31 December 2006

25 the old year

pride and prejudice (austin)
the kennedy imprisonment (wills)
sellevision (burroughs)
diana: in search of herself (smith)
the confessions of an ex-fan magazine writer (wilkie)
capote: as remembered by his friends (plimpton)
8.4 (hernon)
the romantic movement (de botton)
i am charlotte simmons (wolfe)
vanity fair (thackery)
freedom rising: a civil war history of washington, d.c. (furgurson)
madame de pompadour (mitford)
extremely loud and incredibly close (foer)
madame de stael (harold)
andromache (euripedes)
blond (oates)
after the fall (miller)
widow of the south (hicks)
conversations with marilyn (weatherby)
marie antoinette: an average woman (zweig)
the culture of fear (glassner)
john profumo and christine keeler (denning)
norma jean: the life of marilyn monroe (guiles)
the most beautiful woman in the world: liz taylor (amburn)
the enchanter (nabakov)
the portrait of a lady (james)
josephine (erickson)
athenias (hilton)
strapless: john singer sargent and the fall of madame x (davis)
who killed daniel pearl? (levy)
hope in a jar: the making of america's beauty culture (peiss)
beloved emma: the life of lady hamilton (f. fraser)
marie antoinette: the journey (a. fraser)
marie antoinette & count fersen (farr)
the claudine novels (colette)
the rachel papers (m. amis)
versailles (davis)
madame de pompadour: a life (lever)
gigi/julie de carnelihan (colette)
the knight of maison-rouge (dumas)
sex with kings (herman)
einstein's dreams (lightman)
mistress of the elgin marbles: mary nisbet (nagel)
the tipping point (gladwell)
marrying mozart (cowell)
marie antoinette: the last queen of france (lever)
freddy & fredericka (helprin)
la dame aux camillieas (dumas fils)
and the band played on: politics, people, & AIDS (shilts)
adrian mole & the weapons of mass destruction (townsend)
the lost painting: the quest for a caravaggio masterpiece (harr)
duchess: a novel of sarah churchill (scott)
peter pan (barrie)
sylvia plath: rough magic (walker)
la reine margot (dumas)
gentlemen prefer blondes (loos)
the american way of death (mitford)

30 December 2006

4 go lightly

it is official. in january, la petit maison de oh!-'lighn is taking up residence in much less petit, much more fabulous quarters in the pillbarracks. thus, begins the process of the current la petit maison de oh!-'lighn being on the market.

i had been warned that should i dare to not renew my lease, the apartment might be shown during hours that would be confirmed two days in advance and entirely convenient to me. so i struggled to make the place look tolerably tidy. after several weeks of this to no avail, i reached an impasse.

who cares what they think? i thought, conveniently forgetting that after a lifetime of my mother's admonishments to not let anyone know that we secretly live like pigs, i would, of course, care.

so it was that at 2 p.m. this afternoon, as i lay in bed cursing the stupid ear that God gave me, a knock happened upon my door. and i lept from bed knowing that i was about to open the door with some unpardonable hair and whilst wearing hello kitty jammies. my contacts weren't in but my mind's eye could clearly see the underthings strewn about the closet. the pile of dirty clothes in the bathroom. the stack of dishes in the sink. the unmade bed. the incontrovertible evidence of what my mum always said.

but my mum underestimated the power of mood lighting and interior decor. upon entering la petit maison, the prospie let out a gasp. her companion exclaimed, holy shit! they begged me to leave everything. they asked the all-important question: jen or angelina? they looked upon me not as a freak in hello kitty jammies at 2 p.m., but as the curator of grand fabulousnesses. which was rather reassuring. God may've given me a crap ear, but i sure can have my way with a room.

29 December 2006

2 today, in small, long-overdue, slightly ironic personal victories

faux2. if you've had anything to do with me during the past seven months, most likely you were aware of this article at some point. this is the article that was proposed in may. the article for which the bombshell and i went to see faux2 in june. the article for which i interviewed faux bono in july and gredge in august.

this is the article that was to be submited in mid-september. the article that, for four months, was evoked every single time anything vaguely relating to writing came up. oh no. i couldn't write that. i'm writing this faux2 article.

this is the standard profile that i supposedly slaved over thoughout the fall. when, in reality, i didn't even read faux edge's interview responses until october. this is the article that was submitted in a stupidly rough draft because i was so pissed at the thing that i had to send it away. i had to solicit help. i could not go on.

this is the article that returned on november 1st with a bevy of beautiful comment balloons. for weeks, i glared at the icon that sat on my desktop. i couldn't bring myself to actually open it until december 16th.

there was a genuine fear that the article would never finish. that i would go to my grave clutching my faux bono interview notes. and for a scary second, death almost seemed a luxurious alternative to further faux2 exertions. the angels would just accept my blanket statement that a cover bands' sound is unique. they wouldn't demand an explanation of such an unexplainable irony.

faux2 and i had a major falling out. i wanted to beat them up for not being more quotable. i cursed gredge's evasiveness and faux bono's witticisms. i cursed the fact that they didn't have a steady faux adam, which forced me to write about the world's most famous foursome as though they were being impersonated by a mere three.

i wanted to kill them dead.

until friday, december 29th, when i began to fear that this article would go on endlessly into the new year and therefore relaunched my research efforts. newly committed, i headed over to the faux2 website. there, i discovered that they switched faux bonos three months ago. the faux2 article was completely obsolete. my only thought: hallelujah!

ladies and gentlemen, we can now put the fun back in faux2.

28 December 2006

17 home again

in the airport i heard these two couples talking. they were from memphis and had been vacationing in chicago. they didn't understand why anyone would want to live in chicago. in memphis, everything was so close, they said. you could get in your car, go around the corner and anything you could possibly want was right there.

i wanted to march these people back to the blue line, parade them around and show them my city. because though i love memphis, the fact that you have to get in a car to go around the corner says it all.

