friday favourites 17.05.13

this is going to be a bit of a free-form friday faves...

image of the week

i'm not sure if the internet is making me stupid or foolishly brave or dangerously curious. this morning, a friend on facebook posted something about naked pictures of toronto mayor rob ford. and although my initial reaction was indeed to pour a bottle of bleach into my computer [probably a good instinct], i still clicked the link [possibly as you just did, despite the fact that i made no attempt whatsoever to disguise what it was or mislead you as to the horrors which awaited]. what in the name of god would make me do that? 

all of this rob ford naked craziness started because dom posted an entertaining animated video on my facebook wall. actually, it started because my friend martin posted a story on facebook yesterday with a headline that said something like "toronto mayor rob ford on crack", which i interpreted to just be an expression, because i constantly refer to people as "on crack" or "high" as a metaphor for ridiculous behaviour, even in situations when i probably shouldn't. [in fact, i did so in a meeting this week, when we were reviewing some sales projections and my reaction was "i think they're high" and then everyone around the table agreed with me, saying that i was right and the the sales couldn't possibly be as high as projected and i was sort of stuck explaining that i hadn't been making a logical point at all, and that i'd meant that the people who submitted them were actually high, except that i didn't literally mean that, only that the projections were way off, which is what people thought i meant, except that i wasn't nearly as smart as they were giving me credit for being.] anyway, you should totally watch the video, which contains an animated version of rob ford that looks better than he does in real life.

and as long as we're on the subject of rob ford and things that made me feel good this week, while investigating the claims that toronto's right-wing, race-baiting, poor-people-hating mayor might have a bit of a casual crack habit [note to self :: do not google "rob ford crack"], i found out that dude is only a few years older than me. 

i am better than rob ford.

i have never felt this good about my appearance. 

or about not being on crack. 

i haven't been posting so much on politics lately, because most of what i see is a. the same and there comes a point where i just can't make it entertaining to read no matter what i do; and b. so depressing that i just can't make it funny, which is generally what i aim to do. if i were to treat what was happening around me seriously, i'd hang myself within a week. 

and i don't really want to hang myself. the ceilings in my home are high and i'd probably fall and injure myself in the effort and that would just be the most embarrassing thing to have to explain to emt's and the police. 

plus i'd feel all guilty that people would be working to save my life, because it would be one of many examples of me offloading shit i should be doing onto others. 

all this to say that i haven't been doing as many political posts lately, but it's really impossible to resist saying something when someone who embodies just about every political and human trait that you despise turns up in with a crack pipe in someone's home video. 

now that i've said that, of course, i do have a little something i want to say about some recent canadian political intrigue [that's really more retarded than intriguing], but that'll be in a post later this week. 

musical notes

i was listening to this earlier. that's my entire thought process, other than to say that this song is now one that i associate with when i first moved back to montreal, when i was doing occasional dj gigs at katacombes as part of "burning monday". i don't recall how often i actually played it [and am evidently too lazy to check the playlists i have archived on this very blog], but i know it was one that i kept wanting to return to. so now it's part of the theme music i'd choose for the biography of my life, which would inexplicably feature scenes of me dj'ing at a club in montreal, even if that doesn't turn out to be a major plot point. 

kitteh of the week

there's really nothing i can say that is going to make this any better than it already is. 

apologies if you already saw this from me on twitter, facebook or instagram. this makes me laugh more than rob ford on crack. 

[does this mean that marion barry will now be remembered as the nicer mayor on crack??]

ok, clearly i've got this whole crack story on the brain, but there is something just deliciously weird about it. or about the idea that there's some kind of elite drug squad who sell crack to toronto's movers and shakers. or the fact that there's some unknown mole carrying around a portable video player looking for a buyer. 

how is that not supposed to be one of my favourite things? 

i hope that you'll all enjoy a nice crack-free weekend and that you'll do me the honour of returning to this blog in the near future. thanks for taking the time to read this!

making faces :: a winter tale

so this is it. we've reached the final season in our colour year. so far we've looked at spring, with its heart of citrus yellow, summer and its symphony of cool blues and autumn with its spicy bronzes and golds. and i'm still not sure i've found a good place to rest my face. i've chosen seasonal winners in each category, but are they really me?

it's a bit of a rhetorical question, of course, because i already had an inkling that my precocious childhood self might have been onto something when she declared herself a "winter". not that she knew what she was talking about, of course, but sometimes even fools say the right thing without meaning to. even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. [unless you're in europe and use a twenty-four hour clock, which actually makes a lot more sense.]

as with all the other seasons, winter is divided into three parts, the true winter at the centre, flanked by neighbours who carry a hint of the adjacent season- fall and winter respectively. they're all essentially part of winter, though, which carries with it a few key considerations. and it's those considerations that lead me to believe that my best palette might be found among the final three options we look at. i'll enumerate them, in case it helps you select or eliminate the season for yourself.

1. saturation. nowhere is the saturation level higher than for the winter season. this is particularly true of bright winters, for whom no colour is too intense. winter light is weaker during the days and the dark part of the nights are at their longest. if you think about how colours look at night, they are less easily distinguished. the saturation can be turned way up without looking like it's too much. colours that look shocking on others will be restrained on someone who has winter colouring. this is definitely something i've experienced.

you would expect that colours would appear brighter and bolder against my skin because i'm pale. you would be wrong. i remember seeing the puzzled faces of experienced makeup artists when i was blonde and therefore pale in all aspects when i'd try on a bold lip colour. logic dictated that it should be too much, but it wasn't. soft, more pastel shades that should have worked completely disappeared. there is something in my complexion that simply dampens most colours, as if they were being seen at night.

