Allagash White TOMS (anything)
Melanie Laurent Oxford Vs. Poplin
A Man and His Mustache Send Me a Link
Jamon Iberico White Attire Encouraged
Beginners/Mike Mills Allergies
Killer Cam’s Latest Chardonnay
Then We Came to the End Flight Delays
Dirty Beaches Liver Failure
Beachland Permit Parking
Submarine Foodies
Filed under De La Moda
We believed in our undergraduate degrees, our gluten-free pizza and our covered parking space at work. Some of us believed in anti-aging creams while others avoided sunlight, stress, family members and rush hour. Some of us didn’t believe in any of it, but all of us knew none of it worked.
We bleached our teeth, straightened our hair, lifted little silver weights in front of mirrors and ran for hours without going anywhere. We counted calories, went on juice fasts, tried liquid diets, and even braved the Master Cleanse for a few days before passing out in the stairwell at work. Why? It’s embarrassing to take the elevator and get off at the second floor. (Oh, why do the Master Cleanse? Living on lime juice and paprika came recommended.)
We bought dogs and said we’d saved them just hours before they were to be euthanized. We gave them names we thought were clever. English Bull Dogs named Winston, miniature Poodles named Rhonda, Pit Bulls named Justin Beiber—just kidding, nobody got a Pit Bull.
We vowed to drink less and to train for a marathon. We bought the shoes, signed-up online and sat on the couch until it was too late and it wouldn’t be safe to run. Everyone agreed it wasn’t worth getting hurt because of our pride. We applauded each other for our modesty and celebrated it with drinks. In barroom corners we shared our faith in one another and each of our pending, interwoven successes. The next day we’d whisper wearing dark glasses over coffee about how so-and-so was losing it. Then we’d switch to a Bloody Mary.
We upped our dosage and felt better until we felt worse again. Then we’d wonder if what we were doing was worth it. We contemplated the meaning of life and health insurance. We thought about desolate islands in the Indian Ocean and how we could live off of coconut juice. We went to Home Depot looking for a good machete and we ended up leaving with seedlings. This year we’d try to grow tomatoes. We didn’t know anything about agriculture, but we ate organic kumquats and hadn’t smoked a cigarette in two weeks. How hard could it be?
We knew the importance of believing in ourselves. A blind man had climbed Mount Everest. Some days our girlfriends and wives called and asked us how to get home from across town. We’d tell them to Mapquest it.
–The Neapolitan Mastiff
Speaking of believing, check out this track by LA based Poolside
Filed under De La Moda, Red Cups
Earth Day! What a celebration! Everyone’s eating salads with apples and brie. Apples and brie come from the earth! Everyone’s riding bicycles! No, wait, there’s another day for that. Plus, riding bicycles isn’t particularly safe. I know from experience[1]
Regardless, people are eating salads today—lots of them. Warm spinach salads with goat cheese and candied walnuts. People are also doing yoga. Bikram. Sweat out the toxins, Americans! Citizens and denizens are getting in their cars and driving to do yoga because they want to celebrate Earth Day. People are shouting on the internet, “Every day is Earth Day!” But this is a lie. Tomorrow is not Earth Day and people will have forgotten that today was. Tomorrow there will be no remnants. No one forgets to take down the Earth Day lights and tree.
Personally, I am busying celebrating Earth Day by not going outside. Soak up the oxygen, comrades! Have my share. I’ll be inside, for fear of earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, sunburns, windburn, hypothermia, acid rain and other hazards that come from the world outside. If I were a braver man or owned more products from R.E.I. I’d be right there with you—in Patagonia neoprene.
Today, I give science a rest. I put a way my petri dish, pack up my vintage Hook microscope and I don’t even bother to hypothesize why there is no Internet Day. No, I will not think about the internet. “Everyday is Internet Day!” I will boil water and drop an egg in it. This is how Gwyneth Paltrow poaches her eggs. At some point I will add spinach because when I was five and drew pictures of the earth, it was blue and green. Spinach is green. For the time being the poles (represented by poached eggs) are white. The sky is blue. I look up and out and I’m having an Earth Day.
Esteemed comrades: in light of the holiday, build a sled out of banana peels. Make shoes out of an aloe vera plant. Dye your hair with goji berries. Feed your horse asparagus. Name your dog Solar Eclipse. Drink electrolyte-rich bottled water out of your reusable canister. Turn broccoli into a mandolin. Read something by Whitman and quote it out of context. Tell your progeny that the future is theirs so they must not use plastic products with the number six engraved on the bottom.
