Sewing

I grew up in a family of women who sewed. Somehow I didn't get that gene. I have an inexpensive sewing machine that I use for light repairs. That's all some people need. A place to put your sewing machine so you can hem some pants, sew on a button, repair a torn seam, etc. Some women do a little more and they need a better spot. They do easy sewing crafts like making pillows or tote bags, they do their repairs, make aprons, etc. Then there are to people who are into sewing heavily. They need a whole room. These people (male and female) sew their own clothes, do quilting, make sewing crafts, and are able to do just about everything! I really envy those people.

As I said, my Mom, Grandmothers, aunts all sewed. As a child I didn't appreciate their craft. Wearing handmade clothes were considered an embarrassment like we couldn't afford to buy store-bought clothes. About the time I started to appreciate it, was about the time that they stopped sewing. My mother did make me an Easter dress when I was 17. I got to pick out the material and pattern. I think that was the last time she sewed. I begged my Grandmother to sew me a blouse made from a vintage pattern she had. She did but it was a little too small so I didn't get to wear it. I think I still have it. My Aunt Ruth used to sew all the time. She taughter her daughters and they made their own wedding dresses and tousseaus. When we would visit her in the summer, some of that time was spent in her sewing room. She smoked and drank coffee all the time and she whistled while she worked. So I have these memories of the smell of cigarette smoke, coffee, the hum of the sewing machine and her whistling under her breath. We would stay in the sewing room with her and play.

She was the only one I remember having a dedicated sewing room. But she would keep moving it around. She had it in her basement, in an unfinished room upstairs or even in her outbuilding. I guess moving it around helped her to keep it organized. But the other women in my family would use the dining room table to sew. And they all only had 1 sewing machine.

I started looking for ideas for sewing rooms, sewing areas, organizing sewing notions, etc. I did a Google search on these subjects and came up with a lot of wonderful photos. I appreciate all the work they put into their sewing/craft rooms and then sharing the photos with all of us. I tried to pick photos that show the full range from just a sewing corner, a sewing closet, all the way up to full sewing rooms. I tried to get a good mix of inexpensive to expensive ideas. If you sew a lot you need to have a large table for laying out your fabric and cutting out the patterns. You also need a place to iron as you iron seams a lot. You also need good light. I did notice that most of the serious seamstresses have more than one sewing machine. That surprised me because, as I said, my family were heavy seamstresses but they made do with one sewing machine and their dining room table. You also need to consider how to organize and store your patterns, fabric and sewing notions. Keep in mind, that you can let your local fabric store be your warehouse. You don't always have to store tons of fabric at home.

So here is what I found on the Internet. I wasn't necessarily looking for beauty, although I found some beauties, but clean, organized, functioning.





























Notice this is a vintage suitcase filled with sewing notions. I use vintage suitcases as well.




An old jewelry box will organize notions. Fishing tackle boxes work that way too.








This is a beautiful and huge sewing room!








A nice sewing cabinet. I've come across sewing cabinets at thrift stores.




















Shabby chic charm


I like this chalk board! What a great place to make some notes, a shopping list, draw a design, brain storm.


Dust free fabric storage. This is functional and saved the fabric from dust. But I feel sorry for the seamstress when she needs some fabric from the top or bottom of the pile of plastic storage.








This is a store, but I wanted to show you how they stored their ribbon.






I like this sewing room because the dog has center stage!


Now this one is just plain beautiful!
















A sewing area in the laundry room.














Notice the wrought iron planter filled with bits of lace!




















organzing patterns






















Sewing room in walk-in closet


Really nice space

Channeling Your Inner Wile E. Coyote

I'm sure that you will be shocked, simply shocked, to learn that the festivities described here today had alcohol involved. Yep. I swear. Adventures with alcohol. Prepare to be shocked. I hope you're sitting down.

The details of our story today come from the fine folks over at something called Click on Detroit. It would seem that "An Oakland County man was injured when a sledding stunt went wrong." Now, I'm sure you're thinking that something like that, in and of itself, isn't all that spectacular. When when you read about exactly what the "stunt" that this 62-year (Yes! 62!) old and old enough to know better man was trying to pull off, then you might be more impressed. Here's a hint: It would appear that he was trying to channel is inner Wile E. Coyote.

