A memory book.

Dear Emi:

This was my favorite man.

He collected peoples stories. I think that everyone who reads this should document their feelings about something in their life (in a paragraph or three). It should be something that is tethered to this election, economy or time in the world. Send them to me. I'll post them here.

RIP Studs Terkel. I wish he could have told the story of this election.

From New York,
Lisa

Yes we will.

Dear Emi:



If this happens, I'm entirely confused about how one is suppose to celebrate this. Dinner party? Parade? Buck naked running down Fifth Avenue? Polar bear swimming? Key party?

Tiger tattoo pictures

Sharing many aspects of symbolism with lion tattoos, tiger tattoos are a common choice, a combination of beauty and strength. Tigers are the king of animals and a popular symbol in the Eastern world.

Tiger tattoo art can have the following symbolic meaning (besides your own):

• Power and might.
• Pride and beauty.
• Passion and sensuality.
• Cruelty and violence.
• Purity and courage.
• In Japan, the samurai used the tiger as an emblem, for obvious reasons.
• Tiger images and statues are used to ward off evil spirits and bring luck to families and businesses.
• In some cultures, tigers are believed to punish sinners.

Dilemma.

Dear Emi:

Is this man beautiful?



Or kinda fugly?

I can't tell. Please help.

//Lisa

Big things.

Dear Emi:



A matching velour track suit changes everything.

xo,
Lisa

A word of warning

Dear Emi:

Do not under any circumstances watch Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father as your heart will instantly break and you will never be okay again.


The only people who should watch it are:

1. People who want to suffer. (Akin to listening to Elliot Smith on the night of getting dumped by someone you love dearly.)
2. People who can turn their souls off on command.
3. People who aren't worried about their figures and feel okay about comfort eating entire containers of pomegranate chocolate chip ice cream at 12:45 since the world is broken, cannot be fixed and ice cream is the closest thing that approximates the now-gone-feeling-of-okay that was there before you had watched this movie.
4. People who need an I'm-dating-a-crazy-person-and-need-to-be-stopped-because-that-shit-is-real interventions.

Permanently-scarred-by-Dear-Zachary,
Lisa

The great debate

Dear Emi,

Have you ever been to Trader Joe's?

I go every week and regret it every time. It's the closest I have ever come to being an addict and the closest I've come to having a nervous breakdown. The one in New York is small, crowded, ridiculous and completely infuriating--I can't help myself. Who can resist all the affordable organic items? The delicious prepared food, the Chile-Spiced Dried Mangos, the $4 Raclette, the $5 fair trade breakfast blend coffee, the cheap "but in a carafe no one will know the difference" wine?


When it gets too crowded, there is a bouncer! Who manages the line outside of the grocery store! And people wait on the line! I've waited in this line, friend, and it made me feel like a proper asshole. It's that cheap and good.

It is an interesting contradiction to be in a store and want to clap my hands and jump up and down with glee and simulataneously want to SHOOT MYSELF IN THE FACE IF ANOTHER PERSON TOUCHES MY PERSON WITH EITHER HAND OR CART. It's quite the conundrum. Cheap soy milk and greek yogurt for 2 bucks or my sanity? You'd think the answer would be easy, but it is not. You actually have to stop and do a cost-benefit analysis.

But this is all beside the point, what is most interesting is the staff! The place is lousy with employees walking through the biggest grocery-shopping shit-show that ever was, the but on every single face is the biggest, most blissed out smile you have ever seen. Soma? Orgy in the back? What?

Emi, I know these people are as pissed off about having to be at work as I usually am, and I like my job. The shoppers are pretty hard to love, with their carts wielded as weapons, their uninterruptable plans of attack, their nose-dives for the last box of Panko Breaded Tilapia. And I can't help but believe that at least a handful of them have probably dealt with tendencies towards claustrophobia at some point in their life. So why are these people so happy looking?? I want them to tell the TRUTH, Emi!

OKOK, it's schadenfreude, fair enough, but sometimes as I wander the crowded, obnoxious aisles (that I'm dealing with OK but am sure are doing some lasting damage to my soul), I think that if I don't see a "crew member" completely lose it (I'm talking a throwing-ham-at-customers, trashing-the-cheese-aisle kind of fit), throw a box of TJ-O's at their manager and quit out loud, I'm not going to to shop their anymore. Cause if this is what people have to put up with for health-insurance, and whistle while they work, mind you, I don't know what to say.

From New York,
Lisa

Better memories.

E--

I think the world would be a better place if we all had our childhood preserved with videos of completely amazing musical projects like this instead of those embarrassing naked baby photos everyone has.

My parents were just not this cool.



--L

Hearting Jay Smooth

Dear Emi,

Did you know that we New Yorkers are falling in love with this man? Over the internet. Yes, he's a little funny looking, but his brain is quite delicious. Our boyfriends are all jealous.



