Also: Spy glasses from the Midwest make parties that run out of alcohol a lot more fun. Cheers, I & R.

Above is my old shot of Chris T-T at Spaceland. Below are the links for you to buy This Gun Is Not A Gun (released today by Xtra Mile Records and Vital):

This Gun Is Not A Gun on iTunes; This Gun Is Not A Gun on Play.com; This Gun Is Not A Gun on Amazon.co.uk; and This Gun Is Not A Gun on 7digital.

You can also look at James Sinclair-Smith’s video of ‘This Gun’ shot in Glasgow, and the first ever audience video of Chris singing ‘Huntsman’ (in a Stroud gay bar).

Stayed up ’til dawn with Dita Dimoné, so here’s an old photograph she’s never seen before.

I must’ve been living in LA too long; sometimes it really feels like we’re just acting out weird little movies.

We gathered. We giggled. We ate ridiculously decadent Vosges chocolate. (Oh, the sea salt in the Barcelona Bar!) We dressed like lunatics and played with toys. Such is the way of Utata.

As promised earlier in my stupidly similarly named post, naughty bodies be good volume one premiere, I finally sat still long enough to edit photos from the precarious premiere party to end all precarious premiere parties.

[Hot girls dancing brought to you by Tito’s Handmade Vodka and Sparks, obviously.]

Everyone’s still hungover and nursing their injuries, except me.

…who knew me better than most back in the day, Evil and Not-So-Evil E-Words and giant bowls of tequila and insomnia and novelty stripper names stolen from novelty mod rappers and all-night chit chat and all. Laini is the only person to whom I’ve ever written a lovenote in lipstick on my chest, and we had so many silly inside jokes that I’m entirely bewildered now to find that there’s no one left to laugh at them now except me.

Red Star Cards (Winter 2007): Pack of three Christmas 2007, New Year, Saint Valentine’s Day, Thank You, Birthday or Just Because cards — available from countess.etsy.com right now.

The red star cards are made with my favourite red paper (bright and shiny) and a little red flower. Each card is sent with an ivory envelope, and they’re blank inside for your personal message.

As always, other sizes, colours and designs are available on request and if you’re ordering more than one item they’ll be posted together for the shipping price of one.

Last night’s Naughty Bodies Be Good Volume One Echo Park premiere party (San Diego got the premier premiere) was fun, huge and precarious — crowded parties on rocky and unstable hillsides at least ensure all the guests get to grab random strangers all night without the usual slaps in faces. The Tito’s Vodka and Sparks that Baby Girl and her bar-tending minions were dishing out by the bucketful to everyone but me added to the injury potential, but apparently the scrapes and bruises were all minor. (Remember, a dishcloth with ice inside wrapped tight around a wrist or ankle and fastened with two hairbands works quite well as the world’s most ghetto Ace bandage.)

Moon Rats looked pretty double decked among the fairy lights, and Brother Reade started a dance party so funny even the sober girls got down. NBBG V1 is, of course, fantabulous and lots of other good made-up words, too — much cheering ensued.

More party pictures will appear as soon as I can find some that isn’t incriminating [EDIT: some pixxx are now here, Brother Reade: Naughty Bodies Be Good premiere party].

The women in my family have a history of running off to America, on the Irish side at least (no one knows anything about the Polish side.)

My great-auntie Eileen, my grandad’s half sister, married an American serviceman who took her home. She died young of a brain haemmorhage, but not before having a son who would cause quite a stir on arrival in England years later.

“He was very glamorous, I thought, wearing a black polo neck jumper and having a crew cut! He was a captain (I think) in the army and sounded very American,” says my mum, who was a teenager at the time.

I wonder what Eileen’s grandmother, Ellen, made of it? My great-great-grandmother Ellen Devereux of Mayglass, County Wexford, “went to America,” according to the photocopied notes that arrived in the mail, written all upper case by one of my zillion Irish relatives. The author didn’t give any details of her trip, except that she came “back from America with a girl called Susan.”

(The notes aren’t very specific, but the diagram makes it clear that Susan is Ellen’s daughter.)

Of course, on her return Ellen Devereux met my great-great-grandfather Joseph Benson of Newross and, as the author writes, “Joseph and Ellen’s marriage lasted 50 years. They were very happy together,” but I’m intrigued by Ellen’s American adventures. I wonder how much my own echo hers?

And what became of the mysterious U.S.-born daughter, Susan? On her arrival in Ireland, “Susan was sent north and from then on was known as Susan from The North.”