I’m not saying a 1930s Agatha Christie murder has taken place here, I’m just saying one should.
Tag: Humor
“Though she be but little she is fierce.”
– William Shakespeare
The other day Jeff was getting dressed and reached for a shirt of the drying rack, while still not too terribly awake. I know this because I came out from brushing my teeth in the bathroom when I heard him laughing to discover he had tried to put on a shirt of mine instead of his own, which apparently are awfully similar in color and pattern. (Personal note: must do something about this because one of the most odious things a couple can do in public is dress alike.)
That’s right. His forearm is the length of my entire arm.
Visuals like this often throw me because I don’t feel particularly short or small most of the the time, even though I know I am. Other recent height issues lately include me buying too much contact solution because I’d thought we’d run out when in fact Jeff had stored it on top of a cabinet out of my line of sight, and him walking into the kitchen and burst out laughing because he found me standing on a counter so as to rifle through items on the top shelf of a cupboard that I could not otherwise reach. Shortness, a never ending source of exasperation on my part and amusement on his.
Where no gods are, spectres rule.
-Novalis
A couple of weekends ago, Jeff and I went to see The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable, a production by Punchdrunk and the National Theatre. It was a very new sort of theatre experience for us but from scope to scale, one of the most ambitious productions I’ve ever seen. Walk with me, kittens. Literally.
First of all, it’s an immersion experience. It’s promenade style theatre so you’re walking around, on your feet the entire time (and performances can last up to three hours). Second of all, you’re supposed to go exploring. Wander through the set, which takes up four floors of an entire building, poke into closets, rifle through papers, open shut doors to see what character or secret passages lurk inside. And lastly, everyone wears masks giving you a sense of anonymity as part of the set, and also the feeling of being a ghoulish sort of voyeur into the scenes you witness.
The play itself is loosely inspired by Georg Büchner’s famously unfinished play Woyzeck, set in a faded Hollywood production studio and the dying town surrounding it where has-beens and wannabes mingle together either waiting for their second chance or big break. There are two main plotlines both involving infidelity and the descent into madness. But, and this is the most interesting part, there are other storylines that intersect and weave throughout the main ones. Wearing your mask, you must follow the characters you wish to throughout their plot to understand what’s going on. All the while, though, you’re crisscrossing other characters, other plotlines and getting hints of other stories. It’s possible to mix up the crowd of other witnesses you’re in and end up following a different character entirely from the one you started.
Like not a few of the minds they are portraying, it’s very fractal and disorienting. Much like most people’s everyday experiences, a lot of things are going on around you as a viewer, but you can only focus on one or two of them at a time and get the sense that you’re missing out on a lot of information.
Wisely the production cycles through itself a couple of times, allowing the audience more than one chance to grasp onto a tale and follow it to its conclusion. But it is impossible to follow every character and every plotline in the time allotted, which means you as the audience member have to decide. The feeling is very similar to those choose-your-own-adventure books for children, but all grown up, adult and darker.
A shabby sort of town, a movie lot, a trailerpark, nightclubs for the beautiful people and honkytonks for the less so, a church, the woods, a cinema, doctors’ offices are all laid out in such a way that if you follow a character, the layout blends together and creates a plot. But if you don’t you’ll find yourself lost and turned around almost immediately. Watch the trailer below to get some idea of the set and creative. The whole thing is a labyrinth fearfully and wonderfully made, I cannot imagine the time it took to coordinate a dozen storylines simultaneous over multiple building stories, multiple sets, and interacting with one another.
For example, at one point one woman looks in a mirror and is clearly contemplating whether she should go through with her affair. The mirror fades to partial transparency and the audience can clearly see that the reflection is not her but her husband. Because there is no “offstage,” the husband’s storyline is proceeding with its own audience at the same time; he’s in a doctor’s office looking at those one-way mirrors, his mental state beginning to deteriorate and hallucinating his wife. Those sorts of integrations run throughout the production. And yet somehow, every audience member ends up at the finale in the same place at the same time. I seriously want to shake the hand of the person who blocked this thing because I have no idea how they did it.
As theatre goes there are times it stumbles – sometimes you can’t even hear the actors speaking because you’re too far away from them, and other technical concerns – but as an immersion experience goes it’s absolutely stellar. It’s intimate, closeup, and deeply personal. Audience members jockey for position to follow and get best views to the storylines, and in the end (as both the main plots end in murder) you’re left very aware of your own voyeurism.
“You gotta have style. It helps you get down the stairs. It helps you get up in the morning. It’s a way of life. Without it, you’re nobody. I’m not talking about lots of clothes.”
– Diana Vreeland
For better or worse, we live in the day and age that we do, so there is really only one way to tell this story, kittens, and that is through the medium of gifs. Specifically of one of my favorite fun, feel good movies about working for a magazine: The Devil Wears Prada.
Because for being absolutely NOTHING like the the world portrayed in the film, I found some pretty hilarious moments of parallel that kept me laughing.
For example, the time I actually took a phone call from…Dolce and Gabbana.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.
First of all, most magazines – even the large glossies are not run by masses and masses of people. Most of the teams are smaller, about half a dozen permanent staff bolstered by interns, work experience people like me, and members of the wider company who work with departments like legal and HR (plus, of course, an ever rotating of freelancers who work for themselves away from office eyes, mostly). Which means, forget any ideas you have about people lazing and swanning about admiring their own beauty and calling each other, “Dahling!” These people are busy! At any given point the team at the area my desk is in is writing, paying writers, uploading fresh content to the website several times a day, verifying stories and photos months in advance, coordinating copy between the printing magazine and various media platforms, keeping up with more social media than the mind can comfortably conceive.
People doing work experience typically only get a week – I was extremely lucky and got two – but it took me a couple of days to find my footing in the office. Because the main teams are small and well organized teams, they are also fairly close knit. Most of what I did for those two days was sorting mail and doing errand runs including…
Coffee runs! Which, exactly opposite of running errands for the magnificent Ms. Priestly, was not at all scary or difficult and was always rewarded with a thank you.
Regardless of the niceness, I admit, I was intimidated. Writing has always been the plan for me but (as longtime readers and loyal minions know), it’s been a dream fought hard for and also supported in times of great stress or trial – looking at you, Great Recession – by strokes of good timing, unanticipated opportunity, and straight up good fortune. So there I was, an eager but admittedly puny freelancer surrounded by an office full of people who have “made it.” Several members of the team have written books, most have dozens and dozens of articles under their belts, all are talented and have achieved a level of recognition for it.
After my first couple of awkward days settled down, the teammates I worked with seemed to realize I absolutely meant it when I said I was happy to help in any way because I really wanted to contribute and learn. At first one or two asked me, a bit hesitantly, to transcribe some interviews for them. These are time consuming and painstaking jobs that are not always popular – however I have nearly five years of transcribing crime investigations, and now was being offered a chance to do interviews with authors, celebrities, and politicians. It was a joy, they were wonderfully interesting! Not only that but these practiced fingers can fly. Word got around quickly and I did probably half a dozen transcription jobs.
I also was stretched into new areas, like sourcing samples of items for upcoming reviews or features, researching and developing lines of questioning for high profile interviews, and even contributing some online content! All of these were new and a bit intimidating, but like almost everything else in life, once I’d tried it, it wasn’t nearly as difficult or as scary as I worked myself into fearing it was.
When learning, my main goal was to avoid this sort of reaction when I had to put that learning into practice. I’m happy to say that as far as I can tell, I may have been found inexperienced in some things, but no one seemed to think I was an idiot or incapable when I did the work anyway.
British fashion is legendarily free of the rules and conventions some other countries take seriously. Again, banish the image of a woman swanning around in couture. The girls I worked with each looked comfortable, individual, and unique and they wore every combination you could think of from beat up boots to high end. It was a stylish eye opener to see them in action.
Yes, there is some kind of minor crisis every day.
The only really hard thing? The Tube Strike. It was awful, I’ve already whined about it, let’s move on and bust some myths!
