A Platinum Blonde

We are going to seize this opportunity to stand in reverence of all things Debbie Harry. Blondie was our favorite band way back in our peanut-butter-and-jelly days. And yes, there were embarrassing disco moments, but we once read something Liz Phair said in Spin, about musicians feeling confined to their "camp", or genre, and being criticized for leaving it, and even though we think of Liz Phair as a sort of half-hearted Sheryl Crow rip off, we could not agree more. Anyway, we are very much in awe of Debbie's style. We are pretty much in awe of anyone willing to be completely pantless on stage, if not inclined to imitate them. She makes Edie Sedgwick look like a gutless talentless groupie. Which she was, but that is for another post.

Liloh in Nylon

Honestly, we have just discovered Nylon, and by "just", we mean very literally last month, and it has since then become our favorite fashion magazine. We are very suspicious of fashion magazines. We suspect that their editors secretly want us all to develop eating disorders and die, and/or all their editors secretly have eating disorders and are dying, and this may not be too far from the truth. But there is still some good to be found in them, and Nylon is the most promising. And yet, for all it's refreshing, funny, off-the-wall-ness, someone down at Nylon HQ has desperately bad taste in people. Exhibit A: Pete Wentz. We are at war with Pete Wentz. If we were to name a least favorite celebrity, not even P. Hilton would win over Pete Wentz. He has the most aggravating face we have ever seen. Exhibit B: Liloh. We seriously do not expect magazines to put celebrities on their cover only to make them look bad. Because even if the starlet wrecked their living room and killed their dog and beat them for 20 minutes with her Manolos, it would still be their professional duty to somehow make killing dogs and beating people edgy, and attractive, and testament to how unapologetic and cool starlets are. To be honest, the Nylon cover story this month made our heads spin. Liloh says, "Look at me! I get drunk in public more than I eat! Take my picture!" And Nylon describes her eyelashes. They're long.

Juicy Fruit

There are lots of things we don't particularly like about Japan. The age of consent at 13 being only one of them. Manga being another. The infusion of Japanese culture confuses us, not least because of that WWII incident, say, less than 100 years ago. But ignore the politics, because our Pacific brothers and sisters have the most delicious fruits on the culture radar today. And by fruits, we mean FRUiTS magazine, which is spelled confusingly, and published confusingly "every 23th". In Japan. Needless to say, we have never gotten our hands on an actual copy of FRUiTS, but those lovely people have published two books, Fruits, and Fresh Fruits, which are available in our local bookstore, and if they are available there, they are available everywhere, all the time. Also, http://www.japanesestreets.com our new favorite website.

You know what a Harajuku girl is, thanks to Gwen Stefani, and we are not going to explore the slavery/racism element of that here. That is completely between Gwen and the Japanese legal system. But have you seen these delectable fruits? Can't you just tell how much we love calling them "fruits"?
There is actually an unspoken dress code for adolescent girls at every high school in VA, as far as we can tell, consisting of the very tight t-shirt, and the very tight jeans. You can mix it up a bit, of course, if you feel original. You could have your t-shirt say "milk", for instance. If anyone argues that this dress code is "comfortable", we are going to ask them if they used Crisco to get into their pants, because that is the only way we can see it being done. What's the need for Crisco when you could construct a skirt entirely out of men's ties?! Or knit your own playsuit?! We only wish the infusion of Japanese culture went this far. We would be so excited if we saw anyone knit their own playsuit. There needs to be a Harajuku infusion, and we do not mean t-shirts with Harajuku girls on them. Ugh, we hate Gwen Stefani.

Philton Goes to Jail

We were watching "Extra", because we may look young, but we have an elderly spirit, without the acquired good judgment or organizational skills, and the very scary Extra hosts were discussing the Top 5 celebrities hunted by the paparazzi. And, of course, Paris Hilton was on it, because apparently Paris has a "look-at-me quality" about her. And they referred to this as if it was mysterious. Paris also has a mysterious naked quality. Does anyone remember the butterfly pasties? We are betting that contributes to her look-at-me quality.
What makes Paris so aggravating is not her exhibitionism, which could be offset with the right sense of humor, but that she is famous solely for exhibitionism. And she is referred to as an "heiress", which is American for "princess", instead of "porn star", which would be much more appropriate. But even though America has princesses, it also has jail (now Paris can make jail cool the same way Liloh and MK made rehab cool! Imagine how long she spent picking out her going-to-jail outfit!) We are hoping that this will partially dispel the American princess myth, but it is not nearly as satisfying as, say, the Britney Spears eternal spiral of doom.

The Town That Time Forgot

We feel like we should say, "states that time forgot", because that is how we feel about the entire southern half of our nation. But there is never enough time in the day to discuss all of that. So, we have temporarily overcome our immense fear of being stalked, because we realize that any stalkers would be stalking us already, and we are finally going to showcase our glorious town. And here it is! Thanks to A Pictorial History of Warrenton, Virginia . This is one of those instances where we are extremely disturbed by other people devoting entire web pages to our town, or county, or anything anywhere near us, besides Wash. D.C. Anyway, we would hardly call the pictorial history "historical", because, in all seriousness, Warrenton still looks exactly the same. Which is part of its glory.

Here is the Jefferson Motel in its pre-crack-den glory days, from the outside at least, but there is STILL a Jefferson Motel, and it still caters to its specific clientele, if you know what we mean. And this! Oh, this is so, perfectly, exactly as it was, only now we think it is a furniture store, very sadly.