Dept. of Don't Know Whether to Laugh or Cry: The "Dragon Tattoo" fashion line

I almost choked on my Wheaties this morning when I saw an ad pop up on the side of Gawker for a "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" fashion line. I guess it's supposed to be for young women who want to emulate the title character, who is a punked out Rooney Mara:

For the record, the fashion line is like this:

Somebody please help.

Things I continue to miss

I hate crowds and I'm too old for such things, but in addition to Litquake, another huge event in San Francisco I missed this weekend was the Treasure Island Music Festival. I don't even know how all those people got to Treasure Island.

This is why I was eager to help my friend Catherine with her solo show in the Fringe Festival last month -- because I get out and participate in the life of the city less and less.

Haven't participated in the #OccupySF protests either, but then, neither are many others. Hasn't quite caught fire here the way it has in other cities. Added the next day: Here's a video from Sunday night's dust-up, shot by the notorious Josh Wolf, giving me a good reason not to go -- I couldn't stand listening to that strident white girl in dreadlocks.

(I'm exactly of the age such styles are supposed to annoy, but I didn't like the style 15 years ago when it started and I was only 40. White people in dreadlocks -- really??)

Fashionista suffers to make an impression, scrambles epic rock song title

Courtesy a feed from @beatricks, a posting on the New York magazine website reporting on an article in the New Yorker. It's about some person named Daphne Guinness whose career seems to be mainly to attire herself, though in some official sense I guess she is what is still called a "fashion designer." (She seems to be something of an obsession for that particular NY Magazine blog; see all posts tagged with her name.)

I did a Google image search for her, and I have to say -- while some (and only some) of her outfits, for which she reportedly suffers so much, are striking, all her efforts make her look pretty much like every rich lady who's had a ton of work done.

But I guess I'm not her audience, am I. The main reason I'm blogging this person is to memorialize her brain-seizing quote:

I'll eat when I'm dead.

... which is a spooneristic take on the original bon mot "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead," which was the title of a song on a 1975 Warren Zevon album.

She might want to look into adapting another famous rock 'n roll line, "Hope I eat before I get old."

Cultural heroine, c. early 21st century

I ran across this image in the RSS feed of a young woman's blog. It isn't a picture of the blog owner, just a picture she posted, apparently one she likes, as she mainly posts arresting pictures of young women, many of them models:

Click the image to see it as posted. I think this picture pretty much sums up the current zeitgeist, everything popular culture is fascinated with or uses: Extreme youth and attractiveness plus anonymity (the goggles, wig and pose obscuring the model's real features) contrasted with exhibitionism (the underwear) plus narcissism (she's ostensibly taking her own picture) plus voyeurism (we can see much more of her than she "intends" with the picture she is "taking").

This image reminds me of the pictures posted on a rich young Mexican girl's blog I stumbled on many years ago (and which has long since vanished). She posted pictures she'd taken of herself on the toilet. In the pictures she was nude, but had arranged her arms and legs to hide her nipples and her pussy, thus controlling the extent of her exhibitionism. No name, and the postings were clearly just for her friends, whom she addressed through nicknames.

But the image above really piles on the memes. In addition to exhibitionism, narcissism and so on, we can even add nostalgia, if that is the right term for including the 20th century camera she is holding.

Dr. Seuss, 1970s hipster

Don't know when this photograph of Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr Seuss, was taken, but from the polyester print shirt I'm guessing early 1970s.

Click on the image for a larger version, from the article in today's L.A. Times. 

I love everything about that picture: the picture window, the heavy beige phone you could use to conk a burglar, the ceramic mug that might say something like "World's Greatest Artist Is Also My Grandpa," and above all the bold print of the shirt peeking out under the beige sweater. I look at that and think: this is what a successful mid-century artist looked like, dressed like, lived like. I'll bet if you could find a picture of Charles Schultz from the same year, it wouldn't be far off. 

Update the next day: This article has another photo of Seuss at home, showing an interior room and a more relaxed grey turtleneck style. Geisel seems to have liked neutral colors -- an interesting facet for a man whose drawings were fantastical.

'Emo jacket' should appear to makers of pr0n

German electronics company Philips Electronics has announced an "Emo jacket" that is "meant to let you more closely immerse yourself in the experiences" of characters in a DVD you're watching. The jacket is fitted with 64 thingies -- all right, "actuators" -- that are intended to give the wearer the sensation of being tapped in the spot on their body nearest the thingy. A radio receiver will receive signals encoded on the DVD and activate the thingies in whatever pattern the programmer has programmed.

For example, it is supposed to give you the sensation of having a "chill up your spine." I wonder what the German word is for that. On second thought, I don't want to know.

The story on C|Net suggests the obvious implications for porn, saying that at this point there are no plans to ship a matching pair of pants. But once the technoogy has been invented, it's only a matter of time, of course -- I'm guessing the Japanese will get right on it -- before you'll be able to watch porn with no hands.

technorati: technology, Phillips, jacket, entertainment, movies