Mini-Celebrities I Want to Meet in Paris

It’s one of the cool things about living in big cities, the awareness that at any moment one of the people you know by name and face- but have never met before- might be just around the corner.

I’ve got a few people that I’m thinking of reaching out to when I return to Paris, in the hopes of meeting.  It’s a short and eclectic list, but true to me.

If you’re familiar with me (or my Instagram habits) the lack of ‘French Girls of Instagram’ might surprise you, but they’re really more people whose style I admire- it’s hard to want to meet them knowing relatively little about their interests and personality (beyond shared tastes in bathing suits, jeans, and sweaters).
But I wouldn’t say no to a patisserie with Sabina Socol, any day.

So who’s on the list?

• David Lebovitz: I recently finished reading L’Appart and the story of the author’s harrowing journey to owning a Paris apartment really resonated with me, in terms of expatriate growing pains.  And as a big fan of home renovations, I’d love to hear more.
• Rosie McCarthy: Speaking of expatriate growing pains, Rosie’s youtube channel, Not Even French, is a recent favorite discovery of mine.  In her videos, the native New Zealander discusses the surprises (both good and bad) of life in Paris.  She seems like such a lovely person, and I can only imagine how interesting (and informative) a talk with her would be.
• Paul Taylor: I may have shared one of Paul Taylor’s videos in the past, because they’re quite funny.  He’s a British comedian responsible for the What’s Up France?/What the Fuck, France? series.
• Jessie Kanelos Weiner: Jessie Kanelos Weiner is the writer and illustrator of Paris in Stride, a gorgeous book for the dedicated flaneuse (me) who wants to explore Paris. It’s currently hiding in my Mom’s closet for my July 25th birthday.  Sometimes she holds watercolor classes.  And I really want to attend one!

You may have noticed that this list is super expat-heavy.  This isn’t because I have no interest in native Parisians… so much as I think expats subconsciously strike me as being much more approachable.  Parisians have notoriously close social lives and with expats, I have the benefit of a shared language (frequently) and similar experiences.

Mid-week Links

It seems like every time I’ve been posting recently it’s been prefaced by an apology about my lack of consistency.  I’m here again and again with another excuse- you would think being homebound with a bad ankle would lead to more posting rather than less, but instead I’ve just generally been very off my game for the last week.  Thankfully I’m starting to shape up and am more or less ready to rejoin the land of the living/productive, which is good because we’ve got some family trips lined up which I would never for the life of me be missing.
But that does also mean I’m unlikely to be posting consistently for another week and a half.  The boondocks of PA doesn’t even have phone connection, much less WiFi.
See you on the other side!

In the meantime, I’ve amassed a hideous army of motley links from around the interwebs.

Why so many posts about Instagram?

• Intimidatingly stylish Insta-kids. I do not follow these small people but I do have to say that Jayde Robinson looks like the cutest thing ever.
• Is ‘personal taste’ being replaced by an algorithm?
• The Call Me By Your Name x Monet mashup you didn’t know you needed. Summer vibe.
• Some pretty art photos.

Peace and Acceptance:

• “It’s two years after Pulse and too little has changed.”
• On Polyamorous relationships.
• 7 LGBTQIA stories to celebrate Pride

On Films:

• The trouble with Hollywood’s gender flips: “These reboots require women to relive men’s stories instead of fashioning their own. And they’re subtly expected to fix these old films, to neutralize their sexism and infuse them with feminism, to rebuild them into good movies with good politics, too. They have to do everything the men did, except backwards and with ideals.”
• The Pop Culture Detective strikes again! The topic: Abduction as Romance.
• The Hate U Give. This looks pretty great.
• What is Cinemascore?

Miscellaneous:

• Real men smell like flowers.
• Testing the new Glossier cloud paints on different skin tones. Dawn looks pretty amazing on darker skin, IMO.
• My personal kama sutra.
• There’s a garden on top of Fenway (how did I miss this?!) and the truth about New Haven’s masked boombox man.

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Links 6/15

Hi hi hi. I missed the links post last week not because I didn’t have enough to share, just from pure laziness.  So it’s a bit heavy on the links today, but I have broken them down into bite-size and easily digestible categories.

Trailers:

• Robert Redford looking fine.
• How toTrain Your Dragon is trilogy-ing (!), and this time there’s a lady-dragon!
• Jamie Lee Curtis is back for a Halloween sequel!
• Doggies! Apparently service dogs go through intensive training and aren’t just born being helpful little angels?
• I’m considering a post detailing all of the ways the Tim Burton Dumbo trailer is a crime against the original.
• The next installment in the universe of The Conjuring.

