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Monday , November 2, 2009

Too October For You: Our Fave Posts From the Last Month

+ One thing's that nice about nogoodforme being a troika is that there's something for everyone! Case in point: the latest installment in our epic How To Live category, a primer on cosiness and how to get it. With Kat you have full-on cold weather perverse-reveling for those equally as perverse about their love of winter. LJ hates winter but still manages to come up with gold on how to deal with such soul-destroying climates, and Liz, well, she lives in California and walks around dreaming about sundaes. See? A cornucopia of all kinds of wisdom, embodies in three chicks who, crammed together, probably make up the id, ego and superego of a highly evolved human being. Who is what, of course, depends upon your point-of-view on what evolution means.

+ I wish I could travel back in time and visit my sixteen-year-old self sulkily downloading Nuggets songs off of Audiogalaxy in her bedroom. I would say, "Look, Sixteen-year-old Laura. In eight years from now, you are going to write for something called a "blog", which is sort of like a zine, only on the Internet, with those older zine-writers who are cooler than you named Kat Asharya and Elizabeth Barker. In September of the year 2009, you and Liz will decide that you are the John Lennon and Paul McCartney of 2009- you get to be John, by the way- and then you will go iCrazy together and collaborate on a really brilliant article called Liz & LJ Investigates: Who's The Bigger Beardo, John & Paul?, which will be composed primarily of "hilarious jokes about sleeping with the Beatles." But check this out, Sixteen-year-old Laura, here's the best part of all: PEOPLE WILL CARE."

+ Because I am clearly incapable of processing any situation I ever encounter without relating it back to the Beatles: If Kat Asharya were George Harrison (which she "is"), her Hallowe'ek-era tour de force, All Time Top 5 (Well, 8 and a Half): Favorite Horror Movies would be "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." Kat's incisive, intellectual, and insightful exploration of a subject I (Laura Jane) think absolutely zero interesting thoughts about easily takes the cake as my All-Time Top 1: Favorite Solo Kat Post. It's so beautiful to observe a writer engaging with the subject matter that excites them most. Write about movies more, Kat!

+ If you were going to extract the essence of Elizabeth Barker based solely on the keywords and tags found in her nogoodforme entries, you'd deduce that she is a highly sensitive yet fun-loving human being with a knack for revealing incredible emotional depth through beautiful sensuous detail. That is just a very elaborate way of saying reading Liz's entries often make people want to cry and eat cupcakes at the same time. Her latest "Stories About Songs" entry weaves together Jenny Lewis, kissing, California, fires, the Gun Club, resisting the "Carrie Bradshawing" of your soul, and being glamorous-lonely with such aplomb that it feels as effortless as a plume of smoke on a fall night. Read it again with some pumpkin beer and be happy you're reading one of the best writers ever.

+ One of nogoodforme.com's best-kept secrets is our burning desire to one day turn into the blog equivalent of "America's Funniest Home Videos," an online showcase of long-ago-shot, laugh-out-loud clips capturing l'il Kat, Liz, and LJ doing really kooky stuff like accidentally whacking our dads in the head with baseball bats whilst trying to smash our birthday pinatas. Probably the exact halfway point between that sort of slapsticky hilarity and nogoodforme's annual Style Icon series is last month's LIZ AND LJ ON: Baby Liz and Baby LJ!, a collection of old-school photos featuring two-thirds of the NGFM troika at their Muppet Baby-cuddliest. Not only fall-on-your-face adorable, the latest edish of LIZ AND LJ ON is full of surprises: Both Liz and LJ had Beatles hair when they were wee! Laura was the inspiration for Rashida Jones's vacation-destination-advertising t-shirt collection in I Love You, Man! Rabbits who are artists are all named "Delvert"! So totally mind-blowing, you'll feel like someone whacked you in the head whilst trying to smash their birthday pinata - but in a cute way!

+ In addition to gunning to become the next Bob Saget, we all wanna be MTV VJs: Kat will be The Next Dave Kendall; Liz, The Next Steve Issacs, LJ, The Next Downtown Julie Brown. Awesomely, LJ got her foot in the MTV door with a special Halloween installment of For A Date With, a delightfully spooktacular, dead-dude-sweating post that got linked on the MTV Brazil website. At first we had no idea what those wacky Brazilians were saying about LJ, but then our buddypal Anabela graciously stepped in and treated us to this translation: "The site No Good For Me created a suggestion for the closets of girls who pretend to meet popstars who have already departed this one for a better one (or a worse one). The figures are selected based on the style of rockers Kurt Cobain, etc. There is even enough for ex-president John F. Kennedy. Ideal for celebrations of Hallowee'en, which are approaching." So, that's pretty cool. Hope all you closets of girls out there dug the post as much as we did!

Tags: Elizabeth Barker, Kat Asharya, Laura Jane Faulds, nogoodforme, October

Wednesday , September 30, 2009

Too September For You: Our Fave Posts From the Last Month

+ Like we told you last month, nogoodforme doesn't do "These are our favorite records" the same way anyone else in the world does "These are my favorite records." As our decade-specific fave albums series rambled on from the Eighties to the Aughts, shit kept on getting weirder and wonderful-er till the Psychic Police had to freeze time and shut us down for being way too amazing. In the '80s, Liz became both a satanic psychopath (sort of) and a fuzzy-bunny-loving Happy Human (totally). In the '90s, Kat yelled, "Fag this, fuckface!" and then everybody fell off their chair. And in the '00s, LJ wrote some sentences that made Liz run and Twitter "really and truly, i can't think of much that's better than laura's 272 words about 'Holy Ghost Language School,'" and it was The Truest Tweet There Ever Was And Ever Will Be. "Why can't it be 2019 tomorrow?" they all whined so very cutely.

