If you happen to be an individual in possession of two X chromosomes, a functioning e-mail account, and at least a few female relatives, friends, acquaintances, or co-workers, odds are that at some point in the last ten years you have a received a forwarded missive something similar to one I have simulated for you, below.
“Subject Line: Forward this to 10 Awesome, Amazing Women in Your Life Right Now!!!! Continue reading
As I have mentioned before, Bots has kindly suggested that I cross post blog entries from www.daisysagesays.wordpress.com from time to time. Here is our most recent entry.:
This lovely letter comes from our reader, Cosmic Debris.
Dear Daisy,
I think your blog and your advice are delightfully thoughtful and helpful. I so enjoyed the always genius George Carlin, and your essay on how much crap we allow on the lawn of our life is thought provoking in such a fun way! Continue reading
As I have mentioned before, Bots has kindly suggested that I cross post blog entries from www.daisysagesays.wordpress.com from time to time. Here is our most recent entry.:
Dear friends,
Hurrah! Just when I was thinking I’d better come up with some fake reader questions; (For instance, fake someone would write in and ask anxiously if they really have to stop wearing their white patent leather pants after Labor Day. My fake response would be: “Why did you wear them before Labor Day? And more importantly how?”) we have been sent our first real, actual reader advice request!
This comes to us from our friend who goes by the Interwebz name of Turdhurdler. Continue reading
Bots has kindly invited me to cross post articles from my blog, daisysagesays.wordpress.com . Please drop by when you have a moment, and for sophisticated advice, write to [email protected]. All letters will be treated with the uttermost sensitivity and anonymity.
“Have you noticed that their stuff is shit, and your shit is stuff?” – George Carlin
This is yet another article inspired by random things my neighbors happen to leave outside their homes.
I took this photo the other day while on a stroll in my general environs. Here are the thoughts I had upon viewing this item, in the order that they occurred. Continue reading
Bots has kindly invited me to crosspost articles from my blog www.daisysagesays.wordpress.com .
Here is my latest post. Please drop by my site sometime, and write to [email protected] to be included in the upcoming advice column, “Ask Daisy Sage”.
I took this photo some time this past February or March I think, when I was taking my daily walk in the general environs of my home.
I think what made me want a record of this charming little wooden sign was not only its daring dual meaning expression of hostility, ( did the writer literally merely mean dog crap, or metaphorical crap or both?), followed by the polite “Thank you” but the fact that as I walked down the street, and then turned the corner, I discovered 5 IDENTICAL SIGNS in front of other houses. This was no mere whim; this was an anti-crap campaign.
Before the “Tired of your crap” campaign ended, I saw one more sign on someone’s lawn. It said “Please keep your dog off my grass.” The author decided to forego the “tired of your crap” bit. It was written on a flimsy piece of cardboard instead of wood. It could easily have dissolved under the next batch of precipitation. Continue reading
As a singer songwriter (more on that at a later date) I have frequently been fascinated by the personal back-stories of songwriters whose work I really respect. I really enjoy reading books like Brian Wilson’s autobiography, mostly because I like finding out the stories behind his writing of songs like “Caroline, No” and “Warmth of the Sun”.
It’s particularly interesting for me when I discover an artist from the past whose work I was not aware of previously. Such is the case with Jim Ford who I just “discovered” this past weekend.
Friday night I was home doing work, and had the R&B classics channel on Fios on in the background for music. I heard this song, “Harry Hippie” that I had never heard before, and was instantly into it. It is wonderfully sung by the great Bobby Womack. But a quick Google search revealed that the writer was one Jim Ford.
Born in Kentucky in 1941, he spent time in New Orleans before making his way to L.A. and success in the music industry. Incredibly prolific, he was at the forefront of the musical “mixed marriage” that was country-soul-rock-funk; so popular in the early 1970s. Musical luminaries such as Nick Lowe (one of my personal all time favorites) called Jim Ford a big musical influence and a friend. Ford’s good friend Sly Stone called him “the funkiest white man I know”.
