We're Obsessed: Kate Lanphear, Brad Pitt of yesteryear, the healing properties of pop music

Kate Lanphear

I love how certain fashion editors inspire their own little cults. And while I obviously and enthusiastically love all the Vogue Paris ladies, I think I would apply for actual membership in the cult of Kate Lanphear, a senior fashion editor over at Elle. For one thing, her hair is straight-up awesome: it reminds me of this wickedly cute skater boy I had a crush on in middle school, especially with the super-blondeness and the way it hangs in the eye. And secondly, Kate has this kind of tomboyish, super-hot androgyne thing to her that actually looks fun and kicky without resorting to kookiness -- she's working with that strict fashion-ed vocabulary of little color and streamlined shapes, but it has a looseness about the way she does it that I love. And thirdly, I love that you see certain items she wears over and over again in her candid photos. That's just a cool thing. She's just a cool thing, you know? Total and absolute girl-crush. (Kat)

Brad Pitt

No, really: Brad Pitt! Not so much the Brad Pitt that actually exists today, although of course I give the double thumbs-up to his helping build sustainable homes in New Orleans. I'm thinking more like the pre-Brangelina Brad (Team Aniston!) - more specifically, the Brad Pitt who took on some real weird bit parts here and there, despite his heartthrob-superstar status. After writing about Snatch last week I went back and watched a bunch of his scenes and was charmed as hell all over again. And a little while ago I saw Kalifornia for the first time in maybe 10 years and got thoroughly creeped out by Brad as Juliette Lewis's drawling serial-killer boyfriend. And I always thought he was spectacular in 12 Monkeys, but no one ever agrees with me on that one.

My all-time favorite Brad Pitt moment, however, has to be his handful of scenes as Michael Rapaport's stoner roommate Floyd in True Romance. I was reading Entertainment Weekly the other day, and Judd Apatow was talking about how David Gordon Green's upcoming Pineapple Express was inspired by Floyd, which pretty much confirmed my suspicion that Pineapple Express might be the awesomest movie of the summer. Kinda sad that Brad-as-Floyd never got to have his own movie for reals, but James Franco's not a bad stand-in, and scenes like this one will forever live on in my heart. It's enough to make me wanna go dig up one of those "I <3 Brad Pitt" shirts they used to sell at the mall in 1993. (Liz)

Muxtapes, Music, Mania, May

Truthfully, I'm not all that obsessed with Muxtapes. I mean, I definitely think they're the coolest Internet phenomenon of the year (so far), and some of them are really good, but mostly I'm just obsessed with plain old music. That's always true of me, but sometimes its truer than other times, and this time of my life is probably the time when it has been truer than ever, not counting ages fifteen through seventeen, when my life was so utterly boring and unsatisfying that there really was nothing else to think about besides what my favorite songs on the Nuggets boxed set were. It just feels kind of redundant to have my weekly installment of "We're Obsessed" be "We're Obsessed: Music." It's kind of like, "We're Obsessed: Fashion," or, "We're Obsessed: Blogging," or, "We're Obsessed: We're Obsessed." I'm between jobs, between cities, between lives, closing in on a birthday that will leave me weirdly old, trying to quit biting my nails, and suddenly single. But guess what? I don't even care.

Escapism rules. Especially when your preferred form of escapism involves walking around listening to your favorite songs on headphones. I wanted to make the world a Muxtape composed of my killerest stash of "Walking down the street wearing sunglasses and ignoring everything in the world except for my own little zone-out bubble of hooky riffy melodication."

But, unfortunately for me (and you, by proxy), I have been engaged in a domestic dispute with muxtape.com all day long. For some reason, I am not allowed to make a Muxtape to share with all you fine nogoodforme readers. I don't understand it, and probably never will. Alls I know is that I have been pulling out chunks of my hair since this morning at eleven AM trying to make muxtape.com work for me, and it isn't.

Until my inability to functionally communicate with the Internet recedes, you can listen to Ver Sacrum's new song, "Coco General Mdse." It's a really good bad-day song, and can also be accessed and downloaded at Ver Sacrum's myspace, as always.

And, if my melodramatic ode to Depression-era East Coast living isn't enough for you, here are my three favorite Muxtapes of '08 so far:

1) My old DJing partner, Katie Rose, has an awesome poppy masterpiece up HERE (At very least, listen to "Hitchin' a Ride" by Vanity Fare; I swear it'll make your day)

2) Jackson's Muxtape is amphetaminesque as all get out and strikes a really tight balance between songs that make you want to "rock" and songs that make you want to "bliss out" via their melodic perfection.

3) Trevor's is really chill and perfectly mid-tempo. I'm all about mid-tempo these days. It sounds like life.

Enjoy, everybody! Feel free to send me your own Muxtapes- I'm always on the lookout for more gems to add to my Great May Distraction Soundtrack. (Laura)

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