Sadly, we won't be parading today. We won't be donning beautifully be-feathered headresses or even a single strand of metallic purple beads. We might make pancakes tonight, because - as the British are well aware - there's no greater consolation for missing Carnival in sunnier climes than breakfast for dinner. (Pancakes truly are the great culinary comforter).

The fact is it's grey and windy here in London and the dog doesn't even want to go for a walk. In other words, it's only (Fat) Tuesday and this is going to be a long week if we don't work on it. Because we really do want to feel alive and at least a little magnificent, even if we're just dancing around the kitchen... 

Want more mixtape magic? Check out our musical archive....

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Twine Time: On the Verge of Summer
Twine Time: On the Verge of Summer

This weekend we celebrate the beginning of the summer, whether we call it Memorial Day or not. Barbecues and swimming holes and sun hats beckon. Our public pools shall open, we shall brush last summer’s sand from our sandals, and hopefully the sun will emerge long enough to let us enjoy at least one of the two. This, I must admit, is my favorite time of the year. 

MIXTAPE #10: Total Request Live
MIXTAPE #10: Total Request Live

The glorious day my parents finally caved to my manipulative whining and added MTV to the list of our available TV channels - thus freeing my sisters and me from suffering through endless and truly mind-destroying episodes of VH1's Pop Up Video feat. Duncan Sheik Barely Breathing - coincided, magically, with a sick day home from school. At 10 AM, Channel 52 went from static to transmitting a clear picture of Carson Daly's face, and ahead of me stretched a long day to lie on the couch in the warm sunlight and eat cinnamon sugar toast, to watch MTV Jams and read Seventeen magazine in the ad breaks. In this memory I believe I feel the pure, unadulterated joy of youth.

MIXTAPE #9: Les Bon Temps Rouler
MIXTAPE #9: Les Bon Temps Rouler

Or, I mean, happy Pancake Tuesday from Londontown...

MIXTAPE #8: Silver Linings Playlist
MIXTAPE #8: Silver Linings Playlist

(Sorry, we couldn't help the title).

As we really start feeling the closing in of the daylight hours (yikes!), our Silver Linings Playlist is here to help, and also to make you feel a little bit like how we imagine J. Law feels 99% of the time.

Image: Romy Schneider

MIXTAPE #7: Sleeper Hits
MIXTAPE #7: Sleeper Hits

To the surprise of no one, I was a stressed out, asocial high schooler with an unfortunately dorky and fairly undiscerning musical taste. I basically liked the widest range of music one is capable of liking, but not in an awesome way. 

Soooo...welcome to this month's mixtape!

MIXTAPE #6: Secret Spots
MIXTAPE #6: Secret Spots

Let’s face it: The golden days of summer are here and it’s too hot to function. Stop trying—and flee. Pack up the wicker picnic basket your mother gave you (she didn’t give you one, too?), hop on the commuter rail, and head to your secret lake, your secret meadow, perhaps alone or with your secret friend. 

MIXTAPE #5: Heartbreak Hotel
MIXTAPE #5: Heartbreak Hotel

It doesn't matter if it's the Ritz, a Motel 6, or the Heartbreak Hotel itself, a hotel room is never a home. It's just a transitory space filled with ghosts, free shower caps, and your own thoughts, to be purposed as circumstance demands - be it love, crime, consoling a heartbreak, escape, a good night's sleep, or work.  

This month, in the midst of our holiday, we take a turn for the contemplative - the brooding type of contemplative, to be exact; the type that comes from a hotel's particular mixture of freedom and loneliness, like unmixed hot and cold water from two taps - to collect a small bouquet of hotel songs for you. 

MIXTAPE #4: Sea Sounds
MIXTAPE #4: Sea Sounds

It may be June 8th - the prime of glorious early summer, which my Susan Miller horoscope tells me will be a great day (and I trust her unfailingly) - but, let's face it, we're still in Mercury Retrograde. And it is a Monday, after all. 

Because I know that I sure need it, I'm gifting you with the only soundtrack you'll want when life's waters get even slightly choppy. The working title is Olympia Monthly's Super Soothing Sounds of the Ocean Mix - Vol. 1.

MIXTAPE #3: The Sea, the sea!
MIXTAPE #3: The Sea, the sea!

This first of several HOLIDAYS ISSUE  mix tapes is a wild, flotsam-and-jetsam, fruits-of-the-sea assortment of sailors and sea-shanties, Belle & Sebastian and British Sea Power, Händelian hornpipes and Frank Ocean. It's like a confused but energetic surf, the point of a beach where two opposing currents collide: in other words, it's a real mix.

MIXTAPE #2 for Time Traveling
MIXTAPE #2 for Time Traveling

For May and our TIME ZONES  issue, we bring you a playlist of pop from the recent past: songs mostly about love, which are really all about time...

Image, from left to right: Salvador Dalí "Metronome," 1944; Man Ray "Indestructible Object," 1923 (1965) and Claes Oldenburg – Coosje van Bruggen "Silent Metronome," 16 inch, Version Three, 2005 (Photography: Attilio Maranzano)


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