good morn-ting

praise jesus

hot teeth

Um, Other Stuff Happened Today

YES YES YES!

Extremely Belated Love in this Club

THE Jam For 2010 Pending....

Able, you're just gonna have to deal with the Gaga for a second.

singles

"Sweet Dreams"
Beyoncé

Last week, my co-worker was playing a video linked from FB, some throaty, grey shoegazer with a haircut covering "Single Ladies." It was 'ick. He said, "Why is everybody raving about this?" I said, "...because they're racist." And then I watched the for-real "Single Ladies" video a few times--still good, still a call to arms not a snooze, not even a little bit. Occasionally I wonder if, we spectators get lazy about newness and give the establishment too much credit/obeisance (that "...to be pleased means to say yes" business). Sure. But Be is never not working. She works to make our lives easy, to provide us with half-familiar/half-fresh treats, soundtrackings, jams--21st Century POP MUSIC, red-blooded, healthy post-Modernism. This guy, "Sweet Dreams," the most recent single drawn from I am...Sasha Fierce (the 6th or 7th off the record since last autumn?), is Be's Gothic number, as Industrial as our bright Aughts R&B gets (cousin to Rihanna's "Disturbia") and with lyrics like, "Tattoo your name across my heart so it will remain/Not even death can make us part/What kind of dream is this?" and "Clouds filled with stars cover the skies/And I hope it rains/You're the perfect lullaby." I really dig her invocation of dreamstates. Dreams are--as soon as we become aware of them, waking--histories, passages, memories, inaccessible. This angle lends the song a deal of regret, glances backward. She opens with a loosely cast phrase, "turn the lights on," that is applied as a portion of the driving beat throughout the song. In the track's present tense, Be is no longer falling into soupy, dark love, but attempting to reconstruct and measure it 'in the light'...after.

"Sally"
Sam Sparro

I picked up this dude's album because...um...a gay teen played it for me at an American Apparel, saying, "You wouldn't believe how he looks: cute white boy with a side bang, wearing our shit." Whatever. Ain't no shame. This and the U.K. hit, "Black and Gold," are supreme and smart dance songs, despite their hipster cheese (Sparro is an Aussie living in El Lay....so....). And "Sally." I mapped out something like five music videos (starring me?) for it as I rode the train into Manhattan this morning. My favorite was a tour of the Financial District, dead at night with Christmas decorations on the lamposts, dancing in and out of empty dives and office tower porticoes in a 91/2 Weeks, off the shoulder, creamy Irish cable knit sweater and nothing else (shoes?). The lyrical take on stripper dadsums-issues is a touch ham-handed. But Sam's throwback politics are in the right place (I loathe the fourth-wave approach to sex industry-as-empowerment).

Pure redux--tragic heroines/social issues+gay soul singing+slap-happy synths, a track to get riled up to, to dance yr emotions to. Bless our hearts. Disco isn't ever gonna die again!

On Being Post-Revolutionary Aristocrat

"...There's more. Blue is also the color of the wall paint, the velvet mantle-cover she leans against, its fringe and a tassel, the Sèvres and other porcelains on the mantle, assorted flowers, the pouch for her fan, the bell-rope to call servants, the paisley-like pattern on the gold and red cashmere shawl draped over a chair, gemstones in her jewelry, Louise's limpid eyes, even the pale shadows beneath her eyes and along the hand she holds at her chin."--The L.A. Times' Christopher Knight (?) writes the Frick's first loan of Louise de'Haussonville to a SoCal museum

On Being Woman

The painting...confronts the viewer with the disturbing and contradictory visual experience of gazing at Kahlo's nude torso, attractive and available, while standing witness to horrifying pain and inexplicable physical abuse.

- Margaret A. Lindauer, on Frida Kahlo's The Broken Column of 1944.

"kiss me thru the phone"

oh young aj (map of arkansas written across yr face). please don't go and suffer on our account. we love you, and we really love how you twice refuse to blame joe g. for yr poor performance when pressed. what a yankee.

Pillow!

Verses

What could be worse than having to be seen resorting to your own life? In my case, there was a fixed sum of experiences...to or from which I could not yet add or subtract, but which I was skilled at coming to grief over, crucially, in broad daylight.

--excerpt from Gary Lutz's Stories in the Worst Way (1996)

Nail Color For November 2, 2009

Essie, Aruba Blue. Back in Los 90's, metallic sapphire was a favorite, the trailer-trashiest of those non-red/pink spectrum shades. And, aside from dull, Inland-Cali long, square and French white, trashy digits always sing.

Yankee-celebratory nails, from title to sheen to shade. Woop woop.

bam bam

This Postseason has been a consistent thread of comfort en nuestra familia. The Yankees face a near-certain (knock wood) World Series win. I'm prepared for a loss tonight that lets us take the title back in the Bronx, a stadium inauguration (plus Pillow's got es-chool tonight). Of course, I'd also be pleased to make short work of it inside the Lion's Den. Oh the terrible bhoyos and girls of 'illadelphia. I was certain a fight would break out last night, between cracked cracker drunkards in the packed decks or even ballplayers (A. Rod hit 3 times?!). These Keystoners are worse than Massholes, all chipped shoulders and 'helicopter towels' (though I must admit that bell-toll is stylish). If you were only listening last night, catch a clip of Damon stealing third like lightning.

Love.

PARADE.

This track, excavated from our padded memories on Saturday afternoon, has little/nothing to do with La Nueva, but it suits.

Yassum

Helen Yarmak ermine hooded coat with tail fringe, silk mesh lining.

