Steven Alan Announces Spring 2010

Double happiness from our favorite designer. Watch this and note one of our new favorite songs at the end, by The Rural Alberta Advantage. [Our beloved Canadian friend tipped us off to this band awhile back. It continues to be on our playlist.] 


The Rural Alberta Advantage
Bowery Ballroom, NYC
October 7, 2009 @ 8pm


Steven Alan Spring 2010 from Steven Alan on Vimeo.

Last Days of a Midwest Summer

Note that TLF always enjoys NYC in the summertime. But nothing compares to escaping the city to bask in the sunny heartland for our last days of the season.

When we weren’t getting fat on backyard BBQ (brats, peanut butter burgers, provoleta and ribeyes covered in chimichurri), buzzing off Kessler whisky sours and margaritas or adding ice and rock salt to the spastic ice-cream maker, we were hitting the roads with our vintage, matching bikes. We pedaled past miles of cornfields and rustic barns, the old grain silo, the old blacksmith workshop, and the 50’s-era carwash with the Dodge Dart that’s still parked and for sale if anyone’s interested.

Then past more cornfields.

Now, Talbott’s market stand is closed for the season. The leaves are turning. And so we stored the green bikes in the garage till next season.

Farewell, Illinois.

Mad About the Men: The Fog

Spoiler alert. Season 3, Episode 5:

Out of the darkness and into… the pitch black fog.

Sunday’s episode was probably the darkest of the season so far, and that’s superlative indeed to bestow on a show that astounds in its ability to constantly make us feel like something terrible is about to happen.

Last night it started with that spliced shot of Sally Draper wiping Betty Pearson’s blood on her cheek –wtf? - and it dove down into the depths from there on in.

The entire sequence when Don was in the hospital solarium waiting for Betty was infused with a strange, dream-like quality. Don’s watch stopped, and so did time, as it slid by in the same blissed-out drugged state that Betty was in as she wandered through forests and hallways, chatting with her dead parents. (note that this was the second reference to a watch this episode – Ken Cosgrove was very proud of his Birds Eye watch too…)

This episode was really about Betty’s isolation and frailty, stripped of make-up, her face like a child’s, her hair plastered to her head with sweat, she was a long way from the petulant woman-child we have seen in recent weeks. All of this was starkly reinforced when Don reminded Dennis – the other expectant father in the solarium – that ‘your wife’s in the boat, you’re on the shore.’

That pretty much sums up the experience of most of the women in the show if you ask me. Even Peggy found herself in the boat this week, begging Don for a raise, sadly reminded of her past by the baby gifts in Don’s office and desperate for equality. ‘You have everything,’ she says to Don, ‘and so much of it.’

Oh yes he does, and is he about to have the hots for teacher?? Please. No. The weight of Dennis’s comments in the solarium about a baby being a chance to ‘be a better man,’ were too explicit to be lost on Don. Please Don. Be a better man, or at least if you’re going to be a bad man, pick a better woman to be bad with (Rachel Menken, where are you??)

Back at the office, we got a nice chunk of Pete Campbell time this week, sulking again about the state of his accounts. He actually came up with a pretty good idea about marketing Admiral TV’s to ethnic minorities, but as usual handled it with his trademark incompetence and pissed everybody off. The scene in the elevator with Hollis was painful and classic Campbell, as was him storming out of lunch with Duck when he returned to poach some talent (did you spot the line of flying ducks, behind Duck, in his office at Grey? Ha)

Line (s) of the week:
Don: “They waste paper because they throw out bad ideas.”
Betty on Don “He’s never where you expect him to be.”
Next week: the big boss from England is visiting Sterling Cooper.

p.s. why did Dennis ignore Don in the hospital when he saw him later? Any thoughts?

Diligently construed by E. Nolan
Photo by Carin Baer

Weekend Docket: Game Day

TLF grew up craving sunshine and hot climates. But more and more, Autumn is fast becoming our favorite season. And as the sun sets sooner and the temperature drops, another thing comes to mind. College football. Oh, you know you loved it way back when. We still do. Which is why we'll begin shutting ourselves indoors on weekends. Call it what you will: nostalgia, camaraderie, the memory of freezing our asses off as we stood shivering in the rain with paint on our faces and our torsos, the tailgate parties, the collective dejection of defeat and the euphoria of winning. It's still there, only now we're in our pajamas eating buffalo wings on our sectional instead of sharing the team blanket across four sets of knees, chanting until our voices grow hoarse as we battle for the ol' oaken bucket, hoping to defeat IU one more time. Boiler up! 

School Days

We don't miss those mysterious stomach pains that used to sneak up on us the weekend leading up to our first day of school, nor the scoliotic posture rewarded us for hauling 30 lbs of books to and fro. That doesn't mean we still don't fantasize just a little about being hypothetically shipped off to school with a trunk full of uniform blazers, ties and caps. Here, some inspirational vintage photos, Brit-style. They seem to know a bit about nuancing the every day uniform across the big pond. (Note: a young Benjamin Britten in striped blazer.)

Band of Outsiders, GQ, August 09


Band of Outsiders, Fall 09 NY Fashion Wk. Photo by Akira Yamada.


Paul Smith Collection


Thom Browne for Black Fleece


A.P.C., Fall/Winter 10

Mad About the Men: The Arrangements

Spoiler Alert. Season 3, Episode 4:

Several carefully planned story arcs came to fruition this week and still the paternal theme that’s hung like a shadow over the season so far, reigned supreme.

In the Draper household Grandpa Gene continued to show Sally the only bit of attention and affection she ever seems to get, though when he started putting salt on his ice cream we knew the time bomb in his head must surely be ticking. He started the episode by sharing his last wishes with a sulky and vitriolic Betty, and ended it dead – leaving poor little Sally once again, alone. In the meantime he taught Sally to drive and had little Bobby wielding knives and playing dress-up in his war trophies. Nice.

At the office, the ludicrous aspirations of the client looking to make Jai-Alai, “as big as baseball,” gave Don an opportunity to flex his philosophers muscles once again, giving the son of a cold, disappointed father a chance to salvage his money and run before embarking on what everyone knew would be a fool’s mission. But Don is a man who once scorned, doesn’t give you a second chance. He warned the upstart, the upstart didn’t listen and so Draper happily took the three million dollars with his conscience clear. (Great little moment when he sent the ball through the ant farm and later we saw Joan killing all the ants – metaphor? Maybe, maybe not)

In Betty news… she’s still a cold, heartless bitch. She continues to drink and smoke her way through pregnancy and ignore her children. We learnt, from Grandpa Gene, that she was a fat child – no surprises there (remember in the first episode this season when Don tells her to eat something?) and she stamped her feet like a bratty kid when her father tried to share his funeral plans with her, protesting “I’m your little girl!” The Betty Draper Snow Queen Award for this episode, however, went to the moment when she left Sally on the steps in her tutu, distraught after the death of Grandpa Gene.

The rise and rise of Peggy “I am one of those girls” Olsen continues as the Patio pitch came full-circle and everyone realized the Bye Bye Birdie ad was a pile of shite. Best moment of the episode was Peggy’s smug little grin in the conference room when the clients said they hated it – that’s right, you told ‘em so Peggy. She knows it, and most importantly Don knows it, you can bet some reference to that maypole dancing woman from episode 2 is going to be brought back into play soon enough.

There was also some general Joan frivolity - which I always enjoy - when she out-copy-writer-ed Peggy and told her how to craft a roommate ad that would really get noticed. Though those two are like two cats prowling round each other, Peggy knows a good thing when she hears it. This little scenario also gave Joan the best line of the episode, when she read Peggy’s original ad and said, “It reads like the stage directions from an Ibsen play.”

Finally, it would be wrong to overlook the slow, painful penny dropping in Sal’s wife’s head as he gave that thoroughly convincing rendition of the Bye Bye Birdie number in their bedroom – far more excited by that than any potential action with her between the sheets. It was all pretty tragic.

Line of the week: (second to Joan) Don to Bobby: “Bobby, it’s a dead man’s hat. Take it off.”
Next week: Looks like Sally Draper’s about to go off the rails and someone at SC has been cooking the books.

Diligently construed by E. Nolan
Photo by Carin Baer

Karen O and The Kids

Karen O. of Yeah Yeah Yeahs rocks our world. Her single All Is Love (off the WTWTA soundtrack) was just released on iTunes. Miss O. co-produced, wrote and performed the songs along with a gaggle of rockers nicknamed "the kids" that include but are not exclusive to members from Deerhunter, YYY's, Dead Weather, Gris Gris, and Queens of the Stone Age, not to mention a children's choir that will most likely endear us even more to the film adaptation of one of our favorite childhood books.

Scheduled to release September 29 on DGC/Interscope.

Track listing:

01. Igloo

02. All Is Love

03. Capsize

04. Worried Shoes

05. Rumpus

06. Rumpus Reprise

07. Hideaway

08. Cliffs

09. Animal

10. Lost fur

11. Heads Up

12. Building All Is Love

13. Food Is Still Hot

14. Sailing Home