Archive for June 2008
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Susan Lyne Steps Down; Where Does Martha Stewart Living Go from Here?
You know you and your partner have often talked about being closer and developing a deeper intimacy and appreciation for each others sexuality, but what are you doing about it. Those ideas sound good on the surface but how committed is anyone towards actually making it happen? Consider this; a married couple had sex for 101 days straight, considering that they had a three year old it’s very commendable. Considering that they had a seven year old as well is just breathtaking.
In fact, considering that they actually did it, rather than just talk about it; I have to take my hats off to them. Seriously I don’t know if I can do it, even when we were still dating after like a few days straight neither of us had it. You know how it is; now a lot of people talk about having it every day, but I often assume they’re talking about doing so with different people, or maybe that’s like their day job they’re getting paid lots of money to do. This is like, you have to have like the perfect diet with plenty of B vitamins and gaurana and ginseng I don’t know. They say they took a month off after all of this, but it did bring them closer together and fostered a new level of intimacy in their relationship.
After having said your vows and making an honest person out of your spouse this is something that you should be able to do so. No I’m not in the 100 day club, not even the 30 day club, but I can’t say that there weren’t times when membership into the 2 week club wasn’t pending. I think couples look for too many excuses as to why this can’t happen, and singles have entirely too much guilt and are too conflicted to allow this to happen. I mean honestly if the way in which sex is portrayed on television is any indication of what to expect where relationships are over in a matter of days or weeks once people hook up there isn’t any future in actually going for 101 days!
That may have been more than that couple had actually done in their entire marriage, which would be completely normal for most of us. For some of us that may be more than we may see in our entire lives. We shouldn’t obsess over it so much, and realize that if we are married we have every right to do it more times than we could ever count and keep track of. Some singles brag about having had as many partners, as depressing as that is, so we should be able to brag about having done it as many times. Those same people, probably didn’t go 101 days with anyone, so what is wrong with this picture.
This isn’t any reflection or judgment on anyone’s personal life, none of us are perfect. Some of us who were married for 15 years if we were to get a divorce tomorrow would have our inhibitions unlocked and would go on a binge and find 30 people to find trouble with. Particularly most women, because men talk a good game but they never get over the hurt of those relationships with their ex-wives. The society should celebrate and encourage the 101 day post bliss! If everyone would do this there would be a lot less divorce.
Are you ready for bleached denim?
Posted on: June 11, 2008
An often overlooked alternative to white jeans is bleached denim, which was the norm 20 years ago but is trying to make a comeback for those wanting high-fashion but denim a bit different than the over processed or dark rinse jeans everyone else is wearing. When done right, bleached denim can offer something different from what everyone else is doing, yet oddly familiar to those familiar with denims history.
These days bleached denim will be a lot lighter and more comfortable than it had been in years past. Though bleached denim was associated with blue the last time around white and grey offer a more sophisticated approach than what the best of the eighties offered. The few blue pairs we will mention are definitely worth having in your wardrobe though. The first pair of jeans we’ll look at are these great jeans by Christian Dior.
Dior Homme Bleached Denim Jean 19cm
If you look closely there are subtle blue streaks in the denim. These are also low rise, at only 9 3/4 cm.
An even subtler approach to bleached denim is to go with the color grey instead of white. For example, Cambio Nuria has a great pair of jeans that are also slim-fit, yet bleached just right with elastene to add the right amount of stretch.
Cambio Nuria Slim-Fit Jeans – GREY BLEACHED, 36/6
Tobi, a relatively new website that offers a completely different shopping experience. Offers a completely different take on bleached denim for men. The wash is a very, very subtle grey and you would almost pass them off as a great pair of grey jeans that weren’t bleached at all.
Nudie Jeans Slim Jim Skinny Jeans in Sun Bleach Grey
I love that classic stitching on the back pockets. At 10 inches the rise if very generous and they are slim without being skinny, more of a classic fit.
Dolce and Gabbana brings their expertise with these great fashion forward “COOL” jeans. What’s nice about them is the generous mix of elastine and polyester that keeps the look right for years to come and the boot cut bottom that guarantees the right look with a nice pair of heels.
Chip and Pepper offers a nice bleached denim jean in a very, very, light blue that stands as a more transitional approach to bleached denim than white or grey bleached denim would. Yet the great fit of Chip and Pepper jeans sort of throws convention out of the window, the cut of these jeans is very flattering, a lower inseam but a higher rise.
