Doofy husbands, Scary gymnasts

Sarah Haskins, absolutely AWESOME:

Also AWESOME? Gymnasts dealing with a bunch of "bad guys":

"Beauty is so difficult."

This article on Venice is long and beautiful (as are the photographs). It's written in a way that makes you want to linger over phrases and re-read whole paragraphs. It's written in a way that makes you wish you had the talent to describe your own experiences so poetically. I suppose have such a poetic subject to write about helps.

In any case, this is the best part:

...One fall day not long ago two children, 12 and 13, from Grosseto, a town in Tuscany, decided to run away. Their parents disapproved of their romance, so they saved and spent their allowance on a train to Venice. They walked narrow streets paved in stone and lingered on the bridges that vault the canals. Night approached, and with it the need for a place to stay. They arrived at the Hotel Zecchini, a modest guesthouse with an inviting orange-and-white awning. The clerk heard a small voice ask about a room, looked up, saw nothing, leaned over the desk, and looked into the faces of two children. Skeptical of their story about an aunt who would arrive soon, he gently questioned them, listened, then called the carabinieri.

"Such innocence and tenderness. They just wanted to be together," said Elisa Semen­zato, the hotel manager. When the carabinieri arrived, they took the pair on a tour of the city in their boat, then to district headquarters in a former convent and put them to bed in very separate rooms. The next day they were served a three-course meal on a table set with linens in a hall facing the 15th-century courtyard.

Romance triumphs; reality intrudes. The parents, less than enchanted with the Romeo and Juliet narrative acted out by their children, arrived that afternoon to take them back to Grosseto, away from the soft ache of first love and the gilded beauty of Venice.

Kisses end. Dreams vanish, and sometimes cities too. We long for the perfect ending, but the curtain falls along with our hearts.

Beauty is so difficult. 

It couldn't be a secret for long ...

Unfortunately / Fortunately, the Thrillist email sent out today started off with this:

Party: Nightdrive Relaunches
Thursdays, 10pm to 4am: 6445 NE 7th Ave (NE 64th St, east of Biscayne); Upper East Side, Miami; 305.759.3682, 305.914.5298
Nightdrive's relocating to the revampedHarvey's By The Bay in Miami's first America Legion post, to shower you with free billiards, $2 drafts, $6 pitchers, $3.50 wells, free parking, no cover, a boat ramp if you're arriving by jetski, and indie rock, electro pop, and disco spun by Jonathan Brody, Mike Deuce, and DJPJ, who just has to open that little flap on his onezies to drop a Mike.

I gotta say, even though I wanted Harvey's to stick around ... I'm still bummed. Thursdays were our night to go hang out without having to be in a "scene" ... damn hipsters. They ruin everything. I'm so over "indie rock, electro pop and disco".

Girls, Degrees in English, Fizzy Milk and Freaking Out

Girls on YouTube are so great, don't you think? There's this, and this, and this, and now this. As a former copy editor and a person in possession of a BA in English, I approve this video.

Speaking of having a BA in English, check out my friend Hans' blog post on the topic. Because I feel the same way.

Fizzy milk from Coca-Cola? No, thank you.

Another awesome girl: Rachel Young heard that some guy made a topographical alphabet using Google Maps and that it took him 6 months. So she did the same thing. It took her 3 days.

Possibly an awesome new cosmetics line? I'm sort of skeptical though, check out their website ... what do you think?

This really IS the greatest freak-out ever. (Thanks, Joey!)

According to this article, these are the 32 trips of a lifetime ... I don't know ... I don't really care about most of them, but I WOULD love to go to China to be in my own opera, and to go to Argentina to eat and drink at all the best restaurants, and definitely India for a two-day royal birthday party, and Croatia for a masquerade ball with politicians and ambassadors (sounds like something out of a James Bond movie).

Here's a question ... why does Berlin have beach bars and we have none? I mean really, if you want to hang out on the sand and have a drink here you can go ... to the Marriott Courtyard? No thanks. I miss Penrod's.

