Jan 24, 2009

Stanza for Saturday

"Adam's Curse," Last Stanza
W.B. Yeats

I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

"Manager?! Things are going wrong up here!"

Warped Suburbia Motifs of the Middle Nineties


Jan 23, 2009

Verses

In a poetry class in undergrad, my professor encouraged us to make "collages" out of certain poet's work by skimming a volume, drawing out favored lines, and building them into poems of our own(ish). I was looking for a poem by Olena Kalytiak-Davis to post here, but found that I liked my version best. The following is mixture of us two:

In the new mess of morning light
Jameson
And his two sons
Really
Each man, with a car and a wife
His tie, his waistcoat

The dinner conversation moves,
To my first hotel room
Sure, I’m unnerved, but I’ll listen
I listen to myself
Trying not to sound desperate, but beginning to repeat things

Caesar’s Palace.
The way life keeps splitting itself in two

I’ve left rooms saying: Fuck you
And you, and you
And then, made resolutions in a parked car
In a parking lot
In a strange city that is already too familiar

This strip, this city
My memory
Of myself and someone
Translucent, crazy, awake only at night
The panic of birds
At dawn
The mattress that murmurs from underneath me
Hey precious, listen
You should give up

But you don’t recollect like that

I'm OK. You're OK.

Y'all?

http://www.tweaker.org/index.html

Bless Chil'ren'

Subway announcement: The next L train is now arriving on the Manhattan bound track.

Midwest tweaker [to no one in particular]: Boo-yah! Buh-buh-buh boo-yah! [Blows snot rocket onto subway tracks.] The L train? What the fuck is that?

—from overheardinnewyork

Summer Lovin'

We know what Able will be wearing when she's riding the waves this summer. At left, we see what I'll be donning for margarita-induced beach napping. Caftan optional. 

Etiquette Lesson For Friday

Folk Art for Friday

Bless Chil'ren'

The gouty old lady on the Q train this morning who was reading F.M.L. Thompson's The Rise of Respectable Society while muttering to herself and gesticulating wildly.

Deep Ends

January is the proper time to prepare for the beachgoing of our summer-futures. It's a good moment to juice and cabbage cleanse, a good moment to reinstitute one's exercise bulemia (five months of which will certainly do the trick). Visions of barbeques and bonfires and shoelessness and scanty clothing spirit me through the hunger hallucinations and overlong, uphill elliptical treks. And last night, I began a round of online swimwear window-shopping and well . . . I found that I liked something sort of atrocious: a plunging Ed Hardy one-piece, in all of its rhinestoned EuroTRASH, Hard Rock Hotel and Casino glory. Look here. And do click to enlarge.

I'll be sporting it come June, whether you like it or not.

The Best Thing Going (For ALWAYS)

















Clarity here. (And how sexy is it that Alec admits to drinking white wine and ice cubes from a plastic cup? Unthreatenable masculinity!)

Jan 22, 2009

Good Mornting!











































Nail Color For Thursday

Chanel Gold Fiction. I've gone down this gold nails route before (it was the color I chose for my very first manicure moons ago), and it doesn't look so good on me. But the name of this extra posh Chanel number is fantastic (companies should always relish the task of naming cosmetic shades). And since I've been going all English noblewoman and not wearing an ounce of jewelry, I feel my hands deserve a jolt of metal.

In Winter



















In winter, I dress like a political lesbian. Now, I'm a believer in uniforms. I think it's chic and dignified to know oneself sartorially and eschew "costumes" or anything else that reeks of effort (hunger, delusion). And certainly androgyny becomes more pervasive in culture by the minute, allowing me to wear my dad's old clothes to death (which is exactly what I've been doing). But I was seated beside Jared Kushner (pictured here with Ivanka Trump on his shoulders) and several good-looking, besuited others on a banquette in an intimate (something like six tables) dining room this afternoon, and well . . . I just wish I'd been in heels and a pencil skirt.

It's all well and good to wear smocks and shabby pants and oversize cashmere sweaters with gaping holes all of the time as an artist/librarian/experimental musician/blogger/Britney Spears-poet-laureate, but if I'm looking to make some paper (please, Lord--Able was not born to be a Bohemian past her 25th birthday) and break out of my tragic hipster-loser-bartender-ladyman dating cycle I must get me to a TAILOR. And though I tend to wear feminine sundresses in the warmer months (decidedly less butch), these only stand as testimony to my severe hippie-dom/teaheadedness (more politics). Everyday I distance myself further from the "straight world"--how, for one, will I ever reintroduce myself to underwear?!

Perhaps this is some grass-greener syndrome. Perhaps if I actually got hold of one of these shiny finance types I'd be bored and confused . . . can I really deny my fetish for confederate soldiers or that Ana Mendieta (above) is my utter pants idol? Here's the facts: I will always be a hippie. I was borned that way. But I can be a hippie with untattered, flattering clothes and commercial aspirations and a crew-cut of a boyfriend. Anything is possible. This is AMERICA (and in my heart of hearts I will always be bourgeois . . . I was borned that way too, you know, in America).

The style Obama brings us...

Okay, so this has nothing whatsoever to do with Obama. Homeboy's got plenty of other important shit on his mind. But somehow, someway, I know Bush has been suppressing this [I'm at a loss for adjectives] POSTHUMOUS LISA "LEFT-EYE" LOPES ALBUM THAT IS BEING RELEASED TUESDAY!!!!!!!!
http://www.myspace.com/lefteyelegacy

Jan 21, 2009

Middle School Dance Music Committee

I know you promised me a Kate Spade, but that was LAST year boy, in the eighth grade!

The Best Thing Going (For Wednesday)


http://www.tropicaltraditions.com/

Jan 20, 2009

View of a Room

Besides being crazy-in-love with the socialist playwright hero (pictured above) of The Lives of Others (a German film I meant to see ages ago but finally got around to watching this past weekend) and moved by its narrative, I am nuts nuts nuts about the apartment that said playwright shares with his actress lady-love, and below I've embedded a clip of secret operatives bugging it. Of those available on the internets, it's the best for viewing the grand and careless wood-paneled (!!) space. But truly, watch the film. It's lovely, and one gets the full measure of this apartment by viewing the whole. I found myself so enamored of the things on their walls, in and out of focus (and reality). It's sent me into such a crisis about ugliness (and POOR taste) in New York.

Folk Art for Tuesday

So

This has been quite a morning--the climax: President Obama's address, a stirring, ORATORICAL (finally) cry for D-I-G-N-I-T-Y (word!). The very air was singing. Everyone looked gorgeous! I had some favorites . . . Obviously, the Obama clan cut a figure in bright bright brights. I was all aflutter to see old H.W. (I have a long-harbored soft spot for papa Bush) in that yellow cashmere turtle neck, royal purple scarf, and smart beaver hat. The crowd cheered almost as heartily for 42 and the Missus (Missus Secretary of State, that is) as they did for the man of the hour. Yes, there was a grey flannel bow up on Queen Aretha's head. And Dick Cheney was in a wheelchair, cue unabashed laughter at handicapped old man! They say he pulled a muscle while moving boxes into his new home. I say he pulled a muscle while playing The Most Dangerous Game on a remote isle with Delta Burke's husband. And, not to go on and on about Republicans (though being the dark boozers that we are at A&P, we yearn to go to some GOP parties tonight to drink really fine scotch with well-coifed, crestfallen men), but wasn't Jenna Bush's husband, Henry Hager, just a stone fox in his camel overcoat (I know you're with me, Pillow). Oh happy day!

Up With People

I am not a full stop fan of limousines, but this Caddie that the Obamas are sporting today--c'est magnifique!

Verses

I got all in a tizzy over Rick Warren again this weekend, and then I looked more closely at Obama's chosen inaugural poet, Elizabeth Alexander. She writes about Agnes Martin! All is forgiven, Barack.

Islands Number Four

1.

Agnes Martin, Islands Number Four,
Repeated ovals on a grid, what appears
To be perfect is handmade, disturbed.
Tobacco brown saturates canvas to burlap,
Clean form from a distance, up close, her hand.
All wrack and bramble to oval and grid.
Hollows in the body, containers for grief.
What looks to be perfect is not perfect.

Odd oval portholes that flood with light.

2.

Description of a Slave Ship, 1789:
Same imperfect ovals, calligraphic hand.
At a distance, pattern. Up close, bodies
Doubled and doubled, serried and stacked
In the manner of galleries in a church,
In full ships on their sides or on each other
.
Isle of woe, two-by-two, spoon-fashion,
Not unfrequently found dead in the morning.
Slave ships, the not pure, imperfect ovals,
Portholes through which they would never see home,
The flesh rubbed off their shoulders, elbows, hips.
Barracoon, sarcophagus, indestructible grief
Nesting in the hollows of the abdomen.
The slave ship empty, its cargo landed
And sold for twelve ounces of gold apiece

Or gone overboard. Islands. Aftermath.

Jan 19, 2009

Happy Inauguration Eve!

I can't wait for a glimpse of Aretha tomorrow!

I'm OK. You're OK.





Folk Art for Monday

By way of

The Long Weekend

I've only caught fifteen minutes of an episode. And it made me feel icky all over. But Tool Academy is a non-stop thrill-ride (of caca), sort of not to be missed. You see, nine young gentlemen were lured by VH1 (and their nine sad girlfriends) into a cardboard model home under false pretences, told they had been cast in a competetion reality show called Mr. Awesome and then . . .

Coming Soon to DVD and Blu-Ray.

I could wax poetic about the insanity of Richard Kelly's apocalyptic (in both content and production history) follow-up to Donnie Darko, Southland Tales, for days. I mean, the cast alone: Dwayne "My Character Just Happens To Be Gay" Johnson, Sarah "WTF Are Antique Books?" Michelle Prinze, Mandy "Missing You Like Candy" Moore, Bai "Fucking" Ling, to name a few... but in the spirit of A&P, I'd like instead to offer a sneak peak of Justin "But It Came From Memphis!" Timberlake's performance. In this wayward love story, he plays Pilot Abilene, an Iraq War veteran, disfigured and mostly narrating the film. He has a delightful musical number, however, drenched in blood, surrounded by a rather mellow acid trip, wandering around a Chuck E. Cheese, and lip-synching to The Killers "All These Things I've Done". It helps me go to bed at night.

Jan 18, 2009

Founding Fathers: Gia Carangi


This picture is captioned in her biography, Thing of Beauty, simply as "Stoned in New York."