Chip & Pepper Walk Of Shame in Bella Coola
Why they call these “Walk Of Shame” is beyond me, but I like it. That means a lot of things; but regardless of what you did the night before, these jeans look great, and people will soon forget about all of that, hopefully …
True Religion has a number of pairs of bleached denim jeans. These jeans look white but if you check out the stitching you’ll see that they’re actually bleached.
True Religion Candice in Bleached
As you can see here, bleached denim offers a look that isn’t as predictable as solid denim with a bit of depth that the cut alone can provide. It’s a more refined look when approached subtly, and a definitively more aggressive, unapologetic approach to denim when the bleaching is more obvious. This time around though, with better materials and the addition of materials to make the denim stretch and breathe more it should actually look a lot better than it did in the eighties.
Valentino finally has an online boutique, however I am a little perplexed. This has to be the smallest possible offering by a major designer online particularly for fans of the core label. There were three articles of Valentino itself, eleven of Valentino Roma and seven articles of clothing of Valentino R.E.D.
Most of the stuff was already knocked down, and YOOX is powering the website. This in itself seems a bit odd because YOOX already sells hundreds of Valentino items on their own website at full price. If anything a store like YOOX should be the place to find the deals, not the flagship site for the label. There also aren’t any men’s offerings on the website, though you can find men’s Valentino at YOOX.
Valentino was never much of a men’s designer anyway, the stuff typically selling for a fraction of the price the women’s line goes for. There are some interesting pieces on YOOX though.
1. This great jacket in military green. Very hard to pass up though I don’t think I would wear them with jeans as they have it decked out on YOOX though.
2. A Mauve blazer straight out of the eighties. One of those beautiful colors that I love to wear, though toned down enough to keep the men from hitting on you, a great choice.
3. Every man needs casual pants in his wardrobe. Perfect for when you don’t need or want to wear denim and want something that doesn’t have to be dry cleaned or washed and hung dry every time you put them on. These are relatively inexpensive, at only $85.
4. An often overlooked aspect of Valentino’s men’s offerings is his deadpan sense of humor. Take this polo shirt for instance, not quite as intense as Dolce and Gabbanna’s irreverence but not that far from it either.
5. Here is another clean polo shirt, this time from the R.E.D. label. You always need this in your wardrobe, and thought you couldn’t find it this nice at this price.
6. More good fun with Valentino in a long sleeve t-shirt from the R.E.D. label.
Bottom line, if you’re looking for a good time and want something without the edge of Versace or D&G Valentino has some fun but rare items out there. He hasn’t reached that saturation point, and his stuff isn’t as strict as Ferre, nor as old looking. R.E.D. is a great label for those looking for something in the price range of Armani Exchange though tired of Calvin Klein and the Hugo Boss labels. Very nice price points and something you don’t look too old to be wearing well into your thirties.
The consolidation of computing
Posted on: June 8, 2008
Using your computer for everything but regular computing needs.
This was first brought to mind when I was working back in Ohio upon having a conversation with a fellow employee that wanted me to purchase a computer from him. I brought up cable television, and he said that he uses his computer for everything and his primary bill was from his Internet service provider. This was of course like 5 years ago and DSL was still a novelty, but he insisted that it was worth the time to sit by and allow content to load up, because he had complete control over the content.
Fast foward to 2008 and the average computer user is creating the content themselves, and can do for rather inexpensively. Internet connections are a lot faster; yesterday’s dial up connection is now today’s low speed DSL service and cable companies and telecoms like Verizon are aggressively pushing their fiber services. Most people do not realize that fiber is part of the infrastructure with your average cable company these days, only difference being that Verizon uses fiber throughout, whereas cable companies run it up to the equipment in your ward.
The way in which the Internet has democratized networking and made it easier to anyone and everyone to create content poses somewhat of a threat to network television, and all other forms of media available. The first signs of angst were seen amongst record companies, who now realize that peer to peer file sharing networks are not the only way to distribute digital recordings among the masses. The irony is that computer hardware manufacturers had the technology available back in the nineties, but it took a major name to both popularize MP3 players and legal downloading.
Apple could have taken the low road and just put their iPods out there and left it up to individuals at home to find music. These days, anything you want to do with multimedia is offered online; high definition content is still in it’s infancy, but you can enjoy it with the right monitor (most analog monitors are still tapping out the limits of their technology, which is often a mere 768 lines of resolution), you can also sit back and choose from more protocols for video on a computer than you can in television, where only the most popular schemes are built into the hardware.