+ The most exciting thing about "blogging as legitimate art form" is that the non-blog-related life experience of a given blogger (or, in our case, "blogging troika") imbues its accumulated content with an ongoing- and entirely non-constructed- narrative. NGFM's progression from "fashion blog" to "cultural phenomenon" is most effectively demonstrated by examining our premiere Seasonal Fashion Concept post vis a vis our most recent. A year and a season ago, we made jokes about shirts. Today, we opine about "existence within a certain set of realities," brainiac up much-needed-though-sadly-fake Neil Young lyrics, and fuck anorexia in the face while drinking champagne on a rocking horse. It's actually sort of terrifying to imagine the crazy shit we'll be sartorially-conceptualizing come Winter 2011!

+ Once upon a time, on a day that will forever be known as Spirit Animal House Day, a perhaps once-in-an-eon event occurred: all three members of the nogoodforme troika were in the same room all at once, thus putting to rest the longtime rumor that nogoodforme.com was (1) the conceptual art experiment of a middle-aged white man with a longing to trifurcate his feminine side into three distinct-yet-complimentary alter egos or (2) the work of William Gibson. (OMG, can you imagine if it was?!) On Spirit Animal House Day, the actual fabric of the space-time continuum turned into a floral print and began to curve itself into the shape of a swan. Magic happened! Aliens rejoiced! Love became real! To celebrate, nogoodforme expanded the concept of the spirit animal to embrace the ultimate avatars of the contemporary age: celebrities, thus proving the elasticity of the nogoodforme ideology that will one day take over the world in its natural quest for Total World Domination.

+ Is "When Is Boring The Opposite Of Boring?" a really boring way to start talking about "Let It Be Boring" by Laura Jane 'Boring/Not Boring' Faulds? Do we care? We care a little, maybe. But what we care about a million times more is that part 6 through 8 of LJ's latest James Joyce of Fashion Bloggers showstopper means way more to us than any bildungsroman on Wikipedia's admittedly incomplete "List of Bildungsroman works." Or it beats the pants off of David Copperfield, anyway. It's a new kind of nostalgia (neustalgia?), and it makes us hope that Laura's going to pull the rug out from under us all by publishing her debut coming-of-age novel sometime within the next 24 to 72 hours. Also, part 9 is still the best thing Barker's read in 87 years (after the thing about Holy Ghost Language School, at least). Read it again.

+ Laura Jane here! As much as being a part of the nogoodforme troika is the best thing about my life, being a part of the nogoodforme troika is also the worst thing about my life, because writing for nogoodforme.com means I don't get to read nogoodforme.com! But then there are the days where I score into a Kat or Liz solo, and I'm all "OMG THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE A READER OF NOGOODFORME.COM WOW I LOVE KAT I LOVE LIZ AWESOME COOL SWEET TODAY RULES!!!!" September 17th, 2009, was the "King" of those days thus far. Coming home to Elizabeth "Sir James Paul McCartney" Barker's Stories About Songs: Belly & Boys & My New Blue Hi-Tops was pretty much the only thing that could've saved me from committing viral eye infection-related suicide that dirty Thursday afternoon. For me, the best writing in the kind where you can skim a page of it and all the beautiful words mixed together- like the most delicious "make your own salad" of words- function as an aesthetic object on their own. It gets you so jazzed to read them in order, so you do, and then you discover that Elizabeth Barker has systematized "Chevron" and "bacon-wrapped hot dog" and "red dress" and "bathroom door," Valentine's Day bagel shop ceiling 14, 15, 16 magic power- to mean something beautiful, sad, and- let's face it, guys- perfect.

+ When life is perfect, you get text messages of sweet nothings from your favorite beaux, skip down the street rocking your favorite boots, eat a pistachio cupcake as you drink lavender iced tea, and come home to read something like "Getting Back To Where We Once Belonged," by Elizabeth Barker & Laura Jane Faulds. You think to yourself, "Wow, the Lennon and McCartney of nogoodforme.com, writing about Lennon and McCartney? TOTAL GENIUS. PURE BEAUTY. BEYOND THE BEYOND." And then you bless your boots you write a blog with two of the best human beings on the planet. Thank you for reading; thank you for listening; thank you for being here and sharing the ride with us.

Tags: Elizabeth Barker, Kat Asharya, Laura Jane Faulds, nogoodforme

Tuesday , September 1, 2009

Too August For You: Our Fave Posts From the Past Month

+ "nogoodforme.com is rock journalism like you've never seen it before!" raves former Rolling Stone editor Ben Fong-Torres (as portrayed by Terry Chen in Almost Famous) of last month's look at our fave albums of the '60s and '70s. And we couldn't agree with fake-Ben more: Cuz while you were probably already hip to the fact that Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures is a really killer record that came out in 1979, you maybe had zero clue that Laura bought Psychotic Reaction at Generation Records in New York City the same week she successfully attempted to get addicted to nicotine, or that Kat considers Funhouse by The Stooges to be "the universal makeout record," or that Liz spazzes out on boyfriends when they poke fun at Paul McCartney's vocals on "You Never Give Me Your Money." And now you know all those things! That's what we're here for, dudes. That's what we're here for.

