Yesterday I was in Daniel's film, click me! that he's making for a class he's taking with Stanya Khan and it was totally fun and awesome. Paul, click me! was Daniel's assistant and poor Paul. What you can't see in these stills is the giant tree I climbed up in the park and proceeded to get stuck in. I got really panicky and teary and the job of getting me down fell on Paul, literally. I am no delicate flower and I grabbed the scruff of his shirt for dear life and then scratched and slid out of the tree, my legs and arms kicking and grasping at his shoulders until I landed on him with a giant thud, almost snapping his neck. If you've seen Paul, and you've seen me, you can understand why this was unforturnate for him. Later that night Sarah and i went to the carnival in Eagle Rock and rode this amazing carny ride I thought was going to break. Why do all carny's a) have accidental brilliant stylz and b) all sound and look like they arrived via time machine from New Jersey 1986? Cathy and I then had ihop on her couch. What a great day! Yeah for friends, yeah for life. Lechaim! ps, my camera is still broke ass busted. soon soon. Paul took these. ps, why does Pandora think I like The Cure so much? I really really, don't like the Cure. What I would like is to imagine a world in which I've never heard the Cure before so that if I were to perhaps hear them for the first time I could have my mind explode. I can imagine that that's what the experience might be like. Unfortunately, even the first time i 'heard' them, I could tell I'd already heard them too much. Le sigh. We can dream. psps, I really really want to buy Nick Kent's new book, it looks awesome.
God, she's such a genius badass. This is a clip from a small documentary on her poem O Superman. To watch all of O Superman click here i highly recommend it.
O Superman. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad. O Superman. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad. Hi. I'm not home right now. But if you want to leave a message, just start talking at the sound of the tone. Hello? This is your Mother. Are you there? Are you coming home? Hello? Is anybody home? Well, you don't know me, but I know you. And I've got a message to give to you. Here come the planes. So you better get ready. Ready to go. You can come as you are, but pay as you go. Pay as you go. And I said: OK. Who is this really? And the voice said: This is the hand, the hand that takes. This is the hand, the hand that takes. This is the hand, the hand that takes. Here come the planes. They're American planes. Made in America. Smoking or non-smoking? And the voice said: Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. 'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice. And when justive is gone, there's always force. And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi Mom! So hold me, Mom, in your long arms. So hold me, Mom, in your long arms. In your automatic arms. Your electronic arms. In your arms. So hold me, Mom, in your long arms. Your petrochemical arms. Your military arms. In your electronic arms.
Which leads me to two other beautiful, intelligent ladies who I love so dearly. My old friend Alex Pirozzi, keeper of the Williamsburg hearth and who can decorate a mean apartment- seriously it's stupid how incredibly stylish Alex is, and so perfectly east coasty. But I feel as though whenever peopel talk about Alex they get tripped up on the fun exteriors, her beautiful face, her great personal style, her amazing decorating skillz, really, it's intensley awe inspiring! Or the fact that she is the best non cook cook I know who doesn't photograph her food, she just eats it, she actually taught me a couple things I still cook up and is really the reason I started cooking in college, and not just ramen or rice a roni with heather. Because Alex would have me over to her beautiful house and i would sit in her kitchen at her table smoking cigarettes and drinking an expensive beer and watch her cook an amazing meal almost every night- mussles, fish tacos, delicious soup, like a mom. Anyhow, Alex if you can't tell is magical and the type of person who keps her old quilts wrapped in prtective plastic and placed in trunks and who listens to Galaxie 500 in her kitchen alone, reading the New Yorker, cooking an herb chicken in the oven while wearing an apron, her hair up in a messy bun smoking a cigarette like the sultry italian goddess that she is. ANYHOW, because of all these things, i think people forget that Alex is actually amazingly intelligent, as stated above, and a purveyor of social justice and one of my first 'academic' feminist friends I met in college. Her work surronding women's health and the health of children from birth control to free pre natal care has always impressed me. She is a worker of social justice on a grass roots level, and she and I were on team Hillary together from day one. Well, Ms Pirozzi has a new blog that follows her forrays into the world of health care, women's re-productive rights and the rights of all children everwhere. I admire Miss Alex so much. She has a blog called 'Listen Up' that you can now follow by clicking here- that ones for you Athena!- inside joke, moving on!- Miss Alex And then, my most beautiful other beautiful friend who's been on the blog many a time, and much to her chagrin, Sascha Goldhor. Her and her cool as cool can be bro Jessie, have a new blog called Gold and Goldhor. In which they follow the culinary adventures of Jonathan Gold. The best, in my opinion, and i would guess, team Goldhor as well, food critic in all the land. Sorry Anthony Bourdain, I still love you! Anyway, Sascha knows of what she speaks, she is a diligent foodie with good taste in everything and was a producer on the film 'Food Inc.' so these are matters close to her heart. click here to see thought provoking yummyness. Oh beautiful friends, the days go by so much nicer, with a little shine from your cups. Miss Sascha
