the september issue.

if you’ve ever been a reader of fashion magazines, you know that the september issue is notoriously huge (usually about 2 inches thick). one would think that its increased bulk is due solely to the coverage of the fall collections, but one would be wrong. sure, maybe fashion week coverage adds a few pages here and there, but far more than half of the 758 pages in this year’s september issue are ads, ads, and oh- isn’t that some more ads over there?

now, these ads are usually for all sorts of high and brands- your standards chanels, and guccis and marc jacobs types… nothing remarkable (actually, they all tend to look exactly the same to me, you would think they would try harder). however, this year, i noticed and interesting trend. in addition to the standard fancy pantsness, there was a disproportionately large amount of ads for more pedestrian (discount even!) chains trying to keep up with the couture.

lots and lots of celebrity designed lines (karadashians for sears? oh lord!), but also just a general attempt to show that dowdy department stores are at least trying a little bit more than usual to keep up in the contemporary fashion marketplace. edgy ad campaigns! more modern shapes!

well, i ripped all the ads out, and decided that i would do a shopping tour of this supposedly affordable high end design. i am most excited for lagerfeld for macys, and french connection for sears, but my initial inspiration came from the very charming (most especially amongst the satin draped airbrushed bone racks that the rest of the ads were schilling) “money can’t buy style” campaign by kmart.

well, it just so happened that was going to augusta this week, where resides one of the last remaining kmarts in maine. also, it is my hometown.

worth the trip- the black album (with a plaid b-side).

i feel like it was just halloween. how exactly is it thanksgiving already? now, thanksgiving means a lot of things to me- pie, defending my vegetarianism against people who think it is a personal attack, pie, rolling my eyes at football, pie, and most of all… BLACK FRIDAY.

to many, getting up at the pre-crack of dawn in order to shiver outside in the icy icy weather in a line of other assholes who also think that this is a good idea does not seem like a privilege. i know it seems wrong on a number of levels, but i can’t stop myself. i’m not even buying any xmas presents. i’m not even trying to score big ticket items at crazy low prices. i just really love a hot bargain, and have designs on expanding my chick flick collection for less than $2 a dvd.

now traditionally, one gets the thanksgiving paper and weeds through the ads while digesting their  gravy coated food baby after dinner (sort of like half time before the pie round). but since this is the internet age, and we’re all a big fucking pack of cheaters, there are multiple websites offering up all the black friday deal fliers days before anyone has to stick their hands into a frozen turkey and pull out the “giblet sack” (and people question my vegetarianism?).

i love black-friday. net, but it really doesn’t make a fucking difference if you go there or to blackfriday.info or even blackfriday.com. the point is that i’ve been planning my black friday shopping strategy for DAYS. here is my present  ACTION PLAN:

cruel summer.

this heat is killing me. just because i haven’t been in grade school since the 80s doesn’t mean that i don’t remember what that last few weeks of school feels like just before summer vacation. come mid june, my body has a pavlovian response to the first really hot days of the season. i lack concentration. i stare out the window aimlessly humming vacation by the gogos. i abandon my work shoes beneath my desk and pad around the office barefoot. why on earth do we train our children to expect that life comes with 2.5 months worth of vacation, when it usually comes with 2.5 weeks at best? it’s fucking summer vacation yo, and i should be at the beach.

while i’m quietly languishing in the air air conditioned cubicle that is the shackles of my adult responsibilities, i thought maybe i would twist the knife a little harder by thinking about all the things that i would be taking to beach if i actually got to go:

the swimsuit is obviously imperative. however, if perhaps you’re still carting around 30 excess pounds of divorce weight, something skimpy from the victoria’s secret swimslut line doesn’t exactly do the job. i don’t know about you, but i’m not really interested in helping redefine the term “inappropriate ass coverage”.  however, i also don’t desire to be encased in a sacky lycra cocoon of modesty and shame. nestled somewhere in between the two, is the retro suit. draw attention to the tits, cover the lumpy bits.  swimsuits are stupid expensive for how little fabric they involve, and a nice looking retro suit can run upwards of $100. my secret, newport news. yes, a little dowdy, a little dated, and with a healthy side of 1980s hooker. basically, somewhere in between the softer side of sears and fredricks of hollywood. randomly though, they have an awesome selection of swimdresses, some of which are even kinda sexy. oh, and around $50 or less.

although it is definitely always important to know where your towel is, it is perhaps the very most important at the beach. i don’t know if it’s the fact that i grew up in the 80s, and that my mom always bought me jc penny knock offs of the cool clothes, but i am LOVING these lacoste beach towels. somewhere underneath this aging art school kid exterior, there’s a prepster screaming to get out. sadly, as my mom well knew, preppy is pricey. a better bet would be to toddle over to target and pick up a myself an attractive pedestrian towel. do you think the alligator affects absorbency?

once you’ve got your suit and towel, you’re gonna need somewhere to stick it. i’ve been coveting one of these vintage style pan am totes pretty much forever, but who the fuck pays $90 for a beach bag? or pretty much any bag that isn’t encrusted with semi precious gems or at least filled with free donuts. a more practical and almost as attractive solution is the good ole ll bean boat & tote. classic, sturdy, affordable! and you can’t go wrong pimping that maine economy. seriously, half the people i know either work there now, will work there over xmas, or were working there until very recently.

well, those are pretty much the 3 main food groups of shit you need when you go to the beach (and i’m so easily distractable right now that 3 is pretty much as high as i can count without wandering off in another direction) , but you should also strongly consider some other less interesting beach bag accouterments such as sunscreen, maybe some sort of hat, something to promote hydration, a really trashy book, and of course like 17 wacky noodles. did i forget anything?

well, somehow that bummed me out more than i thought it would. my own summer vacation (one whole week!) doesn’t actually happen until august, so i’m pretty much fucked until then. maybe i’ll just lock myself in my room and watch a summer place (have you been bad with girls johnny?) on loop for a while. or maybe i’ll just let jasper from the simpsons sing me the theme song until i black out. bananarama was right, summer is the cruelest season.