Peter Som

1. Lady Gaga’s laced-face. Nobody wears fashion as art better than the lady

2. Erna Einarsdóttir. An important fashion designer of the future

3. Peter Som’s Spring 2010. A collection so yummy that it makes you feel like you’re in an edible boudoir from the 50’s

4. Michelle Obama. It’s so very elegant and true of her to support American fashion designers

5. Blockheads. The fact that there’s a place in Manhattan that can get you drunk and full for only $20 makes us happy

6. Avatar. Nothing less than a revolution in film-making

Lady Gaga's laced face

7. Couture Allure. The best vintage bets online

8. Kathy Griffin. Her Official Book Selection and her moving up the alphabet list – we salute her

9. A Streetcar Named Desire. Cate Blanchett and Liv Ullmann. Theatre lives gracefully. Now we just need to get people to go to the theatre

10. Urban Yoga Spa in Seattle. A fabulously chic hot yoga place + spa sans the mixture of old sweat and patchouli

11. Barack Obama’s Tweets. We have a current president who communicates with us

12. Phillip Niemeyer’s Op-Chart. Picturing the past ten years

13. Adam Lambert. We just like him

Michelle Obama in Isabel Toledo

14. The most original recession entertainment. The sheep’s head eating competition

In perhaps a similar case of desperation, credit card companies and banks with outstanding loans, have dramatically increased the number and frequency of phone calls to those with outstanding credit. Just as unemployment is not a good indicator of the end of a recession, delinquency in paying credit cards is often a harbinger for a coming recession.

These creditors, who aggressively pushed their products on people whose credit did not warrant holding such cards, now find themselves in the position of hounding their customers for even minimal payments.

Gourmet magazine’s closing is a result of a slow economy and a lack of advertising dollars. The difficulty in which credit card companies find themselves, is due to their actions solely. Setting increasingly high interest rates, charging hidden fees at the smallest provocations, and disseminating their products willy-nilly, has led them to hire phone banks to contact customers around the clock.

Just as pushing the button for the elevator many times doesn’t make it come faster, calling a debt-holder many times a week does not mean they will have extra money to pay a bill that never decreases.

The most difficult part of this to swallow, are the salaries and bonuses the presidents and CEO’s of these banks receive. Some of these companies exist because we, the taxpayers, bailed them out as part of Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP). The very people who have jobs due to our money, are making policy decisions about our credit cards that force us to give them more money. They then use that money to line their personal pockets.

Should it take action by President Obama to limit salaries and bonuses of TARP recipients? Shouldn’t those of us who are immediately affected by their decisions be credited? The loss of Gourmet is regrettable. The loss of our money is a crime.

Be aware that Facebook can easily rob you of your time and intelligence. You really have to have an agenda before logging on because there are some odd games that are trying to steal your time, like seeing who looks like you in Hollywood, or who your best friend is that week. Don’t fall for them. My biggest letdowns are people’s comments such as, “woke up cranky”, “eating a burrito”, “my child lost a tooth and said something ‘smart’ ”. I feel robbed of my time because I can’t just ignore them. I have to stop and wonder if the world is run by D-students, or if people are just dying for attention. I mean, really, this is what it has come down to? These are the messages we need to share with the world? Should I just let it go and realize that everyone deserves a voice out there?

As fabulous and paperless as this social media can be, and is, to post a link on all your friends’ pages to a show you are working on, sell a sweater you are knitting, or list an archive of work on your former professor’s Facebook page. I do, however, miss the old world of personal notes, cutout articles in the mail, and smelling real letters that have traveled across the ocean. Just imagine pulling an Oscar Wilde by mailing original written material, along with a personal note to a contact of importance saying, “I send you two magazines with contributions of mine which perhaps you might like to reprint, or notice; they are quite at your disposal”. (“Disposal” means recycle today).

Thank you for being a friend…

A new professional football league (the United Football League), recently began its inaugural season. While we are years away from any team in the UFL beating an NFL team, there are some similarities between now and the year the Jets shocked the sports world.

Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. That announcement shocked the entire world. Robert Kennedy, assassinated in 1968, might have won the same award for his work for peace and with the impoverished. There have been many words written about the world we would have had if Kennedy hadn’t been shot. Undoubtedly, the Vietnam War would have ended sooner and the poor would have had a more vocal advocate. This didn’t happen.

Barack Obama is not Robert Kennedy. However, the excitement he created during the last election must be similar to what was present in 1968 when Kennedy announced his candidacy and went on his cross-country whistle-stop tour. Both candidates mobilized voters who had remained silent for too long. They spoke about issues were important to everyone, except politicians. Both spoke about ending unpopular wars. Only one of them has the opportunity to do so.

Barack Obama has the opportunity to finish what Robert Kennedy began forty years ago. His pace, too slow for some, is necessary for what he is trying to do. It takes time for community outreach—especially in a community as large as the United States. An organization as august as the Nobel Selection Committee has recognized what Obama is attempting to do.

Even with the Health Care debate and unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan unresolved, this is a time for optimism. The spirit of a Kennedy lives on in the personage of our president. Here’s hoping he can see these goals to fruition. That’ll really shock the world.