See, the moron in question here had apparently "...held a sledding party" at his home in Independence Township, Michigan last week. Due to factors which I'm sure had absolutely nothing to do with the amount of alcohol that this guy had consumed, he decided that his sledding party needed to be turned up a notch or two. It would seem that he deemed gravity to be insufficient to play a substantial role in his sledding frivolities so "...he fashioned a device using a motorcycle muffler, a piece of pipe, gunpowder, match heads and gasoline." This can't end well. Hilarious, yes. Well, no.

So, once he got done with all of the fashioning of said roadrunner catching apparatus, he then "...strapped the device on his back, donned a makeshift helmet and got on a sled (and asked) someone to light a wick attached to the device." Are you picturing this? Because I certainly am. I'm guessing that the "makeshift helmet" that was mentioned is probably a 5-gallon paint bucket. I really appreciate that, in true Wile E. Coyote fashion, there was a wick involved. Kudos to you, sir. Kudos indeed.

Now, at this point, he doesn't know if he's going to catch the roadrunner or not, but I'm sure he was very hopeful. That is, until (surprisingly) part of the way down the hill "...the device exploded (shocking, I know!), resulting in second-degree burns to the victim's face. One of his eyes was damaged." Presumedly, after the explosion, he held up a sign that said "YIKES!"

Both ACME and Charles Darwin were unavailable for comment.

Illinois votes + Amazon vs. Macmillan + Tissue as commodity + Golden Girls grow gays

Today's Primary Election Day in Illinois, and a number of key posts are on the ballot, from the US Senate seat, formerly occupied by President Barack Obama and now by his notorious successor, Roland Burris, to the Governors' seat, whose previous recent occupants include a convicted felon (George Ryan) and a man (Rod Blagojevich) who tried to sell the just-mentioned Senate seat to the highest bidder, was impeached by the state legislature, and will soon appear on a TV reality show, to various municipal and local positions, including one that almost no one outside of the state knows about but which has been a rag of contention for years, the powerful Cook County Board President's office. That seat is currently occupied by Todd Stroger, whose father suffered a massive stroke, thereby handing the gig to his son.

Since I vote in New Jersey, I'm a spectator in all of this, but I have to say that while I was somewhat frustrated with the lackluster options in the New Jersey elections that put Rovian Republican Chris Christie in office, I would feel even more disillusioned if I had to choose from the rogues' and hacks' gallery vying for these various Illinois seats. Let's just take the US Senate seat. On the GOP side, the leader is Mark Kirk, a sometimes moderate (by Midwestern standards), sometimes right-wing Congressman representing Chicago's wealth North Shore. Kirk was outed as gay, via a really sleazy media-leaked rumor, by one of his GOP opponents, a very nasty operator named Andy Martin, who has zero chance of winning. Facing almost no real competition Kirk, who ha moved politically to the right to secure the nomination, will very likely win the GOP nomination, where he'll face young, fairly progressive Democratic projected-winner Alexi Giannoulis, the current State Treasurer. (David Hoffmann, the state Inspector General, a former Federal prosecutor, and a truly progressive candidate with a clean (including anti-Daley) record, probably doesn't have a chance, but if he did, he would make the best Senator out of all the candidates.) Ironically enough, Giannoulis's family mint and former employer, Broadway Bank, is in serious financial trouble as a result of its lending policies over the last 8 years. During Giannoulis's tenure as Chief Loan Officer from 2002 to 2006, Broadway Bank jumped heavily into the subprime lending business and other risky banking activities. While Giannoulis has argued that he wasn't really involved in the problems that now place Broadway Bank on the brink, a review of the record belies this. As Treasurer he's done a decent job, particularly in the midst of the current economic calamities, which have hit Illinois, the nation's 6th most populous state, very hard, but his banking tenure, and his refusal to be explicit about his role in it, are troublesome.