From New York,
L

Henna tattoo pictures

Gaining in popularity is the Henna Tattoo. They are not enduring and wear out a paste called Henna which customarily stains the top part of the skin. These tattoos are brown in color but can manufacture shades using a variety of mixes. Adding things to the paste such as coffee, fruits, and so on., can attain this effect, while adding together baby and smear with oil gives it strength in its color and duration.

2-4 weeks is how long the normal tattoo will keep on. It depends on the henna paste being used along with the precision of the tattooed area.

Lobstah!

Dear Emi:

Are lobsters incredibly cheap in Sweden too? Here they are TOTALLY CHEAP because everyone is so poor that they have stopped buying luxury items and now there are too many lobsters on the market. The end result is that they are, at least for the moment, no longer a luxury item! SCORE.


Some people seem to have a problem with putting them in the pot, because, well, that's the part where you have to kill them. But not me! Turns out that I am a fearless lobster killer. Death comes with a bad hair day, sweatpants and the below pot.


Delicious makes me mean.


Sorry you had to die, lobster, but you were extremely tasty.

xo,
Lisa

Dead ends.

Dear Emi:

I hate/detest/despise/loathe getting my hair done.

But now it is short and easy to love! And I didn't even have to leave my kitchen!

xo,
Lisa

Alive. (And White House!)

Dear Emi:

The above image proves two things:

(1.) I am alive! And still writing you letters!

(2.) I went on a tour of the West Wing last weekend. An unfortunate bad hair day during my visit prevents me from posting more photos. (That and there aren't too many as the secret service would likely have tackled me which sounded patently unfun.) (Plus the decision to wear high waisted denim, which may or may not be in fashion when I revisit this photos in old age.)

All is fair in the press room, though!


More letters on the way, more often,
Lisa

FREE CLOTHES

Dear Emi:

I want to tell you about my worst self. Actually, about the "worst self" of every New York City woman who likes expensive clothes.

Every year, in a warehouse in Chelsea, women drag giant plastic bags of designer clothes around on the floor, grabbing everything single things they can (one size up or down? NO PROBLEM), stripping down to their bras and underpants in a wall-less, unisex room, with a crazed look in their eyes. It is called the Barney's Warehouse Sale. Which essentially means free clothes. My shopping partner and dear friend tried to remind me that "these clothes aren't free, they are just really cheap" to which I simply snarled. No words, just a low growl that I had never heard come out of my mouth ever before.

This is how I came to stand in public wearing nothing but socks, wonder woman undies and a mismatch bra and scream at my dear friend Seth (who proved his loyalty and devotion by being there in the first place) to GET THOSE JEANS, NO THOSE JEANS. THE FIFTEEN DOLLAR ACNE ONES. And then lapse into silent rage.... get them now. Seth, the dear, tried to remind me that "these clothes aren't free, they are just really cheap" while I was digging through the knitwear--to which I simply snarled. No words, just a low growl that I had never heard come out of my mouth ever before.

It is the Where the Wild Things Are of shopping. It is Mardi Gras and Carnival and the Fourth of July, but crueler and without music and dance or barbeque. It is the kind of place where you walk out sweating and with your hair messed up and with five (!) pairs (!) of designer denim, two pairs of shoes and five shirts, only 250 USD poorer for it. Because, Emi, you were in the trenches. And in your secret heart, you know that if the real depression comes, you might have to sell apples, but youwill sell those apples in cute ass clothes.

And no one will ever know, as you strut to work in new Costume National heels, a Nanette Lepore cardigan and your new Acne jeans that securing them meant you no longer have any pride or shame. But you look so damn cute, you really don't care at all, not one damn bit. You'd do it again tomorrow if you weren't still recovering from it all. In fact, you really just want to holler your new mantra at anyone who might know the truth:

FREE CLOTHES.

Rose tattoo pictures

Rose tattoos are one of the most popular choices amongst women.
While butterfly and fairy tattoos are also highly popular feminine designs, the rose is something that can be easily incorporated into almost any design and modified to the exact shape, color and size that you want.

Skull tattoo pictures

Skull tattoos have a wide variety of symbolic meanings, depending on how the skull is used. There are so many ways to depict skulls that they can be used to make statements as diverse as how powerful a person is to how cute and girly he or she is.

There are skull tattoos that are meant to be frightening, ones that are drawn to be as realistic as possible and some that are drawn in pink with hearts for eye sockets. The skull is such a universal symbol that it can be adapted to literally any meaning, from religious to political to simply an artistic design with aesthetic merit.

Maori tattoo pictures

Maori tattoos are among the most distinctive tattoos in the world and have their own identity amongst the Polynesian tattoos. Tattooing is a sacred art among the Maori people of New Zealand, and probably came to them from the islands of East Polynesia.

Maori tattoo art is very beautiful, consisting of curved shapes and spirals in intricate patterns. Distinctive for Maori tattoo designs is the fact that they are based on the spiral and that they are curvilinear. The most prevalent place for a Maori tattoo was the face, probably a result of the cool New Zealand climate.