Myth busted: magazine people are catty. The features team (which I worked under directly) and Editor-in-Chief are all extremely friendly, and no, I’m not just saying that. I pitched ideas to several people, including the features editor who took the time to sit down with me one-on-one to discuss them (one especially looks promising!), and then gave me a ton of advice for building my freelancing career in general and in London in particular. She was a fount of information and encouragement!
This wasn’t a one-off thing, the entire office is incredibly friendly and willing to answer questions. I also got to chat to several of the interns who confirmed for me that the Red office is extremely pleasant to work for. I think this goes back to the reality that the magazine world is much smaller than people realize – not only are most of the people I met and heard of friends and respected colleagues, it doesn’t pay to be a jerk and people out for themselves at the expense of their team don’t get far.
Myth busted: the makeover montage. I enjoy fashion, but I don’t cover it as a living (even though I’d like the chance to do so for at least one assignment in my career, because it clearly can be fun if the awesome fashion team in action I saw was any indication). But forget shopping in the fashion closet for your own makeover, all of those items are on loan, are meticulously tagged and documented, and in almost all cases end up going straight back where they came from. Sorry for killing your dreams.
Ditto accessories. Which isn’t to say I didn’t admire the racks of gorgeous things and enjoy getting to see them months ahead of the curve. I’m snobby enough to like feeling exclusive and special like that.
Myth busted: unhealthy lifestyles. Sorry to the catty among you, these people eat healthy and regularly – trust me, I picked up their sandwiches. Not only that they all seemed to have found and individual lifestyle plan that worked for them, and I saw every body type and shape represented in the office.
Summation? It was great fun, a good opportunity, I learned much and got great contacts. I’m happy as a clam about getting the chance to do it, and hopefully I’ll do something similar again the future. Anyone looking for work as a writer would do well to spend a week working at such an office to learn this much mythologized but often inaccurately portrayed side of the industry: it’s hard work, it’s a valuable perspective, and it’s totally eye-opening.
“Vogue always did stand for people’s lives. I mean, a new dress doesn’t get you anywhere; it’s the life you’re living in the dress, and the sort of life you had lived before, and what you will do in it later.”
– Diana Vreeland
My last day at Red, and it’s been an absolute blast – I have a fun post for you coming on Monday about my adventures, never fear. In the meantime I’m finishing up my projects and enjoying the office atmosphere as London Fashion Week kick off today, the BAFTA’s prep starts as well, and other things converge into a massive swarm of work frenzy. Of all the days to wind up a work experience, this is a good one. Here are your links, tell me what you’re up to this weekend!
First of all, it’s Valentines Day – do something lovely with people you like. And if you’re in Florida and you need a last minute reservation, got you covered.
Someone has taken one of my favorite things Ira Glass has ever said and turned it into this. Thoughts for all of us.
One of my London friends, freelance graphic artist Teri, routinely puts out some seriously charming freebies on her site. Her most recent a Spring-y but modern graphic wallpaper is gorgeous.
Were I an heiress, perhaps one of those fabulous types portrayed by the cinema in the 30s, I’d definitely need something (that was not a servant) to hold my gloves from time to time. This would do nicely.
This would make a gorgeous, alternative wedding dress.
Blog find of the week, tales of a woman selling theatre tickets in the West End. I’m pretty sure we should be friends in real life.
Some of the world’s most beautiful libraries.
If you want to see our particular foundational drippings in the primordial soup we all started as, Emily Graslie (my STEM lady crush) of The Brain Scoop has got you covered.
The pinnacle of porcine fabulousness is getting hitched in Vivienne Westwood – working at a magazine leads one to discover the oddest headlines.
The NFL may soon draft it’s first openly gay player, this newscaster hits the nail on the head discussing it and any “controversy” surrounding it. Bravo.
Here’s one to chew on: American media rolling in the gleeful angstfest of complaining about conditions in Sochi might say more about them and betray our own privilege more than it embarrasses Russia. Dirty water, unsafe conditions, unreliable transportation…that’s not entertainment, that’s a large portion of the human race’s reality.
Kid employes Game Theory in Jeopardy. Fascinating!