Father’s Day:

• A wince-worthy compilation of Dad Jokes.
• The New Dad: What the evolution of stock photos shows about our changing understanding of paternity and parenthood.

Identity:

• On avoiding the box and embracing your multi-faceted self.
• Body positivity is selling you something.
• Raising a feminist (with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Trevor Noah).
• The stifling nature of masculinity today.
• Kate Spade’s Death and suicide contagion
  If you or a loved one or a general acquaintance is struggling with getting through, please reach out to or for help. We’re all in this together.

Miscellaneous:

• How ASMR became an internet phenomenon.
• This Parisian restaurant only lets you in with a baby or a bump.
• I’ve been following this illustrator for a long time and now she’s selling some of her prints of Etsy!
• Bumblebees use scent and color patterns to tell flowers apart.

Links for the two test week

It’s been such a week so I’m just going to throw some links on here and run. Seriously, right from vacation into double killer exams.  When it feel like a long week and it’s only Tuesday you know you’re in trouble.

But I bought my flight home, wheee!

• A children’s book to teach about the huge and overwhelming emotional spectrum. Hooray for raising emotionally literate and empathetic children.
• It’s Luckyscent’s 15 year anniversary- and they’re welcoming some cool store exclusives!
• This instagram account makes beautiful patterns from everyday objects. One step up from freakebana?
• My favorite Oscar speeches!- Guillermo del Toro and Frances McDormand (I just watched the latter again (for the fourth time? Still so powerful. #InclusionRider).
• I shared an essay about Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon a week or two ago- and he seems pretty charming in person. And he has a cute belly.
• Wait, are they going to make a film from Chekhov’s The Seagull? Because that would be amazing. Also, how many films is Saoirse Ronan in this year? Also Annette Bening.
• Heartwarming story of the week: A tiny little girl transfixed by the National Portrait Gallery’s portrait of Michelle Obama meets her idol.
• My favorite, sent to me by my college roommate (whose birthday was yesterday, Happy Birthday, Lily!)- the largest ever analysis of film dialogue by gender. It reminds me of how my Mom has stopped watching films exclusively about white men (she made a recent exception for Call Me By Your Name) and now finds that most films she watches are about black men. The lack of substantial female roles in the film industry is really astonishing.

Links: But also it’s OSCAR DAY

My life is dark and full of terrors but also pretty good. I’m still getting over my stomach bug/food poisoning, my landlords are creatures from the black lagoon, I have an exam tomorrow and an exam on Friday and I am NOT PREPARED (Constance the Perpetually Unready) but I had a lovely time in Spain and Malta over my break.

What can you do?

I woke up at 3 am for my flight back to France and I’m a mess trying to gain the energy to shower and study, but today is Oscar Day and I have some time-sensitive links that should go up. And also procrastination.

Allons-y!

• The Personal, First: My Dad broke the world record in indoor rowing for AK amputees over 50 years of age. If he wasn’t officially the coolest before (he was), he certainly is now.
• The perfume oriented:
  Scents of place: brains can navigate based solely on smells.
  A short short for Diptyque’s fiftieth anniversary and their two new releases.
  Hermes is getting in on that sweet sweet Arabian market.
  A dream job and a dreamy fragrance collection.
  Immortalizing the scents of people and the scents of places.
• Very excited for Love, Simon. Especially after this review (from one of my favorite youtube critics).
• The Scrunchie Renaissance: the much maligned accessory that made a resurgence last summer now has a prominent background role in Oscar-nominated I, Tonya and costs boatloads of money at Balenciaga.
• Dick’s Sporting Goods, in the wake of the Florida shooting, will no longer sell assault style rifles. Good on DSG for not living up to its name.
• Positive Self Talk, an illustration by Mari Andrew.
• Another video from pop Culture Detective! This time on the widespread media trope of ‘stalking for love‘, wherein invasive, coercive, manipulative, and otherwise inappropriate behavior is presented as an endearing aspect of courtship.
• Am I Gay or Straight? On giving yourself the power and permission to be who you are.
• And a toe-dip into tonight’s Oscars:
  How Rotten Tomatoes may have radically skewed the Oscars’ Best Picture Race: The demographic ratings trends of the films over time is really fascinating. Also I feel the need to look up past years’ best screenplay winners.
  Hollywood stylists are killing red carpet style, an not in a good way. I also blame the internet, which is usually a good move.

