The Pajama Manifesto

The Pajama Manifesto

Pajamas are on the rise. Across the land, according to the Wall Street Journal, teenagers have taken to wearing PJs all day, even in public—even to school! Apparel companies like Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle are cashing in on the trend, stocking their stores with leggings and sweatpants and other comfortable, flowy, elastic waistbanded apparel. Pajamas are even popping up in high fashion: Here’s Sofia Coppola happily, gorgeously stepping outside during the day in Louis Vuitton pajamas, and here’s designer Rachel Roy attending a movie premiere in her own brand of jammies. Last week Shopbop.com, a women’s clothing site that tracks new “looks,” exhorted its customers to “get comfortable with pajama dressing.” Among its wares were several silk blouses selling for more than $200 each; a pair of silk drawstring plaid pants with elastic cuffs for $495; and these $845 (!) wide-leg print pants constructed out of sateen, a fabric that I think is mostly used to make bed sheets.

14 entertaining cases of collective Internet satire

When the commentariat attacks!: 14 entertaining cases of collective Internet satire

1-2. Paula Deen’s English Peas/Rachael Ray’s Late Night Bacon
Food Network stars like Paula Deen and Rachael Ray pride themselves on uncomplicated dishes that viewers can easily recreate for their disappointed families on dinner tables across America. The recipe for Deen’s English Peas is roughly this: Drain a can of peas, add half a stick of butter, heat on the stove, and serve with middle finger raised in the air. The recipe for Ray’s “Late Night Bacon”: Eight slices of bacon, a bunch of paper towels, a microwave, and fuck off. Both were easy pickings ...

The Lana Del Rey Phenomenon

She’s Not What She Seems

A few years ago, the singer and songwriter Lizzy Grant reinvented herself online. This seems overwhelmingly unremarkable behavior in the 21^st century, particularly for a would-be pop musician, but it proved scandalous. Grant, a 25-year-old singer-songwriter from upstate New York, recorded an EP and an album in the late 2000s. Some time before the summer of 2011, according to a recent Billboard story, she deleted her social-networking profiles and a site bearing her name, and withdrew her album, Lizzy Grant aka Lana Del Rey, from iTunes. Last August, she uploaded a music video to YouTube under the stage name Lana Del Rey—goodbye Grant. The clip was for “Video Games,” a beguilingly morose love song. Helped along by music blogs and BBC Radio 1, which supported the track early, the video became a hit: Today, it’s been viewed more than 22 million times.