You can’t swing a dead cat without seeing a cowhide rug in a magazine these days. Maybe the frenzy is the designer’s response to the foodie steak craze—they have their cow, so we aesthetes get ours. Anyway, a few Saturdays ago I woke up and realized that the Tibetan rug in the living room was all wrong and absolutely must be replaced by a hide. (Dissatisfaction with one’s digs is a job hazard.)

But where to find one? Buying from Ikea seemed terribly un-PC for reasons I couldn’t quite explain and I couldn’t remember seeing any in Boston stores. Naturally, I turned to our trusty friend, the Internet. (more…)

Sunday evening in Cambridge was a sleety mess—which is why we thank the heavens for cozy neighborhood clubs like Club Passim. We settled in quite nicely under the dim lights of this 50-year-old venue renowned for its buzzing folk scene. We went, Oscars-be-damned, to see Berklee songstresses Kristen Cifelli and Kate Klim. The place was almost full by all reasonable estimates, and it seemed as if everyone knew one another, like a music-venue version of Cheers.

“Kate and I have nightmares that nobody shows up,” says Cifelli, smiling at the solid turnout. “So, we’re in a good dream.”

Cifelli plays a much more modernized version of folk music—she serenades with the same regretful twang of country and the romantic mourning so emblematic of the singer-songwriter genre. She sang to us about sad cities, taking a chance on love, and being surrounded by loneliness. We, however, were surrounded by plates of vegan peanut curry and Mexican bean concoctions that people had been ordering from the neighboring Veggie Planet kitchen.

We couldn’t help wonder what it was like for a performer to bleed their heart onstage, only to look out upon a bunch of people chowin’ down on vegetables. Cifelli must have read our mind, because in the midst of our pondering she looked out from the stage and asked the crowd in her best Beantown dialect, “How is everyone’s pizza? Gahlicky?” (more…)

Last night, Bostonista went to Symphony Hall for the first time. We really went to see a fashion show. But we stayed for the Mozart. And, my, was listening to classical music relaxing. Like getting a massage. All of the unwinding. And none of the undressing.

Bostonista learned many things at the Symphony. Never clap in the middle of a score. A substantially younger audience painfully realized this after they were the only ones to put their hands together in a very silent hall. Awkward.

After a spectacular performance by conductor James Levine and the orchestra, we again retreated to the reception area, where we watched a runway show featuring 11 gowns designed by area fashion proteges.

View a slide show featuring all of the gowns here.

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We’re just going to say it: We love quasi-sciencey books about feelings.

From Jane Goodall and Meredith Smalls’ anthropologic looks into love and human behavior to the recent influx of bestsellers about happiness—if a publisher sticks an emotion in a book title, a Ph.D after the author’s name, and a piece of art that doesn’t scream “self-help” on the cover, we’ll gladly pony up $24.95.

As you can imagine, it was only a matter of time before we were itching to conduct our own emotive exploration. It might be too late for us to become famous world-saving primatologists, but we’re doing the next best thing—uncoding what we, as Bostonians, are really looking for when it comes to Love.

Here’s where you, dear readers, come in: Take 5 minutes to humor our Goodall obsession by taking our survey, and we’ll reward you with Boston’s first-ever, in-depth look at how we hook up in the Hub. (Just think: You’ll be able to read interesting information about feelings under the safety of the non-self-helpy Boston magazine cover. You’ll take deep satisfaction in knowing that you were (sort of) in the magazine. And you’ll pay far less than $24.95!)

It’ll be fun. Promise. Click here for the survey.

We’ve experimented with our fair share of eyelash extensions, falsies, and length-defying mascaras, but we had yet to try new products on the market that claim to grow thicker, longer, stronger lashes.

We’ve worn fakes for a fashion shoot, but never could master how to apply them ourselves. We’d rather live with our blunt ones, than have lashes stuck to our brows. Expensive extensions certainly do the trick, but we were looking for a more economical way to DIY.

Enter Lashfood, a natural eyelash and eyebrow stimulator, formulated using Biotin and Arginine. It’s like hair conditioner, but for your lids. We used the product over a month-long period, hoping to bat the big ones at our husband by Valentine’s Day.

