And the winners are...

I have a short attention span and I get really excited about things. When these two personality traits work in tandem (and they often do), I end up getting super stoked on stuff for a few days or a week at a time. So here on WR2BAM:LIFE I'm going to start periodically posting lists of my current winners -- whatever it might be that I'm stoked on at whatever time. Blogs, records, products, events, whatever. Here are this week's winners:

Best Living Thing That I Can Pretty Much Completely Neglect: Air Plants

I just learned about air plants, which gather their nutrients through their leaves instead of through their roots, which means that they don't need soil to grow. I like having plants around but I'm also lazy and have a proclivity towards accidentally neglecting things, so these low-maintenance plants appeal to me. They look cool and I don't have to worry about them. (You can order them for under five a pop at www.airplants.com.)

Best Record That Is Just As Good As It Was The First Time I Got Obsessed With It When I Was 17: Shock Troops by Cock Sparrer

You know how you'll be going through your record collection and you'll come across an album that you used to play ad nauseam like five or six years ago, and you go "Holy shit, I loved this record," and you start listening to it and it still sounds so fucking good after all these years that you kind of feel like an ass for ever letting yourself forget about it in the first place? That how I feel about the British oi band Cock Sparrer and especially their great '83 album Shock Troops, which I played to death when I first got it back when I was a teenager and which I've had on repeat on my iPod for the last three weeks for reasons I will not yet divulge for fear of jinxing myself. Seriously, this album is total and complete working class London perfection -- it makes you want to put on Doc Martens and down a few Newcastles and get in a fight, and it's still somehow it's one of the most upbeat, positive records I can think of. Listen to "Where Are They Now" and then go buy this album.

Best Blog That I Would Totally Be Ripping Off If I Didn't Already Have My Hands Full With WR2BAM: 30 Is The New 13

Embarrassing confession: I was a huge, huge Baby-Sitters Club fan as a kid. Even more embarrassing confession: In recent months I've discovered the rather massive BSC fandom on the internet, and I spend a couple of nostalgic hours a week reading the snarky recaps of BSC and other YA books on blogs like BSC Revisited, Sheep Are In, and Dibby Fresh. Through these blogs I discovered 30 Is The New 13, a blog run by a hilarious and apparently totally un-self-conscious woman named Sada. As a preteen Sada made countless attempts at writing her own YA fiction, heavily influenced (and sometimes completely ripped off) by the popular kids' novels of the '80s, from Judy Blume to Sweet Valley and, of course, the BSC, and on 30 Is The New 13 she posts these opuses in their entirey -- complete with felt-tipped illustrations! -- for our amusement.

I can't really describe or explain this blog except to say that it's incredibly heartwarming and funny for me to read as I, like Sada, fancied myself quite the authoress as a pre-teen (I was constantly at work on my own YA "series" that featured, naturally, a set of identical twins always finding themselves in the midst of completely unbelievable, or, on the flip, laughably mundane adventures). I grew up on the same books that she did, writing strikingly similar stories, and reading her laborious preadolescent works of fiction makes me feel incredibly nostalgic in the best way possible. I'd wager that women born between 1979 and 1987 will probably be the only ones who truly "get" this incredibly sweet, funny blog, but if you should happen to fall into that category -- and especially if you ever had a penchant for The Unicorn Club or Barthe DeClements novels -- please, read and enjoy this blog.

Best Health Program That Gives Me Hope For The Future: College Bound Sisters

I read about this program a couple of weeks ago and I've been thinking about it a lot ever since. College Bound Sisters is a program that was set up at the University of North Carolina Greensboro for the younger sisters of pregnant teenagers. The young girls (aged 12-18) attend weekly meetings with adult leaders where they can discuss adolescent issues, go on field trips, listen to guest speakers, and so on. For every week that each girl stays in school and doesn't get pregnant, $7.00 is deposited into a college fund for her. Upon her eventual enrollment in college, each girl will receive the money she's earned. I can't help but feel that this kind of incentive program is exactly what young women need to protect themselves and to stay in school. I'd love to see something like this adopted nationwide.

Best 40-Year-Old Skater Dude: My Boyfriend Rusty

Click for full size.

No big deal, just Rusty shredding the gnar at the Volcom skate park in Costa Mesa, CA. We've been together for three years so sometimes I forget that he's not just my boyfriend, he's a super cute skater dude. Rad.

Best TV Show That Simultaneously Makes Me LOL And Feel Like I'm Not A Horrible Person: It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia

My core group of buddies and I are legit obsessed with Always Sunny. Every Friday morning you can count on most of my friends' Facebook statuses being quotes from the previous night's episode. We like it because we are a big group of assholes, and "the gang" on the show makes us look like total angels. We also like that Charlie and the Waitress are married in real life.

Best Hot Pastrami Sandwich In All Of Long Beach (That I Know Of): The Koufax from MVP's

Oh, people not from Long Beach, I pity you. I pity you for reasons myriad and ridiculous, but right now I pity you most of all because you don't have MVP's Grill & Patio and therefore you don't have the Koufax. The Koufax is a hot pastrami sandwich on sourdough with Swiss cheese, mustard, and pickles. If you think that sounds gross, I don't care, because hot pastrami is basically my Holy Grail of sandwiches, and you'd be surprised how tough a good one is to find here in Southern California. MVP's is at 3701 4th Street and it's cash only. Call in fifteen minutes ahead of time, order two Koufaxes, and then walk two blocks down the street and bring me one.