2. contrast. winters are distinguished by their ability to wear the lightest and darkest extremes- white and black are perfectly suited to them and they actually benefit from having both at once. what looks stark, heavy or squared on anyone else will snap into place on the right person. the flip side is that a lack of contrast has a tendency to make the person look withered. for my part, i notice that looks i've tried in this series that haven't worked are ones i've had success with in the past simply by including dark, sharp eye liner.

it's another theoretical conundrum: dark liners are understood to shrink the eye, but on me, the opposite is true. you can peruse the looks i've done for this series to see what i mean: my eyes look smaller when there's less of a defined border around them. they benefit immensely from contrast and definition. softer colours of liner barely show on me at all.

i'm not eliminating other possibilities here, of course. remember, i went around for years wearing the palette of a soft summer, convinced that whatever i wore had to be muted because my colour didn't allow for brights. as it turns out, that might have been one of the worse choices for me.

but let's look at the specifics...

making faces :: purple reigns

source

well i did mention a when i did my post on summer season [sci/art] looks that i had a couple of new treats last spring, but i'm only getting caught up now... which i suppose isn't a bad thing, since the shades i'm reviewing are extremely appropriate for spring after all.
from rouge bunny rouge to review for you. i feel like i'm very far behind, despite their modest release schedule, because these products were released

i always knew that i was going to pick up "lilac reef currasow" and "trumpeter koel" as a set. aside from the fact that they were released at the same time, they just seem to naturally bond together. they're both very cool-toned, which is uncommon among rbr products and the shades seem made for each other. both are available in regular potted format and in small pans that fit neatly into the two- and three-shadow palettes that rouge bunny rouge sells.

"lilac reef currasow" is, as you might expect, a light lilac [or lavender- i get confused as to where one ends and the other begins], described as having an "iridescent effect". there is a very low-level white shimmer, but i find it's just barely visible. the shade looks mostly matte with a very slight white satiny effect.

lilac reef currasow

as i've come to expect from rbr, the quality is amazing. it applies smoothly, lasts until you take it off, pretty much no matter what you do. it's cool but not icy [because the finish is less reflective] and brightens the eye tremendously, but it's not the sort of light colour that just looks like an off-white. the lilac-ness stands proud. texture-wise, it reminds me more of the matte shade "bashful flamingo"or "gracious arasari" [which is a satin] than any of the frosted finishes the brand produces.

although i adore these types of shades, i'm very picky about them, because too many light purples are overly frosty or patchy on application. this one reminded me a little of mac "crystal" [one of the very first mac products i ever bought and re-purchased many times since], but "crystal" is slightly frosted and has a distinct grey sheen to it. the base colour is somewhat similar to "lilac reef currasow".

l to r :: lilac reef currasow, mac crystal

for me, this shade is a marvel. i'm absolutely in love with it and think it's worth every penny.

"trumpeter koel" is described as a dark lead grey with lilac blue iridescence. it appears as a medium-dark blue-grey in the pan, but when you swipe the colour on your skin, you can really see the blue-purple sheen resting on top of the deeper grey, kind of like oil on water.

trumpeter koel

the texture feels a little dry and stiff when swatched, but it applied very smoothly on my arm. unfortunately, it wasn't quite so glorious on my eye. strangely, i found it difficult to get it to the intensity that you see in the swatch when i used it on my lid. there, it looked like a slightly faded medium grey, much softer than i anticipated. that doesn't make it a bad colour- it's quite lovely for a soft, smoky look or to diffuse colour in the crease- but i was surprised that it performed so differently than i expected based on the swatches i did.

the other problem i found was that it's very easy to blend out the colour, even with a very light hand and that it's more prone to fading than other rbr shades. i find that i'm best off placing the colour where i want it and blending as little as possible to show the colour at its best.

i do love the fact that it is a grey shade, which means it's neutral enough to wear with almost anything. you can really see this next to a shade like mac "parisian skies", which is a grey-blue that leans far more blue [and shows quite a bit darker on the eye].

l to r :: trumpeter koel, mac parisian skies [l.e.]

 it does appear perfect next to "lilac reef currasow"- brighter colours would overwhelm it. the two of them form a cool, understated partnership that you can see in action here, in the true summer look that i did. i think it would be a great option for all summer season types- perhaps less the slightly warmer "light summer"- because it can add depth without being overly dramatic. for my part, i do wish it were more pigmented, more like it looks in the pan and on my arm. despite my paleness, softer colours just seem to disappear on me, which is a phenomenon i'll never understand.

both of these shades are available direct from rouge bunny rouge and from zuneta. [a word about zuneta: apparently, they were purchased by another company and are in a process of transition, during which they have not been restocking inventory. they have not provided me with a date when things will be back to more or less normal, but they have assured me that they will continue to carry some of their most popular lines, like rbr and le metier de beaute. unfortunately, they will no longer be carrying hourglass. more updates on what will be happening as soon as i'm able to get them.]

you knew that the internet was coming to this

 

i think my next book will be done in this font.