Rococo Cocoa

I'm watching Charade right now and the clothes in it are absolutely magical.




All of Audrey's clothes are by Givenchy. I'd give anything to dress like this every day.

Say what you want about Britney Spears, but you have to be a good sport to run around Los Angeles in those getups with Ellen freaking out random people.

Via D-Listed.

...the creepiest thing ever?! Paintings/Photographs by Fumie Sasabuchi.

Jesus.

In other news, I bought a vintage tie clip this weekend that has a little doorknocker attached to a chain. I wanted to take a picture and include it in my blog, but sadly, my camera died. Go figure.

via Trendland.

Added twitter to the bar on the right. You don't know how excited that makes me.


I am also a part of Blog Catalog. Maybe I'll have 4 readers because of it instead of three? ;)

For a while, I had a Song of the Week post, and then I got lazy or something (who knows with me) and stopped. But I still yearn to share my love of music with you somehow. And so! This new category appears- Play Count Day. Every Monday, I shall detail to you what songs have been all up in my craw as of late.



This week's Play Count comes courtesy of Beyonce's latest album I am... Sasha Fierce.

I don't care how gay the title of the album sounds, it's really good and she'll probably take home 47 grammies. I tend to listen to songs on repeat a lot. Not just a lot. a. lot. I've been overly obsessed with the second track "Halo" on her album and the play count on my iPod is officially at 89. Yup- that's right. 89.

You may wonder how in the hell I could of listened to the song almost 100 times in 6 days. Let me give you a fair vision on how often I listen to music:

I wake up at 6:30AM to an iPod set alarm and take a shower with my battery powered speaker system (which I connect my ipod to) then travel to work listening to- you guessed it- my iPod. At work I listen to music most if not all of the 8 hours while I'm working and when I travel home I continue to listen.

When I get home I sometimes make dinner to music and that's usually where my music listening stops, around 6:30PM. Thats 12 hours 5 days a week. I dont know about you, but I seem to like music.

You have to admit getting letters personally addressed to me from the White House makes me cooler than you.

So I decided that for Halloween I was going to be none other than Steve Urkel, dork extrordinaire from everyone's favorite TGIF show, Family Matters. Really, I loved it, none of that Step by Step crap. So anyway... in looking for the items that he wears, I find that many of them are at this very instant, in vogue. Like... literally. Everything!

Don't believe me? I'll prove it:

From head to toe:

• Oversized glasses: Below, Kelis in a tortise-shell pair.
  
  
• Varsity Cardigan: $169.00 from Rugby.com
  
  
• Suspenders: $195.00 (Really?) from Ralph Lauren (oh, that's why) Online.
• Striped Polo (or Lumberjack Shirts, as he was prone to wear- check here and here): $160.00 from Saks
  
  
  
• High Waisted Pants:
  
  
• Showing your Socks: from the Thom Browne Spring show.
  
  
• Wingtipped Loafers (Gucci, $476.00 on Bluefly.com)

So, in conclusion: Steve Urkel was not actually a dork, but an awkward fashionista way ahead of his time.

Via NOTCOT.

This dude up here is the host of The Pickup Artist* on VH1.

I don't understand how anyone could possibly ever let themselves be had by someone in that hat.

*The Pickup Artist is that show on VH1 where the guy above shows other men how to pick up women. Since when has a guy in a hat like that gotten laid? When? When! And don't say Tommy Lee, cause he has something else working for him.

I am, admittedly, going through a bit of job stress lately. Hopefully no one with a big mouth who works at my 9-5 will read this and go blabbing, but I'm sort of at the point where I don't rightfully care anymore I guess... As Wanda Sykes would say,

“I love getting older, because the older I get, the less I care. The words ‘I don’t give a fuck’ just fly out of my mouth. And if I’m not saying it, I’m thinking it.”

Naturally, this has affected my drive to post as often as I would like. And for the (one, two?) readers of my blog, I apologize. Now on to bigger, happier things...

Above you see a couple of screenshots from book cover designer Darren Haggar's website. So simple, yet to the point. He really lets the work shine with a simple drop shadow on white. Check out his other work too, it's all so good.

I did a drawing for Civilian Art Projects here in DC for a Barack Obama benefit. It's the largest drawing I've done to date at nearly 4 and a half feet square.

© Joseph Lamour 2008. If you would like to post this, please let me know. Thanks!

