Consumption

Crate & Barrel BAD IDEA GLASSES

Crate & Barrel sells something called "Dizzy Cocktail glasses".  Somehow, these are not them:

I bought these because they were $4 each, I had broken all six of my last rocks glasses in an unfortunate fire escape incident, and I thought they'd be good for a laugh.  As you can see, the bottoms are rounded, and when placed on a flat surface, they roll around.  This is a TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE IDEA.  Perhaps this is why they've been discontinued from C&B's website.  I'm hanging onto them, though, out of a kind of horrified fascination.

Opposite of success story #2:  I also picked up a few of these, thinking from the eensy picture that they kind of had a Mason jar aesthetic to them.  I missed the part where they cleverly have citrus-related words inscribed on them in Italian, so it's really more of a Euro-jackhole vibe.  These were promptly returned. 

Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day

I'm a pretty big fan of the environment but these days I'm generally wary of any product that claims to be green. I think people so desperately want to feel good about themselves without actually doing any work that we've come to the point where there is bottled water that claims to be greener than other brands. It's WATER in a DISPOSABLE BOTTLE, ain't nothing green about it folks. So while Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day products are purported to be green, I don't know the science, and I don't care to. To me the fact that they may or may not be better for the environment snoozes in the back seat of a Hummer driven by Works Great that is zooming down the Smells Amazing highway. I discovered this stuff while housesitting for a particularly neat freaky friend. I must have scrubbed his sink every day during the two weeks I was there just because I wanted to use the surface scrub that much. It's like Comet without the Listerine and vomit references. I love love love the Lemon Verbena, but the other scents are awesome too. I'm currently doing laundry with the Lavender and it induces the happy just as effectively.

Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day

LUSH Bath Bombs

We're back to the LUSH well already, but I can't go any longer without talking about their most glorious offering, the Bath Bomb. 

While studying abroad a few years ago, I took a nasty fall and sliced my leg open deep enough to need oodles of stitches--and couldn't get the bandages wet for six weeks.  SIX.  WEEKS.  After some horrifying experiments with plastic wrap and trying to shower with one foot in the awesome claw tub in our flat, I resorted to baths. 

Everything LUSH sells is fantastic, but these little darlings are simply genius.  (Pictured at left:  The Big Blue.)  They're packed full of herbs, dried flowers, extracts, and occasionally glitter (watch out for that--sometimes it's buried in the middle and it's ground very fine and you won't notice your lovely sheen until your bedmate lifts a shimmering gold limb in disgust and stalks from the room to go rinse off). 

Instructions:  Drop one (1) bomb in a full tub of water and observe as it fizzes and shoots around and makes bubbles and smells divine and try very hard not to clap like a seven-year-old.

[Warning:  No matter how much fun it looks like, do not climb into the tub until the fizzing is finished.  Any glee you may feel at the sensation of the bubbles whisking around your toes will be overshadowed by the fear that the ball of bicarbonate will go zooming straight into your nethers.]

They'll run you $5-8ish depending on how big they are and what's in them.  You can get them via the website, but you're better off finding one of their stores and sniffing through the bins yourself.  And blowing your entire paycheck on bath toys for grown-ass women.

I, Too, Sing ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBAW

I've gone extremely girly for the last two weeks, and that's fine. I am in fact a female, and therefore enjoy all the privileges of dousing myself in liquid honeysuckle and behaving like Belle Watling on a bender. However, the siren song of Footbaw is beginning to echo in my ears, and it must be obeyed.

Although Brett Favre is giving his all for ruining the preseason today, there is a ray of hope. A ray with piercing cornflower eyes, tumbling locks of purest gold, and a demented, godless smile on his Viking face. A ray named Jeremy Shockey.

