Charice Live in Mandalay Bay

There are many reasons this girl is amazing. Yes, her voice is black belt and totally schools Celine, Whitney, Beyonce, and Mariah combined. She's also a kickass beatboxer and does some first-rate impressions. She has style, she has class. But most importantly, Charice is just raw. So if this does not, at the very least, give you the chills...

Soul Pancake #13

Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young. ~Sainte-Beuve

Soul Pancake #12

Sometimes you hear a voice through the door calling you...This turning toward what you deeply love saves you. ~Rumi

HGI #1: Tortoise General Kitchenware

H.G.I. = Holiday Gift Ideas. I find that at the last minute I have trouble assembling a meaningful gift, so I like to keep my eyes peeled starting in November. Tortoise, a brand started by Taku and Keiko Shinomoto, has both an online store and a shop in Venice, CA. Their minimalist, artisanal products are handmade, handpicked, and imported from Japan. From utilitarian items like a rattan towel hanger or Yumiko Iihoshi ceramic mugs, to sweet little nothings like block-print fabric ducks and a quaint owl paperweight, each item on the website has a quaint little backstory to it.

Hario Buono Drip Kettle $65

  Iron Monkey Bottle Opener $36

Yanagi Birch Handle Cutlery $25-$29

Wappa Sake Cup $29

Mokusei Lamp $290

Welcome Soap $45

organic, exfoliating Silk Mitten $29 

(for babies!)  

Soul Pancake #10

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. ~G.K. Chesterton

Candy Tasting with Poehler, Plaza, & Jones

"It feels like spider babies are being born in my mouth."

These women are just too cool.

Soul Pancake #9

We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are. We adults, on the other hand, have outgrown them and have to lower ourselves to stoop down to them. It seems to me that the grass hates us when we confess our love for it. Whoever would partake of all good things must understand how to be small at times. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Soul Pancake #8

Sadness is easier because it's surrender. I say make time to dance alone, with one hand waving free. ~from Elizabethtown

The Works of Ed Ruscha

There was an article last week in the LA Times featuring Ed Ruscha, and I felt like I had to share some of his work, since I find pop art so idyllic and comforting. It's like entering a strange, silent world of soft, inky shadows. Very beautiful.  

On Prom and Infinity

by Zooey Deschanel

If only high school were as simple as a teen movie. I would have loved to have been as single-minded as your typical teen heroine (must get in with the popular crowd, must get floppy-haired dude to take me to prom, etc.), but as a teenager I had a lot on my mind. For instance, infinity. How was I supposed to think about prom when I spent so much time thinking about the concept of infinity? Prom was OK, but infinity was interesting and terrifying. This made it a lot harder to think about the dudes with floppy hair.

I often liken my high school experience to the opening scene in Stardust Memories, where Woody Allen is sitting on an unmoving train with a lot of really miserable-looking people, when out the window he sees an identical train, only on this train, as I remember it, everyone is happy and attractive, and there is a young Sharon Stone wearing a feather boa, and there are men in sailor suits popping bottles of pink champagne. He can no longer accept his sad train existence now that he has seen the happy train, and he tries in vain to escape. The difference between Woody Allen and me was, I kind of liked my sad train. I saw that there was another version of high school that was being peddled by the media but I could never connect with it.

Of course, I went to an artsy sort of school, so things were a little bit different. It wasn’t unusual to find a young gentleman wrapped in a piece of duvetyne theater curtain secured with safety pins into a makeshift toga. And no big deal guys, but we had Guys Wear a Dress to School Day. But even surrounded by all these unicorns, I felt like the unicorniest. I just did not fit in.

One day my history teacher asked our class, “Do you guys think about infinity?” Most of my classmates gave him the you’re totally lame blank stare, but my mind started racing. “How does he know?!” I wondered. He said, “I used to think about infinity, and then I stopped.” He chuckled to himself. For me, this moment mapped a strange intersection of emotions: whereas I now knew I wasn’t alone, the people I wanted to connect with, my peers, seemed even farther away. I guess it was then that I realized I wasn’t required to LOVE high school, like the movies demanded; I didn’t have to want to go to prom and homecoming or be the center of the social world—I just had to make high school a place where I could get better at the things I wanted to do. And that’s exactly what I did.

[I] Love Lists

I love lists. Grocery lists, to-do lists, word lists, movie lists, travel lists, bucket lists. And now, a love list. Thank you, Eero Saarinen. This man may have designed a JFK terminal and invented the womb chair, but he will forever in my heart be remembered for the love list that made me fall in love with lists all over again.

From this great book:

   

I - First I recognized that you were very clever

II - That you were very han[d]some

III - That you were perceptive

IV - That you were enthusiastic

V - That you were generous

VI - That you were beautiful

VII - That you were terribly well organized

VIII - That you were fantastically efficient

IX - That you dress very very well

III - That you have a marvelous sense of humor

X - That you have a very very beautiful body

XI - That you are unbelievably generous to me

XII - That the more one digs the foundations the more and more one finds 

the solidest of granit[e] for you and I to build a life together upon

Soul Pancake #6

Well things are pretty lousy for a calendar girl

The boys just dive right off the cars and splash into the street

and when they're on a roll, she pulls a razor from her boot

and a thousand pigeons fall around her feet 

~Tom Waits

Soul Pancake #5

As if you were on fire from within,

The moon lives in the lining of your skin.

~Pablo Neruda

It's a Poehler Party

I have a lot of personal heroes. Many of them are women. Many of them are just as smart and creative and even as funny as Amy Poehler is. Here's the thing though: a lot of talented people have troubles with doubt and insecurity. It even destroys some people's careers. When I see Amy on my television, I see someone who is not only smart, creative, funny, feminine and a feminist but unapologetically so. She does what she does and she "doesn't fucking care if you like it." I think that is one of the very best things about Amy Poehler, and that's saying a lot. Happy Birthday Amy ♥

Soul Pancake #4

Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. 
Between the two my life flows.
~Nisargadatta Maharaj

Say Something Nice!

Aubrey Plaza at 2011 ALMA Awards

In a Giambattista Valli dress from the Fall 2011 collection
and Brian Atwood Maniac pumps.
Love the bunchy, offbeat, textured skirt
in contrast with the sleeker, more elegant long sleeves.
Oh, and ahem, those legs! What. a. stunner.

Soul Pancake #2

“Embrace who you are, because 

you will never be anyone different.”

Soul Pancake #1

I am thankful for laughter, 
except when milk comes out of my nose.  ~Woody Allen

Hailee Steinfeld for Miu Miu

Miu Miu is just too retro for young girls,
but it seems like Hailee's just playing dress up, in a good way.
Some of my favorites snapped up by Bruce Weber: