Germans Are Awesome!

Random observation.

They gave us Capri Sun, Aldi, Trader Joe's (kinda), and this guy ... Daniel Tosh.






Hilarious Quotables
"Oh the floors lava! Thats the lava game, when you pretend that the floor is lava and you climb up on all the furniture. I see some of you dont get that. I dont care, thats ok. You might have called it something else, but it meant the same thing - you were poor. Ill tell my mom, "I want a Nintendo" "Oh the floors lava!" "Oh my God! Whats wrong with our house? Why cant we afford better carpeting? Its called two jobs, bitch!" Thats how I used to talk. I was very street. Maybe not."

"Ever have a nightmare then decide to tell somebody about it and about halfway through your explanation you realize you're retarded? Is there ANY way you can describe a nightmare to be scary? "I had a scary dream last night." Okay, tell me about it. "I was running through this pool of marshmallows in my flip-flops, right? Then the manager came running out of nowhere and HE starts going 'Mmrammramrm' and there was only 18 seconds to eject before the bowling alley closed, and, Tom, you were there but you didn't LOOK like Tom and that was freaking me out! I love cheese!" What? We're no longer friends."

"Sometimes, when I'm feeling down because nothing seems to be going right, I like to take a home pregnancy test. Then I can say, 'Hey, at least I'm not pregnant.' And I know happy days are around the corner."

"If "no" meant "no" then every man would die a virgin."

"I hope we find a cure for every major disease. I'm tired of walking 5k."

Top Five Records © High Fidelity

Lets back away from fine shoes for a moments and return to my other obsession, music. I'm a list monger and circumlocuter. I figured I'd join these seemingly incompatible sides of myself to decide upon my favorite five records by my favorites groups and artists. Let us begin.

These are all in particular order. Let's also pretend that all these songs are snuggled in comfy and mechanically correct quotation marks.


De la Soul
1. Buddy (Native Tongues remix)
2. Oodles of Os
3. Bitties in the BK Lounge
4. I Am I Be
5. Declaration





MF Doom (including aliases)
1. Doomsday
2. All Caps
3. I Hear Voices
4. A Dead Mouse
5. Hoe Cakes






Donny Hathaway
1. I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know
2. Giving Up
3. Lord Help Me
4. I (Who Have Nothing) w/ Roberta Flack
5. Sack Full of Dreams







Bobby Brown
1. Don't Be Cruel
2. On Our Own
3. All Day All Night
4. Rock Wit'cha (remix)
5. Roni






Raheem DeVaughn
1. Mo Betta
2. You (remix)
3. Where I Stand
4. The Idea of Falling in Love
5. Love Drug







Radiohead
1. The Tourist
2. Idioteque
3. Everything In Its Right Place
4. Jigsaw Falling into Place
5. Lucky






TV On The Radio
1. Wear You Out
2. New Health Rock
3. A Method
4. Wolf Like Me
5. Ambulance






Aceyalone
1. Makeba
2. Mr. Outsider
3. The Hold
4. Tweakends
5. Fortitude








Bobby "Blue" Bland
1. Little Boy Blue
2. If You're Gonna Walk on My Love
3. Members Only
4. Stormy Monday Blues
5. Cry, Cry, Cry







Bjork
1. Unravel
2. Bachelorette
3. Hunter
4. I Go Humble
5. Pagan Poetry







Luther Vandross
1. Don't You Know That
2. Better Love
3. Superstar
4. Wait For Love
5. I Can Make It Better







Sam Cooke
1. Bring it on Home to Me
2. That's Where it's At
3. Lord, Remember Me (w/ The Soul Stirrers)
4. I'll Come Running Back to You
5. A Change is Gonna Come







Alexander O'Neal
1. What's Missing
2. All True Man
3. A Broken Heart Can Mend
4. (What Can I say) To Make You Love Me
5. Hearsay

New Obsession - MARSèLL!

They're here, they fit, and I love them.





I'm just having a shoe-ass moment. Again, I have discovered another wonderful shoe company that promises to bankrupt me.

While shopping for a dress for my friend's wedding at Robin Richman, ...

(and I found it, a cute little Hazel Brown)















I see the most gorgeous shoes, and they're on sale. Unfortunately, sale means four to five hundred dollars, so needless to say, they are still there. Turns out they're from an Italian company Marsèll, and I hear the leather's divine and each shoe is handmade. This is my new goal, to own at least one pair before Christmas.

I Need Therapy

Yeah.

So if anyone knows of a good therapist in Chicago, holla.