26 December 2006

44 "oh no! these are all for us. we're delicate and we chap."

my chapstick addiction has been well documented, as has the promulgation of said chapstick addiction by my mum. but i only just the other day realized what a family of stick addicts we are.

as we sat in huey's gorging on burgers, my mum related to my grandmother the stirring story of how she became a stick addict. how, as a little girl when she lay in the hospital ill with an as-yet-undiagnosed respiratory infection, her grandfather exclaimed, that baby's chapped!, promptly raced to the pharmacy and returned to slather blistex upon her lips. pulling a tube of tropical twist punch (bonnie bell, summer '06) from her bag, my mum nodded sagely and said, that's when IT all began.

she went on to recount the current locations of her active sticks. her's are in the pink coat pocket, the front purse pocket, the pencil drawer at work, and the nightstand at home. it was a litany i well know. mine are in the right pockets of the blue, green, and yellow coats; the red coinpurse; the inside pockets of the yellow, leopard-print and red bags; the pencil drawer; my right jeans pocket; on the nightstand; and the silverware drawer. that's the one that made her pause. the silverware drawer? ingenious!

for years, my mum had been faithful to the medicinal sticks. the kind that reek of aloe and mint and various vapors. the kind that smell like they were manufactured in some old lady's attic. i knew the tides had changed at thanksgiving when she handed me a tube of cotton candy (bonnie bell, winter '05). but in huey's the other day, we entered an entire new era when she complained to my grandmother that target was no longer carrying bonnie bell.

coyly, all-knowing, i leaned across the table and whispered the magic word: walgreen's. her eyes lit up.

conveniently, we were going to walgreen's that afternoon- not for chapsticks, but for medicine for my stupid ear. while the family waited in the car, my mum and i linked arms and marched in. for three minutes we debated in the ear medicine aisle before grabbing the thing with the most ingredients. then the search for our beloved bonnie bell began.

they glimmered before us, a mirage of sweetly flavored chapsticky glittering goodness stuck casually at the end of an aisle alongside bargain bin wrapping paper and reduced christmas candy. my mum reached out and carressed the winter wonderland delights collection (bonnie bell, winter '06) as though it were the shroud of turin, while i dove reverantly for the vanilla creamies, our favourite from the fall '06 line.

we approached the check-out counter with a bonnie bell stash. a collective 18 sticks. so many sticks, in fact, that we crossed some personal satisfaction stick threshold that led the check-out lady to assume they were gifts. in an extraordinarily effective upsell, she led us to the glorious display of the bonnie bell christmas collection that we had somehow overlooked and from which we were practically obligated to buy an additional 10 sticks.

i am not ashamed to admit that my mum and i left walgreen's with $30 worth of chapstick. but as we were leaving, she nudged me and whispered, let's not tell the family. they don't know. they won't understand. it's bonnie bell.

25 December 2006

11 meanwhile, in memphis

we wear silly hats
(and are much happier than we may appear)

we make silly faces

we even make our GPs wear silly hats

and we love kitties

19 December 2006

29 turn on the bright lights

there are certain perils that one encounters as a wearer of eyeliner. aside from the aforementioned prejudice, the principle conundrum is the sheer inability of making one's eyeliner stay put. it wants to migrate and play the field. to fool around with the chin or party with the nose or have a forehead one night stand. eyeliner is très JFK.

the catch-22 is that the simple wearing of eyeliner can make one look 37% less haggard- a figure overwhelmingly in its favor. but a figure rendered less glorious by the fact that eyeliner gone awry can make one look 42% more crazed. it's a risky fine line.

today, i did a series of bold, not so smart things. i put on eyeliner in the dark. i did not turn on the lights to check the stay-puttingness of said eyeliner that had been applied in the dark. and then i went out in public.

it was a freaking awesome hair day and the sun was shining in such a shiney way that i almost believed i had somehow awoken into a shampoo commercial.

happily, i skipped to the marché to post a certain christmas present to a certain someone. happily, i conducted an entire business transaction, tossing my glossy raven locks so that everyone else in the line could appreciate their uncommon luster.

it was with less happiness that, at the completion of our business transaction, i received a gentle pat on the hand from miss marché postal worker, who said in a tone hushed with concern, honey, what's all that dirt there under your eyes?

18 December 2006

24 20s-something

within The Family, father cupcake is best known for his adept photoshopped superimposement of heads and his clever card-making skills. this year, the father cupcake stepped it up a notch, creating a calendar- entitled caroline, still in her twenties- devoted to the chronicling of my twenty-something life through 1920s vintage photographs. it's beyond words. but the spirit is captured with this one.

17 December 2006

25 ten

the albums most listened to by an oline in '06
(as requested by the dread pirate)

1. gogol bordello- gypsy punks: underdog world strike
2. the magnetic fields- 69 love songs
3. the magnetic fields- i
4. wolf parade- apologies to the queen mary
5. devotchka- how it ends
6. the shins- oh, inverted world
7. nada surf- the weight is a gift
8. man man- six demon bag
9. art brut- bang bang rock 'n roll
10. idlewild- warnings/promises

15 December 2006

18 aha!

the remaining ingredients in this skin cream?
24% hurrah
31% huzzah
37% shazzam

14 December 2006

14 morning voice

today- because when you're on a deadline, The No Phone Calls To Residences Before 10 a.m. rule does not apply- i woke up an america's next top model. and i learned that even the beautiful people sound like shit at 6.44 a.m.

