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A (Semi)-Official Guide to Winter Boots

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As I am writing this in Libe café — shoutout to all my fellow Libe-addicts — it is becoming increasingly snowy and cold outside. I am fortunately not out there, but I will be soon. And, because I was silly enough to believe the weather report, I am not wearing those singularly excellent and necessary winter items this column is about: boots. I have boots, and boots that I like, but I was trying to get an extra day of not-boots in before winter set in completely. My goal in this column is to help you find one (or more!) pair of boots that can bring you through the winter without feeling bored or uncomfortable.
The first thing we need to examine, as always, is utility. Why do we wear boots?
(1) They keep you warm.
(2) They keep you dry.
(3)They keep pants dry/clean.

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Book Review: Forgetting the Salt

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Sarah Jefferis’s collection, Forgetting the Salt, is filled with full-bodied, no-nonsense poems, some of which read slow and detailed, full of causality and precision, and others which rush the reader through as if on a “water slide” of images and sounds. The stories and characters, and specifically the way in which the information about them unfurls throughout the collection, are so compelling, they should be left to discovery of the reader. Clues about the speaker’s mother’s Laundromat, her discovery of various facets of her sexuality and of the “grief on the hip bone / of fear” which has been present in her life, are dropped throughout the collection.

You Mean There Are Places Here to Shop?!

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Whether you want to take advantage of the last bit of warmth still clinging on like those last leaves around campus, are already holiday gift-searching, or want to express your remaining joy from Tuesday by giving a gift to our friend the Economy, here is a guide to some stores on the Commons I find to be worthwhile places to spend your money.

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Plaid is Rad

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Dear reader, I misled you, and I’m sorry. I had said that today we would be discussing what’s new for fall, but then I got distracted by something very close to my heart, which, though not technically new, deserves to be talked about. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, today we will be discussing the glorious, the wonderful, the endearing … plaid.
To say that I like plaid is an understatement. Three of my absolutely most favorite garments are plaid: a yellow plaid flannel cowboy style shirt from Old Navy and two pieces my mom made and passed down to me — a jacket-style wool-flannel red plaid shirt and a gorgeous high-waisted circle skirt, also a red plaid.

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Katie Holmes and Those New Peg Legs

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Unless you have personally received a 700-billion dollar bailout — and while you are waiting for Wall Street’s bailout to “trickle down” — you (and I) should probably not be buying very many new clothing items. So, as promised, here is a new way to wear pants you already have: tight-rolling.
When I say new, I don’t actually mean new; not to quash your nascent fashion creativity, which I hope this column is fostering but, as they say, everything old is new. And in this case, we’re talking ’80s-excellence old. This cuffing technique is also called a French roll, farmer roll, pegged leg and who knows what else, and is probably best associated with another ’80s favorite: acid-wash jeans.

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Kroch Libe Goes 'Street'

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Cornell has nine dance groups who perform it, two classes taught exclusively about it, four radio shows that feature it, funding agencies and concert organizers who sponsor it, one official blog devoted to intellectual discourse about it and now, over a 1,000 records containing it, more than 500 original flyers advertising it and about three decades of photographs of its infancy. What is it? It’s Hip Hop, in all its quixotic, nonconformist, ever-evolving, hard-to-define glory.
It features the photographic archive of Joe Conzo, Jr., who, at 16, started going around the Bronx with a camera around his neck in an attempt to attract girls, and inadvertently captured some of the most momentous moments and characters from Hip Hop‘s inception.

I Heart M.C. Hammer (Pants)

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When we last saw our fashion protagonist, she was dangling from a sharp precipice in Paris by the seat of her extremely flowy pants, and we all wondered, would an explanation come? Would the trend cross the Atlantic? Would advice be given?! And now, the ex­citing conclusion, when all will be revealed.
Seriously though, at the end of my last column I pro­mised to talk about M.C. Hammer pants, and I never miss an opportunity to extol the virtues of funny-looking pants. I should clarify right now that although I did just refer to them as “funny-looking,” all of the pants in this article have my full support.

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Dressing On the Side: A Guided Tour To Scarf Fashions 'Round the Globe

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This summer I had the chance to visit three excellent places — Paris, France; Taipei, Taiwan; and the sunny situation we call Southern California. This meant three excellent opportunities for my favorite things (in no particular order): dancing, eating and fashion. If you know me, and if you’re reading my column, there’s a good chance you do, you know that I’m always thinking about clothes, and this summer’s travels provided both mental and physical fodder for myriad new outfits and thoughts about the current state of fashion. Today I want to talk about one of the trends that stood out to me in my first stop.

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Dancing Through Life

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It starts with a dead hippopotamus.
Then there’s the narrator, Joaquin, a young reporter on the entertainment scene aching for his big break into real news; his older brother, a successful business- and ladies- man and the spitting image of their father; their mother, lightly alcoholic and distraught by the younger daughter’s blatant lesbianism and penchant for male clothing; his childhood best friend, a well-respected pimp with connections, whose mother, a great beauty who moves in powerful circles was the first object of the narrator’s desire; the utterly star-struck zoo-worker whose job it is to slaughter and butcher horses for the lions; the object of his affection, mafia movie maven-cum business man George Raft;

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Bearing the Body Bares Its Soul

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Bearing the Body tells the story of a family divided, searching for reconciliation. Like so many families, amends are sought only after great tragedy. In this case, the recent passing of the mother and, two years later, the mysterious death of the eldest son, Daniel, plunge the two remaining members of the family into a delirious search for truth and connection in the city of the estranged son’s death, San Francisco. The father, a Russian Holocaust survivor, and the younger son, finally settled into his medical residency after many years of odd jobs, meet the girlfriend and her young son.