Nobody will ever win the Battle of the Sexes. There's just too much fraternizing with the enemy. **

Cocktail. A movie. Not the Tom Cruise one, the OTHER. Also a beverage. One that I need copious amounts of. A less sugary, non-fruity one if you will. Oh hell, just pour me a Martini.

If art imitates life imitates art, then Cocktail sure is a movie of times. (No it really is and you'll soon see why.) Good girls get the boy. Girls who drink, date, earn a living and live an independent life are good to bed, not to take to Ma. (Charlatans! Harlots!) That in gist, is the movie. Oh sorry, forgot the spoiler alert. But are you really surprised? Was that really a spoiler? 

And that's why to me the umbrage, the indignant offense almost all have taken to the Guwahati incident surprises me. Did we really not see it coming? (Not that it makes the incident any less offensive and outrageous. Or scary.) Here is a movie (Cocktail) an elite production team churns out which in it's most basic form will make every social anthropologist reach for the nearest pen to paper a theory. Exhibit A: Innocent girl from homeland that doesn't drink or engage in promiscuous sex or even dating. Cooks, cleans, prays. Exhibit B: A successful career woman (one assumes). Drinks. Dates. Heaven forbid, even occasionally gets laid. Exhibit C: The man. Beds Exhibit B but longs to marry Exhibit A. Did the movie really have to be set in London even? 

Did someone say regressive?

And this is a movie set in 2012. Also the year where one eleventh grader, a girl, was publicly attacked by a mob of men when exiting a pub.

These are the times. We seem to be a society that's largely been socially conditioned by murky margins. The outraged are real, but is their voice loud enough? Is their dissent weighty enough?

The movie is a mere dot on the board. The bigger problem lies elsewhere. The place where declarations like "She must've asked for it!" are flippantly thrown around. Where every rape, abuse, molestation is watered down to "Did she provoke it?" or "She must've asked for it!" but, that's a whole other post now, isn't t?

Am a woman. And am worried.

** A Henry Kissinger quote.

An Excerpt Sometimes IS The Whole Story

The blues, man, the blues… the blooz! That aching' ol' heart disease and joker in the heartbreak pack, demon engine of rock, matrix of uber-amped Aerosmith, and the sould-sound of me, Steven Tyler, peripheral visionary of the tribe of Oh Yeah!

Now the blues is, was, and always has been the bitch's brew of the tormented soul. The fifth gospel of grits and groan, it starts with the first moan when Adam and Eve did the nasty thing and got eighty-sixed from the Garden of Eden.

"Once upon a time…" "In the beginning was…" That's the way it starts off. Every story, gospel, history, chronicle, myth, legend, folktale, or old wives' tale blues riff begins with "Woke up this morning'…" The blues is soiled with muddy water, funky with Storyville whorehouse sweat and jizz, smoky from juke-joint canned heat, stained with hundred-proof rotgut and cheap cologne. It's so potent 'cause it's been in every low-down, get-down joint the world has ever seen.

Everybody sucks on someone's tit, and ours was the bitch's brew of the blues.

- Steven Tyler, Does The Noise In My Head Bother You? A Rock 'N' Roll Memoir

Parched

In the quiet of the night, she lies in wait. For words to come to her, or her lover. It's all the same sometimes.

And Elsewhere, Mardi Gras.

Beginnings, endings and the in-betweens. The stories you can tell over coffee and beignets. 

Abita Amber and blackened alligator. When in Louisiana... 

(“New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.”  said Mark Twain. 

An understatement if there ever was one.)

Cajun martinis in The Big Easy. Spicy, perfect. 

There's a song written about it somewhere, of that am certain.

First comes booze, then come Blues.

And when you are finally ready to say Good Night, you know it was.

It's only been a week and, am not putting away my party hat just yet.

Half-finished books. Pages filled with words half-formed. Tarts that once stood witness to flailing diets, their obituaries now written on discarded foil. Ashtrays that know once the night falls, they'll have company to keep.

Vows to say Love You more and make passionate declarations less, settle with the ice in the glass. Dusty scrapbooks and dustier images to resurrect. Along with rusty memories to only bite the dust. With scary, speedy efficiency.

Old ways, familiar patterns and white lies. Because in the end, it's all much too easy.

What Resolution? Here's to a garishly shiny, spanking new year. New Year!

And you thought I was only Grey.

Who's afraid of a lil' color?!

Stop. Don't you see it's Red?

It took my turning Thirty (gulp) to finally try 'red lips'. Try I did, and how. There's just been no looking back since.

Having always pined for a different time (you know I've always had a thing for Fifties-Sixties), I haven't exactly been immune to the allure, the charm of red lips, being that the women of the time sported the hue with just the right panache and studied nonchalance. 

