What’s up, pussycats?

It’s the end of summer. THANK FUCK FOR THAT. I’m not a summer person. (We’ve covered this in previous sessions.) At this point in the year, I feel an intense back-to-school I-hope-it-rains-soon lets-start-fresh ooh-mustn’t-forget-to-get-new-little-ankle-boot-socklets excitement. So I’ve been trying out new beauty shit (NBS, if you will). Pull up a chair and let me tell you ALL ABOUT IT.

Side note: for those of you who only read me for the beauty stuff – and I know you are there, you have been since this ol’ thang on my lovely JoGo’s site – know that some things never change. I still use Lancome Bifacils to take off mascara and Cetaphil cleanser, I still use SK-II every night and a little moisturizing mix of Yu-Be with Korres and and/or my other fave, Etude House Moistfull Collagen Cream. When you find things that work, you stick with them.

But I have some fun OTHER stuff that I’ve been flirting with in addition to my regular all-stars because, you know me, I’m just that kind of cougar.

For a start, Vitamin C. I started using Skinceuticals CE Ferulic Acid about two years ago, and I wish to hell I hadn’t, because holy shit you guys, it is expensive. But two or three drops of it under my SPF every day gives an outstanding overall glow AND protects your face from [can't remember, don't care enough]. I was so impressed with it that I thought ‘hey, if a little Vitamin C is good, a LOT must be GREAT’  - this is the ol’ Burgess ‘if it feels good, do it, if it still feels good, do it MORE!’ motto.

I tried La Roche Posay Redermic C. Mostly because I really trust LRP. I thought it was great for brightening, but I detested the crinkly toothpaste packaging. The creases swiftly became cuts, and the stuff started oozing out and changed color, and I understand Vitamin C needs to not be exposed to air or it loses its pound puppy power, or whatever. (Actually, doing research just now, it appears that they’ve improved the packaging in the last six months – so give it a bash, if you fancy.)

Then I did some reading – okay, I did a LOT of reading. And discovered Soko Glam’s COSRX Triple C Lightning Liquid. This is the ne plus ultra of Vitamin C products. It also sells out regularly, but put your name down for the next release and you won’t have to wait long; they make it in small, regular batches to keep it fresh and as powerful as possible. As advised on the box, I’m keeping it in the fridge, and I pat on a couple of drops at night, after SK-II and before moisturizer. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but I think it’s adding a certain je-ne-sais-quoi brightness and radiance.

BUT. It is kind of drying. So I’ve been trying to figure out ways to add extra moisture to the ol’ noggin. (Dry skin is, to me, the most aging thing in the world. Some of my girlfriends hate moisturizing, it gives them PTSD to oily teen skin or something. When they tell me that I take them by the shoulders and give them a light slap and say: “Think of your epidermis as a dried apricot. If you drop a dried apricot in water for an hour, you will see how plump and lovely and youthful it becomes as it rehydrates. WHY WOULD YOU NOT WANT TO BE A PLUMP APRICOT? WHY DO YOU WANT TO BE DRIED FRUIT?”)

HADALABO Gokujun Hyaluronic Lotion Moist. This is one of those things that pops up constantly if you subscribe to Korean and Japanese skincare blogs, which of course I do. I delayed trying it, because the watery nature of it didn’t really appeal, plus I already do the SK-II and then the Triple C Lightning serum watery things and can I really be any more high-maintenance than I already am? The answer, as it turns out, is YES I CAN. You just shake a little of the liquid into your hands and pat it into your face and neck. It works. I do it after the CE Ferulic, before SPF, in the morning, to counter-act the dryness of the Vitamin C the night before. Will I repurchase? Yes. Yes I damn well shall.

Next: snail mucin. Urgh. Snails. Everyone’s been talking about snail mucin for years. You know that already. And there’s a particular fad for the slimy snail sheet masks. I wear them for fun now and again. (Though if you really want to try a sheet mask, this one is my favorite, it’s nice to wear on weekend mornings while you read the newspaper.)

And then there’s this: COSRX Advanced Snail 96 Mucin Power Essence. The consistency is… how can I put this delicately? It’s a little cum-my. It just… yeah, it just is. (Stares into space, thinking about it.) But it does make your skin feel lovely. Will I buy another after I finish this one? Eh, maybe. I’ve been using it erratically, because of the aforementioned consistency. I also read something about how they ‘milk’ the mucin secretion from the snails and threw up a little in my mouth. I think life might be too short to be grossed out by skincare.

