tête-to-tête

Widget, CSS, TUMBLR, WORDPRESS WHATEVER

2010-10-03T10:32:00.002-04:00

for right now i'll probably be posting rando shit over at tetetotete.tumblr.com but i'm also in the midst of being in the makes of an awesome site so sit tight because i know you're mad not sitting tight right now.

2010-09-29T09:11:00.000-04:00

i'll probably come back when i feel like it. somewhere else.

Persona by Superhumanoids

2010-06-21T13:03:00.002-04:00

heavy rotation

Persona by Superhumanoids

BeginningThe Rest

Nixon hearts jews and homos

2010-06-06T11:37:00.001-04:00

This website, WhiteHouseTapes.org is amazing. So we all know Richard Nixon was a really nice guy, a Quaker even. He did great things for this country from his famous altruistic core; like when he attempted to liberate the backward Vietnamese. So, needless to say I was super excited to listen to recording of him. One of the quotes found in this recording really made my toes curl with excitement: "We've got to get a man in charge who is not jewish to control the jewish...Second, most jews are disloyal, do you know what i mean?" Click here to hear Nixon say every lovely thing that could be conceived to say about Jews and "Homos". oh and HAPPY OPPOSITE DAY!

weirdo

2010-06-01T19:48:00.007-04:00

in doing research for this thing i'm putting on in july for this organization i work for i found this. Julia Randall's art is weird and freaky. It's sexually explicit but have certain social underpinnings. par example lets take above image: makeup case with a tongue -> looking at yourself to make sure you look good for whatever normative person with preconceived notions for standards of beauty you're trying to impress -> tongue staring back at you -> if you don't look good for said person with preconceived notions of what beautiful is then you won't get any tongue action at all. oh and i think she teaches at wesleyan. cause what person i stumble upon doesn't haven't an association with wesleyan. oh, me. that's right. and i'm really fucking successful at this point so people from wesleyan should be crying about not going to macalester. CRYING.

booksandboysbooksandboys

2010-05-14T20:57:00.005-04:00

my friend put me on to this kitschy blog, "hot guys reading books" that i'll probably never look at again but wanted to share with everyone because i still think theres something clever enough about it to RT it. yup. i'm moving RT to the blogosphere. first to do it! anyway, don't be frightened everyone, i only like the illusion of a man reading. it's not like i ACTUALLY like a man that reads. reading is for tourists. no. reading is forrrrrrrr viceroys. what? i don't ever remember what a viceroy even is. I'm not going out tonight. i'm just going to sit and look outside my window into my neighbors houses and see if there are any cute boys reading books. and if i see any i will most likely shoot fire from my eyes. new blog name tete-to-voyeur-tete-bruja.

i'm out to this open field

2010-05-12T12:13:00.006-04:00

Via Tania's song "fields" is one of those haunting jawns you listen to on a long train ride across the country for self-discovery. That'll be me next week. Except i'll be on a plane and i'll probably discover nothing more than a hair i missed whilst shaving my legs. So. that's my life. but this song is amazing.

Fader has posted the dope Lemonade remix up here: http://www.thefader.com/2010/03/09/premiere-via-tania-fields-lemonade-rmx-mp3/

mellow yellow

2010-05-03T14:25:00.002-04:00

i've been sending "voice notes" on BBM back and forth with a friend and it came to this.

shadester

2010-05-01T12:43:00.006-04:00

This delightful a capella diddy by Austin based solo artists Jazz Mills and Stephanie Hunt is a Lilly Allenesque tribute to ladies (and gents) everywhere who know they're being played by the "shady boy" and keep going back for more even tho you know he's a shadester. shadester? ew. won't ever say that (made up) word again. promise.

dear chloe

2010-04-21T10:07:00.004-04:00

happy birthday collier. someone that reads this blog is going to buy you chloe sandals available at Asos. Isn't that nice? YES! that's so nice! My birthday is May 27th

I tweeted #ericajong #dasracist

2010-04-16T14:42:00.016-04:00

After being retweeted by blog Racialicious on Wednesday i realized i had a lot more to say about Erica Jong's article. Racialicious blogger Latoya Peterson actually cites my tweet in her response on Racialicious up today.
Anyhow, here goes:

Erica Jong Is awhite-American writer who famously supports a sexually liberated brand of feminism; she is most recognized for Fear Of Flying, a novel that trails the life and time of a 29-year old (white) woman unsatisfied in her life and marriage. I bring this up only to prove a point---that in jong's Huffington post piece today (sort of) about a biography of Oprah---the theme of her own dissatisfaction is what reigns. It is drenched in racism and thinly established by an anecdotal and dizzying pastiche that backhandedly creates the persona of a militant and deanged Oprah. It's weird. And I am still asking myself, why are you so angry Erica? She seems like a jealous little kid who on a family trip screams "me, me, me", each "me" more desperately seeking validation and recognition than the previous.

At the outset of Jong’s article she makes clear her discontent with her perceived role as “the happy ho of literature”. So I’m thinking, “oh cool, Erica Jong hates to be pigeonholed and defined.” But then I keep reading. “And following it [their first meeting], I accepted Oprah's invitation to come down to Baltimore and be on her local talk show. At that time, I was probably better known than she. I had already been published all over the world. But I liked her and thought we were friends from the spa.” Immediately Jong positions herself “above” Oprah, as a figure more promising and known doing a favor for the amicable “pudgy and young” black woman that she “liked”. It was awkward to read and made me feel embarrassed to imagine Erica Jong (unmasterfully) creating a hierarchy where Oprah is positioned “beneath” her. Thus begins her proclivity for perpetrating racism through self-aggrandizement and condescension. All the while doing it with these weird delusions of grandeur.

The article is scattered, poorly punctuated and I don’t think proof-read or spell-checked. Poor editing aside, however, one of the things that happens when you construct an argument from discrete moments and memories is that the seam of your argument begins to rely as much on proximity as it does on the content of those memories. Towards the beginning of the article Jong relates the interview she “agreed” to do with Oprah (because she didn’t, of course, gain any audience or publicity, she was just helping out a friend). “‘Don't worry if I nudge my co-presenter,’ she [Oprah] explained. ‘It's how we communicate on air.’ And indeed, she kept poking him. It was odd, but memorable. I'd done quite a few programs without ever seeing this.” What sticks out is the word poke, as it is often used as slang for sex. It sticks out because Jong’s previous paragraph details the spa session in which she and Oprah discussed the difficulties of finding “supportive and sexy men”. The paragraph directly following characterizes Oprah’s “lusty humor”. There is sex all over the place and because Jong fails to provide any solid context for this positioning, I find myself wondering if she means to imply through her curiosity (it was odd, but memorable) that Oprah was exploiting her sexuality with her male co-presenter. Metaphorically “poking” him on air as it were. Perhaps she wants only to describe Oprah’s television personality as unconventional, but I think the implication is there and it is belittling.