Ford released just one solo album in his life, the somewhat unsung “Harlan County” released in 1969 on White Whale Records. Listen to the title track, if nothing else, to see how Ford blended the various styles of American popular music with incredible finesse and excitement. His arrangement is complex and highly satisfying; if those horn sections alone don’t get you moving, you’re just too tired to move.
Apparently he recorded a second album, set to be released in 1970 on Capitol Records. However after some sort of dust up between Jim and some Capitol execs, they pulled the plug on the album. He was sent on his way with $20, 000 AND his master tapes, and specific instructions never to show up in the Capitol Records building ever again.
Although his career as a solo artist was indefinitely stalled, he maintained his rock star lifestyle by writing hits that were covered by many major artists like Womack and Aretha Franklin, who shined with a bangin’ version of Ford’s “Niki Hoeky”. He even wrote an entire album for the Temptations, “Wings of Love” released in 1976.
If you listen to Ford’s own solo tracks, you easily understand how both his songwriting and vocal style might have been influences to so many new artists of the time. Nick Lowe and the rest of the London pub rock scene guys were just getting started when Ford went over to London to lay some of his soul on the people. And of course Ford’s influence could be seen in all kinds of American southern rock artists.
Jim Ford claimed for years that he actually wrote or co-wrote the famous “Ode to Billy Joe”, which was singer Bobbie Gentry’s entrée to musical fame. Gentry has always denied that Ford was involved with writing the song. The two were a couple and living together when the song was written, and sometimes songwriters living or working in close proximity can develop nebulous and conflicting perceptions of their “boundaries.” Gentry later showed that the “Billy Joe” story was something she had written up as a short story before putting it in song form, and showed early drafts of the lyrics that had many more verses than ones she finally recorded. Places mentioned in the song like Choctaw Ridge and the Tallahatchie Bridge were real locations from her particular southern upbringing, not his. And Gentry did go on to have artistic success and hits on her own after her breakup with Ford, shortly after the song hit. But you can see some of Ford’s style in the song too. I believe it’s at least conceivable that while Gentry was in the process of turning her short story into the song, that Ford suggested some part of the melody line or chord structure. Was Jim hurt because she didn’t acknowledge his contribution to a huge hit, or just hurt because she left him? Only the two of them will ever know for sure.
According to this article about Jim on Aquariumdrunkard.com, after those initial years of living in the fast lane, came a story we’ve all heard before, namely: charismatic musical genius gets lost in the world and makes friends with drugs and drinking.
He cleaned up in the early 2000’s and found himself living in a trailer, in Mendocino County, California, strewn with myriad master tapes of tons of amazing Jim Ford songs that had been recorded and never released.
This is how and where he was somehow found, lounging in obscurity, by a Swedish music magazine publisher in 2006. Thus started the last, brief phase of his life, garnering one more bit of the spotlight for the road.
In 2007, a German indie label named Bear Family Records put out “Sounds of Our Times”, a compilation consisting of the entire “Harlan County Album” plus 15 of these unreleased tracks.
There were plans made for a subsequent album of even more of Ford’s demos (which was released in 2008 as “Point of No Return”) and old friend Nick Lowe was planning a big reunion concert for Jim in London.
But before the hoopla could ensue, it was over. Ford was found dead in his trailer on November 18th, 2007, at the age of 66. His neighbors were worried something was up when they noticed that he had left his Peugeot with the hood up parked in front, in the rain. I haven’t found anything about the cause of his death online.
RIP, Jim Ford. You’ve certainly made this girl love you, and darned if you didn’t make it “out of Harlan County.”
By Daisy Sage and PandaRobots
Daisy: PandaRobots and I have many times expounded on the joys of watching our favorite black and white films from the 1930s and early 1940s.
I suppose it would make sense at this juncture to mention that my screen name, Daisy Sage, and my avatar were taken from a character in one of my favorite movies from the early 1930s, The Animal Kingdom (1932) . The photo I used for my avatar is a publicity still from the movie of Ann Harding, who played Daisy in the movie.
Like many “pre-code” movies of the very early 30s, there’s no real salacious content in The Animal Kingdom by our contemporary standards. And yet, this film touches on subjects that would be quite taboo in “post code” era movies. Premarital and marital sex is both alluded to, and it is mentioned that two of the characters previously lived together as an unmarried couple.
