Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Grandma Anna (or: The September Issue)


Grandma got run over by a reindeer,
It wore a Prada nose, I do believe,
You can say there's no such thing as fatties,
But as for me and Alber, we believe

She'd been drinking too much vodka,
And we'd begged her not to go,
But she'd left her sunglasses,
So she stumbled out the door into the snow

When they found her September mornin',
At the scene of the attack,
There were hoof prints on her forehead,
And fattie hand-prints on her back

Grandma got run over by a reindeer,
Walkin' home from our house September eve,
You can say there's no such thing as fatties,
But as for me and Alber, we believe

Now we're all so proud of Alber,
He's been takin' this so well,
See him in there sewing dresses,
Drinkin' beer and playin' cards with cousin Belle

It's just not September without Grandma,
All the family's dressed in Coco's black,
And we just can't help but wonder,
Should we bury her with vodka or without?

Grandma got run over by a reindeer,
Walkin' home from our house September eve,
You can say there's no such thing as fatties,
But as for me and Alber, we believe

Now the goose is on the table,
Alber's gonna eat it all,
I'm drinking diet coca-cola,
That would've matched the colour of dear ol' Grandma's soul

I've warned all my friends and neighbours,
Better watch out for yourselves,
They should never give a licence,
To a man who weighs more than the sleigh,

Grandma got run over by a reindeer,
Walkin' home from our house September eve,
You can say there's no such thing as fatties,
But as for me and Alber, we believe



Monday, July 13, 2009

2 Easy Pieces

A while ago, I did an interview with a certain website- I'm not sure if it was ever published or not, considering it was supposed to be published in June, and it is now July. July is after June. I know this because I went through the months in my head: "January, February" and so on. So, I thought I'd publish a few excerpts from the interview over the next few days. A woman named
Donna Tillotson originally asked the questions, by the way.

On Emmanuelle Alt, the Chanel Jacket, etc:

Do you think Carine is a part of a secret plot to replace the classic Chanel jacket with the new Balmain jacket? Do you think Emmanuelle Alt is a decoy robot of this movement who has been built to take some of the pressure off Carine?

For a very long time I was confused to who this Emmanuelle Alt is. I would be at parties, and if they were in France one of my people would tell me that this Alt person was also there. Yet I was never sure what this person looked like- are they are boy or a girl? Emmanuelle sounds like the name of a bad Spanish chef. Eventually I saw Emmanuelle's photo on a dart board in Anna's office at Vogue- "who's that?", asks I, "Oh, that skunk Emanuelle" Anna told me- or rather spat at me. Now, I am still not sure whether Alt is a robot or some sort of brainless, trend-following moron. The terms are not mutually exclusive, of course.

Carine, she is one of the "cool kids" who thinks she is oh-so-chic in her Balmain jacket. One wonders whether she was stoned out of her mind for the entire period of the 80's- it's not hard to imagine. She's trying to replace the Chanel jacket, it's clear- but the Chanel jacket is timeless, something the horrible smelly homeless man can only dream of. Frankly, I'm not worried- French Vogue is only read my American French students, anyway. Everybody in France reads a magazine which is far too chic to dictate here. But it exists.

On Jealousy:

Did you ever find out what Jealousy was? Did it end up being from the middle classes?

I started looking down a suburban street for jealousy. I saw mothers in zoot suits, and fathers in polo shirts, and children in brown suits and flowery dresses. Over the road the family wore the same thing- zoot suits and such. Yet each family looked over the road at the other family like the had something the other didn't have. This confused me. I walked to the next house, where a 40 year old woman with blonde hair trailing down her back had her dress unzipped by a fat man with grey hair. I felt like I was in some TV series. I went to the city with its metropolitan metal, and I found lawyers hanging off highrise towers: I asked them if they knew what jealousy was, but they just shrugged and directed me to the nearest white house. So I got into the white house, where they were serving sixteen white horses on white plates, and all smiled. I had heard that people who smile are not jealous, and I went elsewhere, toward the heart of the middle classes- the workplace. Yet, I saw people smiling here too. I wondered to myself: Is jealousy something which people pretend not to have? After this...epiphany, I wandered over to the Met ball, where I finally found jealousy by lifting up the wigs of the ladies who go there.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Interview with Julia on the Couture Collection