As is Jong’s “girlfrien’” approach to Oprah throughout. “I always liked her verve, her lusty humor, her bounce, and I really didn't care whether she was born rich, poor or middle class. Who knew? We had stuff in common, both were talkative and funny”. Bizzare. Why was Oprah’s nascent economic situation even relevant? Do Jong’s opinions of individuals normally hinge upon their economic status? I doubt it. Rather, I understand Jong’s comment as unequivocally racialized and quite cynical at that. “Who knew?” How amazing that Americans from different racial and economic backgrounds can have stuff in common and get along! Jong begins to develop her point about half-way through her article: Oprah has gone from the happy, approachable girlfrien’ type that hangs out with her in the spa to the unnecessarily paranoid, (too) politicized and unapproachable militant that starts her own magazine to control the world’s opinion of her. Jong pretends to like the idea of Oprah’s magazine, O, even indicating that she might have been the catalyst for its inception (delusions of grandeur?). Here again is Jong’s erratic and unreliable pattern. She supports Oprah at first for starting her own magazine but then quickly alters course and vilifies her by creating an image of Oprah as a kind of paranoid autocrat that must have complete control to avoid being “nervous”. What’s more, Jong literally suggests Oprah’s paranoia is completely racial, that her discomfort with white people was the driving force behind her magazine. That Oprah created a publication about everything from cooking to politics that is read by millions all over the world because white people make her nervous? And she wonders why Oprah’s paranoid? Because of people making sweeping and insane judgments like you just did, Erica. This is almost a joke. I’m laughing.

Jong drives her point of Oprah’s paranoia as extraneous and based in her fear of white people by name-dropping a few of her white celebrity friends---Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Liz Taylor---as folks that “can laugh at themselves” are “humble” and “self-effacing,” not “shits”. So then who is the “shit” to which she is referring? Is she referring to Oprah, the paranoid monster that can’t just manage to chill out in the same dressing room as her when they’re in a play together?

And then the shocker that literally made puffs of huge balls of anti-racist smoke come out my ears:

“But Oprah seems to have gotten more mistrustful with fame, not less. And she seems to have gotten more race conscious than she was when she was younger. You never felt that Oprah was a professional Negro. She seemed totally unaware of race -- but what do I know about being black? It's not like being Jewish with a Chinese nom de plume.”

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOKAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY. The pinnacle. This is better unpacked with my favorite move: an open letter. Erica Jong, here is my open letter to you in response to above quote. Oprah is arguably the most famous woman in America. Barring her race, I’d say that’s a reason to have le grand guard. You have never experienced that kind of fame and probably never will. So fall back. You have, however, in your article created an image of Oprah as a once “Happy Darky” that never indicated to you, an “insider”, that she had a mistrustful bone in her “pudgy” Mammie body but has now turned into psycho, nervous, militant black woman. You captured Oprah (in your oh so limited friendship) as not having the “sense” that Oprah was a “professional negro” or was “aware of race”. Your tone is implicit; I was waiting for you to finish the thought, to read “but…she is a professional negro now”. All that came before, about her shift from being carefree to a care-monger only supports such. I got news for you honey: Oprah was always black, knew she was black and dealt with her blackness. Just not with you. Like you said “what do I know about being a black woman?” Nothing. And it’s clear that you don’t want to know anything about it because the small inroads she’s made in her quest to break racial barriers you marked as the beginning of her paranoid anti-white brigade. But the jig is up for you, Erica. You were fooled. And now you look like the fool.

She dished with you in a hot tub, or whatever, the same way she appeals to millions of white ladies in Pleasantville, by stealthily ignoring race. But now she has reached such great heights that she is able to break free of the chains that bound her and can speak openly about race. It was all her game, Erica. Don’t you see? And Oprah has absolutely no obligation “not to carry grudges” because she does not need to be complicit, she does not need to lie down when she has the power to stand up. But don’t be confused, her power, no black American’s power makes them into magic fairy’s “transcending prejudice” and making magic fairy dust that un-races them. And I wouldn’t blame her if she held a grudge against you. Your hegemonic childish outburst excuse of an article says only one thing and it’s not about Oprah. It’s about your dissatisfaction with your own reality and your inability to let a Black woman rise above you. And THAT is messed up girlfrien’.

Love always, Tete

2nd installment, this time on joanna newsom

2010-04-13T15:41:00.003-04:00

i wrote another piece for glorious noise about joanna newsom. she's pretty so if anything read the article to look at the picture of her. we kinda look alike. nah, we don't.

i have more time than you

2010-04-13T11:39:00.006-04:00

my friend started this blog, I have more time than you and since she's become a recluse. i only know this (not anymore) privileged information because i saw her long beard through the little slit of her window in her basement apartment in Greenpoint that she shares with a geriatric Polish woman named Svelta. So really her blog isn't appropriately named because she actually DOESN'T have any time for work or friends or laughing anymore. she only has time for her blog. and for cutting Svelta's nails. and for scrubbing Svelta's corns. Anyway what she manages to do is pretty cool job for not having contact with the outside world. She posts music, art and graphic design things that i dont understand. So, check it out. And remember, don't start a blog children, because you might disappear into the Brooklyn abyss.

roadtrip to dollywood?

2010-04-09T22:00:00.006-04:00

i'm serious. i will absolutely drive (without a drivers license) to dollywood this summer. who's down? i'm also thinking of seriously getting it in on the shoulder pad blazer this (fake) spring. watch the video below of Dolly singing "jolene" my personal fave. and the dress she's wearing in the video? my wedding dress. not kidding right now. and her intro? she kills it. she literally says "Thank you [for buying tickets] i really need the money. it takes a lot to make this woman look so cheap." I love you dolly. and i wish i were a drag queen so you'd love me too. In all seriousness, "Jolene" is probably one of my favorite songs of all time. when i'm a famous writer i'll cover it. like scarlett johannson did with tom waits. i'll do things like sing songs when i'm a writer. foot in every door. no? foot in every puddle? foot in everrrrrryyyy patch? tete bad with idioms. tete no good with idioms. tete go to concert tonight at 10:30 of NSR at Crash Mansion. NSR and Dolly Parton would make a really beautiful song together. and baby. more baby than song. and they'd name her jolene. and she'd live part time on the upper west side and part time in dollywood. and she'd be a dragqueen so that her mommy would like her.

re: what do you think of NYTIMES article?