+ Just last Sunday, a certain "fashion blogger" spent a couple hours trolling the fiction department of Los Angeles Public Library, in hopes of heading home with a couple of crackly-paged novels and/or short story collections sure to set her heart aflame. She got some good stuff, she thinks, but something sorely missing from the stacks was the debut novel and/or short story collection by Laura Jane Faulds, whose paragraphs never fail to be promotive of un coeur flambe. "Dash my wig, where is that doggone book?" she cried, fully realizing it doesn't actually exist in this dimension yet. Then she went home and re-read The James Joyce of Fashion Bloggers: "Whisky & Cinnamon Gum," by Laura Jane Faulds, reached for the fire extinguisher, and all was groovy again. Books, schmooks!

+ How is Madonna fifty-one years old? That makes no sense. Nothing about Madonna makes any sense to me, being Laura "I Was Born in 1985" Jane Faulds. Who is she, really, and why does she do the things she does? I don't trust Madonna. But I like Liz & Kat a lot, and their All-TIme Top 5 Madonna Moments collabo-post was a blast. I'm stoked I found out that, when I was eight years old, Madonna said "fuck" 47 times on the David Letterman Show. These women have taught me so much.

+ Maybe you've figured it out by now, but nogoodforme has plans for Total World Domination. We may be lackadaisical and happy-go-lucky about it, but we are inexorably crafting the idea of a nogoodforme lifestyle, one tiny blog post at a time. Liz's L.A. edition of "How To Live" will teach you how to infuse your life with the romance of the city, the poetry of heartbreak and the essential soul of a really good cocktail, all in the spirit of loving life and living large. Plus, it's got some of nogoodforme's best, most soulful writing, so why not read it again and feel your heart go ka-bloom-in-June?

+ This August, Laura Jane did more for "wandering around listening to headphones" than anybody's done for anything since E.T. ate Reese's Pieces, or maybe since LJ started talking up The Kinks' Muswell Hillbillies big time. With her premiere MH-centric installment of Walking Down The Street with Laura Jane, these two worlds collided. Another thing that happened this August: Laura Jane got a Kinks tattoo, which can also be referred to as "Kinks Ink," or maybe just "K-ink."

+ JOHN HUGHES. If you're a sentient being and reading nogoodforme, those two words (JOHN HUGHES) still bring a bit of sadness to your heart. Liz commemorated Mr. Hughes' passing with a tribute to some of the most awesome songs ever discovered via his movies, managing to bypass the super-obvs "If You Leave" for such gems as Oingo Boingo and Kate Bush. It's truly bittersweet -- happy because there's just so much good music (and memories) associated with Hughes' films, but sad 'cause the man is gone.

Tags: Kat Asharya, Laura Jane Faulds, Liz Barker, nogoodforme.com

Sunday , August 2, 2009

Too July For You: Our Fave Posts From the Past Month

+ Feeling down in the dumps, discouraged, directionless, dejected? Like a cake shop without any cakes, like a cornflakes box without any flakes, like a little orphan girl who's been neglected? Probably the best way to make life good again is to read The Laura Jane Guide to "Anti-Accessorizing," aka the first edition of nogoodforme's new "HOW TO LIVE" column. You'll not only learn how to be more crackerjack at achieving those kinda cloud-nine "days your Kinks song matches your shoes"; you'll also get dozens and dozens of dozens of sentences so gorgeously brain-melting, they're sure to put that pep in your step and glide in your stride. While you're at it, read HOW TO DRESS YOURSELF: Laura Jane's Guide to Stoner Girl Chic for lots more life advice rolled up in one big sexy, scrappy joint.

+ Before nogoodforme.com was a Heidi Montag/Spencer Pratt hate blog, a remarkably intense Beatles fansite, an ironic Brody Jenner worship blog, and/or, um, a Starbucks drink review blog, it was a "fashion blog." This month, Kat brought us back to our roots with The nogoodforme Guide to Red Lipstick, which was as delicious, elegant and girlsy-swirlsy as a pouty crimson smacker itself.

+ Once upon a time in a kingdom faraway, Liz wrote a brillsville zine called Deliciosa -- see why that name is so fitting at the nogoodforme Summer Tea Party installment of Yum, where super-deelish Gin-A-Loupe Coolers and a mind-bogglingly awesome array of sandwiches are served, complete with food-porno worthy pics that would make Gwynnie "GOOP" Paltrow blow out her digestive system in envy.

+ Further proof that LJ & Barker are the Lennon & McCartney of 2009: This July, both Laura and Liz reviewed I'm Going Away by the Fiery Furnaces. Liz penned a cheerful, peach-related ode to the simple joys of eating seasonal fruit, and dancing. It was the "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da" of this July. Laura Jane, who most likely likes I'm Going Away a hell of a lot more than Liz does, wrote a slack, snide anti-review focused primarily on slamming the creative efforts of a writer she deems inferior to herself. Ouch! It's a grand thing we've got Kat "The Dark Horse" Asharya to balance shit out!

+ LJ fucks up a Cinnabon, confronts anorexia and lays down some legit honesty about the whole eating disorder thing in the latest Laura Jane Investigates. Smart, true, candid, beautiful -- the old cliche of truth being beauty and beauty being truth gets reinvented all the time, mostly 'cause we need it in a world that can make beautiful girls feel so horrid inside. ALSO: can someone get LJ her own talk show? Seriously, if Alexa Chung can do it, SO CAN LJ.