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Last night was the opening night for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Project Mozart program. At the pre-concert reception, professional models donned dresses created by 11 local fashion design students, which were inspired by the composer’s music. Audience members got to vote for their favorites (read more about the event here).

Lasell College junior Christian DePietro sewed together a champagne and pink gown complete with an 17th Century-inspired “false rump” and mermaid bottom, which was upheld by a modern take on the corset with the accent of a fan. The dress was accessorized with a shepherdess hat, which he also mended himself from straw.

See a slide show featuring seven sketches of the students’ designs.

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This past weekend, we hoofed it around the city, looking for the perfect Valentine’s gift. Not for our boyfriend, not for our crush, and not even for moi. We were pursuing presents for… our brother’s girlfriend (fingers crossed she’s not reading this right now).

While a little blue box is always nice, we wanted our dear brother to get a little more creative.

Genius struck, courtesy of an episode we remembered on The Real Housewives of Orange County. Maybe you remember the one, where the ladies go on an afternoon shopping spree to Fred Segal and create their own personal fragrances?

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Over the weekend, Bostonista went up to New Hampshire for what was supposed to be a relaxing White Mountain experience. We booked a superior room in the venerable Mount Washington Resort, a century-old grand hotel with incomparable views of the snow-capped Presidential Range, recently completely refurbished. Having stayed there before, I spent the drive up prepping my fellow editor for the establishment—it’s old, it’s grand, and the hallways look exactly like the endless, over-scaled, and decidedly creepy hallways in “The Shining.”

Sure enough, when we left the elevator that evening and made our way to our room, she turned to me and did her best “redrum” imitation. And that’s where I figured the joke would end.

After dinner in the huge dining room, serenaded by a pony-tailed gentleman playing Disney’s greatest hits on a grand piano, we headed back to our room. We got ready for bed, she climbed into hers, but I was still wandering around, checking my email, brushing my teeth. Then the overhead light went off, on, off, on, off. It wasn’t a flicker—it was rhythmic. I looked at her. She shrugged. I went over to the switch and studied it. Did it have a timer or something, she asked? No. It was a simple switch. So I turned off the light, went to bed, and didn’t think anything more about it. (more…)

There’s nothing that makes us feel the icy grip of old age like seeing a bunch of musicians half our age playing the Middle East. And we’re still on the sunny side of 30.

This past Saturday, we went to the Tribute to Corporate Rock show upstairs at the Middle East to watch the 6- to 17-year-old students who attend Paul Green’s School of Rock in Watertown play the music of rock gods. (For anyone who lacks the vocab, “corporate rock” means anthem rock—the slick singles by bands we all know and love and can get for just $9.99 from late-night TV infomercials: Journey, Foreigner, Styx, Queen…) Fifteen kids play through fifteen songs with rotating lineups.

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So sorry for the spotty posting as of late. We’ve been busy baring our shoulders and going to shows and writing a novel. (Also–who knew?–it turns out being a muse is sort of time-consuming.)

But mostly we’ve been refreshing our browser and waiting for Alexandra Penney to post another installment of the Bag Lady Papers on the Daily Beast.

Have you read it? If not, in you’re in for a treat. (Seriously. For a long time, we resisted Tina Brown’s site because we had already grudgingly bookmarked wowowow.com on top of the HuffPo…and really, how many news sites run by middle-aged-to-elderly female members of the media elite can one realistically be expected to consume? But this feature alone makes the Beast a worthy read.)

Anyway.

Penney is a former Self editor who made a fortune writing ’80s-era sex advice books and, since then, has done pretty much what you would expect: become a batty Upper East Side “artist.” She wanted to spend her golden years traveling and making cheese souffles and, you know, working on her portfolio of sex-doll photographs…and not managing her retirement accounts. So she hired Bernie Madoff!

You can guess where it goes from here. The diary, liberally sprinkled with “mother-f…er”s, details the nuisances of sudden destitution, from first-ever subway rides to self-painted nails. Lots of good stuff. But our absolute favorite part of the entries is Penney’s obsession with white shirts.

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