Smash smoosh

I was making a favorite side dish of ours one evening, Collard Greens with veggie bacon and garlic, when it came to me that smashing in a potato would create a great one pan, complete meal. It also holds true to a culinary philosophy of mine: “Meat can be used as a flavoring, or accent, but doesn’t have to overpowering the meal”.

Ingredients

• 2 potatoes, cooked in a microwave (large take 5-6 minutes) still hot
• 1 bunch collard greens chopped, stems removed
• 3 veggie bacon chopped into 1/2 inch squares
• earth balance butter
• a little red wine (optional)
• salt pepper and toasted garlic
• sunflower oil

On medium heat, saute the bacon bits until the bits gets crispy around the edges
add collard greens, butter, garlic, salt and pepper, saute together until the collard greens go soft.
chop the potatoes, course chop the potatoes and add them to the mix. Add more butter on top of the potatoes, and smash the potatoes and butter into the mix.
done.

That was my Grandmother’s advice.”Save it. You can always break an egg in it.”

She was a deppresion era gal, so always looking to save money by saving leftovers, and serving it with eggs the next morning. Almost nothing is sacred in this realm, as long as you use your imagination. Some ingredients are better off folded into a scramble (such as vegetables, some meats), but for an ingredient like leftover rice, it’s nice to cook an egg over easy, lay down the rice, then top with the egg. This allows you to use the yolk as your sauce, and if you have flavored rice (like spanish rice, or indian), the results can be delicious.

Breakanegginit
Had some leftover rice from indian, so I microwaved the rice, fry the eggs over easy, salt and pepper.
Delicious.

Not everybody has the talents of a chef, but there are ways to even bring canned food to life, just by adding ingredients at the right time. Case in point is this EXTREMELY simple recipe:

Tomato Soup with Tuna

Ingredients:

1 can Wolfgang Puck’s Tomato Soup with Basil

1 small can of tuna fish.

1 Lemon

grated cheese (optional)

From the Spice Rack:

one or two pinches Grated Toast Garlic

Dried Parsley, Basil, and Oregano to taste

Heat the soup on medium heat, stirring in the garlic first, then the parsley Oregano and basil.

Drain the tuna fork the tuna, with twisting motions to break it up into fine pieces.

stir in cheese, if you like.

After soup is heated add lemon juice to taste.

Pour soup into a bowl and float the tuna, like an island, on top.

The key to this is to add the herbs and spices as you’re heating the soup. DON’T add the lemon juice or the tuna until the very end.

It’s surprisingly good.

BA-BA-BA-OOOO.

Bowie did it, I did it, Junior did it, Junior 2 did it. We all BA-BA-BA-OOOOed. And with this werewolf howl we bid adieu to Good David Bowie Records, ‘Absolute Beginners’ just about sneaking under the wire thanks to a tune, some Liberace piano and at least a semblance of effort. Junior said her favourite bit was the saxophone ad-libbing at the end, and that’s a shrewd choice – it lends some ‘Whole Of The Moon’ glee to the affair, some devil-may-care euphoria.

Nothing much to offer:

Fresh blog for third year!

Here is a drawing from the end of last year, drawn from Jean-Luc Godard’s film ‘Weekend’. This technique has definitely crossed over into my first third year project. ‘Absolute Beginners’.

The photograph is something I found on artnet.com.

So it has not been my habit in the past to like clothes but a few elements in the past few months of my life have converged to make me start really liking nice clothes, not the least of which is the discovery of a ragtag group of youngsters (read: most of them are one year my junior) who have put together a stunning little enterprise in the East Village. Michael DiPietro, Rebecca Lesesne, and Alex Parkin head up a co-op of about ten young designers selling original pieces in a charming/disarming boutique at 616 East 9th Street between Avenues B and C, under the moniker Absolute Beginners.

from absolutebeginnersinc.blogspot.com

As I understand it from DiPietro, mon nouveau buddy, there are many forces at play in the design aesthetics of the Absolute Beginners crew, but the one that appeals to me most (and therefore the one I remember enough from our conversation to write about) is that of Slow Fashion. You may have heard of Slow Food? Observer writer Zoe Wood (‘Slow fashion’ is a must-have … and not just for this season) describes Slow Fashion as “products that are ‘trans-seasonal’ and meant to be kept, with all materials organic, recycled, or fair trade.” Of course, elements of a quality, built-to-last product come with the territory when nearly everything at the store is hand crafted and one of a kind. Built-to-last works for me, since I wear all of my clothes into the ground and never like to buy anything new.