Shockey (28; I had no idea! He's timeless) is a four-time Pro Bowler and is the sole reason the New York Giants made it to the playoffs. His off-field activities include drinking, whoring, Americaning (it's a word! He went to the U, BABY!), and poking Tom Coughlin with a stick until he cries. He used to shoot his older friends with a BB gun to make them pay attention to him (FACT!). Under normal circumstances, the utilization of a gay slur would make my eyes swell with furious tears; when Shockey calls Bill Parcells a homo, the tears are of unmitigated adoration. Does this make me a bad person? Yes. Do I care? No. I AM WOMAN.

The point of all this is to say that Jeremy Shockey--volatile, mentally unbalanced, gleefully anarchic Jeremy Shockey--has been traded to the New Orleans Saints. He is now playing football in the most corrupt city in the world, where he can rampage through the French Quarter with hand grenades and hurricanes in his clenched fists, demanding that every woman he sees immediately disrobes before him, snorting uncontrollably while he shovels fried dough into his gaping maw. If you can think of a better scenario for the National Football League or humanity, please let me know immediately.

Buy this jersey, belt it, and wear it with some gold lame underwear. Then take a casual stroll through the Quarter at three in the morning. If you feel you must, spritz yourself lightly with HGH and tiger musk. The pieces should fall into place from there.

FREEDOM ISN'T FREE WHERE'S MY DRINK

Custom Vans Slip-Ons

I know what you're thinking. Well, yeah, technically, these are kinda hideous. But let's get this straight: college football season begins in three weeks, a girl needs to sport her colors, and just anyone can buy some college-specific Nike IDs (those are for banner ad-susceptible commoners; also, Nike offers a pink version of your college logo for girls which is just insulting and I refuse to support that as well as pink hammers and screwdrivers and toolboxes).  These Vans slip-ons are both old school and completely customizable, thereby allowing you such whimsy as adding a camo heel counter to remind everyone looking at your ass that you're a soldier reporting for duty here and not to be trifled with - unless it's half time and I'm in the beer line, in which case: [bats eyelashes].  Are they made for people born deformed and archless?  Yes.  Will you have to cut a slit in the elastic gore just to get them on?  Yes. Will you get a weird tan line because the vamp comes up high?  Yes, because your team plays in a stadium approximately 300 yards from the sun.  Are these minor obstacles you should ignore in favor of looking like a street-wise sexpot while cheering your boys this fall like a champ?  Absolutely, and you're just 3-5 weeks away.

Vans | $50

Sensual Amber by Bath and Body Works

I blame strippers.

I should elaborate, yeah? I enjoy the occasional outing to the strip club (strictly sociological curiosity of course), but the law in Tennessee strictly dictates there be no fun actually had in such establishments (hint: no booze). So when I found out that a) my future husband had never experienced the wonder of strange women disrobing to terrible music and b) there is a place near Atlanta that features both strange men and women disrobing to terrible music, I knew there was a road trip in our near future. A friend tipped me off to a Priceline trick that reliably yielded a luxury suite downtown at a ridiculously low price and it was, as the kids say, on.

I usually find myself in the sliver-of-dial-soap-type establishment when sojourning at hotels. This one, however, had an adorable little set of Bath and Body Works aromatherapy products in their shockingly delicious Orange Ginger scent. It served as a refreshing antithesis to that “strip club smell” (Equate baby oil, smoke, drugstore cologne, desperation) and I decided it might be time to lift my personal ban on Bath and Body Works that had been in place since what I like to call the “Sun-ripened Raspberry Incident” (more commonly known as ages 11-13). Unlike some of our OTHER contributors, my hair is so lame that pretty much all I can do is dye it intense colors and make it smell nice so I went in for a bottle of the shampoo. They were giving away a lotion with purchase so I hastily grabbed the one with the fewest flowers or fruits on the label. It smelled pretty okay in the bottle and I thought I could put it in my locker in the studio or something.

Then, I put it on.

