Mrs. Mia Wallace (Pulp Fiction Makeup series from Urban Decay)

Good afternoon!

I'm feeling a little under the weather today-- haven't stopped sneezing since what seems like yesterday afternoon and don't seem to have much hope of stopping before night fall today! I took the day off work and have just recently ingested some antihistamines which will hopefully knock me out until such time as my nasal passages decide to cease and desist, so keep a  good thought for me that they do! However, I wanted to check in on you and show you this little blast from the past: here I am in 2004, in the apartment dorm I shared with my friends Ryan (pictured, as gogo dancer) and Torey (not pictured, but probably equally awesome in costume), in all my sophomore year of at UT glory. Because of my goggle eyes, above average height, and long nose, I used to get a lot of comparisons in college to Uma Thurman (believe me, I'll take it!), so the year after Kill Bill's I and II came out, I decided to embrace Tarantino's muse in one of my all time favorite movies, Pulp Fiction, for Halloween*. You can't see, but I'm wearing black cigarette pants and silver flats, the latter of which MW took off for her iconic dance with Vincent Vega:

Why this trip through time? To show you I don't think I ever even tried to smile in photos until at least 2007? To reminisce on how I had to hack the wig I'm wearing down to a shorter length with bangs, which I overshot by a tad? To highlight the assortment of weird things taped to our kitchen wall (including a TV guide cover of Will Ferrell that is cracking me up a little now just to see it?). No! To commemorate the good news that Urban Decay has just released a line of makeup products, twenty years after the release of the movie, that bear homage to what is arguably one of the best written movies of the nineties'. Folks, check it out! Pulp Fiction makeup!

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Yes, that is misquoted bible verse Ezekiel 25:17 on the back; yes, I used to be able to recite not just that passage, but the entire scene from the car ride to Brett's house to Brett and friends' demise in a cloud of "great vengeance and furious anger" as a party trick. In high school (have I told you this story before?), I hooked my dad's cassette deck and tuner up to the VHS player, and recorded two 90 minute cassettes of the audio of Pulp Fiction, and while I may have only physically seen the movie ten or fifteen times, I've listened to it something like 500 times. In my defense, it was before the internet! We had so much time on our hands back then, people. Also, how else was I going to internalize lines like "My name's Paul, and this is between y'all" or "Ha ha ha, m'f--ker, they're you're clothes", which still bring me joy to this day? I digress. Are you seeing the packaging? Wait til you check out the eyeshadow inside:

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Yep, each are also from the speech. Urban Decay even includes a tutorial on how to get the Wallace look from the movie (in case you haven't studied that scene from Jack Rabbit Slim's nearly as much as you should have):

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How do you think that stacks up to the real deal?

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Though the lipstick and lipliner looks a lot more red than what they went for in 1994, I'm still drawn like a moth to this red, red, RED lipstick. I only wonder if in real life it wouldn't be too dark for my complexion. The Revlon "Fire and Ice" that I favor has like no dark undertones to it, which makes it so wearable for me and my fair-ish coloring. Isn't it super late forties' looking to you though? I might have to treat myself to this $22 lipstick..Fire and Ice is like $5 a tube, so that's a heck of a splurge, but maybe it'll be worth it to live out my dreams!

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And last but not least, glitter eyeliner and rust red nailpolish. I'm less excited about these, because the eyeliner seems more Lou Reed's Transformer than Pulp Fiction, and I'm just not brave enough to do nail polish that isn't Revlon Red, but I still think they'd be neat on someone else. Is that someone else you?

When in doubt, What Would Lou Do?

Update: My friend Kelsey, who clued me in on this whole amazingness to begin with, has ordered us both some of the lipstick, so I'll have to let you know how it turns out when it gets here. Also, THANK YOU KELSEY!!!! How about you? Are you a huge Pulp Fiction or makeup fan? Which of these are you probably going to break down and buy? And what movie do you think would be a fun one to do a beauty-along with? I'm thinking of all the vintage color movies I would like to emulate, and am drafting a letter to Urban Decay in my head as it happens. This is only the beginning, haha!

PS, I now want to watch Pulp Fiction again. Did you know we almost used this as our first dance at my wedding? I finally decided you wouldn't be able to see my feet under my bell-shaped gown, and that Matthew's superior dance skills would shame my own, but it would have been neat to do anyway!

I have to go lay down my weary head, but have a fabulous Tuesday! Godwilling, I'll talk to you tomorrow! Til then.

* Just wanted to mention that on the way out of Andy Holt Apartments, the night this photo was taken, I was in an elevator with a Kill Bill Uma in the yellow track suit, a katana bearing O-ren Ishii, and another Mia Wallace, this one post-heroin-O.D. with a syringe sticking out of her chest. Isn't that wild? "Calling all Tarantino characters, please board the elevator at the same time". I still think mine was the most convincing, but I'm biased. :)