Friday Links: 1/26

I turned 22.5 yesterday and today I have an exam that threatens to destroy all that I hold most dear. I’ve been studying since I woke up at 5:30 am. (Approximately five hours ago). There are about three hours left. It’s panic time.

Here’s what’s happening online:

• Kate DiCamillo (author of Because of Winn-Dixie, and others) on why children’s books should be a little sad.
• You can smell when someone is sick. Here’s a case where a woman was able to identify Parkinson’s patients by body odor, some even before they were clinically diagnosed.
• NBA = ballet? Check out these beautiful unplanned synchronized moments.
• Hedi Slimane takes over at Celine, replacing Phoebe Philo. Not a fan of this development.
• An ode to the pre-teen bedroom, complete with bead curtain.
• Ann Curry may have a baby crush on Stephen Colbert but I have a baby crush on Ann Curry.
• First there was athleisure. Now there is bath-leisure.
• Screen Junkies casts the It sequel– the prestige, the popcorn, and the provocative versions (the latter featuring Jared Kushner).
• Full cast and vague plot details have been announced for The Incredibles II and I am salivating.
• This webcomic is my current (as of yesterday) obsession and I’m narrowly avoiding bingeing it instead of studying. It’s sold out but if you buy it in book form it comes with a plush. Here’s the author/illustrators tumblr for more info.
• Phantom Thread is the last big Oscar nominee that I haven’t seen. Here are some of the films from which director Paul Thomas Anderson drew inspiration (including Rebecca!) and an amazing short film featuring under-the-radar lead actress Vicky Krieps.
• One thing I really like about this capsule wardrobe article in particular (among the seeming billions out there, which get a bit very repetitive) is the recognition that, because everyone’s style is different, so will everyone’s capsule wardrobe be.
• What is Scandinavian style and why is it gaining so much traction globally?
• Living for Colbert’s imitation of French President Emmanuel Macron. It starts around 2 minutes in.
• In case you’re wondering what I’m doing here in France, here’s a video featuring some of my classmates.
• And to round out this rather fashion-focused week, Kate Spade succulent sandals.

Friday Links 1/19

Happy Friday! I have the day off, which is many kinds of wonderful (not least because I get to go out and buy a pastry and check some travel guide out from the library and maybe find a waterproof pair of boots.)
(You know, the real problem is that I just want these ten year old riding boots to be new again, or to find a pair of Chelsea boots that are pretty similar. But the Vogue right now seems to be for combat boots or boots that are combat-adjacent so I’m having some trouble).

Anyway, links!

• Collider (one of my favorite youtube channels on the film industry, frequently mentioned on the blog) doesn’t usually discuss anime, but Emma’s here to decode some common visual tropes and gags.
• More things I’ve learned from my amazing and diverse ISIPCA classmates? Dan from Australia taught me about ‘Firehawk’ raptors, which spread bushfires to flush out their prey.
• There’s a Star Wars-themed Creperie in Paris. The dishes are named after the planets by which they were inspired.  Not at all vegan-friendly, but I’m so amused.
• I know I hate on GP’s goop, but this is actually a pretty good article about how our negativity is in many ways an adaptive strategy, a self-defense mechanism to protect us from past threats- and so a lot of negativity may no longer really be necessary (and may actually be counterproductive) to leading happy lives.  I know I sound super woo woo so I’ll stop, but it does resonate with a lot of what I’ve observed and thought re: my own negativity and cynicism.
  But yeah, no, I only skimmed the article.
• What do I really want? Continuing to love Mari Andrew’s illustrations.
• Also Poorly Drawn Lines’s send up of this classic Lion King scene.
• Screen Junkies (another favorite youtube channel on the film industry) presents their annual Screens awards for the best and worst in movies and television.
• Unforgettable movie style moments. Some (Keira Knightley’s green Atonement dress) would definitely be on my own list (which, hey, will maybe happen someday).
• I hope you made it through Blue Monday (the most depressing day of the year, apparently) okay. If you’re still feeling a bit of residual down-ness, here are some lovely feel-good movie dance scenes. I still always listen to Dancing Queen when I need a boost. I have to say I think Moses Supposes from Singin’ in the Rain is actually more feel good than the title song, but whatever. Again, maybe this is a moment when a personal list is needed.
• You’ve heard of the KonMari Method. Maybe you’ve even partaken in some Swedish death cleaning (I’m only 22 and I know I have. One needs to be prepared)- now t’s time for the hot decluttering trend of 2018: American Apocalypse Purging.
• Another anticipated 2018 film (see earlier post): Love, Simon.
• I watched I, Tonya and thought it was pretty good (Blades of Glory is still the best figure skating film), but you know what I’d love to see? A film about figure skating legend Surya Bonaly. Because a backflip is almost as difficult as the Iron Lotus.
• The mindset of men and women re: sex and during sex itself, and how this influences the way women write about sex.  A really interesting read.
• A very cogently written account of the issues with Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water. It’s always brilliant when you find an article that explains your gut feelings. Beautiful film, serious problems.
• There’s a Colette film coming! Keira Knightley’s going to star! I’m not sure those two go together! But I love both separately!
• On Aziz Ansari and sexual assault vs sexual coercion: I don’t believe sexual coercion is sexual assault. But it’s not exactly enthusiastic consent either.  I don’t think it’s too much to ask men to interpret mixed signals, particularly when sexual violence against women is so common and fear of the consequences of refusal is so real.
• If becoming a perfumer doesn’t work out, maybe I can go into gourmet ice cream.