Until of course I saw these shorts:

from www.michaeldipietrodesign.com

I wanted them oh so bad so I commissioned them from Michael. I look AMAZING in them, and it feels really good to have something that is made specifically for me. I also couldn’t be more pleased to invest in a young artist’s feeling of “shit, somebody likes my stuff enough to give me money,” since I know how awesome that feels myself. 

Absolute Beginners opened on September 16th (the party was killer) and is open most days of the week. They’ve already gotten press from Time Out and The Thread, NBC’s fashion blog (Now Open: Absolute Beginners on 9th Street | NBC New York), and with their gumption I can only see them going up. The store is open Wed + Thu 12-8pm, Fri + Sat 12-10pm, Sun 12-6pm, and closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Go there and buy everything.

Here is the footage for Rachel’s show, enjoy!

Today was so awesome. I woke up and caught the Weehawken shuttle bus aka “the unicorn” (lol) – hopped on the lightrail and headed down to Jersey City to finish my painting at the warehouse. … I should really learn how to drive…

The lil warrior was there.

and of course…

=D

HOW EXCITING!!!

After painting, I got on the path train and headed to Rivington and Ludlow to meet Brianna to shoot for her lookbook. Stay tuned for those!

After the shoot, I went back to Bri’s. Mandy met up too.

Some of Brianna’s classmates opened up a shop on E. 9th Street called Absolute Beginners. Tonight was the opening so we decided to check it out and show some support.

After the party, Mandy and I went to get sushi on St Marks.

Happy Birthday Mandy!!! =D

As far as musical theatre goes, it’s not the fact I rarely enjoy when a perfectly good play or film is ruined by people inexplicably bursting into song that is the hurdle. It’s the geeky devotion musical theatre inspires in its fans. Rent fans especially seem to feel the need to launch into song whenever the mood hits them. I’m afraid this creates somekind of instinctive cringe reaction in me. That and jazz hands. I can’t get behind jazz hands.

Musical comedy, specifically comedic song, also doesn’t really bother me in and of itself. Though the songs are often too long, the joke getting tired after one chorus, hearing a parody or satirical song once can be amusing. They key is once. But sometime people listen to these things AS IF IT’S A LEGITIMATE FORM OF MUSIC. I’ve known people over the age of ten who listened to Spinal Tap because they thought it was simply good music. This doesn’t give me a geek shiver so much sends a geek seismic wave through my soul. And you know right now there’s people playing Flight of the Conchords, The Lonely Island and the Mighty Boosh in their cars and on their iPods. I feel irritated just thinking about it.

But there’s an infinite rainbow of hurdles music can inspire in people. We barely scratched the surface of genre hurdles in this episode (there was no mention of prog, jazz-fusion, or ska), we might have to revisit this topic in the future. I know I could spend an hour just discussing Frank Zappa fans.

Working in the area, with its plethora of designer coffee spots, high-end fast food and concerned looking meeeedja types pacing the streets talking LOUDLY into BlackBerry Bolds, it’s difficult to concieve that London’s Soho was once so seedy. I used to listen to my dad’s tales of being robbed in clip joints by burly characters after being promised a superior striptease experience than Raymond’s Revue Bar, including the crudest sting i ever heard of, with a friend’s old man conned into entering a satin curtain into a piss-smelling alleyway where he and his boys were promptly knocked to the floor and relieved of their wallets.

There’s still an undeniable edge, but the overt seediness seems to have made like Le Corbusier and gone upwards, marked by crude signs and grimy doorbells, operating above those respectable retailers. The sleaze that gives Soho character seems to be in full effect, just 10 feet above your head.

In his self-published (and highly recommended) autobiographical tale, ‘Dreamy Lips’, skater Matthias Connor describes his tenure as a sex shop worker in the area, discussing the change in fortunes of the area’s purveyors of grot, reluctant to shift like ‘Boogie Nights’s Jack Horner and his forced shift from film to video, as a once-glorious XXX empire is largely condemned to a single alleyway, oft-busted, but generally left as an outlet for tourists to tick a box marked “scary brush with London lawlessness” during their visit.

