"Corey Feldman threw himself a $250-per-guy birthday party with lingerie girls..."

"... and some jerk made it look kinda sad."

The problem began with the publication of VICE editor Jamie Lee Curtis Taete’s “I Went To Corey Feldman’s Birthday Party,” a firsthand account of a soiree recently Feldman threw himself in “The Feldmansion”....

Unfortunately, despite Taete’s introductory note explaining he was only allowed to attend on condition of allowing Feldman final edit of the piece—and that the story thus represented “text approved by Corey Feldman”—something about the way Taete captured his Corey’s Angels party didn’t sit well with Feldman....

“It’s called defamation of character and slander n I’m pretty sure those things r still illegal n this country,” Feldman tweeted....

Feldman approved the text, yet he's crying defamation... apparently because of the photographs. Well, go over and look at the photographs. As the headline says: some jerk made it look kinda sad.

What's happening these days at Grey Gardens?

For many of us, Grey Gardens means Big Edie and Little Edie in a movie engraved on our hearts. Rufus Wainwright sang about that.

But here it is mentioned by Howie Kurtz, who's at Fox News these days, taking a shot at Pari Bradlee, the daughter-in-law of Ben Bradlee, who once ran WaPo, the newspaper Kurtz abandoned:

Her new [Facebook[ profile picture, in a Swiss-cheese bra that leaves little to the imagination and long black leather sleeves and briefs, is so revealing that it drew a torrent of breathless comments....

"I have worked so hard all my life and always wanted to feel and be beautiful inside and out," Bradlee writes on Facebook. "I own my sensuality and teach others not to repress it. Femininity for me is a very powerful and beautiful force."...

The photo shoot took place at Grey Gardens, the fabled, 14-room East Hampton mansion, once featured in a movie, that the former Washington Post editor bought with his wife a quarter-century ago.

A movie. A Swiss-cheese bra.

I got to Kurtz's place via WaPo, where Eric Wemple is casting aspersions on Kurtz, calling his reporting a "nothing-sandwich posting." Is that a nothing sandwich with Swiss cheese?

Everyone knows at Grey Gardens, you eat liver paté.

"Scientists at Harvard have spent the past five years building robot bugs..."

"... that can move with the same dexterity and speed as real-life insects."



This post is for betamax3000, who said, in last night's Koi Café:

I Am Going to Try an Experiment to Determine the Depths of My Althouse Comment Addiction: I Will Not Post a Comment for the Next Twenty-Four Hours. God, Give Me Strength. And -- Please -- No Robot Posts.

And I said:

But I have a Google alert on "robot."

And as long as you're over there rooting around in the Koi Café, I'm seeing Titus's list of what's hot this summer in Ptown, which he says "will arrive in Jesusland, in approximately 9 months," which makes Inga say "I got the no bra and kale thing, woo hoo! I'm ahead of the game!" and Palladian says "Kale? Varvatos? LOL. Poor Titus, about 2 years behind the trends. What a drag it is getting old."

And Meade says "Ha ha. Cool woud be growing ornamental kale in an old pair of Varvatos boots you bought in SOHO a dozen years ago. Hot: Italian wedding soup." I extract the information that it was Varvatos boots that Meade acquired — on the advice of his Cincinnati-based style consultant — to look good enough for me the first time we met, in January 2009, which was 4 years ago.



Now that you've got your shoes on...

Release the robot insects!

"We've had bras hanging here for 45 years. It's been a charm of the place. So here comes this gal..."

"... and she's walking in here like Lady Astor's pet horse, you know, and she says she wants those bras down because they're a fire hazard. Now how can a bra be a fire hazard unless someone is wearing it? Honest to God."

At the Treillage Café...



... I was going to say get out of the grid, but you have to stay on the grid to jabber in The Treillage Café. Meade taught me the word treillage. I was going to say "trellis," but treillage sounds a little exotic. I did a Google image search on the word to make sure I wasn't getting it wrong, and the first couple things that came up made me worry for a moment that I'd stumbled into the name of some subdivision of bondage fetishism. The next step in my research was the Oxford English Dictionary (to which I cannot link). Meadhouse dialogue:

ALTHOUSE: Trellage is not even in the Oxford English Dictionary.

MEADE: French!

Trellis, however, is. My favorite historical OED quotes for trellis:

1861   Bp. S. Wilberforce Let. in Life (1881) II. xiii. 454   The earthly love becomes the trellice, up which the heavenly love creeps.
1894   H. Drummond Lowell Lect. Ascent Man 193   Language formed the trellis on which Mind climbed upward.

What metaphorical trellis — treillage — is supporting your upward aspirations? (The shadow the trellis makes on the grass — the focus of this photograph — is a also metaphor, though I don't have quotes for that easily at hand.)