It’s also interesting that several of the protagonists in the story take a fairly bohemian view of life; artists pursue their art without worrying about money (even in the very beginning of the Depression era!), and look down upon friends who “sell out” and create commercial crap in exchange for financial security.
So Panda, why don’t you tell us what attracted you to the films of the 1930s and early 1940s?
Panda: What initially drew me to these films were the strong female characters. The women have lines! And personalities! And tell jokes!
I do think the world in which these characters live is idealized to a certain extent. The Depression is rarely mentioned. Sometimes vagabonds or people down on their luck will be shown (the mother and child in It Happened One Night, My Man Godfrey, Meet John Doe ), but in general at least one of the leads is incredibly wealthy.
Daisy: Yes, I’ve noticed that too. In My Man Godfrey (1936), which is basically a romantic comedy with some class-consciousness thrown in, you have the “forgotten man” theme juxtaposed with the very rich and spoiled.
One comedy I like that makes light of the difficult financial times is Three Broadway Girls (1932) . They do mention the stock market crash and refer to the stresses of being broke. However the three main characters are young attractive ex-showgirls who have nice lives as “gold diggers”, so you don’t see any actual suffering.
Another thing I like about these movies is the depiction of romantic love and how it develops. It seems so much more genuine than contemporary depictions of love. Sentimental, without necessarily being soppy. Panda, what are your thoughts about this?
Panda: I totally agree. The way they treat sex is fascinating, too. On one hand, I like that the filmmakers couldn’t substitute the characters sleeping together for actual relationship development; they have to write dialogue or think up other situations to show the couple falling in love. I think that makes the relationship seem more genuine, as you said. On the other hand, I was initially surprised at how modern they are about it, too. Even if everything’s done with a wink and a nudge, they don’t pretend that sex doesn’t exist. In fact, sometimes it’s a major plot point, as in The Philadelphia Story (1940) and It Happened One Night (1934) – two of my favorites.
Daisy: I love both those films, too! The Philadelphia Story was written by Phillip Barry, who also wrote The Animal Kingdom a few years previous. He had a wonderful talent for dialogue.
Panda: Oh yes, the dialogue is so important in these films. That’s another reason why I like movies from the ’30s and ’40s – the scenes last longer, there’s a lot more exchange between the characters, barbs being traded back and forth, etc.
One of my favorite lines is when the heroine tells the hero “You’re the most contemptible man I’ve ever met in all my life!” in The Lady Vanishes (1938). It set the stage for so many of today’s romantic comedies – and basically every Nora Ephron movie ever.
Daisy: It seems like a lot of care was taken with the plot twists, too. One thing I really like about The Philadelphia Story is that it’s one of the only romantic comedies I’ve ever seen, from any era, wherein the first time I saw it, I couldn’t figure out which of the guys the heroine would end up with at the end. The writer did nothing to broadcast the ending.
Panda: Choosing between Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart would be hard for anyone. Who are some of your favorite leading men?
Daisy: I like Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart a lot, too. But I have an especially soft place in my heart for Dana Andrews. William Holden didn’t really start to get prominent roles until the late 40s and early 50s, but I’m a big fan of his too.
Panda: What is it about the leading men in these films that is so appealing or different from today’s leading men?
Daisy: I think one thing that makes these male characters so appealing to me is the sincerity element. When a guy falls for a girl in these movies it looks like he decides pretty quickly and pretty solidly. You can tell that there’s not a lot of waffling or indecision, even if it takes three quarters of the story arc to do something about it.
Panda, why do you think that so many movies of that era had newspaper people as the protagonists?
Panda: I researched it a little, and I found that many former journalists worked as scriptwriters and between 1928-1935, there were 79 newspaper movies. These movies helped to shape the public idea of the journalist as a hard-hitting, tough reporter, chasing after the biggest story (be it serious or gossip) no matter the obstacle, making wisecracks, and usually making some sort of moral or heroic decision. When I see the fast-talking female reporters, like in His Girl Friday (1940) , I think they were the archetype for today’s romantic comedies where every heroine is a high-powered magazine executive or wants to write for one.
Okay, let’s sum up with descriptions of some of these movies.
