OF A GOLDEN AGE

In the new Esquire, Ben Affleck uses a word I’ve never seen before.

amortize: 1: to pay off (as a mortgage) gradually usually by periodic payments of principal and interest or by payments to a sinking fund; 2: to gradually reduce or write off the cost or value of (as an asset) amortize goodwill, amortize machinery

After a long list of shows ranging from unexceptional to cumbersome (Sugar-pink fuzzy sweaters and matching hats? Really, Chanel?), of course leave it to Alexander McQueen to turn everything upside down.

McQueen’s new collection is sort of a self- and industry-mocking spectacle, exactly what we should be seeing for a season when few people are purchasing anything, let alone the safe or downright dreary — but still couture — crap issuing forth from most of the designers:

After the triumphs of [McQueen's] recent collections, this was a risky show, entirely uncommercial and intentionally provocative, and it generated extreme reactions. Dennis Freedman, the creative director of W, was visibly ecstatic watching the show; but another magazine editor, afterward, compared the trash-bin styling to “a collection inspired by Wall-E.”

How funny that someone trashed (hurrr) McQueen for a supposedly Wall-E aesthetic when that movie also took a risk and aimed to provoke by commenting on the failing status quo. In a way, this is a crisis time for fashion, but it presents an opportunity too, one which McQueen embraces in this collection: Fashion has the potential to reinvent itself as a legitimate commentary and art form. I can buy safe clothes at the mall. And I can watch reruns of 90210 if I want to relive the 80s.

As part of a recent list of retooling and reinspiring ideas, Seth Godin offers a simple, lovely mantra (from Pivots for change):

Keep the machines in your factory, but change what they make.

Well said.

At age 23 I’ve already forgotten a substantial amount of things that have happened to me.

Since I’ve been keeping a journal in one fashion or another for the last almost ten years, it makes me wonder if writing things down impedes actually remembering them without the memory jog.

This is both a depressing and a fascinating thought.

• Siam Country, my favorite local Thai place, offers these spiciness options for their dishes:

Not Spicy
Mild
Medium
American Spicy
Thai Spicy

Medium turned out to be more than I was prepared for, my bad. But I definitely laughed a lot at “American spicy,” which also sounds imprudent.

• Hearts for Housing happened Friday night and I had a seriously good time, while inadvertently embarrassing a group of lawyers I played with by admitting (when asked!) that I graduated from high school in 2003.

• Thanks to Netflix, I’ve begun an epic quest to watch the entire series of Homicide: Life on the Street, by the same guy who later created The Wire. I believe Homicide to be one of the best TV shows ever made. In fact, here are my top nine in no particular order, excluding single-season shows because those, to me, play out more like movies.

1. The Mary Tyler Moore Show
2. Homicide
3. Six Feet Under
4. M*A*S*H
5. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle
6. The Twilight Zone
7. Northern Exposure
8. The Simpsons (up to probably season 8)
9. The Bob Newhart Show

• My parents saw Fleetwood Mac at the Allstate Arena this week and said it totally rocked. I wish I could have gone! As a special karmic punishment, the radio played really good Fleetwood Mac pretty much all weekend long. Thanks a lot, universe.

(on Friday Night Lights, to a dorky kid who looks lost in the middle of a party)

“If you get in trouble, just act like you’re looking for someone.”

Good advice!