I love the coquettishness of it. The sexuality. That it can be gauche and vulgar. Sophisticated and timeless. That it means power and confidence. That it means being all Woman.

Not being one who was ever comfortable with too much attention (don't let my husband tell you otherwise), am certainly surprised how taken I am by the hue. Turning older definitely had something to do with it. Let's face it, we all turn into world-weary, world-wise women a lot sooner than what our parents ever gave us credit for. But the truth is, it took me all of three decades to become the woman I am today. And that woman sure isn't shy of red.

Forget the fact that it brightens up a dreary day or simply turns heads... The fact is, I like who I become when I wear it.

Kiss. Kiss.

Ply me with wine. But, romance me with words. Your words.

Es un escándalo!

I love a good dinner party. The smokers outside, conspiracy hanging heavy in the air. The hum of conversation reaching a quiet crescendo inside. Glasses half-full begging for refills as stories are re-told. The stoic clinking of ice building the backdrop to climax. The food adding spice to the romance, the dessert sealing the deal. 

Ashtrays lie in wait, bearing witness to unfolding events. Discarded bottles ready to play enablers. 

Sheets that come tomorrow will wink back knowingly. 

When I was gone, did you whistle a tune?

I've been a Bad Girl. Not in an exciting wink, wink way, just in a terribly lazy, been watching way too many Law and Order SVUs kinda way. I tell myself I need to blog, much like how I tell myself to stay off of Chocolate, but I seem to not make much headway with either. 

There's so much I want to say but sometimes words just take longer to come, if they ever do. Other times, Bravo happens. Hello, Real Housewives?!!

But I promise to be better. I'll even go and sharpen my pencils. Maybe even buy some new stationary... What, it'll only take a minute!

The Blues, they sing to me.

Cue song? Okay. How Blue Can You Get?

William Christopher Handy: The blues - the sound of a sinner on revival day.

“Close you eyes and tap your heels together three times. And think to yourself, there's no place like home.”

Happy Hour

Crossover episodes I'd like to see: Hollywood Squares and X-Files. Cheers and Law and Order SVU. Walker, Texas Ranger and Gossip Girl.  

Walker, Texas Ranger and Gossip Girl. Yup, I went there. Walker and Waldorf... Epic.

One mustn't lose their Muchness. Ever.

"You used to be much more..."muchier." You've lost your muchness. " says the Mad Hatter to Alice.

P.S: You want me to find another book to get obsessed with, don't you? I know what you are thinking!

P.P.S: I must share with you this other obsession of mine... Murakami's After Dark. One of these days, I promise.

Sometimes, the sharpest of angles and the straightest of lines, cast the softest of glows. Shadows by which, many stories are told.

The hare-brained chatter of irresponsible frivolity.

Art, in all of it's forms, is an altogether funny thing.

I've had this painting for a while now... I love it for it's colors and the joy it seems to exude. I've always thought of it as fishes swimming upstream until a friend pointed out it's likeness to, well, you know. And, there's no getting past that. Did I then relegate it to some dark corner of my house? No sirrie, I promptly fell even more in love with it.

People's reaction to this painting (that hangs in my house) is quite priceless... Most don't give it much thought beyond it's cheery colors. Some mortified, quickly look away. Others, after a start, smile. It (the painting) certainly makes me smile, I mean, how can it not? As for the Sperm dress (see below), I happen to love it. The dress reminds me of the painting and... Makes me, you guessed it, smile.

Oh, I do realize just about now I sound like a dithering idiot who goes about all of her day with a grin plastered on her face. Not so. Mostly. Er. No, not so.

P.S: The title, borrowed from Disraeli. Also, the words 'irresponsible frivolity' somehow make me think of tulle skirts, cotton candy and manicures. Don't ask.

Kallol Datta Sperm Dress

Satchmo is all kinds of Cool. End of a song, beginning of a story.

(Yup, I recently watched High Society. Again. It had been a while since I saw it last and had forgotten just how much I love this movie. Bing, Sinatra and Armstrong. Grace Kelly too. So many reasons.)

You're being charming, reasonable and very boyish. Unless you've changed, that means you're about to drink someone's blood. Probably mine.**

Black-and-white movies. And bottled effervescence. I love it all with a bit of grey.

** The title's from the 1948 Bette Davis movie, June Bride. Love the movie. Love Bette.

But mostly, I flutter.

Helen

The Birds

Fall 2011 Runways

Top Row, L To R: Giambattista Valli, Jason Wu, Yigal Azrouël, Naeem Khan

Second Row, L To R: Oscar De La Renta, Prabal Gurung, Monique Lhuillier, Emilio Pucci

Photo Credit: OneIndia, Rediff, IMDB, Style.Com
Cross posted on highheelconfidential.com

At times, they bloom in unlikely places. At times, they tease. She likes to hide, while they seek.