Levitating Lightbulb!

Once upon a time, Zack and I went to see Murdercola at Remedy this summer, and we ended up on the flyer for their last show ever, which we missed. But it's legina, here it is:
From the website, bea.st:

Jeff Lieberman is an inventor! The last inventor I heard about was the dad from Beauty and the Beast.  This guy:

(Maurice)

I made a song called "Parade Outta Pittsburgh" to commemorate my homeward voyage, if my home were in Brazil and I were journeying with a chain gang, and spoons. I need to cozy up to Comcast OnDemand and sleep for 20 hours a day. Stick a fork in me, I'm done!

Hellaween, the year's almost over!

One week to go and I might get all A's!! I REALLY don't know how this happened, but it did. And I had fun. And I'm going to London for spring 2008, to study at the School of Slavonic & Eastern European Studies @ UCL. Holla. I love London! I can't wait. But, really, where did the time go?

RJD2 and Flosstradamus came to play at our gym. Flosstradamus blew up the spot!!

Netta and Koko came for Halloween and that was the most fun ever. No one really had a costume.











A Latvian Halloween...we threw a party and every single person I hoped would come showed up. And it was warm and lovely retarded. And now I'm submitting the final version of my fiction story. This semester really did happen somehow.

Back to Cool

In the space of 90 minutes I slipped back into myself. Hilary Masters is teaching me Survey of Forms: Fiction.

Again, Hilary Masters, son of Edgar Lee Masters who wrote Spoon River Anthology, is teaching ME the art of fiction. By the passage of knowledge I will reap the genius of several highly regarded authors, as channeled through a highly regarded author whose dad was my required reading in high school.

I think badass may run in the family. He regaled us with tales of phone calls from Eleanor Roosevelt, checking in on Hyde Park's local news. He loves Weeds, especially Nancy Botwin. He was stranded in Oklahoma on Route 66 alongside his 1940 convertible.

I'm reunited with my first love, a creation borne from stealing, lying, and antagonizing. From wrong, right. I'd giggle if I weren't in a computer cluster.

I'm seeing Ratatat on Friday at Diesel, a real-life Pittsburgh nightspot. In the words of Buster Bluth, I feel alive!



And I want this^. I wonder if it's vegan (since it's Stella McCartney)...

Remember Proenza Schouler? Those two guys who are kinda dating, maybe brothers? Well this is what they've tossed onto the table, and if I were a rich man I'd be in it. And that wordplay would have increased proximity too.
<-- Well of course Miuccia Prada "thought using a little bit here and there is tacky, so we've had all Switzerland working on couture lace. They're in shock."

Yes, hospitalised for shock after a year of 16-hour workdays spent frilling up lace to pay for some horrendous[ly expensive] efficiency. Oddly, les élites du monde d'haute couture seem poised to continue praising this lacy bullshit until someone comes forward with some criticism that diverges from the homoerectile Oedipal compulsion party line. Of course this person will be a freelance fashion reporter, or some Rachel-Zoe-with-glasses publicity whore whom no one will take seriously. Hence, more praise, more money, and all I get is a pair of glasses. (They're great glasses!)

Leg-er! Hemlines hike up in Leger's scooping catsuit-style minidresses. Slinky materials wrap the hips and midsection, and cleavage takes a backseat to buns and thighs. My favorite piece is the open-chested dress that forms a heart! Adorable.

Diane Von Furstenberg's Fall 2008 collection is sensual, creamy, and reminiscent of the 1940s manned-down silhouette of sex appeal. This last outfit is the most vibrant and gorgeously composed ensemble I've seen for fall and maybe even forever. Diane's still got it.

Notes to self:

-FenderBender

-pregnancy and young couples (Making parentheses around her stomach with his hands, he pronounced in shrill, precise tones, "This. Will not become. That.")

-Ginger's coffee that tastes like burnt azz.

Back to school, back to cool. Stay trill, yinz.

Let's Get Racist (In Here)

<--This is the sequel to Trainspotting. Fun, fierce, fabulous!

So last night I asked my friend to rate himself on the racist scale, from 1 to 10. 10 being an awoved/involved racist and 1 being "I call bullshit".

The problem was, I delineated the eschelons of racistness after he rated himself a 6, which he then thought was too high (and it is), so we settled on a 5. To ease the sting of my unseemingly devised confession extraction game, I gave myself a hearty 4.

