Brella

THINGS TO DO 

• Move very strangely when you are all alone. Big Martha Graham gestures? Hunch-and-sneak like a little gremlin? Broken robot? The classic “Oh No I Have No Knees”? Completely up to you. 
• Check your reusable straws before you slurp! Mine had a small piece of HARICOT VERT (I take every opportunity to say this, even when “green bean” would do) inside and thus my inaugural slurp was coldbrew greenbean. It was unpleasant and the combo will not be sold at cafes anytime soon. 
• Do not watch the A24 film called “Men,” because it will start off okay and then just get dumber and dumber, and also the main character will suddenly start wearing this strange pink Jane-Austen-esque nap dress when that was nowhere close to her earlier style. This movie is very mixed up in its motives and message, I don’t need unclear costuming signals to add to the muddle.
• Do watch (if you can find it) an underseen but not half-bad movie from 1948 called The Velvet Touch. It has Rosalind Russell wearing a whole lot of excellent hats, a love-at-first-sight “dreamboat” with possibly the worst teeth ever seen in a leading man, and Sydney Greenstreet dryly referring to his “mountainous bulk.” Speaking of Sydney Greenstreet, what actor will ever again have an early bio like this one from Wikipedia? “He left home at the age of 18 to make his fortune as a Ceylon tea planter, but drought forced him out of business. He began managing a brewery and, to escape boredom, took acting lessons.” I think that sort of Hollywood origin story has probably run its course. 
• Go to an all-ages Metro show; enjoy all the bands except the last one, because what in the name of Adult Contemporary/vaguely Christian-rock was that? They felt like a last-minute addition to the bill and the change in vibes was palpable. From the balcony I could watch all the alternakids leave and a whole lot of unironic baseball caps and hockey jerseys arrive. I could also get invested in one fan in particular, who seemingly knew all the lyrics and shouted “LET’S GOOOOOO!” between songs. Eventually I realized he was (metaphorically) speaking to me, and I left! (With my friend, also my ride, who luckily was in complete agreement with me about the band’s merits.)
• Group things together in your mind! For instance, I realized how many horse-related bands I like: Sparklehorse, Feeble Little Horse, An Horse, Horsebeach. Also I like a band called Duster and a band called Luster, but am less of a fan of a band called Guster. Nonetheless, they should all three go on tour together because that would be funny. 
• Contemplate what circumstances (brain worms? hubris? or…genius?) compelled these journal editors to allow this title, “When to Ask for an MRI of the Scrotum.” Oh honey. Just ask! We’re not mind readers. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. Seize the day! Seize that scrotum! Stick it in a tube! On the other hand, think about the timing of your ask. Maybe not when she first gets home after a hard day at work.
• (Also, imagine the honor of being named part of the Scrotal and Penile Imaging Working Group.) 

—mimi smartypants saw the lizard on the red brick wall. 

EVERYBODY PIPE DOWN

I want to get serious for a second (but only for a second) about my (and possibly your) freaky brain. I was thinking recently that my anxiety shit is so much better, and then I realized that the anxiety itself has not lessened one iota, but my relationship with it as a thing (anxiety qua anxiety! The Concept of Dread! Hello Kierkegaard, so nice to see you again!) has changed a lot.

Because basically, my brain is just as anxious and doom-obsessed as it ever was, but I no longer care. The hamster wheel will start and I just feel affectionately dismissive, like “Oh you!” Because anxiety is a separate thing, see? A separate, ridiculous thing, like a crazy rubber duck (on fire) floating down an otherwise-peaceful stream. You don’t get mad at the stream, and say “GODDAMNIT STREAM, WHY DO YOU ALLOW FLAMING RUBBER DUCKS TO FLOAT ON YOU?” You just point and laugh. Holy shit, look at that.

Should I credit the medication for this newfound Zen? Maybe. I go see my brittle little rat-faced psychiatrist next month for a “med check,” and perhaps I shall try and find a non-flaming-rubber-duck metaphor to explain to her what’s new and different. I also need to remember to ask for more of the chillout pills, to be used only in case of emergencies. Like the really HUGE flaming rubber ducks that keep you up all night.  

PEOPLE GOT PROBLEMS

In the spirit of not caring, and letting this freak flag fly, I have been making more of an effort to spend quality drinking time with people I don’t know all that well. Like hanging out with neighbors, and going to work happy hours, and making plans with cool-seeming friends of friends so that maybe someday we could ALL be friends, etc. (The struggle to find female hangout pals is REAL, y’all. I don’t want it to be a WHOLE BIG THING. I just want to EAT SOME TACOS WITH A LADYPAL.)

Sometimes this hanging out goes well, sometimes it goes…less well. Sometimes someone who seems supercool has a weird weak spot, and then you unluckily hit on their weak-spot topic, and you are all whoa, WTF. You feel me? Sometimes it can be okay as long as you avoid that person’s weak spot FOREVERMORE, but that can be difficult if the weak spot is large.