13 December 2006

24 plans

in the 9th grade, we had to buy a planner from the school store. ostensibly because we were so young and naive as freshmen that we would be incapable of keeping track of assignments when our classes were located in different halls. the planner we had to buy went from august to august. this was logical at the time.

because i attended school through the 17th grade, i've been on the august to august system for the past ten years. unfortunately, my life shifted to a january to january keel a good four years ago. this has been terrifically confusicating. it's like moving through time zones, except it's an entire four months. which is why i resisted the switch for so long. because how the hell does one get off the august to august system?

there are really only two ways:
1) The I Have Money Pouring Out Of My Ears & Can Waste Half A Planner & Buy A New One In January way


2) The I Don't Have Money Pouring Out Of My Ears & Can't Justify Wasting Half A Planner So I Will Endure Four Plannerless Months Until January way

a thrifty masochist, i went with the latter. it has unilaterally sucked.

it should come as no surprise that i like plans. not that i'm a plan nazi, just that i'm not particularly fond of complete planarchy, and when left to my own devices will naturally fall into a rather regimented routine. plans are exciting. plans are comforting. plans are very hard to have without a planner.

my planner used to be like a journal or sorts. you could go back and read it and have a pretty good idea of what my days were like- right down to the weather. in reading about the nabakovs, that was always one of my favourite details. that they shared a planner for the fifty years of their marriage. they're lives so thoroughly overlapped that vladimir made himself right at home in vera's planner.

and all the minutiae of the nabakov's lives were there, in their planner. looking at the slip of paper that contains the scribblings i've made in a valiant attempt to wrench my august to august plans into line with my january to january life, i haven't the slightest idea what i've been doing for the past four months. which is rather amusing.

i like to think that when whoever writes the cupcake&bombsybox begins sifting through the archive of all my junk, he/she will come across the conspicuous four-month gap in my planners and he/she will make the most logical conclusion. the logical conclusion that all biographers make in the face of any sizeable gap in the documentation of a well-documented modern life.

he/she will lean back in his/her chair, hands behind his/her head, and knowingly say, but, of course, that's when the cupcake joined the CIA. he/she won't stop to think, maybe that's when the cupcake wasn't master of her plans because she wanted to save ten lousy bucks.

12 December 2006

21 and then there was fudge

exploring is awesome. even the names of explorers are awesome. buzz aldrin, christopher columbus, amerigo vespucci. if your name's amerigo, you really can't help but be awesome. and explore.

because exploring is awesome. there's something inherently glamorous about anything that involves an atlas and exploring not only involves an atlas but also boats and balloons and trains and horses and guns and nazis and natives and a big, bad mystery either in the desert or a rainy eastern european communist country.

that said, i really just want to stay home. my name is kind of plain and not very explorery. so i explore on a small scale- at the h+m clearance rack and in my sock drawer. but tonight i went all out and really scavanged. tonight, i took on the freezer.

i thawed some ancient chicken and some old frozen green beans and made a huge bowl of nasty. then i began digging deeper. moving the many-months-old pint of sherbert, pushing past the bag of rice, ducking out of the way of the random frozen lemonade, my attention riveted to the blue tin gleaming in the distance.

i'm not a fan of chocolate, but there are days. and there, in the distance, was grandcupcake's fudge.

the fudge that grandcupcake carefully packed and secreted in my bag as i was leaving last february. i wasn't to share it with the parents cupcake. this is all yours, she said, because a girl going to the big city needs her fudge.

looking in the tin last february, i thought, a girl going to the big city doesn't need THAT much fudge, so the bulk of it was frozen and forgotten until tonight, when i peered past the sherbert and the rice and the lemonade and saw that blue tin gleaming in the distance and thanked God that i have a grandmother who knows that a girl in the big city needs her fudge.

11 December 2006

28 sex/race

croftie and i went to the art show at the merch mart today. after hours of deep conversating, we arrived at a pair of profound conclusions.

re: the dread pirate doug-cosbO
he's not a solid black man.

re: the perils of immaculate conception
you wouldn't want to lose your virginity if you're already pregnant.

10 December 2006

26 thou shalt find the winter's rage freeze thy blood less coldly

today i walked behind this woman. she was wearing a plaid scarf, a jaunty hat with a feather, and bursting with christmas cheer.

i thought: there's a caroler.

in an era where people drive their trick-or-treating kids to the nice neighborhoods, caroling seems kind of passe. rather like being in a madrigal guild or playing the lute.

as a result, only the hardcore devotees carol. and, let's face it, it's the hardcore devotees who are often the most frightful. they're so earnest it hurts to watch.

this woman wasn't frightful and she wasn't actually caroling. she was just going down the street. but the scarf, the hat, the skipping walk. it all screamed caroler.

i felt bad, though, for being judgemental. i thought, maybe she isn't a caroler. she looks very nice and happy. maybe she's someone who just has a very caroly sense of fashion. i am a horrible, rotten person because i've stereotyped this perfectly lovely looking woman as a caroler simply because she thought a yankee doodle dandy hat was a good idea.

just then a group of similarly scarved and hatted, freakishly enthusiastic people lept out of nowhere from around a corner, beamed at this woman, and immediately burst into a rousing chorus of "good king wenseslas."

i exclaimed, shit! and immediately fled from the frightful caroling freaks.

08 December 2006

15 i thought it couldn't get any colder than yesterday, but then today proved me wrong

18 stressball

sometimes i worry that i worry too much. actually it's not really worry so much as a heightened sense of doom. but then i look over at the vieve and see the abject terror in her eyes and i know that we're all alright.

06 December 2006

33 sex by the fire

a public service announcement

(ie. things your married friends have to tell you because croftie's romances-on-tape don't really tell it like it is):

the husband had our fireplace going when i got home last night. i was not at all turned on, but instead inspired. people have sex by the fire! it is something you are supposed to do! scores of women are "lain down by the fire" daily! chef from south park sings songs about it to the children, even. i thought, this must be something spectacular and we must get on this train! ...so not worth it. it was like lovemaking in a little tiny hell. never do it by a fire. you will pass out from heat exhaustion if you are not careful. consider yourself forewarned, oline.