IN THE COMMENTS: Rabel said: "OED may have it with an 'i' before the first l.'" Ah! You are right. Meade only said the word, so I take responsibility for misspelling. I've corrected the spelling in the post, except at the spot where I'm not finding it in the OED. In fact, treillage is in the OED:

1712   J. Addison Spectator No. 477. ¶1   There are as many kinds of Gardening as of Poetry:..Contrivers of Bowers and Grotto's, Treillages and Cascades, are Romance Writers.

The topic was bras...

... and thread hijackers made it taxes.

Because what gets people more excited?

Purchase of the day.

From the May 4, 2013 Amazon Associates Report:

Bali Lace 'N Smooth Stretch Lace Underwire Bra 3432

By using the Althouse portal, you can buy things you want, pay nothing extra, and make a contribution to this blog. We notice. We appreciate it. And only if you shout it from the mountain tops will we know it's you.

The Althouse Amazon portal: because, yes, size matters. But ultimately, it's all about fit.

Instapundit: "Bras make boobs saggier, study finds."

Posted this evening, but please note that in June 2009, I wrote — on Instapundit:

DO BRAS PREVENT SAGGY BREASTS? “There is, so far as [The Straight Dope] can discover, zero evidence that bras prevent saggy breasts.” I recommend bralessness. At least don’t let fear of drooping breasts stop you.."

I had a corresponding post on Althouse, so there was a comments thread here. The first commenter was Bissage (the dearly missed Bissage):

I’ve always worn briefs instead of boxers, just in case.

Then somebody else said: "For older women, the bra offers one benefit. It holds the sagging organ away from the skin beneath it." And I said: "Go braless so you don't develop a place called 'under your breasts.'"

I also have a September 2005 post on this subject (which is close to my heart).  It started out talking about the old Maidenform bra ads, and I was criticizing the ones that featured a woman staying home with her kids:

What's the business sense of this? If I'm staying home with kids, that bra is coming off! A bra is for going out into the male-dominated world and achieving. As soon as you cross the home threshold, that bra is off. Right, ladies? What is the lag time for you between when you walk through the door and when you take off the bra? Five minutes, tops? Is it the first, second, or third thing you do when you come home?

That brought comments like:

You're kidding, right? No woman with a D-cup or greater --- I think the cutoff is really C, but I'm trying to be conservative --- would make that statement, I am guessing.

And:

Take off bra when you come home? Only if you're lucky (and small) it's UNCOMFORTABLE if you're "generously endowed" to go around without a bra. (...yes this is true for C cups too)

I think this may only be the case if you have become dependent on the bra instead of keeping up the strength of your ligaments. As I said then:

It's less a matter of size than inner structure. I think there is some evidence that wearing a bra all the time decreases your natural support.

And linked to some technical stuff (photos of breasts at the link):

There are lots of studies showing that ligaments and tendons in limbs do atrophy when the limb is immobilized. Bras obviously prevent the the natural slight up-down movement of breasts when we walk, and let shoulders bear the weight of breasts. If breast ligaments behave like limb ligaments, it may be a matter of "use it or lose it".

The only study ever published on the subject of bras and sagging was done in 1991, in Japan. The study suggests that a bra can actually increase breast sagging rather than the opposite. The abstract says (emphasis mine):

'Eleven adult female subjects aged 22-39 years wore a certain brassiere for 3 months while anthropometry and moire fringe photographs on the anterior trunk were taken regularly once a week. After the 3 months, the brassiere was not worn for another 3 months. Then the measurements and photogrammetry were repeated for comparison using superimposed moire configurations. The results are summarized as follows. Regardless of slim or obese trunk, subjects with pendent breasts showed the highest degree of breast form "correction" from wearing the brassiere. In all subjects, after 3 months of brassiere constraint, the underbust circumference was smaller but the chest circumference became enlarged, the distance between the right and left nipples became wider, and the breasts tended to hang down. This change was more marked in obese subjects with pendent breasts. And when this type of subject wore a "well-fitted" brassiere for a long time, her breast form became developed, that is, her breasts hung down more." Ashizawa K, Sugane A, Gunji T Institute of Human Living Sciences, Otsuma Women's University, Tokyo, Japan: Breast Form Changes Resulting From A Certain Brassiere Journal of Hum. Ergol.(Tokyo) 1990 Jun; 19(1):53-62.

The unspoken rules of the society may force you to wear a bra to work or to social occasions, but there's no need to wear one for the purpose of preventing sagging. It just won't work. Remember also that breasts will benefit from bra-free time, so it is good to take the bra off whenever you can.

I hate to think that anyone is doing something that's less comfortable because it's supposed to help when it's doing the opposite. Think about your ligaments, ladies.

ADDED: "Medically, physiologically, anatomically, the breast does not benefit from being deprived of gravity. Instead, it languishes with a bra."