"[A]longside the statuesque Mrs. Obama in her head-to-toe gilding, [Sarah Jessica Parker] looked like an elfin wallflower in an eggplant-colored sequined dress."

Writes Robin Givhan, in "Michelle Obama can wear whatever she wants now. What she wants is sparkly thigh-high boots" (WaPo).

Is it really okay to use one woman's looks to put down the other woman standing right next to her? Because there are lots of other ways to play that humor-writing game:


Let me make a neutral, moderate, non-humorous observation. This is a very striking case of comparative size. It's sort of mind boggling. Which one is making the other look much smaller/bigger than we remember her? Or are they both doing it to the other.

And those are some strange never-ending boots Michelle is wearing. I think the women coordinated their outfits and had an idea of dousing themselves in glitter for the holidays.

Obama’s dress is from the brand’s spring 2019 collection. The boots are from spring 2018. Both are very, very expensive. Together, they represent the transformation of Balenciaga, a storied Paris-based fashion house....

Very, very expensive? I guess I have to look it up myself, but with the 2 "very"s, I'm expecting something like $50,000. Oh, they're only $4,000. Cheap! They're just some metallic stretch-fabric, right? It's flashy, but a less expensive material and easier to sew and fit than leather. And $4,000 is only slightly more than the highest-priced ticket to her show ($3,000).

Was the ensemble appropriate? Sure. Obama’s book tour is the equivalent of a literary rock concert....

I'm trying to think what kind of rock star would wear boots like that. I thought of KISS.

Whether the ensemble is flattering is beside the point. Taste is subjective, and what might be one person’s glamazon coup is another’s ostentatious faux pas....

And that's how you say something without saying it and really, really say it. I used 2 "really"s so you'll feel what I'm saying.

Remember when we talked about Hillary's shoes? That was in April 2017:



Was she like an elfin wallflower in an eggplant-colored sequined dress?

ADDED: I thought Tom and Lorenzo (my favorite fashion bloggers) would track Robin Givhan and say Michelle Obama can do anything she wants, but I was wrong:

[T]he boots are fierce.... But that horrible choir robe is quite frankly one of the worst things she has ever worn. The color is harsh and unflattering, the satin is unforgiving, and the shape and design of it completely distorts her body... Just look at her body language. Any time a non-pregnant woman spends that much time and energy touching and covering her mid-section, it’s a dead giveaway that she’s not feeling comfortable in her garment....

They love SJP's look.

"I've been meaning to phone you but from Minnesota/Hell it's been a very long time...."

I'm watching this at 6 in the morning not because I'm thinking of Minnesota — à propos of the Super Bowl in Minnesota tomorrow — but because the line "you wear it well" came up in the comments on Tom & Lorenzo's discussion of "Friday Leftovers for the Week of January 28th, 2018": "As for SJP - yea, love it. I feel like she's worn this before, but she wears it well." SJP — Sarah Jessica Parker — is dressed like this.

Speaking of fashion, I love the fashion in that video. Rod seems to be really enjoying his yellow satin pants — to the point of laugh-out-loud comedy. And who has ever done nipples as satirically as Rod in 1975?

The law-and-fashion news.

"Designer Christian Louboutin can claim trademark protection for the red outsole on his women's shoes, but not if the rest of the shoe is also red, a federal appellate panel ruled yesterday, allowing rival Yves Saint-Laurent to continue selling an entirely red shoe."

Louboutin's iconic high-end, red-soled shoes, introduced in 1992, have been spotted on celebrities including Sarah Jessica Parker, Victoria Beckham and Rihanna. The shoes sell for up to $1,000 a pair.

YSL's shoes are entirely red, including their outsoles, and are part of a line of similarly monochrome shoes, also in purple, green and yellow....

[The district judge had said] that a color, being an essential element of fashion design, could not be trademarked, despite the strong connection in the public mind between red soles and Louboutins. The judge compared the suit to Pablo Picasso suing Claude Monet to assert a trademark for a particular shade of blue....

However, the [appellate] panel found that the "evidentiary record further demonstrates that the Louboutin mark is closely associated with contrast," not just the red color, and that the trademark must be narrowed to cover only situations where the red sole of a shoe contrasts with a differently colored upper part.

So maybe you can have a trademark in a particular color. (I note that Tiffany, which has a particular shade of blue, filed an amicus brief supporting Louboutin.) But Louboutin didn't own red or even red soles. What distinctively said Louboutin was red soles contrasting to the rest of the shoe.

