{ I went to hear DJ Pauly D spin }
…and all I got was this article. Yes, Jersey Shore. Bedazzled headphones and laptops. The people who paid money. Young girls, old dudes. Ok, I know you’re curious. For The Grid.
"The outrage is tiresome and deeply hypocritical, in all the tiresome ways you’ve been tired out by before. M.I.A. was illustrating her line, acting out the attitude of the words: performing. Fine, it may not be legal to flip the bird on television, but that’s simply a remnant of the fifties we haven’t shaken. Unless somebody was handing out Xanax with the foam fingers, Lucas Oil Stadium was ringing with the music of profanities last night. More to the point, television viewers were submitted to ad after ad that likened women—negatively—to sofas, cars, and candy. Mr. Winter didn’t have anything to say about that, so I’d like to raise both of my middle fingers to him and anyone who thinks profanity is somehow more harmful to our children than images of violence and misogyny. (My two sons, fourteen and eleven, thought the Fiat ad was corny, so I guess they will be safe without Mr. Winter’s intervention.) I say we get out of The Pretending To Be Moral game altogether and use the Internet for important things like posting pictures of cats looking at croissants and PDFs of sensitive government documents."
— Sasha Frere-Jones — M.I.A. Shouldn’t Have Apologized (via annaetc)
"Yes. Writing is always a way, for me, of coming to some sort of understanding that I can’t reach otherwise. It forces you to think. It forces you to work the thing through. Nothing comes to us out of the blue, very easily, you know. So if you want to understand what you’re thinking, you kind of have to work it through and write it. And the only way to work it through, for me, is to write it."
— Abridged excerpt from Believer mag interviews Joan Didion. If you write, or want to, read this. Add to: “People who inspire the fuck out of me.” Not even for who she is, or how she writes, but because of the way she approaches her craft.
What, I can like this shit too. But only this one, and only for the muppet-beard/glasses. Are you on Scruff?
As if “woof” didn’t already sound like
how gay adult males with chest hair seriously hit on each otherbabies making the noise a dog makes…#justsayhi
Sunday thoughts. My reality.
Last, last Sunday. From the archives… of my phone.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Party rmx feat. Andre 3000 & Kanye West
by Beyonce
The Nocturne: Happy Endings, a monthly dance party that lets you werq with wontons. I went dancing with all these random people in a random hole in the wall in Chinatown for The Grid. I walked up to this place (^) and hoped – for five seconds – that Roman Polanski would be inside. But a story’s a story, and sometimes the best kind leave you dazed and bemused. Starting to think the best stuff happens in places only we know. Read and then go, next month, for New Year’s. Lasers included.
Cibo Matto - Sugar Water. 1994.
the pieces of me
I somehow got connected with this pretty young thing Irina Luca to do our photos for FILLER’s fash week section. She’s fresh out the oven (a.k.a. school), so she’s always bringing up experimental ways to shoot street style or whatever, really. I don’t think she thinks much about it, she just does it. And that’s what I admire. She made this one of “my style.”
a stranger asked me a question about love
On Formspring. “And sure, you can “be in” love just like you can “be in” a pool; it’s a mass that can drown you, and give you that heart-aching fear for life and breath the moment it’s happening. It can drown out your thoughts and consciousness of the surrounding. But then you can get out. Sometimes with or without help. Before its too late. Or you can keep swimming. Or you can choose never to get into the pool at all. But that would be like never feeling sunlight on your face. And who wants that?”
ghosts, again
So, do you believe in ghosts? he asked me as I lay across the floor, organizing things. I’m not sure, I looked up at him. Have you ever seen one?
No. But they’re real. I believe it.
A few days later, I asked him about love. If it was possible to be in love with someone you’ve never met, or known, or to just fall out of love with someone you’ve spent entire lifetimes with.
I’m not sure, he said. I’ve never been fortunate enough to experience that. Or it. But I know it’s there, I believe in it.
Like ghosts?
I guess, he said.
I knew.
"The only thing more elusive than the search for love is the search for happiness."
— When the chance came to contribute to the new Aggregation Magazine, an online collection of stories based on a collection of links, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about: the allure of happiness. We’re flooded on a daily basis of what happiness should look like; what it should mean, how it should feel. But where does the self come into play? How does one define it? I’m not sure I’ve answered any of these questions, but I hope these links bring you one step closer to doing so.
Others links that didn’t make my cut in the piece (too recent and you’ve probably already heard about because the media obsessed over it for about a week), but are worth a look nonetheless:
Looking for happiness? Try Bhutan. Boston Globe.
The world’s happiest countries. Forbes.
Others links that didn’t make my cut in the piece (too recent and you’ve probably already heard about because the media obsessed over it for about a week), but are worth a look nonetheless:
Looking for happiness? Try Bhutan. Boston Globe.
The world’s happiest countries. Forbes.
ghosts in the attic
Yesterday, over eggs and pancakes, I brought up a relic. A remarkably difficult, Caulfield-esque relic that still haunts the tiniest parts of my mind. It wasn’t love, or even lust. But it was something. I remember when I was 17 and just got an all-access pass to the open road and dad’s mini-van, and after driving around all night, asked a friend over McPancakes, “Who’s the one person you wish it had worked out with? You know, if you had the chance to make it work, who would you choose?”
As the years moved forward and the friend stayed behind, the moment never left. What a question to ask yourself at 17. I had only ever “seriously paid attention” to one person, obsessing over countless others without cause and without effect. What did I really know about being haunted by failed attempts or fleeting lovers? The dread of having the most intense sex of your life knowing it might not happen again for years, or forever, with him, or with anyone else, seems like a more favourable ghost to walk with now that I know better. But then there’s that one that gets under your skin. That might not necessarily live up to his own memory in your mind, or understand you, or even feel the way you would feel back, but the one that remains all the same.
I periodically think of him, like a reminder that it’s time for my weekly dose. The ghost glides across my hardwood floors at the same time, too. No, I don’t creep, and I don’t stalk. I don’t need to. But I do wonder. And I do wish. For what? Maybe that we would have worked out. Maybe that I had that chance to make it work. Maybe that I’d let it go, or that he’d let me go on.
So yes, I asked myself that same question yesterday, over eggs and pancakes. Not out loud. But to the parts of him that live within me. And I know that I know better than that. But he was here tonight.