The area will always maintain a bohemian history too – writers and dandy/raconteurs like Julian Maclaren-Ross define the area as much as any slap-happy titty-bar doormen. In literary terms, while it isn’t the area pivotal to the narrative, the ‘old’ Soho is depicted in Colin Macinnes’s brilliant ‘Absolute Beginners’ set circa 1959, at a key point in modernist style and a time when the teenage identity was still being forged. Macinnes includes the coffee shops and rent boy activity that the area was notorious for, and depicts it as the place to be for a well dressed young person in the city, hetrosexual or otherwise. Macinnes’s attention-to-detail is astounding, capturing every cut, stitch and leather finish on the young narrator and his associates, already bemoaning a clueless new breed. It goes without saying that ‘Absolute Beginners’ is an essential tome on the decades styles and attitude, and most importantly, a brilliant piece of writing. The 1987 musical (gotta love that opening tracking shot though) is pretty dire though. Dissatisfaction with the adaptation is a byproduct of the next piece of Soho fiction too.

We all fancy ourselves as writers. The fact of the matter is, that pampered by the luxury of irony, self-reference and Google research we just can’t measure up to the likes of Gerald Kersh. Colin was a well-to-do relative of Rudyard Kipling, with the means and manners to ascend into a bohemian existance. 20 years before ‘Absolute Beginners’…well, began, Kersh’s 1938 novel ‘Night And The City’ depicted a super-seedy Soho, where complicated deals and double-crosses took place, working class anti-heroes (who pimp their girlfriends) practise their best American accents from hours of aspirational cinemagoing on club hostesses, paying attention to their attire down to the rakish angle of their hat and monogrammed tiepins…clean living in exceptionally difficult wartime circumstances. Gerald himself spent a significant amount of his nights and days in the Soho area.

Born into a poor Jewish family, he grew to be an alarmingly prolific writer of books, short stories and screenplays, yet his narrative skills and turn-of-phrase aren’t celebrated enough, making him a marginal figure who remains stuck in cultdom. ‘Night And The City’ is just the tip of a very smoggy iceberg, but remains as vital and accessible (if you can steer past the un-PC, though accurate to the attitudes of the time, dialogue) as it did all those years ago. A kind of British Fante, Bukowski or Hemingway, who maintained similar skills yet often dealt in pulpy subject matters, blurring into the areas populated by Lovecraft and Bradbury…versatility is the keyword here. And like the all-American trio mentioned previously, Gerald could handle himself. Other than looking exceptionally dapper in later life, sporting some serious beardage, Kersh had been a wrestler, bodyguard, debt collector and cinema manager on the run up to his published debut in 1934, and during his attempts to maje a good living from writing, where the success of ‘Night And The City’ would popularise him somewhat. He signed up to be a guardsman and served during WWII too.

There’s little purpose in simply rehashing this superb biography, part of a Harlan Ellison site (he’s one of Harlan’s favourite authors, and one of Anthony Burgess’s too) but this quote has a certain resonance -

“Kersh was always getting into fights of one sort or another. One time, in 1931, a man tried to liquidate him with a sixpenny hatchet. Kersh sidestepped, escaped with a small gash on his forehead and a bit of concussion, retaliated with a little marbletop table and won on a technical knockout. However, the man succeeded in jolting a nerve which, for more than fifteen years, consistently gave Kersh a sore head and kept him awake nights. He bore other trophies – a knife wound on his left wrist and tooth marks on the knuckles of his right hand.”

Drawing out the noirish aspects of the book, ‘Night And The City’ would become a decent motion picture in 1950. Gerald wasn’t pleased with it though. It’s a great piece of post-war filmmaking but bears little resemblance to the novel. Inexplicably, it became an NYC-based film in 1993, with Robert De Niro as the antihero grifter Harry Fabian. In many ways it’s more accurate to the original narrative than the earlier adaptation, but shorn of Soho, what’s the point?