Watch the sun and wait for it to tell you to walk into the sea. As you trudge through the rising tide, remember that Whitman quote and disregard it. Shout something that you think sounds like something Thoreau might’ve said, but you can’t be sure. When the lifeguard starts calling you back to shore, bat an arm at him and tell him to go to hell. If he says anything, ask him how many months out of the year he works. If they send a pontoon boat after you, remember that quote—the one Thoreau should’ve said, but probably didn’t. Shout it! Then dive my son! Dive deep into the depths of our mother earth’s bosom. Dive until you’ve nuzzled yourself between plankton and tectonic plates. Then and only then will you have properly celebrated Earth Day.
Now you’re free to have that arugula and chevre salad. Wash it down with a shot of wheat grass and wash the shot of wheat grass down with two ounces of fresh squeezed orange juice. You deserve it! Happy Earth Day!
[1] It was a beautiful fall afternoon. I was riding my bicycle on the sidewalk, which is illegal. A monster truck neglected to stop at a strip mall entrance. My beach cruiser (Eleanor was her name R.I.P.) took the brunt of the collision. On my knees and elbows, like a wounded war hero, I crawled back to the sidewalk and demanded an ambulance. An hour later I was blissfully high on morphine, which made the whole thing worth it.
Filed under De La Moda, Information Pertinent To Gratification
Recent events have spawned recent and not so recent statements w/r/t earthquakes and tsunamis.
“What tsunami?” Jetty Eddie, Malibu
“To put it more simply, what would you do for a case of chronic, controlled, all-possessing and inescapable delirium tremens?” Geoffrey Firmin, Under the Volcano
“Tragedy abroad seems to induce myopia. (beat) Anyone else feel like hitting the pool?” The Neapolitan Mastiff, Hollywood
“All of America’s youth are obese and in need of a cataclysmic intervention–be it portion control or death.” Shea Butter, Off the Grid
Filed under De La Moda
There’s a pool and it could be anywhere—the middle of the desert, the top of a hotel—it could be Charlie Sheen’s pool in the middle of the desert and on top of a hotel. There’s excessive UV exposure, beads of sweat are slipping down napes and everyone is bi-winning. There’s cheap beer, some version of champagne bobbing in a bath of ice water and lots of drinks with mint floating around the bottom that taste strangely delicious and dehydrating. Overheated bodies are palpitating to a rhythm that they believe is distinctly theirs, but in fact is anything but as it effortlessly unites the solipsistic masses as a single conglomeration—crowd, party.
But this is nothing new and that crowd can be found year-round. What is new is Reginald’s Groove by Cosmic Kids. It’s one of those tracks, which induces a dopamine driven inflated sense of self, shedding listeners of history—it emphasizes the moment. Girls emancipated from inhibition will flock in bathing suits that look like failed FIDM projects and everyone will love it. Guys will strip themselves of conventional wisdom and hedonistically offer thighs and comfortably pallid chests to the sun. Some will also love this, but all will indulge.
I hate to champion the pending 2012 apocalypse, but I’d gladly concede to it in return for a mid-summer’s afternoon pool party right about now. What do I care about melting ice caps? Charlie and I are in it to win it.
Filed under De La Moda
All right my chicano hermanos: I know you dominate a certain amount of the plaid shirt, straight-billed Dodger hat, acid washed skinny jean, Creative Recreation sneaker market. I know this! I know you’ve lived up on Micheltorena with your Moms and your abuelita since forever. Ya lo sabía! You were there before the undercover aristocrats came with their canvas tote bags and masters degrees. You were living there way before all the Farmer’s Markets, gastropubs, boutiques specializing in vintage eyewear and wine bars. Christ, you took your first steps in the parking lot of the 99 Cent Store on Sunset. You’re totally on point.
So you wear that hardcore messenger bag on the train. It’s water-resistant, cost more than a month’s car payment on a Ford Focus and it’s ugly as hell. Sure, it was designed for PBR drinking Lance Armstrongs who make their living weaving through buses, beemers and tourists from the Financial District to the Sunset. So no, that messenger bag with your textbooks from LACC isn’t really for you. But do I care? Hell no! You’ve earned that sleek pink sleet-resistant sack. And you’ve earned that freshly painted fixed-gear that’s been sitting in your abuelas garage since spring 2005. By the way, your homeboy Nairobi really did hook it up with that all white everything except the pink taped handlebars paint job.
What I don’t get—what I’ll never understand, whether it’s a twelve year old Korean girl with it at the mall or some fiero with a Paper Magazine under one arm and Delorean blasting from his oversized headphones—is the raccoon tail. The foot long ball of fur that frankly looks like part of a mauled cat hanging from your pocket—serio guey? A big, ole bushy raccoon tail? There are no raccoons in Silver Lake. In the hills, you say? Nope. Not even in your abuelitas lifetime.