Your operating system probably already supports high definition, just that your monitor may not be up to speed, nor your graphics card. I barely watch television, and even though great sites such as Hulu exist that allow me to watch higher quality television than I do on YouTube, it doesn’t really fit my needs.
YouTube and Google Video are about the only places you can still find an old videotaped commercial advertising early RCA VCRs that were actually recorded on an RCA VCR. It’s the only place you will find someone exploring the urban landscape of dead shopping malls, girls showing off playing up the camera to get their 15 minutes of fame and guys doing the latest crunk/snap dance. On YouTube you can watch thousands of prisoners in Manilla doing choreographed moves to Thriller; or the High School cheerleading squad dancing to Crank Dat Batman.
Before YouTube, you had to pass videotapes around, or watch America’s Favorite Videos. Those days are so over; so why can’t a decent site like Hulu compete with the eternal amatuer hour over at YouTube? For one Hulu lacks enthusiasm; I don’t want to see snippets of Die Hard or be told that the only movies available is a B rated movie from 1982. I’m not interested in seeing the first episode of the Mary Tyler Moore show. I most certainly do not want to see Family Guy or Friends, because those shows are probably playing in some distant part of the world every hour of the day anyway.
Hulu is a cold, corporate approach to rebroadcasting material, though it is slick and has an easy to use interface it lacks the authenticity that sites like YouTube has. Sure you can often find the latest music on YouTube months if not years before it comes out, and Google needs to do something about that because while those songs are often AM radio quality they are still there. But on the other hand Universal has a channel on YouTube where they post their own music videos, and at times without commercials being inserted into the video. Artists are posting their own videos up there as well.
So why even have a television, other than the slow download speeds? It still takes about as long as the movie plays to download one on DSL, and that’s not even as DVD quality. But quite honestly, I’m not even that interested in downloading movies because I’m not that interested in what Hollywood does anymore. Insulting my intelligence with tripe like another installation of Indiana Jones or yet another remake of the Incredible Hulk movie. It’s no wonder why Sex in the City the movie broke box office records.
Speaking of Sarah Jessica Parker they have Square Pegs minisodes online. If you want to watch your video on the run you can watch an entire episode in like 4 and a half minutes. For those old shows that’s all you really want; watching Square Pegs is more about reminiscing about choppy eighties style video editing and bad acting, nothing more nothing less. I wouldn’t buy a copy of Square Pegs unless it was in a bargain bin for like 75 cents, and even then you would have to include more than one episode.
I wouldn’t watch an old commercial from the eighties for any amount of money either; but there is a huge interest on YouTube for that type of content. Often it’s a poor videotape as well; companies should take note of which ads people are watching and then start unloading high quality content on the site. A Coke ad from 1980 is just as effective as one is today, and can still drive sales; in fact these are commercials that people actually want to watch.
So why let them down, why continue to fight them. One of my favorite commercials is for something that doesn’t even exist anymore, the World Trade Center. I don’t know how effective that ad was at the time, but it brings back memories of better days, so I’ll hunt it down and watch it every now and again. I’ve never been to the World Trade Center, so that is my way of paying homage and keeping the memory alive until I can get back to New York to actually visit Ground Zero. Unfortunately the movie World Trade Center doesn’t do that for me; too morbid and lacking the disturbing violence that actually occurred on that as the approach was a bit abstract.
I just now got my high-definition working without the picture freezing up; the solution was an old antenna from 1980 that I used to use a cheap 75-300 adaptor for. The adaptor was $5 and the antenna $3, but it works like a champ. I can finally watch CBS in high definition again, and you would think that I would but it still pales in comparison to actually being able to make content and have control over what you watch. I can use software to record the flash and create a playlist and burn all of that to DVD and sit back and watch the games begin.
These days the only reason I even deal with CDs is because I have a player in my car. CDs are a non-starter these days as everyone has graduated to using hard drives, so I can get them for like 30 cents a pop, could pay less but what for. I don’t even keep them in my case anymore in fact I can’t even find the CD wallet.
High definition television is about the only saving grace of broadcasting these as I might watch something I normally wouldn’t just to see the quality of the picture. The color issues that plagued analog television are a non starter with digital; now you’re just plucking more color depth out of the signal with a better television and aren’t confined to the poor color reproduction that analog offered. Your cheapest digital television showing high definition content is probably giving you better color than the best media that analog set could ever reproduce.