2010-04-03T11:31:00.004-04:00

Below is my response to my boss asking me what I thought about the NYtimes Article that reports Obama's checked the "black" box instead of taking advantage of the option to "write-in" his race/races:

I think that Obama's checking the "black" box was more political than a genuine manifestation of what race he "feels". Perhaps in a way he does feel "black" since he projected/marketed himself as such for the purposes of being the "first black president". But ultimately i think he did it to be consistent for the America that isn't yet comfortable with bi-raciality.

Much of black America voted for what they saw/believed to be a "black man". Common belief in black communities "if you look black then they think you're black, so you are black" and black Americans voted for a man they could call their own, his "story" negligible. White Americans voted for a "black man" that speaks like a white man. Obama is the anti-intimidator; he doesn't challenge or appeal to white America for entry into their sphere/club by claiming his (true) whiteness on the census. He, in a sense "knows his place" and keeps there. But i don't think that this is at all an Uncle Tom move, i think it's more about pushing the limits of race intermittently, somewhat implicitly, stealthily.

in short, am i surprised? no. I think he feels as biracial as you and I but knows that it's an identity that is burgeoning, not yet marketable on large-scale politics, to the body politic. he owes it to his base (black americans) and he can't scare off the white Americans.

warmest regards on this warm day,
c

south africa and new york are like the same place

2010-03-30T17:11:00.006-04:00

I watched this art21 episode about William Kentridge and dude is Theman Jones. "Best known for animated films based on charcoal drawings, he also works in prints, books, collage, sculpture, and the performing arts." he goes in on the effects of apartheid and colonialism in the neatest way i've certainly encountered! yay for art! yippie! he has an exhibit at the MOMA until may 17 and I'm hyped.com to go. anyone wanna take me on a date? sometimes i'm pretty. i can definitely look pretty if you want me to. i'll look pretty for William Kentridge. and for you.

yes, today, i'm in a hole

2010-03-29T14:19:00.009-04:00

It's raining in New York City today and i feel like I'm in a number of sad french films though I'm not even in France, I'm on 24th st. so, guess what am i? a poser. that's a vintage word. Also vintage are many of the verrrrry pleasurable photographs on my besties new blog called are you in a hole. check it out. maybe you'll like it so much that you'll offer to fly me to France as a consolation so i can be in my sad, slow and rainy french film. Gonna go listen to Elliott Smith and cry now. really. i am. no. actually i probably won't. but this is the internet so you can't see me. MUAHAHAHAHA.

tegan and sara love a remix. i love tegan and sara.

2010-03-24T13:28:00.005-04:00

So Tegan and Sara get down with a remix i guess. im mad excited for the ra ra riot, VHS or Beta and Four Tet. That's just me tho. above video is the original. do whatever you want. i'm not telling you to watch it. but if you don't i'll get dem alligator tears.

comes out mar 30 and the remix EP track listing is as follows: 1.Alligator (Holy F**k remix) 2. Alligator (Passion Pit remix) 3. Alligator (Toro y Moi remix) 4. Alligator (VHS or Beta remix) 5. Alligator (Doveman remix) 6. Alligator (Four Tet remix) 7. Alligator (Murge remix) 8. Alligator (Ra Ra Riot remix) 9. Alligator (Automatic Panic remix) 10. Alligator (Hi-Deaf remix) 11. Alligator (Dave Sitek remix) 12. Alligator (Sara's Original Demo Version) Bonus Club Tracks: 13. Alligator (Morgan Page remix) 14. Alligator (Kevin St. Croix remix) 15. Alligator (Mad Decent remix) 16. Alligator (Josh Harris remix) 17. Alligator (Hamel remix)

this might make sense. it's an experiment.

2010-03-22T20:58:00.008-04:00

= HEALTHCARE!!!!!!!! YAYYYY! BEARS!!!! HEARTS!!!! STARS!!!! OBAMA!!!! MUFFINS!!! muffins? muffin tops? nobody will have muffin tops anymore with the better healthcare we just got! actually nobody will have cancer! obama cured cancer!!!!!!!!!!!

people like me, i play tetetotete for another site

2010-03-11T21:47:00.005-05:00

check it. me. i wrote an article about band cubic zirconia for glorious noise.

french movies make me SO excited

2010-03-10T14:18:00.003-05:00

one of the films playing at this year's Rendez-vous With French Cinema festival that started mar. 11th and ends the 21st at lincoln center, ifc and bam. I will most likely see ANY french movie. someone, anyone go in with me? I can't go to films alone. I have social anxiety, the kind of social anxiety where you need to be around people all the time.
*follow the links for a full lineup of the films playing at each locale. lincoln center is the spot that's really going in hard on the festival.

if you want to go in on good music there is a music blog that i approve of.

2010-03-03T15:04:00.005-05:00

This is a good song that i found on a good music blog that everyone in the world should look at because it is good. god is good. god is dead. i am nietzsche. SO, (above) Jens Lekman and the chick from The XX have a song together. And maybe a baby. I'm their baby. I'm your baby. Though i DO like the blog I disagree with their assessment of Jens Lekman, i think he's precioso and makes me happy like belle and sebastian did when i was 15. anyway, listen/watch the song above and check out the blog: i guess i'm floating

*sorry about that Lens Lekman bit...i thought that looked wrong. but i was distracted, i was being told a story about crackhouses in LA by a regular at the bar. GOOD REASON for an edit?

