new clothes

thanks to tim gunn's book, i'm unhinging my closets and editing my wardrobe, one item at a time. after i dropped off the second huge bag of clothes to the salvation army, i knew that i was making progress. i need new basics but i can't afford to get them all at once, so today i splurged at american apparel. for some strange reason, i had always made a point of not buying anything there. probably because most of their ads featured scantily dressed girls with their legs splayed apart, and soft-core porn just isn't my thing. someone told me that they underpay their workers or something. the guy who owns it was brought up on charges of sexual harrassment. evidently, he likes to masturbate while conducting interviews. rumors, fact and fiction. who cares? they're doing a brisk business. but still.

i passed by the american apparel store in the lower east side with my friend and his buddy todd the merman once. all the salesgirls were wearing micromini dresses or hot pants that exposed their bums, with skimpy semi-see-through tops. one of them was spinning records. "let's go shop in there," todd the merman said, and he headed inside before my friend and i could reply. i wasn't blown away by their selection like todd seemed to be. maybe it was the fluorescent lights but i remember thinking that there was something drab about clothes that were that colorful. it's like that store units from the 80s, but urbanized -- garanimals for the tragically hip. both todd and i left emptyhanded. my friend thought the whole thing was funny. he thinks american apparel is a cult. (he's probably right.)

jump cut to me, feeling the pinch of the cold and realizing that i'd tossed out all the worn out leggings i had. while surfing the net for a high-waisted version, i fell onto the american apparel website and i found what i was looking for in short order. was it any good? it was cheap enough for me to take a risk. i called first to make sure that the particular store location had everything i wanted -- i can't stand wasting time in a store when i know what i want -- and that was pretty much it.

what did i get? really great thigh high socks. high waisted leggings. high waisted shorts. a tube dress that's going to be a terrific long skirt. all of that, for a grand total of $99. not bad. and here's the kicker: everything fits remarkably well.

i care about style. style has nothing to do with fashion. i pick and choose certain pieces so i can look like my own unique self when i get dressed. whatever works, you know?

next: h&m for a black 3/4 sleeve cardigan. i tossed my worn-out ratty ones -- and after all, it is a basic.

a happy birthday, every day

Once upon a time when i lived deep in the heart of the sovereign state of Texas and sang with an outfit called Ro-Tel and the Hot Tomatoes, we'd do all the balls -- The Zoo Ball, The Governor's Ball, The White Ball, to name a few -- and quite often, private parties for such regional upper crust as the Bass brothers and H. Ross Perot. Oh, the stories I could tell, about the food and the instant just-add-money opulence and the tacky gowns and what the nouveau riche turned into when they got ripped and of course, what was said and done to me, once things really got going. Such swank! Such decadence! Such bad taste!

While playing a country club in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area (boy howdy, we did a lot of parties in that area -- could have been Plano, could have been anywhere), I distinctly recall meeting a lovely society matron (fourth generation oil baroness, to be exact) who turned me on to Chinese herbology, Creme de la Mer, and the joys of fried ice cream inside of one 15 minute conversation. She was what can only be described as a panic and a caution -- the kind of woman that never calls anyone by their actual name and yet everyone genuinely loves her for it. While we chatted, she called me "honeydip" which (for those of you keeping score at home) is a kind of donut. Bizarrely enough, it's what my brother Emmett sometimes called me when we would have our most vicious fights. Nicknames that are food items are actually a very Southern thing to do. A Yankee would never talk like that. At least, not any of the Yankees I've ever met.

So there we were at some art gallery gala dinner soiree function brou-ha-ha, making conversation. And I'm looking around, I'm looking at all the people and I'm taking it all in, you know? I'm thinking things like, when I have money, no one's gonna know it and other stuff too, like when i'm loaded, i'm going to be the healthiest person on the planet. or else why bother if you're just going to keel over from a massive coronary before you really enjoy any of it? yeah. stuff like that. heh.

Suddenly, we were talking to each other. She said my singing was really, really real and then our chat took off from there.

In retrospect, I realize why we had somehow gravitated towards each other. This old lady and I had a lot in common. She didn't smoke. She didn't drink. She excercised, ate sensibly and in her words, "avoided the sun like it was the shadow of Death." Well, heck. So did I. I had to admit -- she was aging well for a blonde. She also saw a doctor and dentist regularly. And she loooooooooooooooved Jesus. (Check, check and check.) She had more money than she'd ever spend so she decided to give it away, judiciously and carefully and intelligently. Philanthropy! What a concept. I liked that, too.

