united stats of america. amazing.
12.31.2009
12.27.2009
//glasses glasses //
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.
12.21.2009
bedazzled
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.
12.20.2009
for emma forever ago
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 20th, 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
12.18.2009
12.15.2009
all the single ladies, all the single ladies. put your hands up.
i'm going to see this tonight. i love a trailer with no words. it just makes me wanna SCREAM for ice cream.
12.09.2009
jews < hipsters
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.
12.03.2009
french people look pretty all the time
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.
12.02.2009
people care about the yankees
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.
11.30.2009
adoption is for everyone
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
11.22.2009
11.18.2009
tom from myspace or tom who saves the world
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.
11.13.2009
scarlett johansson breaks up with pete yorn
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
11.11.2009
only if you care about civil rights and humanity
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.
11.09.2009
home shopping
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 $$ and a bootboxes for $$$.
11.02.2009
sex in late jan and early february
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.
10.30.2009
traveling kids (not the anarchist kind)
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)
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.
10.27.2009
joe lieberman is out of his everloving mind
Huffington Post just told me that Lieberman is going to join the republican health care reform filibuster. he is the devil's spawn.
10.26.2009
10.25.2009
sienna plays
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.
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