don’t jump.

I know you’re sad you have to go back to work today, and it’s like hurricane ida outside, and your umbrella broke , so now it just flops around and stabs random angry strangers on the metro who yell at you because they haven’t done anything fun since 1988. and even then, they only saw a new kids on the block concert, and sat in the back row, and they weren’t even tipsy. and you also had to take out the garbage this morning, and accidently spilled eight tons of coffee grounds all over the carpet. and maybe you don’t have sweet weekend plans yet, so you are worried you might stay home cocooned in your ugly black sheets until next summer, when you can finally go roast marshmallows at bonfire parties and make-out with cute people. but don’t panic. take a nap. get a huge hot chocolate and a wheat-free brownie with walnuts.  go see where the wild things are. you will be okay.

dude you’re hott.

I know you’re all about to fall in love 5 seconds after looking at these photos but consider yourself warned. Someone at capslock already called dibs. The boy you are about to fall in love with teaches science to little kids by way of setting things on fire, freezing marshmallows, and making Jurassic pies.  Perks of being friends/future lovers with him include back stage passes to the kitchen lab and access to off limit triple bunk beds aboard submarines. Thus, we spent the day at the science center following him around and re-gaining brain cells lost from the previous night of hanging with Ashley. 

(Stay tuned for a video interview with our scientist friend. I just need to hunt down a techie first to teach me how to convert my imovie into a bloggable clip.)

new best friend

this weekend i took a little road trip back to pittsburgh, pa to meet the only real tv star worth knowing, ashley. you may know her from rock of love bus or charm school but we now know her as our new best friend. i know we have no pictures of our encounter but it is only because we were so excited to meet her it totally slipped our mind. tequila had nothing to do with this. instead we’ve left you with this fantastic video, biiiiiiiitch.

gothic morning.

I walked by this yard, and felt a brush of cold, musty air. As I was taking the picture, an ancient, witchy-looking woman lifted up the window shutter, eyed me through the black bars and rose bushes, then vanished. I immediately wanted to go home to read Edgar Allen Poe by candlelight, watch Edward Scissorhands, and wear this. Instead, I just ran away. But still.

unlock me.

 halloween preview. world’s best chastity belt. capslockkills.

scream it: ode to karen o.

ya, ya, ya, we’ve been whacked over the head with the obvious: the world would be a grittier, better-dressed, and all-together more fluorescent place if we all emulated karen o. So why must I give you one more small bump, dear capslock? 

a. because an ipa-goggled boy with enviable hair gave me drunken band advice at 2 am: “all girls should scream like karen o. If you are in a band, and you are a girl, scream. It is [insert breathlessness] so. hot.”

b. because I like her when she is not screaming, particularly on the newly released acoustic, string-enhanced “maps”

c. where the wild things are. 

d. And because even in a pink collared shirt and a gold falsie, I still get sucked into her vortex of red-lipstick, black-leather, bed-hair cool and want to stalk behind her tour bus (which undoubtedly isn’t a tour bus, but a rusty van that was found on the bottom of a pirate ship and has been redecorated with iranian throw-rugs, lava lamps, and guitars from the raddest underground punk rock band from czechoslovakia) and scream:

they don’t love you like I love you.

damn it. 

metro accessible camping.

          Suddenly, capslock needed to go to the great sepia-toned outdoors! But then we remembered that we were in the middle of DC. But don’t worry, we found camping accessible by metro! And a cab. We ventured into the campground/trailerpark/meth forest decked in plaid and hauling banjos, harmonicas and veggie dogs. We forgot sleeping bags, but luckily we had a lot of bourbon and beer. Then we tried to put up the rain fly as a tent. It was dark!

So we left the headlights on to scare the ticks and chiggers, locked the keys in the car, and had to be rescued by AAA. We woke up covered in scratches and with a mysterious amount of firewood. Our morning alarm was the park rangers screaming “EVERYONE UP!!!” and Mr. Policeman, who said, “Come hither kids.” We had a nice little chat about our shared freshman party dorm and were escorted on our merry way. And then we stopped in suburbia for Denny’s, and found Old Navy, where we bought skull and cross-bone water bottles. You may now insert scratchy Old Crow Medicine Show record. 

guest drop: capslock’s first stalker sex column, “only the names are changed”

 I should have known better when she told me her name.  You can’t trust people with three part names.  Just like John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, Mark David Chapman… I should have known Jamie Hollis-Castor was up to no good.

 I was going to say it started out innocent enough – but it didn’t. Not even close. I was in the studio, like every Wednesday that summer, hosting my radio show. The show didn’t have a ton of buzz, but we got some callers every once in a while.  So when the studio phone rang this particular Wednesday in June, I didn’t hesitate to pick it up.  I barely got through saying hello when—

 “I know you.” The girl’s voice was high-pitched, fragile.

It must have been a crank call or a friend of mine.

“You work at Banana Republic.”

 And, yes, at the time, I also worked at Banana Republic.  She went on to tell me her name – I didn’t recognize it.  She said she had seen me in the store a bunch of times… By this point in the conversation she had already friended me on Facebook, so I looked at her profile. I’d never seen her before – we had no common friends.  She went on to list more things that she knew about me – I guess I felt flattered – but mostly totally creeped out in an I Know What You Did Last Summer kind of way.

 This is where the story should end.  I had been stalked.  A normal person would not indulge their stalker with such banter – but I have an intrepid mouth that’s always 3 lengths ahead of my brain’s ability to reason, so, yeah… I indulged.  We finished our conversation and I finished the show… and then I didn’t hear from her for a couple weeks. 

 Was she no longer interested in stalking me? Had my willingness to speak to her rendered me all-too-real to her? What began as something creepy now left me feeling abandoned… unworthy.

capslock, mark-anthony and byt on h street.

            Capslock’s coming out party may be scheduled for April, but there’s a chance we already “came out” to Brightest Young Things at about 2:30 am on H Street. After a lackluster evening wearing jumpsuits and attacking strangers for their liberal use of khaki, it was time to gallivant home. Right on time, a black Cadillac saddled up to us and said: “Get in.”

Normally Capslock is against accepting rides from strangers, but an unspecified amount of Pacifico and vodka led to factions within the group, in other words…

This week in cAPSLOCKKILLS…

In music, we explored Coeur de Pirate, our newest little French singing sensation.  In case you missed it early Monday morning, check her out here.

You all got the big news about cAPSLOCKKILLS’ european bureau opening in Seville. To celebrate, we brought you some fantastic examples of how to travel in style, after all, we need to make travel exciting again.  Continuing on our travel tangent, we brought you this smart series of travel guides, written for those of us who prefer to be “travellers,” rather than “tourists.”

Keeping with the crazily packed week, we brought you classic proenza schouler style in our most favorite of hues…black, and took a look at exciting things happening at Carnet de Vol for Autumn/Winter 09/10.

Topping off cAPSLOCKKILLS was another stellar photo of the week, and a brief on how casey reed johnson is slowly but surely bringing new life to the genre of modern sculpture.

In a slight twist to the weekly recap, we would love to mention a few things we skipped this week, things with which our peers were busy, and examples of sheer idiocy generally perplexing questions of life…but nothing too intense.  cAPSLOCKKILLS ventured to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC for “The Art of Power,” exhibit.  Le Temps de Souvenir explored why New York is such a freaking cool place.  And finally, we were just baffled by this…subtitles for life, anyone??

Sound off on this, or any post by leaving a comment, or dropping a line at capslockkills@gmail.com.

We’ll see you bright and early on monday.