Rick Steves and David Sedaris? Yes please!

Horses, Butterflies, Roast Chicken, Oh My!

Horse racing! At Miami International Airport! Because this city isn't surreal enough as it is, we should bring in a bunch of quarter horses and have them race around in the parking lot. Maybe in between Boeing 737's! Having horses in an airport makes about as much sense as having sex offenders live under a bridge.

In other animal news ... Damien Hirst, the man behind The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, which we just saw at the Met a few weeks ago, decorated a bicycle with butterfly wings and Lance Armstrong is riding it in the Tour de France. People are, understandably, mad ... I don't know that I care all that much. Butterflies are beautiful, yeah, one of the best things ever is the butterfly conservatory in Key West, but don't they live for a day or something? Maybe his assistants (of course, an artist of his stature doesn't actually make the art) plucked their wings after they died? I just think it's weird that Lance Armstrong and Bono are involved in the possible butterfly massacre.

I was really happy when I read about the newest viral wedding video. But then I saw it. And was sorely sorely disappointed. We could do it so much better ...

I love Bon Iver and I love Twilight. But I don't love them together.

Spin put out a list of the 20 best albums of 2009 ... so far (why not?!) and guess who's (deservedly) listed FIRST?!

I really couldn't have described Gwyneth Paltrow's cooking video better myelf.

On travel ...

I've been thinking more and more about my need to travel. I had two plans for my life when I was little, these were the things that would spring into my head when people asked the inevitable "What do you want to be when you grow up?" (Which, by the way, I always hated. You guys too?): a world traveler and a professional student. But, being young and, sadly, conventional, these didn't seem like appropriate answers, so I would come up with a substitute. Based on whatever I happened to be interested in at the moment: marine biologist, underwater photographer, art historian, journalist ...

Now that I'm going through a bit of a crisis (and I mean that in a good way) and I'm trying to figure out who I am, I'm thinking the desires of my childhood may be one good place to start.

So traveling.

Because of fabulous parents, I traveled frequently when I was younger, and my parents were the sort of travelers who chose to up and leave from one week to the next, arriving with a vague sort of notion about what to do, renting a car, finding a map, and then just winging it along the way. Guidebooks were non-existant. (When we arrived in Cancun, Mexico, with no plans to speak of, my dad let my brother, sister and I each pick one activity that we liked from the billboards that lined the road leading away from the airport. It was an amazing vacation. Swimming in an underground river, taking a submarine trip out to a reef - complete with a real-life mermaid, no less - to go snorkeling, and watching my first bullfight. Thanks, dad.)

Now that I'm older, I want to continue that tradition of traveling and being open to all the bizarre, risky and exciting things that go along with it. But since we live in the times we do, and I have a job working for the man (as opposed to being self-employed as my parents were) all I can do for the moment is read. So that in the future (soon, soon please!) I can set out on all the adventures I deserve. Like being given a balloon so that the delivery boy can easily spot me sitting along the river after ordering a bacon-and-pineapple pizza. Or scouring ancient marches aux puces for serendipitous treasures. Or going to see the Paris of the East.

For those of you who want to join me in computer chair-travel, check out these airfare tips and the hotel-porn that is Tablet Hotels. One of my favorite websites ever.

Some reasons to start dancing flamenco again...

I could wear this dress, which has been my ideal, "when-I'm-famous-and-dancing-in-a-smoky-tablao-in-Spain" dress since the first time I put on "character" shoes at the age of 8. Seriously, I once had a vivid dream about my Abuela making this dress for me ... and here it is ... more perfect than I had imagined it. (Yes, the back is open down-to-there):

Or I could go with this new (to me anyway) trend of short flamenco dresses:

Or maybe just stick with a good classic:

If I had been dancing a couple years ago when I got married, maybe I would have gone with a flamenco-themed wedding?

By the way, insanely gratifying? The fact that the models for flamenco fashion shows are not all a size 0:

All pictures taken from simof.net