john mayer is really smart and really cool and really loves black women

2010-03-02T11:37:00.006-05:00

In a recent interview with Playboy Magazine, (which I had the joy of finding behind my bar one Tuesday afternoon last week) John Mayer is quoted as having some sort of “nigger pass” in the black music circuit. Everyone is in conniptions over Mayer’s use of the word “nigger,” which, yeah, bad word John, tisk tisk. But the media’s coverage of John Mayer’s (what I’ll be the first to coin as) “Niggergate” rebukes him for using the word, as though the meaning behind the whole comment wasn’t the actual problem; but my ni##ers the content of his comments issss the problem! So, my initial thought was to pass it off with the ol’ this cracker-doesn’t-know-what-he’s-saying-pass. I laughed to myself, "instead of normal famous people problems like delusions of more grandeur he apparently has delusions of transcending race!" But as I kept reading the interview and then later when I read other interviews with him about his apparent premier guitar ability, I began to understand that he is very aware of the history of Blues and at least partially understands his racial location within the musical genre. But then I realized he might not understand he isn’t made of the stuff but has learned to make a vanilla, pop-culture reproduction of the stuff. We know he certainly does not have the sophistication of someone like filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard who infuses the quote “What has been called classic blues was the result of more diverse sociological and musical influences” from (formerly known) Leroi Jones’s book Blues People into his film. But we do know Mayer is in the very least equipped with the historical proverbial building blocks to understanding the role of race and racism in the history of Blues.

Dare I say, his ass should have known better? Yeah, I’m going to hold him accountable, because nobody else seems to be doing it. I feel like me and this dude, Jon Caramanica, who wrote a piece in the New York Times today are the only people confused by everyone’s ease regarding Mayer’s behavior. Mayer is fully aware that hegemony delivered his white ass (as opposed to an African American with the same talent) to superstardom. So I’m just a little confused to whty ?uestlove and all these other important black artists are writing Mayer’s comments off as a silly misstep. As I understand it, the image he has constructed for himself is that of the reckless musician rocker-dude that says what he means and means what he says whenever he wants to say it. So let’s just call a spade a spade (he's a racist fool) and stop pretending like Mayer’s body is a wonderland (cause it's not).

In his apology on twitter (twitter, great) he says, “I wanted to be a blues guitar player. And a singer. And a songwriter. Not a shock jock. I don’t have the stomach for it.” So he seems to be humbled, to have felt genuinely sorry (yeah, right) for his Niggergate gaffe. But in his apology, there is no acknowledgement of the content of his interview as being the problem. Who CARES about "nigger" when you have a whole glut of other offensive shit you said after “nigger”? He doesn’t think to ask forgiveness from the black music community (both living and dead) that he has taken and taken and taken from. Rather it is (cowardly at best) stab at reestablishing his image as the fringe but “good” white guy who just wants to play “his” music for the masses who love his proclivity for romantic love ballads or his tunes of passivity, waiting for brighter, more equitable days. But is Mayer really waiting on the world to change? It doesn’t seem like he wants to change much in the way his racial privilege. In fact he’s being a pretty active participant in the reinforcement that white people can dominate a historically black craft and do it with arrogance and without concern.

Arrogant and unconcerned John Mayer was also asked in the Playboy interview: “Do black women throw themselves at you?” to which he replied that he didn’t really think of it, calling his penis a white supremacist, comparing it to David Duke of the Ku Klux Klan. Is he serious? He’s been obsessed with a music made by the blood, sweat and tears of a whole bunch of black women and he hasn’t thought about having sex with them? Oh, heya liar! He really gave himself the moniker David Duke. Is he insane? This is too easy.

Dear David Duke AKA John Mayer,

I can’t wait for the world to change so I can hit you over the head with your stupid fucking guitar and never have to hear you play another ridiculous song because you’ll be singing songs of actual pain and suffering. You’ll be singing “oh I can’t wait for the world to go back to the way it was when this black woman that will never have sex with me wasn’t kicking my ass.” Yeah those are lyrics I can’t wait to rock out to.

Cordially,

Tete

new york has kept gil scott heron alive long enough to write this awesome song.

2010-02-20T12:25:00.004-05:00

so "new york is killing me" is every music blog's 'best new song'. fine. maybe I only saw a review of it on pitchfork. I just wanted to sound like i am well researched, unlike that dude, Zachary Kouwe who had to "resign" from the NYTimes last week for plagiarizing every article he's written in like the past 7 months. Way to be premier NYTimes. I guess New York is killing a lot of people (me and gil scott heron) and institutions (new york times, all print media). We're all trying to survive in this perro eat perro city. Me? I'm just trying to get a free meal. I suppose I should have gone to some fashion events during fashion week. i bet there was so much untouched food there that it was coming out of the cracks in the sidewalks. Actually it was probably just sitting there, neatly, on fold-up tables with plastic cloths. I'd like a free banana. Thank god my dad is coming to brooklyn right now. god damn these hunger pains. i need bread. banana bread. Listen to the song.

Iranians make jewelry and are peaceful

2010-02-12T20:15:00.003-05:00

my girl's mom is doing her O.G. Iranian jewelry thing on the radio with Pierra Tocci AKA the regulator when it comes to interviews here: http://www.breakthruradio.com/index.php?show=9246 If you wanna check out her stuff in person or just wanna check her out (shes a MILF deeefffiniiteellyyy) go tomorrow to the Williamsburg Fair Love_A-Fair 2010 at TERMINAL: 343 Broadway, Brooklyn and see whats really what.

sometimes i like to look at things i'll never afford. because i'm a masochist.

2010-02-07T13:25:00.007-05:00

While i was perusing, no, scouring the internet for ideas for my girl's '40s/'50s themed birthday party I found myself on archive imagining myself dancing to my new favorite song, "sexy chick" in above chanel dresses and nina ricci shirts. Neither of those by the way even conjure wartime floral prints of the 1940s or crinoline of the 1950s. square one. broke and still need a dress. any suggestions? does cheap shopping even exist in new york? nah kiddddo.

geography is fun kids.

2010-02-04T13:07:00.005-05:00

Tonight, Dash Speaks performs his new shat with another new hiphop duo Memory Laine at Gallery Bar. Dash Speaks, who writes and produces everything (as he works through in the song 'Army Of Me') infuses electro-pop-world-music creating a sound that accelerates us into a musical geographic location yet discovered. So go witness Dash Speaks doing new and exciting things like playing checkers with freak show women with beards. And piggybacking off of that will be Memory Laine funneling absinthe into one another's bellybuttons, back and forth.

