"I don't do minimal."

I'm not alone when I say that octogenarian style-icon Iris Apfel is one of my heroes. A longtime New Yorker and polymathic aesthete, she lives her life in BOLD. From a legendary wardrobe bursting with eclectic accessories and whimsical ensembles that has been celebrated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute to her maximalist taste in interior design, the world Ms. Apfel has created for herself is utterly unique and entirely her own. She seems to relish living life by her own rules.

I've always wanted to know what Ms. Apfel's Manhattan apartment looks like, and this month's issue of Architectural Digest gives us a rare peek into her home life. It's just as I imagined and more. I especially loved learning more about her history, specifically that she used to be a copy girl:

"But after landing her first job as a $15-a-week copy girl at Women's Wear Daily, she figured out that advancement there was blocked because the editors she hoped to someday replace were, as she puts it, 'either too old to get pregnant or too young to die.'"

True words, even to this day. Perhaps inspiration for those of us who want to live by our own rules or break out and do something by ourselves in a different way. I don't know about you, but I think our world needs more color, whimsy, and individual exuberance. Also, gigantic glasses and multiple brooches on one lapel. I love you, Iris!

Photos via Architectural Digest

Tonight I will be spending the night--the entire night--with 499 people at the New York Public Library as part of a game called Find the Future, a game we have no idea how to play. All we know is that tomorrow morning, at 6 a.m., we will emerge all bleary-eyed and triumphant onto the Fifth Avenue sidewalk brandishing new titles: Published Authors. What we write tonight, together, will be a book about our future. We think. We have no clue! What we do know is that we'll be writing something unprecedented and monumental. And what we complete will be published by the NYPL to be kept in its archives forever.

Needless to say, I'm still freaking out about getting to be a part of this. To enter, you had to write an essay discussing how you want to make history and change the world by finishing the statement: "By the year 2021, I will become the first person to..." I wrote about wanting to tell the story of my immigrant history spanning three cultures, two continents, and one woman. I want to tell this story through writing, film, and performance. I want to tell it with the curiosity of youth and the mark of age. I want to encourage other women to look way back into their pasts and find the ghosts with something to say, the women whose voices were silenced or never deemed worthy enough to be heard.

I hope I can start this process tonight tucked into a cozy corner or splayed out on that glorious marble three floors above 42nd and 5th. I hope I can leave something there that those who come after me can read 100 years from now. My family is the reason I do this, and I thank them for not only encouraging me to take part in this game but for sparking my interest in where I come from in the first place.

Starting Saturday, everyone will be able to take part in the Find the Future game online. You can also help the NYPL celebrate their centennial by checking out a new exhibit featuring pieces from their vast collection such as a John Keats letter to Fanny Brawne, journals from Jack Kerouac and Virginia Woolf, a copy of the Declaration of Independence written in Thomas Jefferson's hand, and Charles Dickens's letter opener featuring his pet cat Bob's taxidermied paw as a handle. Here are a few photos I took yesterday during one of their free, daily tours.

The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, a repository for the study of English Romanticism.

Charles Dickens's letter opener with cat paw handle.

A hidden reading room, one I plan on haunting tonight.

The journal and personal belongings of Jack Kerouac.

A doll's casket.

The entrance to the New York Public Library.

Please help support the NYPL and all local libraries!

The buzz around Cannes this year hasn't all been surrounding a certain dogmatic filmmaker. Critics are shifting their attention towards Spanish filmmaker (and my personal fave) Pedro Almodóvar's latest "horror film without screams or frights," The Skin I Live In. Adapted from Thierry Jonquet's novel, Tarantula, it's a tale of plastic surgery obsession gone awry, and in literary form at least, is described as a "poisoned bonbon" of a story. Um, yes please!

The film reunites Almodóvar with former male muse, Antonio Banderas, whose career he launched back in the late 1980s and with whom he hasn't worked in 21 years. Cannes critics suggest not letting anyone tell you much about it (which defeats the purpose of a review telling you all about it then I guess), and most have praised both the "magnificent" direction and "creepy" turn by Banderas. Unfortunately, we have to wait until November for this goodness, but here are a few photos and a trailer to tantalize us until then.

Tonight's the last night of the Scene: Brooklyn Film Festival hosted by the Brooklyn Arts Council. Come on out to Galapagos Art Space for a screening of some of Brooklyn's finest short films followed by a party featuring the debut of the dynamic DJ duo DAS SCHMUCK (aka yours truly + my pal Douglas Q. Smith). It's gonna be a grand time!

Found this at the Strand.

Photographs by Hamish Robertson

"Every girl should be given an electric guitar on her 16th birthday."

Holy punk rock, have you seen this movie? You've got Diane Lane pre-The Outsiders as Corinne Burns, a passionate, small-town teen who wants to start a girl band called The Stains in the wake of her mother's death. Her rebel yell goes like this: "I'm perfect! But nobody in this shithole gets me because I don't put out!" Rounding out the cast is a young n' lanky Laura Dern wearing some seriously awesome pastel n' pleather outfits. Christine Lahti plays her mother and Corinne's aunt (OMG CHRISTINE LAHTI!), and is a tall glass of taut, tanned, feathered-out Long Island iced tea. Then you've got Ray Winstone as Corinne's love interest and lead singer of The Looters, the band The Stains open for on tour. Who plays guitar in The Looters? Oh, just Mr. Paul Simonon from The Clash. Yeah. So, if you haven't seen Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains already, I urge you to go and Netflix this party! It's my style inspiration for the week.

Dear Chan Marshall, I can't wait much longer for a new album from you.

Once I wanted to be the greatest. No wind or waterfall could stall me. And then came the rush of the flood, the stars at night turned deep to dust...

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Punk pioneer. Feminist poet. Style macerator. Brace face. You were an inspiration and a true original. We will miss you...

"I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not." - Kurt Cobain

Sometimes I daydream about what Kurt would be doing now. What he'd be making, what his music would sound like, if he'd still have long hair. I'd like to think that he'd be outspoken, that maybe he'd have shed his apprehension for the spotlight and embraced it, becoming the elder statesman of the misunderstood, enduring godfather of misfits. I imagine that he'd be serious but also more lighthearted. Spontaneous but allied to self-mockery. I see him in photos with Michael Stipe, both sporting matching grey beards, their heads tilted back in shared cacophony somewhere off the coast of France. I like to think that Kurt would have gone solo, acoustic maybe, as gentle would have been a better form of rebellion. I like to see him as a one-man poetry band, rasped rage embracing a powerful purr.