Tunes Tuesday, "You've Got Friends (Valentine's Day Mix Tape)," DJ Lani Love & Major Taylor

Yesterday, R29 ran a Best-of Valentine's Day guide I wrote that featured fun things to do this week for everyone, not just people who are coupled-up. Writing that got me genuinely excited about the holiday, which I haven't always been. Now I'm all about heart-shaped everything (as seen in my Eater DC article today).

Unfortunately, I think Valentine's Day can often be about comparing yourself to others, whether it's not being in a relationship and wanting to be in one, or stacking your relationship and V-Day gifts against other people's experiences. But why not have a day to celebrate love? This is sappy, yes, but I like the idea of appreciating what you have and the good friends who love you.

Brought to you by DJ Lani Love & Major Taylor Follow Major Taylor at djmajortaylor.com TRACKLIST 1. "Friends", Whodini 2. "We're Going to Be Friends", The White Stripes 3. "Just a Friend", Biz Markie 4. "Just Friends", Amy Winehouse 5. "With a Little Help from My Friends", The Beatles 6.

My Chicago friend DJ Lani Love's Valentine's Day mix celebrates not romantic love but friendship in all its forms. Fittingly, she collaborated with her friend, Major Taylor, to create this ode to friends who always have each other's back. I love the selections from LCD Soundsytem, Justice vs. Simian, White Stripes and Friends (the band). And I never remembered the "My Buddy" jingle being so operatic. Happy early Valentine's Day, and to quote Golden Girls, thank you for being a friend.

Nana's Valentine Mart, Mintwood Place, and Weekend Fun

As a Mount Pleasant resident, I'm so sad that Nana is closing the brick & mortar shop. I loved having them in the neighborhood. You never know what you had till it's gone, eh? They threw a fun Valentine's-themed pop-up on Saturday (as written about in R29) with jewelry, cards, hipster accoutrement, and live music. What a charming scene!

The stenciled, hand-painted fabrics from DC Etsy seller Printed Wild totally won me over. A little cosmetic bag came home with me — more on that later! Didn't purchase anything for anyone else, only Valentine's Day presents for myself. 

I chatted with the employee who rung up my purchase, and she said Nana has the space till the end of February, so there will be one last hurrah party in Mount Pleasant. But Nana will keep doing similar pop-up marts around the city, which is something fun to add to your calendars this spring. And this is complete scuttlebutt, but I heard a gourmet grocer might be coming to the Nana space. We shall see.

On Friday, I headed one neighborhood over to Adams Morgan for a Restaurant Week dinner with friends at the much-hyped, Obama-approved Mintwood Place. Wouldn't it be crazy to pick out the DC places where the President goes for date nights? I'm pretty sure Obama isn't constantly refreshing his food blog reader, so someone must have that job. "Barry, the kids on Yelp are going crazy for the escargot hushpuppies at this place."

Anyway, big thanks to my friend Carolyn who scored us the reservation. She's so with it. I took note of the globe light fixtures at Mintwood, after reading on Eater that ne'er do wells keep stealing them. People are so weird. The City Paper too just ran an article about how apparently everyone pockets copper mugs in restaurants. What? If you frequent PX and Bar Pilar, you can afford to buy your own dang mugs. I guess people will steal anything that's not nailed down, or even if it is nailed down, in the case of the light fixtures.

This one inside Mintwood Place is safe though, phew! We loved the atmosphere, and all four courses of our meal lived up to the hype, as Carolyn's boyfriend Alex noted. I was partial to the burrata and kale starter and the baked Alaska. Can't wait to go back! Even a cocktail at the bar would be fun.

After dinner, I made Joe watch the film "The Loneliest Planet." It has Gael García Bernal in it, Cup of Jo blogged about it, and it involves a couple dealing with a fluke encounter on a hiking trip that shakes their entire relationship. Sounds interesting, right?

Well, to give you an idea of how snail's pace slow this film was, there would be a wide shot of the couple hiking starting in one corner of the tv screen and then you'd watch the entirety of their walk to the other side of the screen. I felt I could go to the bathroom and return and they still wouldn't have reached the television's right side.

With the last scene, I told Joe, "Sorry to make you watch this. I thought it would be a little more fast-paced than people taking down a tent in real time."

"It's OK. They're actually pretty quick at taking down the tent, I'll give them that," he said.

So the landscape was beautiful, but you could compress the action into about five minutes. I'm alright with slow movies, but this felt like it never built to anything and people didn't talk about things like normal humans. Also, the girl annoyed me. OK, rant over. Have you seen it? Am I showing my gnat-like attention span or do you agree? It got good reviews. I suppose I prefer more of a plot and dialogue.

Those are my weekend highlights. I also watched "Couples Retreat," which is a sentence I never ever thought I'd write. That one was not my pick. 

Tunes Tuesday, "I'm Writing a Novel," Father John Misty

Big news last week: I'm headed to Coachella! After refreshing web pages and nearly giving up, my good friend Emily was able to score tickets for us for the second weekend.  I'll head to Arizona to visit her, then we will road trip to the festival. Hard to believe this is really going to happen, but I can't wait! 

Before they released the lineup, Emily mentioned that she heard Father John Misty would be there and that she really liked his album. I've had it on repeat for the past week ever since the first listen. To celebrate our upcoming trip, I'm bringing you my favorite track by far off the stellar "Fear Fun." It's a song that opens with the funniest lyrics I've heard in some time.