Turns out, having a “good side,” is a real thing. It’s amazing the amount of differences in the sides of our faces.
“Time for something sweet.”
– Winnie-the-Pooh
After our excellent brunch, Jeff and I spent the morning wandering through Soho. He was inevitably hungry merely two hours after we ate and expressed a desire for that recent acquaintance of ours, a cronut.
We’ve become “those food trend” people, ugh.
Anyway, the internets informed us that cronuts were to be had at my new favorite coffee joint.
Wild and Wood is a fun little place, all the seating comes from churches, mostly in the form of old pews which I think is fantastic, and most of all it’s tiny! If you go to the last picture of the gallery on the site’s homepage, you are looking at basically the entire shop. In other words, it’s almost a dead ringer for what most coffee houses and small businesses have looked like throughout human history in general and British history in particular.
But what I loved most about the bijou bistro?
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“And now leave me in peace for a bit! I don’t want to answer a string of questions while I am eating. I want to think!”
“Good Heavens!” said Pippin. “At breakfast?”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Last week was busy for both of us. Between days in the magazine office and nights spent freelancing for me, and long hours for him as busy season gathers force – all of which interspersed with some truly heinous days of commuting due to strike action on the part of Tube workers (I spent 10 of a 48 hour period commuting by foot and only occasionally bus) – we needed some indulgence on the weekend. And since we were being terribly grown up with grown up problems like commuting, a grownup weekend indulgence like brunch seemed the very thing.
There is something very adult about having brunch, as opposed to breakfast. Anybody can stumble blearily to the cupboard of a morning and slosh some cereal and milk into a bowl. But brunch, at least brunch in the more fashionable areas of London, requires effort, kittens.
I’d been hearing mouthwatering things about Jackson and Rye in Soho so last week I made a reservation for the weekend and Jeff and I trotted off that morning to enjoy ourselves on an uncharacteristically bright winter day. My initial desire to dine there was due to a pretty delectable sounding description of their buttermilk friend chicken sandwich, but the only time I could get us in was 10am. Fried food might be okay in Jeff’s book at that our of the morning, but it’s definitely an abomination in mine. I got a delicious eggs, potato, and fancy vegetable breakfast while Jeff threw himself on the sword of the aforementioned chicken – a great hardship for him, I’m sure – so I could at least taste it in between munches of grilled sourdough toast smothered in avocado.
Lest you think I’m dwelling too much on this, I was incredibly smug because historically Jeff tends to always choose better food than me when we go out to eat. Almost inevitably the dishes he chooses are better presented and tastier than my selections, which irks me greatly. For once at least, I won brunch. It was delicious – Britain has converted me to slightly softer cooked eggs and I haven’t looked back.
We’ll be going back because we quite liked it; I still want to try the Avocado Eggs Benedict (I really love avocados but finding decent ones it’s nigh impossible thus far) and because it felt really nice to “do brunch,” eating nice food in a fun place, leisurely people watching, and chatting about our further weekend plans (spoiler, one of the most interesting theatre experiences I’ve had in a long time). Very responsible and far more put together than many of our usual weekend morning routines. I wouldn’t want to do it every weekend, cereal and milk is frankly sometimes just what I need, but as an occasional treat I think it sounds quite nice. Minions are welcome to join us.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
– Oscar Wilde
I’m pretty sure this will be a continuing feature (my love of British placards and signage being well established).
I’m beyond ready for Game of Thrones to be back – as Kerry, once put it, you can tell a lot about a person by who you think should rule Westeros. Your answers to that immortal question in the comments, please. This guy also looks about as cheerful as Kit Harrington does in character – aka, miserable.
The eventual title of my autobiography, I’ve decided.
One of my favorite pubs every for reasons that will become more clear in a later post.
I haven’t investigated this claim as deeply as the Not-Sir-Christopher-Wren-Or-Queen-Catharine-of-Aragon House. But I will say I have seen more than one “oldest pub/restaurant/licensed premises in London” sign in my time.
Self explanatory. (Or if not, a landmark of a restaurant that had to close in October of last year, but petitions were got up to keep it opening and functioning because it’s a Soho mainstay. Also, the name is cheeky, because it’s Soho.)
