Just Desserts

My family rules when it comes to sending care packages stuffed full of treats. Toll House bars. Walnut-studded brownies caked with chocolate frosting. Kitchen sink cookies, laden with white, milk and semi-sweet chocolate chips and laced with coconut. Or cooky bon bons, with pastel icing and a cherry or chocolate center. 






For my last birthday, two of my nieces sent a quartet of enormous, moist, decadent chocolate chip cupcakes smothered in buttercream frosting, overnighted in Tupperware and surrounded by ice packs. Amazing. There’s nothing like getting luscious treats in the mail.


If you don’t happen to be a member of my family, Godiva has a plan for delivering love, or an endearing, flavorful facsimile, six times a year. 
Month 1: Chocolate Ganache Layer Cake, an exuberance of Belgian milk chocolate, dark cocoa, clouds of chocolate ganache and chocolate cream frosting. They say it serves 13.
Month 2: Chocolate Chunk Brownies.

Month 3: Chocolate Cupcakes with a surprise center of Godiva chocolate ganache. 
Month 4: Biscuit Gift Box. Thirty-six delicious reasons to banish those little huckster Girl Scouts.
Month 5: Chocolate Macaroons. OMG.
Month 6: More Chocolate Chunk Brownies.



In the fall, look for Godiva’s Belgian chocolate flourless cake and a dessert truffle collection that features tiramisu, cheesecake, carrot cake, lava cake, red velvet and strawberry tarte truffles. Also: chocolate-dipped madeleines. 


Or if you’re the hands-on type, try the Mousse Cup Dessert Kit. Yum.

T: The Constant Consonant

  The letter T: the most commonly used consonant in the English language.

The Marilyn Monroe Workout

According to Yoga Nation, Marilyn Monroe was reported to have taken up yoga to “improve her legs.”

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S is for Storefront

Before There Was A “Sexiest Man Alive”

Margaret Bourke-White shot Marlon Brando for LIFE magazine in 1952, at a time when the 28-year-old actor had already given memorable, star performances in The Men, A Streetcar Named Desire and Viva Zapata. But despite his growing fame on stage and screen, these photos remained unseen, and were recently rediscovered in LIFE’s archives, labeled “cover tries.” 

The Bourke-White images are a delight. Brando was at his physical prime: the supple, well-muscled Stanley Kowalski, exuding more animal magnetism than any wife-beater could restrain, with smooth skin, a sensuous scowl and the hypnotic grace that counter-balances yet also prefigures the later madness of Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, the stuffed jowls of Don Corleone in The Godfather, and the compelling bloat of Paul in Last Tango in Paris. It’s like pitting Early Elvis against Late Elvis, and on a visceral level, the primal, unbridled, hip-swinging swagger of the Stella-hollering youth wins hands down. Brando, like Early Elvis, was beautiful.

Brando’s first of four LIFE covers was dated April 20, 1953 — a moody, stagey movie still featuring the actor as Antony in the film version of Julius Caesar.

Click here to see more of the rediscovered Brando portraits by Bourke-White.

Double Trouble

The oversized ring is a lot like any architectural work: it needs a firm foundation for its soaring proportions to triumph. Part brass knuckles, all statement piece, the two-finger ring smartly provides the essential underpinnings, simultaneously daring others to look but disdaining any attempts to mess with your bad self. 
Custom Knuckle Ring, Etsy, Heistjewelry, $100

Spike Knucklebuster, LUVAJ, $100
Fool’s Gold Knuckbuster, LUVAJ, $90

OMFG Silver Glitter Knuckle Duster Ring, Etsy, lovemexleaveme, $12.50

Brooklyn Bridge Gold-Tone Ring, Emitations, $215, MyShape 210032

Brooklyn Bridge Silver-Tone Ring, Emitations , $215, MyShape 210030

Birds On A Branch Ring, Urban Outfitters, $18

Two-Finger Snake Ring, Urban Outfitters, $18

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