Today marks an auspicious day in my journey of knowledge.

After years of collecting photos of the most eye-watering haircut on earth, I finally stumbled upon its proper name. The reason I collected online photos was to ask friends to help identify this hairdo. Somewhere in my mind, I thought the day I write a novel entitled "Stress Test" or an investigative inquiry into various structures of Newtonian gravitational defiance, this haircut would be the first on my list of topics to discuss.

I had been referring to it as The Portuguese Man-of-War for two years. Needless to say, when I declared jihad against the Portuguese Man-of-War, only Marine Biologists rushed to my rescue to administer online Heimlich for the choke on style.

Well, today is the day I finally have the answer.

It is called the Emo Scene Hairstyle.



Now I can finally wipe out my collection of emo scene hairdo pictures on my hard drive and use the space wisely for the next point of curiosity in my life:

I was arguing with Captain Huggy Face on my rotary phone.

He said he was shopping for sleek stylish laptops with lots of blinking lights, lit keyboards, and bling. I said a computer was a tool and what you are able to do with a tool is way more important than what your tool looked like. So for me, a bland desktop tower that is packing more than 12 thick solid sweaty inches of ass-kicking processing power with the right hidden cards under the hood is what a tool is all about.

He said a computer should be aesthetically pleasing to look at. I said a computer is all about what it can do, not what it looks like, and suggested he use the money instead to buy me a set of Falk Copper Cookware Set. He thought $1200 was a bit insane for 2 pans and 4 pots, but I argued that well built pots guarantee many years of pleasurable homecooking which leads to delicious meals for the mere cost of eating out a dozen times (girls, feel free to chime in your support). He said he could see spending that money on silverware that guests will see, but a cookware set is hidden from the public eye.

So now, I said you worry more about what people see than what we are serving them.

So then he said the Mauviel cookware, with the mirrored copper surface or the All-Clad copper core is at least fancier to look at than the dull Falk finish. I said the Falk is built much better, with 2.5 mm of copper, and the low maintenance finish is an ease to work with, whereas the All-Clad is all about pricejacking. Who cares what the pots look like, as long as they are built well? You can have all the fancy pans in the world, but if you can't make a good French omelette, what good are you?

Before he can even answer, I wailed, "if you had to pick between a spoiled beautiful girl who you had to pour money into or an ugly broad who will love you for the stars and take good care of you, who would you pick?"

He jumped right in and said, "I'd pick the third choice, neither. That's why I've been eating from paper plates."

Olivia Palermo


I recently thought: "What are the 3 most important things in my life?"

Health, Inner Peace, Happiness.

I wish I could include nice picks like "love" or "charity." But deep down inside, we all know that you can't truly be in the position to take care of anyone until you are in the position to.

On a brighter note, stuff like "money" "fame" and "beauty" is not all that important to me. I've held jobs that made a pretty penny. And during those years, all I thought about was, "what can I buy with my paycheck to justify this ridiculous job?" I've kinda experienced fame. I've been on stage, on the radio, on records, and everywhere I go these days, people seem to be extremely interested in staring at me, taking pictures of me with their cell phones, or following me around. Beauty...well, who doesn't wish they look like Olivia Palermo?

I'm not sure how this hit me this past week. Maybe it was watching 1971's movie Harold and Maude, combined with old Julia Child French Chef episodes and Jacques Pepin's wonderful signoffs ("cooking with friends is always better than cooking alone"), talking to long time friends on the telephone, and spending time with my boyfriend. Somehow, the gestalt of the week's events combined, bringing into focus, a sense of urgency in relishing the art of living.

But having your health, attaining inner peace, and arriving at a joy of living, the happiness of starting a new day, the love of our short stay on earth, and celebrating the privilege of humanity, and being good and honest to friends, family, and the people around you...

That's important to me.

( If any man ever treated me this posh, I would so totally hop in the sack with him at the end of the night. )

Two nights ago, I went mad and proceeded to do an Amazon review on every album recorded by Club 8.

I also created a Listmania! on all their output:

Club 8: My Favorite Pop Band

Then I purchased 12 tubes of discontinued Revlon Crystal Amethyst lipstick before passing out at 7:30am.

In my dreams, I dreamt about all the (imagined) scenes from 1984's movie Repo Man that was cut in the editing room.

It was so freakin hilarious, I am sure I was giggling in my sleep.

Cuz when I woke up, I had a big grin on my face.

I have already talked about 10 living people I would like to meet. So now, let me list 10 non-living people I would have liked to meet.

( Tom Cruise May Be One of Them )

( Ben Affleck is not one of them, guaranteed )

Before I begin this post, let me state this clearly: This is an entry about being transgender (transvestite, or whatever constitutes "passing for normal") and managing the portion of the general public who lack an inability to control themselves from gawking. This is NOT a post about Jose Mestre OR Mandy Sellars (even though their stories are the few out there that are truly about beauty and courage, and I believe, should NEVER be looked at from a sensational angle ...both have stories featured on The Learning Channel).

Thinking about Jose Mestre (The Man Without a Face) always makes me reassess the concept of beauty. Do we have a threshold when we say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder?" How far can each of us go in the name of "inner beauty," and when push comes to shove, would inner beauty really tip the balance on the scale when outer beauty is the counterweight? Looking at the brutality of bloggers' comments concerning Mestre, it's apparent that we won't go very far at all.



( Nothing to see here, move along! )

Director Kenji Mizoguchi once dropped his shirt and exposed his back to a colleague. There were two scars that were the result of razor slashes. He got it from a prostitute he was seeing. Mizoguchi said, "you see these? Until you get them, you are not allowed to make any movies about women."

( blown away and screenshots from Sansho the Bailiff )

My bf spent the whole weekend introducing me as "this is my girlfriend, Pristine, she scotch tapes cats to her trees when she's not out here in Connecticut."

Everyone looked at me in shock while someone tries to dial the ASPCA to report me.

Well, here's the actual story.

There's a gigantic bush outside of my house that was overgrown. But now it just looks like a neatly trimmed 15 foot bush with Alfafa's cowlick sticking out from the center. Why is this?

( Find Out What The ASPCA Has On File About Me... )

Jewish Moses had to use ten commandments.

Black Moses only needed one theme from Shaft.

I'm trying to drink myself straight. It's nice, but I can't seem to nail it.

Does anyone have a subscription card to twelve issues of Maxim?

Note to self #1: When at a party in Stamford among fey gay men, and one is presenting oneself as a feminine creature exuding fragility and vulnerability, never...ever...say: "So that time when I rode my motorcycle back from Georgia with nothing but 1.75 litres of scotch whisky ropped to my body and I was followed by half a dozen state trooper patrol cars under the North Carolinean moon."

I was driving past an open air morgue of recently deceased pine trees last night, and I recalled one of the nicest Christmas TV commercials: A dad takes his son out to the forest in some SUV and hands him an axe. They walk to a desolated area and find a gorgeous pine tree. The son looks at the tree in all its magnificence and natural glory, then he looks at his father, and the next scene, they are back in the car driving home without a tree.

We need more commercials like that.

Let me know if you find stuff like that. Because after a month of begging my cable company to pull the plug on my Skinner Box, they finally did.