Dash Speaks album Geography available for download at dashpeaks.com

going in on new york city architecture

2010-02-03T13:49:00.005-05:00

union square

The Bowery

These photos from this architecture site my girl's uncle put her onto are dope. Also dope: the mailman that just came to drop off the mail at the bar i work at. he had an incredible flat top. and he's wearing shorts. a black dude wearing shorts in 30 degree weather. well, i'm not saying it's abnormal. i feel really hot too. but i got my haircut last night. so.

i'm permanantly blue for you now that you have another song i like

2010-02-03T08:44:00.004-05:00

jacques renault. oh hey. hottie.

so today on my daily free download on RCRD LBL was a refreshingly good remix. You all remember the once i'msmilingalotbecauseifeellikeimontopoftheworld "bruises" by the band Chairlift that became i'mfrowningbecausethissongisonmadcommercialsandismadannoyingandmyheartwasjustbrokenandican'ttakethisanymore
Well here's a hit you can feel good about! The song "Evident Utensil" remixed by Jacques Renault. I'll always love a french remix but more importantly i'll always love a french man. fuck it, i'll always love exoticizing. but i can do that, cause i'm brown. and pretty. The song has the midas dance touch and has moved me to bop (even at this godforsaken hour) and (eventually) dance (when it's a different, but more appropriate godforsaken hour.) Why am I awake? oh cause i ate a grilled cheese and french fries at 2am and can't stop drinking water because, really, i'm convinced i didn't eat a grilled cheese and french fries at all but really ate all of the contents of a salt shaker disguised. shut up. get the free download here. and don't go to SUGAR on houston and allen unless you're looking to be dehydrated for the remainder of 2010.

spring fling

2010-01-24T18:29:00.003-05:00

refinery29

lover's spring collection.

i hate you

2010-01-21T14:52:00.002-05:00

so. much.

yeah

2010-01-14T09:31:00.002-05:00

vice via knighttcat

whatever.

my secret garden

2010-01-12T11:23:00.005-05:00

i'd like to go to a house in the woods with a hall where i eat soup and drink homemade beer. anyway i'm broke.

she needs to eat a sandwich BUT...

2010-01-10T03:27:00.005-05:00

face hunter

...she also looks dope in this outfit and I'm a hater because i feel like a Christmas ham in comparison. no big deal. an Easter and Kwanzaa ham too. not Hanukkah, but only because Jews can't fuck with a ham.

three penny opera thoughts

2010-01-06T10:23:00.006-05:00

So. Obviously Rosabel Morrison was Carmen many many moons ago. The current Carmen, Latvian mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca, was off the chains. The New York Times piece does a much better job at extolling the 3-hour masterpiece but I saw it last night and just had to give postspect (respect in the form a post..funny?!? not funny!?!?)

hi. i love you 2010. you're the best. i wanna do you. for 365 days.

2010-01-01T12:27:00.003-05:00

happy new year.

united stats of america

2009-12-31T20:12:00.003-05:00

united stats of america. amazing.

lonely hearts

2009-12-31T17:43:00.000-05:00

lonely hearts aw2010

Lonely Hearts: What is Your Damage from Nik Riviera on Vimeo.

//glasses glasses //

2009-12-27T12:29:00.005-05:00

there's a great blog by the same name. That's not what this is about. This is about something entirely different in fact. See, I left my glasses (purchased in 2003) at my parents house on the upper west side and I'd like nothing more then to make 94th st. their new dwelling. I'll be heading on over to Moscot's today to peruse. But in preparation I've scoured their website and these (above) are my favorite items.

bedazzled

2009-12-21T15:07:00.003-05:00

SLV Jewelry & Tribeca Retail Club are inviting people to gawk . . .and then buy incredible jewelry handcrafted by Sadye Lee Vassil (SLV Jewelry) tomorrow night from 4pm-10pm at 294 Broadway (between walker and white), 4th Floor. Imma cop mine fashofasho. and then give it to Tiger Woods. He needs something. poor man.

for emma forever ago

2009-12-20T15:17:00.010-05:00

It’s a funny thing eulogizing someone a year after they’ve died. I sit down to write about her frequently but never accomplish more than writing her name, Emma Bee Bernstein. So it is strange that today, and begrudgingly so, is the first time I’m attempting to pen a piece remembering emma. We both had the same penchant for hyperbole and mythologizing and I think I was afraid that all the practice we’d had couldn’t prepare me to honor her memory. But I will try.

I remember when I became friends with Emma. We were both placed on the same camp Olympic team, Guatemala, in the summer of 1996. It was my first summer at Camp Kinderland and I was sick over being split up from my only friends and comfort, Sonja and Jesse. I was afraid Emma didn’t like me, maybe because I was new---unfamiliar with the traditions, songs and tales that came along with Camp Kinderland. But then she sat down next to me on the soccer field during a match against the blue team, clad head-to-toe in our team’s color, red. She had on a red wife-beater with red sophie shorts, a red head-band and red knee-high socks, on her feet were converse with (what I’d like to remember) red shoelaces and, of course, against her tragically beautiful pale skin was her signature red lipstick. And there began my most unique 12-year friendship with my emma bee, or as I called her, spoc. She called me Collzra.

Most of what I did in those first few months of friendship with Emma was laugh. She was as tireless as I at night. It’s funny, as I recall it now, it feels like all of our moments at Camp Kinderland those first two years were like the movie NOW AND THEN, filled with boy-talk, nail-painting (emma had tiny little nails and stubby little hands that she hated but wouldn’t allow to go unpolished) and laughing about nothing at all. Those foundational summers were perfection. We were connected to one another---our truest, barest, youthful selves. She accepted me though I was a difficult person, masking my insecurity with a hardness and a harshness that was unmatched at camp. She accepted me with an ease and a respect that I had a much harder time doing for her as the years went on and things became more difficult for her. And for that I am very sorry to emma.

High School approached rapidly. Emma wanted to go to St. Ann’s and didn’t get in. I remember her crying. She cried all night. I got into St. Ann’s but I couldn’t go without my partner. So we both decided on Friends Seminary. Together, as it were, we faced High School. Like in camp, Emma had a much easier time adapting. She threw herself into her studies with a vigor and passion I’ve still never encountered in anyone since. Her appetite for learning was astounding. It made her almost manic. I remember being angry that I didn’t have that same ferocity for all things studying. I was scared perhaps, that if I tried I wouldn’t get it like she did.