I’ve always worn La Roche Posay Anthelios – I have flirted with Elta and others in the past, but I always come back to Anthelios. But then this summer I began obsessing out that it wasn’t enough coverage. “I need a stronger zinc oxide barrier SPF that won’t make me look like a kabuki performer,” I remarked sadly to myself, because I work from home on my own all day so all my fascinating banter goes completely to waste. “I need something that will cover my chin because that thing is getting freckles and they may not be freckles they may be age spots and what the sweet motherfuck am I supposed to do about them?”

For a couple of days, I tried the Cerave SPF50 zinc oxide stick that I scribble on my son’s faces every morning. (If you think I’m obsessive about my own SPF, you should see what a batshit insane banshee I am about protecting the translucent, milk-white skin of my tiny redheaded sons. “WE HAVE SKIN CANCER IN THE FAMILY,” I yell to anyone who listens, which is no one. “RED-HEADED BLUE-EYED PEOPLE ARE WAY, WAY, WAY MORE LIKELY TO GET SKIN CANCER THAN ANY OTHER SKIN TYPE. MY HUSBAND GOT SEVERE SUNBURN ONCE IN HIS CHILDHOOD ON A BEACH IN FUCKING IRELAND OF ALL PLACES AND COULDN’T GET OUT OF BED FOR TWO DAYS AND I BET THAT’S WHAT EVENTUALLY KILLS HIM.”) But make-up doesn’t go on over the top easily, and when I just used it on my jaw and chin, to cover the parts that sometimes stick out from my hat, Fox complained that I looked like I was trying to make a statement about Abe Lincoln being part-mime, or something.

So I tried a bunch of other “invisible” zinc oxide SPFs, and I don’t want to name and shame, but were they invisible? Were they fuck.

Then I saw this SuperGoop 100% Mineral Smooth & Poreless Matte Screen SPF40 product in Sephora, bought it because it has 17% zinc oxide and YOU GUYS. It’s wonderful! To quote the Dread Pirate Roberts aka Wesley in Princess Bride, I have never seen its equal!

It’s very gently tinted, matte, sort of mousse-like in consistency, it blends imthefuckmaculately with other make-up – but you don’t really need to wear any, as it doubles as concealer/foundation, the little clever clogs. I wear it over my normal SPF, Anthelios (which is mostly chemical SPF with a bit of titanium dioxide, I don’t think any of us need a long lecture from me about chemical vs physical sunscreen, if you want to read more go here). It’s not going to be in my make-up routine as soon as nice normal weather resumes, but while the sun is still in its evil phase, I’m wearing this little baby every damn day.

HOWEVER. And this is where an extra step begets an extra step, like with extra vitamin C requiring extra moisturizer. I’m now wearing such a heavy SPF, I had to add an extra cleansing step to my routine. Because taking off THAT much SPF requires some heavy lifting. It requires, in fact, the dreaded Korean double-cleanse. YES. I KNOW. I HAVE MADE FUN OF TEN-STEP ROUTINES FOR YEARS AND HERE WE ARE AT WHAT, SIX OR SEVEN?

Trilogy Cream Cleanser. Smells divine, made with organic rosehip oil, doesn’t dry out, and perfect for removing heavy SPF. Lather up with a splurge of this and some water, then remove it all one of these little white face cloths. Throw the face cloth straight into your laundry basket and cackle at the sheer indulgence of it all. Then use Cetaphil to cleanse again, just for fun, because something about it really does work wonders.

Lastly: this ridiculously cheap Real Techniques 1413 Setting Brush.

The lovely Katie Jane Hughes uses it to blend in concealer and foundation, so for $3, I couldn’t think of a good reason not to try it. YUP. She’s right. It’s fucking excellent. I don’t use it for the Supergoop stuff, but for going out at night / when normal daytime service resumes, it’s incredible for blending your concealer, foundation, and highlighter. It gives you delightfully airbrushed skin look, but not in a crazed-faked-baked way. Just… perfect.

Okay. Back to the real job.

I went to LA last week and sold another show to a studio!  The deal is being worked out right now, so I can’t go into too many details. But I can’t wait to get started. I also sold a show to a cable network recently – something set in the 80s – and just got the all-clear to move from outline to script stage.

The outline process is INTENSE and sometimes slow. But oh, so useful. I love outlining. (I wrote my first novel on a whim, with no outline, no plot, no plan, in fact nothing in my mind aside from a general desire to make my reader laugh and feel happy and understood. Sometimes I look back and think, my God woman, you were lucky to get an agent and a book deal off that thing.) I think of outlines as the blueprint for the house I’m designing and building: I have to make sure the people paying for the house are happy with the blueprint, right? So they can’t say at the end “uh, since when was there a fucking gazebo on the roof deck?”

