New Year, New Obsessions
I wasn’t surprised in the slightest to see The Hangover win a Golden Globe–everyone (even in the over 40 set) is constantly quoting from it, and apparently it was the hottest DVD rental for New Year’s Day. We rented it and lay on the couch in a stupor on New Year’s Day ourselves. Not that we were so incredibly hung over that morning from too much drinking (I consider New Year’s Amateur hour and generally refuse to participate in the forced partying), but because we all seem to be stunned and hung over from the great tumult and upheaval that was 2009.
It’s a new year, however, and suddenly there are signs of new things to obsess over. Here are 5 or 6 that are obsessing me.
- Snoods. What is it with the floppy beret style headgear that all the cute young girls are suddenly burdening themselves with on the street? Talk about a way to bring down your look! These droopy, knitted cloches make even the perkiest, leggiest of 20-somethings look like sad sacks. I don’t think they are trying to channel the Joan Crawford kind of snood that was popular in the 50s as an update of Juliet’s little medieval beaded bun-holder in Romeo and Juliet, but rather a cross between a 70s floppy hat and a gamine beret. Anyhow, they are the most hungover looking headdress ever. And there isn’t a cute young thing on the street lately without one.
- Butter. When I discovered real French butter in New York a couple of years ago and how unbelievably pure and delicious it was, I started to make it a rather fattening habit of buying one of thoe foldable coolers and smuggling it home amongst my socks and underwear in my suitcase every time I was in NY. Now I can find it here, at one of many new overpriced indie gourmet cheese stores for a mere $18 for Echire in one of those little straw baskets that are like tiny versions of the ones you see in vegetable markets and we have it all the time. The ready availability, I am sorry to say, has not dampened my enthusiasm for it. And a new fashion, apparently the latest foodie trend in restaurants for 2010, is brown butter–a delicious 50s French way of injecting extra calories that is both incredibly simple (you just let butter caramelise, essentially) and unbelievably delighful on the simplest dish. I had it over rainbow trout at Deluxe on Ossington the other night and I licked my plate clean like a cat.
- Clogs. Just got my real Swedish Troentorp chefs clogs repaired, thank goodness (I must have a high instep or something, because their padded trim around the clog’s opening had burst apart, spewing foam) because I discovered that there is no longer any such thing as Troentorp anymore (the co has been sold or re-named or just modernised) and now there is an international run on clogs. My clog sisters Kate and Susan and I now consider ourselves way ahead of the curve because everybody from Karl Lagerfeld (who showed models on the S/S 2010 runway in Chanel suits and wooden heeled CC clogs) to the cool girls are all over the clog trend for spring. Susan is so ahead of the pack she has an entire clog wardrobe.
- Siphon coffee. Ok, I am completely smitten by the whole tiny indie storefront cafe phenom. My local, Ezra’s Pound, is so incredible, I go out of my way to swing by every morning for an Americano that is without a doubt the finest I have ever had, and every day I stop in, it seems it’s busier than the day before. Ezra himself, who is tall and somewhat reticent to the point of geeky but a coffee and fine food obsessive (Ok, he actually makes his own butter for the cafe, which people might have thought was somewhat crazy a decade ago but now is the height of cool) is now somewhat of a local celebrity–my sister invited him to a gathering at her place for the holidays and it was like he was the star attraction. Another incredible coffee place I stop by whenever I have the opportunity is an even tinier, funkier spot called Sam James, after its owner, who is as cute as a Bruce weber model. And Sam James ups the ante on obsessive–his latest craze is Siphon coffee, which looks like some sort of handmade bong or drug paraphernalia, all tubes and beakers and bunsen burners–but it is a sort of modern percolator ritual. He hand grinds the coffe first in a wall-mounted German-looking ceramic grinder, then fills a low beaker with water, places it above a burning flame, attaches various tubes and vials to it, and voila, the cold water is sucked up and then replaced with this gorgeous old-world coffee. The whole thing is beyond theatrical and way precious, although the coffee is delicious.
- Why is everybody obssessed with MTV’s new Jersey Shore? The Guidos and Guidettes who “represent” the Guido lifestyle of “tanning and hair gel and fist-pumping” are like comic book characters from a 50s musical, like West Side story on MTV. Beyond their general amorality, pointlessness and decadence, can someone tell me what these cartoons have to tell us about now? Maybe its the throwback nature of their presentation that’s the point? I just don’t get it.
- Likewise, all the objections to Jason Reitman’s Up In the Air, which I happen to think is entirely genius, a brilliant encapsulation of the floating emptiness of middle America’s mid-life crisis, rendered in the soulless office-taupe halls of the Holiday Inns and Westins in Dubuque and Desmoines. In my view, it’s an exact picture of where we at–losing jobs, losing focus, utterly losing the point.