Archive for category: Heaps Cool Stuff

I haven’t done one of these posts in a long LONG time – November 2012 to be exact. Since I’m always reading and trawling the internet for heaps cool stuff this post is going to be a big one.

Photographer, Paul McDonough, took some beautiful photos of New York City in the late 60s and early 70s.

Tavi wrote this incredible post about her blog turning five years old and about her thoughts on memories and nostalgia, amongst other things. I wrote a tumblr post about growing up and things I remember from that weird period between being a child and a teenager. Harmony Korine did a Reddit AMA that cracked me up (Spring Breakers doesn’t open in Australia until May 2nd but I can’t wait). I enjoyed this New York Magazine about Astrologer Susan Miller, and I enjoyed this piece from The Coveteur about Susan’s daughter Chrissie Miller‘s (the designer behind now defunct Sophmore) apartment (which she shares with her boyfriend, Leo Fitzpatrick aka Telly from ‘Kids’). Also good on The Coveteur was the house tour of model/actress Jaime King who I have liked since I read an article about her in an issue of Marie Claire in my dentist’s waiting room in 2002, and on the subject of Jaime, I’m excited about this documentary about her late boyfriend, fashion photographer Davide Sorrenti, See Know Evil. From The Brown Eyed Baker; a recipe for the best chocolate fudge sauce I’ve ever had. My new favourite tumblr – When Big Hair Roamed The Earth. Thanks America, But You Can Have The Madden Brothers Back Now, seriously why are they always in Australia!? I wonder similar things about the singer Pink.

Andy Prokh’s photos of his daughter Catherine and their British Shorthaired (same as my Zigmond!) cat, Lilu are adorable.

Kathleen Hanna said some good stuff about Taylor Swift on The Daily Beast (I can’t believe that interviewers are still asking her about her part in naming ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit though, is this not 2013?!).  I am obsessed with Within Color, a new-ish blog written by some awesome Women of Color. It’s mostly fashion and beauty (so many good outfit photos!) with some other topics thrown in from time to time. My Misspent Youth by Meghan Daum; it’s great, read it. You look great, have you lost weight? is not a compliment. ‘Can You Wear Leggings As Pants?’: Yes, Because I Fucking Want To!’ I can’t believe the debate about this is still going on. Genius babe Bethany wrote about how she feels about being fat. I wrote about dealing with creepy dudes on tumblr; Please Don’t Make Your Boner My Problem.

I probably talk about how I want to run away and live in a cabin in the woods a little too often but I can’t help it. Here is a list of 31 dream houses in the woods. The ones in the photo above is The Eames House, Case Study House #8 (part of the amazing Case Study House Program which also brought us The incredible Stahl House), it was built in the mid-late 1940s and I am in love with it.

I’ve recently really gotten into Joan Didion (I read The White Album last month, finished The Year of Magical Thinking two weeks ago and I just started reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem yesterday). After reading her essay ‘Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream’ about Lucille Maxwell Miller, who was convicted by the State of California of murdering her husband by dousing him with gasoline and allowing him to burn to death while he slept in a Volkswagen I did some googling and came across ‘A Mother’s Crime‘ on the LA Times, an essay about the murder written by Lucille’s daughter Debra Miller. While on the subject of Didion I also read ‘The Autumn of Joan Didion‘ by Caitlin Flanagan and really enjoyed it. And on the flip-side, after getting really annoyed by Didion’s disparaging essay about ‘The Women’s Movement’ I read this critical essay ‘Joan Didion: Only Disconnect‘ by Barbara Grizzutti Harrison and found it quite interesting.

Recommendations: I bought these t-shirts for me and Tom from Teenage and they are pretty great. I’m attempting to read 52 books this year and I’m already up to book number 18 (which is Selected Unpublished Blog Posts of a Mexican Panda Express Employee by Megan Boyle in case you were curious) and I am enjoying reading so much! I used to read so much when I was younger but I’d slowed down a lot the past few years, so I recommend setting yourself reading-based goals so that you will read more books because reading is the best. I also recommend Mac Rebel lipstick, Dorothy Perkins jeans (the super skinny ones are still not tight enough from the knee down for me but apart from that they are great jeans), black jeans with blue denim jackets, middle parting your hair (I’m super late on this bandwagon and it’s weird to see my forehead but I like it) and listening to Brian Eno’s Music For Airports while you write, or while you do anything really.

Look at that middle part! Good bye fringe/bangs, it was nice knowing you.