It Happened One Night – 1934
The master of the wink and nudge sexual tension. Claudette Colbert is absolutely gorgeous and portrays an innocent, vivacious, spoiled girl with hints of a burgeoning sultry woman in a very believable way.
His Girl Friday – 1940
This actually isn’t my favorite Cary Grant movie, but it should be mentioned. I like that Rosalind Russell isn’t a simpering ingénue. Plus, her and Cary Grant’s characters were colleagues – there was no “Now that we’re married, you won’t have to work” from Grant.
The Philadelphia Story – 1940
Cary Grant’s character is a recovering alcoholic. Katharine Hepburn’s character, a beautiful but chilly divorced heiress, refuses to embrace human flaws (and there’s kind of a “needs to get laid” subtext.) There’s a funny and fascinating “love rectangle” as well.
Daisy: Besides The Animal Kingdom, and My Man Godfrey, which I described above, I’d like to recommend:
The Women – 1939 directed by George Cukor, and starring Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, Joan Crawford, and a talented ensemble cast comprised entirely of women. Full of great dialogue, it shows how one woman deals with her husband’s infidelity while trying to save face amongst her pitying friends.
Here are places you can view some of Panda’s and my favorite movies of the 1930s and early 1940s. Enjoy!
My Man Godfrey (on Netflix )
Meet John Doe (on YouTube)
Free downloads at Archive.org:
His Girl Friday – (streaming on youtube) (free download)
Daisy Sage and PandaRobots are two classic movie enthusiasts who like it better in black and white.
by Daisy Sage and KatScratchFever
Daisy: KatScratchFever and I decided to write this article, to both complain about and explore the reasons why it seems like we can’t find cute clothes of decent quality to purchase on a working persons budget for several years now.
Neither Kat nor I are extremely overweight or oddly put together in any way. We are both quite fab, as a matter of fact. Kat is tall, well built, and striking. My body type could be described as a short (5’4”) version of Christina Hendricks, with more or less her same differences in measurements, if you shave a couple of inches all over (I found this out when they were auctioning off some of her Mad Men dresses online and printed all the dress measurements.)
However we are both grown up women whose figures are not flattered by the thin tubes of crappy fabric run up by some poor 12 year old in a sweatshop somewhere, desperately trying to not to lose consciousness until the next rice and water break, for the purposes of filling the burgeoning racks at the likes of Forever 21 or even H&M.
What follows is a dialogue between Kat and I, to explore the reasons for this dilemma, and find possible solutions.
Daisy: When did you first start noticing that it was so difficult to find nice clothes that were affordable?
Kat: It probably started years ago, but I wasn’t fully conscious of it until I was out of college, had a full-time job and began budgeting and being critical of the things I was spending my money on. I very much want to subscribe to the idea that “I’m too poor to buy cheap”, but in the case of clothing, it seems almost impossible. Housewares and furniture have the kind of longevity that makes it rewarding to have a “buy less, buy better quality” ethos, but clothes are not as durable. You spill things on them. The cat swipes at you as you walk by and rips a hole in them. You slip on the four inches of ice crust the Snowpocalypse left in its wake and tear them. They wear out in the horrible industrial washing machines you use because you don’t have the luxury of laundering things in your apartment. You can’t afford to have your entire wardrobe dry-cleaned once a week.
Daisy: Indeed. In the last few years, I have lost several clothing items I liked through “attrition”; i.e. tossed out worn things, or given them away in a fit of feng shui, only to wait in vain for proper replacements to magically appear. I still pine for a perfect pair of royal blue velvet jeans that I wore threadbare in places to the point that they tore across the ass, which you can’t really repair. (Maybe the velvet jeans and I could have made it work out, somehow.) I currently have in particular a “jeans deficit”.
Consider the dichotomy of two pairs of Gap jeans I own. One of them is one size larger than the size I have normally worn for years, that I bought when I had gained a little weight. Since, then, I’ve lost some of that weight, and these jeans are now so large on me that I can only wear them in public for very short jaunts down the street, covered by a very long sweater (because they WILL inevitably fall all the way down on my ass if I don’t catch them in time).