On some of the major issues facing Congress, and in particular the Senate, it's clear where these two will land. Kirk has been reciting the GOP's health care initiatives mantras, which will do little to improve the ongoing health care cost crunch or resolve the longer time economic crisis the country faces, while Giannoulis would be a reliable vote for the current Senate health care/insurance reform bill, down to supporting Obama's flipflopped position on taxing higher cost plans, yet he also would probably support a reconciliation bill that included more progressive reforms like a public option. Kirk seems likely to oppose major banking reform, while Giannoulis, whose family firm would be affected by the legislation, probably would back it. On national security, Kirk appears likely to back any administration initiatives that track closely to Bush's, which is to say, most of them, while Giannoulis could very well be a firm supporter of Obama's on many national security initiatives, but also outspoken on ones that progressives have identified as particularly problematic, such as the delayed closure of Guantánamo, the glacial withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and so on. As to whether Giannoulis can defeat Kirk in the general election will come down to the general economic conditions in the state, how well he can appeal to people in the populous, centrist ring counties around Chicago, how vigorously he deflects criticism of his family bank's fiascos, and how much he delineates himself from the Blago-tainted Democratic cast. Kirk's chances will depend upon how much voters across the state are willing to hold their noses and vote for a Republican, people's sense that he would be willing to work with the Democrats and Obama as opposed to being yet another GOP obstructionist, and how many Chicagoans and Chicagoland suburbanites show up for the general election.  The after-effects of the outing and his denial will have little effect at all, because Giannoulis, like Burris, has a strong pro-gay record and wouldn't use Kirk's hypocritical record against him.

And so it goes down the line. The country and state are in sad shape, and many of today's leading candidates appear to offer little in the way of viable solutions for the nation's or state's problems.  There are Green Party candidates running in a lot of these races, and if I could vote here, some of them would get my vote, but I also don't think hardly any of them have a realistic chance to win in the upcoming general election. One candidate has stood out for me: Democrat S. Raja Krishnamoorthi (above right, Huffingtonpost.com) a former Obama campaign employee and current candidate for the Illinois Comptroller position. One of his ad taglines is "Another candidate with a funny name," and his commercials and posters emphasize "RAJA," with the aim of getting people outside Chicagoland to vote for him (he grew up in Peoria, about as middle-American as exists).  Based on his background and record, he appears to be one of the best options Illinois voters will have today.

###

Returning to the publishing tip, one of the most noteworthy issues this week has been the battle between mega-retailer Amazon, the largest online bookseller in the country and proprietor of the Kindle e-reader, and Macmillan (part of the McGraw-Hill conglomerate, I believe), over a pricing dispute. To summarize, Macmillan objected to Amazon's loss-leader pricing of e-books at $9.99, and wanted to sell e-books for more, by moving from a wholeseller model to an agency model. The fact that Apple just debuted its iPad, which represents direct competition to the Kindle, and agreed with the country's five largest publishers (Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster) to sell e-books at a higher $12.99-$14.99 price point, threatened Amazon's power and buttressed Macmillan's complaint, since the publisher would be undercutting themselves by selling books at differing prices on a similar platform. Amazon responded in brutal fashion by severing all purchasing access Macmillan's books, not only removing buy buttons from Macmillan's print books on the Amazon website, but also also cutting Kindle owners' and user's access to Macmillan's texts.  Just like that.

Quoting the Publisher's Lunch site (I don't have login access, but h/t to Lisa M.):

Among the books subject to the greatest potential short-term effect of Amazon's buy-button removal is Andrew Young's just-released THE POLITICIAN, which curiously still ranks at No. 9 on Amazon's bestseller list (and has been between No. 4 and No. 6 today at Barnes and Noble.com). Hilary Mantel's WOLF HALL was at 69 on Amazon last night, falling steadily today and now at No. 128. Atul Gawande's THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO: How to Get Things Right was at 34 last night on Amazon, now at No. 66,--and has risen from 112 up to 86 at BN.com in the same time period. (These numbers change slightly every hour we've been checking them.)

Amazon has now relented, but larger issues remain. What is an equitable price for e-books, which do not require much of the cost of hardcopy books; there's no physical printing or storage or shipping involved, so should they be priced as anywhere near as high as trade paperbacks? How much power and control should any retailer or hardware company like Amazon have over publishers, and should a retailer which is also a hardware maker also be allowed such overwhelming control the means of distribution? Yet on the other hand, if a bookseller is offering a deal that's more financially beneficial to readers, should a publisher be able to trump that?  How should we think and talk about the publishing and distribution systems in light of these dramatic technological changes?  Should the sellers be making the extra profit off these works, as the agency model suggests, or shouldn't that be going to authors, who are responsible for the works themselves--i.e., the content?  And, even more basically, what is an e-book, really?

