mini beast speaks

A message from one of our sponsors

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:28:00 +0000

One of the fashion designers that my sister represents, Lauren Moffatt, has partnered with The Skin Cancer Foundation to produce this chic canvas hat. I'd wear it! Check it out here.

Spring

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:47:00 +0000

In honor of Earth Week, there is a clothing swap going on in the Student Center. Donated shirts have been clipped to a clothesline and shoes are displayed in the shelves of a magazine rack. A few coats dangle from the corner of a cardboard box. While passing by today, I was startled to see the jacket of someone I know. Its torso was unnaturally still and empty, reminiscent of a hollow crab shell or the sloughed skin of a snake.

Public service announcement

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:34:00 +0000

Tastes like dirty flowers

Magic tricks

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:34:00 +0000

Last night I stayed up until 3:45 am watching episodes from the first season of HBO's In Treatment. The show chronicles a psychotherapist's sessions with several different clients. I got engrossed in the story of Sophie, a troubled sixteen-year-old gymnast.

Many elements of Sophie's narrative are common in adolescent dramas. She fights with her parents. She suffers from anorexia. She has a dark secret. What distinguishes Sophie's story, however, is the complexity of the actress who plays her, Mia Wasikowska. Wasikowska is an optical illusion. She can morph from a little girl into a jaded older woman with no discernible stops along the way. It is as though she changes costumes between shots, transforming herself while the camera idles on a distraction in the room. In a few rare instances you can see both child and adult at once, an ambiguous figure that baffles the senses.

Stevie Wonderful

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:56:00 +0000

Newest antiques mall purchase!

Like an old couture blankie

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:59:00 +0000

After lunch today, I tried to quell a nasty case of heartburn with a handful of antacids and a few moments of TV. Unfortunately, every show on the air just seemed to aggravate my condition. A talk show on mothers in prison hurt my stomach. A medical mystery left me with a metallic taste in my mouth. The movie on the Disney Channel made me dizzy. Finally, I settled on a re-run of Project Runway. It made me feel warm and drowsy, probably because I had seen it before. Familiarity begets comfort and I had no obligation to stay awake and watch how it ended.

Oopsy doops

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:13:00 +0000

Hello. I'm back.

I'm taking a short story writing class this semester (taught by author Jennifer Finney Boylan, catch her on tomorrow's episode of Oprah) and I've become so absorbed with inventing fictional stories that I guess I forgot to record the true ones. Last week, I finished my three pieces for the class, so hey! Here I am. And here's today's first piece of minutia: a poem that I wrote about Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Rembrance Day, was posted this morning on The Jewish Writing Project.

Hi/atus

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:48:00 +0000

I apologize for disappearing so unexpectedly from this blog. I could vomit up excuses for my absence, but what good would that do either of us? I will be out of the country this week. When I return, you can expect some fresh new mini-musings. Until then!

The birds are in their trees,
the toast is in the toaster,
and the poets are at their windows.

Hey Shorty

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:41:00 +0000

Tonight at 12:04 am, I will become 22-years-old.

Here's something I wrote just after I turned 18:

In literature, I’ve found that 18 is usually a coming-of-age, the inception of manhood or the start of a marriage—but as time’s gone on, 18 has shrunk a little. I don’t know anyone in a hurry to find a spouse and start a family or take over their parents’ business. Most kids I know still sleep with stuffed animals. What hasn’t changed is the searching, looking for your way, hoping that you get there, and feeling proud that you’re (sort of) doing it on your own.

What's changed in the past four years, other than my mailing address? Something to think about in my quieter moments tomorrow. Do I look like an adult now? Well, I plan to wear a skirt that was knit for me when I was five years old, but it's really very sophisticated.

Fabu

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:08:00 +0000

Shoes hanging from lampshades! Girls on the toilet reading vintage books! Models conjoined by their braids eating cheese balls! Check out these shots from Hayden-Harnett's fashion week "Cargo Cult" installation, which my big sister helped create. She's so much cooler than I am.

The strange things we remember

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:09:00 +0000

A boy whom I went to high school with once said that there are two kinds people: those who pour ketchup directly on their french fries and those who pour it on the side. I remember this statement every time a plate fries is before me. I must admit, I waver between the two alternatives! What does it mean? What does it all mean?