Conversely, another Gap pair of jeans I own, which the label says is the size I have traditionally worn, (just one number size below the ass hanging ones) are so still so tight on me that I can only get them on by lying on the bed and doing a type of yoga breathing exercise in which I expel and exhale all the oxygen from my body on a cellular level.
A third pair, also in my regular size fits just fine, but the fronts of the legs have worn so thin, and have rips from constant wear, that they are only suitable to wear on a hot summer day to a HORDE concert, and I’m not sure they have those anymore.
I’ve been told by those who know clothing manufacturing that in the last few years, the Gap is so loosey goosey about pattern cutting in their factories, that you could try on 10 different pairs of their jeans, all ostensibly the same size, and not one of them would be the same size or shape.
Kat: Most certainly, in the last four or five years I’ve noticed a decline in quality, or a huge jump in price, from the places that used to be my stalwarts for reasonably priced, well-made women’s clothing (the Gap and J Crew come to mind), and by far my overall satisfaction with the stores where I used to achieve moderate success on this front (H&M, for example) has gone way, way down.
Daisy: I concur. H&M is a sad shell of its former self, selling various sad shells of clothing. I find it useful to stop in for a random pair of sunglasses or socks when I pass by, but that’s it. Although, I must admit, I bought a sundress there last summer on sale for $10 that I didn’t even try on, and it ended up looking great on me. Go figure. Anyway, Kat, what is your opinion about why this decay in our clothing options has happened?
Kat: My opinion is that this is a result of a giant mess of apathy on all fronts. The general public no longer cares how they look, or at the very least takes minimal pride in putting themselves together well. Clothing retailers are apathetic about the quality and construction of their product and care mostly about their net profitability. Everyone cares more about being “Fashionable” and “Hip” than dressing appropriately for your body. We live in a throwaway society, which has little respect for high production standards. I think that much in the way that some people say there is “no middle class” anymore (or it will be that way in the very near future), there is no real “middle class” for clothing, only expensive boutique garments, and things that I will end up using as cleaning rags in six months or less.
Daisy: I think what you say makes a lot of sense. It seems like even moderately priced clothing of decades ago was constructed so much better than today. And the dye colors of the fabrics were more rich and vivid. I once had an A-line winter skirt my mom had worn when she was young, bright blue mohair, lined, with a fuchsia and dark purple thin plaid pattern over it. Below the knee, side zip, kick in the back. I kept that thing together for years re-sewing ripped or loose seams, fixing belt loops, until I gave up on holding it together. I know I won’t find anything like that again, outside of a high-end boutique.
Kat, what is one of your worst shopping for clothes experiences in the last few years? Which retailers do you detest the most and why?
Kat: Oh, there are many, but this one still stings. I was in H&M (on a budget, as usual) in the dressing room with about seven dresses to try on for a wedding I was to attend. Most of them wouldn’t zip or were too weirdly shaped or too revealing and I was growing frustrated and running out of time. The fifth frock had a side zip, but to put it on I had to slide my arms into the sleeves and pull it over my head. Overall it fit so damn well, except that the short sleeves were obviously tailored for a size 10 woman with size 0 waif arms and my barrel chest was stuffed so tightly in that it was difficult to breathe (a typical clothing woe of mine). Defeated, I tried to take it off by first pulling my arms out of the sleeves, but they were so crammed in there they wouldn’t budge. I tried to pull it up at the waist over my ribs to give the arms a little slack, but still, no dice. I finally resorted to a technique I’m sure many women have used before in this situation: hike dress up over hips, bend in half at waist, cross arms around body and try to slowly inch the dress off inside-out, peeling your sausage arms out last. This time though, it didn’t work, and now I thought I’d have to call the dressing room attendant for help. Some sort of dressing room rage took over at this point, and I just started flexing my arms and yanking at the thing, which finally ripped, giving me enough extra room to extract myself and fling the dress on the floor, ready to HULK SMASH!!! I put it back on the hanger, hid it between the other dresses, gave everything back to the attendant and went to the closest bar to quell my rage with a bottle of wine.