###

This morning I was given to mull over the deep and historic mistrust many Black Americans, including my own parents and many friends of mine, have had with the medical profession, the government and affiliated private institutions after I read this New York Times story about poor, Black tobacco farmer Henrietta Lacks, who died from aggressive cervical cancer back in the early 1950s. Denise Grady's article discusses a new book, by Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, 2010), which explores what Johns Hopkins Hospital did with her cancerous tissue--her body--after her death, how the ubiquitous HeLa cells developed from that tissue have enabled an array of medical discoveries, and even enriched some of the researchers and corporations using it, though not a dime nor, for years any recognition or thanks went to the Lacks family, which was devastated by the loss of this then young mother and wife. Moreover, this all happened without Mrs. Lacks' or her family's consent, or even knowledge.

The racial, class, and educational gulfs between the Lackses and the doctors and researches enabled this, paralleling other Black Americans' experience with the US medical system. According to the article, hoever, Skloot points out similar situations are still occurring half a century, despite beefed up informed consent laws. Courts have tended to side with the scientists as opposed to patients and the family of the deceased, provoking a new movement for "tissue rights" and greater ethical inquiry into who owns removed bodily tissue even in the face of legally binding agreements, and what happens and who benefits, and at what cost, when that tissue--after surgery or death--represents not just a vital element in invaluable, life-saving research, but a valuable commodity as well.

###

Today's laughter link: Christwire: The Golden Girls: How One TV Show Turned a Generation of American Boys into Homosexuals. Two names: Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan.

Not humorous at all, but a positive sign: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen spoke out strongly today on behalf of repealing the odious "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that has led to the discharges of thousands of valuable military personnel. Unfortunately, we do not need another year of "study." Ask the UK, Israel, and other countries for pointers, and take lessons. Just get it done, and swiftly!

Ideas For Storing and Organizing Your Sewing Thread

I found these ideas on storing your thread by doing a Google image search. Great ideas!

News Navigation Narration

It's been an extremely long day over here. Long, long, long. Anyway, enough about me. Let's get on with the news.

I don't have much to say and the video below pretty much says it all, really. A one Charlie Brooker is apparently a columnist for guardian.co.uk. While I don't typically think of The Guardian as any sort of humorous publication, this Brooker fellow is one funny guy.

The quality which our reporting media continues to strive for is at depths that are lower than most of us could have ever imagined. That is to say, it sucks. It sucks so bad that we're not sure if it can suck any more. But then we realize that it can. But fortunately, there's the wonderful Charlie Brooker to help us navigate through some of those potentially confusing newscasts and understand exactly why it is that we're seeing what it is that's being reported to us. Nice job, Charlie! There might be a glimmer of hope out there yet. Maybe.

Blogging On + On Publishing + Black History Month/Langston Hughes Day (Poem)

Over the last year I've gone through alternating or oscillating waves of planning to end this blog and feeling energized enough to continue it. The paucity of responses, especially since 2007, has only exacerbated my sense that blogging may be a waste of time, though I do enjoy it, and yet, at the same time my "followers" have increased, so I guess things aren't as dismal as I sometimes think.

I know that the rise of other social media--Facebook, where many longtime fellow blogging friends post anything and everything they find of interest; Twitter, where I'm now fully chartered (with about 1,800 or so tweets); YouTube; old standbies like Yahoo!, Hi5, Myspace, and yes, that now hoary gathering space Friendster; more specialized social media spaces; and parallels of these sites--have siphoned off interest from all but the most lively and focused blogs (like Rod 2.0, who's as sharp and hot as a laser always). Also, I acknowledge that my own postings have shifted, from the early art and lit-focused eclecticism to politics, which I know turns (some) readers off, especially if you can get much of the same, often with more in-depth reportage or more interesting slants, elsewhere. Moreover, I'm quite aware, as my few readers also are, that the Law of Diminishing Returns has taken hold here with each successive year (can that also be analogized to entropy?), with fewer posts ever year since 2005. So far in 2010 I've managed to make 22 out of January's 31 minimum daily posts, or achieve about a 70% posting ratio for the month, my highest January total since 2006, which I take as a positive sign, so I think I'll try to hang on for a little longer.