No one wants a fucking gazebo on the roof deck.

With these two projects, and two others in the pipeline, I’m a busy little cougar these days. But I keep thinking: “man, I want to write a funny / beauty / fashion / something post for the blog.” And then I don’t because… by the time I’ve finished writing and thinking about worlds and plots and characters all day, and dealt with two very small redheaded boys, I’m wrung out like an old dishcloth. It’s all I can do to watch Younger, read about the most recent evils and idiocies of the administration, say hello to Instagram, and pass out.

So, forgive that it’s short, but here’s a round-up of things I fucking LOVE right now:

& Other Stories: Maquis de Nuit

I popped in on Saturday, swiped this across my face, immediately decided that I looked like I was in St Tropez in the 1920s, only without having to deal with the tediousness of Hemingway being such a little bitch to everyone. The salesgirl told me that they only put them out that morning for the first time, and “There are only like three left! They are walking out of here!” It looks dark blue-red in that photo, but it’s more of a dark burnt brick-red. Delicious.

Etude House Moistfull Collagen Cream

I have pretty good skin. I have bad hair – very, very bad hair. But good skin. And if people ask me what I do, I am totally honest: I don’t get facials or laser treatments or anything like that (BORING and seriously who has the time?), I cleanse with cheapie-cheap Cetaphil, I wear SPF 50 or higher every day, I don’t drink wine (vodka yes, Campari yes, even beer yes – but wine, almost never, unless I’m eating a GREAT steak somewhere like Raoul’s and the steak personally asks me to drink a glass of red as its last request, you know what steaks are like). And I moisturize more than anyone else on the fucking planet. I have gone on about my love of moisturizers before, and recommended quite a few, but then I read about this as a viable alternative to the infamous-always-sold-out-expensive-AF-$130 Tatcha moisturizer, and figured, why not, it’s only $17. I’m now on my second pot. (For me to repurchase something, rather than think, eh, I’ll try something new, means it’s really good.) I throw this moisturizer on in the morning as a mask when I wake up, then remove with a warm wet face cloth an hour later when it’s time for CE Ferulic Acid (yes, I’m a convert, I wish I wasn’t, it’s so goddamn expensive, but a little goes a long way) and SPF. During the day, if I’m not going out, I just throw on a glob or two early afternoon for fun. At night, I apply it over my SKII. It’s sort of gel-like, it doesn’t have any smell, and it just makes your skin all plump and happy. Trust moi.

.Maybelline Lasting Drama Waterproof Eye Pencil in Silken Turquoise

The secret to wearing wild eye pencil colors is to throw them on like you don’t give a shit*. The messier the better. Line your waterline, smush it under your bottom lashes, scribble over your eyelid. Use your pinkie to smear it around. You can’t fuck it up, because fucked up is THE POINT. The LAST thing that you want to look like is one of those sweet, sad teens on the internet taking selfies with ‘baked’ foundation and eyes made up to look like peacock feathers, or whatthefuckever. The aim should be to look real, and like you’re having fun. This pencil, plus mascara, plus bronzer (this one, always, forever, amen) is my favorite summer look right now. It’s sort of Brooke Shields in 83, and we all need more of that.

*This is probably the secret to everything in life: don’t give a shit what anyone thinks of you, just work as hard as you can and be kind and happy. And wear turqoise eyeliner

One of my best friends from college reminded me of this song last night, from the movie Eurotrip. It’s a weird little cameo from Matt Damon, and he NAILS IT.

I’ve been writing a lot, which means I’ve been reading a lot to calm my brain down. And I can only calm the damn thing down by reading non-fiction. I don’t know why. It’s veh annoying. But it’s true.

Here’s what I’m reading. (BTW I never recommend the books I think are kak. Only the good ones. But I don’t name and shame the kak books, either, because, eh, it’s just my opinion, and I don’t want to hurt an author’s feelings. We are very tender types, you know.)

The Chief: The Life Of William Randolph Hurst by David Nasaw

This book is thoroughly enjoyable account of a total eccentric. I started reading it because I was reading a biography of Rockefeller, and it was honestly one of the most boring books I’d ever read, not because the writing was bad – it was fine – but because Rockefeller was DULL as FUCK. Holy shit, the man was a robot. So I mentioned that to one of my American girlfriends and she said ‘oh, yah, try Hearst, he was fun’.

