Claudette Colbert and Bette Davis:



Now allow me some Audrey love:





And girls with umbrellas. What's not to love?



{via My Vintage Vogue, a site to love and cherish}

Sweet tooth.

Do you like candy apples? Or do you call them toffee apples, like they do in the UK (a bit odd, since there's not always toffee involved). In Brazil we call them Maçã do Amor ("apple of love"), like in France ("pommes d'amour"). I think those are much better names. I took this picture in Hannover two years ago, in one of those delightful Summer fests they have all over the place. And I was happy to learn that, in Germany, they are called "Liebesapfel" and also have "love" in the name:


Regardless of how you prefer to call them, I think they're brilliant. So you can imagine how I felt about these:


So pretty that I don't know if I would be brave enough to eat them. I would most likely just display them in a glass jar.

You can find them at Amy's Candy Kitchen and Double Dipped Sweets on Etsy (US and Canada only, unfortunately... Or fortunately, my diet is safe).

Labels: yummy

15:52 -

my so-called life.

This and Wonder Years = two of the very few TV shows that I've ever felt like watching.
Both about people growing up. I wonder what does that say about me.

I loved Angela Chase. Badly dyed red hair, shabby flanel shirts and all. I liked the way her limbs were too long and her nose sort of too big, because she was growing up as unevenly as we all do. And how she would look gorgeous one day, then plain the next day and dowright ugly later. I could relate to that. And I kind of wanted to be like her. Smart, introspective, inquisitive, full of dreams. She was so convincing as a teenager (mood swings, naivety, arrogance and excessive use of "like" and half-witted metaphors included) it almost made for uncomfortable watching. Because so much of what I saw in her I could recognize in myself.


I, too, had a Rayanne in my circle of friends (sexually active, liberal views, small drug problem). And a Ricky (gay, unpopular and lonely, but so sensitive and sensible). And even a Brian (I never realized he was kind of into me untill we both were attending different universities). And yes, a Jordan Catalano (because every girl has to have one). I just didn't have a younger sister and awkward, anxious parents; mine were not very much concerned about my emotional troubles, maybe because I was indeed very good at pretending I didn't have any.


There were times when I wanted to hold her and cry with her. There were other times when I just wanted to give her a slap. But you could almost feel the pain in her growing bones. She was much better than the artificially perfected versions of teenagers I've seen lately on TV. They are what we want, expect or believe teenagers to be. They're not like the rough, painful and beautiful real deal. She was, and there was never a deal as real as Angela.


"My parents keep asking how school was. It's like saying, "How was that drive-by shooting?" You don't care how it *was*, you're lucky to get out alive."

"I couldn't stop thinking about it. The, like, fact that people had sex. That they just *had* it, like sex was this thing people had, like a rash. Or a Rottweiler. Everything started to seem like, pornographic or something. Like, Mrs. Krysanowski has sex. So does Mr. Katimsky. They both have sex. They could have sex together. Like, right now."


"Sometimes it seems like we're all living in some kind of prison. And the crime is how much we hate ourselves. It's good to get really dressed up once in a while. And admit the truth: that when you really look closely? People are so strange and so complicated that they're actually... beautiful. Possibly even me."

"This life has been a test. If this had been an actual life, you would have received instructions on where to go and what to do."


"Sometimes I think if my mother wasn't so good at pretending to be happy she might be better at actually being happy."

"People are always saying you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster. Like you know what it is, even. But every so often I'll have, like, a moment, where just being myself in my life right where I am is, like, enough."


"What's amazing is when you can feel your life going somewhere. Like, your life just figured out how to get good. Like, that second."

Labels: celluloid

09:33 -

Paul & Holly.

"You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself."

Labels: celluloid

09:22 -