Posting is very difficult during the academic year; whereas I once had a bit of breathing room, things are less free these days, and I'm so often overloaded with classwork (I'll have 2.5 classes this quarter), and other work-related tasks, about which I cannot post at all for obvious reasons, but I do love blogging, so if you're willing to keep dropping in here, I really appreciate it.

===

Speaking of classes, I wanted to share a photo of today's blackboard from my English 392: "The Situation of Writing" class, which is required for all senior-year creative writing major. Today, we were concluding our discussion of the publishing section of the class (once labeled the "Doom & Gloom" unit, things have changed considerably since I began teaching this class), which included reading Jason Epstein's The Book Business: Publishing: Past, Present and Future of Books (W.W. Norton & Co., 2001)* and I thought that as I've done in the past, I'd go over how you publish a book. I do use the computer in my classes (the students are Tweeting each week, and I post most class-related materials to Blackboard regularly), including this one, but I do love turning to the blackboard from time to time. And so it was with this rough flowchart. "A," at the far left, was our fictional writer of "mystery fiction," a genre one of the students suggested; the rest is, I think, self-evident if a bit illegible. If you are unclear about how books have tended to reach to readers, it's yours to review.


*Reggie H. suggested this book, which I hadn't read before considering it for this class; in the past I've tended to teach André Schiffrin's The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read (Verso, 2001), a polemic which turns on a narrative of steady decline, with a direr, more caustic tone, but I thought I'd try something new this year, and Epstein's volume is very informative and useful, even if it also at times is both disturbing (he worked for the CIA, he openly admits) and unguent in his unacknowledged privilege.

===

It's officially Black History Month. I personally like to think of every month as Black or women's or Latino or queer or straight or Asian-American or working-class or immigrant or any possible identification history month, which is to say, all of these identifications should be in play always when we think about this society, its history, our collective and individual pasts, but given the realities in which we live, we still must take a lighthouse approach to guiding people along different paths other than the oblivion-laced mainstream one, which these identitarian-focused months provide. Certainly Black history--the Black history that is part of American history and the histories of the Americas-- remains a mystery to many (black and otherwise) as it always has, despite years of education. The discourse about Haiti's pre-earthquake political and social malaise, and the current lack of media discussion of the dangers of the US's presence there, show that only so much has seeped in over the years.



Interestingly enough, as I think I pointed out back in 2007, the first day of Black History Month coincides with Langston Hughes's (1902-1967) birthday. He is, as I tweeted earlier today, one of my favorite poets, an avatar in the older sense of the word, whose work and life I grow to appreciate more and more the older I get, and I relish any opportunity to post a Langston Hughes poem. So my poem for today is a somewhat messy, overtly political one that is very in keeping with today's news. The innovative form, which collages in the language of advertising (not so unusual today, but striking for the period in which Hughes was writing) and sarcastic tone are hard to miss, as is the fact that New York, and many other cities these days, have many thousands of homeless or near-homeless people struggling to find places to sleep every night, while a parallel world exists in which the luxury described in the poem below barely approaches the ostentation and excess that the ultrarich now regularly enjoy. Including, one imagines, at the Waldorf-Astoria, which, as I need not tell anyone, is now the flagship of a "luxury" hotel and resort chain....

Advertisement For The Waldorf-Astoria

Fine living . . . a la carte?
Come to the Waldorf-Astoria!

LISTEN HUNGRY ONES!
Look! See what Vanity Fair says about the
new Waldorf-Astoria:

"All the luxuries of private home. . . ."
Now, won't that be charming when the last flop-house
has turned you down this winter?
Furthermore:
"It is far beyond anything hitherto attempted in the hotel
world. . . ." It cost twenty-eight million dollars. The fa-
mous Oscar Tschirky is in charge of banqueting.
Alexandre Gastaud is chef. It will be a distinguished
background for society.
So when you've no place else to go, homeless and hungry
ones, choose the Waldorf as a background for your rags--
(Or do you still consider the subway after midnight good
enough?)

