Colleen Taylor

San Francisco I love you, but you're bringing me down.



I know most of the country has been absolutely sweltering this summer, so the "Eternal Spring of San Francisco" seems silly to complain about-- I usually do love it. But this summer has been particularly chilly and gray-- and week after week of fog during the longest days of the year can really get to you.

Thank God for road trips!

"Perfume, like wine, is beautiful when you know how to stop."
-Fabrice Penot, co-founder of cult fragrance house Le Labo, in a very well-written article in the July issue of Food & Wine on the similarities between perfume and wine.

The article is chock full of "Lettie Teague (the piece's author) has the best job ever" moments. One of my favorites is when she and The Modern's chic female sommelier spend an afternoon sniffing and shopping at the perfume counter at Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and then repair back to a table at The Modern where they proceed to pop open and drink bottle after bottle of expensive wine, trying to find matches with the perfumes they just sampled. Best girlfriend date ever.

"Then Assange leaned forward and, in a whisper, began to talk about a leak, code-named Project G, that he is developing in another secret location. He promised that it would be news, and I saw in him the same mixture of seriousness and amusement, devilishness and intensity that he had displayed [while working on a previous leaked story].

'If it feels a little bit like we're amateurs, it is because we are,' he said. 'Everyone is an amateur in this business.'"

--from a profile of Julian Assange, who directs the document-leaking news organization WikiLeaks, in this week's New Yorker

New York Magazine published a fantastic interview with Joan Rivers (I'm pretty keen to see the new documentary about her.) It's so great when a comedienne is still fun to listen to when she's being earnest.

I liked a lot of what she said, especially her thoughts on friendship-- I agree that it's so important to really be able to talk to people about more than just the weather. Here, she describes what it was like to spend a lot of time with the high society crowd in New York:

"... It’s all very glamorous at the beginning. Going to the Metropolitan Opera, taking a table here, being on a committee there. Going out all the time all dressed up."

She levels me with a look. "And then I got bored to death. Nobody tells you the truth. I once asked one of the ladies, 'Did you ever have an affair?' And she stared at me like I was crazy. 'Why would I tell you?' she said. Another time, someone had just bought an apartment and I said, 'How much?' And she said, 'That is really none of your business.' And I thought, Fine. Then we are not friends and I don’t want to spend any more time with you. I was friendly with one couple who I no longer see at all. They would always say, 'We're such good friends.' And then I found out that their daughter had a complete nervous breakdown. For a year, I was always told everything is wonderful. Well, then what are we wasting our time here at [Upper East Side restaurants] Elaine's or Mortimer's or Swifty's? I don’t want to sit in Swifty's and not say anything about anything. I just totally stepped away.

... All I want you to do, if we are sitting down and it's after 6 p.m., is tell me the truth. Because we've all lied to each other all day long in business and we've all had these lunches and we've all ass-kissed to the point where I carry Chapstick. If I am going to sit down and eat with you, just tell me the truth and let me say to you, "Things are lousy and I’m sad.'"