The point of this whole exercise was to own up to ignorance, bigotry, generalization, scapegoating, and fear, the 5 deadly sins of which we are ALL GUILTY, to varying degrees. I'd be lying out my arse if I said I haven't made hasty associations between a person's exterior and his character, or that I haven't acquired and nested expectations of color, size, background in what I read, watch, kiss. My worldview results from my ubringing by immigrant parents in a progressive environment amongst people with strange accents from a place I'd never even seen until I was a teenager, and finding myself at odds with my auto-Americanism and my parents fought for, misunderstood, conditioned, and adjusted Americanism.

Therefore, I don't give a fuck who's "in the room"--if I wouldn't say it if a [insert race] person were present, then I simply would not say it. I would die before I'd write off a race of people with a single derisive comment or term, because I've been wrong too many times and have had my preconceptions twisted and turned too many times to believe that people exist foremost in a handful of pigment-determined absolutes.

It can't be that easy.

I've met a black guy who was not, in fact, "ripped". He's my fucking dad!
I met an Asian kid who was dumb as dirt. And his parents weren't that upset about it!
There was the intolerable Russian, the prodigal Jew, the Estonian schoolboys who called me a nigger (multiple times, as we shared a row on a plane headed west), the white dude with 2 kids and no legal income, the Hispanic girl with wealthy parents and a perfect GPA, and the most proximate example, the black girl who loves music by old white guys, and will never again reduce herself to using, endorsing, or shrugging off a racial slur. That's tasteless, tacky, embarrassing, rude, abrasive, inconsiderate, and highly unbecoming.

Especially not when I open my eyes and set foot on a college campus where white people are not the majority. Simply having senses intact will emphasize the fact that the only thing separating me from an Arab, a Cambodian, a Korean, a Swede, or a Nigerian is....

nothing. In some cases, a lake or forest or desert but we're all biologically identical and race does not exist (if you disagree, then define it). There is no tangible qualifier to determine difference among humans, so "white" "black" "Oriental" "colored" "mulatto" "pardo", conveniently, provides a means to subjugate, terrorize, colonize, and comfort.

On my scale, then, a 4 would indicate that stereotype fascinates, entertains, and amuses me, and that I can take a clever racist joke in stride, assuming that it's delivered with impeccable comedic timing and calculated sensitivity. Otherwise you're no better than an incest-ridden idiot redneck and you can get off my property before I shoot yinz.



How's that for a stereotype?

Recession Special!

Apparently Campus Food offered a special of the same name. I'm still reluctant to jump on the Recession bandwagon, although while searching for an account to store my modest assets, interest rates slapped me across the face and washed my mouth out with soap.

Additional wordly tidbits: Daniel J Flynn HATES Howard Zinn's leftist, Marxist perversion of American history, his omission of facts that do not mesh with his "class struggle" narrative, and his anti-American mudslinging in the name of greedy, capitalist monsters looking to profit from "the people".

I've only made it to chapter 4, and I see where Zinn's going. I'm okay with this, especially now that I've read the review. However, this sounds like a former bullied accountant who found his balls in the Grand Ole Party, perhaps himself a "Son of Liberty":

"America’s founding can be reduced to the pursuit of exploitation and profit. Well maybe for academics with lifetime subsidies and rock stars with drug-fried brains."

I challenge ye then, Ye Olde Republican Partye, to write a book that flips my leftist distrust for socioeconomic self-interest on its ear, because that worn-out, shriveling mess John McCain is not doing it for me.

Pittsburgh By Night: No Shirt, No Shoes, No Toga

And that was how I met Tyler. Along with Mike, Andrew, Jim, &Meredith. Only the strong survived!

Around 3 the crime mob--some in toga, others convinced they could not cross the threshold--walked to Ritters, where we continued to embarrass ourselves. Sat in the back room I didn't know existed beyond the greasy fryhole known as Ritters Diner. This big table next to us blurted out, "I love Times New Roman!"

We walked back to Chris's and at 4 am techno was blasting from an unknown source. Then we all had coffee and went to bed.

The best nights end at 5 pm the next day, like this one.

Notes to self:

-Times New Romanian

-Ritters-Carlton

-Mike's lifelong dream: "to see Enya live."

-You're not above sharing a twin mattress on a floor surrounded by wonderful people.

Pittsburgh By Day

This Saturday I went from Shadyside-->Downtown-->North Side-->North Shore-->Strip District-->Bloomfield-->Shadyside and took several pictures, the rest of which are here.

Found a beautiful park on the North Side with many hobos. Still don't (need to) know the name. I went to the Thai truck in Strip where this overbearing homeschooling dad used me as an "example" for his daughters. I wanted to roll my eyes at him and tell him to loosen up, but I guess that would have been immature and counterproductive. Then a weirdo nudged his way into our conversation simply because I said "Russia".

I digress, with popular responses to half my course of study:

-I only know one word...priviet.