Kersh passed on in 1968, while living in the US, but it’s that 1993 film that led to one of the last ‘Night And The City’ reprints before deletion beckoned. That’s where John King comes in. A strong writer, but like Macinness and Kersh another (willing?) victim of a dumbed-down movie adaptation, the toxically shit ‘The Football Factory’ – trash like all Nick Love efforts, could have you deeming him a practitioner of div-lit. That would be a misnomer. On the back of his success, King, an unabashed fan of London literature, particularly that depicting the working classes and those of a criminal pursuasion led to London Books a company dedicated to publishing old and new books based in this fair city. ‘Night And The City’ led the reprint charge, but other forgotten authors like Robert Westerby and James Curtis got a spotlight too – respect is very much due to King for this independent endeavour. Extra props for recommending books at the back of each hardbound tome from companies other than their own.

Their site’s message board is an interesting source of follow-up suggestions and discussion of other great ‘lost’ local novels. Also easily available beyond London Books, are Kersh’s ‘Prelude To A Certain Midnight’ and ‘The Secret Master’, plus on a more light-hearted note, a compliation of his ‘Karmesin: The World’s Greatest Criminal’ series based on the tall tales he heard in bars and pubs each and every night.

Soho’s literary legacy is one worth celebrating. Gerald Kersh – legend, rest in peace.

An unnamed male teenage narrator describes summer in London in 1958.  In the earlier parts, his main concerns are his love for ex-girlfriend Crepe Suzette, his misgivings about his family, and spending time with his various friends.  However, as the novel progresses, he describes the rising racial tensions of the time, which inevitably spill over into violence.

The narrator lives in a poorer part of London which he refers to as Napoli, and whose population is very multi-cultural, and also houses a lot of people on the fringes of society at the time, such as homosexuals and drug addicts.  A new youth culture is just emerging and so is the popularity of jazz music in Britain.

I enjoyed this book, on the whole, although I found the narrator hard to engage with, despite the fact that we were seeing events through his eyes.  He seems to have more acquaintances than actual friends, and many of those are fairly transient characters, who seem to serve as a sounding board for the narrator’s thoughts and beliefs.

Things do become more heated at the close of the book, and with it, the maturing narrator also starts to care about bigger issues.  However, although he has strong feelings about the events that take place, I found little emotion in his telling of such events.

I wasn’t around to experience the era or the location of the times described, but the telling of the story does seem to have an air of authenticity about it, and described London as a vibrant and exciting place to be, but with an air of underlying tension.

I usually prefer character driven books, but in this novel, the characters take second place to the city of London itself, which is really the biggest character of all.

Overall, an enjoyable read, and much better than the film adaptation!

How to lighten up a dark photo

This very simple tutorial is based on Photoshop CS4. It will work on a CS3 and CS2 version as well.

A very easy and effective way to lighten up a dark photo is to use Shadows/Highlights! You will be surprised about the impact!

This exercise will explain in easy 3 Steps how to lighten up a dark photo:

• Use a dark photo or use our sample photo
• Use the Shadows/Highlights (Image Adjustments)
• Save file as a jpg

Step 1

Either use a photo that you have and open it in Photoshop (Ctrl + O or File>Open)

Alternatively just use our sample photo. You can right click it and choose copy and when in Photoshop start a new document (Ctrl + N or File>New Document) and paste the image with Ctrl + V.

Step 2

To actually lighten the image up go to Image>Adjustments>Shadows/Highlights and change the amounts of the Shadows (I chose 57%) and Highlights (I chose 9%). If you untick and tick the Preview box you can see the changes that will happen.
Okay the changes!

Step 3

Save the image as a jpg (Ctrl + S or File>Save).

Peggy Moffit in a Mary Quant Mod-Bob wig by Vidal Sassoon

We have the Brits to thank for the mod movement if not the existence of the clothing boutique itself.   And perhaps most of our gratitude for both should rest at the feet of Mary Quant, maybe the most influential designer/boutique owner of the 1960s.

First, a word about the word: mod.  Mod as a fashion, music, and lifestyle descriptive term derives from the term Modernist, first coined in the 1959 novel Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes to describe modernist (or mod) jazz fans versus traditionalist (or trad) jazz fans.  The mod subculture is a British one (brought to America with the British invasion) born in Swinging London when British teens began to rebel against the boring, staid and traditional 1950s culture, be it music, fashion or film.  With the beatnicks and teddy boys (1950s dandys) as their predecessers, mods look to French art films and Italian fashion for their style cues.

And at the forefront of the movement is Mary Quant.  In November of 1955, Mary opened her first boutique, Bazaar, in Chelsea on King’s Road with her husband Alexander Plunkett-Greene and an accountant, Archie McNair.  Unable to find the pieces she wanted to sell, Quant began designing and creating her own looks, most notably the mini-skirt.  Crediting Quant with the creation of the mini-skirt is somewhat controversial as Andre Courreges was putting out minis at the same time.  But there is no doubt that she popularized them and moved them into the mainstream, along with hot pants and Twiggy, the iconic mod model.

Mary Quant & her models

So what makes the mod look?  Well, there is the afore-mentioned mini skirt (usually in an a-line shape) generally worn with flats and maybe a boxy jacket or cardy.  Or you can take a more pop art approach and work with bright colors usually offset by dark trim details.  Or think Italian design elements, like sleek, sophisticated cigarette pants again with flats and a trapeze jacket or artist-style smock.

Mary & the Mini, named for her favorite car

As far as celebs go, the top contender for rocking the mod look today is Zooey Deschanel, especially when she’s in She & Him mode (fronting her band with M. Ward).

M. Ward & Zooey Deschanel of She & Him

And what line of clothing does Ms. Deschanel seem to prefer for her mod look? Why, Dear Creatures, of course.  Here she is in the Nine to Five dress:

Zooey in Dear Creatures' Nine to Five dress

We are thrilled to be carrying Dear Creatures at Minx.  We’ve got the Nine to Five dress in the richest mustard yellow with brown piping for only $83.  Just perfect for that mod look.  This one’s got Mary Quant written all over it!

Nine to Five Dress from Dear Creatures $83

Thanks to the Come Spy with Me blog for the Mary Quant pics!

Why am I so exciting?
What makes me dramatic?
You’re trying to say
something about yourself
That’s motivation
–From ‘Absolute Beginners’

אורי ברוכין מתארח בשאלון
http://hasheelon.com/2008/11/30/uri-baruchin/
צילום: תום בירקט

Bueno, buscando por ahí me he encontrado con esta maravilla de la Música. Sí, maravilla, por que esto no es una opinión, no depende de gustos, esto es música en mayúsculas.

A pesar de que muchas personas que conozco me dicen que no les gusta su voz “rara” o incluso lo tachan de cantante pésimo yo no encuentro en su voz más que puro sentimiento: conozco pocos cantantes que transmitan tanta pasión… y eso que no es mi música, no es la música de la que tratamos en este blog.

Pese a quién le pese, David Bowie es un mito en vida, un icono de la música y un innovador: siempre va un paso por delante de los demás. Ala, si no lo digo reviento

Este video te lo dedico a ti. Feliz finde!

A faixa Absolute Beginners, tema central do filme hômonimo com o próprio David Bowie atuando, tem um dos melhores solos de sax da história do rock. É difícil afirmar qual dos seis músicos que atuaram com Bowie tocaram o instrumento, mas para registrar, aqui estão eles: Don Welter, Gary Barnacle, Paul Weimer, Willie Garnett, Andy MacKintosh e Gordon Murphy. A faixa, que chegou ao segundo lugar nas paradas britânicas, você ve logo abaixo no clip original de 1986.

A medida que hago memoria descubro que muchos de mis “descubrimientos musicales” siempre tienen lugar de madrugada y gracias a la televisión (qué irónico). El caso que hoy nos ocupa es el de una mítica canción de David Bowie aparecida en el año 1986 y que servía de banda sonora para la película del mismo nombre.

Mis recuerdos sobre este descubrimiento son los de una noche viendo la MTV cuando apareció un vídeo en blanco y negro en el que una mujer vestida de cebra y un Bowie caracterizado a lo detective de los años 50 se perseguían por las calles de la ciudad de Londres al tiempo que se entremezclaban imágenes de la película que antes os comentaba.

Como tantas otras veces la melodía se metió en mi cabeza y en los días posteriores fue imposible sacarla de ahí; de tal modo que tuve que ir a una tienda de discos y comprarme el dobre CD “Best of Bowie” en el que venía incluída la canción para poder escucharla todas las veces que quisiera.

De cualquier modo, el ver este vídeo me trae muy buenos recuerdos y todavía mejores sensaciones; así que es idóneo para terminar la semana. ¡Me encantan los videoclips originales!

If our love song
Could fly over mountains
Could laugh at the ocean
Just like the films
Theres no reason
To feel all the hard times
To lay down the hard lines
Its absolutely true