+ Nogoodforme's prettiest piece of eye candy this month comes in the form of Kat's Blink of an Eye entry on Tim Walker, whose lovely photos of lovely ladies in lovely dresses make us go so swoony. If this post were sweets for realz, it would totally be a satin-ribbon-tied box of cassis petits fours, and never the boring sugar of Skittles or Starburst.

+ At nogoodforme, we like to go to the dark places where no one else dare venture to go: Satanicism (which is the nogoodforme version of Satanism), relentless fashion goth commitments, reading L.A. Candy. Michiko Kakutani has nothing on LJ and Liz, who take down Lauren Conrad's epic epistle with wit, vengeance and aplomb.

+ We know you've probably spent the last week slumping around in the junkiest funk, bemoaning the fact that you'll maybe never have another cinematic experience even half as wondrous as G-Force in 3-D - but rest assured! The inaugural installment of nogoodforme's newest column KAT ATTACK! gives us the skinny on a buncha way exciting movies hitting the theaters in the not-too-distant future, including that Runaways biopic that's weirdly starring Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie.

+ You know why nogoodforme.com is awesome? Because we are impenetrable, but also, totally relatable! Who doesn't love and hate things? Barker and LJ sure do! If it's not one thing ("like crack"; "why ears are handle-shaped"), it's definitely the other (ogling babes; throwing Big Gulps at peoples' heads). Official Life Concept of July 2009= BALANCE.

Tags: Kat Asharya, Laura Jane Faulds, Liz Barker, nogoodforme.com

Tuesday , June 30, 2009

Too June For You: Our Fave Posts From the Past Month

+ The best thing about the seasons changing is that your favourite trio of Anti-Fashion Industrial Complexicators finally get to unveil their long-awaited seasonal fashion concepts! A Day In The Life: Dopest Shit We'll Wear This Summer effectively prepared the world for three sweltering months of Kat and Laura Jane eschewing all-black and all-scrappy (respectively) in the name of sweetie-pie summer dresses, and Liz abandoning sweetie-pie summer dresses to channel the inner bad-ass-ness of zebras on a daily basis. We're hot.

+ LJ's "Let It Beat" post proved that writing honestly about anorexia need not be an after-school special full of special-effects hysterics and fake resolution. What's amazing (besides the huge deal about approaching the topic with ongoing candour, openness and bravery, especially in the fashion blogosphere) is that LJ's unmistakable, unique.voice still shines through -- the same wit, passion and feistiness that asserts the far reaches of Beatlesology plants you just a bit in the shoes of what's it like to live present-tense with a disease that a lot of us who dig fashion and style feel the shadows of, however obliquely. If you take one thing away from reading "Let It Beat," it's that anorexia sucks, but the people we love who suffer from it (and there are more than you think) are still who they are: immutably brave, unexpectedly winsome, wickedly smart -- and it's that part of them that deserves to win, flourish and be held accountable to living life large and keeping their game tight.

+ The worst thing about celebrity deaths is the amount of shit writing you have to read about said celebrity's life, and the meaning it now takes on. We all did a damned good job of writing up some characteristically non-trad Michael Jackson obits, but Kat Asharya really brought it home on this one- her stoic yet sentimental ode to aging, nostalgia and the sobering reality of how you'll never be a kid again will bring tears to your eyes, even if you never moonwalked across your basement carpet.

+ June was an emotional month for all of us over at nogoodforme.com- must be all the Cancemini energy in the air! Soundtracked by Bruce Springsteen's "Spirit in the Night," The Most Romantic Summer Song (Or: Why Bedroom Dancing Is Better Than Time Machines by Elizabeth Barker is a stunning tale- no, movement- about sex, summer, rock-and-roll, pink wine, dudes, (i.e. all the best things there are!) and the myriad meanings behind them. Featuring the showstopper of a sentence, "From what I can tell, bedroom dancing is way better than time travel, because you're simultaneously living in another generation and claiming that generation for yourself," this piece is a must-read for anybody who likes music, or great writing.

+ If LJ can be said to be the Andy Samberg of Fashion Bloggers (which she can't, since she's already The James Joyce of Fashion Bloggers), and her epic dance-a-thon was the "Lazy Sunday" of 2007, then this month's "Laura Jane For Sale" is certainly her "Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals". In a dream world, this majorly LOLZ-inducing masterpiece is the kinda shit that goes crazy-viral instead of that total yawnfest "I'm on a Boat." HELP US BUILD THAT DREAM WORLD.

+ The only dumb thing about the inaugural entry for our new LIZ & LJ ON column is how Liz totally forgot to scan and post this exciting Beastie Boys photo from the June 1994 issue of Details. Even without that killer shot, "The Beastie Boys Through the Ages" is probably definitely the most gripping tete-a-tete on Mike & Adam & Adam's varying states of flyness you'll ever read anywhere.

+ We don't know when they'll be, but you are all invited to the nogoodforme nuptials! Go to City Hall with Kat, watch Kris Kristofferson walk Liz down the aisle, and drink fizzy white sangria at LJ's reception. Knowing the karmic connectedness of the troika, this will all happen in the space of ONE MOON.

+ While naming your most beloved Beatles record is maybe totally easy, trying to pick this month's most boss installment of LJ's "Young Person's Guide to The Beatles" column is supertricky. Still, we're gonna go with "Firing Off on Revolver" (aka "The Favorite Beatles Record of Neither LJ Nor Kat Nor Liz"), partly because the intro encourages all of us get slightly more vulgar (in an adorable way) on this here blog. P.S. If you can correctly guess each nogoodforme.com member's favorite Beatles record, then we will give you a million dollars, with which you can start up a publishing company and then put out The Young Person's Guide to The Beatles in book form. Go to it!

