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.

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

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.

going in on new york city architecture

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

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

refinery29

lover's spring collection.

i hate you

so. much.

yeah

vice via knighttcat

whatever.

my secret garden

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...

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

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.

happy new year.

united stats of america

united stats of america. amazing.

lonely hearts

lonely hearts aw2010

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

//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.

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.

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 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

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.

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

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

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

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.