05 December 2006

21 everything must go

it's now official. la petit maison de oh!-'lighn is relocating at some undetermined point in the future to some as yet to be determined, less petit maison. that's quite a high percentage of indeterminants, which is not entirely reassuring, but i'm coping.

i'm coping by making plans. because i like plans. so i have embarked upon The Official La Petit Maison de Oh!-'Lighn Eat Everything Out of the Cabinets Plan. this has turned out to be rather a jolly fun thing. tonight it was minestrone with cornbread and peaches. quite lovely.

and yet, even as i bask in the glow of the lesueurs, i can see the dark corner into which i'm heading. all because one day last february i chose to have lunch with AT rather than tag along with my parents to stock up at costco.

i forgot then, as i always do, that when left to their own devices, my parents always grocery shop for the twenty-year-old son they never had.

thus, there will come a night in the dead cold of the chicago january when i will be burrowed under a pile of blankies feasting on hungry man baked beans with NEW! hearty bacon chunks. damn.

03 December 2006

10 devotched







"winter hurts."


"don't worry. my heart froze long ago."




"my God, we're going to die."






"have we died yet?"

02 December 2006

15 freezication

to answer the pressing questions:
i am alive.
the window is closed.
it only snowed 4 inches.
it's not as bad as they're making it sound.
but: it's cooooooooooold out there.

25 November 2006

10 close encounters

H was my favourite professor. he was also the person who suggested that not only were tabloids worth studying but they might be a viable thesis option. this is the man who taught me how to write the way i write. croftie and i adored him. we were his groupies.

H is also the only person more awkward than us. during social hours, we would approach him to try to make conversation and he would blanch. despite the fact that he'd thrown back a couple beers, he stood rigidly in a corner, visibly oppressed by his lack of a doctoral degree. the effort to speak to him was exhausting. after a suitable interval, croftie and i would back away, shellshocked in the face of such social ineptitude.

i have conflicting emotions about H. during the spring of 2004, i wrote him no less than three fan letters- thanking him for the enormous influence he'd had upon my writing. and yet, i never really wanted to see him again because the memory of his taxing conversational inadequacy was so vibrant. i thought i'd just dedicate a book to him somewhere along the way and that would suffice.

so i was thoroughly unprepared to wind up sitting directly in front of H on the red line today. i didn't know what to do or what to say, so i did and said nothing. the bombshell and i rambled on about how old we feel as H and his friend rambled on about films. i was painfully aware of H's presence. he was staring, trying to place me. with a toss of the raven hair, i could have swiveled around and gushed, H, croftie and i loooooooooooooove you. but i did nothing. for seven stops i did nothing. even as i felt his eyes following me to the door, i did and said nothing.

it's times like these that i wish i had the foresight to have written letters to all the people i don't particularly want to see but might run into, in which case i wouldn't be able to summon the nerve to speak to them. if i'd had a fan letter for H, i could have swiveled around, smiled silently, dropped it into his lap and possibly made his day. as it is, he's probably wandering around boys' town vexed because he can't place that black haired, colourfully dressed girl with the peachy gum.

23 November 2006

15 oline et famille on la farm

horse watching

the home-made christmas card workers revolt

the home-made christmas cards

dog walking

we five pies

the aryan context in which i look like a gypsy

22 November 2006

7 liebestraum

all my life my father has made up songs. this is what we do.

whenever i sat down to the piano and played a few notes, his voice would begin booming nonsensicals from the other room. it drives my mum crazy. primarily, because his songs are rather "earthy." my mum doesn't do earthy.

this morning, for reasons unknown, we broke into an a capella father-daughter rendition of his masterpiece, i smell that smell. set to franz liszt's liebestraum, i smell that smell is a three stanza musical tour de force. unfortunatly, the third stanza has been forgotten but for the words "stench" and "woe."

in the midst of this morning's vocal extravaganza, i made the statement: it would not be an overexaggeration to say that we are the silliest family that ever was. as my mum nodded away, the father bear quickly went on the defense.

this is art, he said. we are producing greatness of a faux variety. we're like QVC- a little classy and a lot of tacky.

20 November 2006

8 *star*

in the past week, i've been approached for ashlee simpson's autograph and i've purposefully cultivated nicole richie's bangs. needless to say, my sense of self has taken a wee bit of a battering as of late.

so when i heard that croftie had taken the celebrity face test that the bombshell had discovered and that she had been declared a dead ringer for beyonce knowles, i couldn't resist having a go- to definatively determine whether i'm headed too far into teeny-bopper territory.

it would seem the answer is yes.

19 November 2006

9 so, maybe we don't love a parade?

"if they were to bomb this place right now,
all of chicago would be dead."
-random dude, who very accurately summed up the lighting parade

"it just didn't feel right trampling all those people."
-random lady, who very accurately summed up leaving the lighting parade

18 November 2006

14 i may be urban, but i'll not be outfitted

i don't like urban outfitters. a loyal h+m girl, i find urban outfitters too dark and drab. it's a dungeon by comparison. admitedly, they make some cute things. the bombsy's dream coat for one. my fabulous rug and the vieve's throne for two others. but there is no store that makes me quite so uncomfortable.

because urban outfitters so obviously thinks it's way cooler than me. there is no more judgemental retail establishment.

maybe it's because i myself am judgemental. the hordes of trixies that come from iowa and wisconsin and peoria and du paul to go to the store on our street are pretty much the same set that we referred to in high school as the "tan people"- girls who frequent tanning beds and the boys who date them. we pale people, we didn't like the tans.

i swear, the trixies/tans come to urban outfitters by the busload. they clog the street. they act as though it's an imposition if you ask them to move out of the way. it's analagous to navigating that hallway in high school. thus, i, pale to the very core, avoid that place like the plague. but some things are inescapable. urban outfitters is apparently one of them.

