A FASHION MONTH CHALLENGE

Recently, I had an epiphany. An a-ha moment. God Oprah descended down from the clouds of heaven Montecito to drop SOME SERIOUS KNOWLEDGE on my unworthy ass. She told me to search within for clues, to relish quiet, to meditate and visualize my way forward. Yah-huh she did.

I began peeking into the cavernous hole that is my heart soul mind and attempting to tune into Lauren's Crazy Internal Radio Station: 6666.6 FM. I'm fully aware that I sound like a deranged Scientologist, but nevertheless, what you should know is: I'M MAKING MORE OF AN EFFORT TO SLOW MY ROLL AND BE GRATFEUL, K.

DEITY O

It was with this newfound spirit of zen and gratitiude that I found myself at my grandparents house last week, teaching my nonno how to use a voice recorder. Sounds pretty simple. Pretty provincial. Pretty 1996, if you will.

However, as I showed him how to make the recorder his bitch, an iPad rested on my lap displaying my Twitter feed, the television was blasting MSNBC, and his laptop sat on the table in front of me so I could easily flip between the New York Times and Style.com for the latest show coverage (before doing this I silently prayed that all porn sites remained deeply hidden beneath the weight of his Safari history - but this is a story for another day). I could feel my eyes flitting maniacally between each device and my brain engorging with blood when, suddenly, it hit me: Smack! Pow! Ka-Chow! BATMAN BUBBLES ABOUND! I am oversaturated, overstimulated, overmedia-ed. My wires are entangled, my nerves are frazzled. I'm experiencing a new form of modern day PTSD that is created and fuelled entirely by MY DESIRE TO STAY NEAR MY PRECIOUSSSS: the Internet.

Media consumption is no longer limited to a quick browse of your preferred newspaper in the morning, a flip through a magazine or novel each afternoon, and an hour of snoring through Brian Williams at night: it's an ALL DAMN DAY LONG buffet.  You cannot escape it. Free and easy access to crack Wi-Fi has morphed most (not all) 'breaking news' into irrelevant bullshit that absolutely no one needs to know immediately to survive. Being well-informed is critical, yes; but when Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds got married on Sunday and the BREAKING NEWS Twitter account blasted a headline announcing their nuptials to its 4,602,904 followers, I thought: FUCK. THE WORLD IS ENDING. 

OOPS - wrong blonde wife!

I realized that I am in fact drowning my brain in a cool, welcoming wave of noise. Maybe I'm feeling particularly knotty as a result of the RNC, DNC, NYFW assault- a series of potent acronyms that have left my otherwise rational mind jumbled and desperate for respite - but the fact remains:  I AM GETTING SICK OF CONSUMING NEWS USING MY EYES TO SEE THINGS.

After all, that's what fashion month is about, isn't it? If no one sees the clothes, do they really exist? We are inundated with press coverage, blog posts, tweets, instagram photos and review after review after endless review. Oftentimes, when I decide to sit and actually browse the shows in a Veruca-Salt-I-WANT-IT-NOOOW fury, I blow past the words and feast on the images alone. In this crazy, hyper-connected, virtual world, everybody's got something to say - usually the same thing that somebody else has already said- and this lunatic big-mouth is done with rehashed, repurposed rhetoric. 

So, I've decided to impose a little challenge on myself for this season of the fashunz: I will write one sentence reviews that make you smile! laugh! cry! (hopefully) without regurgitating the same meal you've already been fed (hopefully x 2). 

I cannot promise the sentences will be short - they may be run-ons that would cause the brainz of SAT students to 'splode violently all over the screen. But, I will attempt to fold my usual paragraph-long narrative per collection into one, single-period entity. Call it an attempt at a brain reboot; call it impossible. One thing is for sure: the results will not be lacking in sheer, unadulterated insanity.

Come back tomorrow to watch as I incorrectly use punctuation to jam five sentences into one whens the funs and games begins.

Follow the insanity on Twitter @CWICW or, you know, send me erotic love letters: crazywithitcrazierwithout@gmail.com.