I took this photo of the dogs the other day and it immediately reminded me of one of my favorite David Hockney paintings, Mr. and Mrs Clark and Percy. Hockney painted the designer Ossie Clark with his wife, Celia Birtwell, she’s pregnant and wearing one of his dresses. Ossie Clark was a seminal fashion designer in the 60s and 70s, Yves St. Laurent was inspired by Clark, not the other way around and he’s talked about when people talk about the retro designs of Mary Quant and Biba. What I like is that the painting is filled with light, just like the photograph of the dogs–and I’m well aware that the similarities stop there. But to my credit when I showed Conrad the two images he burst out laughing and said, “Chewie is the one with the cat on his lap.”

Apparently, the painting is loaded with symbolism, the lilies next to Celia represent purity and her pregnancy while the cat on Ossie’s lap is a symbol of infidelity. Their marriage was rocky, Clark was bisexual and unfaithful and they eventually divorced in 1974. Oh and the cat’s actual name is not Percy, its Blanche, but Hockney though Percy sounded better in the title.

Maybe it’s winter. Maybe it’s that I spend most of my day alone with dogs and I miss human co-workers, but I’ve been noticing some similarities between my dogs and celebrities.  Maybe you agree?

Since I’ve been blogging for W I’ve been thrown back into the world of high fashion which is really fun, except when you forget how seriously everything is taken (case in point, Armani has been asked to push his couture show back a whoe 90 minutes because Dior requested a time change and he has refused with a strongly worded letter accusing Dior of being insensitive to other people’s time and labor. Really? I mean 90 minutes is how long you can wait for a show to start). Anyway… so while writing about that I also got a huge kick out of  The Cut’s post on The Cat Version of the Sartorialist, an addictive fashion portrait blog. Here’s their post:

Cats are in for spring, so there’s no better time to study the fashions of the most stylish felines walking this earth today in our new favorite thing, the Catorialist blog. Don’t miss “The Catorialist for Purberry’s Art of the Trench.” Or these musings on “A Gentleman’s Style“: “To this day I am impressed with the way he carries himself; he is from an age where cats learned to wear their fur instead of letting their fur wear them.” [Catorialist]

Now if only their were a canine version.

While pointing for W’s Reading List I came across this chic tidbit:

What does Marc Jacobs bring to the beach in St. Barths?

A Birkin, naturally. Via huffpo

Livejournal celebrated Sesame Street’s 40th Birthday with a Muppet doppelganger photo collage. Here are some of my favorite pairings. They are uncanny!

I have just been assigned a fun new project for W magazine. I’ll be hunting the web for the most intriguing fashion stories of the week. Here’s my first post.

One of my favorites was refinery29’s post about Steven Meisel’s H1N1 inspired fashion shoot for Vogue Italia. But then we know this is a topic close to my heart and respiratory system.

Here’s an outtake:

Even though I’m not a doctor, I play one when I go online. I surf the web and diagnose myself with any illness I think I might have. I’ve had ovarian cancer, IBS, hiatal hernias, and PID—all in my mind.

But after three days of a fever of 101 I realized that I had more than a bad cold.  I logged onto the CDC and compared my symptoms to H1N1: Fever. Check. Respiratory Cough. Aches. Chills. Check. Check. Check. The next day, I was at my doctor’s office and she was writing me a script for a Tamiflu and Codeine cough syrup.

With my scripts in one hand and my cell in the other I speed dialed Dr. Sirna, my kid’s pediatrician from the foyer of my doctor’s office because Dashiell, my youngest, has asthma. The receptionist told me she’d have him call me right back. I turned the volume up on my iPhone and told Dashiell he could not play Frogger on my phone anymore so I would be sure to get his call. I even brought the phone into the bathroom with me. I kept checking that the ringer was on as if had some Flu-OCD and it reminded me of when I was a staff writer for SELF, and I’d be waiting to do a celebrity phone interview.

Celebs prefer to call you because they don’t want you to have their number and they rarely call on time so I’d be stuck at my desk trying to occupy myself for anywhere for five to fifty minutes—but I’d really just be glancing at the phone, pretending to write another story.  The only person who called me on time, actually a few minutes early, was Jody Foster. I had to be called out of meeting to take her call. Hearing “Jody Foster is on the phone for you” is a love-your-life kind of moment.

But when you have the flu and your kid has asthma during a possible H1N1 outbreak getting a call from your kid’s pediatrician feels even more reassuring. It also doesn’t hurt that Dr. Sirna is a Jason Bateman look alike.

I told Dr. Sirna that I had the flu but I didn’t know what kind, he said, “If your doctor diagnosed you with the flu and gave you a script for Tamiflu, you have H1N1 because seasonal flu has not started yet.” He also told me that the H1N1 is not behaving in the way they expected, its much more mild.

Well not mine. (more…)

A friend just emailed me to say that a quote from my Screaming is the new Spanking post is in the New York Times Style section today. For the record, since I did that workshop, I yell a heck of a lot less, I just curse a shitload more. Kidding!

More bug fun. I walked into thee playroom on last night and a large black oval shaped thing was ON David’s right shoulder as he was busily putting together a Lack TV table from IKEA. It was as big as an old-fashioned shoe horn and as shiny. I just stood their motionless trying to figure out how my worst fear had been come true: a Brooklyn cockroach had made it to our tidy suburban home. I couldn’t speak. I just stood their staring at David’s shoulder and he looked up and asked me if the kids were ok because I looked freaked out. I didn’t say anything for a few more seconds and then finally I said, “There’s a very big… bug… on… your… shoulder. David is usually a cautious and measured person so I expected him to get up and look in the mirror and then figure out what to do. But instead somewhere between the words bug and shoulder he whipped off his t-shirt, which made me run in an “ahhh it’s gonna get me” panic out the room. Left to battle the insect alone, David didn’t know which revelation was worse, that we moved to a place where bug that large could be on his body or that I was clearly was out to save myself.
Once we realized it was a cicada and not urban enemy #1: a roach, we relaxed and felt rustic and outdoorsy and saw the humor in our house guest. It was much too energetic to capture on film, banging and buzzing into the walls and we laughed so hard trying to take a photo of it that we nearly fell down the basement steps.  Try if you can to imagine a mouse with shiny wings flying around the playroom and know that when we were able to swish it towards the door, were very happy to see it go.
And for you urban folks, cicadas look like this:

I was on a playdate this morning in my suburban neighborhood and in the middle of it the other mom actually started to clip coupons. Right before my very eyes I watched her trim out tidy rectangles from the circulars. It was so surprised, it was like the first time I walked my dog and he actually peed on a fire hydrant. Hilarious.
FC correction on Sept 25th

I would just like to say that since the economic crisis, I have changed my tune and love to clip coupons!