Julia (Frakes) and I were seated together at dinner recently- actually, it was the dinner hosted by the Venus de Milo. Dinner parties hosted by statues are all the rage in Paris at the moment.
Anyway, it was after the couture show; after that interview with Cathy "Ohio" Horyn where she kept going "mm" every five seconds and laugh deeply, like a man. She reminds me a little of my father, who was about two hundred and sixy four when my mother gave birth to me. It was later in the night when I was talking to Julia- we were alone, because everybody else had either passed out or died (which is effectively passing out anyway, just for a tad longer.)

So Julia ended up interviewing me about the couture show, and the interview's been posted here, at the Paper magazine website, as per usual. I suggest you read it.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Letter to Karl

Mr. Lagerfeld,

Do you sell your DEMODE shirts in size x-large?

T

--

Dear Trevor,

Because of the high quality fabric we use, an extra large shirt would cost 5 more pounds more than the regular shirts- as we use more fabric, and it takes longer for the seamstresses to sew. We find the higher price acts as an incentive to lose weight, too.

Love,
Karl

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

"Live Blogging", Chanel Couture

Whilst the rest of the world was weeping for Michael Jackson with their television sets tuned to one of the seven hundred and sixty eight channels that covered it, I and my seamstresses were putting the finishing touches on the Chanel couture. We don't have a television set. We were playing one of my ipods actually- Tom Waits. Cathy "Ohio" and her hag friend from Central St. Martins decided to visit us, so I had some assistants hide the sandwiches and pies- not to mention bacon muffins, whilst we entertained the two hags. They told us about the tent that they'd set up outside Paris in order to save on hotel costs- I muttered something about Brokeback mountain.

We just showed a few minutes ago, actually. So now I'm designing the next collection. The press is no doubt going to ask some questions about the collection I just showed- they're annoying like that. The hags are circling like birds in a Hitchcock film.

Friday, July 3, 2009

The World's Longest Dinner (or, be careful of your waitress at the Tate Modern, she just might be an EEL)

I just came back from the World's Longest Dinner Party. It lasted for 8 days. These things do- they're either very long or very short. I try and make them about 10 minutes, people are rarely interesting after that. But this dinner party ended up being...an interesting social experiment.

The party itself was one of those social events that involve food and people and people wearing clothes. There's also "small talk" at these social events- the conversation generally goes like:
Person one: Mutter mutter OH YES mutter.
Person two: Flatter flatter flatter DON'T YOU LOOK GOOD flatter.
And so on.

If Donatella, Coco bless her plastic soul, is involved in the party it will go something like this:
Person one: Honour honour flatter flatter ITALIAN FOOD flatter
Donatella: Mutter LOOK AT MY MEDUSA LIPS mutter mutter

Meanwhile, if Anna is involved in a the party conversation with her would sound something like this:
Person one: Fear idol fear loathing fear honour-to-meet-you fear.
Anna: Hello.
20 minutes later.
Anna: BLERGddhdDSHSSIEYRDnhcsjcfscnscjscDDJDAcfbsjfbafbsjfbsoaiddhdbJCJNJNCSCA.

Which is why Anna does not go to many parties. She really can enunciate tha many letters than fast. It's something of a party trick. By 2 hours later, Anna will have mistaken most of the guests for deer and start shooting them. It's all that time she's spent at my place in Vermont.

If I were to sum up the dinner party I went to mathematically, we could say that it was 80% "You DO look good" and so on, 5% Donatella and 7.5% Anna- the rest being the people Anna shot at the party, with a tiny dash of Tom Ford attempting to direct a movie with his Sony camera.

The press clippings from the party probably would read something like this:
"Anna Wintour shot 12 people at a party recently, held by the fabulous Mr. and Mrs. So and so. When interviewed by the police about the incident, she claims that she mistook several guests of the party as deer, and proceeded to shoot them as she would do on Karl Lagerfeld's Vermont property. The people were not eaten, and are now in the good care of graveyards. Chef to the stars, Mr. Somesuch, worries about the waste of food: "Well in this resseccion, you've gotta take everything you can for food. When I was a little boy growing up in Scotland, we had to eat food out of newspapers. Nay, we had to eat it off the ground! Nay, we had to eat it at sea level!
Meanwhile, Ms. Wintour has entered into a plea bargain with the police about the unfortunate incident. She will make gun safety
commericals to screen in September- "a faaaabulous tie-in to the "September Issue", Large Editor of American Vogue, Andre Leon Talley said. Ms. Wintour also said that she did not intend on shooting anyone else, although she believes guns will be a big accessory in summer 09. More on this exciting accessory story as it happens."

Of course, that story will never be published because here at Chanel, we have a certain power over the elite. It isn't good publicity to have editors going around killing people, you know. Deer or not deer. The fabulous Mr. and Mrs. So and So ended up holding everyone hostage for 8 days, where there was much chit-chat that went around the lines of "prison uniform is SO not chic," and "flatter DON'T YOU LOOK GOOD," as the fabulously well-to-do guests were not so much air heads as helium heads, unaware that Mr. So and So were holding them hostage. Eventually, everyone signed the criminal equivalent of a post-nup (a post-shoot?) and they were allowed to leave, air-kissing everyone until the only things left to kiss were themselves, which they did with remarkable dexterity. And that was dinner.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Transcript

Karl asked me to post this transcript. Regards, Brad II.

Bob Dylan: Cathy Horyn saw Karl in the kitchen/can't say nothing, but nothing didn't happen
Karl: Boys who wear cowboy hats end up lying on the mat.
Bob: Cathy wore her beanie/And her knee highs too/Someone said "girl, you look like a hag"/She gave them them the evil eye
Karl: How do you even know who Cathy Horyn is? She's just some hockey mom.
Bob: Karl saw his models/All in a line/Cathy said "Karl, why don't you grab something off the shelf?"
Karl: Models don't go in lines. They go in gaggles. Actually, I'm not sure if there's a proper term for a group of models. What's the term for a jar of toothpicks?
Anna: A pickery.
Karl: Oh! There you are. I wondered where you'd gone.
Bob: And Anna's getting some medicine and gin/in the infirmary.
Anna: For once he's right. "Voice of a generation", ptf. That generation was so stoned up a rock could've been the spokesman for it.
Karl: Or a pen.
Allen Ginsberg: What, you don't like Bob?
Anna: Dirty American. It takes a lot of effort to work at American Vogue, you know. But nobody reads British Vogue. God. Coco. Pynchon. You might as well work at Cat Fancier's Weekly.
Spokesman for Cat Fancier's Weekly: Hey now! Look here, we at Cat Fancier's Weekly have been getting a lot of flak- since about the beginning of time. Even Jesus used us as a joke.
Karl: How'd the joke go?
Spokesman: Erm..um..
Jesus: Oh man, I remember. It was like- "I could hardly be God's son if he worked at Cat Fancier's Weekly."
John Lennon: Oh yeah! That was a good one! Bigger than Jesus, that joke.
Jesus: Bigger than Jesus.
Spokesman: It's just not fair. We've been going as long as Christianity! Surely we're doing something right if we're still going. Right?
Sir Edward Elgar: Surely sir, you realize that you're only in existence because of the continuity of this joke? In fact, this conversation right now is keeping your alive.
Spokesman: So..?
Karl: So you would not exist if Anna hadn't made that joke about you.
Spokesman: Am I supposed to pop out of existence at the appearance of logic here?
Anthropomorphic Panda Bear: No.