Bon Voyage

Mightygirl shared her fantastic master packing list.  Organizers around the world found calmly (and neatly) expressing exclamations of joy.

Bedroom makeover, part 1

We’ve had the same dressers in our bedroom from Gothic Cabinet Crafts for 10 years.  I’ve stained them, painted them, scowled at them, reknobbed them, yet they remain.  Until one day, when my interior designer friend ‘J’ came over and very kindly said, are you er – married – to those dressers?  Because I think I could help find some vintage ones for you.

Blog-ee, meet my new friends.  Do you die?

ps. I love how the seller posed them outside, just kind of hanging out in front of some sugar cane fields, acting all coy.

 

More Mad Men Analysis

According to some people, this Mad Men analysis blog might be even better than the first one I posted about (sorry Tom and Lorenzo!)

Like a Phoenix Rising

Lonnymag.com is an online magazine produced by a lot of the same people who brought you Domino Magazine.  I still miss paper, but this is great.

Speaking of tick tock

These would be great clocks to count down the final moments of my house plants.

Pluto Sunburst Clock at Conran Shop

Roost Flora Wall Clocks at Velocity

Tick tock, greenery

Just a windowsill, but it’s my favorite place in our apartment right now.  I’m trying to enjoy it, as it’s without question that those plants will be dead by Halloween.

Beauty

One of my best friends is a textile designer who owns L’erba.  Her designs manage to be modern, romantic, nature inspired and soothing.  Do you know about the magic hour?  Each of her designs feel like they capture that moment. Her home is almost entirely white.  We’d visit and I’d feel like I just came back from a luxury spa.

Last time I was out at her home in East Hampton she let me peek around her studio.  Imagine a room in the eaves of an attic with design books, vintage fabrics, inspirational objects (a vintage white little girl’s dress, a purse with unusual stitching, rocks and shells found on the beach).  Everything in the palest of shades, soft to look at and touch.

She motioned to a large print she had designed and had printed out. It was, to steal a phrase from Rachel Zoe, BEYOND.  I DIE.  BA-NANAS.

Some months later I met her for lunch to celebrate our birthdays.  I saw a very large tube in her hand.  I had a very large smile on my face.

Can I really express how great it is to have such talented and generous friends?

The before shot is in our old place, unframed.  The after shot is it properly framed in our new place.

Etsy love

Etsy is going to turn me into a Collyer brother.

From top left to right, linking to main seller’s shop on Etsy as the vintage items were one of a kind:

Handmade ikat pillow

Vintage grey glass vases

Vintage grey glass bowl

Vintage atomic style lamps

Vintage tray

Greenware pot with succulent plant (sent to the lovely Catherine to wish her a very happy birthday)

Burlap runner (using to cover bench, stamped mine with ‘17′ on both ends as both Fi and B were born on the 17th)

Nautical knot door stopper (Note to parents -  Not a great idea.  Could be renamed Nautical little brother head smasher)

Cuckoo Clock!

Exciting Times (for M, anyway)

Editors Note:  One day I’ll have something interesting to say.  In the meantime, it seems the excitement and adventure scale is tipped towards Mike.  Jerk.

PS.  Hotel report forthcoming

***Start Field Report***

Author: Mike

Subject:  Me and My Friend Ellroy

*********************************

To All those Who Told Me Moving Back To NYC Would Only Bring Me Bad Things

That’s right folks, I’m not ‘just’ an extra in a sea of extras movie star, but an all-around media/culture luminary. Aside from hangin’ on the Wall Street Two set with Oliver Stone, Shia LaBeouf, and Frank Langella, I also rub elbows with such famous contemporary authors as James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential and American Tabloid, to name a couple). As luck would have it, I just happened to run into the aforementioned American master of noir, the aptly self-proclaimed “Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction” while he was waiting for his driver outside the Plaza. After I bluntly informed him that he’s “my favorite fucking author!” we proceeded to chat in the easy, cheerful manner of old pals unexpectedly crossing paths in an unlikely locale. At least, that’s how it seemed to me anyway.

Before I continued on to the coolest Apple Store in the world at 5th Avenue, the Demon Dog invited me down to The Strand for a reading of his just-released novel Blood’s A Rover and the subsequent book signing that very evening.

I begged permission from my wife made room in my overloaded schedule to attend, since I had been waiting literally eight years for this last installment of Ellroy’s massive, mind-blowing tour de force of historical fiction known as the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy. The first book of the trilogy, American Tabloid, is my favorite book of all time; I push it on friends looking for something to read with all of the fervor of a religious kook handing out “The End Is Neigh…” pamphlets in the subway.

I like all of his other books of course, and some are better than others. His leave-nothing-unrevealed memoir My Dark Places still, ten years later, has me nearly convinced that the fact that I have not experienced enough real pain and difficulty in my own life will prevent me from becoming the kind of writer that I would like to be. I wish I had asked Mr. Ellroy his opinion on that during the question and answer period, but I digress…

Evidently he was surprised that I actually showed up at the reading, because when my turn came he warmly chatted with me for a few more minutes, graciously posed with me for a photo and then inscribed my copy of Rover as follows:

“To Michael, You were NOT full of shit!” —-James Ellroy

He’s a real cool dude, and I look most forward to reading Blood’s A Rover.

***End Field Report***

Now where were we?

Hi.

Our babysitter quit on us.   Cold turkey style.

Working mothers, you feel my pain.  Add in this happening right before starting two new schools (one in the morning, one in the afternoon), in a new city, in a new apartment, while still trying to get to work, well.  I’ve been sunnier.

Anyway, enough of me crying about it.  The post must go on, right?!  RIGHT.  And therefore, I give you a teaser of a juicy forthcoming post.  It involves performance art, a downtown hotel, and Mike doing “The Robot” – oh yes, it does.