The Louboutin side of the argument thus won something important upsetting the trial judge's per se rule against fashion-industry trademarks in a color.

"Some of the stuff in [Sarah Jessica Parker's] house was shabby chic, and let’s just say, Anna [Wintour] wanted less shabby, and more chic."

This is completely mundane to me. Of course, a house that a real family lives in is different from the norm for a glamorous lunch party. Whether Anna Wintour or some less divine stylist is doing the redoing, it must be redone.

But it became hilarious when Rush Limbaugh — who had never even heard the term "shabby chic" — tried to get his mind around it.

Have you ever heard of the term "shabby chic"?  That is how the New York Post describes Sarah Jessica Parker's house. The decor is shabby chic.  I've never heard it, either.  I don't know what it is.  But they had... It's in the Post. Apparently, people were over there Windexing doorknobs.  This place is made out to be an absolute pigsty that Anna Wintour had to go into and clean. No, I'm telling you that's how it's written.  There are people cleaning the doorknobs, washing the windows, taking a piano upstairs, moving furniture out, moving furniture in. 

Etc. etc. After the break, he's got a definition of the term — it's from Wikipedia, though he doesn't say so — and he's quoting and riffing:

"Shabby chic is a form of interior design where furniture and furnishings are either chosen" because they look old and worn out, with "signs of wear and tear." Or if they're new items, they're made to look that way. Flaking paint, dents, little chunks taken out of the wood table in the kitchen. I have pictures of some of this stuff.  It looks like you'd run into it in one of Hatfield or McCoy's cabins.  At least to me. "At the same time, a soft, opulent, yet cottage-style decor, often with a feminine feel is emphasized to differentiate it from genuine period decor."

Anyway, Anna Wintour didn't like it. She got it out of there.  It's not even her house.  It's Sarah Jessica Parker's place.  Anna Wintour shows up, and she probably said, "I'm not going in there.  I am not setting foot in this place! I'm not having my picture taken in a place like this."  So the story goes on. She moved the piano upstairs. They were spray painting stuff, washing doorknobs inside and out.  They're making the place sound like a pigsty. 

Limbaugh obviously wants it to be that Parker is a big old slob, but "shabby chic" is a decorating term that has nothing to do with things being filthy or even messy. And "one of Hatfield or McCoy's cabins"... that's a way to say "hillbillies" without saying "hillbillies." Limbaugh wants to say: this is the case of the biggest fashionista in the room calling another fashionista a hillbilly. The material is not there, because "shabby chic" is a technical decorating term. (My Google image search tells me it's very heavy on the color white.) But Limbaugh nevertheless follows his original impulse, that Wintour and her people insulted Parker by calling her home "shabby."

IN THE COMMENTS: I say: "Note to commenters: References to Parker's resemblance to a horse have been done, done, and overdone. Come up with something new." And Crack Emcee says: "Glad to oblige," and — quoting me "The material is not there, because 'shabby chic' is a technical decorating term. (My Google image search tells me it's very heavy on the color white.)" — says "Oh, that shit is HEAVY alright." Indeed!

ADDED: An antidote to the heavy at Crack's link. By the way, we're repainting our house, and we're repainting black and white. What we need to survive... together alive...

Searching for "ample art," I found a cool blog called judith2you.

"Ample art" was the ridiculous phrase used by the pool reporter to describe the room Sarah Jessica Parker had had prepped to receive the President of the United States and 50 of his glamorous friends. Here's the blog post about that. Trying to summon up a picture of "ample art," I thought of those big fat nudes by Botero. I did an image search on his name, which I used as a link in that blog post. But I clicked on the most obvious big fat nude, and it took me to a post at judith2you: "Judith meets Botero." It' a post comparing that Botero to a painting by Marco Palmezzano called "Judith with the Head of Holofernes." The blogger, Judith, comments on the the maid, who "put herself in danger in the midst of the Assyrian Army, she had to carry the bucket with a lifeless head stuffed in rotting meat...."

What is this blog? "That's Judith to you" is what you say when you're named Judith and someone presumes to call you Judy. The blogger's name is Judith, and she says in the sidebar:

... it's time to own my name. to be Shakespearean and wonder "What's in a name?" to learn about the artwork inspired by the name. to contemplate how a widow in a gleaming gown can decapitate a brute - and not muss her nails. join me in the bumpy ride through history and art and social change, all in the name of Judith.

She's been blogging for a year and has blogged about one a day, which substantiates the claim to being a real blog (as I see it). I've written before — I think! — about the idea of choosing one word, setting up a Google alert for it, and blogging based only on that word. What would your word be? In this case, the blogger has chosen her own name, and she's limited her subject to art, although she hasn't limited herself to the news of the day.