Home Sweet Home

I really want to redecorate my bedroom (I have a roommate, so the rest of the apartment isn't exactly fair game). I don't have that much space, but I also don't have that much stuff. What I do have:

• a ton of books
• a ton of clothes
• a ton of shoes
• a ton of jewelry
• a ton of records
• one awesome 1970s black velvet painting of two scantily-clad Nubians riding a winged zebra through space
• one awesome 1970s painting of a voluptuous Indian maiden stepping into a pond
• one vintage open-top schooldesk which was rescued from the side of the road and lovingly restored and painted for me by my nice boyfriend Rusty

Everything else is pretty much expendable. I've been perusing The Selby for inspiration. Here are some of the photos that are giving me the redecorating jones hardcore:

Top, from the NYC home of Josh Conner and Lyz Olko.
Bottom, from the Sydney home of Natalie Wood. Click for full size.

I'm really into the idea of treating jewelry and clothes as something to be displayed rather than tucked away in drawers and closets -- personally, I spend more money on clothes and accessories than I do on anything else, so I think there's something to be said about letting them be a focal point. I think it looks sick when there's a ton of necklaces hanging off a wall, like above, or when clothes and shoes are presented almost like art, like below:

Left, from the Sydney home of Aimee Bayliss, Nathan Smith, and Anne Ryan.
Right, from the NYC home of Sally Singer. Click for full size.

I already keep my favorite pieces on a clothes rail dead-center in my room, and I'm all about the idea of using a basic, tall IKEA bookshelf to house my shoe collection for a look similar to Sally Singer's above.

More general inspiration:

From the London home of Gary Card and Henderson McCue. Click for full size.

The idea of organized disarray (i.e. books and shoes on nearly every surface) is appealing to me, because I'm a huge slob.

Top, from the London home of Rosa Connell and Bella Howard.
Bottom, from the NYC home of Josh Conner and Lyz Olko. Click for full size.

I'm also finding that I like the look of a bunch of stuff just stuck on the wall, no frames, no rhyme or reason -- reminds me of when I was in high school and papered my bedroom with show fliers and pages torn from the local throwaway rags. When you consider what a hassle it is to frame everything and have it all hung straight and perfect, it's so much easier, plus it looks cool and undone alongside a few bigger pieces.

Top, from the Sydney home of Harold David and Dave Bonney.
Bottom, from the London home of Rosa Connell and Bella Howard. Click for full size.

Just great aesthetics all around. I really want to spray paint a cow skull fluorescent red now, and I love clear Lucite furniture. I'd really like a Lucite chair.

Top, from the London home of Sylvia Farago and Christopher Simmonds.
Bottom, from the Sydney home of Aimee Bayliss, Nathan Smith, and Anne Ryan. Click for full size.

More visual candy. I love jewelry stands and having all your shit out on the surfaces of things.

From the London home of Sylvia Farago and Christopher Simmonds. Click for full size.

I love a room with hundreds of books on display. Looks so good...especially with the shoes under the shelves.

So, this is a list of things I'm desperate for (more for my own reference than anything else):

• A Chief Joseph print Pendleton blanket (I love them)
• A Navajo rug
• A Lucite chair
• IKEA Billy bookcases (one for shoes, two for books and records)
• Vintage glass ring hand jewelry holders/jewelry stands in general
• This hanging cluster lamp (reminds me of a geodesic dome, I love it)

I'm on my way...

You're the one I've waited for.

Woof, I really let this aspect of my shit drop off for a minute there! I've been a LiveJournal user since high school so it's been hard for me to get used to making the switch, but I want to start keeping the WR2BAM:LIFE blog on the up and up and kind of shuffle my personal blogging over here. So I thought I'd start it up again with a little bit of an introduction post, because even though I've been running WR2BAM on the regular for almost two years, there's only so much that a fashion blog can tell you about a person, right?

In a nutshell.

So, I'm Sara M. I'm 24 years old and I've been holding it down in Long Beach since I was 19. I was raised in Flagstaff, Arizona and spent my teen years in Orange County. For the last four years I've worked at an architecture and interiors firm in Newport Beach and I also do freelance writing work, mainly screenwriting and script editing for a small L.A.-based production company. My ultimate goal is to be a writer (besides WR2BAM and my freelance work, I'm also working on a novel).

I have a pretty awesome boyfriend, Rusty, with whom I've been for coming up on three years:

Charming.

I run with a pretty bitchin' pack of ladies, most importantly my longtime BFF Jennie, who is an incredible illustrator as well as being an all-around amazing human being:

At her brother's bachelor party in Detroit, July 2008.

And my roommate and pretty much constant partner in crime, Farron:

Doing what we do in Big Sur, August 2009.

So, let's keep this simple. Besides fashion, I'm into heavy metal (but you already knew that), road trips, geodesic domes and the theories of Buckminster Fuller in general, writing, reading, super-trashy reality TV, punk and oi, architecture (particularly midcentury modern and prefab both midcentury and contemporary), shooting guns, feminism, alt comics, skateboard culture even though I can't skate a lick, motorcycle culture even though I've only ever ridden on the back of a hog, vintage Airstream trailers, traditional country and western music (I'm huge into Loretta Lynn), karaoke, getting tattooed, and partying hardy.

That's the general background. I'm going to try to keep this thing afloat.

XOXO,
Gossip Girl Sara M.