Why am I named this??

My blog just asked me that. Crazy blog can talk...

Rorschach: Because I have done a couple IQ/psych tests in my day, the ink blot test always kind of freaked me out and inspired me at the same time. I was always looking for the glint of judgment in the test facilitator's eyes when I saw frolicking satyrs or jelly doughnuts. "Does she have an eating disorder, or some strange addiction? Is she really that blind?"

But Rorschach tests are really cool, because every person that looks at them sees something different, and that's probably why they appeal to me. I have spilled my coffee at times and it's fun to Rorschach the -

Coffee: Caffeine probably accounts for at least 75% of my bodily chemistry. Plus, I like the whole aesthetic and feel surrounding coffee-drinking. It makes your hands warm in the winter and there is a whole culture built around the enjoyment of coffee. I think today's coffee shops are the equivalent of the bistros and absinthe dens of yesteryear. Creative types tend to like them. I tend to like creative types. We like caffeine.

1963:

I love anything pre-1980. I loved the eighties, don't get me wrong, lots of great memories of that time in my life. But I never felt like I fit into the modern world. Yeah, I have lots of modern sensibilities and I probably would have not done well in the more chauvinistic eras. But the music, clothing, cars and just the STYLE of the past spins me. Particularly the Victorian era, the Roaring Twenties and World War II eras have always fascinated me. Things were made better, even plastic was awesome, and there is nothing like an Eames chair, people. Rita Hayworth in Gilda changed my life as an impressionable teenager sitting in the library one summer afternoon. I was really homely. She wasn't.

But why 1963?

Kennedy, of course. It changed our world when one of our last great presidents died in Dallas. Seeing the footage of beautiful Jackie trying to frantically reassamble her dying husband's skull in her flawless Chanel suit was gut-wrenching. And I wasn't even alive yet when it happened. My mom was, and it really was the day the music died, for everyone. But 1963 does it for me for other reasons. Probably my single favorite year for fashion, for automobiles (I had a '63 Dart), and just the general feel of the time. Women still had womanly figures, and girdles weren't a dirty word. You had to have a girdle to look good in a pencil skirt. Now we have Spanx. Thank God!

America was starting to wake up to women's rights and equality in the workplace. Women were going on birth-control, and the seeds of the sexual revolution were being sown. But there was still that tinge of innocence...at least until November.

I guess that's why I love the show Mad Men so much. It shows that transition, in a truly fine way. The characters change with each year that goes by, and are a microcosm of society for the decade. You love and hate Don Draper with equal fervor. I want to steal Christina Hendrick's wardrobe and I wonder if the perpetual scotch is REALLY scotch or iced tea. Otherwise the actors are gonna need rehab after the series ends...which it will have to. Eventually.

So that's blog post number 1!! I think that one will be the hardest.