Now this is just my opinion. Don’t take it personally. Don’t lose sleep over it and certainly don’t try and put yourself out of your misery by jumping off the Sunset overpass at Glendale Boulevard because that shit isn’t high enough to accomplish anything, but a month catching up on reality tv and a rash under your arms from the crutches they’ll give you on your way out. (If you happen to have any vicodin left over (assuming you do jump) email me at exchangingpleasantries@gmail.com and I’ll tell you about a safe place where it can be disposed).
All I’m saying is you’re better than the raccoon tail, guey. Take that filthy, beady eyed, trash eating, furry extremity out of your pocket and throw it in the lake at MacArthur Park because that’s where all things not worth burying or reporting to the LAPD go to die.
–The Neapolitan Mastiff
Filed under De La Moda, Uncategorized
Periodically, I like to see what’s cooking and in some cases what isn’t on the other side of the Atlantic. With my assignment in one hand and a bottle of disinfectant in the other I dove headlong into the icy Atlantic and began to backstroke towards Europe. Landlocked as it is, I felt it best to commence my transatlantic adventure by braving the pre-and-post Haussmannian streets of “Old Paree.” Paris to the layman. I’ll tell you what’s not cooking in Paris: steak tartare. My first meal of 2011 arrived at 6:00 am looking like a well seasoned and caper-drenched raw hamburger patty. In my booze-soaked state I didn’t realize it, but looking back I can think of no finer way to ring in a healthy and prosperous year.
It’s widely accepted by the transients who frequent the Hollywood Public Library and myself that Parisians invented haute couture. What they didn’t invent are Timberland boots. At the moment there are more Timberland boots pounding the cobblestoned streets of the 1st and 3rd arrondissement than you can shake a buttery snail at. The tan boots, which were worn by rappers in the late nineties and Eye-talians with chinstraps for much longer, have infiltrated a society that has more loafer options on Rue Rivoli than we have registered voters in California. But I wasn’t sweating it.
Several weeks of blustery weather left me low on white blood cells and high on paracetamol. The only logical thing to do was get the hell out of Sarkozy’s pocket and into Gaudi country. I was craving shrimp with whiskers and beady black eyes over a bed of saffron rice. Scarves, gloves, water-resistant coats and steel toed boats—these things were for fools. I wanted to be in the land of toreros, cheap hash and fine quality cured Iberian meats. Barcelona beckoned.
My first stop was the hospital on Comte de Guell. I stripped and slipped into a smock, which exposed my ass to more Catalonians than your average ecstasy bender on Ibiza circa 1989. I find there’s no better way to view a city than from a hospital bed. I passed my days watching the telenovelas set in Miami and listening to the news read in Catalan. My suitemate was a Barcelona native and an octogenarian. We didn’t get into to details of his visit, but I got the impression that where I was passing through on vacation—he was there for an extended stay. He looked so at home in his smock I wouldn’t be surprised if he owned a timeshare of that fourth floor cot.
One afternoon while watching the news I saw there was some action going down in Tunisia. High on Spanish pseudoephedrine, I decided the reports demanded my journalistic presence. With prescribed speed running through my veins I jumped out of bed and dashed to the employee elevator. Now, obviously I wasn’t going to Tunisia. Africa, as I learned from watching Lord of War, is not really that great of a place. The human race may have started there, but it was a bad idea to stick around and it would be an even worse idea to go back. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve had plenty of bad ideas in my day. Most of them were pleasurable, some were criminal, but the majority involved traversing from Lake Havasu to the Hollywood Reservoir on a pontoon boat that was knee-deep in tequila. But Africa? Even Northern Africa is no place for a man who can recite the history of the aperitif Kir as fluently as another might recite his phone number.
Tunisia is small. If there was a Little Tunis in L.A. I would’ve just gone home, but there isn’t. To be honest, if there was a Libyatown or even a Little Marrakesh, I probably would’ve still gone back and tried to hunt down a Tunisian, but alas there is not so I could not.
Rather, I chartered a boat to the port city of Marseille. It’s well known that ports from Malaga to Dubrovnik are rampant with North Africans. Though the voyage should have been tranquil and enchanting, the morning we departed I mistook a nicotine patch for my anti-seasickness patch. This left me with my head hanging off the deck spewing yesterday’s sangria and langostas from Thursday to Sunday. When I arrived in Marseille my enthusiasm had waned. If Nice is on the Cote D’Azur, Marseille is on the Cote D’Debris. At my hotel I got a recommendation for a Tunisian restaurant, which I figured was as good a place as any to begin my journalistic hunt. The restaurant looked bleak, but I ordered the Kefta cous cous and an Orangina anyway. When my dinner arrived nine minutes later I had lost total interest in my mission and Tunisia. Also, I figured the story would be old news by the time I tried to peddle a profile on a Tunisian born French restaurateur’s perspective on the future of the country he left twenty-five years ago. As they say, today’s news wraps tomorrow’s fish. Thinking of this made me regret not seeking out bouillabaisse.