There is a neighbor of mine who I really do like, in a general way, but then certain parenting topics will arise, or sex-and-adolescents topics, and random bizarre discourses ensue, such as how letting a female teen take hip-hop dance classes will lead to that teen becoming sexually active, gays being totally great as long as they don’t “shove” it in your face (shove what? I want to ask. SHOVE WHAT?), tiresome heteronormative jokes like the dad “waiting with a shotgun” when this teen’s dates come to the door, blah blah blah, and I’m like Girl. I don’t even know where to start with the sexual-political education I would like to bestow upon you. But it’s cool, I guess. It’s friendly. But it’s probably not a friend.

Then there are the people who really are friends and their weak spot is more amusing, like how I recently discovered that a person who has been married nearly as long as I have gets furious if her spouse or children use “her” towel, and that her household towels are ruthlessly segregated, with all the family members drying their clean wet bodies with super-personal terrycloth. I get it, I guess, and lord knows I have my weird rules too, but towels are not in that category. If a guest took a shower in my house, I would give that guest a brand-new towel. But for my immediate family? I have cleaned up all manner of bodily fluids from the one and regularly fondle the genitals of the other, so as far as I’m concerned we can share towels.

ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD

Yesterday at dinner I said, “Oh! Nora, remind me to show you the dead mouse on the way to school tomorrow.” Because there is a dead mouse on my block, and I saw it on the way home from work, and I wanted Nora to see it too. She was like, “oh cool,” and asked me some questions about it, which I answered, and finished her dinner and cleared her plates and stuff to the kitchen. A minute later she went running to the front foyer holding a post-it note. Later I went out there and saw the “REMEMBER: DEAD MOUSE” note stuck to the inside of the front door and I was like awwwww. Shared interests bring parents and kids closer together, and looking at dead animals is one of ours. I LOVE MY CREEPY BABY.

(Mouse was gawked at this morning. It’s just…dead, not very squashed or anything, although I think there is a small puncture hole in its side. Nora used a stick to transfer it to a more obvious place in the neighbor’s landscaping, for easier viewing and possible disposal, and then we jammed that stick in the ground as a gravemarker/flag.)

—mimi smartypants claims this dead mouse in the name of the king!

 

Remember this article about the importance of speaking the language of finance?  So I’m going to sprinkle in some definitions for us.  This is a fun one.

If it isn’t selling, double the price

At Coach, it’s been raining in a bad way.  They discounted their goods to drive sales, which worked at first.  But by lowering prices they undermined their brand’s value as a status symbol.  Oops.  #screwedthepooch

Coach’s situation is a classic Veblen good dilemma: A Veblen good is something (like a luxury car, or designer handbag) that is more in demand as it’s price rises; it’s value rises as a result of it’s exclusivity.  A Veblen good’s value and desirability as a status symbol rises along with it’s price.

For a Veblen good, therefore, the demand is proportional to the price (price goes up, demand goes up), which is a contradiction of the law of demand (as the price falls the demand increases / as the price increases the demand falls).

Examples of Veblen goods includes luxury cars, fine wine, fine jewelry, and designer handbags.  If the price of these items goes down they become less exclusive and therefore less desirable (Coach obviously missed this memo).  If the price goes up, demand for them as symbols of luxury increases.

The term was named after the economist Thorstein Veblen who first wrote about conspicuous consumption in 1899. (Conspicuous consumption in 1899?  How little we change.)

The post What’s a: Veblen Good appeared first on the monied.

Art Director's Club of NY Advisory Board, 1971



Don and Peggy start their own shop.  Both win gold medals at the 1971 Art Director's of NY Hall of Fame.  Peggy for an anti-war campaign.  Don for True Story magazine.  Their passion is their work.  Their work is what they  are.  They get married.  Don dies of lung cancer two months later.  Peggy becomes one of the most powerful and respected individuals, man or woman, on Madison Avenue.  Roll credits.

Emily Anderson is one of my dearest friends. We met while attending the same high school in Georgia, and have been close ever since. And now she and her husband, John, live in a van down by the river. Well, sort of. Since February, they have made their home in a 1973 Winnebago Brave. She documents the highs and lows of RV living in her blog, Somewhere, Idaho.

Emily Anderson and her new (old) Winnebago.

What spurred the decision to buy and live in a Winnebago?

I’ve been a fan of the “tiny house” movement for a few years now, and when my husband was offered a job in Idaho, we started to think seriously about paring down and trying it ourselves. Building a tiny house still costs about $7-10K (or more, depending on where/how you source your materials) so we decided to look for a vintage trailer or motorhome instead (vintage being one of my great loves) and bunker down at an RV park for a while. I’d been fantasizing about living an Airstream trailer for some time, but I found a vintage 1973 Winnebago Brave I absolutely loved that was almost live-in ready and within our budget.