it came. it went. i spent maybe six hours asleep all weekend. it was fun, predictably strange, oddly heartfelt, wtf susan miller, why you gotta lie? you said october would be a breeeeze. yeah, a breeze if you're a cold hearted fool with no feelings. tell me how not to feel susan!! tell me damnit! anyhow, times were had, my costume, now going over photos of the last 48 hours was unbelievably unflattering, red bulls were crushed like tiny cinder blocks beneath godzilla's feet and some giant doucheball dressed as a line of coke reinforced all my notions about insecure assholes. they live to make you feel better about yourself. keep trying coke boy, one day you'll look in the mirror and not hate what you see, because damnit, you're beautiful, worth it and whatever dad said, it was about him, not you :( But in all seriousness I was sort of embarrassed for him so I shouldn't make fun. The universe unfurls. Viva Halloween! ps my camera is a piece of shit and im absolutely buying a new one this week when i get paid. i took more pics but....but my camera sux!
I didn't take these photos, I yanked them from Heather's facebook profile, whatevs. But I wanted to post them because a) they illustrate quite clearly why HeeHaw is one of the greatest humans on earth and two- yes i rock letters and numbers together when making points- and two, they made me realize how much my life has changed in just the year and couple months since I've been away from the east coast. Halloween is quite the big deal in NY and it also served as a wonderful time to leave town and hit the road and see some nature. The landscape is different. And with nature being such a rare and welcome sight in the city, natural nature not manicured street mediums, that when you see it in it's dog given glory, it's a wonderful feeling of celebration and freedom. You've managed to escape the dadaist ridiculousness of the pulsing vibrating city, which really odes after awhile start to feel like a living, breathing thing all on its own. I miss NY and the smallness of the east coast, get on a bus and be in what feels like a different world in two hours, hop on the train and be in another state. It's not quite that easy out here. But what I have come to appreciate about the west coast, which I don't think I fully grasped until I left and returned, is the openness, the freedom, the possibility of getting lost, actually lost. Dying in the desert or driving over an hour and not seeing a single car. Despite all the strip malls and ugliness that are slowly encroaching on this distinct landscape, there is still the feeling of impossibility and wildness, unhinged mania that creeps around the edges of this place. And I love it. Be safe, happy Halloween!!!!!
When I was in high school I thought love was this flower that was asleep inside my heart and that when I met the right person it would open, like they would shine and it would bloom. At the risk of sounding cheesy, when I closed my eyes in high school and thought about life it looked like this. A literal flower. I was a really intense, emotional, self destructive kid. I say kid because anyone younger than twenty is a kid to me now. I still feel like that person sometimes. Certain people I meet bring it out and it's just the most shocking feeling. Like a ghost limb I lost in some heartsick war that I manged to amputate in order to survive. I feel it twitch and its this intense dislocating feeling. In a way every day that I wake up and shower and make my bed and try to eat at least one fruit and one vegetable and smile and not be moody and shake peoples hands and nod and not engage in terribly inappropriate enmeshing conversations with people, is a day I feel like i'm going through the grownup motions. Because it is, but its best that way, for me, and for the people in my life. So to meet an equally disjointed person who you instantly recognise as going through the motions, is weird. Weather it be in friendship or love. It's scary and I want to run. Even though every fiber of my being says GO ALL THE WAY. Anyway, I don't act on these impulses, rarely ever. I like my life the way it is, I pay my bills, go to school, hang out with friends, see my shows and turn my work in on time and meet my deadlines. The world is filled with missed connections, paths in the universe that somehow never crossed. If I had known you when I was twenty-five, if we had been friends in high school, if I had seen you looking down from the balcony of the mall. If you had lent me quarters for the pac man machine, that even in 1996 was retro. If I bought you an iced tea on melrose at the punk rock store. But all these criss crossed moments through the universe are only that, missed moments and I wake up and do the motions knowing that the world is filled with people just like me and sometimes we pass each other and it feels like lightning. But ultimately, now, I'm too grown up and no amount of feeling high is worth not feeling clean. ps. I want a time machine so I can go to 1983 and ride the alpine slide at action park. thanks katie! i'm obsessed now! click here to read about americas most dangerous theme park. now closed. god this place looks like it ruled! "It's like coming to Broadway, it's wonderful." YESSS!!!! Tacky old NJ grandma, YESSS!!!!
