A Glamour-Optional Retreat
DAMES NATION.
We bring you...
A BREAKING CRUSH BULLETIN!
It's time for you to meet Nigel Hayes, sophomore at the University of Wisconsin and proud member of their basketball team. He's the young man adorably covering his face in the gif above and we're obsessed with him for reasons you will soon come to understand. You see, earlier this week, he and his friends discovered the stenographer at their NCAA press conference and became absolutely enraptured at her speed and skill. Then Nigel took it upon himself to test those remarkable skills in the following manner:
So, already, Nigel Hayes had our attention.
BUT THEN, Dames Nation! BUT THEN!!!
At a SUBSEQUENT press conference, Nigel was up to his old tricks, testing the stenographer's skill with the word "syzygy," when something about her caught his eye. WE COULD TELL YOU MORE, but just watch the video, trust us, it's worth it, and it ends with that justified (and totally adorable) face-covering GIFfed above.
In not-in-the-least short, we Dames are formally resigning our jobs on Monday to devote ourselves to writing a romantic comedy about Nigel Hayes and his one true stenographer love being brought together by Hank the Brewer's Dog/becoming the toast of Hollywood.
As lifelong Hufflepuffs, humming "On, Wisconsin"
as we launch our careers as rom-com authors,
we salute & thank you, Nigel.
BADGER PRIDE!!!!!!!!!!!
YA just got a little less great...
...because the wonderful author Ellen Conford passed away last Friday on her 73rd birthday. Friend-of-the-Dames Lizzie Skurnick wrote this terrific piece on Conford's To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie for her classic Fine Lines column on Jezebel, and also sent along this brief, poignant note from Maura Magazine about Conford's We Interrupt This Semester For An Important Bulletin. If you, like your Dames, have (TRAGICALLY) yet to read any of Conford's books, you can find two recently republished books in Lizzie's terrific imprint, to which we both subscribe.
Visual Crushes
Kevin Wada’s stunning cover for the hypothetical first issue of FRESH ROMANCE, the new romance comic serial a former DC editor is trying to launch via Kickstarter.
Dame Commander (!!) Joan Collins’ ensemble at her OBE investiture is all that we dream of wearing one day (when we are not wearing elegant yet comfy loungewear). HUGE h/t to damesbro @amydieg
We are imploring our British counterparts, Rosie and Jessica of The Day of Fun Show, to go visit the ingenious cami-knicker set that Patricia Mountbatten made out of her aviator boyfriend’s redundant silk air map at the Imperial War Museum’s exhibit, Fashion on the Ration: British Street Style in the 1940s.PLEASE, ladies! Do it for US and all Dame-kind.
Monster Teacups Filled With Creatures From The Deep: We’re sure Cthulhu & other briny, multi-tentacled beasts would make your tea taste better, but we'll never know because these beauties are not actually drinkable, alas!
Twee as Hell:
Corgis Race to Choose the Royal Baby’s Name (h/t noted corgi-watcher Ann)
A big awwww to this gallery of The Art of the Picture Book Barcode — via @100scopenotes
Sanrio Puroland: If Hello Kitty Were Mickey Mouse, This Would be Disneyland (via Kim France’s Girls of a Certain Age. Kim France: Introducing Dame Sophie to Good Things For The Last 25+ Years.)
If you loved us, you’d crochet these Golden Girls amiguri dolls for us.
Sweet Tunes
Just TRY to watch this dance-in-the-movies compilation video of Walk The Moon’s “Shut Up and Dance” without leaping up to shake your own tail feather, via our friend Angie, who always finds these things a moment or two before we find ourselves in desperate need of them.
Friend of the Dames Scott Rader is a Spotify Playlist Master Builder. Lately, we are especially fond of his 90s Alternative list .
“Hunting for Prince’s Vault”, in which Prince’s former sound engineer, who clearly has the heart of an archivist, talks about how she started work on the “bank vault” that holds every song the Purple One has ever recorded (except the ones he has deleted). If you read this one, make sure to make time for all of the interviews with his colleagues - everyone is in awe of him.
Lots of great music in NY Magazine’s list of female acts who will dominate SXSW. Dame Margaret is especially fond of Kehlani, whose “FWU” has completely charmed her, but also she strongly feels that NASHVILLE’s fictional band The Triple Exes really NEED to cover Elle King’s “Exes and Ohs”.
And finally: is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? If it’s a dream, don’t wake us, for Robyn has launched a tech fest for teen girls!
Miscellany (Tasty Tidbits, Served Incrementally)
Liz Galvao’s “A Prayer for Cookie Lyon” is every bit as glorious as the woman herself, a truly impressive feat. (Her Weird Personal Emails newsletter is likewise terrific, if, like, newsletters are your thing [Wink. Nudge.])
8 of History’s Greatest Cat Ladies including Charlotte, Emily and Anne (Poor Anne!) Bronte, who Margaret correctly sorted into Gryffindor/Hufflepuff/Slytherin in a piece that ran in The Toast a year ago this week!
Emily Nussbaum on the Bright Pink Resilience of Kimmy Schmidt: “At times, it resembles a Nickelodeon tween show—which is just how its heroine might imagine her own life. Yet, without any contradiction, it’s also a sitcom about a rape survivor.”
Bar Fight Insults as Academic Papers: “Leisure Activity as Identity in the Modern West: Asking Whether You Even Fucking Lift”. Sorry, we are dying of laughter now.
Dames mega-crush Parul Seghal on How ‘Flawless’ Became a Feminist Declaration.
This article is technically called “How I Became The New England Patriots' Most Sensitive Fan” but its alternate title could easily be “How Josh Gondelman Made Dame Margaret Cry About Football for the First Time Since Friday Night Lights Ended.”
File under: It’s Your Money, Man: People Who Spend Thousands of Dollars Buying 'Haunted Dolls' from eBay (Dame Sophie, never interested in even the most innocuous dolls, is too scared to even click through to read this one. Shudder.)
These two pieces on all-women’s boarding houses -- one on their history, one on their present -- made Dame Margaret realize she and Dame Sophie should found one that’s actually great, less of a “luxe convent” (as the the Barbizon, founded by Ford Models doyenne Eileen Ford as a place to stash her gorgeous young employees & their virtues, apparently was) and more of a glamour-optional retreat. Who wouldn’t want want an All-Bossy Dames Boardinghouse? An All-Bossy clientele might make self-governance a tricky thing to manage, but if there are any circumstances under which a Bosom Buddies reboot could possibly work, it’s this.
Here’s a fun occupation for you: we’re hosting a Sense & Sensibility live-tweet on Sunday night & would love to have you join us!
When: Sunday, March 29 - 8:30 pm ET / 5:30 pm PT
Where: Twitter!
Margaret will be tweeting from @MrsFridayNext, Sophie will be (wo)manning @twobossydames.
How: Hit PLAY on Netflix or DVD at 8:30 on the dot. Tag your tweets with #senseand or just follow the hashtag, if you prefer.
See you then, chums!
Thanks so much for reading!
Tell a friend (or an enemy with discerning taste) to subscribe, won’t you?
We love to gab with you all on Twitter
(We’re @MrsFridayNext & @sophiebiblio!)
(and now, @twobossydames, too!)
You can catch Bossy Extras on Tumblr.
^^^^^^^
ALL HAIL DAME COMMANDER COLLINS!