Fairest Fairfield

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:28:00 +0000

Who knew such a fun-filled antiques mall lay just a few miles down I-95! Its tchotchke-stocked floors yielded some particularly transformational experiences for my friends and I this morning. We all bought something special, then discussed the disparities between generations and sang along with Simon and Garfunkel on the car ride home.

I picked up a few gifts for my mom, brother, and sister. (Guess whose is whose.) Of course, I couldn't resist a $1 treasure for myself. Behold, a photo essay of "Willie," a four year old growing up on the Lower West Side in 1963.

"From the city's large-scaled plan, he takes a child-sized joy."

In a blizzard, you could make an Afro

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:18:00 +0000

Clearing off your car after a snowstorm is a little like playing with a Wooly Willy. As you scrape icy filings from the sides of your car, a hairstyle takes shape. When its doors are covered, a car takes on the shape of the furry helmet Andre the Giant donned in The Princess Bride. A few strokes against the windows produces a flat top or a faux hawk, depending on how high the snow is piled on the roof. I suppose if you left the back window covered, you'd be left with a mullet. An experienced New Englander can shave a sleek crew cut in two minutes or less.

To a boyfriend of the future

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:13:00 +0000

All you have to do is fly me to the Catskills, recite these jokes over a breakfast of bagels and lox, and practice the piano while I finish my crossword puzzle.

The value of a neat appearance

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 04:04:00 +0000

The dry cleaner in town embodies one of my favorite values, earnestness. Customers hand over threadbare button-downs and slacks each week to be freshened. A woman in back, hidden between racks, threads the bobbin on her Singer. Every person receives a handwritten receipt at the register. While I wait to have a dress altered, I wonder: Am I more like these working people whom I so admire or more like the students on campus shuffling through the library in torn jeans? I wish for one, but I think I'm the other.

In Maine, animals belong on your wall—not on your head

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 03:48:00 +0000

Today the snow fell in clumps and clusters, bestowing every surface it touched with a shiny little puddle. During my four years as a student in Maine, I have never fallen for the "Patagucci" aesthetic. I refuse to join the fleet of Polar Fleece and Gortex-bundled bodies. But really, why fight practicality? When my fur hat gets wet, it looks like roadkill and smells like a grandma.

Kinda, kinda

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 03:15:00 +0000

Some things change and others never will.

Gone snowshoein'

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 01:50:00 +0000

Spent a beautious day in Denmark, Maine

A day deferred

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:50:00 +0000

-Do you have a yearly quota of bad days?
-Do you rank them: terribles, horribles, no-goods, and very bads?

-Is there a pattern to them, a Morse code of sorts (good good good bad good good bad good) that might provide a clue to their meaning?
-Do you see them coming, like an exit on the highway?
-Or do they sneak up on you—a speed trap on the roadside?
-Can you fix one halfway through?
-Do you just keep telling yourself, "I am OK," and then simply choose to be? Or do you wallow in it, savor it, commit to the day's unpleasantness?
-And what is the first thing you do upon waking the next morning, still feeling stiff from yesterday's mood?

Wild hearts can't be broken

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:25:00 +0000

Yesterday, when temperatures in Maine rose a dozen degrees and the wind took a much-needed rest, I went for a run outside. It was a bad run. I was sad to find that I'd lost a lot of strength and stamina over the winter. At the peak of my self-pity, I jogged past a farm where two white horses were standing side-by-side in the snow. Oh. This will be okay, then, I thought. I wish I'd had my camera, but maybe you had to be there.

It does a body good

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:13:00 +0000

In the sixth grade, I collected magazine advertisements for milk—those wholesome portraits of celebrities wearing frothy white mustaches, captioned with witty copy, and finished with a memorable tagline imploring the inclusion of dairy in a balanced diet.

I began by tearing them out of the magazines I already owned. But Teen People and CosmoGIRL! only yielded teenybopper icons: the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Jennifer Lover Hewitt. I rifled through the stacks of Vogues and InStyles in my sister's room for more spoils, turning up with a handful of Daisy Fuenteses and one lovely Lauren Bacall. After tearing through the back issues in our house—I remember being disappointed that my mom's New Yorkers were not the "right kind of magazine"—I turned outward for help.

