Werner Herzog Inspirationals

Today I'm savoring the bleak, coldly scientific nihilism of Werner Herzog. It's keeping me warm like a cup of hot tea.

All images, captions, and title via: Werner Herzog Inspirationals

On Getting Older

I long ago stopped asking myself if I have arrived where I thought I would be by my age. When I was 5 years old and wondering (with awe and disbelief) what I would be like at 17, or 25, or--gasp, 30, I suppose I thought I would be like my parents. By the time they were in their 30s they had already achieved the trifecta of adulthood: married, owned a home, and had a kid (me) on the way. I'm nowhere near any of the above, nor am I certain that I aspire to any of the traditional trappings of adulthood.

I'm 32 today, and still figuring out what it means to be a woman of a certain age. A woman who is unmarried, doesn't own a house, doesn't have children. Is still trying to decide what she wants to be when she 'grows up.' Doesn't even think she wants children. Is in fact wary of the entire institution of marriage. Whatever my life has in store for me, I know it won't look anything like my parents. I live in a prohibitively expensive city where home ownership is a pipe dream, and I am part of a generation of women with ubiquitous, cheap, convenient forms of birth control. All of which is definitely not making me want to flee to the suburbs. I love living in a city. I love having the freedom to travel.  I'm not going to lie, I think I could live this way forever.

2014, a Year Well-Lived

Sunset from Pruitt Ridge Campground, Big Sur, CA

Protective prayer painted in taxicab roof, Bangkok, Thailand // tiled floors of the Doi Suthep temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Lotus flowers for making offerings at Doi Suthep temple, Chiang Mai, Thailand 

Camping at Alabama Hills in Lone Pine, CA 

Beyonce concert at AT&T Park, San Francisco 

Longtail boats docked at Railay Beach, Thailand 

Bang Bang Bar, Railay Beach, Thailand 

Longtail boat ride Andaman Sea, Thailand // Perfect afternoon reading spot Railay Beach, Thailand 

Whale watching, Rancho Pescadero, Pescadero Beach, Mexico 

Home away from home in New Orleans, our Air BnB apartment, built circa 1870 

Truck camping with dog 

Waterfall, Feather River in Plumas National Forest, CA 

Rooftop pool at Terminal 21 Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand 

Sunset at Pruitt Ridge, Big Sur, CA

This photo set is clearly not representative of say, any given Tuesday in 2014, but then again you probably wouldn't care to see pictures of me sitting at a desk hunched over chewing on my cuticles. We'll call this my world through rose-colored glasses aka all the cool shit I did that was worth putting on Instagram.

Essential viewing: The Staircase

For those of you who can't satiate your closeted trial laywer/detective/forensic pathologist yearnings with Serial, I highly recommend watching the 8-episode mini series The Staircase, by French documentarian Jean-Xavier Lestrade. The series documents the first degree murder trial of novelist Michael Peterson for the death of his wife, Kathleen in their Durham, NC home in 2001. After Michael made a frantic 911 call, his wife's body was found, blood-soaked and crumpled at the bottom of a flight of stairs. The prosecution's claim was that he beat her to death with a blow-poke, the defense claimed she had fallen down the stairs in a tragic accident.

I don't want to give away too much, but suffice to say this one still has me thinking after I burned through all 8 episodes in a day and a half. It's got more twists and turns than an episode of American Horror Story, and like Serial, the essential question appears to be: is an innocent man on trial for a murder, or was there a secret side to him that no one else knew about?

Watch episode 1 below, all episodes are available for streaming on Youtube.

babe alert: Dolores Costello

Here's what you should know about Dolores: She was born in 1903 into an acting family. Her first film role was in 1909 at age six, making her one of the earliest, if not the seminal "child film star." Many of her earliest films are 'lost films', pieces of cinema no longer known to exist in any private collection or public archive. She was nicknamed "the Goddess of the Silent Era," but was able to transition to talkies starting around 1929 after conquering a severe lisp.

She met actor John Barrymore on the set of the film The Sea Beast in 1926 and married him two years later. The couple had two children before divorcing in 1931, Dolores (Dee Dee) Barrymore and John Drew Barrymore who is, you guessed it, Drew Barrymore's father.

Sadly, Dolores' acting career was cut short because of severe complexion and skin issues--a result of 30 years of having to endure film makeup. Can you imagine the lead they used to put in that stuff?

She's got one of those faces that doesn't seem at all locked in a specific time or place. I can just as easily imagine her living among us right now, albeit with less spectacular eyebrows. What a beauty!

You should be paying homage to...

The visual opus that is Mariah Carey's video for 'Heartbreaker' was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 fifteen years ago today. That's 1999 if you're bad at math.

 **If you did not cut off the waistband of your jeans as a direct response to the sartorial influence of this video, you were either not in high school in 1999, or you had extremely poor taste and probably listened to Korn.

American Music

via Open Culture

Awesome archival footage of Blues legends Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters, Lonnie Johnson, Sugar Pie DeSanto, Howlin' Wolf, Big Joe Turner, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe performing for a UK audience eager to experience true "American Folk" music. The performances were eventually broadcast on British TV between 1963 and 1966. Legend has it that at the first stop of the tour in Manchester in 1962, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Jimmy Page were all in the audience. Because they wanted to learn from the masters, obviously.

There's something so grainy and textured about listening to old recordings by the likes of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf that it's almost impossible to imagine them being alive in the broadcast TV era. But here you go. They're not in living color but they might as well be. God what I would've done to be there, in that audience, right at that moment.