Father John Misty on Sub Pop http://www.subpop.com/artists/father_john_misty

"I ran down the road, pants down to my knees/ Screaming, "Please come help me, that Canadian shaman gave a little too much to me!'"

And the lyrics just go on like that... It's a hallucinatory episode you can tap your toe to.

Too Many Magazines

I've always loved magazines, to the extent that I used to look forward to going the dentist so I could read the magazines in the waiting room. Now I'm grown up and I subscribe to a bazillion magazines and counting. I love magazines so much that I have a hard time throwing them away. Look at this stack in my room.

I'm going to read these all. Some day. I swear.

They keep stacking up, and I'm not even getting rid of the ones I have read. It is a burden. Joe got me an iPad Mini for Christmas, which I love, and now I'm thinking about Next Issue. You pay a monthly subscription for an app that you lets read unlimited magazines on your iPad. Just reading the list of magazines involved made me realize this may be a dream come true. Bon Appetit, Marie Claire, EW, People, Lucky, The New Yorker, and more. I could hold onto them forever — for whatever reason I feel compelled to do so — without taking up shelf space. It's gonna put the airport bookshop out of business and keep magazines from folding.

Maybe. But I should I commit to another monthly fee? Yikes. If I subscribe to one app, then I wouldn't have an ungainly stack of magazines. But does the physical presence of a magazines compel one to read them? What do you think? My heart says yes to the app, but my head says no. For now. I might switch over and try it out when I have to renew my People magazine.

I was clearing through the pile a bit, or at least trying to keep it from collapsing on itself. When I saw Angelina's mug the second time, I thought it looked familiar. Check this out. It's the British Marie Claire I got on vacation in France on the right and my normal U.S. subscription on the left.

Now Marie Claire is my absolute favorite women's print magazine, but this makes me think we are getting the short end of the stick in the U.S. Only 238 hot new looks to 419 for the Brits? The British magazine is bigger and has about 100 more pages. Angie looks a little tanner in the UK photo. And the headlines are saucier too. I may or may not have bought this solely because I needed to know more about the "I hid a crack pipe in the Ugg boots" tagline. C'mon, you know you're curious about that too. I've never seen a crack pipe referenced on American mags besides Whitney's tabloid exploits. Too soon?

I told Joe about the magazine discrepancy, including the difference in headlines and my preference for the British version. "When you saw the crack pipe headline, did you just throw a 100 euro note down on the counter and walk out with it?" he said. Haha, no, but you don't want to know how many dollars I paid for this particular magazine with the exchange rate. Add it to the pile!

Book Report, "Happier at Home"

This series is my attempt to reconnect with my English major roots by writing mini-essays about books I think are worth adding to your reading list. First up, Happier at Home, a non-cheesy self improvement tome.

Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life

By Gretchen Rubin

Buy on Amazon

I'd like to just start out by saying that I don't have a ton in common with "Happier at Home" author Gretchen Rubin in terms of taste and hobbies. She is perfectly happy wearing yoga pants and a North Face computer backpack as a purse every day. Besides not being interested in fashion, travel isn't big on her list at all either. Or desserts. She decides that she will feel better about life if she doesn't eat a single sweet during the Christmas season and manages to accomplish that easily.

On the other hand, my tastes unfortunately lean toward ultimate consumption. I dream of wearing a cute new outfit while eating ice cream on vacation. 

So while we are opposites, and despite the fact that Rubin says at one point in the book that she's not very good at telling jokes — I may have nodded my head while reading that — I really enjoyed reading Happier at Home, the sequel to The Happiness Project. As a reader, you feel like you're part of Rubin's family and they seem like a loving, content bunch. And Rubin writes thoughtfully on parenting, marriage, and the physical realities of her home, incorporating arresting quotes from philosophers and writers about life and happiness. I like the idea of living an examined life, and following through on steps to make your life better.

Personally, I was intrigued by the first chapter about possessions and organization. I like that she doesn't equate possessions and consuming as shallow or detrimental to happiness. Rubin writes: "For better or worse, buying things (or photographing them, cataloging them, or writing reviews about them) is a way to engage with the world. When we're interested in something, we often express this interest by researching, shopping, buying, and collecting." 

I love fashion and home decor. I'm drawn to design, and I spend a ton of time reading fashion blogs and magazines for fun. But at the same time I know it's just stuff. If I bought everything I ever wanted, I would always want more. I suppose I feel conflicted about loving and wanting things. While I love shopping, I hate having too much stuff. Having to store it, and look at it, and get sick of it. Rubin understands the ties of ownership that can weigh us down. And her answer is engagement: to only own things that you use regularly or have meaning to you, and for those things to be organized.

I think this is a book I'll come back to as a way to simplify and improve my every day life, and I need to check out her first book too. What are your thoughts about possessions? What would make you happier in 2013?

Tunes Tuesday, "The House That Heaven Built," Japandroids

This song made plenty of 2012 "Best of" lists. Of course it did. It rocks that hard. This is the kind of chorus you'd hear in your head when crossing the finish line of whatever marathon you are running. I love the quiet part too. Love it all!  PS: Spin picked Japandroids as 2012's Band of the Year.

From the album Celebration Rock. Purchase CD / LP / MP3 here: http://www.polyvinylrecords.com/celebrationrock