Life According to Gamine: Vampire Envy

This is a Gamine original and since I own Gamine, I also own all the rights to this. To see it in its original format go to Life According to Gamine: Vampire Envy.

Like every twenty-something approaching 30, I have begun to contemplate my own immortality. Instead of dwelling on the fact that one day my boobs will start to head south for the winter and that my coolness quotient, being tied to how close I am to 25, will being to drop exponentially the second I blow out the candles on my 27th birthday cake, I have become obsessed with exploring my options for forever delaying my inevitable slip into old age and eventually the coffin. I’ve toyed around with having kids as an attempt at immortality, like most people, but they are damn expensive and require me to have some semblance of a career with health insurance and sanity. I have even begun to explore the fact that my choice to become a writer is more influenced by my narcissistic need to live forever than my desire to write, but writing doesn’t pay until it does. So after careful consideration I’m turning to vampirism, more specifically I’m begging the vampires of Bon Temps–wherever that is–to come and get it.

I’ve really thought this trough after being a student of the vampire myth my entire life, and watching every episode of True Blood. I’d be totally ok with never seeing the sun again, I have a permanent tan thanks to having ancestors from west Africa, and I’d look great frozen at 26 for the next however many years until the world ends, Buffy stakes me, or I meet the true death at the hands of an angry vampire king. I also already wear a ton of black and would have no problem living off of blood–its like a juice fast but jucier.

My decision to embrace life as the undead has pretty much been accepted by everyone except my boyfriend who thinks my dreams of biting necks, glamoring fools, and hanging with Vampire Bill and Eric are no more than teenage fangirl fantasies. I acknowledge that at the heart of my desire are fangirl fantasies where I am less like True Blood’s resident backwoods Barbie and more like the chicly dressed but tough ass nails lady vampires who do nothing but sleep all day and wear vintage Dior at night. While some part of me would love to have one of the show’s main man vamps bite and turn me, another larger part of me refuses to accept that death is begin to blow his icy breath on the back of my neck–my bad that was the a/c. Either way, I am on a mission to join the undead in their quest to do whatever it is that they spend immortality doing, as long as I don’t get stuck hanging with lames like Vampire Bill and this new sensitive Eric Northman who would win me over in real life as a vampire, because thats what vampires do, but would probably annoy the heck out of the vampire me and the real me if he were the real him. (The real Eric Northman is Swedish and no offense but I don’t know anything to come out of Sweden that isn’t a little bit odd. Think about it, Ikea, H&M, Abba, Ace of Base…all odd.)

To satisfy my boyfriend’s curiosity and annoyance with my geeked out fangirl tendencies–he’s sat through Harry Potter and Twilight with me and indulged my comparisons of both series to the ultimate geek trilogy, The Lord of the Rings–he will be the first person I turn as a new vampire. He will also be responsible for turning me if he becomes a vampire first. However we come to vampirism, we will have forever to figure out our careers, how we’ll afford to live, and whatever else you’re supposed to figure out before 30 because I have the same ideas about being an adult at 26 as I had at 16.

Booze, Broads, and isn't Mad Men about to start?

I love the 1920s, really I do. I mean women had just earned the right to vote and, despite the criticisms hurled at them by intellectual suffragettes, flappers were liberating women from corsets, sitting in bars, smoking and drinking with the boys, working outside the home, and wearing pants. The decade that brought us an immigration act, Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Gatsby old chum, jazz, frozen food, oh and let's not forget the resurgence and growth  of the KKK, is also the setting for HBO's newest serial that is apparently about baby gangsters.

In addition to being a smorgasbord of everything we think we know and love  about the 1920s-gangsters, free flowing booze, flapper talk, crooked politicians-Boardwalk Empire is visually stunning. The scenes of Atlantic City the way it was way back when are so insanely beautiful that I want to rent out the place for a sweet 16 for my un-conceived daughter-complete with late night sideshow style barkers urging you to come in and watch a girl in high waist shorts do the Charleston.

                       

Aside from the aesthetics, I couldn't tell you much about the show. There are bootleggers, a bunch of dirty politicians, famous Mafia bosses in their adolescence, and a battered woman. Basically its like Gangs of New York, Casino, and Goodfellas with ragtime and fake pearls. For a show filling the time slot of another show where no one is what they seem-who knew Lafayette's new boo was a Mexican warlock?- and wraps up before a show where just when you think you know a character they change-except Betty she's pretty much the same character she's been-the fact that the characters in Boardwalk Empire are exactly what they appear to be-they are based on historic figures-is not refreshing, just not like the others. Maybe next week I'll change my mind...I doubt it

Caren West talks Kell on Earth

This piece originaly appeared on Examiner.com. To view it in its enterity please go to that website.

Last Monday night Bravo gave every fashion and pr girl from here to L.A. yet another reason to set their DVRs with the premier of Kell on Earth, a show chronicling the life and times of the guys and gals at People’s Revolution and their mama wolf Kelly Cutrone. Although Atlanta’s pr girls don’t have to worry about seating Vogue’s editors too close to Harper’s, they do have face the same pressures and demands from their clients whether they be America’s only couturier or the coolest husband and wife jewelry line to hit the scene....Read the entire article here.