Sassy Jones on the decks

So much fun last night at the Dogstar. Brixton is just a really chill place, exempt from the posh nonsense you find in places like Victoria, where I live, and South Kensington, where these kids live. Mellow cats.

Yesterday evening Johanna suggests I just call the Dogstar since I hadn't heard back from them on DJing Friday night. Novel idea, I introduced myself to the resident DJ who was super nice and then he says he would set me up with his friend who runs an all-girls DJ night in town.

I played a really fun set, some of my mashups, some baile funk, some hip-hop, and my entourage and I had a blast. The room was packed with people getting crunk, singing along, it rocked! I have never DJ'd at a real club before, but I like it. And the Dogstar guy wants me to give him a demo, which would be "Beaster Eggs" from 2007.

Flashing. Lights.

Celebrity Syndrome

Walking down Queensgate last night in South Kensington, I hear

"SASSY!!"

It's Alyssa, wielding a wine bottle, we cheers. I meet 2 people who already know me. This keeps happening. Monica says I have a fan club. I say thanks, but please don't stroke my ego.

There was a queue last night @ Notting Hill (?!?!) because some big shot band was there. Luckily Sarah spotted Dominic and we jumped the queue.

The band finishes. Everyone inside is so skinny. Highbrow crowd. I keep expecting to see Kate Moss. Meet a director named Raoul who's making a gay zombie movie called Mr. Right. He throws me over his back and somehow I land on my feet.

Dancing on couches with my 60s soul sister who looks French, but isn't.

Lights go up and we're dancing on stage. Get a lollipop from a baby. Keep saying thanks to compliments. Too many. Top form.

Rolled everyone cigs after they finish cleaning the bar. There's a girl with holes in her sweater. It's awkward.

Then I read everyone's palms and people actually believed that shite. The bartenders were sticking their palms in my face, lining up. Turkish people. Jules and Dre, Dr. Dre.

"I'm going home." This keeps happening. We're all sitting around the table talking about fortunes and street names and pearls and England. All the boys have cool shirts. Sometimes I'm standing on a bench, always laughing.

Then it's 5 and I'm trying feebly to unlock a door so Levi lets me out. Dumb smile, thanks, and I throw myself onto a bus.

Wake up at 12:34!!! For my 1pm class and stumble in on time. My eyes are so red. I think I'm going to a party tomorrow but now I need a nap.

Hang Loose

Been rolling with an international crowd these days. Norwegians, Australians, you name it.

I went to hip hop karaoke, going again for my birthday.

We took a cab to the corner store, made it wait, took it back to Martin's.

When he says beers, it sounds like "bears".

Me, upon re-entry: We got BEARS!

I am a woman.

And as such, I bloom, wilt, curl into a shell, then burst forth again, like the seasons.

I just figured out this paper, 1 of 2. I'm quoting Mikhail Gorbachev himself and using his words against him. So naughty.

Last night I designed a gown, it's really sexy. I can't wait to get back to my studio in Pittsburgh and go nuts this summer. Living with Drew!

Also, t-shirts:

SKINNY WITCH (Halloween)

THEY'RE REAL (across the chest, w/ glasses)

and

NO HARD FILLINGS (pie)

CAN YOUR URETHRA DO THIS? (baby) haha, maternity line

Twenty Years Old

If you are 20 years old in America, the you are missing OUT!

Johanna put it so simply, "I will never be 20 years old and in London ever again." So true.

This opportunity is highly time-sensitive, and it's becoming more and more evident.
Par exemple,

Earlier tonight I attended a lecture on the Russia-Ukraine gas conflict which concluded with sandwiches (I had 4) and wine in the senior common room of my college. I mingled with my Soviet and Russian Foreign Policy teacher, Pete Duncan, while he tipped back a glass of white, and implored him as to where I should seek sources for my 10-page paper for his class, due in 1.5 weeks. He gave me good--and appropriately erudite--advice, "the primary source". Well, duh! Also, I should note that today Georgia taught me how to use her espresso machine so I've developed an intimate, and timely, relationship with that thing. For example, it's 1 A.M. now and I am likely going to brew myself another shot and dig into the wealth of said primary sources (statements, contracts, press releases from the CIS and its constituents) then toss back a hot glass of mulled wine and call it a late, sexy, Russian night. Does this mean I'm officially 89 or just saucy and cultured?

I vote cultured.

And also, I call mad bullshit on the grody feathered creations from this year's Lunar Gala. Try harder, please.

Russia's Next Top American Model

is smarter than a 5th grader. Pilot?
This is my sole inspiration as I research the tits off Russia-Ukraine relations. 10 pages starts... NOW!

Holy Hella

"In short, he was also good. And they looked very good together. Their dance was imbued with something lasting and unforgettable."

-Vasilii Shukshin, Snowball Berry Red

A wave just swept over me. I can't stop reading this.

WOW!

I am drinking Alka-Seltzer for the first time in my life. How exhilarating. It was in the care packages that my parents sent me last week. Care packages are my jam.