Here's her second post, where she contemplates the apocryphal, biblical character Judith:

... the reasons her story have persisted are as varied and complex as the artists who have depicted her.  “strength in weakness” is an overly simplistic explanation: Judith embodies (in political terms) “the people v. tyranny”, (in feminist terms) ”righteous woman vs. marauding man” and (in County Music terms) “git-er done gal v. skunk-drunk asshole.” not to mention, she was not afraid of a little blood and gore to make her point nor adverse to using her feminine charms to advance her true purpose.

... here is a woman you can admire. the men in her city were ninnies, ready to give up and be killed or enslaved. but she looked at her resources, figured she could seduce the guy, made a plan to freak everybody out by detaching and then displaying his head – and it worked. think of all the ways it could have gone wrong —

One - she couldn’t seduce the guy because (a) she over-estimated her charms or (b) he wasn’t interested in her type of womanhood or (c) he wasn’t interested in womanhood at all. “Sorry little lady but you’re just not my type.”...

More at the link! I did a search for Caravaggio — because I knew Caravaggio's painting of the beheading scene — and was delighted to find the Thanksgiving post "Judith demonstrates technique in how to carve a turkey without mussing your gown."

Obama and Michelle at Sarah Jessica Parker's West Village brownstone, with 50 others, who'd paid $40,000 each.

The glamorous fundraiser in NYC. The one that also included Anna Wintour. Meryl Streep and Michael Kors were there.

The pool reporter was impressed with what Parker had done with the place: There was “ample” art on the walls, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a pair of marble fireplaces. The fireplace mantels were adorned with flowers, and so were the tables, which also had votives — Wintour’s touches, perhaps.

Ample art — can't we get a better description? I can't picture anything. Ample? I'm picturing this.

Some Occupy-type protesters were down the street, on the other side of a a police barricade. One of them said, "It’s not a fund-raiser; it’s just trying to get famous people to amplify him."

Ample... amplify....  Damn. I've go the set-up for I joke, but I just can't find it.

The complicated story of Linda Lovelace — soon to be 2 motion pictures.

The star of "Deep Throat" — which is the most profitable movie ever made – led a fascinating life that tracked so many of the cultural trends we lived through. Of course, she got none of the $600 million the $30,000, hour-long movie made. That had to be annoying. But she was the face (and neck) of the porn that suddenly everyone felt they could actually go see. The Nixon administration prosecuted the filmmakers for obscenity. You've got bad old Nixon coming after you. What a strange combination of glamor and squalor!

Her follow-up films flopped, and she became a heavy cocaine user in the mid-1970s, then she made the God move: "God had changed her life." When the 80s came around, she threw in her lot with the feminists:

Demi Moore smokes something, and the real victim is Gloria Steinem.

I don't know exactly why Demi Moore was hospitalized.

Friends and family who were with Moore indicated she has smoked something “similar to incense” and was burning up, shaking and convulsing. They said it was not marijuana.

X17 reported doctors are speculating whether Moore smoked synthetic cannabis, which is also referred to as “K2,” “herbal incense” or “spice.” There are also reports Moore drank excessive amounts of Red Bull energy drinks.

Troubling. Sad, indeed. And there's also the divorce (from her 16-years-younger husband, the very cute Ashton Kutcher). But the person my heart goes out to is Gloria Steinem. Demi Moore has now had to pull out from the role of Gloria Steinem in a movie about Linda Lovelace, the star of the historic porn-flick "Deep Throat." Replacing her is Sarah Jessica Parker. Imagine, one day, one of the most beautiful Hollywood stars is playing the role of you in a movie. And the next day, they've recast the role with an actress who... is just not even very pretty at all.

What's Gloria Steinem doing in a biopic about Linda Lovelace? Here, read "Out of Bondage," by Linda Lovelace (with Mike McGrady), introduction by Gloria Steinem. From the 1986 Publisher's Weekly review at the link:

Steinem's introduction declares her belief in the integrity of the revelations that shocked the public when Lovelace's Ordeal appeared. 

Note: I've read "Ordeal." (And I've never seen "Deep Throat.")

With McGrady, Lovelace here writes a sequel, the story of her life after she escaped from the pimp she claimed forced her into prostitution and into filming "Deep Throat." Many of the hideous experiences detailed in the first book are repeated here, which readers will find hard to bear, unless they are intrigued by the brutalizing pornography that pays handsomely for everyone except its victims. Naming celebrities and mob figures, Lovelace makes a strong case against demeaned "entertainment." Now a wife and mother, the former "sexual zombie" is also an active supporter of human rights. She lectures at colleges on degradations suffered by women as sex objects.