Links not Words

Look at me doing two posts two days in a row like I don’t currently have 134 raw materials to study and an illness to recover from! 😀

No excuses, I have reaped enough links from the inter webs now to share them and I’m missing sharing my thoughts more often, so I’m going to work on making time for this blog/diary/list compendium more of a priority.
For the children, you know.

• Pixar’s released a TEASER TRAILER FOR INCREDIBLES 2! I’ve been waiting so long. And I am so ready for destructive apocalyptic Jack Jack and stay-at-home Mr. Incredible. (And Edna Mode. Please, Edna Mode).
• One of my favorite makeup artists (Violette, check out her youtube channel) has released a trio of lip colors with Estee Lauder. I’m sorely tempted.
• A scholarly discussion of Rankin & Bass Christmas specials; the good, the bad, and the ugly. Finally convinced me to finally watch Jack Frost, which I had somehow missed during all of my childhood ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas. Here are some highlights.
• A program to help you find the word that’s just on the tip of your tongue.
• Guys, there’s a new horse movie coming out, Lean on Pete.
• The American Film Institute has released their list of top 10 films of 2017. It’s a pretty good list. I’ve seen 4/10 so far, time to get cracking.
• Yale’s released a new admissions video, “That’s Why I Toured Yale”, replacing cult icon “That’s Why I Chose Yale”. The weirdest thing? I recognize people in the video. (I see you at 9:26-9:33, ballroom team!)
• NPR’s guide to the best books of 2017. Be right back, adding about 20 to my list. have you read any?
• New York Times film critics on the best movie performances of 2017. So much agreement and so much anticipation for films I haven’t seen yet (like Ladybird, The Shape of Water, and Call Me By Your Name).
• The magic of big cities, an illustration.

Disney Animated Movies Ranked

Way back in late September Collider Videos (one of the sites/youtube channels from which I get the vast majority of my movie news) posted this controversial list: a ranking of all 56 animated Disney films.

Obviously I do not completely agree so I’m here to add my own two cents.

Qualifiers:
I have not seen all 56 films, so this definitive ranking is restricted to the films I have indeed seen.
You may disagree. Write your own list, tell me your thoughts. Please do not comment that I have shit on your childhood (or that you want me to masturbate using my own tears as lubricant, which was a comment I saw on a youtube video ranking Disney songs. Eight years ago. It is a comment that has stuck with me).
At the end of each item I’m including Collider’s ranking.

Favorite Fashion and Style Books

I’ve read a lot of style books over my time- they’re good for kicking back and relaxing when you’re trying to put off reading Henry James’ The Golden Bowl (which I’m currently happily but slowly wading through right now). At some point they all seem to blend together (the fashion book, not the Henry James’), but there remain some special ones that stand out- and a lot of other ones that are fun and worth reading, even if they’re not listed here.

Because I had to limit my number of French style books- there are so many that are worthwhile reads but differ from each other only slightly.

I also cut out my favorite minimalism books, because they deal with wardrobes an top of many other lifestyle changes.

And then there are books more based on images- which I’m not going to talk about. But style coffee table books are beautiful too.