“Do you just constantly have your own little side adventures?”
“Yep.”
– Troy and Abed, NBC’s Community
Jeff likes to tease me that I stumble across random historical and cultural things by mistake. He calls it, “leading him into wardrobes,” which I take to be a high compliment. But some of these adventures take the most pleasant of odd turns. Take for instance this charming little house nestled into a quiet spot near Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames.
Exactly the sort of historical house I’d love to buy if I had pots of money. It had caught my eye before on many of our Thames strolls, but one evening I decided to wander closer (deaf to the dire warning of Jeff, who said I’d be arrested or at least scolded for venturing onto private property). Which is when I caught site of the stone inscription:
Which, if squinting isn’t a help, reads, “Here lived Sir Christopher Wren during the building of St Paul’s cathedral. Here also, in 1502, Catherine Infanta of Castile and Aragon, afterwards first queen of Henry VIII, took shelter on her first landing in London.”
Which already would have been cool if it was true, but is even more cool since it’s a pack of lies!
A little historical digging, starting on the internets and confirmed in some more official records, leads you down the most glorious, London-y-est, twisty, and complex turns. First of all, the house on the site wasn’t built until 1710 which was the year St. Paul’s was completed – making it pretty hard for Wren to have lived there while he was building and totally impossible for the long suffering Catherine of Aragon to have stopped by at all.
To be fair, Wren did live up the road a few houses, but not at this particular bankside address. But in any event this placard (which as it turns out is a recreation of an earlier one that has disappeared) seems to have originated on a nearby building – which historians are unable to determine was or was not the site of Wren’s house. When the building was demolished, an intrepid local salvaged Placard 2.0 and hoisted it onto his own house.
In the final twist, this area of London was bombed heavily during WWII and was considered to be a less desirable part of town in general (I’ve mentioned before that we live in a former Dickensian slum, yes?) So after the war the powers that be were thinking of ways to improve the neighborhood. Postwar, and currently this usually meant bulldozing the damaged history bits and putting up new developments…
But!
The placard ensconced in the stone made them wary that they might be tearing down a culturally relevant site. And though sometimes weighed down by bureaucracy, the Brits usually bow to their own history.
Thus this Stuart era house – where Christopher Wren did NOT live, and Catherine of Aragon did not break her journey – stands. Impervious to historical accuracy, Hitler, and planning councils!
“When I was 16, I started publishing all kinds of things in school magazines.”
– Margaret Atwood
– Margaret Atwood
I am waist deep in transcriptions of interviews no one will see for months yet and the sense of intrigue is heady. But it’s also time consuming. Here are your links, kittens, I’ll have a full report of week one later in the weekend!
Pearl clutchers avoid, though you’re missing out on some grade A humor. Look, I’m as excited about the next series of Game of Thrones as anybody, but really, guys!? (It must be said, the last line slays me. And there’s someone for everyone, so let’s all hope they found happiness.)
Puppies! (I have really bad puppy lust again, you guys…)
Is it weird I want to go to this?
Need a last minute Vday gift for a ladyfriend? I heartily endorse these.
The Olympics have arrived, here’s a rundown of the athletes representing their countries alone.
More Olympic goodness, here are some events that no longer make the roster. Two words: ski ballet.
Woody Allen, rape culture, and victim blaming/shaming. Something to ponder when thinking honestly about crime (particularly abusive and sexual) and who we tend to give the benefit of the doubt to in our culture.
Why yes, this is indeed be necessary to my happiness.
Facebook is 10 years old this week – time to rethink your life?
Now that you know someone who (tangentially and not really at all) has some experience working with Fashion (capital F, note), it would be a shocking embarrassment for either of us to mispronounce major labels.
My first week at Red Magazine was great fun. I got to meet Alex Steadman of The Frugality, a site I quite like, and just diagonally across from my work station is Pip McCormac, whose book is coming out this spring – and looks gorgeous! It’s a bit intimidating working with a posse of such impressive people, but I’m enjoying it immensely.
Small Dog Syndrome 