Teen Sensation

Twilight backlash is such a drag! I spotted these knickers on Jezebel, where they were the featured item in a post about fandom going "too far." How fascist! And when I clicked on the text link "Robert Pattinson panties" (that word makes me boof), I found a whole line of tsk, tsk, tsk blog entries decrying the little garments. But why? As a serious appropriator of images, I am charmed by them, might (if I still wore underwear) consider owning a pair (and this too!--what a trip!). There is a line in the Jezebel post: I'll admit that firstly, it's been a long time since I've been a big "fan" of anyone or anything. Really?! Oh no! She doesn't like anything??? I've had it up to here with the narrowness and humorlessness (or no-humor-but-our-own-ness) of the Brooklyn-based blogosphere.

Twilight is fabulous. The first film (and, I imagine, the soon-to-arrive second) was a style avalanche, a celebration of the extraordinary, near-terrifying lushness of the Pacific Northwest, of small towns, of high school and Lord Byron and glitter and Native peoples and cops and isolation. Oh my goodness. And R. Pattz really is divine. Divine. And people love it. People love him and his girl and the books and the films. And aren't we just sick and tired of mocking the multitudes? A&P is. Lookit:

Carcinogenesis

too easy

White El Dorado

So last night? I had this dream? I took Ghostface Killah as my date to the Academy Awards and he was kissing my neck while I was giving my acceptance speech. And he whispered "I'm going to make love to you tonight, baby" in my ear and I started blushing and stuttering and he yelled out "Staten Island's in the house!" and everybody started cheering. And I was wearing this dress? It was super low-cut in the back and the Wu-Tang logo was in rhinestones across my butt, which was really really big. And my hair was black and in front of my face like Jessica Rabbit's? And suddenly with one dream I set a really high bar for myself. I have to go to the gym. And when I get there I'm going to get my heart rate going with this jam.

Early Photograph for Wednesday

Thebes, Egypt
John Bulkley Greene
salt print
1854

"what's so great about sleeping downtown?"

Woah Fay-shun

The Sunday Times (of London) Style Magazine is tawdry where ours is fussy (either way...fuck 'em). But this sort of drugged, high-class ho in hotel room with chidren's toys concept falls flat everytime, outdoes the typical levels of tawdry and pointless and drivel (even if it so aptly stars Lindz Lohan). A recent Elle shoot of this type just sent me reeeeeeling. I guess Fay-shun can't help but wear its unhealth on its sleeve. But women dressing as girls is just so...defeatist. I want to see more of this. And I'm not entirely joking!

"no lie--i'm higher than i ever been. (born rich born uptown born to win.)"

Birdman. Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. I mean, endless love. And this hook is hotness. But where is the signature bird call???!!!! I want to become a pop star just so I can cut a track with Birdman constructed solely of his bird calls. And is that Drizzy getting dim?

Addendum: I was premature in posting this entry yesterday, having yet to make a close listen. But since last night's commute, "Money to Blow" has been repeat-oned on my iPod and...the hook (chorus?) is clearly supreme, the reason for the track's stupid listenability. But Drake's verse is kind of AWFUL. What's all this talk of roofies?! Roofs? And that "constantly seducing ho's" line is awkward. And oddly, I find it tough to suspend reality with this cat. He says, "I'm on a 24 hour champagne diet." And I get sober. I say no no. I used to be on one of those and it sucks. You get headaches and you blackout and crowds are fine but most one-on-one interactions are total disasters. Generally anti-human, non-life-affirming. And I'm letting it slide because, as stated, I like this part, but that line about money falling on skin...I dig the mention of skin (I'm probably wrong but I think 'touch' is not called upon enough in English-language musics), yet klar-ly he is not talking about hisself--he is throwing money at a woman. The worst. What a punk. And around 8:20 this morning I realized, Birdman (my darling) would not be getting this kind of airplay without this fresh, young thing being attached to the project. And that hurts my feelings.

Best Thing.

WOWOWOWOWOWOW

Love in This Club For the Post-Season (and the late 90's and the Bronx and...always)

(...given that I don't have to hear him talk about Jesus.)

1850

Do review these stills from a tremendously important estate sale held in Memphis over the weekend. It is a treat to glimpse this home, which sits cloaked behind a high fence and a large swathe of property diagonal to our University Club in our Central Gardens, where there is nary a tall building to peep it from. In general though, I find such events to be confusing and tragic. I know a handful of these living descendants, and I understand that their lives have run a separate course--their comforts are not in the old profusions (Lord knows why). People do not live in state anymore, do not want to employ staffs, pay fat tariffs. This (among other things...) is why so many of the fine old American houses have been demolished or turned museum. I can't lay claim to this sort of thing. My ancestors were poor and feckless, but what objects of theirs I do have, I hold fast to. And I imagine, if I possessed in my line a WHOLE house full of things purchased and arranged just so by my people, I would bar it from being disbanded as best I could (I know...money, means, etc.). If I remember correctly (and do correct me), Pillow's family seat was burned down before her mother was born. But if Pillow and Mama Pillow could, I think they would have it still. I'm being unjustly critical (with little grounding in reality, sums and figures). But I know, having grown up in Central Gardens, that properties like these see uncertain and unhappy fates once let loose. If there are potential buyers, they'll surely bristle at the price. It will sit empty for a stretch. It will maybe be bought and sold, bought and sold by those who hardly live in it, certainly not for generation after generation, as before. It lies right on the train track border between ours and a far dodgier section of town. The address is a bit tarnished now, the pocket of land isolating, and in dicey Memphis, worrisome. And so it goes; America is too fast for History.

Whatever happens, the kitchen will be lost. Ooooof.