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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.

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

Persona by Superhumanoids

heavy rotation



Persona by Superhumanoids

BeginningThe Rest

Nixon hearts jews and homos

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

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

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

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

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

shadester

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

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

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

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

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?

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?

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

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

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.

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.

= 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

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

french movies make me SO excited

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.

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

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.

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

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.