I left the restaurant without taking a Tunisian coffee and boarded the midnight train to Monaco. Why Monaco? I wanted to get as far from Tunisian cous cous and politics as I could. Grace Kelly came to mind. What did she ever have to do with Tunisia? Nothing? Exactly.
Monaco is fine if you enjoy looking at the breath-taking coastline and stunning young mothers, but the French defended Principality has a sort of Orwellian feel. Everything is sterilized. Sterility often leads to paranoia. For a second I felt like Gene Hackman at the end of The Conversation where he rips up his apartment looking for the wiretap he’ll never find. I didn’t have an apartment to rip up so I skipped straight to the part where I resigned myself to my fate and started playing the saxophone. The only problem was I didn’t bring my Bill Clinton to Monaco so I had to play the air sax, which was still pretty gratifying. I thought again of Orwell and wondered if they were doling out somas anywhere. Then I realized somas might be from A Brave New World.
Overwhelmed with literary insecurities I decided to hunt down a pistachio macaron. After munching on that crunchy green, hockey puck of sugar I asked a few people at the patisserie if they knew where I could run into Princess Grace. I got some weird looks. It didn’t take long for me to realize the Monegasque are an uncongenial bunch. I stumbled across Grace Kelly Boulevard. I thought it might take me to her chateau. It didn’t. I left Monaco without seeing Grace Kelly. On a more positive note, I completely forgot about Tunisia, which was the chief interest of my trip. In the words of George W. Bush, “Mission Accomplished!”
That’s all I have to report from the continent that birthed the Black Death, Brigitte Bardot and Nutella. Au revior, mes enfants!
–The Neapolitan Mastiff
Filed under De La Moda, Uncategorized
The Mayor’s Tongue Dyscalculiac Cab Drivers
Paz de la Huerta “Only God Can Judge Me”
Indian Summer Sparrow Tattoos
Movember Meg Whitman (2x recipient)
Jonathan Ames (writer) Jonathan Ames (scatologist)
“Heads Up!” Iced Coffee
Sacrificial Bunts Faux Fur Anything
Crystal Castles feat. Robert Smith Having An Epiphany
Playoff Beards Patriotic Tunes
Tryptophan Induced Naps Weather Delays
Filed under De La Moda
If you thought watching Monica Bellucci get sodomized at knifepoint on the floor of a Paris subway for nine minutes in Irreversible was difficult… as Bachman Turner Overdrive once sang “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Enter the Void is the least enjoyable film, I’ve ever seen. And yet there was something captivating in the way this, utterly punishing-to-watch, story was told. Sure, at times it was painstakingly boring (if I had to get up to use the W.C., I would’ve never returned), but something kept me glued to my seat for 130-something minutes. I’m not positive what it was, but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it wasn’t so much wondering what was going to happen next because it started at the end (same as Irreversible), but how Noe was going to show it. The car crashes made me cringe every time and the Freudian references (practically Oedipal punches to the face) were captivating enough to keep all eleven of the men in the 1:30 p.m. on a Friday showing in our seats until the end.
There were gut-wrenching moments that made me feel violently ill. At times it was unwatchable. The cinema nausea was heavy. Although, my ailing may have been due to the copious amount of Cazadores Reposado and P.B.R. in my system from the night before. We’ll never know because I’m never watching this film again.
The movie was way too long. The acting wasn’t fantastic (read: Nathaniel Brown should probably find an alternative career—something that doesn’t require much effort like a toll booth operator), although Cyril Roy and Paz De La Huerta (Peace from the garden? Really that’s almost as bad as Placido Domingo) were impressive. Especially Roy, although it might just be that his character was the best written.
But I have to reiterate, I was invested in the story. Despite how boring watching Nathaniel Brown on D.M.T. is, I stuck it out. I felt sympathy for some characters and hated others. I cared about De La Huerta’s character enough that by the end, I was rooting for an ending I knew was not coming. Noe tested my patience and my equilibrium, but he also did many things right. For different reasons, I’ll never watch any of his films again, but I’ll probably pay to see his next one.
SPOILER ALERT: During the course of the film Enter the Void, Noe’s camera Enters the Vagina. I’m talking seventh grade sex ed class, enters. Organs are beating in there. I think I saw Paz De La Huerta’s gall bladder. Seriously.
-The Neapolitan Mastiff
Filed under De La Moda
Exchanging Pleasantries 