today, a catalogue arrived. and i thought, wow. victoria's secret has had quite the revamp, dropping the hi-gloss, 35 lb. cover and moving to 27 lb., lo-gloss stock. gutsy move, vicky.

then i realized. this was an urban outfitters catalogue. and i am left to conclude that this is the year of what lindear refers to as the bazoom.

this happens. we twiggy girls have our day and then the bombshells come back for a few seasons then it's our turn again. it's no big deal. but there's something different, something diabolical, happening in the urban outfitters catalogue.

this is not décolletage in the context of little black dresses and ballgowns or even sexy sweaters. this is red-carpet-ready breasts spilling out of $28 tee-shirts.

my new fear is that people are actually going to dress like this.

urban life is hard enough already. there's the windpant/cardigan combo in the spring, the men who roll their pants to show off entirely too much sweaty, hairy leg in june, and the women who, all through july, act as though bikini bottoms are a legitimate summer pant. stop the madness, people.

it's not that i'm averse to fashionable provocation. i am, after all, usually the most colourful person in the room and my oddly clothes have, on many an occasion, left me giving an eye-full. but seriously. it's cold. it's freezing. it's winter. don't put on two sweaters and three shirts just to fall out of it all. we're urban, yes, but these outfits, they hurt our tender souls.

16 November 2006

13 bang! bang! rock 'n roll!

bombsy and i don't half-ass things. we go all the way. so when it came time to get our hairs cut after months and months of abstinence, we made it an EVENT.

we dined. we refilled our drinks. we got on the wrong bus to go a block and a half up the wrong street. we set off the alarm when i tried to prematurely disembark from the wrong bus. we walked a block and a half on the right street, cursing the freezing cold. swearing that we could not go any further, conveniently just as we reached the bombshell salon's stoop.

my hair hasn't been cut since last january. so obviously my first thought was bangs! on monday, i saw a photograph of nicole richie. nicole richie had the bangs of my dreams.

now, no self-respecting person can go into a salon and ask to look like nicole richie. i know this. alas, i was mistaken for ashlee simpson not seven days ago, so asking to look like nicole richie doesn't seem such a distance to fall. it would obviously be far worse had the same request been made at a gym or colonic spa.

i proudly handed my photograph of nicole richie's bangs to lance. to prove my unashamedness, i even chimed in to say that's nicole richie, as though there were any other woman who could be carrying a siamese cat that looked ten pounds heavier than her.

the bombshell and i had a post-cut date to watch camilla & charles: whatever love means. we shouted this fact from the sinks of the bombshell salon, over the roar of the water and the snips of the scissors. there was no one present who did not know we were on our way to a rendezvous with camilla & charles: whatever love means. the woman who ran our credit cards and who was in our presence for a mere minute and a half couldn't help but exclaim, you girls are CAHRAZY!

because we were. we giggled all the way up halsted. we made a display of ourselves getting treats in that damn CVS that never has anything you need and everything you'd never want. we created a spectacle all the way down fullerton and over to orchard and up bombsoline street in the rosy glow of anticipation.

and still, there are no words for camilla & charles: whatever love means. it's bloody groundbreaking, riveting, entirely frivilous entertainment. dana knows. bombsy knows. croftie very soon will. it just can't be conveyed. you have to experience it. and then you know.

i've tried to tell my mum. repeatedly, i've tried. tonight, in the post-glow, i said, you don't understand. you don't get it. they had to wait twenty years. they were only right for each other and they couldn't be together. they were so in love.

my mum paused half a beat and said, whatever that means. i blew nicole richie's bangs from my eyes (because that's still a small thrill) and sighed, you just don't know, mummy. you just don't know.

15 November 2006

29 the iodot

iodot (I-Oh!-'dät) n. circa 1976; chiefly eatonian; an idiot whose idiocy so exceeds the traditional boundaries of idiocy that the word idiot is no longer sufficient, in such case the antiquated nominative iodot represents the individual's demotion from standard idiocy into shameful iodotism, most often characterized by blundering, dunderheadetry, nincompoopery and peter panism.

the teddy calls drunk on certain saturdays at 4.30 a.m. usually the certain saturdays that people are staying with me. so they inevitably leave with the impression that i'm a lady who accepts phone calls from drunkards in the dead of night.

i am not that lady. i'm queen of the screen. unfortunately, the teddy is not king of the message machine.

his voicemails are very sloshed george w giving a press conference after an especially lively hunting party as he ill-advisedly still clutches the rifle in his free hand.

the teddy says this [in tones eerily reminiscent of james van der beek's star turn in that 1999 classic, varsity blues]: as we know... i have fond feelings... for you... but i wanted to spare... you... the abject horror... of being in... my life.

the teddy has said this before. this exact line, word for word, with the same dramatic pauses without deviation for however many months. always delivered as though it were a new, exciting revelation that warranted applause.

i imagine he must carry this speech around on a cocktail napkin, pulling it from his pocket as the clock strikes 4.29 on certain saturday mornings. never mind that we haven't spoken in months or that he has yet to find a better speech-writer.

the teddy's delivery is crap. it sounds as though he were squinting into the memphis sky, straining to read a heavenly cue card mistakenly written in yellow fine tipped pen. it's not a convincing act. it is, undoubtedly, the act of an iodot.

and i'm not one to rush to judgement. to lightheartedly toss about accusations of iodoticy. nor am i one to exploit an individual's iodotery for comedic effect. well, that's a lie. i'm a writer. it's what we do. but enough!

the oline says [in her most exasperated dame judy dench tones]: i have only... blech feelings for you... and i want to be spared... the abject horror... of hearing this same stupid message... ever again... in my life.