Me: Bonnie Raitt has come up once every day for the last four days
Me: is that not wierd?
Carin: how so?
Me: Like Monday was talking about how in college when i had a bad breakup i listened "ICan't Make You Love Me" (editor's note: shut up) on repeat all night
Me: and then the Tuesday on the radio it was mentioned she was hosting an event somewhere
Carin: hahah
Me: and then yesterday someone mentioned to me hearing her song on Pandora
Carin: and nessie has it in her away message right now
Me: Yeah! Isn't that wierd!
Carin: There must be love in the air for you...Bonnie Rait style
Me: ... Unless that means I'm getting a redhead in the sack soon I don't like where this is going

This may be 3:30 AM talking, but I decided that I'm going to try for a MacArthur fellowship. Sounds fancy, no? That's cause it is.

I will be entering this a lot. Simply cause it's so easy and a hoot. You should too. I just uploaded a drawing from college, Buh-Caw:
but I plan on doing a tequila related piece or two for it.

This has gotten me thinking about tequila at 10AM. Which I suggest you do often.

I kept forgetting to post this, so, instead of being asleep like I should be at this hour, I'm finally putting it up. Do click on the image to see detail.

This was a hand drawn character taken into Illustrator and traced. Then, I added texture and some other stuff (like her shadow) and ta-da! There she is. I love her dress.

For Liberator Magazine 7.2.

• butternut squash soup
• the warm smell of cinnamon
• hot cider
• wassail, for that matter
• hot toddy, for that matter
• pockets of fireplace scent during a walk
  
• pumpkin cookies
• nutmeg
  
• the prevalence of orange in an outdoor palette
• long sleeves
• jack o' lanterns
• layering
• apple crisp
• the sound of drum brushes being appropriate in music
• light scarves and cardigans
• autumn.
  

So today I was looking for songs by Laura Love on my iPod and I discovered that I have 823 songs with the word, album, or artist including the word "love" in it. Since I never let things concerning my iPod rest, I decided to do a little math.

I have 13,169 songs total. This means if I calculate the percentage ("love" songs divided by all songs) then I get .0643177, or about 6.43%. That's a lot of love, considering everything you could possibly write about. My friend Carly has 1,343 "love" songs and 22,033 (Jesus!) songs total, which makes her love song percentage a pretty solid 6%.

Because I'm at work and bored to death, I decided to go a step further. "Love songs" don't necessarily have to have the word "love" in it, so I compiled a short list of words that are synonyms of love and how many are on my iPod:

• passion- 30 songs
  
• marry+marriage- 7+14=21
  
• heart- 247 (I mean, christ, people- can a brotha get some original lyrics?)
  
• romance- 10
  
• sex (generalizing)- 58
  
• erotic (again, generalizing)- 1 (can you guess which song this is?)

I of course went through and tacked on a "-1" for songs with more than one of these words in it, Frank Sinatra. Accounting for the Minuses, which were -52. So, 823+347-52. That leaves me with a total of 1,118 love related songs- of course, this is only by title, so I guess this would be uncreatively titled love related songs, right?

My iPod thusly has a 8.5% uncreatively titled love related song ratio. What does yours have?

In accordance with Hooray Ray.

These (famous) people were born today:

Harry Connick Jr. (41)
Ariana Richards (29)
Ben Lee (30)
Ludacris (31)
Elephant Man- The Rapper(33)
Richard Ashcroft (37)
Taraji P. Henson (38)
Moby (43)
Virginia Madsen (47)
Elizabeth Daily (46)
Kristy McNichol (46)
Scott Patterson (50)
Amy Madigan (58)
Brian De Palma (68)

Makes you wonder how one can celebrate a birthday today without offending anyone...

Me: I'm thinking of buying a Vivienne Westwood shirt
Carin: a mens top?

Really, people? Am I that gay now that it's not hard to believe I'd wear women's clothing? Although, that dress does look pretty nice on Hong up there...

[Picture from Bryanboy]

I found a blog this morning, we could grow up together, and the blogger's photographs make me want to move back to New York. Being in Manhattan in the summer is one of those rare experiences that is fantastic even if you have no money. Just walking around leaves you with memories as vivid as the image above, even if you don't have a camera.

Me: When life gives you lemons, you paint that shit gold.

Andy: When life gives you lemons, you eat a miracle berry and then eat the lemon
Andy: It is delicious

Loree: omg that new nicholas cage movie... i have no idea what it's about because all I see is his bad toupee

Oh my sister...

I am currently working on one of my laptops which is dually connected to my flat screen monitor and I'm watching TV on my other laptop.

I am officially ridiculous.

Further branding and website theme inspiration through Abduzeedo tutorials. I tried my hand at light painting using part of this tutorial. Pretty nifty.

