thank you notes 11/7
i'm thankful that i had a weirdly intense bout of sadness and stomach trouble yesterday, for what reason i'm not sure (maybe having a beer after running while i cooked dinner?). i'm thankful that i had planned to set aside the evening for doing something "productive" but am thankful that after trying and failing to rev my engine enough to get up the hill of the task i wanted to make progress on, i let go and laid in bed breathing slowly and deeply and reading.
i'm thankful that i have been wanting to read a novel, so i started reading the plague tales by ann benson and am thankful that the bit i read was good, i'm thankful that i will probably have to reread that bit tonight because i fell asleep at 8:30pm and woke up at 9:10, to find D who was patiently waiting to watch westworld but who said we didn't have to watch if i was tired. i'm thankful we watched it anyway and that i still enjoy watching it, even if it is kind of stupid.
i'm thankful for shock and awe, which i am still enjoying reading even if it is kind of stupid at times. i'm thankful that for every interesting thought or argument (like the chapter on alice cooper, a figure i had totally written off but who the book successfully argues has a very important proto-glam status) there is some dumb groany pun sentence, like...okay, actually, i'm going through my notes right now and i can't find any that are really that bad, so i'll retract that. i'm thankful to have learned about david bowie, proto-youtube makeup vlogger:
"At the height of glittermania, Creem magazine started a style column called Eleganza, and one month it was partly devoted to 'David Bowie's Makeup Dos and Don'ts.' Nestled amid full-page ads for Peavey monitor speakers and a piece on bottleneck guitar techniques, you found Bowie recommending 'a very light liquid base, usually white, pink, or yellow, but for stage sometimes iridescent, applied with a damp sponge,' suggesting Elizabeth Arden eight-hour cream for a nice shine for lips and eyelids, and kohl 'smudged right along the lash line.' It also gave away the recipe for the 'now iconic gold circle on his forehead'—tiny gold rhinestones stuck on with eyelash glue. But actual glitter was a no-no on account of its tendency to fall into his eyes during performance—a problem made worse, no doubt, by his intermittent penchant for shaving off his eyebrows, to increase the weirdness quotient."
"At the height of glittermania, Creem magazine started a style column called Eleganza, and one month it was partly devoted to 'David Bowie's Makeup Dos and Don'ts.' Nestled amid full-page ads for Peavey monitor speakers and a piece on bottleneck guitar techniques, you found Bowie recommending 'a very light liquid base, usually white, pink, or yellow, but for stage sometimes iridescent, applied with a damp sponge,' suggesting Elizabeth Arden eight-hour cream for a nice shine for lips and eyelids, and kohl 'smudged right along the lash line.' It also gave away the recipe for the 'now iconic gold circle on his forehead'—tiny gold rhinestones stuck on with eyelash glue. But actual glitter was a no-no on account of its tendency to fall into his eyes during performance—a problem made worse, no doubt, by his intermittent penchant for shaving off his eyebrows, to increase the weirdness quotient."
i'm thankful for the video of the hillary canvasser doing a kickflip in heels. i'm thankful for two young women i ran into while on my run yesterday in hillary stickers working to get out the vote. i'm thankful for this article about a badass latina hotel worker. i'm thankful for wesley morris. i'm thankful for this review of the photographer's cookbook, which includes recipes like "a formalist stew" which "has 185 ingredients and takes 31 days to prepare." i'm thankful for the description of a woman, on her thirtieth birthday, walking barefoot through six white layer cakes lined up on a plastic tarp.
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