14 November 2006

14 you can never go down the drain

my biggest kid-crush was mr. rogers. i loved that man. i loved everything about him- from his sweaters to his hypnotic voice. my parents hated everything about him- especially his sweaters and his hypnotic voice.

mr. rogers had this song that allayed all my childhood fears about going down the drain. because while i didn't suspect that i could go down the drain in my entirety in one big swoosh, it seemed quite logical that a rogue toe could fit through. or that a lock of the oline hair might get caught up in the swirl and suck my whole silly head down with it.

so i had some worries. but mr. rogers calmed them. he sang, you can never go down, you can never go down, you can never go down the drain! and i believed him.

which is why it was a rather stunning twist of events last night when i actually wanted to go down the drain. because nothing was going down the drain. not me, not water, not draino, not squat.

somewhere along the way, the drain went on strike. in the aftermath, it's been like showering in a wading pool. participants in the Let's All Go See Oline Before It Gets Stoopid Ridiculous Cold Up There In That Freezy Winter Wonderland In Which She Has Chosen To Dwell-O-Rama can attest to this.

much like standing in the hull of sinking ship, one grows increasingly aware of the rising tides. by the time of conditioning, one is ankle-deep in water. stay much longer and death by dirty waters would ensue.

clearly, this is intolerable. so last night, i- a girl who abhors cleaning bathrooms, entering bathrooms, talking in bathrooms, seeing other people exit bathrooms and bathroom humor- went to war with my bathroom.

i went to war and i won. there were vigorous celebrations. the veive was tossed in the air a couple times. we donned silly hats and threw a dance party and fell into bed at half past three.

this morning, bleery-eyed from the revelries, i stumbled into the shower and nearly banged my face on those damn plants. recovered but dazed, i turned on the water. a flash flood.

my man rogers forgot to mention, the drain always wins.

12 November 2006

14 "But you know what? Even if he got blown up and horribly deformed or had a brain injury, I would still be with him I think..."

in the midst of a discussion about a kick-ass, dead sexy dress, meggie took a detour and spoke the above in reference to her current flame.

how danielle steele, i thought at first. but then i realized, my God! isn't that what we're all looking for?

someone who will stick around when we get blown up and horribly deformed or have a brain injury. and someone for whom we'll do the same.

i don't know why the poets haven't thought to put it that way. it's so much more compelling than my love is like a lark, it singeth in the dark...

10 November 2006

28 photographers snip snap

in which oline (to whom things happen that don't happen to most everyone else)
feebly attempts to convey an event so stupidly absurd
that its 100% trueness defies even oline's comprehension... and she was there

today, i gave my first autograph.

but let me begin at the beginning.

i hate umbrellas. almost as much as i hate birds.

but, no. i should go back further.

i should go back to my irrational fear of electrocution. yes, that's the beginning. i used to have this irrational fear of electrocution. every doorknob held the threat of a shocking death. static cling left me quaking in my zippered boots. a logical hysteric, i developed a slew of preventative measures to delay my inevitable death by doorknob shock.

at some point, i wised up and transfered the irrationality to the more obvious threat: umbrellas. because, by God, umbrellas are frightful. as does most everything else, this comes back to my loathing of eyeballs. umbrellas have spikes. eyeballs-on-spikes. horror.

because i hate umbrellas, i ventured out into the icky chicago blustery rain this afternoon bundled in the green coat, the yellow scarf and the blue hat, and wearing the HUGE sunglasses (because waterproof eyeliner has yet to be invented).

walking down clark street, i was innocently bopping to brian eno's "baby's on fire," savoring the dramatic irony that baby's firey plight was unfolding while i was being drenched, when suddenly a hand clasped my arm.

fearful of an umbrella encounter, i lept back, only to see a benign kid. a girl of maybe 15 or 16 (i'm old. ages blur. she could've easily been 22.). this girl, wearing those pants where you can tell- even from the front- that there's writing on the ass, stood there clutching my arm.

i looked for weaponry. because the sidewalk in front of The Weiner's Circle seemed as good a place as any to be assaulted by a teenybopper with HOTT STUFF written on her ass. but no. hott stuff brandished nothing but a pen.

does she want my phone number? i wondered. can she possibly be in cahoots with marvin lustbade? have i such luck?

hot stuff seemed short of breath. she seemed to have a desperate need to speak to me. i shut up the upod and looked at her quizically.

DAMN. NICK. hott stuff exclaimed, practically retching the words. as though she couldn't get them out fast enough. both syllables dripping with unmitigated hatred.

what has the lovely gentleman ever done to you? i nearly demanded, then thought better of it. hott stuff had obviously been electrocuted by the doorknob at The Weiner's Circle and what i was witnessing were the residual twitches of the electrical currents combined with a mild case of tourettes.

hott stuff reached to pull something out of her bag. an umbrella?! i wondered, with furrowed, fearful brow. a battered back issue of STAR emerged. my relief was visible.

still recovering from the stress of her recent electrical shock, hott stuff fumbled through the magazine, increasingly frantic as the raindrops dashed across the glossy pages. finally, she heaved a sigh of content and thrust the open page toward me, pointing at the headline, Jess To Nick: You're a Girlie Man!

hott stuff leaned closer. she offered me the pen, which i took for fear she might activate a button, upon which the harmless-looking pink sparkly writing utensil would explode into one of those umbrellas for cocktail drinks. eyeballs-on-balsa. ouch.

hott stuff thrust the magazine at me and leaned in, as though she were confessing a deep secret for which she had spent weeks ratchetting up the courage. hott stuff looked deep into my sunglasses.

she looked deep into my sunglasses and said, i just love your sister.