-I only know one word in Russian, da! (I'm rolling my eyes hard)

-What do you plan on doing with that?

-Why? (for those without time to waste)

I feel similarly about Segways.

Adam and his friend Emily came into Crazy Mocha while I was drawing and after a bit they took me home. I was super tired then Chris told me he was having a party so I went...

PBR You Kidding Me?

Today Netta e-mailed me the upcoming feature in Adbusters. After reading it, I reflected and sent her the following e-mail:

Yeah, this article is so defeatist. After I took a minute to criticize the writer (step 1), I realized he must have been pressed on a Tuesday to meet a Thursday deadline, so he hopped to that club on Wednesday, ended up blowing lines off that girl's Polaroid with her and Bruce Willis's nephew, and hit the send from his DELL. DESKTOP. some time around 7 am on Thursday. This could explain the fixed-gear bike fallacy (they can, and often do, have brakes) that could have been easily warded off with that last, crucial Wikipedia scan.

Some counterpoints:

That last paragraph is self-obsessed just by being! The Lost Generation died off before WW2. And now that acid and cocaine are illegal, the only things we can rebel against are the war on drugs and gas prices and the Right's deathgrip on consumer efficacy, by getting high and going on a bike ride to the thrift store.

Here's something that "feels real": cash. So having a college degree, especially in the progressive sciences, not only allows you to criticize every aspect of the feeding machine your paycheck powers, but to do so with the backing of, you guessed it, a government-funded institution.

"We are the last generation." He's really given up. He considered throwing those rocks (at a vacant housing development? talk about subversion!) and decided to reveal the huge conflict of interest apparent in this article: the royal "we" and the titular "hipster" are inseparable yet unwilling to admit their point of intersection, the reporter.

Wearing non prescription glasses (I have some) and skinny jeans (I have multiple) and listening to Deerhoof (you've probably never even heard of them) on your iPod (I don't have one, or a Facebook) while making sure everyone on the bus can SEE that you're reading Bukowski (shhh--I haven't read Bukowski, but Pete Doherty interviewed him in VICE) probably has little to do with a disillusioned backlash (not to be ironic) to the West's ignorant overconsumption and excessive reproduction of style and standard. Maybe everyone feels so snubbed by Hollywood that it's less hurtful to create mini, Internet Hollywoods or even pitch them up under a 300-year old bridge (et voila, DUMBO--"Down Underneath the Manhattan-Brooklyn bridge" DUH!).

But before this sounds too optimistic, I'll acquiesce to the conservative evildoers who Barry O's obviously grinding a self-challenging, earth-conscious cog against: the American Apparel has been pulled so far towards the belly button that we've been looking for nipple on Last Night's Party instead of even glancing at the dynamic shift occuring in our history that accompanies any change in power. Call it our New Millenium American Dream: We won't take the President, but we'll take a tip from his pastoral origins. Cowboy-fit jeans, white v-neck, and the interning class's perverted darling, piss ass beer.

Grind With Care

This show came up in a very Brazilian conversation with Carolina. I watched it every day when TV was raising me!

Then she gave me the sizzle on baile funk in Brazil: "hosa tucarinho" (sp?) means, "We grind with care."

Sweet and Sweaty!!!

Here are some pics from !!! last Tuesday. Best audience ever, fabulous ass-shaking, and crowd-band interaction. There are several more that I'll probably post to Flickr when the inspiration befalls me.

Tornado? I'm So Excited !!!

It's raining in Pittsburgh, putting an end to a nasty heat wave. Fruit flies need not apply. Cellphones are so impersonal, and the removal and addition of contacts can symbolize many things--breakups, makeups, hookups, new friends. Then there's the acquisition of numbers which become too many numbers to ever call them all, so they just take up space. A warm piece of plastic rests against my thigh, inhaling and exhaling, sending out noncommittal bleeps and buzzes, always nagging.

So I decided to throw my cellphone into the Allegheny this morning. It was a magnificently liberating moment, watching the mechanic, unseemly toy escape from my fingers and collide with the choppy, dynamic surface of the river before being swallowed completely.

And then I woke up to none other than...a text message! [Forced re-entry to] reality blows.

However, the day is ripe. Drew and I are going to see !!! tonight at Rex Theatre. Tonight's event proceeds many nights last summer in Fill's living room, when Drew and I, blind to the world, oscillated wildly to "Hello? Is This Thing On?"

Hell yeah it's on, turn it up!

Warm Leatherette

Saints preserve us! Trent Reznor covered this song and whereas before, I did not take well to Nine Inch Nails, this video hath made a believer of me. And I think I, Sassy Jones, am going to cover it too.