Aside from the other things she told me about, she mentioned something that she did every year that piqued my interest: she celebrated her birthday not just for that particular day but the entire month that she was born. I loved the idea of that -- lavishing goodies on myself, secretly reveling in my own private funtime, whether it was my birthday or not. It seemed to epitomize my idea of luxury: having the expansiveness to be good to yourself spontaneously, for example. Even if that meant something as simple as taking a walk through the park and enjoying the flora and fauna instead of hopping on the crowded subway like everybody else.

Pretty soon, I found myself enjoying my birthday for the entire month of June. I bought myself that book I'd wanted for so long. I took a day trip to the beach by myself. I skipped that slice of pizza for dinner and had wild salmon instead. And then the next thing I knew, a month stretched itself into a year. And every day became my birthday. I woke up, happy and grateful to be alive and actually excited about staying in bed and playing guitar all day or getting out of bed and going to work all day or whatever. I would do little things for myself all the time and when I did, I would think, well -- it is my birthday. and that would be that.

Well. My Texas time was once upon a time ago. I still don't drink alcohol or smoke anything. I still drink my daily shot of wheatgrass and pour sunblock lotion (with an spf of 30, no less!) all over myself, even on cloudy days. I still go to church every Sunday. Even when I was broke and at my absolute lowest, I was still happy as a lark because my skin was radiant, I was making cool art and I was a size 4. But having a birthday every day has given me a much needed way to spoil myself a little, in the most ordinary moments of my nyc life. Because those ordinary moments, that's life. that's what we live through. Really, when you stop to think about it, that's when we should be happiest. And usually, that's when we're not.

Happiness is a choice, after all. Hm. Maybe all this time I was just choosing to be happy...

happy birthday, daddy

my father turned 90 on saturday, march 24th. there was a formal black tie party in his honor in ATL. complete with a four course meal, old family friends, footage from family reunions past, and of course pictures. ramon and i serenaded him. nothing elaborate. just a few standards that he would have heard as a young man in the 2os and 30s. i think a lot of my not-so-distant family members were genuinely surprised that i could actually sing. at the time, i was more amused by that than annoyed but it was definitely a mixture of both.

my father grew up in the deep south -- south Georgia to be exact. interestingly enough, he made the first wave of the great migration north in the 20s and eventually the first migration south in the 70s. i don't know very many people who can make that claim.

i don't even want to think about the trouble he's seen. but believe it or not, sometimes he actually tells us about it.

just so you know that he's not hobbling around in a diaper with a drool cup around his neck and talking to himself: here he is the next morning after breakfast on his excercise bike.



the day before i got to ATL, we had this long wierd argument about debt and how he thinks it's better to pay things off over time than all at once, in one lump sum. i mean, really. he practically drew a flow chart for me over the phone. not that i needed one. i had to keep reminding myself that he was about to turn 90. he sounded like his usual self. remembers absolutely everything. still thinking everything through, still scheming. and even though he's calmed down a lot since i got work, he's still arguing with me about my future, my finances.

that's his job, i suppose. God knows he's good at it.

i love this restaurant!

abdul closes up "a bistro"...
Originally uploaded by queenesther.

this is the coolest restaurant in brooklyn and no one knows it. not yet, anyway. it's called "a bistro" and it's almost at the corner of myrtle and carlton in ft. greene. it's cassandra and abdul's place. he cooks the food, she serves it. what a team. after they'd been together for awhile, he told her that he wanted to be a chef -- so they rolled up their sleeves collectively, made a plan of action for attending cooking school and working in quite a few gourmet restaurants inbetween and here they are with their own place. ain't married life great? if it's one thing i love, it's a strong partnership. i'm really proud of them.

what's so cool about it?

whenever i'm there, i feel so at home. it's everything -- the curtains at the window, how small and intimate the space is, all of the attention to detail. it's a very relaxed atmosphere. everyone is enjoying the food and each other, even though they're all strangers. not surprisingly, there are quite a few regulars. the food is absolutely spectactular.

they've only been open for about six months or so but the neighborhood seems to be catching on. i try to go there once a week but eventually i'm sure there'll be a new york times review and i won't be able to get in at all.

garland had his birthday party here a few months ago and everything was so good, i had to come back. i want to support my friends when they do things but this is different. there's no obligation here. it's just me, treating their kitchen like it's an extention of my own. it's just that good.

that's the real reason why i work out: so i can eat with relative abandon.