four more years

more Hairpin love!

Only now apparently all these guys want to move to Australia. THANKS A LOT OBAMA.

They know women have the vote here too, right?

dance me to the end of love

possibly the best thing ever:

are you trying to seduce me?

Well the internet has gifted us today, as Joseph Gordon-Levitt somehow bested his previous SNL opening monologue by bringing less clothes and more dancing, Magic Mike style. Turns out in 2012 we have an awful lot to thank Channing Tatum for (Vulture thinks so too). And for those of us outside North America (thanks for nothin', NBC), Jezebel has gifs for days.

Then there was the incomparable Anne Helen Petersen breaking down the timeless appeal of the Boss.

And because good things come in threes, Kat Dennings looking like a goddamn bombshell at the Emmys:

the half-life of love is forever

Earlier this year The Hairpin linked to an incredibly absorbing interview with Junot Díaz in the Boston Review - read here, read it! And then get his latest collection of short stories, because they're everything a follow-up to The Brief Wondrous Life (or more pertinently, the raw and beautiful Drown)ought to be. Sometimes it's just such a relief to hear an intelligent, articulate man address issues of race and sexuality in a thoughtful way - consider it an antidote to the general world at large.

he's dangerous but sincere

Sometime Hal Hartley muse and general indie dreamboat Martin Donovan's debut as a writer and director, Collaborator, screened as part of the terrific Canadian Film Festival - a once-successful playwright's melancholic midlife/career crisis that gracefully evolves into a tense and compelling two-man act. It's a good one.

tell me I'm your national anthem

summer style inspiration from Lana via Jackie O/Marilyn - say what you like about her, girl knows her look

if I don't get your call then everything goes wrong

 

hello, beautiful

owen wilson x wes anderson is my favourite kind

further reading

Mad Men loves a good literary allusion. ("Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" - "You should read the rest of that poem, you boob") 

LADY LAZARUS

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it--

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?--

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot--
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart--
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash--
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap, 
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

 - Sylvia Plath

yes

MCA where have you been

How I Wanted You to Find Me

Last night when you didn’t turn up I snapped my timing belt and
spent an hour listening to passing cars make the ditch brush hiss,
watching the earthworms coming up onto the blacktop looking for
a better place to dry out and die. The tow truck driver talked
forever. His shift was over in forty minutes, and if he delayed he
wouldn’t have to go out to rescue anybody else. I texted you as he
dropped me and the dog at the Motorway Motel, but you didn’t
respond so I got out of the cab and tried not to make a big deal out
of things. I ran some water from the sink into the ice bucket and
went to sleep on top of the covers. I imagined there were dead
bodies in the boxspring. I imagined there were U.S. Marshalls in
the room next door. I imagined the next morning I would settle
down and live here with a truck driver who was only home on
holidays. This is how I wanted you to find me. This is how I
thought I could make you feel sorry for what you’d done.

- Sarah Carson

look at you

Oh Rufus.

bang bang

“well, maybe wong kar-wai doesn't have the exclusivity of asses in slow motion, you know?”

FINALLY saw Xavier Dolan's 'Heartbeats'. Slow-mo yearning, impeccable eye-candy, perfect ending. Worth the wait.

she's happy with the way she looks, she's happy with her gender

for a girl who doesn't even own pants, I sure covet this look

oh, Girl

so the jezebel.com commentators are all worked up about white girl privilege and sex & the city-lite but my heart says whatever, they've missed the point - Chris Eigeman is back in my life! (plus, it's a show by/about ladies that has the potential to be actually good) New trailer for Lena Dunham's TV show:

calling Dorian Gray

So I guess when he's not making cheese at his (very big) house in the country and writing the most entertaining Britpop memoir of excess and champagne, Alex James moonlights with a bit of modeling. After all, it would be a shame to waste those glorious cheekbones now he's not strictly a rock star anymore.

(Alex James & Irina Lazareanu for the Auben & Wills Spring campaign, photos via missmoss)

d'amour

My favourite Louis Garrel collaborator Christophe Honore's latest, Beloved, is screening at the French Film festival. This time round Garrel's outrageous beauty costars with Catherine Deneuve and her real-life daughter Chiara Mastroianni, Ludivine Saginer and legendary director Milos Forman. Plus Paul Schneider! (holy shit Mark Brendanawicz, that's a long way from Pawnee)It's set in the '60s and '90s. It has songs. What else do you want?

BRANSON!

Fallen into a Downton Abbey K-hole. It's happened to everyone.