Not only is the song SIIIICK to begin with, but NIN is the latest in a line-up of electromusicians to cover it. I first heard the Chicks on Speed version, then more recently Giddle and Boyd (left) covered it. They're insane and I love it! Thanks for the tip, Nick and Emma. This music fits you like leatherette in a car wreck.

Future Roach Material

That's an Irvine Welsh creation. I'm almost halfway through Trainspotting and it gets juicier and meatier and scummier with each chapter. The characters are hi-larious, especially when they get introspective or start whining about interpersonal male conflicts, the same ones I thought not to exist. Reminds me of , Boyfights.

On Saturday Sam and I sat in his room, paralyzed by humidity, and listened to Da Drought 3. My favorite songs are "I Can't Feel My Face" and "Upgrade U".

"Lil' Wayne is the greatest rapper in the world." -Lil' Wayne

Well there's a clear conflict of interest above, but I'd agree that currently Lil' Wayne is the greatest rapper in the world. Others would concur:


Lil' Wayne knows a simile when he spits one. He's not starting a revolution with his music, rather he's making better versions of other people's songs and slapping the world in the face with them. This formula works for him on Da Drought 3, evidence that Weezy has the game on lock, and not by doing anything extraordinary with rap music, but by highlighting the inadequacy of his competition. What a dick.

Eventually, Sam and I arrived at this: In middle school you're too self-conscious, and in college you're not self-conscious enough.

Hey yinz, Primanti Bros. is 75 years old! They had a big ole bash in the Strip on Saturday to commemorate. As I watched it from a distance under a tarp, I ate some pad thai from this awesome family's truck, alternatively drawing, reading Trainspotting, getting sauce all over Trainspotting, getting sauce on the drawing (miraculously, I came out sauce-free). Saturday is my favorite day of the week.

Dank like a summer night in Atlanta and humid as hell's sauna, this weekend was perfect for 40s on the stoop, 40s on the fire escape, the buzz within and without, crickets shacking up, butterflies slapping their wings in the dark and dancing inside a fizzy tummy. Summer, thanks a bunch.

How bout them fake apples?

Ah wis leafing throah sabirspace win ah came acroos this. Ah sais tae masel, "Ah lurve em!"



Green: Interns. These are kiddies here for the summer to leech off us and pad their CVs. Also, just FYI, a green badge is usually synonymous with "easy lay." As my friend Misha likes to say, there's nothing like some overwhelmed, wide-eyed Yale undergrad who's here in Mountain View for the summer, totally lost and innocent and tighter than a carpenter's clenched fist. And the blowjobs! Vot eta da! These girls from college give them out like free mints at the restaurant. First date? Kiss goodnight? Nah. How about a blowjob instead? Then a slurpy swallow, big smile, all proud of herself, a quick peck on the cheek and she leaps out of the car and runs into her shitty apartment complex. Heaven!



A kto eta? Eta Ruslana Korshunova! Buyla Russkoi modyelyu kotoraya umerla v New Yorkye.

Rave Till You're Blind

Yo yo yo yo yo! Life is awesome for the following reasons:

1.Finished this book.

About 10 pages in and I stopped agreeing with Satter for the remainder of the book. His anecdotes are imitable, his suspicion, blinding, and his thesis, inconclusive. He purports from the beginning that administrative ineptitude, corruption, and a resulting moral vacuum in Russia's "soul" (bullshit) are responsible for her inevitable rule by dictator. We belabored this same argument in Soviet Union in WW2 and it still nags me, begging the questions 'Is Russia really doomed?' and 'Are we as doomed as Russia?'


2.Started this book.

After seeing the movie and reading the script, I bought this and 2 other of Irvine Welsh's novels, Glue and Porno, the follow-up to Trainspotting. I'm on page 43 and the plot is up and hoppin' already. The phonetic Scottish slang dialect doesn't even faze me anymore. I love books!!!!


3.Got these shoes.
From Beacon's online. New guilty guilty guilty pleasure since I went to Brooklyn and shopped there 2 days later. I'm gonna whip them out for fall like whoa.


4.No longer jealous of Balenciaga.

Just when you thought Balenciaga could go no more angular, they etched from a block of vinyl these cage-like "dresses" that the ugly-no-not-model-ugly-just-straight-up-UGGZ wearer seems rightfully displeased to sport.

Unless she's wondering where her period went.

Those satiny, exposed framework pantsuits of last spring were pretty groundbreaking for a house that traditionally favors more sensual, form-following lines.

This, however, simply gross.


5.Maybe Satter was right after all.

Read about the Moscow rave that left 61 people blind!