Links I Like Friday

Girls on Bikes :30 HD from Loeffler Randall on Vimeo.

If you've ever dreamed of riding a vintage bike with a designer purse in the basket, this video is for you.  Maybe my bike needs a basket, and then if I do that, the designer purse will follow.

I've been riding my bike more lately. We have a love/hate relationship. I love the idea of the bike but I feel like it is the wrong bike for me. It has the boy-style cross bar and I feel like I may tip over every time I try to get started after a stop.  It's because I'm so uncoordinated and I need to start pedaling before my butt is on the seat but I can't do it.  My bike bell used to say "I ♥ My Bike" but the ♥ faded away, which is very apropos. Joe says I should write "I Ehh My Bike."

This week, I chatted with "Bachelor Pad" stars and the front of the house team at Elisir in Penn Quarter for Eater. And I ate jambalaya at Georgia Brown's and name-dropped Beyonce for a Scoutmob deal.

The rest of the Internet:

I always love Lauren Moffatt's fashion lines, and of course, her home is gorgeous as well and so unique. Lots of painted white brick! I had a painted white brick wall in my bedroom in my last apartment and hope to have that again in some future home. Also, Lauren's beautiful bubble chandelier is available at an (almost) reasonable price here. I sent the home post to Joe, because well, Debie wasn't online yet. He said, "He needs to chill with his collection of sneeks." [DesignSponge]

More Lauren Moffatt here, talking about being a mom. [The Glow]

OK, so this girl wasn't exactly working in the coal mines, but just because unpaid fashion/media internships are the way its always been doesn't mean it's the way it should be. [NY Mag]

Richard Cohen thinks politicians' "I was poor once" stories are out of touch: "Michelle Obama recalled that Barack used to pick her up 'in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by in a hole in the passenger-side door.' Of course, the couple in that car had both graduated from Harvard Law..." [WaPo]

I visited the lovely new Mount Pleasant library yesterday, which just opened on Wednesday after a renovation.  It's so pleasant!  I randomly spent five minutes reading a Kirsten Dunst profile in a January edition of Lucky on a library shelf, and I'm recommending it for Kirsten fans.  The author writes a nice little take-down of celebrity profiles, and Kirsten genuinely seems like a cool girl. [Lucky]

Aidan's Swing

Tunes Tuesday, "Something Good," Alt-J

Links I Like

This is not exactly a glamour shot.  The cake I made this week tasted alright, but it is not very pretty.  And the inaugural voyage of the new bundt pan too!  Something went wrong with the whole make your own frosting deal.  And then I got frustrated and took the frosting bowl, overturned it on top of the cake in one flip, and let gravity take its course.  The hole in the center was full of frosting.

I told Debie my new career is domestic goddess.  That was before I did that to the frosting, set off the smoke detector, and opened the fridge, somehow breaking one of the shelf doors so that all the condiments fell out onto the floor, mustard and jam and ketchup bottles everywhere.

Anyhow, the chocolate sour cream bundt cake tasted good, that's what counts.  The recipe is from my beloved Joy the Baker cookbook.

This week, I wrote about a really nice, brand spankin' new hookah place on H Street for Scoutmob.  Highly recommend if you are in a hookah-smoking mood. [Scoutmob]

I visited the new rustic and manly Epic Smokehouse in Pentagon City. [Eater]

I also photographed some of the crazy fun of Fashion Night Out in Georgetown [BizBash]

A ton of links from the rest of the Internet:

So I made it all the way to the end of this gif-based tumblr about how everyone is married. [#MyFriendsAreMarried]

Stumbled on this interview with writer Molly Young, and it made me want to read her work.  Loved her articles (1, 2) on Cosmo's Helen Gurley Brown! [Into The Gloss]

Bet you can't read this eulogy about a horse who loved children without tearing up.  Big fat tears rolled down my cheeks while reading this at the Pentagon City mall food court. [WaPo]

In case you want to look like Kate Moss.  Well, the makeup and hair at least.  Seems more attainable than the pricey wardrobe and extreme thinness.  [WhoWhatWear]

NOOOO! They are my Brangelina. [NY Daily News] 

Snarky take on the dead-horse VMAs: "Recoil at the torrent of teenaged girls stuffed into outfits every color of the day-glo. There are streams of Snookis." [Spin]

Love Design*Sponge's Grace Bonney, and here's a quick interview with her on an interesting website that uses a questionnaire answered famously by Marcel Proust. [The Proust]

Scoutmob grades D.C. politicians' Twitter accounts. [ScoutmobDC]

France INSTAX

So happy I dragged my Fujifilm INSTAX camera to France on our vacation.  Sure, you look like an uber tourist when you pull out this gigantic honkin' camera, but the little print-out photos are so much fun.  I love the fact that it airbrushes all your blemishes away, ha. Don't we look retro? It's like real life Instagram.

I finally learned how to hook up my new wireless printer/scanner, so I can share these photos now.  I had to chat with a Comcast representative to figure out how to change my wireless password, and it took a few representatives for me to figure it out.  My first reaction to tech conversations is always utter despondency.  "This will never, ever work," I told Joe, instantly abandoning all hope as I chatted online with someone named John Anthony from Comcast.  And I mean furiously chatted, typing a full paragraph of frustration about exactly why I was unable to change my password.

"You don't need to type all of that," Joe said.  But I wanted John Anthony to thoroughly understand where I was coming from.  "Why don't you just write, 'Yes," Joe said.

John Anthony suggested something I had already I tried.  "I knew that already," I wrote.  Throwing some shade.  I could've written "DUH" or "DOY" but I refrained.

Tunes Tuesday, "I Can Only Give You Everything," Nick Waterhouse

No matter how many iPads we buy and tweets we send, it seems that retro soul will never die.  I make this assertion partly on that Heineken "Love Letter" commercial, the one that plays after every other ad during the U.S. Open this year.  (Don't get me started on the "It's a monkey, Daddy" Federer commercial, which was cute the first ten times and not so cute 500 airings later.  I've obviously been watching too much tennis.)