09 November 2006

20 don't tell mamma what you saw

today, at 3.40 p.m., marvin lustbade called on the damn phone. i have no idea who the hell marvin lustbade is, but it became very clear, very quickly that marvin lustbade only speaks english as a hobby.

all i was able to decipher throughout the minute in which we spoke was the number 105, which i would then latch on to as though we might be able to forge a common understanding through that numeral and arrive at some sort of sensible outcome.

the conversation went as follows:
marvin lustbade [amid sounds suggesting he was standing on the balcony above niagra falls]: 105?

oline: yes.

marvin lustbade: ok... 105.

oline: yes, 105. is there a package?

marvin lustbade: 105!

oline: there is a package?

marvin lustbade: ok... yes, 105.

oline: so, yes, there is a package for 105?

marvin lustbade: 1
[completely drowned out by the niagra noise]5!

oline: shall i come down and get the package i think you might have for me?

marvin lustbade: yes, 105!

oline: um... ok.

so, throwing caution to the wind and intrigued by the prospect of seeing a lustbade, i went to the lobby, which seemed the only logical locale where marvin lustbade could have meant for me to redezvous with him to retrieve the package i thought he might have. but marvin lustbade was not there. marvin lustbade stood me up.

lindear and i have a policy of sharing every single inanity throughout the unfolding day. thus, she was immediately given a full lustbade report. the reply: Oooh, don't tell your mother.

and i think that was the most frightful thing to emerge from the lustbade episode. the realization that though i am a 25-year-old living on my own in chicago, paying bills and pretending to be an adult, my mum would completely rip the raven hair from my silly head if she knew i'd gone to the door to get a package from a stranger. so please, sir, if you run into my mamma, don't reveal my indiscretion. just leave well enough alone.

07 November 2006

26 "that was not a sneeze. it was the horror of such a place coursing through my body and jumping from my lips."

i am a book bigot. in the midst of my many-years-long torrid affair with biography, i've had only the most casual of dalliances with fiction, and primarily only with the fiction of people whose fiction i already adore.

the dread pirate is also a book bigot, though his devotion lies at the opposite end of the bibliospectrum. the dread pirate is exclusive with fiction. and for this, he's been the recipient of many an oline frown.

but some weeks ago i made a lucky steal from the pirate's trove. mark helprin's frederick & fredericka. it was hardback and it was huge. it was the antithesis of light subway reading. thus, after a respectable passage of time, i returned it. fortuitously, some days later a more friendly, twenty-five cent paperback copy encountered me in a thrift store.

thank anne shirley for thrift stores and dread pirates.

today, during rush hour, standing in the train and clinging to a pole, i used my free hand not for balance, but to hold frederick & fredericka aloft. i laughed out loud no less than five times. HUGE laughs. HUGE mwaahhhhhhhh, peewee laughs.

a guy in a hot pink camouflage vest moved further down the train. an elderly woman looked at me with oh, how sad that a girl with such impecably applied eyeliner should be having a mental breakdown aboard brown line run 372 eyes and quickly followed him.

today, for quite possibly the first time ever, i was the scariest person in the room. i was officially scarier than hot pink camo. it was glorious. there will be no more frowning at the fiction.

05 November 2006

15 quote absurd

for years and years i've collected quotes. written on post-its and receipts, scrawled in journals and books, jotted down on a decade-old dollar bill. because sometimes people say the greatest things- the most fabulous, completely fantastically articulate, off-hand things.

the people i run with have a propensity for saying these things. maybe that's a prerequesite for admission to my circle- the ability to capture the banal with a clumsy twist of entirely appropriate words.

i don't quite know what i plan to do with these quotes. there are hundreds by now. there's always been the joke that i'll write the world's most underlineable novel, but really i have no idea. it seems rather wrongish to pilfer from the brilliance of one's own friends. exploiting their hastily uttered words simply because i had the wherewithal to write them down.

but there's no forum for quotes. they are weak. they require context. they demand good presentation. they cannot stand alone. but then i thought, hell. they're just quotes. let them fend for themselves.

“sandwiches will take you places."

"this is why people don't just wear one shoe... because they knock over their christmas trees."

"i loved that class. it sent me on a black, downward spiral, but i loved it so."

“some people find God, others find golf.”

“there just isn’t enough time in the day to do all the napping you want to do.”

"i don't know how people can leave actual kids at home when i can barely leave a cat."

"no one should call you for anything but fun stuff."

"if you're going to talk with a damn in the background, you've got to put a dear in the fore."

“it’s hard to be a practicing icon.”

"menopause lasts ten years and you will have zits until you die. these are the things they never tell you."

“when it’s good, it’s really good. when it’s bad, it seems far more sinister than it really is.”

“you can’t be aloof if you’re driven by countdowns.”

"there are situations where being the scariest person in the room doesn't pay off."

"our lives would be so different if mary jo kopechne had been a man."

03 November 2006

19 this is a low

(the winter of our freezicating discontent has official commenced. and though we are all madly in love with chicago, as chicagoans it is our God-given right to complain bitterly about being colder than anyone should ever have to be.)

it is 27 degrees right now. the high is 43 and the low is 31. and it is currently 27 degrees. how can the current temperature be lower than the low? why not adjust the low so you don't look like a moron? i don't do numbers, but if it is currently 27 degrees, it seems pretty obvious that the low is not 31. obviously, the low is lower than that low would imply.

anybody remember monday, when it was a brisk 71?

6 a hmm hmm is good to find

in the thrilling saga of Let's All Go See Oline Before It Gets Stoopid Ridiculous Cold Up There In That Freezy Winter Wonderland In Which She Has Chosen To Dwell-O-Rama, kara beautiful gold rolls into town tomorrow. which means HUGE laughs, pervies, bitchies, glammies, cutsie movies, croissantsies, deep thoughtsies, holocaustic undies, and raw cookie doughies. excitement.

(and we look completely high in that photograph. we weren't. we were simply thrilled to the brink of stupidity by the then-recent conclusion of the hair from hell decade.)