This stuff was apparently created for my body chemistry because WOW. Every single person I walked by commented that I smelled amazing. I kept bringing my arm to my nose, inhaling deeply and feeling like I’d just done something incredibly naughty. Soon I owned the handsoap, the creamy bodywash, the shower gel, the body cream, the glittery lotion and body spray, and the regular body spray. I acquired the body scrub this afternoon. Somehow there are still several products I do not own but I’m working to correct this.

How to describe the smell? The packaging says Pink Lotus petals enveloped by a golden piece of precious amber. Seductive. Rich. Beautiful. Whatevs, I like to think of it as the way a strip club would smell if it were in heaven by way of Marrakesh. Unfortunately during my trip to the B&BW today the salesclerk noted that if I liked Sensual Amber I should try their new scent, Black Amethyst, so I dabbed on some lotion. I have been smelling my hands for the last few hours and I have to say, there may be some competition here.....

Bath and Body Works Sensual Amber $3.50-$18.50 Currently buy 1 get one 50% off.

The Company Store's Primaloft Comforters

I sleep cold, by choice.  Back home I was ill-rested all summer, every summer, because it was too hot to get under the covers.  In Los Angeles, this involves a year-round  ritual of jacking the AC down to 65 right before bed and burrowing into a nest of pillows and blankets like a very pretty and accomplished desert rodent.  Yet even the sturdiest of air conditioners doesn't have a prayer of matching the chilly snap of a winter we never see this far south. 

Enter Primaloft.

I love love LOVE The Company Store.   Everything's all clean lines and classically pretty, and their stuff lasts forever.  I discovered their Primaloft comforters my last year in Knoxville when I was living in a hundred year old house with no heat or air conditioning and windows that refused to shut.  Primaloft is a down alternative found in camping gear, and is (warning: science) the least gross down alternative in the world, ever.  It doesn't form hard little balls inside the blanket or disintegrate into dust when washed, it won't make you sneeze, and best of all for we warm-weather nesters--it's completely breathable. 

These comforters are huge and soft and fluffy to such a degree that you'll be tempted to just wander around the house all day with it wrapped around you like a toddler with a security blanket.  You can wash them in your own machine (ever try hauling your down blankets to the clearners?).  They have four different weight classes available depending on your warmth needs.  Mine's a medium, and I can rest quite snuggily under it in Southern California, in July, for an entire night without breaking a sweat. 

Summation:  If you're going to buy a comforter, buy it from The Company Store.  And if you're going to buy one from The Company Store, do it now, because their famous Comforter Sale is upon us.  During the sale you can pick one up for $100-200, which is a total steal.  Sleep tight!

Like a margarita. But for your face.

Normally when I mix vodka, lime, coconut, avocado, seaweed, and sea salt, it means I'm at Jay's beach house, watching The Birdcage and weeping while wrapped in a shark towel and shoveling clam dip down my gullet. When LUSH mixes those things, they come up with a product that achieves a similar catharsis without the hangover: Ocean Salt Facial Scrub. For those of us whose skin is so delicate and fair that it makes Scarlett O'Hara look like a leathery peasant, it can be difficult to find a cleanser that doesn't irritate and inflame. This is that cleanser.

The salt and vodka extracts exfoliate without grating your face like delicious parmesan, and the violet and avocado leave you feeling moisturized, not oily. The ingredients revitalize your face without stinging. Also, it smells like happiness (by which I mean it smells like the ocean if the ocean were made of vodka). It's a little on the pricey side ($18.55 for a 4.2 oz tub), but it lasts; you use less than a teaspoonful per scrub, and I recommend using it only ever other day. Wet your face, rub it in gently and let the exfoliants work their magic. This is also brilliant on the elbows and knees, hobbit feetsies, and any other rough patches you may have. My notoriously problematic skin was soft and clear within about a week.

One note: it may smell like a margarita and look like a Sonic Slushie, but don't let it get in your mouth when you're washing; the salty taste is overpowering.

Happy Salt Funtimes