+ Liz went into the heart of darkness and confronted her inner Rufus Humphrey. It wasn't pretty, but she discovered ultimately that We are all Rufus Humphrey. Okay, not really, but it sounds wise, doesn't it?

Tags: Andy Samberg's cultural complexity, Beastie Boys, Bruce Springsteen, fashion, Gossip Girl, Kat Asharya, Laura Jane Faulds, Liz Barker, Michael Jackson, nogoodforme.com, The Beatles, The James Joyce of Fashion Bloggers, weddings

Monday , June 1, 2009

Too May For You: Our Fave Posts From the Past Month

-Probably the best thing we've ever done in our lives, at least this month anyway, is "Style Icons, Part Deux" (aka nogoodforme.com's second annual style icons series). Bigger and better and badder than last year, the 2009 lineup is John Lennon in Rishikesh, Tina Chow, Punky Brewster + Helen Hunt in Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Rainbow Brite & the Color Kids, Dita Von Teese, Axl Rose, Lee Scratch Perry, The Wassup Rockers Kids, Geri Halliwell at the 1997 BRIT Awards, Peggy Oki/Jeff Spicoli/Eva, Marguerite Duras, Courtney Love, Cayce Pollard, Jimi Hendrix + Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Ray Davies. FYI, this is also the starting lineup for the nogoodforme.com fantasy basketball team.

-Every metaphysically astute fashion glossy in the Milky Way wishes its staff had brainstormed up something as brilliant as a a guide to astrological perfumery in last month's edit meeting. But they didn't, because LJ thought of it first. Ha!

- Articles like Kat's All-Time Top 5 Madonna Covers post are the bread and butter of nogoodforme.com, casually but cerebrally exploring the intersection between music, clothing, art, style, and life itself. Bonus points for Dean Wareham inclusion, notes Laura Jane.

-Another brilliant thing LJ thought to do was film herself drunk-dialing Spencer Pratt, who didn't answer, but it was awesome anyway. Lookit..

-Speaking of Spencer Pratt, May 2009 unofficially turned into "Obsessive Heidi & Spencer Hate-Fest Month" on nogoodforme.com. Check out our Favorite Celebrity Twitters article to reconnect with ngfm's first major hit of Speidi-loathing, then soothe your soul by trolling some Twitters written by less-worthless stars.

-If Kat's Madonna cover analysis post was the bread and butter of nogoodforme.com, Liz's Dear Diary, Will Surfing Turn Me Into a Satanist? (Or: Dennis Wilson Is Maybe My New Favorite Beach Boy, But Charles Manson Is Still a Total Loser) is decidedly our "kitchen sink ice cream sundae drowning in liquid acid." In a surprise upset against Laura Jane, Liz definitely took home the blue ribbon for "Weirdest nogoodforme Post" this May. But this is nogoodforme.com, not freakin' US Vogue: the weirder the better; the more Satanic, the best.

-May also saw the introduction of LJ's new column The Young Person's Guide to the Beatles, which will eventually be a book, and then LJ will go on a book tour and we can all go to our local Borders and have her sign our copies. The column debut, "Opinions on 5 Beatles Songs I Have Yet to Opine About," is a "delightful romp....Five stars!" raves nogoodforme.com.

-Characteristically, the nogoodforme troika is way beyond hackneyed wishes like world peace, hot dudes, and Heidi Montag & Spencer Pratt's deaths. We think outside the box (or, in this case, outside the magic lamp). As outlined in the Be Careful What You Wish For installment of nogoodforme ix, all we need is yellow-complected douchebags, for Twinkies to be flaxseeds, and a meta-desert island to call our own. Oh! And Total Media Domination, of course. And for YOU to keep reading, and to have a lovely (Too) June (For You)!

Tags: astrology, bread and butter, Dean Wareham, fantasy basketball, Heidi Montag, investigative reporting, Kat Asharya, Laura Jane Faulds, Liz Barker, Madonna, nogoodforme.com, perfume, Satanism, Spencer Pratt, style icons, weirdness

Wednesday , April 29, 2009

Too April For You: In Which We Pick Our Fave Posts and Bestow Big Love Upon One Another

KAT ASHARYA WAS BORN 2 B FLY

Once upon a time when we were young little prancey lambs, Kat Asharya and I used mail each other mixtapes accompanied by sweet and gushy notes scrawled in messy cursive on adorable stationary. (Actually, only my cursive was messy; Kat has gorgeous and impeccable penmanship, I'll have you know.) We never do that anymore, which is mostly okay, 'cause now we have a blog that functions as a living, breathing mixtape ("your ultimate fashion mixtape," if you will). And of all the Heavy Rotations we've cooked up so far, probs my fave is that really weird one where LJ posted two Friedberger songs, I used Juliana Hatfield and Spencer Davis Group to cavetch about dudes who are stupid, and Kat picked a pair of tracks by Lady Gaga and the Fly Girlz. OMG THE FLY GIRLZ. What would've ever become of me if I'd never heard "Born 2 B Fly"? Probably I'd just keep on always being vaguely surprised whenever music made by people born after 1970 turns out not to suck, which is no way to live. Now my iPod plays "Born 2 B Fly" at least 9,000 times a day and I'm even contemplating buying the Fly Girlz' actual record (Da Brats From Da'Ville), just like I did with the new PJ Harvey/John Parish album after Kat reviewed it in her Five Best Things post (which, incidentally, also gives props to DBFD - see how it all comes back around?). It's awesome when people make you want to buy new records instead of just playing the same Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young CD on repeat night after night after night. Kat Asharya: Saving me from turning into a no-fun pseudo-hippie smugster, one beautiful nogoodforme.com post at a time. (Liz)