Aceyalone - Fortitude

The Dark Knight

Heath Ledger played the hell out of The Joker.

this is how i had to open this review cuz really, he acted his ass off.

this, The Dark Knight, is the movie we (my brother and I) have been waiting for all summer. as far as we're concerned, the summer movie season is over. sure, we'll see some other assorted films, but this was it. did it justify such importance, such speculative awe? kinda.

i must say, both jimmy and i have the utmost respect for Christopher Nolan's talents. he is one of the few writer/directors whose need to control the stoichiometric balance of words and images isn't misguided (M. Night Shyamalan, stop it!). just recently, The Prestige ascended both our best of lists. see it if you haven't; it is fantastic. so yeah, we came to this film expecting magic, and perhaps that was a tad unfair.

what was good
if just considering the characters' developments, not the way in which they were paced, just development, we are talking about some of the best in comic movie history. the theme--the characteristics of a hero, what he or she represents, how he or she is to inspire, and why he or she is needed--was consistent and artfully woven throughout both the plot and the characters' actions. Batman/Bruce Wayne, Two-Face, Harvey Dent, and The Joker all complemented each other's internal conflicts with good and evil, and Nolan's skillful handling of the subject was evident; beyond offering flat characters who belonged at either end of the spectrum, he (and his brother?) wrote people who were constantly at odds with the strict moral codes they had created for themselves. this was particularly true for Batman and The Joker. the hero/villain dichotomy is often pretty deep in written form, but it's rare that it's translated to film. The Joker, the villain, who acts as the evil element, is complex. he is not simply bad, he's philosophically maniacal and truly the perfect foil to Batman's strictly-regulated hero.

Aaron Eckhart was a fantastic Harvey Dent. though my colleague intimated that Viggo Mortensen would've been much more welcome, I felt Eckhart did a good job being Gotham's golden boy and mixing in a touch of self-righteous arrogance. Morgan Freeman was Morgan Freeman--smooth, in control, carefully thoughtful as Lucius Fox. Gary Oldman continues to prove he's an actor with enviable talents. Maggie Gyllenhaal took over as Rachel and was good (better than wassername), but (I shall not finish this thought). Christian Bale continues to be a good Bruce Wayne and Batman, though he was more Batman than Bruce Wayne here. yes, all these folks did nice jobs, but this was Heath Ledger's movie. i was almost afraid that his last performance would be overrated, but goddamn, homie was akkin', yo! Jack Nicholson's Joker was a lunatic clown (and this was, in part, due to the nature of the Tim Burton's vision); Heath Ledger's was brilliantly psychotic and sarcastically funny but never a clown. his humor was in his ability to make his darkness complex, relatable, and really very scary. he held this movie together, no doubt about it. it would be nice for him to know how much people really dug his performance, and it's sad to know that he can never reprise this role, but so it goes.

now the problems. there were really only two. one: what was with that low-assed talking? you really had to struggle to hear what the hell they were saying. two: edit this shit, Christopher. this movie was at least two and half hours and felt like it. unlike Batman Begins, which was engaging straight through, this one allowed you to wonder when it was going to be over. by no means is it a bad film (and i've already acknowledged to myself that i could never call it one even if it is ... though it isn't), but the critics lied to me. Nolan did his film a serious disservice by including so much. a shorter, tighter film would've allowed this to be a masterpiece. i never really cared when Batman beat people up because i was given too much time between crises to be bored. i did, however, almost tear up at a few points.

ultimately, the brilliant parts outweigh the sluggish ones, and the last 15 minutes were beautiful. i have imax tickets to see it again next week and i'm not too mad about it.

She's Addicted © N.W.A.

So last time I talked about a gorgeous pair of Dries van Noten pumps I got for a stunningly low price and offered the best photo I could find to showcase them. Well ... those snatched-from-the Internet photos do no justice to the true beauty of my new favorite shoes (until the Marcello Toshis arrive, more on that later). Check the technique, suckers!

I'm wearing them as I type. Love is a new shoe.

Just recently, I discovered yet another designer that may usurp my beloved Chie Mihara, if they are as comfortable and well-made as reported. Just yesterday I spoke with my enabler, Rachel, and we discussed the inability of a girl obsessed to get a pair of Marcello Toshi shoes in this city. Fast forward to today. I'm minding my own, innocently searching the web for shoes, when I happen upon a pair for 80 percent off. I had to have them.

Check my soon-to-be-favorite shoes.

Aren't they fab?

I wanted the ones below, but they didn't have my size.


And I may just get these too.

Wanted was Gooooood/ Diane von Furstenberg/Dries van Noten

Do you like unnecessarily violent films? I do. Gun play so pretty it's almost poetic? Yep. Bad-ass characters who adhere to a code so strict, they have to be fictional? Mm hmm.

On my brother's birthday, we (my mom, my brother, 75% of the Baker Boys, and I) went to see Wanted, and so far, this is the only movie giving Iron Man a run for its money. It had it all. An opening sequence that elicits surprised expletives, fantastic special effects, the archetypal training sequence, a hilarious protagonist who you want to root for, a great plot twist, and a final boss character worth fighting. Yeah, this movie straight exceeded my expectations. I may have to see it again.

Check the trailer

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In other news, I'm broker than I've been in a while. As luck would have it, it is sale season, which means that God (gods) hates (hate) me. Diane von Furstenberg's S/S 2008 collection is my dream wardrobe, and it's on sale, yet I cannot purchase any of it.

All gorgeous, all unattainable.

However, being broke can't completely break my spirit, oh no. I went to the Nordstrom on Monday because my friend told me about the designer sale going down. Why did I get a pair of Dries van Noten pumps for two bones? Oh, happy, happy day!



Mine are mostly canvas and a tad bit lighter. I must say, I came up.

"See, Daddy, sinners have [sole] too."