How have people reacted to your decision?

Reactions were varied—surprisingly, most of my friends thought it was a pretty awesome idea. Our families were a little taken aback, but I think they’ve come around to the idea. I think those that don’t quite get it have a hard time wrapping their heads around why anyone would opt to live this small when they could afford to rent something with all the regular modern amenities—and occasionally, I wonder the same thing—but I don’t have any regrets as of yet.

Where exactly do you park your home?

We are currently living in a really nice RV park with “full hook-ups” right by the river. Their bathroom and shower facilities are nicer than a lot of hotels’, honestly. Our Winnie bathroom has a toilet and shower, but you can barely turn around in there—and being able to take a nice, long hot shower keeps me from feeling I’m totally depriving myself from all luxury.

How is your dog, Juniper, taking to her new space? Did it take some time to get her acquainted with extra-small space living?

Junebug was EXTREMELY confused for the first few days. She’s a great little traveler, but she couldn’t really figure out what was happening—were we still traveling?! Why were we sleeping in a giant car?! But she’s adapted very well. She has plenty space to play with her toys, stretch out and take a nap—and she gets nice long walks every day, which she needs anyway because she’s a little chunklet!

It gets pretty cold in Idaho, right? How do you stay warm?

It DOES get pretty cold in Idaho. It also rains a lot, snows occasionally, and hails almost as much. The weather is pretty insane. We keep warm at night with a nice electric heater—we could also heat the Winnie with propane, but we don’t want to rely on that as much because of the pets—I’ve always been very wary of cooking or doing anything with gas, really.

What are the best and worst things about your Winnebago?

The best things: it looks AWESOME, it has all of its original interior. Cosmetically, it’s been pretty well maintained inside and out- for a 40-year-old vehicle. It’s compact, but it has all the essentials we need—dinette, kitchenette, and something of a “bedroom.” The worst things: it only had half of its original plumbing when we bought it, and the “toilet” was this weird porta-potty thing you had to empty yourself every few days. DISGUSTING. We’ve already replaced the toilet and plumbing, but for the first few weeks, we were washing our dishes in the laundry room sink, and emptying our own waste into a standing toilet several times a week—that was definitely the WORST, but both those issues could’ve been easily avoided if we knew what to look for (which we do now). Any older vehicle or motorhome is gonna have its issues, but this has really been a learn-as-you-go experience.

Has anything really surprised you about your new life?

Really, I’ve been surprised that it’s so DOABLE, and it keeps our living expenses at about half of what they were when we were renting. We pay our monthly space fee, electric, and we pay $15 for cable, and wifi is FREE. I mean, c’mon! I really wish I’d had this idea in my early twenties. If you’d rather spend your money on eating well, going out with your friends, and traveling, this is definitely the way to go if you’re a boho twenty-something. And it beats the crap out of paying deposits, rent and utilities. And really, who ever gets their deposit back? I don’t think I’ve ever gotten my deposit back once.

Do you really save that much money compared to renting a traditional home?

When we did the math, it was pretty astounding—we can actually bank my husband’s entire paycheck, and pay all of our monthly expenses with my smaller, freelancer’s income. We can save about $8-$10K over six months, and pay off some credit card debt—which puts us in a great place when it’s time to start shopping for a home that’s not on wheels.

What is it like to cook a meal in your new home?

Meals have been something of an adjustment—we have a small three-burner stove, and a tiny oven and a fridge that is somewhere between a mini-fridge and a regular fridge. We have plenty of cabinet space, but our limited fridge capacity only allows us to store about 2 weeks of food at a time. Also, we’re about six hours away from a Whole Foods, and three hours away from a Trader Joe’s. Our meal choices are a little less decadent than they were before, because you really only want to use 1-2 cooking implements at a time, but we still manage to eat well, and eat healthy.

Do you feel isolated or have you found that there’s a sense of community among travel-trailer dwellers?

A little of both. The park is about half-full right now, and people come and go from week to week. After living here a month, I only really recognize about half a dozen people. I think this place will be a little livelier in the spring and summer, when more people are traveling.

You’re a writer—do you find inspiration in your new environment?

I absolutely do! I couldn’t afford to live right on the river if I wasn’t living in an RV! I wake up every day and walk my dog and there are little ducks swimming around and bald eagles flying over the pines…it’s a very rugged, idyllic landscape. It’s also extremely quiet—much too quiet for some—but it gives me a lot of space to think and write.

What is the whole point of living in a travel trailer? What do you hope to come out of this experience?

It’s become something of an experiment—my goal is now to live in the Winnie for a full 6 months, blog about it and save up enough money for us to put a nice down payment on our first home. It’s also an exercise in living small. 90% of our worldly possessions are in a 10X10 storage unit back in Reno, and while we occasionally miss our records and our giant speakers and such, we’re getting by just fine with out them.