Part 2 of my interview with Dr. Jill Stein – Green party presidential candidate in 2012 — just went up on my Huffington Post blog! She reveals how a health scare got her into politics. Just one more reason why Stein is inspiring and fearless.
Happy birthday to Dr. Stein too, who turns 63 on May 14. Be sure to wish her a happy birthday in the comments section or tell her how you feel about her continued work in politics.
If you missed part one of our interview, don’t worry — you can catch up!
Look, it’s Joanne — and Jill! Former 2012 presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein and I recently sat down over her favorite snack: blueberries. We had a blast chatting about everything, from local food to how she did push-ups in jail. She also talked to me about the future of the Green Party.
Check out the first part of our interview on The Huffington Post! Be sure to share, like, or leave a comment. It’s how I know you love me and I love you right back for it, dahling.
I love a good party, and I outdid myself at my younger sister’s 25th birthday bash about a week ago: I brought drag king karaoke realness into my living room. There were rainbow boas. Rainbow sweaters. Non-rainbow 1970s men’s glasses. It’s all fun and games until you wake up the next day with your fake mustache floating in your cereal.
In my latest Look It’s Joanne video and blog for The Huffington Post, I take you to the morning after the party and explain my love for living room drag karaoke.
PS: If you’re not in a party stuper too, please follow me on Huffington Post and subscribe to my Youtube channel. Kisses!
My sister Eva knows me better than most people. This is a burden for most, but she has the shoulders to carry it off. She emails me funny clips and Reddit images every day. Two of them made giggle too much this week: they were the Treat. Yo. Self scenes from a 2009 episode of Parks and Recreation (which I’ve added at the end of this post). In this episode, co-workers Tom (Aziz Ansari) and Donna (Retta) spend one day out of the year splurging on clothes, fragrances, and even fine leather goods. Tom tries on slippies, aka shoes, and Donna fawns over a diamond-encrusted beetle pin.
Eva had a reason for sending me these clips: I’ve been treating myself during Staff Appreciation Week at my office. Not to boast too much, but I’ve been living it up like a porn star on a speed boat full of, um, whatever porn stars really like that isn’t sex-based. Here’s my top five indulgences of the week, because I’m too relaxed to do a commentary on how the modern workplace edict of sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day is killing us:
1) Hot breakfast on Monday: More hashbrowns for the lady, please!
2) Strawberry Cookout milkshake on Tuesday: I started with a straw, but then graduated to a spoon. I was also going to drink my milkshake and work, which proved to be impossible. It was a milkshake love affair for a good fifteen minutes.
3) A chair massage on Wednesday: That woman attacked my back and made me feel reborn.
4) A nice lunch out on Thursday: I LOVE falafel wraps!
5) A cocktail party with HOT FOOD today: Forget wine, pass the chicken fingers.
Happy Friday to all of my fabulous Look It’s Joanne peeps!
This week, I took my new Don Draper kicks out to work. You may be asking, “What are Don Draper kicks?” After assuring you I’m not an alcoholic nor a compulsive sex addict who grew up in a brothel (Dick Whitman realness!), I would say they are women’s shoes, appropriately called the Dapper, that look like man loafers. They have a grooved pattern dotted with pin marks along the toe and through the sides (AKA wingtips). They have golden brown laces. They make you look and feel smooth like the “Mad Men” lothario without the nasty side effect of being a sociopath.
Your follow-up response might be, “Big fucking deal. Menswear for ladies is so done.” Listen, I’m not pretending to be Tilda Swinton. She’s got that women in menswear thing on lock. She can do it in her sleep. Seriously. She’s done it twice while napping in a glass box at the Museum of Modern Art.
What I’m saying is I got a pep in my step from wearing classically masculine shoes. There is something about not getting blisters on your feet from high heels all day that relaxes your mind and cankles. I even felt more confident when I stepped into an elevator full of men in suits wearing the same shoe. I wanted to say, “Sweet Drapers, Bill. Where did you get yours? Rack Room? Me too!”
Lots of ladies find their power in wearing stilettos, which I honestly don’t understand. I spend the whole day teetering on 3-inch heels (yeah I know that’s not very high by Sarah Jessica Parker I-grew-an-extra-bone-in-my-foot-from-wearing-Manolos standards) and praying for the workday to end so I can go home and run barefoot on my patio. Sometimes I quit wearing heels mid-day and slip into my aerated flats — NOT CROCS, TRADEMARK SYMBOL.