LJ ON BARKER: "Elizabeth Barker and Kris Kristofferson are cut from a thicker, more intricate cloth than most celebrities today," writes Ethan Hawke

Elizabeth Barker of nogoodforme.com is really, dangerously good at writing sentences. A very good example of this phenomenon in action would be, "Early-1970s Kris Kristofferson was hotter than an armadillo's hide at a West Texas picnic on the Fourth of July, as Stupid Ethan Hawke stupidly fails to add. What shoddy journalism." Next up is "But uncongrats on the irksome assumption that quasi-self-effacingly acknowledging your assholeness somehow excuses everything. It doesn't. Everybody hates you." Uncongrats? Irksome assumption? Quasi-self-effacingly? The strength, clarity and mind-bottling hilariousness of the writings of Elizabeth A. Barker turn me into a regular Jack Nicholson's Character In As Good As It Gets. Liz: this paragraph is the weblog equivalent of me looking longingly into your eyes and saying, "You make me wanna be a better writer." HA HA HA! Oh yeah, and I definitely ain't the type of girl who'd ever turn her nose up at pictures of sexy shirtless dudes. Three cheers for sexy shirtless dudes!

LJ: TAKING ON THE FASHION INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND EFFIN' WINNING

LJ's inaugural "How to Dress Yourself" column, taking inspiration from old issues of National Geographic, was pretty much the best fashion blog entry I have ever witnessed in my entire life. Seriously, it was just awesome, spot-on, quirky, cool, and utterly inspirational -- the perfect embodiment of what fashion should be all about in an ideal world, which is about cultivating imagination, fancy and happiness instead of letting some cog of Fashion Industrial Complex machinery bully you into thinking what's sexy or fierce or whatever. But I feel like the biggest props this month need to go to the Thrift Scores entry in which she talked about dealing with her eating disorder. One thing that sucks about representation in anything fashion-related is the lack of transparency about how images are made and the continual hypocrisy of the whole image-making machine, but what's amazing is that someone in the fashion blogosphere talked about how their body got to be that way in a candid, honest, upfront way. I went to a college where every other girl seem to suffer from disordered eating and maintained their thinness at a tremendous cost, and I spent years observing how they explained their physique as "It's just my metabolism" or "I have food allergies" or whatever, which is some way made me sadder. The key to confronting any problem is a brave kind of openness, and such prevaricating and subterfuge just makes it so much harder for others to confront their issue as well. So I think it's really brave that LJ is so open and honest about her experience, and I think it's even braver that she's not letting the disease define her but fighting it like the scrappy person she is. I'm proud of what she brings to nogoodforme -- serious smarts, bracing honesty, outspoken clarity. But I'm even prouder of her as a friend, because it takes a lot of guts to admit there's something not right about what you see and to do something about it. True freedom lies in authenticity, and LJ is authentically awesome. (Kat)

NOGOODFORME ON NOGOODFORME: "How can something with no recorded fatalities be illegal?" ask Liz and Laura Jane of nogoodforme.com

Once upon a sweltering Williamsburg afternoon four years ago, Laura Jane Faulds and Elizabeth Barker sat on the front stoop of some rich person's townhouse and shared a joint. Laura's hair looked absurdly great, she recalls; Liz hadn't showered in three days and felt really nasty about it (which she should have, since LJ is obviously the sort of person who would judge the Helter Skelter outta Liz Barker for having temporarily poor hygiene). Little did Liz and Laura Jane know: in a few years time, they would collaboratively produce the single most important document in the history of Stonerdom: The NOGOODFORME Guide to the Greatest Stoners of All Time. I wish the lady who walked past and looked at us like we were gutter rats had instead been a sage sent from heaven above to tell us of our awesome futures; it would have totally blown our minds, yo. Tragic as it is that Kat Asharya's glamorous life prevented her from getting in on the Sacred Stoner action, let's face the music (Pink Floyd's The Wall, in this case): this post was effin' genius.

"The Irony of it All" by The Streets (The mad-best pro-marijuana song, followed closely by "I Love You Mary Jane" by Sonic Youth & Cypress Hill) is a perfect compliment to "TNGFMGTTGSOAT":

Tags: Ethan Hawke, Kat Asharya, Kris Kristofferson, Laura Jane Faulds, Liz Barker, marijuana, nogoodforme.com, The Fly Girls, Thrift Scores

Wednesday , April 1, 2009

Too March For You: In Which We Pick Our Fave Posts and Bestow Big Love Upon One Another

KAT ON LIZ: Infecting Me with the Crush Virus on a Dude I Barely Noticed Before

When I saw Liz's entry on Josh Hamilton, I have to admit I barely knew who he was outside of Kicking And Screaming and a few other things -- and even then, he barely registered on my scale of libidinal interest. But such is the power of Liz's articulate, infectious romanticism that her All-Time Top 5 Reasons To Be In Love With Josh Hamilton actually made me have a crush on him for about a week, fully able to appreciate his uber-Average Joeness as a mark and badge of his personal brand of foxiness. I consider this an advance in my emotional development. Plus, now I have a new crush to add to my personal repertoire, and for that, I thank Liz Barker.

