New gen Disney

Isn't Zac Efron kind of like a singing, dancing, baby Tom Cruise?

Raindrops on roses

Late Sunday night and I'm watching The Sound of Music on TV (while pretending to clean my apartment, as usual). It's definitely one of my all-time favorite movies, and I know that saying that makes me deeply uncool. When I was growing up, I probably watched this film several dozen times -- and I remember dancing around, pretending to be Liesl in the gazebo, imagining I was a patriotic Austrian fleeing from the Nazis, stuff like that. Maybe a lot of of ideas I had about being a grown-up came from The Sound of Music -- like, I really thought that when I turned 17, life would start happening, I'd fall in love, blah blah blah. And Maria and her fantastic convent sisters really made me romanticize the idea of, uh, becoming a nun.

Not blue

Anytime I'm blue, I Google-Image "Chow Chow Puppy." I like stocky dogs with big heads and short legs.

On my mind lately

I've been thinking a lot about new year, new me -- it's just that time of year. And I feel like I've been in kind of a rut this year -- not a bad rut, just a shallow holding basin maybe. Careerwise and social-wise. So in 2008, my 30th year, I'll be doing some new stuff. I wonder if I can write another (type of) book. I wonder whether I should take a stab at styling more. What about freelancing more? And where will I travel this year.

I think (probably naively) that 30-35 will be a really life-defining period in my life. The next five years is going to be the five years I get my shit together and really start moving in the right direction. Right? Right.

Ugg mania

Huge line all the way down the block outside the soho ugg store. In the front, the crowd is chanting "fight fight fight fight" as two grown men, one english and the other italian, jostle over who cut the line.

Flabbergasted.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

The train

I am on the LIRR and there is one other person in the car. I got on the train first. He got on afterwards and sat across the aisle from me (I bet he's the same kind of guy who goes for the adjacent urinal in an otherwise unoccupied bathroom). Anyway, he's been yapping loudly on his cell phone ever since we pulled out of Penn Station. My IPod is cranked up super-high and I can still hear him shouting into the phone. Now he's taken off his shoes and has propped his feet up on the chair across from him.

Merry Christmas.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Ms. Softee

I wonder if I'm getting more sentimental with age.

Geez, another side effect no one bothered to mention.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Class notes

When you get your college's alumni magazine, do you ever read class notes that aren't from your year?

After a lovely Christmas Eve dinner with the fam, I tucked up in bed to read the newest issue of my alum mag and I have to share with you this passage from the 1935 class notes, written by Edward Gerson, who'd just had his second stroke and who'd lost his wife that week. It's really heartwarming and inspirational in its own way.

"I have known Marv since grammar school. I have known Ed since 1926. I hope you all have wonderful old friends that you can still share your life with."

I mean, Gerson must be just about 94 years old now.

I hope I still have old friends to share my life with when I'm 94.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

The holidays

Is all about friends and family. I don't know how I would have gotten by without my friends and family this year. Happy holidays everyone, and hope to see you all soon.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Multi-tasking

Right now I'm watching the shot at Love with Tila Tequila reunion show and creating some new Shopstyle celebrity lookbooks all at the same time.

Where do they find these people? (And will I get cancer and fry my eggs because I've got my laptop perched on my, uh, lap?)

I'm Never Happy Anyway either

When I found out that the Sundance Channel would be re-screening the 2000 documentary Karl Lagerfeld is Never Happy Anyway this coming January, I just knew I had to see it as I'd missed it the first time around. So I begged for a screener and they were kind enough to oblige.

Made back before the big slim-down, this film portrays and entirely different aesthetic side of Lagerfeld -- this is the sequin, brightly colored, large silhouette design side -- this was back when Andre Leon Talley sat with Karl through fittings and Lagerfeld wore loads of Japanese avant-garde designers like Comme and Yohji. This was made in the age of the fan.

But it's remarkable how nearly identical his interviews are in this film to the more recent Lagerfeld documentary on at the Film Forum (Lagerfeld Confidential). Just like in LC, the mostly-German Never Happy Anyway explores Lagerfeld's zero-tolerance nature for betrayals amongst friends, his everlasting quest for new information, music, books, data, and an almost pathological workaholicism.

Me and K Flamingo

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Happy birthday to me

Holiday party

Our holiday party was last night. Couldn't resist snapping a photo with our friends from the messenger center. Talk about working a look! Amazing suits. Everyone else (like me) was wearing boring black. Some of the women were dressed like Santa Claus's mistress. Ho. Ho. Ho...

Belated Iceland Photo

Me (right) and Susan in Iceland. Speaking of Iceland, it's pretty much like Iceland outside in New York right now. Damn cold.

Liveblog from madison square garden

Garnier took us to the knicks game. Amazing!!

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

The beginning of the end... okay, not quite, but

Next Saturday, Dec 15, I'm turning 30. To say I am panicking would be an understatement. Seriously.

Like my friend C said to me today, 30 makes you feel like you're not young anymore.

I mean, it's not like a surprise or anything -- I've been 29 all year. And I've also been thinking a lot about what going to happen in the future.

Sometimes I feel like since I grew up in New York and I still live in New York now (albeit after spending several years in New England and then abroad), I haven't really made all that much social progress. More or less, besides living on my own and going to work instead of going to school, my life today is not all that different than my life was when I was, say, 13 -- I'm single, the friends I hang out with are single, I do the same stuff I've always done for fun. I wonder if growing up in and then living in New York as an adult has somehow left me emotionally stunted.

Anyway, I've realized my loosely-tailored five-year plan. And I've never had a five-year plan before, not ever. So it's pretty exciting. Big changes ahead or something like that.

I don't know how I will celebrate my birthday this week. Maybe it will involve drinking 30 glasses of champagne. Honorable, no?

Bad Santa(s)

Gary just called to warn me there are hundreds of people dressed as Santa roaming around the East Village and Soho. Apparently they've been out in force drinking all day.

Noise sandwich

Upstairs neighbor drags furniture around an obviously uncarpeted floor until midnight last night, starts up again just after FIVE this morning.

Downstairs neighbor, an I'm-a-lawyer-so-breathe-on-me-and-I'll-sue-you type, keeps multiple dogs in a less-than-400-sq-ft studio apartment. The dogs started yapping it up this morning at 7:45. Most days they start at 8:40 and bark all day long, so today must be a special occasion.

I mean, come on guys. Get with the New York apartment-living program.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Dear Upstairs Neighbor

I don't know what you're building/drilling/dragging around/killing upstairs, but please stop doing whatever you're doing at 6:00 a.m.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Ha ha

My friend just sent me a funny picture of me in Iceland

The Icelandic President's pad

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Scary

In Iceland they have people dress up as ogres and chase you screaming around haunted houses. Like this: Aaaaaaauuuuuuuggggghhhhhh!!!!

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

The ultimate luxury

Isolation, silence, snow upon which no other people have walked.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

In the middle of nowhere and mobile blogging

TMobile is amazing stuff. We're surrounded by lava rock and ice.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Iceland

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Geyser play

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Lemons

These jokers tried to drive their hatchback VW rental up a glacier. Now they are stuck.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

On this morning's agenda

Monster trucking through Icelandic countryside. Monster trucking!!!!!

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile