Love

You know what really pisses me off? Idea thieves. It happened again, a magazine that will remain nameless rejected a pitch I sent about a month ago on the grounds that it was too "personal an essay", that mind you I only pitched because another magazine I wrote the essay for on spec- never again-, I'll mention that one, The Believer, turned it away at the last minute for the same reason, stole the name of the essay, and used it for an article about FOOD. The title of the essay is very specific and not one that you would necessarily even associate with food unless someone had recently seen this small thread of words together, like oh say, in a pitch.
Now I know intellectual property is slippery and one could argue that it was a coincidence but I will tell you right now, it wasn't. This happens alot actually and it more than anything pisses me off. More than any other aspect of this business idea thievery bothers me to the bone. I'll be frank you, I don't make enough to pay the bills and must supplement my income from outside sources and as a writer you depend on the integrity and honesty of others to respect your unpublished intellectual property, which is what I refer to it as. Ideas are hard to come by, they don't grow on trees and most of the time when a writer pitches something it's because they are able and willing and excited to follow the path that is that story, and so when you pull that right away, when you TAKE it away you are stealing a little from their mouths. But most of all, their art.
Now would be a good time to mention that I do more than just write music reviews or Best of LA funny ticky tacky blurbs. I write poetry, short stories, feminist academic responses to pop culture and right now a novel. I consider myself every bit an artist as someone who paints for hours or plays guitar in a dark room. Trying to get my work out to you, the world, is difficult and many times the only thing people are willing to let me write, are music reviews or interviews, which I don't mind, but there is so much more I want to do and to have people in a position of power to rob me of an opportunity is selfish and in my opinion, unconscionable.
I now can no longer pitch this essay with this title because it is too similar to the one in this magazine, no one will publish it, and its an essential part of the story, it SETS up the narrative. It's a very clever, witty title. Which I now know even more because someone took it from me for their own use. I was currently working on having my friend score it for me so I could read it as a performance piece. AND on top of everything else, the magazine that did this is one that I really loved and have been reading since the nineties and I believe has played an integral role in young girls finding their voices and inner strength. I am beyond peeved. It wasn't a music review or an interview with a band, it was a personal academic essay, an intellectual property I now need to re appraise.
And while were on the subject of things I hate, I hate semi famous people fucking with my friends and taking advantage of them. Being an artist is REALLY FUCKING HARD and it takes lots of sacrifices from the person trying to make their way. Many of us don't lead traditional lives and put alot of time and energy and money at stake on the hopes that we might reach our goals, so to have someone who's been there, who knows the struggle and has then made it to a position of mobility, to take advantage of a currently struggling individual is fucked up. Uggh, I'm so fed up with everything.
I need to clean my house because it looks like the inside of my head and I'm sitting here stuffing my face and wondering, will this be the nacho, will this be the nacho that satisfies me, but of course it never is.
ps, can we put roman polanski, jon gosslin, and woody allen on a boat to hell? jesus, im so OVER it.

I Hate You

Do you like the fashions? Then you should visit my good friend Lisa's click me new blog click me!
She's amazing, buy her clothes if you can afford them! She is incredible. A real visionary.

Do you live in Pennsylvania? Then order food from my good friend Capri, click here! who has started an amazing 'posi core, vegetarian, vegan, organic, sustainable' catering company. I can attest from eating a ton of her food that it's waaaay delicious. And you never feel gross when you're done, you feel healthy and full and like, the opposite of food coma. Visit her new website by clicking here Plus it's all made in a magic forrest.
ps, cathy came over and saged my cat. YES!

On a Wizard on a Whale

So last night I had the pleasure of seeing one of this years sausages in person! Well, I didn't meet him but Sarah and I went to see Pearl Jam. Age-ed balding frat boys en masse. We even got attaked by a crazy Pearl Jam fan because we didn't look like we were HAVING ENOUGH FUN. Some icky woman who looks like she's been doing bong rips since the release of Ten. I had to go for work and it RULED!!!! Then we feasted on griiilled cheeese! That's it.