It’s kind of weird that high heels became stereotypically feminine anyway. In Egyptian murals dating from 3500 B.C., both men and women of higher classes are depicted in high heels. Men and women wore early versions of them during the Middle Ages, Turkey in the 1400s, and Europe until the mid-1600s.
High heels became more of a fashion statement when Catherine de Medici, only five feet tall and arranged to be married to the Duke of Orleans, wanted to be taller than the Duke’s mistress, which, um, is either sad or overly progressive. When she put on two-inch heels, the people of France went wild for them. “I’m gonna shoe shank you now bitch!” is what Catherine said to her husband’s sidedish, Diane de Poitiers. Verbatim. Or not at all.
So high heels — and Drapers — are for everyone.
Here are my 5 tips for rocking menswear shoes, non-Swinton category:
1) Wear colorful pants: I paired my shoes with red slacks, a gray jacket and top plus a statement necklace. Here’s a picture of just the necklace and not my pants because I only snap pics of my bottom half when I’m sexting.
2) Wear a colorful scarf: It’s sort of like a tie but with more parrots on it. Ok, maybe that’s just my scarf.
3) Stop saying colorful so much: You don’t need to compensate for your unisex shoe with scarfs and bright prints and patterns. You don’t always need to sparkle like a fabulous drag queen singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by a piano, do you? I think I’ve just undermined my #3 tip.
4) Shoe your friends your new look: I’m sorry, that should have said “show” instead of “shoe.”
5) Convince your mom how great they are: She may have frowned at you in Rack Room Shoes, but now seeing you prancing around in your sweet Draper kicks, she’s just happy you’re happy.
I wanted to start this blog by saying, “Summer is almost here and that means summer book reading!” Unfortunately, I am too early to say that, since it’s only April. Then I thought about it, and the more I did that, the more I felt like I needed to stop thinking so hard. So after I folded my “Pugs Not Drugs” t-shirt in my bedroom and came back to my computer, this is what I realized: People talk more about reading than they actually do it. I know that’s not much, but in my defense the leggings I’m wearing right now are cutting off the circulation in my torso and up to my brain.
Anyway, a friend of mine recently said she was trying to start a book club. I thought this was a pretty gutsy thing to do in the spring, since I always thought starting or being in a book club was more of a summer activity. (Full disclosure: I’ve never started a book club, because no one wants to read my books, but that’s something for a therapist to hear, not you.) Well, apparently spring really isn’t a good time, because my friend’s putting together of a book club has proven to be more difficult than getting Congress to come together or for TCBY to make a decent mango flavor.
Then last week, I got an email from meetup.com because I keep forgetting to deactivate my account. I got invited to a new group called — and this is real, I did not make this up like the tight leggings bit — The Charlotte Women’s Article Club. The group is described as a “quasi-book club for women who are too busy to read an entire book!” They read AN ARTICLE A MONTH.
Before I get all nutty, I will give this positive feedback: I am glad they are reading articles from The Atlantic, Mother Jones, and New York Magazine. That’s why I pray the magazine choices don’t devolve into US Weekly, where women in the group can ask, “What does this article really mean about how fat Kim Kardashian’s ass has gotten since she got pregnant?”
But still, an article-a-month club is kind of ridiculous. This new meetup bothered me not only as a woman, but as a human being who likes to pretend to read books with her friends. What is a book club anyway? You skim through a few chapters and drink wine with your lady friends. How long could an article-a-month club meeting really last? Five minutes? Ten tops if there’s a disagreement, i.e. is it really none of our business that Khole Kardashian may not be a biological Kardashian?
The club’s first meeting is April 24 and the topic is The Future for Afghan Women. That will definitely take longer than five minutes to sort through. I might go, but then if I don’t read the whole article, there’s no way to realistically tell the other ladies without looking like an idiot that I didn’t have time to read it.
Oh, and since I don’t have a therapist, I’ll share five of my favorite books:
1) A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood: A dark, gorgeously written story of a day in the life of a gay professor in the early 1960s who has just lost his lover.
2) The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin: A quirky, funny read about a man who is trying to live his life despite his often crippling phobias.