LIZ ON LAURA: Our Secret Weapon Makes An Honest Man Outta NOGOODFORME.COM

At first I was gonna rave about LJ's contribution to our Dream Prom-A-Rama superlative, but then it seemed kinda ridic to take a heartfelt look back at something that happened 22 hours ago. So instead let's gush about the nogoodforme.com Secret Weapon's latest sartorial adventure, as documented in "HONEST"-Y IS THE BEST POLICY: A Laura Jane Fashion Challenge. Srsly bros, why would anyone go bonkers over that "Cory Kennedy takes Rite Aid" ish in NYLON when we've got the infinitely more inspired avant-wackdom of LJ's Swedish Meatball Humane Society Bargain Bin Mirvishian Chic? Also, the last two grafs of the "GRANDFATHER INHABITING THE BODY OF A 23-YEAR-OLD GIRL" section made me LOL and even almost ROTFL. Also: Baby Pluto underwear, for 99 cents! Dude, why is life so awesome?

LAURA JANE ON KAT: One Man's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is Another Man's On the Road

As they say: If everybody in the world thought the exact same thing, the world would be fucking boring. Actually, I'm not sure if they say that, but if they don't, they definitely say something similar. And if they don't say something similar, well, they should. In our Beloved Books we Totally Loathe post, Kat Asharya slammed the Helter Skelter outta one of my personal favourite contemporary novels, Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (As much as I love it, though, that is a goddamned annoying title, especially to type out). If nogoodforme.com were run by a bunch of babies, I probably would have cried you a river on Eggers' behalf; however, nogoodforme.com is run by a group of mature and respectful adults, and as much as it's fun when we all geek out on loving something as a collective whole, it is equally awesome to take note of our divergences and relish in our respective Laura, Liz, and Kat-nesses. Kat's unmitigated critique of AHWoSG was eloquent, sharp, and on the money; plus, it was really funny when she said "God, I want to fucking staple your ass, motherfucker!" and "Please, someone bring me that barbed-wire noose RIGHT NOW, I'd rather hang myself with that than spend another word trying to figure out why I think A Heartbreaking Work sucks the most tedious balls ever." Something I'm 100% sure they say is, "Why can't we all just get along?"

In the nogoodforme.com-i-verse, we can. And it is a heartbreakingly, staggeringly beautiful thing.

NOGOODFORME ON NOGOODFORME: Nobody's Perfect, Not Even Us!

After nearly six years of unadulterated perfection, a crack has finally appeared in the Ming vase/Faberge egg/Grecian urn that is the nogoodforme troika. From mall-binges to junk food-binges to Diet Coke-binges, our Most Satisfying Vices post demonstrated to the Universe that even we have our darker moments. We all shared a collective sigh of relief after outing our weaknesses- the beguiling mystique has been penetrated! Kat, Liz, and Laura Jane: They're Just Like Us.

Tags: Cory Kennedy, Dave Eggers, fashion challenges, imperfection, Kat Asharya, nogoodforme.com, TOO GOOD FOR YOU, Too March For You

Sunday , March 1, 2009

Too February For You: In Which We Pick Our Fave Posts and Bestow Big Love Upon One Another

KAT ON LJ: LJ TAKES ON FASHION "WISDOM," DESTROYS ALL MONSTERS IN THE PROCESS

Laura Jane brings so much sartorial and literary wealth to nogoodforme that it's bewildering to choose a favorite post from her, but I think her RULES ARE FOR FOOLS: A Laura Jane Fashion Challenge post epitomizes the blithe, devil-may-care way that she upends the "rules" that hamper fashion free-expression and proves her Ultimate Fashion Challenge hero status once again. Seriously, people, why let a cabal of food-challenged, bitterly competitive Fashion Industrial Complex normies rob you of your joy and pleasure in fashion? Follow the lead of our Pied Piper of Fashion Awesomeness and DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, and watch LJ upgrade her role from nogoodforme's "Secret Weapon" to "First Line of Attack."

LIZ TO KAT: THANK YOU FOR ACCIDENTALLY INVENTING MY DREAM MAN

Of all the Internet things to have eaten my brain over the past month, the Katie Couric Meets Lil Wayne vid Kat posted definitely ranks among the top three. Now I walk around all the time going, "I'm a gangsta, and gangstas don't ask questions," albeit only in my head (not because I have no talent for performative irony, as Kat claims of herself, but because - as a professional journalist - never asking questions would be a pretty bad career move on my part). All that said, my vote for Best Kat Post O' The Month goes to her Random Picture Entry on the art of Alice Neel. That's partly because in her commentary on Neel's Dana Gordon portrait, Kat suggested "late 70s/early 80s Cape Cod chic" as the next look for Devendra Banhart, thereby accidentally inventing my all-time number-one dream man. But it's mainly got to do with Kat's graciously and geniusly introducing me (and you, and you, and YOU!) to art I'd probably never find otherwise. (And yes, I just plagiarized one of our commenters in that last sentence, but if said commenter's got a problem with that she can totally sock me in the nose when we go out for dinner at Delux in approximately one month, nine days, and 3.5 hours.) I'm so art-ignorant and weirdly complacent about that ignorance alotta the time, but as Jack Nicholson once said to Helen Hunt in a movie I've never seen, Kat makes me wanna be a better man. If she'll be my art mentor, I'll proudly be her manatee.