She dyed her hair pink and befriended the “fringe”, which at Friends were just the kids that liked “The Velvet Underground”, didn’t wear Gap, smoked cigarettes in the park behind our school and had an affection for socialism. We drifted in that first year. I resented her coolness, I resented how easy it was for people to love her. And love her people always did. But by the next year we were back on track. It always happened that way. Emma and I were as different as two people could be but there was an inextricable closeness that we couldn’t shake. She was very intentional in her close friendships and I always felt privileged to be on the inside.

Senior year of High School Emma was elected to give the senior speech. She recited "Changes" by Tupac. We had grown very close again, sleeping many nights at our friend Marissa’s house where we’d smoke pot and watch “Dazed and Confused” and “Clueless” and romanticize our future boyfriends at our respective colleges. Somehow it was different when I spoke about future exploits, so many of which Emma already experienced. She was not afraid of new experiences and adventure like I was. Sometimes that was scary for me because her desire for spontaneity sometimes translated into recklessness and compromising situations, all of which I berated her for (too) much.

I moved to Chicago in the fall of 2007. She was nervous that I’d be judgmental and I was nervous that she’d be self-destructive and I’d have to feel her decisions with the same weight and intensity I had so many times before. She was more beautiful than ever, owning her curves, her style, her hair and her talent in a way that came together magically. And there were moments, in her small room on Central Park and Fullerton in Logan Square after a huge vegetarian meal of enchiladas and chiles rellenos from El Pacifico, where we’d laugh and laugh about the Halloween our English professor was dressed in all leather, or when a fellow camper had food in his teeth while he tried to shamelessly flirt with her.

What followed I’d rather not recall in a public forum because Emma accepted me. And here I must accept her and her decision with a respect and an undying love. It was hard for me to reconcile her death as I saw it for so long as an affront to me and my love and devotion to her. But now I understand that her sickness took a form that had nothing to do with me and what I tried to do for her. That she respected me and accepted me up until the very last day she lived. And I must do the same for her. Finally.

Emma loved regaling tales of yore. And she loved cutting her clothes. And she loved being sad. And she loved taking photographs of Toni. She loved Cindy Sherman. And she loved Top Chef but hated meat (most of the time). She loved dressing up in her grandmother’s clothes. She also loved her grandmother’s specialty, Barley. She loved Chanukah but didn’t care as much about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was the last time I saw my friend. She left the next morning for Venice. I miss her very much everyday but today on the one-year anniversary of her death, December 20^th, 2009 I am devastated. I was supposed to go with her to the Bon Iver concert last winter but I was lazy and it was snowing, something that never stopped her from anything. It seems fitting to end with a line from the song entitled “For Emma”


“So apropos/Saw death on a sunny snow/For every life/Forgo the parable

/Seek the light/With all your lies/You're still very lovable/

I toured the light/so many foreign roads for Emma, forever ago." - Bon Iver

-Collier Meyerson

chanukah

2009-12-18T12:00:00.002-05:00

in my on-line browsing on etsy i came across this vintage het pendant. It's the last day of chanukah. Should I go in?

all the single ladies, all the single ladies. put your hands up.

2009-12-15T15:33:00.003-05:00

i'm going to see this tonight. i love a trailer with no words. it just makes me wanna SCREAM for ice cream.

jews < hipsters

2009-12-09T15:09:00.000-05:00

i love hassidic jews. i don't love a hardcore, self-righteous bikers that wear those stupid hats. WHY do they wear those hats? Is this feud going to end up like the crown-heights riots of the '90s. Maybe the hipster grifter can weigh in.

french people look pretty all the time

2009-12-03T13:43:00.004-05:00

garance dore

this is Eleonara. She's a classy broad. I'm going to France in march. maybe i'll come back Sabrina styles. classy. classy. classy. without that weird crush on harrison ford though.

people care about the yankees

2009-12-02T15:27:00.007-05:00

I'm (almost) speechless over these photographs taken by a friend, nofauxtography at this years ticker-tape parade. had to put his work on blast. i believe he can make prints (for a fee) if people are interested.

adoption is for everyone

2009-11-30T13:44:00.004-05:00

I wrote my senior thesis on the complications of transnational, transracial, transcultural adoption. I wrote about how angelina jolie creates an image of herself worthy of candidacy for sainthood and how madonna tries to make transnational adoption (literally) in vogue. However, beneath the glitz and the glam there are adoptees all over these United States that grow up confused and sometimes ashamed of who they are; confused about having to identify certain ways in racially and culturally polarizing environments and ashamed at both the prospect of never understanding their former, unknown self and sometimes hating the life they were severed from. It's a tricky thing being an adoptee (i know because i am one) and i am excited to see if this film joins Avery's two lives (pre and post adoption) in a way that honors the disjointed and non-linear nature of an adoptee's experience.

check out the official website of the film: Off and Running

minneapolis is a sexy rocker model chick

2009-11-27T17:28:00.003-05:00

knighttcat

valerie is a penguin

2009-11-22T12:44:00.002-05:00

this is a good remix for a day of unpacking my new house in brooklyn.

tom from myspace or tom who saves the world

2009-11-18T21:51:00.003-05:00

i'd rather be tom who gives kids shoes. cause like i bet he's hotter. or at least his shoes are hotter than tom from myspace. tom from myspace wishes he could be tom the shoe. really. he told me. i could work for toms for a living. just saying. dream job.

scarlett johansson breaks up with pete yorn

2009-11-13T21:06:00.007-05:00

so, this is mildly embarrassing. I like the Scarlett Johansson and Pete Yorn song "relator" from their album long collaboration entitled, "The Breakup" not yet released. I tried to resist the temptress (who serves more as an awkward and boring weirdo in the video) but the song is just SO CATCHY. I listened to it a couple months ago and divulged my secret to a few friends but now I think it's time i just come. clean.

An open letter to Scarjo:

Scarlett Johansson, you might have called me Cabbage when we were 10 years old but i've forgiven you and i even love your new song.

Love always,
Tete

only if you care about civil rights and humanity

2009-11-11T12:39:00.006-05:00

The film, WILLIAM KUNSTLER: DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE's theatrical release is this friday, 13th (that's weird) and I implore everyone in New York to go and pay the 3 mil (that's how much films cost in these trying times) and see it at Cinema Village on 12th and University. The documentary, directed by the late William Kunstler's two daughters, Sarah Kunstler and Emily Kunstler, explores the career of the radical and controversial Civil Rights attorney. Most fascinating (and surprising) is rather than revering Kunstler, the sisters explore and interrogate their issues with the controversial cases their father took later on in his career. So, children of the corn, instead of renting Freddy the 13th (or whatever) go see something far more intellectually stimulating. And tell your friends to get with my friends so we can be friends.

home shopping

2009-11-09T07:32:00.003-05:00

dwell

sorry. I've been looking for an apartment. I don't seem to do anything else. And I don't seem to find one either. I, for some reason, thought I'd be choosing between mansion and estate. Though it's more like I'm finding shoe box after shoebox for $$ and a bootboxes for $$$.

sex in late jan and early february

2009-11-02T11:51:00.004-05:00

photo cred 10.17

everyone seems to be born in the last weekend of octobre and the first week of novembre. needless to say i was celebrating all over new york these past few jours in various costumes. eating various red velvet cakes. one was from magnolia. Aside from the normal commotion of that place there was an added twist of the 20 marathon runners, peering over my shoulder waiting with bated breath until they could dig their ivories into a celebratory cupcake. I felt like i was in a marathon of sugar consumption this weekend. halloween. over. check. total body conditioning starts at 5:30. anyone? also french words make everything sound way more whimsical and romantic. I am trying to get you to want my life. alors.

traveling kids (not the anarchist kind)

2009-10-30T12:39:00.010-04:00

Images of travel have been on my mind since last nights Girldrive reading at KGB Bar. This morning, feeling nostalgic for roadtrips and yearning for any kind escape from the cityscape i looked at my friend Stephen Yang's photos. If only i were independently wealthy. Oprah, if you're out there, I know you love to help a colored in need. I am that colored.

savage (not fred)

2009-10-30T11:01:00.008-04:00

The Dutchess and The Duke has a sound that transports me to the fall of 1968. I imagine I'm Winnie's (from the Wonder Years) weird black friend who'd rather go home and listen to records than speak. I imagine I'm playing them on my 8-track in my basement while she stares at me blankly, obtrusively, as if telling me with her eyes that she wishes I had straight hair. It's a symbiotic friendship though because she brings the weed. I close my eyes and mellow out. I know I'm bound for New York City on a greyhound right after i graduate, with or without Winnie. Later I become the most relevant African-American cultural critic of the 20th century.

joe lieberman is out of his everloving mind

2009-10-27T16:41:00.003-04:00

Huffington Post just told me that Lieberman is going to join the republican health care reform filibuster. he is the devil's spawn.

winner

2009-10-27T16:31:00.002-04:00

courtesy of 10muses

and her thighs ALMOST touch! hottie.

you wildin

2009-10-26T14:09:00.004-04:00

check out my latest post about Pinkberry at youwildin'

helsinki plaid

2009-10-25T22:18:00.002-04:00

courtesy of hel-looks

i love fall

sienna plays

2009-10-25T08:15:00.004-04:00

my friend raved about the dress she saw sienna wearing at the premier party of the new play, After Miss Julie that she stars in. After a www.google.com inquiry into the dress i was pretty upset i wasn't a rich and famous movie star wearing balmain. every. day.

ladies lunching lavishly

2009-10-24T13:09:00.008-04:00

nah, not really lunching lavishly, though there is free champagne! It's actually a present day answer to an amish market, except with hot ladies selling way cooler things; jewelry, artwork and natural beauty products. though amish butter is pretty on point. Anyway come peruse, buy or chat with ladies in this rare and awesome project of women selling products made by women, for women, by women, for women. women. womyn. yup.

a crimpet a crumpet

2009-10-21T16:00:00.003-04:00

photo from 10.17

If i were a lady i would have a spread like this

robyn bird is my new feminist hero?

2009-10-21T10:30:00.010-04:00

remember her? I know you all remember "if you wanna hear us moan, call us on the phone." After getting over the nostalgia of seeing her blond hair (that a blind hairdresser dyed) and her white fingernails (which she sported every show), I was really impressed by the content of the clip. For close to 30 years she's taught nearly every 13 year old New Yorker since the 70s a thing or two about what grown-up boobies and penises look. A. The Bird-Lady has been a woman unapologetic about sharing her sexuality with public access viewers since the dawn of time. she has literal pioneer status. B. After a jaunt with her wikipedia page i realized that she has used her iconic channel 35 status to raise awareness and support development in AIDS research and LGBT rights and issues. Bird has also been engaged in legal battles with the state of NY since the 90s to keep her show public, free and unscrambled, defending the rights of people all over our fine city who want to enjoy pornography legally, freely and safely in the privacy of their homes, without shame.

So, let's all raise one to Robin Byrd for being mad cheesy, having that semi-creepy raspy voice, for loving the gays, the bis, the transgenders, people of color, sex on pool tables and sex in her weird neon studio.

Gordon Voidwell sings the black national anthem

2009-10-19T13:42:00.003-04:00

CMJ promises some really exciting new music and some really boring, bad, bad, music. I strongly urge, as the most important voice of any given generation, against your natural inclination to purge when you hear the words "WEBSTER HALL" and go see Gordon Voidwell play at 11pm. Bring your friends of color too. he loves that. and semi hates it. or loves it.

i'm pretty hungry

2009-10-15T16:44:00.002-04:00

props: http://infantfoundation.com/blog/

filippa K

2009-10-15T16:27:00.002-04:00

I plan on finding some winter items with filippa. In Sweden she has a discount store. Unfortunately for me I don't live in Sweden. I also like light more than 4 hours a day in winter. you can find her at Castor & Pollux and Flying A in New York.

rick owens

2009-10-04T19:30:00.004-04:00

i'll be visiting his shop this week.

rickshaw shawn: my, my, my superman

2009-09-27T09:48:00.009-04:00

I saw this dude at like 3am two weeks ago on 5th and A carting these two japanese girls for the ride of their life. He literally scaled a wall. My natural inclination told me to pack it away in the depths of my memory bank for it's unreal, bizarreness but instead I found myself standing in the same exact location last night regaling the incredible. so, i found him. watch. this.

and if you want to look at him in late-night-action watch this:

alexander wang

2009-09-14T15:04:00.004-04:00

so this photo from the wang show has nothing to do with my post but i thought this getup was fuego and I want it (or the inevitable and more realistic forever21 version) immediately.