My grandmother enlisted her friends from mah-jongg and synagogue and every few weeks, I would receive a manila envelope of folded magazine pages that the ladies had filched from tabloids at the salon. I remember discovering that although my brother had discarded nearly all of his old copies of Sports Illustrated, he still owned the swimsuit issues; one of which was the singular location of an ad featuring Tyra Banks in an orange bikini. Soon, my parents began to drive me to the public library once a week, where I would thumb carefully through editions on the magazine swap table. These trips produced some of the most treasured pieces in my collection.

As collecting grew from a hobby to a passion, my methods became more scientific. I preserved my finds in celluloid sheets in a 3-inch three-ring binder, ordered alphabetically by the first name of the subject. I cared not only about the people pictured in the ads, but the pages' aesthetic variations as well. Milk ads can differ in their dimensions, their language, their sheen, and their ad copy; if I found an ad with the same photograph but different design than one already in my collection, I catalogued it separately. To educate myself on the field, I cruised makeshift Angelfire websites that like-minded collectors had created, many of which listed the title and month of magazines in which the collectors had found rare ads. (If I remember correctly, I think I even had a site of my own: "Milk Ad Central.")

When I became envious of other collectors' spoils, I sought a new approach. I joined eBay. I asked my mom if I could order an advertisement featuring the actor Billy Zane, which had been printed several years earlier and appeared only a few magazines. I think the ad cost roughly five dollars, plus shipping and handling. The day it arrived, I discovered it to be a hoax: the seller had clipped a page from the official Milk Mustache Book and tried to pass it off as an original. I lost a little faith in humanity that day.

I thought I would never be able to fill the holes in my collection—to find those milk ads, for instance, that appeared only once in the October 1995 issue of Ladies' Home Journal. But then something happened and, to tell you the truth, I don't remember how or why. One of my older brother's best friends, T., shelved books at the town library and offered to visit the private collection of archives to see what he could find. Not long after, my brother returned from school with a pile of milk ads pressed in the pages of his school notebook. There they were: Ivana Trump, Christie Brinkley, the real Billy Zane, and more, all in mint condition. It was like finding the missing piece to an enormous jigsaw puzzle or locating a long-lost friend. For the next few weeks, I printed up lists of magazine issues and subject names for T. to hunt down. He always fulfilled my requests precisely, even adding on an extra ad or two if he came across it. Before long, I needed another three-ring binder.

I stopped collecting by seventh grade, in part because every year, as a kid, whatever you were doing last year seems completely childish, and in part because I think I was worried T. might get arrested. I wasn't the one one who lost interest: A fleet of collectors' websites shut down shortly thereafter. Milk ads waned in their distribution and popularity for a few years. Lately, though, I've been spotting them with more frequency. What's dwindling now are the magazines themselves.

Writing can jump from page to screen unscathed, but the essence of the magazine—the smoothness of the paper, the sequential order, the kitschy advertisements—that is what is lost. What can you do with the irksome ads that border webpages on the Internet? Save them in a folder on your computer? Why would you bother?

Helical ambitions

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:57:00 +0000

Small joys of the biology lab:

1) Following a standard procedure
2) Drawing a Table of Contents in a fresh lab notebook
3) Liquid nitrogen
4) Science jokes
5) Drumming your fingertips on the stage of the vortex
6) Enjoying the last moments of sun in the greenhouse
7) Telling your friends you spent the afternoon extracting DNA

Great grey cowl

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:31:00 +0000

Who needs Yokoo when you have Mom?!

Only a king of sentences could

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 03:50:00 +0000

I wish I were eloquent enough to describe the timbre of little kids' voices.

Barberella

noreply@blogger.com (NB) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 04:59:00 +0000

For years, I've wanted to shoot a photo essay depicting the signs of beauty parlors with horrendous puns for names. Turns out there's a whole Flickr group dedicated to this pursuit! They have some good ones, like "The Best Little Hair House in Whitney Point" and "Par-X-Salon-ce," but my personal favorite is known only to the few lucky drivers who find themselves careening down Roosevelt Trail in Raymond, Maine. There you'll see it, recessed from the road on a small wooden sign: Hair Force One.