(I'll take the one on the left, please)

LJ ON BARKER: WE ARE ALL INSPIRED BY KITTENS

Dear Elizabeth Barker,

Dude. You know I think you're a total genius. I've only told you so, like, 660 times over the course of the past 110 years (a whopping 6x/annum). On the genius tip, you're like the girl Matthew Friedberger. To me. My confidence in your unbinding knowledge of this truth is what permits me to crown your We're Obsessed: Kittens Inspired By Kittens post as my "Too What Liz Barker Wrote in February 2009 For You" pick. This video changed my life. It doesn't have a whole lot to do with your intro/write-up (though your intro/write-up was, of course, genius/hilar) as much as it does with the Asbergersy six-year-old who masterminded the vid. But don't fret, Barker- the moment when she declares "I'm her... Mom!", then contends,"No... she's not!" makes Ulysses seem about as genius as Brody Jenner trapped in a discussion about fiscal policy during WWII-era Great Britain. It's not you, it's... kittens.

Best,
Laura Jane

PS: You already know this, but the world doesn't: When I first saw Kittens Inspired by Kittens, I was so amazed and inspired that I had to call Liz Barker THAT EXACT SECOND. We talked about it, and then talked about Flight of the Conchords for a bit.

PPS: Your capybaras post was pretty sick too.

AN ENCORE PERFORMANCE OF KITTENS INSPIRED BY KITTENS:

NOGOODFORME ON NOGOODFORME

This month's collective group fave post was nogoodforme ix: Bizarre Ways to Relieve Stress. It has space, puppies, horses, weed, Miami freestyle, rhinoceros, astrology and a Philip Lim reference, which makes it pretty much a "nogoodforme in a nutshell" kind of deal. It also features the most bizarre, long-ranging intra-blog comment exchange between all members of the nogoodforme troika ever.

+ Continue reading "Too February For You: In Which We Pick Our Fave Posts and Bestow Big Love Upon One Another"

Tags: being art-ignorant, Brody Jenner, capybaras, Devendra Banhart, falling through on promises to Liz Barker, kitten videos, kittens inspired by kittens, Lil Wayne, manatees, obscure 30 Rock references

Sunday , February 1, 2009

Too January For You: In Which We Pick Our Monthly Faves and Bestow Big Love Upon One Another

(Because we'd never want you to miss even a teeny-tiny piece of the action, here's a handy little round-up of our favorite posts from last month.)

LJ ON KAT: KAT ASHARYA IS THE DITA VON TEESE OF 2009
Let's face it, y'all: I hero worship the Helen Keller out of my co-bloggers. Sometimes, Liz or Kat will write something so far above my capacity for intellectual thought that I feel comparatively infantile (in a good way). One of January 2009's most LJ-infantilizing entries was Kat Asharya's contribution to our New Year's Resolutions Superlative. Personally, I used that entry as a tool for facetiously positing that my 2009 would best be spent adhering to the rules of the "playa". That's what I bring to the table. Kat, on the other hand, graced the blogosphere with her elegant, insightful and tastefully lengthy piece on masochism in Western societies, puritanism in Western societies, "sartorial true love", eco-footprint reduction, and Dita Von Teese. If Vogue articles were as cool and klassy as Kat's, well then, I would read them. But I don't. Instead, I read nogoodforme.com.

If you didn't get to read The Zen of Dita Von Teese the first time around, now is your chance! Click here to check it out.

KAT ON LIZ: NOGOODFORME'S RESIDENT SWEETIEPIE ON SONGWRITERS SHE'D SLEEP WITH
Liz Barker is nogoodforme's sweetheart, which is pretty much the reason LJ and I made her go get the food for Spirit Animal House: of all three of us, she'd know how to nourish and nurture a bunch of drunk partygoers with just the right amount of savory and spice. She pretty much makes the adorability quotient of this blog go off the charts. I thought her All Time Top 5 Songwriters To Sleep With entry was the epitome of what Liz Barker brings to nogoodforme: it's smart, super-darling and totally right on, and it makes me want to wrap myself in the coziest cocoon possible and just emit love for the world.

LIZ ON LAURA JANE: LJ IS TOO L.A. FOR YOU
I feel really bad for you that you didn't get to be a part of Laura Jane Faulds's historic and whirlwind takeover of The City of Angels last month (unless, of course, your name is Emily Richmond and you were right there in the thick of all the magical action). For everyone in the world not named Liz Barker or Emily Richmond, the next best thing to actually experiencing the LJ L.A. takeover firsthand is reading all about it in Laura's oh-so-illuminating Best of Five: LA/CA VIA LJ post. For me it ranks #1 among all LJ's January offerings not just because it's soooo rad to read another nogoodforme blogger raving all about the awesomeness of my fair city, but also cuz I just actually learned new things about L.A.! Boy howdy! Oh, another reason this entry's great is that you get to see what my space heater and the back of my cat's head look like, so you all can stop dying of curiosity now.

NOGOODFORME ON NOGOODFORME
And our collective fave group post is nogoodforme ix: Best Ways to Beat the Wintertime Blahs. Now let's go bowling and ice skating in Santa Cruz or Disneyland while drinking hot chocolate and eating summery salads, dressed kinda crappy except our new Iron Maiden Vans. And then let's just be hermits till springtime rolls around and all in the world is as it should be once again. Cool.

Tags: Kat Asharya, Laura Jane Faulds, Liz Barker, nogoodforme.com