Taylor Swift, feminism and Sylvia Plath: Alice Bolin ties them all together on This Recording. Stevie Nicks is a queen, a witch, a dragon; she’s in control. Stevie Nicks is there for us: this essay gets even better and the whole Stevie tag on ‘One Week One Band‘ is fantastic. Emma Wooley’s post about what it’s like being a teenage girl really hit home for me (and a lot of other people judging by the thousands of tumblr notes on it).

I love Sincerely Hanna’s Switcheroo photos, this one of Coreena and Kyle is one of my favourites.

Why I Stopped Buying Frankie Magazine, a great post about the lack of diversity in Frankie and other Australian magazines (from June 2010 but I only just read it so I want to talk about it). A Frankie contributer named Chloe Walker responded to this post by saying “on the website the mag is described as ‘aimed at women (and men) looking for a magazine that’s as smart, funny, sarcastic, friendly, cute, rude, arty, curious and caring as they are’. That’s their focus, not ‘diversity’.” Which I thought was kind of horrifying to be honest. How can body/racial diversity not fit into those categories? I really don’t think thin, white, cis-gendered people hold a monopoly on being smart, funny, arty, curious or caring. GROSS.

My talented genius buddy Sara is now selling her prints on Etsy. My favourites are this Rebel Girl one and the Lindsay Lohan postcard.

Another talented genius buddy of mine, Nathania, came across this great interview with Kathleen Hanna from Index magazine in 2000 where she talks about feeling alienated by popular movies, particularly comedies because she can’t find sexist bullshit funny which is something I really relate to.

I want to work my way through Scouting New York’s list of horror movies set in NYC. So far I’ve only watched Frankenhooker, Basket Case, American Psycho, Black Swan, and a few others.

And here’s some parting words from Aubrey Plaza.

I’ve been watching a lot of movies and documentaries on YouTube lately, such as:

‘Born Rich‘ a documentary about kids who were, you guessed it, born into rich families (like really, really rich). It was made by Jamie Johnson, an heir to the Johnson and Johnson fortune and he interviewed his rich friends and some of them got really mad afterwards because they looked/sounded like total jerks.

I love Alicia Silverstone and bad 90s films so True Crime was right up my alley.

And continuing on my Alicia Silverstone kick I’m about to watch Hideaway:

I haven’t seen it before but it looks and sounds amazing. If you’re loving 90s Alicia as much as I am, The Crush is also on YouTube in full. Not Alicia but very 90s and amazing All Over Me is on YouTube as well and it is THE BEST.

Cat Shaming because sometimes cats are naughty and need to be publicly shamed on the internet (I think that might be one of Zigmond’s relatives pictured).

I am pretty into Courtney Love’s pinterest account. Some great ladies I know have started a blog called Least Likely. I recommend you check it out, especially Katie’s post about how she hates Jim Morrison (me too) and Stephanie’s about getting older but still being a perma-teen (obviously I relate). There were some really good parts of this article on The Quietus about beta male/indie boy misogyny. I loved Texts from Sweet Valley High and Texts from The Baby-sitters Club on The Hairpin. I’ve been reading some of these walk throughs/reviews of NYC Haunted Houses and while I’m reading them I’m just thinking ‘NOPE’ but then I just keep on reading for whatever reason. And Straw Feminists In The Closet.

Erin from Zero Style teaches you how to make a circle skirt from an old bedsheet.

I am loving Christina in this video and reading this quote from her:

“During the promotion of my album Stripped, I got tired of being a skinny, white girl. I am Ecuadorian but people felt so safe passing me off as a skinny, blue-eyed white girl. So the next time my label saw me I was heavier, darker and full of piercings! Let me tell you, that wasn’t an easy pill for them to swallow. I had gained about 15 pounds during promotion and during my Stripped tour with Justin. They called this serious emergency meeting about how their was a lot of backlash about my weight. Basically, they told me I would effect a lot of people if I gained weight. The production, musical directors, people I toured with would ALSO miss out if I gained weight because I would sell no records or tickets for my shows. I was young, so I lost the weight quickly and was toothpick thin during Back to Basics promos and touring. So I told them during this Lotus recording, ‘you are working with a fat girl. Know it now and get over it.’ They need a reminder sometimes that I don’t BELONG to them. It’s my body. My body can’t put anyone in jeopardy of not making money anymore- My body is just not on the table that way anymore. I am 31 my boobs are Max’s and my pussy is mine. Sorry.”

What an awesome babe.