I have a really frequent habit of getting blogmatized. It's a little better than being dickmatized, but it burns a lot less calories. I've been reading the blog of one Leonidas. Says he,

"I'm 24, from Athens, Greece, currently living in London, UK. I'm interested in intimacy, (male) nudity, sexuality and personal spaces. I only work with film, colour. I also use my sx-70 polaroid a lot."

Anyhow, I find peoples' lives astounding and intruiging (especially other artists and actors), and I've been reading his blog "cover to cover" as it were.

I really dig his photography. And I want to make a shirt like the one above. I'll save my discussions about my fashion aspirations for a future post.

The following is me and four of my friends' reactions to this slighty disturbing story about this guy who wanted to be displayed standing at is funeral. I just thought how it was interesting how differently some of us reacted to it. Click here and here for the story if you dare...

Carly: .....................................this story
Me: that ____________________

Me: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080819/ap_on_fe_st/puerto_rico_standing_wake ____________________

Me: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080819/ap_on_fe_st/puerto_rico_standing_wake
Loree: What is WRONG with people!
Loree: God in heaven
Loree: omg
Loree: My jaw is still... OMG
____________________

Me: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080819/ap_on_fe_st/puerto_rico_standing_wake
Rachel: GREAT IDEA

Very versatile sheer t-shirt from American Apparel. I wouldn't just wear it alone like bachelor number one up there (at least until I get some 6 pack abs), but I think it would be great for layering or wearing under a cardigan. I'm definitely getting one of these, but I cant decide on which color.

I'll probably end up getting all of them, because I am ridiculous.

Remember this? If you don't (you don't) let me refresh: I'm designing wedding invitations for my friend Amelia and her fiancee Joe (not me) and we have gone through months of edits, text changes, mother's changes, more mother's changes, more more mother's changes- and now we're here!

They are inviting around 170 people (all with at least 1 "plus one"- that's a lot of people!) and thusly, I'm hand making around 170 invitations. See, that sounds tough doesn't it. But get this- Each invite has 4 separately cut printed components, printed labels, backing sheets that need to be cut, ribbons that need to be cut, wrists that need to be cut...

It turns out that when I'm done with them I will have cut 170 x 6 components to = 1,020 components in all, 4,080 (or therearounds) slices of the exacto. Crazy!

Anyway, I'm keeping track of how long it takes me so that when I charge another wedding invite client, I know I'm getting my money's worth. So, its really a good thing in the end. And think of the ice breaker I have at the wedding! "Hey, you know the invite you got in the mail that was absolutely gorgeous? Yeah, all me baby. Here's my card."

Some random dude from the t-shirt website, Design by Humans. I'm only posting this cause my exact words when I opened saw him this morning were "I mean damn!"

My coworkers are used to my outbursts, I imagine.

America looks like she's about to cut a bitch. It's beautiful.

From DListed.

I've decided to do this when I feel I'm wearing a cute outfit. That is all.

I have been seeing this cover all over fashion blogs recently and every time I have to pause, cause I just love it so. From Pop Magazine - which can get Agyness Deyn and Naomi Campbell to model for them, but can't hire a web designer to make a website past their myspace page (!?!)- September 2008. My first issue as art director comes out soon, so I have my eyes open extra extra wide.

Ever wonder what it was like to be colorblind? Color + design blog has an interesting article (complete with pictures like this Warhol here) of what 7% of men and 0.4% of women in the US and elsewhere see every day.

That being said, I like the color palette of the color blind. I may even do a piece of art with it.

I bought a bowtie! A real, tie it yourself one too. It's a terrible picture for actually SEEING the bowtie.... I think I need to locate a place in my house that actually supports light, my bedroom is on the bottom floor, and light is sparse. Maybe one day I'll take a picture in the brilliance of day when I wear it out.

I'm definitely wearing it in November, My friend Carly and I are going to go see the Washington National Opera's production of Carmen at the Kennedy Center. Denyce Graves is starring. Apparently she happens to be one of the best opera singers on earth. Awesome.

I have no idea how Fred Astaire found a bowtie for guys with necks as big as his waist, But I want to try this sometime... It most likely would have to be that exact outfit in order to not look ridiculous.

I was watching the silver fox on Regis and Kelly and amongst his favorite shows are:

• Flipping Out
• Project Runway
• Talk Soup
• Living Lohan, and
  
• Denise Richards: Its Complicated,
  which he calls "Denise Richards Colon Its Complicated"
  

Like... I'm not saying he's gay or anything...

I'm just saying I watch the exact same shows, and therefore we should watch them cuddling in bed together. While I apply "Touch of Grey" to his scalp.