3) Heartburn by Nora Ephron: Gee, isn’t your husband cheating on you while you’re pregnant with his second child hilarious? In this modern classic, Ephron makes it seem that way, complete with cooking recipes sprinkled throughout the book in case you need dinner ideas for later.
4) Me: Stories of My Life by Katherine Hepburn: The iconic actress rambles about her life and conveniently leaves out juicy details about her partner Spencer Tracy. It’s as entertaining as your batty old aunt dodging questions about what it was like when she was a “dancer.”
5) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov: I read somewhere that someone thought of Lolita as America and Humbert Humbert, the middle-aged man that pursues her, to represent England trying to defile America. I think it’s just about a disgusting creeper seducing a teenager. I am fascinated by books that talk about horrible things without using overtly horrible words, like this one.
I also like this fun fact about the author: Nabokov went butterfly hunting in the summertime. Maybe he should have started a book club instead.
You didn’t ask, but you certainly received: My Look It’s Joanne comedy series is now on The Huffington Post! Episode 3 is (a)live and kicking right now, so go leave me a comment about how my gym shorts make my ankles look weird.
We’ll still get together here on my Look It’s Joanne website every Friday to talk about hobos, binge eating, life, love, dancing like there’s no one watching. Or like there is someone watching, if you’re into that.
xoxo
Mama Joanne
Do you love French movies? Do you love French movies that don’t leave you blowing your nose and screaming, “Life is so fragile!” 
(I’m talking to you, 2012 Best Foreign Film Oscar winner Amour)? Then this short film of me schooshying around an arts and crafts store is made for you, mon petit cheri/cherie.
Like the boy in the 1956 French featurette The Red Balloon, I chase after something red, but it’s not a tomato-like sack of helium. Plus I’m a 27-year-old woman instead of a French schoolboy. At least since the last time I checked.
If there is one thing I’ve learned about social media, it is this: People take a lot of crappy pictures of themselves and then post them for friends and family to wince at, and comment, “Wow, that’s…you!”
Just so you don’t think I’m in a glass house throwing stones, or in a drag queen’s dressing room throwing shade (a more likely location for me), I have posted this masterful photo of me looking atrocious, yet ready for a night on the town. I have captioned it, “This is the best I can do.”
You know what’s not crappy? Posting fine art on your living room walls instead of a Facebook one. May I be so bold as to recommend art by my lil’ buddy, my sister from the same mister, Evamarie Spataro? You can buy her fabulous art wares on etsy or the new Look It’s Joanne store.
If I may again be so bold, I suggest you buy the giant octopus to put above your couch. Friends will marvel at how it looks like a real giant mollusk is going to eat your living room. No, not the Thin Mints on my coffee table! Take my sister who created you, you monster! Oh, the humanity!
In the spirit of painting a portrait with, uh, paint, or posting inappropriate Facebook photos, here’s a top five on social media photo etiquette.
1) Just Woke Up: I don’t want to see your bed head hair or know you sleep naked unless you are Javier Bardem or, um, Javier Bardem. It’s none of my business. Plus, how can I look you in the eye in person? We’d have to stay only social media friends due to my issues with counting sheep in the nude.
2) On the Phone: Listen, I know you’re super popular, but please, put down your cell phone for one second. I have a thing for ears and I want to see both of them without a phone hiding one. There. Oh, that’s the business.
3) Hey It’s Girls’ Night Heyyy: As Eva and I have deftly illustrated, some people take terrible photos of themselves before they hit the club (is that still a thing to say or do?). They do it as a form of self-flagulation, or even approval seeking, saying, “What do ya think?” If you do not truly believe you look amazing in your blue spandex halter dress, don’t take the photo. Just stay home. Besides, girls’ night is not all that. It often ends in a passive aggressive fight about which tapas you want to order as a group: “Oh, I wanted artichoke hearts, but I guess gluten-free gnocchi is fine.”
4) Engagement Photos: Listen, I’m glad you’ve found the love of your life, or at least the woman who has agreed to carry your children, but be selective. You get one day to celebrate finding the one you’ve settled for, so put up a few engagement ring shots, a little hand holding while strolling down railroad tracks, but maintain an air of mystery. It’s more exciting.
5) Smooching: I am happy you love your boyfriend. Really, it’s nice. But I don’t need to see you two sucking face. The way his sharp upper lip hair pokes your nose is making me lose my Thin Mints. I would like to see more profile pictures of couples shaking hands in front of a business park.