So who's playing Linda Lovelace? I found an old news story that said Lindsay Lohan had the role. Ah, now, I see it's Amanda Seyfried... and that there's a second Linda Lovelace biopic in the works.

Competing films of the same variety sometimes meet poor ends, as studios start rushing to be the first to release their version, which can damage the quality of the end product.

If only they'd take their time! What a fulfillment we might achieve!

"I felt that women betraying each other was something I was investigating at the time."

Said Tori Amos, explaining the origin of the song "Cornflake Girl":

The idea of that, and how quote-unquote friends can really hurt each other deeply, and the idea that the enemy is out there somewhere, but really, where we get hurt usually comes from people we are close to. So “Cornflake Girl” really was about two women, that one felt that the other had really betrayed her.

The inspiration came from Alice Walker’s book "The Temple Of My Familiar":

In the book, they talked about how young girls would be taken to a place for female circumcision, whether it was out in the desert of Africa or what have you, usually by somebody they trusted. A mother, a grandmother, somebody they loved, and of course the person that was doing this to them, taking them to the whatever you want to call it, the hacker or the mutilator, thought that they were doing the right thing, or else the girl wouldn’t be able to get married. They justify their betrayal, and that was really what prompted the idea of “Cornflake Girl.”

But wait, says Adam (at Throwing Things), what about that story about how "she beat out Sarah Jessica Parker to star in an ad for Kellogg's Just Right cereal?"



Just Right cereal... female genital mutilation... it's hard to imagine a greater disparity in sources for a song. And yet... everything goes into the mix, doesn't it? You read books about all sorts of drastic and dramatic occurrences and your own life ticks on with its miniature but important-to-you events, it all swirls around in your poet-brain, and out pop a song (and, over the years, out pop stories about whether the song came from).

This isn't journalism. It's art, and the only test is: it's a great song.

Was Justice Scalia smoking cigarettes with Sarah Jessica Parker?

The Legal Times gets the story straight:

... Justice Scalia did not need a cigarette. But when Parker asked for a light for hers, he provided it (as any Old World-style gentleman like Scalia would, we might add).

And he did not rush over to her and gush about how much he loved "Sex and the City" and was psyched about seeing the movie. You hear? There was no rush and gush.

My beloved commenters, you know what you need to do. Write your own Nino & SJP dialogue.

ADDED: So far, Bob is winning.

Celebs gone twee.

Oh, ick:

SARAH JESSICA PARKER has admitted that she has taken to dressing like The Beatles to please her two-year-old son James. "He wants all of us to dress like the Beatles in the Yellow Submarine era – collars with flowers, really weird haircuts and bell bottoms. He will only wear bell bottoms, which are not easy to find. So I dress in a way that makes him happy because he is the centre of our lives."

MORE:

"The only way we could get him out of pyjamas was to tell him he could dress like a Beatle!... My son has some strong feelings about what I should and shouldn't be wearing. James is like, 'Take that dress off, I don't like it.' Or, 'I'd like you to wear long pants today.' So I dress in a way that makes him happy, because he basically is the centre of our lives," she said.

Yikes!

Here's a mean but funny list from NY Press: 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers (via Apt. 11D). At #50, the first entry hit me as hilariously dead-on--for Sophia Coppola:

AN ART BIMBO whose daddy happens to be movie royalty rides in on the tired back of Bill Murray and is proclaimed a new film genius. The genius' film, Lost in Translation, is the most pretentious, overrated movie of last year, about an alienated Yale brat who feels so lonely in her five-star hotel that she strips down to her panties and curls up on the windowsill every half-hour.

Love the drawings, even if they do make Sarah Jessica Parker (number 13) look an awful lot like Coppola. Aw, what's so bad about Parker?

WHEN GIRLS THINK another girl is beautiful, but guys know she isn't, call it the Sarah Jessica Parker syndrome. Parker is a dual monument to millennial American female vanity and inanity. Spoiled and groomed to the point of psychosis, Sarah Jessica Parker is the final dead-end in the American feminine odyssey.

Do girls think Parker is beautiful? It seems to me most actresses who are called beautiful are nowhere near beautiful. It's often a stretch to call them pretty. The fascinating ones are rather weird looking, really, like Angelina Jolie and Julia Roberts.