ROOMERS
Take a room at the new Waldorf, you down-and-outers--
sleepers in charity's flop-houses where God pulls a
long face, and you have to pray to get a bed.
They serve swell board at the Waldorf-Astoria. Look at the menu, will
you:

GUMBO CREOLE
CRABMEAT IN CASSOLETTE
BOILED BRISKET OF BEEF
SMALL ONIONS IN CREAM
WATERCRESS SALAD
PEACH MELBA

Have luncheon there this afternoon, all you jobless.
Why not?
Dine with some of the men and women who got rich off of
your labor, who clip coupons with clean white fingers
because your hands dug coal, drilled stone, sewed gar-
ments, poured steel to let other people draw dividends
and live easy.
(Or haven't you had enough yet of the soup-lines and the bit-
ter bread of charity?)
Walk through Peacock Alley tonight before dinner, and get
warm, anyway. You've got nothing else to do.

EVICTED FAMILIES
All you families put out in the street:
Apartments in the towers are only $10,000 a year.
(Three rooms and two baths.) Move in there until
times get good, and you can do better. $10,000 and $1.00
are about the same to you, aren't they?
Who cares about money with a wife and kids homeless, and
nobody in the family working? Wouldn't a duplex
high above the street be grand, with a view of the rich-
est city in the world at your nose?
"A lease, if you prefer, or an arrangement terminable at will."

NEGROES
Oh, Lawd. I done forgot Harlem!
Say, you colored folks, hungry a long time in 135th Street——
they got swell music at the Waldorf-Astoria. It sure is a
mighty nice place to shake hips in, too. There's dancing
after supper in a big warm room. It's cold as hell
on Lenox Avenue. All you've had all day is a cup of
coffee. Your pawnshop overcoat's a ragged banner on
your hungry frame. You know, downtown folks are just
crazy about Paul RObeson! Maybe they'll like you, too,
black mob from Harlme. Drop in at the Waldorf this
afternoon for tea. Stay to dinner. Give Park Avenue a
lot of darkie color——free for nothing! Ask the Junior
Leaguers to sing a spiritual for you. They probably
know 'em better than you do——and their lips won't be
so chapped with cold after they step out of their closed
cars in the undercover driveways.
Hallelujah! Undercover driveways!
Ma soul's a witness for de Waldorf-Astoria!
(A thousand nigger section-hands keep the roadbeds smooth,
so investments in railroads pay ladies with diamond
necklaces staring at Sert murals.)
Thank God A-mighty!
(And a million niggers bend their backs on rubber planta-
tions, for rich behinds to ride on thick tires to the
Theatre Guild tonight.)
Ma soul's a witness!
(And here we stand, shivering in the cold, in Harlem.)
Glory be to God——
De Waldorf-Astoria's open!

EVERYBODY
So get proud and rare back; everybody! The new Waldorf-Astoria's
open!
(Special siding for private cars from the railroad yards.)
You ain't been there yet?
(A thousand miles of carpet and a million bathrooms.)
Whats the matter?
You haven't seen the ads in the papers? Didn't you get a card?
Don't you know they specialize in American cooking?
Ankle on down to 49th Street at Park Avenue. Get up
off that subway bench tonight with the evening POST
for cover! Come on out o' that flop-house! Stop shivering
your guts out all day on street corners under the El.
Jesus, ain't you tired yet?

CHRISTMAS CARD
Hail Mary, Mother of God!
the new Christ child of the Revolution's about to be
born.
(Kick hard, red baby, in the bitter womb of the mob.)
Somebody, put an ad in Vanity Fair quick!
Call Oscar of the Waldorf——for Christ's sake!!
It's almost Christmas, and that little girl——turned whore
because her belly was too hungry to stand it anymore——
wants a nice clean bed for the Immaculate Conception.
Listen, Mary, Mother of God, wrap your new born babe in
the red flag of Revolution: the Waldorf-Astoria's the
best manger we've got. For reservations: Telephone EL.
5-3000.

Copyright © 1931, 2009, The Estate of Langston Hughes. All rights reserved.

