A Brie Grows in Brooklyn

People whom I intensely dislike today.

1. Beyonce

(False pregnancy rumors are not cause for outrage. Why not just tell the public: “Listen, I had a little belly in my blue sparkly onesie last week because I ate fucking Mexican food.”)

2. Angelina Jolie.

(Way to use a procedure that most women can’t afford to catapult yourself back into the spotlight. How about telling someone else’s story to raise awareness for the fact that the majority of women who die from breast cancer are low income and in the ethnic minority? Enough with the publicity blitz — you are not a hero.)

3. Judd Apatow

(Your movie “This is 40” sucked, and thanks for wasting 2 hours and 30 minutes of my life this morning.)

This sort of takes the cake for dumbest post ever, but I finally found a pair of fashionable silk pajama pants that fit me. Silk only describes the material — actually, I think they might be eco-polyester, whatever the fuck that means. 

Let me tell you the story of these particular trousers.

I’ve been wanting a pair of silk trousers that make me look like Beyonce posing on a tractor trailer for many months now. (You feel me, people who follow her on Tumblr?) But I every time I tried them on, they either made me look like a sack full of moldy potatoes, or my dad about to retire in his Merona flannel pajama pants for the night.

When I was younger, my father said to me, “When you were born, I was terrified that you’d be missing a breast like me.” Because my father is missing his left breast muscle, and apparently it’s genetic. Fortunately for me, I have the muscle, but no fucking fat above it, and moreover, I also inherited my dad’s thick, short, built-like-a-workhouse legs, and elongated torso. Elegant pants, in other words, do not suit me — these legs were made not for walking, but for standing in a fucking bog pit in wool underwear, pulling at my teeth, and whining about how my back hurts from being pregnant for the 14th time.

In other words, pants have to be made for a stout, alcoholic, flowery-mouthed, fighting breed to fit me. Which very rarely happens.

The other day, I especially mourned this fact when I saw a girl in Williamsburg walking down the street. She was wearing this amazing tropical silk lounge pants, ballet flats, and a leather jacket. “I love those pants,” I told Caleb. “But they would make me look like I was sitting backwards on the shoulders of a dwarf carrying two cantaloupes.”

“I thought I taped your mouth shut,” Caleb said. 

Then, today, I walked into H&M to kill some time before lunch, and ran smack dab into a rack of aforementioned pants. They called to me. “Try me on,” they said. “Try me on in four or five different sizes, all of them larger than normal.”

So I went to the dressing room with my arms full, and tried on, without realizing it, the smallest pair. They might not fit me perfectly, but they’d fit me well enough that I could definitely rock them with a pair of heels and a tight-fitting shirt and a mask over my face just in case someone recognized me.

If you’re like me, and you’re missing not only both breasts, but also a willowy build, but still, emulate everything Solange wears, you might want to check them out. Buy them, and you can come over to my house, and we can do our make-up, and then go see how quickly it would take for us to get arrested posing on the hoods of the cars at the police station down the street from my apartment. I want to put them on my blog, “ExactlyLikeBaddieBeyIfYouDrink10BeersAndSquintYourEyes.tumblr.com.”

I know I shouldn’t weigh in on Beyonce’s lip synching scandal, but I CANNOT HELP MYSELF. I think it’s pretty ridiculous — rumors have it this morning that she is “saving herself for the Super Bowl,” where literally no one would give a shit if she lip synched. In fact, it would be expected that she would, given that she’ll probably be dancing her ass off.

People love Beyonce — I too loved Beyonce, until I watched the recording of her “Intimate Nights” concert, in which she sung a lot of her old hits, and the entirety of her latest album, “4.” When she first came on, her singing sounded kind of terrible. “Her voice isn’t that great,” I noted to Greg, who is an utterly and devoted fan. He would stand by Beyonce if it turned out she was an 80-year-old man in a plastic body costume. “How dare you!” he said.

Then, she began singing the songs on “4,” which are technically quite difficult, and she sounded absolutely perfect. Not a single off note. Not a single missed beat. “She’s lip synching,” I said to Greg. It seemed kind of obvious giving her lukewarm singing on the previous songs, as well as the incontrovertible fact that the human voice is flawed instrument.

“How dare you!” he said. And then kicked me out of his house.

(He actually didn’t do that — he’s exceedingly kind and gentle. But he did defend Beyonce’s honor in our discussion after the concert was over.)

I do want to believe that Beyonce had a good reason to lip synch the National Anthem at the Inauguration, which is a gigantic honor. I would forgive her, for instance, if she came out and said that she was so nervous that she couldn’t even talk. But to say that you’re saving your voice for the Super Bowl, or that it was really cold, or that other people in the past have lip synched is a lame cop out. All you had to do is stand in place, and sing one simple song, Beyonce. There are hundreds of thousands of kids singing in a capella groups across the country who could do the exact same thing. And the true greats, the ones with real blessings, could do it lying down, under duress, in the middle of winter in Antarctica. Kelly Clarkson did it, even though it took her a second, at the beginning, to find her pitch, in what I can only imagine was an open sea of cacophonous sound. She absolutely killed it.

Re-watching the tape of the performance this morning, I realized that Joe Biden’s face says it all. He can barely keep himself from laughing — perhaps at the ridiculousness of the act, or perhaps because he felt uncomfortable for her. Or perhaps she actually was singing, without the microphone, and sounded, as one would expect, flawed. 

I liked talking to stylists for this article on “mining your own closet.” They told me how you can stay on trend for Spring 2013 using the items you already have your wardrobe. In other words, you can look like Beyonce (possibly) without spending a dime.

All the single ladies.

(Alternate title: “Why I shouldn’t be allowed on a dance floor.”)

I recently spoke to celebrity stylist, Jennifer Hitzges (who has worked with basically everyone, including Beyonce), about how to wear fall fashion trends.

Inspired after our conversation, I went on the hunt for a pair of printed pants, only to discover that printed pants make a fat ass look like two basketballs in a duffel bag. Sigh. I’ll keep dreaming. 

GUUURRLLS, I know you’ll be into this one, so click on if you want to read more.

Thanks to some insider knowledge, I happen to know that Beyonce was just in Marfa, Texas, a sleeper town turned art world destination. 

I absolutely love that the Daily Mail has no idea that the photograph above shows B in front of the “Prada Marfa” installation by Elmgreen and Dragset, not an actual Prada store. Here’s their caption of the image:

“Jump for joy! How exciting to be able to afford everything inside that branch of Prada.”

If you’re not an avid follower of Beyonce’s Tumblr like me, you can check out the rest of the pictures from her trip with Solange in this hilariously misinformed Daily Mail post. My friend tells me that not only did she do the art shit, she also caused quite a ruckus by showing up at some field party a bunch of high school students were throwing. Yee-haw, Lady B!