Anyway, something is finally happening in New York City! What?!
"night of mayhem" at What Goes Around Comes Around hosted by Mischa Barton

Start Time:	Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 9:00pm
End Time:	Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 12:00am
Location:	What Goes Around Comes Around
Street:	351 West Broadway
City/Town:	New York, NY

Moe's Kleiner Imbiss

2009-09-14T12:37:00.007-04:00

The falafel with halloumi and some spicy sauce at King Of Falafel, graefestrasse in Kreuzberg, (a neighborhood in Berlin) is the most bomb thing I've ever tasted. I was trying to think of my "comeback" post, something that would summarily describe my month-long jaunt across eastern and northern europe and all i could recall was this wonderful, cheap eat. So, everyone, if you find yourself in berlin in the near future, skip all of the art, kreuzberg bridge drinking, biking (and falling off), watching buskers, flea-markets, theater, and go straight to moe's. but before that go next-door and buy a club mate and drink that up right quick.

shopping in europe

2009-08-03T20:55:00.005-04:00

Grace wants me to pick bensimons up for her while I'm gone. what other hard-to-find euro items are necessary to sport upon my return?

black people die, nobody cares

2009-08-03T20:07:00.005-04:00

The first black supermodel, Naomi Sims, died this past Saturday at the age of 61 from cancer. I just read about it on huffpo today. I should have known on Saturday. Perhaps it's time to switch up my news and blog perusing methods. Or maybe the media just needs to become more sensitive at calling attention to the life and times of women of color that have broken the mold. i'll dare to say she was instrumental in paving the way for changing the standard of beauty, even if we still can't shake exoticizing current black models.

i need a ride or die bitch

2009-08-03T01:42:00.005-04:00

I'm leaving for europe in three days. I'm not sure how exactly i'll update but insha'Allah i'll find a way. berlin then easyjet to yet disclosed countries. stay tuned.

stillness is the move

2009-08-01T18:15:00.004-04:00

last night i went to a goodbye party in ditmas, a neighborhood in bk. As always I was a) so taken with houses and b) so taken with the fact that I rode the Q to get there instead of metro north. It definitely looks just like an affluent suburb on every side street, equipped with teenagers tripping on their front lawn a la can't hardly wait. It strangely feels sacrosanct and I wasn't sure if I was even down to post this for fear that my most popular blog in the world would somehow drive the masses out of williamsburg and into this somewhat sequestered secret. anyway. visit.

tete-a-bouche

2009-07-31T15:04:00.006-04:00

I never think to order or make ravioli because one serving is always like three pieces and it's gone so fast and when i'm done (and unsatisfied) i always go into a debbie depression because i want more. But this photo transforms the lonely large starch into a healthful salad that makes ravioli my irresistible food choice of today. f i ever cooked I'd use this recipe.

effortless

2009-07-30T12:03:00.004-04:00

louise, my fashion muse of the day is found here

it might rain but it still reigns supreme

2009-07-30T02:01:00.011-04:00

Photo by Nick Johnson.

Bill Wasik of the NYTimes (yeah I read the article on-line but I still live in New York and love it, Bill) writes a piece dethroning New York City as the reigning epicenter of artistic production and instead crowns…the Internet? I was feeling Wasik before he started on his Internet transcends actual human contact tip. See, I used to be a huge advocate of “New York is not provocative more like evocative, dead, and overburdened with fake-ass-people where no interesting or organic art of any form is produced.” Before I moved back here I spent hours with friends in grimy bars in Minneapolis and Chicago arguing that the best music and art was being produced elsewhere, in those ubiquitous “main streets” of America type towns that President Obama always referred to in his campaign stump. But, nope, New York is still dope and there is still ridiculous energy, art, music, jewelry and clothing being produced everyday here. Though the economy has been suspect and Madoff wilded out and caused the downright decimation or major depletion of monies for the arts in the mainstream doesn’t mean that the art isn’t being made at all! And furthermore, we all know that the stuff that legendary musicians/visual artists/writers is made of are never initially part of the establishment anyway.

Wasik interrogates the process of stardom on the internet and sets it wildly apart from that of that of becoming famous in New York. He does it in a way that puts a value on the success of people who get famous on the internet and pits them against those who become successful by networking in New York. So, if you make a youtube sensation of your wedding where you emerge husband and wife after an amazing dance routine you’re not as cool as, say, Wasik who maybe got pats by fat cats all the way up to Harpers. And I’m not saying that’s not as cool. But, like, has Wasik ever heard of legacy? of money getting you places? I know firsthand that vetting in New York exists in many different capacities and that people i know have gotten famous when others who are way more talented are thrown to the wayside. I’m not saying Dash Snow wasn’t great but I definitely wouldn’t have gotten famous for throwing jizz around.

Finally, my dude, the Internet is still a medium and not a place. The photograph above is taken outside of a school in Park Slope by a photographer from New York documenting what he sees. Makes sense cause that's what photographers do. Without that there'd be no photography to put ON the internet. The internet is just a platform by which to share and by no means does it take on the physicality and emotion of an experience like watching some kids from the neighborhood practice their skateboarding. Looking at photographs, reading blog posts, articles, watching films and clips is all good and fun and enriches your life and stuff but I once learned (and will always remember) that a well-functioning and happy person needs human touch 5x times a day and I get that times like x 10 on the Q-train on my way to work.

new york should take fashion tip from fashion icon. duh.

2009-07-29T17:04:00.005-04:00

I'm pretty sure that I don't live in New York and that I actually live in England, Scotland or the Pacific Northwest. Except that it's (England + themosthumidplaceonearththatitfeelsliketheinsideofagarbagetruck - fun in the mud = especially terrible). the weather forecast this weeks promises that there is no point in wearing anything except for this. what other rain inspired items would do?

the point.

2009-07-28T22:40:00.007-04:00

I believe this photograph was taken by famed writer, Nelson Algren, during Beauvoir's visit to Chicago. She writes candidly about her affair with Algren but was renowned for her explicit writings on the life-long-crazy-escapades-and-open-relationship she had with Jean-Paul Sartre. I thought to name this blog after the biography published on said philosophers as a way to link the antiquated yet forever romanticized self-referential, indulgent Beauvoir in her time with blogging. It makes me feel more comfortable knowing that this chick, who wrote one of the most influential feminist works of all time, "The Second Sex," basically blogged her life old-school styles. so. welcome. and hopefully I'm onto something.