Here's Hughes's statement on the poem, from The Big Sea: An Autobiography by Langston Hughes (1940):

In the midst of that depression, the Waldorf-Astoria opened. On the way to my friend's home on Park Avenue I frequently passed it, a mighty towering structure looming proud above the street, in a city where thousands were poor and unemployed. So I wrote a poem about it called "Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria," modeled after an ad in Vanity Fair announcing the opening of New York's greatest hotel. (Where no Negroes worked and none were admitted as guests.)

The hotel opened at the very time when people were sleeping on newspapers in doorways, because they had no place to go. But suites in the Waldorf ran into thousands a year, and dinner in the Sert Room was ten dollars! (Negroes, even if they had the money, couldn't eat there. So naturally, I didn't care much for the Waldorf-Astoria.)

They wouldn't be turning Jay-Z or Beyoncé or the President away these days, so I guess we can say that some things have changed.

===

Outside the Anglo world, as our friend Nic P. pointed out, today is a palindrome: 01 - 02 - 2010. Ours came nearly 1 month ago.

Who Wore What to the Grammys

The Grammys were last night. (How come it isn't Grammies? Shouldn't it be Grammies? Maybe. But it's not. It's Grammys. But I digress.) And, as is my tradition with all of these self-congratulatory awards shows, I feel the need to review the fashion that presents itself. And I will say that I was rather disappointed this year. Sure, there's the mockable. That goes without saying with any of these awards shows. But there just wasn't the vast amount of choices that I usually have to gawk over and make fun of this year as there have been in year's past. (Anyone who suggests that it was low-key out of respect for the tragedy in Haiti gets stabbed.)

From the buzzy folks over there at Celebuzz.com, we have a one Ke$ha. And to quote those very witty and very funny folks from Celebuzz.com, " She looks like a figure skater doing the walk of shame the morning after prom." Couldn't have said it better myself. Behold!

Um, yeah. OK, first of all, I'm not a fan of the symbols as part of a name. That dollar sign there in place of the "S"? That just doesn't do it for me? What say you use some of that $ that you've been earning and go out and buy yourself an "S", all right?

Here we have the American Idol runner up from last year, a one Adam Lambert.

Adam seems to be going for a look that is somewhat of a cross between Alice Cooper and Colonel Sanders. Behold!

The chap below is Mike Sorrentino. You might know him as "The Situation", but only if you have a penchant for watching trashy MTV shows like Jersey Shore. Mike is very proud of his stomach and he has absolutely earned that right, it looks swell. I just don't know if he needs to be unbuttoning his shirt at the Grammys. We've seen it. We know. And his sideburns that he shaved into what appears to be a "J"? Well, that's a whole different situation right there.


Speaking of Jersey Shore, here we have a one Nicole Polizzi, aka Snooki. Now Snooki is famous for, among other things, her "bump" on her hair. She has the whole Bumpit thing going on only without the Bumpit. But here she is at the Grammys and she is sans bump. What's up with that? We only keep reality show participants like her around for a reason and her reason is the bump. Without the bump, she more useless than she is with the bump. (Granted, with a dress that freaking short, most people aren't even going to notice that she has hair, but I'm just sayin'.) Bring your bump next time, Snooki. Bring it.

This is someone named Sheila Durcal. I have no idea who she is or what she does. Even more perplexing to me is why she is wearing a dress that looks like a walking advertisement for one of the PAAS Easter egg decorating kits. It's very strange.

This is a woman named Niecy Nash. I'm not real sure who she is either. But I'm also not real sure about her dress. Did part of it fall down? It's like the world's biggest dust ruffle or something down there. It looks lost.

Hi, Sheri Jones-Moffett? Yeah, Daniel called and he'd like his coat of many colors back.

Here we have one Rihanna with a very large shoulder accessory. After the debacle that preluded last year's Grammys, perhaps she was just looking for a little added protection for herself. You know, in case some little jackass thought about pulling a stunt like he did last year. (How happy was I to not see that jackass Chris Brown anywhere in that place? Very. That is correct.)

And finally, it just wouldn't be fashion at the Grammys if we didn't have a look at a one Lady Gaga.

She kind of has that Dee Snider look going on up top and sort of a spun sugar/cotton candy thing going on with the lower half. Either way, it's pretty mello for Lady Gaga. (Good Lord, I can't believe I just wrote that.)