02 November 2006

11 a-feared.

a few months ago, i read bernard henri levy's who killed daniel pearl? i sat up reading late into the night thinking our world is a whole hell of a scary place.

then i read the culture of fear, barry glassner's treatise on how fear is manipulated by news outlets to create stories, by politicians to deflect controversy, and by the average citizen to channel common worry. glassner asserts that there is a culture of fear that we're all buying into. and that it makes the world seem a whole hell of a lot scarier than it really is.

after reading the culture of fear, i cannot look at anything without smirking and saying, ha! fear! naturally, in a snide british tone.

so i say ha! to fear. and then my mum calls and asks for the twelve thousandth time whether i have my bottled water for the 8.4. after half a lifetime in memphis, where our science books protected us from death during elementary earthquake drills and where we were inundated with stories of the indians watching the mississippi flow backwards, we know the 8.4 is coming. we've seen reelfoot lake. the city is braced and it is in no way prepared.

but we do have our bottled water. i have my bottled water for the 8.4, despite the fact that i now live in chicago, a city where the 8.4 would only rattle some glass on michigan ave. but it makes my mum feel better.

maybe this is a family trait. we like to fix things and we like to be prepared. i think a part of that does have to with living on a fault line, which it is generally believed is going to either take out your city or st. louis. a fault line whose activity could make katrina look like a breeze. that kind of knowledge would tend to set one a wee bit on edge.

and we are a little edgy. my grandparents grew up dirt poor during the depression-- my grandfather in arkansas and my grandmother in mississippi. it is a major point of contention that one of them had to have been poorer than the other. when we're all together, the conversation frequently turns into a poor-off.

we ate our cornstew out of cardboard boxes... you had cornstew? we couldn't even afford corn... we walked twelve miles to school, while your father drove that bus... my father only drove that bus because he needed the money and the brakes didn't work so we had to jump off and on. i nearly died every day...

my grandparents keep everything because after ten years of nothing, anything seems precious. they live amongst empty butter tubs, fabric scraps, and frozen vegetables. if the 8.4 comes, my family will be eating asparagus from "i can't believe it's not butter" bowls and wearing technicolor dream clothes.

i am nowhere near that prepared for anything. the only thing i own in bulk is glue sticks and bonnie bells. in the case of a scrapbooking or chapping emergency, i am set, though the likelihood of scrapbooking or chapping entering the realm of crisis seems slim to none. but sometimes a girl's got to prepare. so i say ha! to fear, then promptly display signs of panic.

since the holiday season is approaching and since i am historically deathly ill at every other christmas and also since i am living in a household with nothing but ibuprofen, yesterday i went to the pharmacy and stocked up. i prepared to be violently, dramatically, grotesquely ill in the near future and bought every single medication that might assist in recovery. plus some red nail polish.

the checkout lady was baffled. clearly i was perfectly well. and clearly i was purchasing medications to be administered as a final hurrah at someone's deathbed.

i was kind of embarassed by this. it seemed rather hysterical and silly. but then i called my mum and gave her the litany of the ways in which i was now prepared to be violently, dramatically, grotesquely ill. she sniffled (she's got the rhonthitis and sounds like scarlett johansson) and asked, worried, but do you have your bottled water? aha! fear.

31 October 2006

26 long-forgotten fairytale

once there was a lovely girl. your standard, average, lovely girl. we're going to call her penelope. because that's such an every(wo)man kind of name.



the habit would persist into adulthood, when penelope would begin painting her nails garish colours in an effort to cease the barbarism. penelope's mother frowned at the black lacquer. she said, you don't want to get black stuff all in your teeth. penelope didn't relish that idea, but she didn't give up her nails.



this rogue flake of black nail polish had not been content to simply rest upon penelope's number 9 central incisor. rather, it sought refuge within the gum tissue above. so that it was visible through the tissue yet entirely unreachable.







penelope pulled a face and put the worms in her mouth.

29 October 2006

10 the aforepromised impossibly fabulous photograph that proves we can wear hats and not look like fools

and, yes. yes, it did take an hour-long photoshoot with mr. lindear and an extreme aperture change that produced no less than 53 hellaciously blurred shots to come remotely close to anything that could be passed off as faux impossibly fabulous and atone for our very spangled past, but we are nothing if not determined. we're also apparently committed to the shrug- despite its spangled history of failure- as the ultimate photographic pose.

28 October 2006

8 "i mean, it's great if you actually have the time of your life, but we're sure as hell going to make it look like you did."

"scientists get together to discuss new ideas and results"
(and eat really crap food)

the witches of the brown bags

mr & mrs lindear


oline in mirrors

we're so hot right now

oh! the fritos
(after a midnight oline confession of a rarely indulged, fervent passion for fritos, mr. lindear collected 12,000 cool points for including them in the group bagged lunch)

"so... yeah... there went our train."

26 October 2006

26 lindear

my dearest dear friend lindear, a friend so dear it's in her nickname, is coming to town this weekend. we've known each other over half our lives (though it took twenty minutes of ardent mathematics and mr. lindear's wandering into the room and providing numerical assistance for us to figure that out). the dearness of our friendship is best captured by three things:

1) the fabled 10 ways to get kissed note, passed to partner during senior year homeroom then handed down to me, the keeper of the sacred documents.

2) the infamous page periodical, our subversive 6th grade newspaper, in which we indignantly lambasted the oppressive hall policies of our teachers and for which, after it was intercepted by said teachers, lindear was severely admonished as i awaited the verdict in the cafeteria, paralyzed by fear.

3) feburary 1993, when spangled hats seemed like a good idea.

DISCLAIMER: permission to publish this photograph has been granted only on the condition that a parade of look how hot we are now! photos follow in its stead.

24 October 2006








i wanted to wave my razor in the air and scream.


23 October 2006

5 la bombsybox

la bombshell avec le comte d'ruckus

the royal family

le comte d'ruckus

le dauphin

la oline de leibovitz & d'ruckus