We're Obsessed: Gwyneth Paltrow's Shoes, Letrasetting, mvyradio

Gwyneth Paltrow's new obsession with S&M-y type shoes

It's kind of postmodern, being momentarily obsessed with someone else's obsessions, especially when that someone is Gwyneth Paltrow, who often gives me hives for various reasons. But lately I have been intrigued by Paltrow's fashion and footwear choices during her recent press tour for Iron Man: crazy patent stiletto platforms, vertiginous heel heights and kind of bondage-y, buckle-y pumps. It's like she's been looking at way too many pictures of Carine Roitfeld and her Vogue Paris girl gang or something! I don't know, though -- I think these shoes are perfect for that crew, who cultivate a kind of dark, difficult aesthetic en masse. The "queen of darkness and perversity" approach to footwear strikes me as wrong on Gwynnie, who is, after all, a clean, classic Upper East Side girl through and through, no matter what cool neighborhoods she lives in or organic food she eats or whatever. Combined with her newfound penchant for short, short dresses and skirts, it's just a little much, don't you think, especially when she looks a bit awkward? (Hey, as I would, too -- I tottered on some crazy Givenchy sandals I was pretend-buying in a store awhile ago and was like, Who can even stand in these?!! Although I admit they looked super, super-HOT and I probably would've gotten them if I had someone to carry me around everywhere -- oh, and if I was really rich.) Still, she looks great. And as they say, don't hate the player, hate the game -- and when it comes to fashion, you can always just love the shoes. (Kat)

Letraset

I spend a lot of money on crap. It's "my thing". Since I never spend more than ten dollars on any given purchase, I am always able to justify spending money I shouldn't be spending, telling myself things like, "You don't eat meat. If you ate meat, you might spend an extra five dollars a day on meat. Since you don't, you are entitled to invest your spare five bones into day-glo jewelry, Quebecois history books, girl group 45s, and pot leaf lighters. You're supposed to." As you may have guessed, this rationalization is often problematic. All the cheap crap adds up, and then I find myself wondering why I didn't just spend it all on something that serves an actual purpose. But, being the world's foremost expert on obsessive-compulsive crap-compiling, I've learned to keep my eyes wide open for those impossibly sexy moments when my tendency to scour the world for magnificent curios pays off a millionfold, and I find some hidden-away treasure that, once found, I can't imagine ever having lived without.

A couple days ago I felt listless and decided to go for a headphones-walk, despite the fact that it was raining cats and dogs. I try to walk around in the rain as much as I can, to prove to myself that I am as cool as John Lennon ("When the rain comes, they run and hide their heads, they might as well be dead... rain, rain, rain, I don't mind"). Wandering and soaking can be remarkably soul-clarifying sometimes, but this time around, I felt like a dead rat and just wanted to go home and hide my head. I stopped into one of my favorite stationery stores for some momentary respite, and stumbled upon the #1 Junk Score of My Life: a bin full of vintage Letrasets in every font you could imagine, on sale for ONE DOLLAR EACH.

You better believe I bought twelve, and am planning on buying more. Actually, I'm planning on buying out the stationery store's entire inventory. Out of all the abandoned relics from the semi-recent past I can't let go of (Walkmans, typewriters, daily planners), Letraset are by far my most beloved. There is something so satisfying in scraping off the letters with a quarter or pencil or fingernail; the same feeling of rhapsodic fulfillment you get from peeling glue off your hands or paring potatoes. You can kearn and lead according to your own intuition, and the inky black precision of the final product is aesthetically unrivaled.
Souvenir demi-bold; Souvenir light; Avant Garde Gothic bold condensed; Avant Garde Gothic medium; Benguiat bold; Condensa; Clearface heavy; Helvetica light; Helvetica medium condensed; Alfac modern; Isbell medium.
Those words to me are like Mary Shelley to a Comp Lit major. Happy scratching, Laura Jane! (Laura Jane)

Rock radio for grown-ups

One day last summer while hiking through Topanga Canyon, my friend and I were playing a game called something like, "In the fantasy version of your life, what's playing on the stereo?" I can't really remember my response, but if I were to answer now, I'd totally say mvyradio. It's a station out of Martha's Vineyard, and I started listening online last winter during a heavy-duty bout of nostalgia for all my kidhood summers spent on Cape Cod. MVY was the only station my family ever played while we were at The Cape, and it still sounds the same today: lots of Dylan and The Dead, Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, U2, Lucinda Williams, Bonnie Raitt, Neil Young, and so on and so forth. It sounds like hanging around the back deck at dusk after a very long day at the beach, after dinner but before bedtime, the grown-ups drinking margaritas and the kids eating chocolate-covered Oreos (something I was only ever allowed when we were on vacation). That all seems like perfection to me now.

And now L.A., already home to the best radio in the world, has a new station called The Sound, which is kind of like the MVY of Southern California. One weird thing they've got in common is their tendency to play Crash Test Dummies with an unnerving frequency (and, really, who ever wants to hear Crash Test Dummies?). But without either I never would've known that "Invisible Man", the new-ish single from Joe Jackson (seen below, back in the day), is so epically lovely.

As for MVY, sometimes they spin stuff that's not quite my cup of tea, like David Gray or Dave Matthews or any 10,000 Maniacs song that's neither my prom theme ("These Are Days") nor a track off Blind Man's Zoo, but whatevs: It's really perfect morning music, I love all the DJs, and listening to the ferry reports always makes me feel homesick in the sweetest way. (Liz)

Posted by Kat, Liz and Laura in We're Obsessed
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