In the Woods

I realize I'm more than a week late on this, but I'm on the road, and this sleepless early morning in a Syracuse Motel 6 is the first chance I've had to post anything not trip-related.

I've been wanting to see a fashion story in Olympic National Park forever, so imagine my delight in opening last Sunday's paper to find Raymond Meier's photographs in the fall travel issue of T, The New York Times Style Magazine. Actually it was more like delight mixed with jealous rage, because someone got to do that story and it wasn't me. No matter, the images are so amazing, I got over it very quickly.

Read the article and see more images at the T website.

Vermont to New York over Lake Champlain

Night Flight

After Maya and Alex's wedding and reception, everyone went to a bar in Killington for pizza and beer.

Alex's mom Dot brought these mini candle-powered hot air balloons over from England. Basically you light the candle, hold onto the balloon, and wait for it to inflate.

At the right moment, you let go, and they drift slowly upward.

They get up really far before they burn out. I was kind of worried about sending a ball of fire over the national forest. In fact, I kind of had reservations about the whole thing. But it had just rained and was wet enough not to be a fire hazard, and apparently they're bio-degradable, so when the remnants fall to earth, they (hopefully) don't muck up the place too much or for very long. They let off a really warm light and floated quietly away—a great end to the night.

Vermont

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The color is beautiful up here and everything is so perfect, I feel like we're staying inside a train set. Maya and Alex's wedding is today on this big farm near Rochester, and tomorrow we head for central New York.

One More Weekend

We didn't have much free time during our quick trip back to New York – mostly running errands and tying up loose ends.

Doesn't really make for great blog posting.

We did however have a chance to stop by the Museum at F.I.T., for a run through its excellent current exhibit, Gothic: Dark Glamour.

Alexander McQueen, Fall 2007. Not surprisingly, there was a bunch of McQueen.

Rodarte, Fall 2008. The Mulleavy sisters were inspired by Japanese horror movies and wanted the red chiffon in this dress to look like blood in water.

There aren't that many images on the web and no photos are allowed in the gallery – but I recommend checking out the show if you can. It's up through early February at F.I.T.

Also on view is Arbiters of Style: Women at the Forefront of Fashion. (Seems like that should go without saying, but no matter.) It's worth a look as well.

Photography Louise Dahl-Wolfe (1895-1989)
Diana Vreeland wearing a suit from Henri Bendel, on a deserted movie lot in Phoenix, Arizona
Harper’s Bazaar, January 1942

Dispatch from the road

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Yes, I'm still alive, thanks for asking. The past ten days have been a blur, starting with my brother and I driving the Penske cross-country in three days flat. It wasn't a sightseeing trip but here are some random pictures.

Littlejeans could not have been better—a natural trucker. We were like BJ McKay and his best friend Bear.

This is literally the only tourist attraction we saw, and only because we needed diesel and it wasn't far from the freeway. I was a bit disappointed to find that the building is not actually made of corn, it just has a bunch of corn on the front of it. I guess maybe it would be a little impractical to make a building out of corn though.

Obscene hand gestures from midwestern youngsters.

That's Toledo in the distance.

Littlejeans drinking water on the side of the road during a coffee break in South Dakota.

The sun was going down as we crossed through Idaho and into Washington. It was a fitting end to our high-speed epic.

Once we got to Seattle, we unloaded all our stuff, returned the truck, and flew back to the East Coast. Emily and I are off to a wedding in beautiful Vermont, and then we'll take three weeks for a more leisurely drive across this great land, nowhere near the interstate.

Central Booking

Since I'm on the road and not posting as much as I'd like, here are more pages from my black books... click to enlarge.

I knew you'd be back

At long last, Wes Anderson's (and co-writer Owen Wilson's) Bottle Rocket gets the Criterion treatment it so richly deserves this November. His most recent two movies (The Life Aquatic and especially The Darjeeling Limited) have been crushingly disappointing because of their focus on props (both inanimate and human props) over complex characters and their interactions – but that doesn't take away from the utterly life-changing genius of his first three (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums).

Here's the original Bottle Rocket short.


And here's one of my favorite scenes from the feature.


Related: This is our second cat, Inez. More about her another time.

The Illinoise

I'm posting from my crackberry (as I believe the tag line below reports) so I'm not being very detailed, but suffice it to say we are making good, locally made beef jerky-fueled progress. Stayed in Rockford, Illinois last night and we're back at it this morning, the next goal being Gillette, Wyoming. Luckily we missed getting caught up in the hurricane through Indiana and Illinois and it's sunny and beautiful now as we cruise through Minnesota. Jeans is holding up well and has found a way to communicate when it's time for a bathroom break, which involves pulling his poop box out of the back of the truck in a rest stop or kwikstop parking lot, and surrounding it with our backs turned so he can step in and handle his business.



In other news, there's a road in Indiana called Fangboner Road. The heartland is so folksy.



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Wisdom from a Cookie

Ohio

Clevelands. Erie. (etc.)

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