Your Beloved Dames Do The Sprain
Dearest Darlingest Dames Nation,
I, Dame Margaret, come bearing bad tidings.
This week's newsletter is going to be a little less like this:
And a little more like this:
Because the beautiful Dame Sophie, i.e. the better half of your Two Dames, has been stricken with a hideous back injury and cannot sit for more than a few minutes at a time. Given the reading and writing intensive nature of NEWSLETTER COMPOSITION, that means that Dame Margaret is flying MOSTLY solo this week.
Ergo: Direct all complaints about the newsletter's quality to @MrsFridayNextalone. And please send @SophieBiblio warm thoughts, e-warming pads, Advil, and only your most flowery and extravagant praise. Just remember to keep your praise short enough to be read in back-strain-sensitive bursts <3
Disclaimer declaimed, now onto the links!THANKS and A REQUEST!
FIRST OFF!!! To all of you who "attended" our MOONSTRUCK livetweet last Sunday and made it such a ravishing success, THANK YOU!!!!!!!!! Your commitment to Sparkle Motion is NOT in question and it left us brimming with the kind of happy tears this gif implies:
From making hilarious and insightful comments about this masterpiece of American cinema to baffling the rest of Twitter by talking about a movie released in 1987 on the same night as Saturday Night Live's 40th Anniversary Special, we won Sunday and we could not have done it without you guys.
NEXT! A humble request! Inspired by our friend Dolly's excellent and hilarious Q&A with The Awl about her Yoga Nemesis, we are going to be dedicating a segment of our a future newsletter to NEMESES. Please send us: (1) Your best real-life nemesis stories (names can and will be changed), (2) your favorite examples of nemeses in both history and fiction, and (3) your ideas about what distinguishes a NEMESIS from an ENEMY.
We hunger for your thoughts, darlings. Don't make us hunger in vain.Two Bossy Dames' Adventures in Imaginary Radio
Recently, your Dames have been featured on a couple of podcasts (aka IMAGINARY RADIO, get it???) that diligent readers would be wise to check out. First off, Dame Margaret was interviewed on the VERY FIRST Live! episode of previously recommended librarian podcast, Bellwether Friends. Dame Sophie could not join us because of (sob) work commitments, but Dame Margaret talked at length about Two Bossy Dames, how it came about, how phenomenal Dame Sophie is, and what, in your Dames' wildest dreams, we hope to do with our #brand in the future. She also prattled on quite a bit about how she became friends with both the hosts of Bellwether Friends and those of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour and her personal aspirations, such as being a Library Ambassador to Millennials OR becoming to PBS's Masterpiece Theatre what Chris Hardwick is to AMC's Walking Dead.
THEN! In a turn of events that brought great delight to both your Dames, we were praised in episode 50 of Rosie and Jessica's Day of Fun, "Rumbles and Crumble." This was great not only because Dame Margaret directs her face towards praise like a flower to the sun but also because it led to us LISTENING to Rosie and Jessica's Day of Fun, which is fantastic. The episodes are short, about 30 minutes, and cover pop culture, baking, crafting, some kind of Top Five list, and the two sibling-hosts, Rosie and Jessica, just generally being hilarious, charming, and exquisitely accented. The only downside is that their conversation about eating food in train stations might make you long for the Cornish pasties you used to eat in train stations, but Dame Margaret can tell you from personal experience that this longing is not fatal. Transatlantic friendship bonds are rapidly forming between your Dames and these lovely girls and we strongly feel that if you like our work, you're highly likely to enjoy theirs.
Twee as Hell
Design Within Reach, aka Dame Margaret's favorite place to look at lamps whose prices are NOT within her reach, not that she is bitter, apparently sponsors the world's greatest annual contest wherein people compete to make the best miniature chair they possibly can out of a single champagne cork. The results are, predictably, devastatingly cute.This two-tone, color blocked polka dot coat, worn by someone named Gabby Prescod at New York Fashion Week. The first person to either buy or make a coat such as this for Dame Margaret gets a pony. Look at pictures of award-winningly handsome dogs and see if you can match them to their owners with The New York Times's Westminster Dog Show Look-Alikes Quiz! Dame Margaret managed to match 7 out of 12 dogs with their owners. SEE IF YOU CAN BEST HER!Miscellany!
Catch a glimpse of the Dystopian Hellscape through which Dame Margaret is currently suffering, AKA a tumblr where pictures of Boston's public transit paired up with quotes from Samuel Beckett plays.A fascinating interview with BROAD CITY’s costume designer, Staci Greenbaum. Take a look inside the Moorish/Art Nouveau inspired palatial estate built for Charlie Chaplin and Mary Astor, currently owned by Joanna Newsom and Andy Samberg. Then come back and validate Dame Margaret's assertion that there is no more perfect place for Joanna Newsom to live.Weep over Bill Murray's recollection of the last time he saw Gilda Radner, a goddess SURELY enshrined in Two Bossy Dames' Imaginary Book of Saints [I smell a book deal! -- Sophie].Nod fervently along with Danielle Henderson's essay on the crushing crushability of the glorious Mark Ruffalo.10 Odd Things You Can Buy from Monks, including POPE COLOGNE!Examine your aversion to that eye-searingly hideous shade of green Apple deploys to mark messages sent to non-Apple phones in this piece on "green bubble" disdain and how it might have been consciously constructed by Apple's project managers.And finally, these bros by Michelangelo are nude, drunk & on panthers. Renaissance mic drop.