Daisy: Oh I’m feeling your pain there. I have experienced the existential angst of being trapped in a cheap dress in a try on room, on more than one occasion. Either I couldn’t get it up over my chest or down over my hips. As I pulled on it, I wondered how I got into it in the first place. It’s completely exhausting. You CAN’T be trapped in a dress, except yes, you are. I would not fault you one bit for ripping the freaking thing. What else were you supposed to do? I’m sure H&M survived the potential loss of the $1.67 the dress was actually worth (as opposed to the $29.99 it probably retailed.)
Kat: As for hated retailers, Forever 21 is just the worst. Other cheapo stores like Rainbow and Strawberry get lumped in there as well. Most of them don’t even have dressing rooms and the ones that do are so small I barely have room to try anything on. I’m convinced this is because they know if you can’t try stuff on you will likely buy it anyway because it’s cheap, and the likelihood of you coming back the within the time frame of their return policy (usually 7 days if you want your cash back, not store credit) is slim. It’s a racket, I tell ya.
Daisy: I didn’t even know Rainbow was still around. The last time I was in one was years ago. I was working part time for a small business out near the east end of Long Island. There was practically nothing around in the way of civilization, so many times on my lunch break, I would get some kind of fast food, and then go wander around the Rainbow in the local strip mall. It gave me something to do, and I figured I might find a clothing item in my price range. Never found anything there except a customer base of old before their time “Sixteen and Pregnant” candidates pushing double strollers and their irate moms. The merchandise was not only depressing; some of it was literally dusty. I felt as though it was the retail store that time forgot.
Kat: Why do you think it is that it is still so hard for “normal” shaped/sized women to find well fitting clothes? Is it because retailers are still trying to mimic the high-fashion world where everyone is a size 2, despite the actual size of their clientele?
Daisy: I think it is a convergence of a couple of things. Yes, I do think retailers are trying to mimic the high fashion, size 2 model, because it is what is promoted in the magazines, and there is a burgeoning demographic of young girls who either naturally fit into that stuff, or are willing to starve themselves to do so. Also, I think that as food manufacturers have over the last few years managed to keep the prices of packaged foods relatively stable by sneakily reducing the size of the packages and/or the portions of food inside them, that clothing manufacturers are able to sell cheap clothing by using less fabric, and lower quality fabric to make the bulk of their clothing.
Kat: I like equating the cheap wardrobe I have that is filling my closet and dresser but leaving my soul empty to fast food and portion sizes. Your analogy is very apropos.
Daisy: Thank you. So Kat, what do you think is the way forward for stylish ladies such as us to dress ourselves well? Vintage? Ebay? Vigilant Goodwill shopping? Sewing?
Kat: I think Muumuus are the wave of the future. In twenty years everybody will be bulbous piles of jelly zipping around on scooters ala Wall-E and I won’t ever have to wear another pair of pants again. (Fingers crossed!) Here’s where I’m hoping our fellow Crasstalkers have some opinions and advice to soothe our wardrobe-weary souls. I have always been interested in learning to sew, but continuously fail at finding the time or finishing beginner projects. Since my sewing skills are only advanced enough to make tote bags, unless I cobble all fifty of them I have into a utilitarian, carryall ToteMuumuu, I won’t be wearing any homemade garments any time soon. I scour thrift stores regularly, but everything worth buying has long been picked over in NYC by all the fly-by-night Ebay vintage store mavens and Brooklyn Flea Market clothing hoarders. My girlfriends are all in the same situation as I, and though we sometimes do clothing swaps, none of us have a go-to store for new items that stand the test of time. Your ideas?
Daisy: I actually can sew, although I haven’t touched the machine in years. It is a whole lot of work, as you say.
As to the clothing swap thing, it’s the kind of idea that sounds fun, but for me is not that practical because my female friends are all different heights and sizes. And even if we fit into each others clothes perfectly, it seems like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Personally, I’m very excited about your ToteMuumuu™ concept. Let’s speak privately about trademarks and lining up investors. If we hurry, we can hire an Indonesian manufacturer, and roll that sucker out to the floors of the women’s departments of Sears and JC Penneys within a month. (Of course you will have the final say on whether the samples live up to your aesthetic vision.) After we cash in, we can buy ourselves wardrobes from high-end boutiques and have all our clothing tailored.