Whatever happened to actually using your computer for, well, computing? Well other than writing and visiting some social networking sites like Answers it rarely gets any use. In fact it’s the non computing needs that are tying my computer down; I insist on loading an hour or more of high-definition content into memory and then have the nerve to get upset when the audio is out of sync or the picture freezes.
Today the computer is a multimedia type of appliance instead of a real computer. Everything is pretty and we complain and moan when we are forced to watch anything less than the 24-bit color we’ve become accustomed to. A command line or a script of any sort, let’s not even mention actually programming the computer for a change, is our worst nightmare.
We’re content to pay the next guy to worry about that; you can’t complain about rock star music producers getting paid a million plus for a beat on a song you’ll forget about in three months when you not only do not play any instruments but haven’t time in your busy schedule to sit down and listen to someone else play one. No you’d rather get that ear candy; the right sounds at the right pitch with the perfect rhythm to get you into the mood. The instant gratification that only the most advanced drum machines can afford.
We’re living in a society dominated by cheap content on disposable interchangeable hardware made as quickly as possible in order to get on with it and move on to the next big thing. No one has a relationship to content anymore, even less so to the actual medium that content is on. Even the computers themselves, at $400 a pop, are pretty meaningless these days. I purchased a computer for $100 at the thrift store and installed a Linux cd and suffered through a lot of frustration and angst trying to get it do certain tasks. But I miss that computer, my Vista machine, which takes care of everything and idiot proofs the operating system, is administrating itself. It tells me when a website is questionable at best, what hardware I should install and what steps I should take to make the computer faster when it is non responsive. In fact I rarely have to do anything with this machine so of course I am not learning anything whatsoever about computing.
I have to force myself to do something; there are solutions out there that will work for about anything and everything you need to do, and it’s hard not to. But this is a day that technologists were anticipating, though I bet few ever realized that computing would eventually render everything else that technology used to offer meaningless and worthless.
Get it out of your system
Posted on: June 4, 2008
Dior is sick. But most people don’t know much about their men’s label, which is very gender bending and mostly monochromatic, giving that arrogant, yet confident fashion feel. eluxury finally has a decent selection of the Dior Homme, for too long they just had some simple black and white pieces which evoked a man’s approach to classic early eighties woman’s fashion but now they have a more comprehensive selection.
They got me over my unhealthy obsession with D&G and other 90s couture. A while back I had made a lot to do about how all of these older labels, whose designers had long passed on even before American sportswear labels like Polo Ralph Lauren were popularized, had been bought up by these mega conglomerates and were sort of homogenizing fashion. My opinions have changed over the years though, because they had the business sense to give those labels some perspective and actually made them a bit more competitive, removing some of the more artistic high-end fluff and bringing them a bit down to earth.
Thing is I’m not really feeling this years collection though. With labels like Dior a lot of times it is about which hot designers they have working there. For example Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs were the real reasons people wore Gucci and Louis Vuitton back in the day. I don’t know what success Tom Ford has these days with his own label but a lot of people were still with Marc Jacobs when he focused on his own label.
Their denim was a lot better back when I first found Dior on eluxury. Take for example these two examples of bleached denim.
They’ve got the eighties bleached denim thing down, if you can squeeze into them these skinny jeans are for you. But I don’t know if people are really ready to bring bleached denim back though. Everyone has tried to bring them back rather unsuccessfully, and perhaps it may take a label like Dior to bring some long needed chic to them.
On the other hand these dark jeans are right on point.
The perfect jeans for those old enough and with the disposable income to do the * right, the way it is meant to be done. These aren’t any fly by night True Religion or Paper Denim and Cloth but a real classic.
On the other hand some stuff about Dior will never change. For example check out this mesh jersey tee, for that rock and roll feel they’re known best for.
You can’t really build anything around that; for one it’s so Versace and Helmut Lang back in the 90s it isn’t funny. So there you have it. Unfortunately Dior is still letting eluxury handle the bulk of their online shopping and I really wish they would just take that over entirely and slowly but surely build a serious presence like Louis Vuitton has done. You know sometimes you can be a bit too exclusive, forcing everyone to take day trips to New York or Paris to get your stuff. So eluxury is great for those that want to take it for a test drive without making too much of a serious commitment.
okay so the skinny jeans didn't work out for me so well ... 
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