Happy Banned Book Week!

This week the American Library Association is celebrating banned books! How cool is the American Library Association, they've always been way hepper cats then I give them credit for. How cheeky, I mean really? If you go on the website they have a little blurb about free speech and have complied banned books by decade author et cetera.
Gloria Anzaldua and I would like to present the list of most challenged books. I think you could also switch the title to greatest literary classics and no one would be the wiser. The number on the left represents where the book falls on the ALA list of 100 greatest novels. Viva books!

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
9. 1984 by George Orwell
11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
23. Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
38. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
48. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
57. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
66. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

SGV Por Vida! I love you, you Mousy Bitch!

Sarah turned another year young and had the most amazing party in like, forever. Shiz got crayzee. but in the 'there is no party after this party' kind of way. you can put sarah in a dress, you can put sarah in a fancy house in beverly hills, you can surround sarah with classy art and peeps, she can read a million books on philosophy and theory but you cant take the Swang out of the sarah. girlfriend is a good ass time. and that is one of the one million reasons why i love her so.

you don't know me!

birthday beauty. she looked gorgeous.





















mateo's. face.

The Dude

Someone needs to get Zigs on the phone and tell him that he has a doppelganger and it's the new Venezuelan LA Phil conductor Gustavo Dudamel.
But this post is not about that snippity salamander but rather about beautiful Gustavo. I very rarely post LA Weekly stuff on here other than my own but I must share, if you have not picked up this weeks LA Weekly, do so, now. Gustavo Dudamel the twenty-eight year old new conductor taking over for Esa Pekka Salonen is on the cover and the adjoining article is wonderful! Aside from being a total babe the Dude, as he is called, le sigh, is also one of the first successful alumnae of Venezuela's famous El Sistena orchestra started in the early eighties to change the lives of poor and marginalized youths in that country. The program has had overwhelming success and many of its first students and graduates- as you would cal them- are now in their late twenties. Many our now going into philharmonics around the world and energizing classical music with zest and youth. Something that is transforming the way the music is heard and received critically. Gustavo is the most visually available of these working musicians. And taking over our philharmonic!
I grew up not surprisingly in a house with music, around music lovers, my mom liked Paul Simon, Enya, Credence Clearwater, Tina Turner, Cream, Los Lobos, Bob Marly, et cetera, my dad only listened to Jazz but he was a fiend and the short while I lived with him it was always on in the house, my sister was into Goth and listened to the normal nineteen eighties bag of The Cure, Cocteu Twins and the odd Prince song. But classical I was not exposed to until school. I was lucky enough o be in schools with amazing music programs my entire life, even if I couldn't play I developed a taste for classical, and now I love it very much, although I wish I had a deeper knowledge of it. In any event I will definitely be heading to the Disney Center and the Hollywood Bowl next summer to see the Dude.
click here to read the entire article

Oh the Humanity

Because Stacy is a kind soul she came over to my hermit hole and helped me read and grade essays for my undergrad class. uggghh.
sorry this blog is turning into the den of slack, as lelaina likes to say. i have been doing things and going out a tiny bit but ive been sort of sick and a little bummy and not really into photographing things. plus ive been bz up the wazoo with school.
in any event, because i have been reading so many books and writing so much and and just consumed with literature and philosophy and theory these past two weeks, i thought it was actually fitting to have stacy on the blog. her blog btw is the definitive source for all things literary and sort of the best book blog on the nets. visit it. it ruuuulz.
seriously her blog is amazing and way addicting click here to read it!
Oh I cut my hair! yayayayayayay! it needed to happen. i feel 19. this is the same haircut i had when i was 19. and in alot of ways, i actually feel 19 these days. its strange and i'm too sleepy to elaborate.
goodnight moon.
Read:
Of Human Bondage
The Importance of Being Iceland
Hells Angels
Zeroville
Tender Buttons, but only after reading William James's essay The Stream of Thought. It will blow your mind.
A Cool Million
Wuthering Heights- trust me!
Bad Behavior