s legs will eventually be dressed in green stockings. It’s understood that Currin won’t add hosiery until the image of the bare leg is finished.
It’s obvious, once I think about it. He can’t just paint a green leg.
The profile proposes that John Currin, the man, was restored, was set right, when he fell in love with his wife, artist Rachel Feinstein. And John Currin, the painter, was revived by underpainting. The technique was a breakthrough in his work. I am endeared to the image of the artist on his honeymoon in Venice, moving from painting to painting at The Galleria dell’Accademia to look for layers of underpainting beneath the surfaces.
And I will remember him for saying, “‘I came to the conclusion that there is no misery in art. All art is about saying yes, and all art is about its own making.’” While I don’t believe that there is no misery in love, if I can learn to believe that the latter are true, that love is about saying yes, then that might be what sets me right.
My cousin is in town this weekend and we have spent our time seeing 27 Dresses, discussing the power of positive mental attitude coaching from The Secret, and confessing the crowning indiscretions of our youth. Marie is always on my side—she commends my strength but validates my weaknesses. We high-five each other all around.
She told me this whole gossipy narrative about me as filtered through my mom, to our grandmother, to her mom and back to us. She said that the moral of the story came down to, “it was all on Emily’s terms,” and Marie said, “Well I’m sure it was!” Like, tell her something she doesn’t know. High five for that.
Last night, we had dinner at Rice Thai Kitchen on 7th avenue, which is celebrating its twelfth anniversary with a 50% off special. We each ordered a glass of Thai Iced Tea, which is a sweet drink with a comforting spice. It’s served a little like a tequila sunset, with a creamy layer that hovers atop the crushed ice and tea.
It would be easy to replicate with chilled black tea brewed strong, maybe with two bags, a little cinnamon and sweetened condensed milk or half and half. Twinnings makes a loose Ceylon Orange Pekoe (it comes in a dashing little tin) and a bagged black Ceylon tea. CurrySimple, a mailorder Thai food supplier, makes a real Thai tea syrup concentrate and has a pictorial of the process online.
Apparently, the beverage is served in a plastic bag with a straw on the street in Thailand. I’m trying to picture how that would fly on the streets and subways in New York, where we really depend on our cans and cups and bottles.
Whenever I have something with condensed milk, I think about manjar or dulce de leche, which means “milk candy.” It’s a creamy, caramel sauce that’s popular in Latin America. I spread it on pancakes, toast, sweet crackers and sometimes just my fingers when I went to Chile. It comes in a jar there, but you can make it on the stove top.
1 quart whole milk
1 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
Bring milk, sugar, and vanilla extract to a boil in a saucepan over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low, and continue cooking, and continuously stirring until the milk has thickened and turned a caramel color, about 1 hour. Stir in baking soda. Continue cooking until the milk has reached a pudding consistency. Pour manjar into a bowl and cool completely in the refrigerator.
I’ve heard that you can also whip this up with nothing but a can of sweetened condensed milk submerged in a pan of simmering water for three hours, but that sort of sounds like a science experiment and I’m not asking for any explosive disasters in my little kitchen.