I haven’t done one of these for a while so here are some cool things I’ve come across on the internet lately.

Impossible Buildings by Victor Enrich.

This ‘whatever’ pin by Thora Ford. I also love the ‘feminist’ pin and interlocking prism necklace.

“During the printing of the 1999 Melways Directory (the most popular Melbourne streetmap),  a solitary ant accidentally wandered  onto the black printing plate of Page 1A, a detail of the central city. Embedded into the printing plate, its image was printed on 20,000 copies of that edition. The ant was positioned over what is now Southern Cross Railway Station,  creating a surreal image of a giant mutant insect menacing the commuters.” c/o Letterbox.

Hey Aussies, go sign this Illamasqua petition so maybe we won’t have to pay inflated prices for cosmetics/buy them online from overseas anymore.

So I really don’t know what the hell is going on in New Zealand but apparently some primary school had a competition where children dressed up dead possums in costumes.

If you’d rather a bit of a nicer marsupial story, these orphaned kangaroo and wombat are bff.

Here is a video of Patti Smith singing to her cat.

I really like Daniel Freytag‘s work.

And a few links I couldn’t be bothered finding images for:

Books About Death By People Who Committed Suicide on Vice.

Stubbs the cat has been Mayor of a town in Alaska since 1997.

Emily from XOJane talks about her favourite true crime books.

I love Cat Marnell’s blog ‘How To Murder Your Life‘ that she kept from August 2010 – May 2011. Make sure you read the tags or you’ll miss out on a lot of her awesomeness.

Here are 9 Delightful Library Cats! They are all very cute and delightful. The cutie guy above is named Browser and has his own blog.

A tumblr full of indifferent cats in amateur porn, which is exactly what it sounds like and is obviously very NSFW so I don’t want to post photos from but go check it out because you will laugh.

This video goes for ten hours. It’s Molly Soda (who you may know from her tumblr fame) reading all of the messages in her tumblr inbox. I didn’t watch all ten hours of it but I watched bits of pieces of it and thought it was a kind of amazing piece of performance art and said a lot about how nasty people can be when they have the option of being anonymous. And I also thought it said a lot about how scared people are of women with armpit hair, strangely enough.

OK Cupid Enemies. Some people are really weird on their online dating profiles, guys.

“The animal was clearly in distress, or perhaps berserk. The President confessed to having had limited experience with enraged rabbits. He was unable to reach a definite conclusion about its state of mind. What was obvious, however, was that this large, wet animal, making strange hissing noises and gnashing its teeth, was intent upon climbing into the Presidential boat.”

Now I don’t know if you Americans know all about this but in 1979 Jimmy Carter was apparently nearly attacked by a crazed swamp rabbit and I just found this such a bizarre story.

I love Michael Eastman’s series of photos of vanishing America.

And Todd Hido’s Homes at Night series.

I love this video where Arabelle talks about telling off some 13 yr old cat-calling jerks.

Have you guys watched Missrepresntation yet? If not, get to it.

Matthew Gray Gubler’s reasons to stay alive.

This frank and fantastic post about sex education, including a YouTube video drawing of the internal clitoris. (C/O Steph)

Gaby does lots of really cool stuff like the amazing Hopeless Lingerie and she’s started a new feature on her blog, Spokes ‘N Daggers - Friday Night Movie Night! Each week Gaby talks about a different movie and includes lots of screenshots along with some recommendations like who to watch it with and what to eat while viewing, which reminds me a bit of a cool teen magazine review. She has great taste so you’ll definitely find some gems to watch.

50 People You Wish You Knew. Some of the captions are pretty eh but there are a few funny pictures.

Do any of you guys love trashy tv as much as I do? Well if you do you might like p3p3fr3sh’s YouTube channel with full uploads of E! shows like ’20 Most Shocking Unsolved Crimes’ and ‘Too Young To Kill’.

Who Took The Bomp: Le Tigre on Tour. Watch it on Vimeo here. About 15 mins in some interviewer asks them about Kathleen spray painting ‘Kurt smells like teen spirit’ on Kurt Cobain’s wall in the 90s and I’m like blaaaaah, this interview is in 2004 is that really all you can think to ask them about?! So that interviewer but sucks but Le Tigre are so good and you guys should watch this. If you’re as excited anticipating the release of The Punk Singer as I am, you might also want to watch It Changed My Life: Bikini Kill in the UK, a documentary from 1993 (available to watch in full on vimeo).

Gabi Fresh and 30 other fat babes in fatkinis on XOJane.