So a couple things have inspired today's post. One I'm at school waiting to meet with my students to go over their essays that are due next week and I have alot of time to blow, two I finally finally after three years of doing this here darn blog, installed a stat counter. Wow, was it eye opening. First off waaaaaaaay more people read the blog than I thought. Most of them are coming from Jessica's website and Jezebel. Which hey, is way cool. I'm totes flattered. Also, from places like Minnesota and Seattle?! Vhat? Boston, Alex is that you? Awesome. A shout out to my Internet homie in Poland. Who are you? Well, once I realized people were actually reading this I decided to take a slightly less fart around attitude and write an actual article type thing. I've decided to address's advice columns. One advice website in particular. If you hop around the Internet and use your noodle you might be able to put two and two together. This site makes me want to poke my eyeballs out with shrimp forks, if you don't know what website I'm referring to, consider yourself lucky and enjoy the free advice.
Honest to Dawg! My new advice column!!!! Aka Life Advice aka the ‘Menz’. Things to try: Wear stained underwear on a first date. Guess what? If you take it off he WON’T GIVE A SHIT IF IT’S DIRTY. If you keep it on he’ll never know it’s stained. So you know, WHO GIVES A CRAP?! A real life boy told me this and when I said, 'really?!' he looked at me like I was insane. Burp and or ‘accidently’ fart on a date. Guess what, he’s done these things too. And if he runs away or gets grossed out you should try one of two things 1. Date a grownup 2. Be happy that the universe has removed one more horrible shallow man from getting in the way of finding the manz who will love and respect you for who you are. 3. Smile, laugh, say, “I disagree” when he says something you disagree with. He will. 4. Compliment one girl every day on something other than her a. hair, b. outfit, c. boyfriend. Oh, that has nothing to do with man related things. Exactly. 5. If you go to the gym or have a gym membership take the New Yorker or a book and a bag of chips. Read and eat them while sitting on the bike machine. Then take a shower and go home. 6. Sing out loud in your car while stuck in freeway traffic. If you are next to someone smoking, role down your window and ask for a cigarette. 7. Wear makeup if you want don’t wear it if you don’t. Meh, who cares? Treat yourself to a chocolate shake from In N Out instead. It will bring more pleasure than a forty dollar anti wrinkle cream, you crazy baby faced twenty something weirdo!!!!
Myths about boys/men: That they are boneheaded babies That they ‘don’t get it.’ Bullshit. That they mature slower than us- not so, we don’t hold them to a high enough standard.
Don’t wreck yourself for a slimeball. If he doesn’t see you now no amount of ‘how to snag a guy’ advice will bring you into focus. Also, never let a big fat sexist man named Greg Behrendt tell you that again. I've just absolved him of his good will gesture on our behalf and will tell you this for free. Thank you Greg, we got the memo, now go away.
George Bush isn’t dumb. George Bush is evil. We’ve been too kind.
If you follow these rulz, it might take awhile for you to find a ‘proper’ manz, but that leads us to the most important part: THATS OKAY. Learn to be happy alone. You’re going to wind up alone someday anyway, even if you win the hetero life lottery and it’s blissful, the human heart drifts and wanders into dark and shallow currents, you need to learn to face sadness head on. You might find that it’s not that bad and in fact empowering. As Julio said on the Biggest Loser before he got packed up and shipped back home ‘I used to make fun of those people that picked the fatty things off their plates, but there’s a certain strength in it.”
Don’t take advice from blog advice columns. Especially shallow nineteen fifties blog advice columns disguised as edgy hip blog advice columns. You’re smarter than that.
Also, I'm vain, narcissistic, moralistic, insecure, preachy, condescending and need to take all of my own advice. Read this with a grain of salt.
I love you, Nikki.
Not really, I don’t really love you at all, I don’t really know you, well some of you I’m sure. Maybe I love like two percent of you, but who cares. You love you. That’s what really matters.
I write for the LA Weekly music department. If you want me to write something for you and have a dictionary i can use, say my name at write (dot) ndarling (at) gmail (dot) com but for reals, i'm profesh.
Oh, and don't send things to my LA Record account. I don't write there no more!