The Final Days by Woodward and Bernstein

I have this thing for presidencies on the verge of collapse, for obvious reasons.

Ghostbuster’s Daughter by Violet Ramis Stiel

An absolutely delightful book about Harold Ramis, written with love, honesty and humor, by his eldest daughter Violet. He sounds like he was everything you would ever want him to be, and more. Such a lovely read.

An Odyssey: A Father, A Son And An Epic by Daniel Mendelssohn

This is book is gentle and thoughtful – not a page-turned, exactly, but every time I picked it up I was happy I was reading it. Part exploration of The Odyssey, part memoir of the author’s father, and partly a rumination on time and love and death. Just lovely.

City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940′s by Otto Friedrich

A chaotic, deliciously satisfying cavort through the 1940s in Hollywood. LOVED this book.

Indecent Exposure by David McClintick

Terrible title, great book.

Final Cut by Steven Bach

One of those ‘when it goes wrong, it goes WRONG’ Hollywood books.

Name Above The Title, an Autobiography by Frank Capra

For more Hollywood books, go here and here and here (I have this thing for books about Hollywood.)

Watch and cry, my loves. Watch and cry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Gh0LRdKu4 

Every time I watch this, I scream with laughter. Actually. Literally scream.

Well, not new. New old music. Old music, mostly, that you probably haven’t listened to in a while, maybe ever, but you’ll totally love. Music! What I’m saying is, here’s some music for you. Handpicked by moi.

The Flaming Lips. Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots.

This is a weird, beautiful, quirky little song, unlike any other song.

Saint Motel. My Type.

I’m not sure if I love this, or really hate it. But I keep listening to it.

Blondie. Long Time.

Love Blondie. LOVE.

Cake. Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town.

I like to sing this very loudly to myself. It’s VERY dramatic. Stick to the very end to hear the ad-libs.

Dave Dobbyn. Slice Of Heaven.

This song was a SMASH HIT in New Zealand and Australia, and my cousins in Perth had it on cassette tape. We played it a lot when we visited them from HK for Christmas. Then we would sing it, acapella. Then we’d make up Nativity plays. My sister was Mary. I was the Donkey, but I like to think of myself as the writer/director BEHIND the Donkey.

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Bellbottoms.

Obviouslah I’m a Baby Driver fan, I’ve got a working brain. But what made me fall in love with this song was an interview with Edgar Wright, when he said he used to listen to it in his car, like Baby does in the movie, and daydream and write in his head. And the movie grew out of this solitary daydreaming. This is exactly the kind of thing I do, and totally the way I think of ideas and write. I think and think and think until eventually, my head will explode if I don’t write it all out.

The clip is the movie clip, rather than the video, because, well, it’s better.

And if you’d like to see the clip while you read the script – and why wouldn’t you? – then take a look at this amazing Instagram account.

Lemon Jelly. Nice Weather For Ducks.

Another weird song. But kind of great.

Gizzle. Get Loud For Me.

I have a feeling I posted this song before, but tant pis, as they say. It’s one of my favorites right now.

There’s no video to this song. But just trust me. It’s Turin Brakes, Feeling Oblivion, and if you’re in just the right mood, it will make you burst into tears. But the kind of tears that make you feel better about everything. I promise.

We’ve been married eight years. EIGHT YEARS, PEOPLE. And we have the photo evidence to prove it.

Errol is six, Neddy is four.

I wish, in retrospect, that I wasn’t wearing a deeply crumpled old jacket, that I’d tried harder to get the boys to wear the FRANKLY ADORABLE little blazers that I bought for them for special occasions, and that we’d gotten our shit together and made it to City Hall before the sun was directly overhead. Oh well. Live and learn. You can also see that Fox has grown a lovely red beard, that Errol is extremely shy of the camera, and that I am clutching Ned’s hand rather than holding it, because he was hopping around like a bunny on the 7-ft-high podium and one of these years, he’s going to fall off.

Here we have 2017. Errol is five and Ned is three.

Here is 2016. Errol is four, Ned is two and REALLY into it.

Here is 2015. Ned is one, Errol is three. That dress is from Topshop. Where the hell did I put that dress.

Here is 2014. Errol is two and Ned is three months.

Here is 2013. Errol is one and a half.

Here is 2012. Errol is about eight months old.

Here is 2010, our wedding day.

As I said this time last year, we got married here in NYC, even though we were living in London at the time, because why not. And 2011 is missing as we were living in Zurich for the year for Fox’s job, and I was three months pregnant, so it would have been a photo of me puking and snarling at Fox.