I've been sustaining myself on a diet of hot chili peppers since my cold started on Saturday, and while they make me cry like a dumb schoolboy, they really do the trick.

I'm not letting nasal congestion slow my roll, right now I'm going to Scala at King's Cross to buy tickets for Peter, Bjorn, and John also my jam. All the while reading "Snowball Berry Red" for Modern Russian culture. Reading Week is shite.

Single Ladies on Repeat: Anti-Valentine Valentines

In the end I had about 10 valentines. Lydia, Sarah, Isabelle the German, and a lot of Norweigans who hosted the party we attended last night.

Highlights:
-"jelly" shots, which we really just cubes we stuffed in our mouths
-"Single Ladies" on repeat and the whole room doing the dance while playing find-the-tranny-in-the-video
-gun shows
-Ray Charles
-speaking Russian! They're taking over "Londongrad"
-Underworld's "Born Slippy"
-51Fifty's
-hearing a Scottish boy say "Hawla!" then advising him against going to Detroit, ever.

Lowlights:
-sick
-2 10-page papers have to be done this week, Reading Week
-Russian grammar take-home test needs to be studied for
-Russian in general outside of a party setting

Silver linings:
-No classes this week
-Sunday sick day, watching more documentaries in bed
-Lecture on Russia-Ukraine gas conflict=3 pages of my paper
-Getting a Vday text at 4am while walking from the bus in the cold=inner warmth

And when you're the last to leave the party, expect to be horizontal.

Brixton, Kill 'Em With The Flow

If Sex And The City has taught us anything, it's that all you need to have a good time are your girlfriends and some decadent music. These are truths.

I just got back from the Dogstar in Brixton, where Johanna, Katherine and I shook our moneymakers to all the highschool-era hits, including "Crazy In Love" and some reggaeton-pop single whose name I do not know. And while creepies gave us lecherous looks and one tapped Johanna on the shoulder, none of that mattered because we were having ourselves a gay ole Independent Women Part II time, as Sarah would say. Most importantly, I left the house in my rags and sneakers, which are proof that this is my town, where I can go out looking like shite and feel completely comfortable. What a lovely feeling!

I might be DJing at the Dogstar on February 27th, but til then, we're looking for an anti-Valentine's Day activity, of which there are many around town, mostly raves. I can hear shrieking from across the hall where Georgia is waxing Mojan, who is going to visit her boyfriend in Berlin. Being a woman is a uniquely anguishing experience, just ask Sylvia.

Milk Man Ballet, North Haven, ME

This has made my day and possibly even my life. We all know Deerhoof is my favorite band, my e-mail, my eccentric inspiration, and these crackpots in Maine have the right idea. On an island off the cost of Maine, a group of teachers rounded up a band, choreographer, conductor, arranger, and cast from within and without North Haven and put on this sold-out show, Milk Man Ballet, whose score was Deerhoof's 2004 heart-tickler, Milk Man. I salute thee.

If all else fails, alas, a calling.

2 Days, 2 Celebrities

Just ask Coolio here, the past 2 days have been a whirlwind.

I probably had too much fun, but I only live once, right?

Right.

On Tuesday a group--no, a gang--of us from Goldsmid went to Ministry of Sound, this multiroom dance club at Elephant and Castle. We didn't get there until 1, and Shehnal's
boyfriend's friend Rishi lives with one of the DJs, so it didn't really matter.

This place was insane, you would enter one room and then be borne from it into another. All very uterine.


So this kept happening and then Rishi leads me into this large performnce space and none other than Coolio is rapping onstage, pictured above in the white tee.

Then last night we went back to Notting Hill Arts Club, where halfway through the evening a buzz sweeps the room and Johanna shrieks, "The guy from Twilight is here!!" Granted, I've not nor will I ever see Twilight, but I did learn that he was also Cedric Diggory, the one who dies in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. A sad moment in Harry Potter history. Here's Sarah talking to him, Robert Pattinson:

Everyone in this tiny underground hovel was on his nuts, and I felt kind of bad for the guy. I didn't approach him to take a proper photo. Either way, he looks like an Alaskan dog and he looked well shite in that grungy shirt. I wonder if he took home a Debbie Harry type, or just left with his less attractive (sucks for him) male friend who looked very, very bored.

Today I was nearly hit by a bus while I ran from an overly friendly giver of directions. Why should directions end in, "Do you want to get coffee?" Why can't people just be nice, and then leave you the hell alone! First the construction worker, then this fellow--enough is enough. I am but a child, okay fine, I'm a very busy young adult for the time being, and I'd much rather have a nice we're-both-from-Africa convo on the street with someone who's clearly too old and should know better. I don't want to get coffee. Coffee is a drug that should be taken to the face while getting dressed or running to catch the Tube. I'd rather read or watch a Russian movie. Yes, I am that girl.

But this was nice, the right kind of nice, and where I'd have least expected it:

"I hope you end up with someone who deserves you."

Not followed by, "like me. Wanna bang?" Just simple sincerity. The way it should be.

It's good to be around obscenely loud people, makes me miss my Pittsburgh droogs:

We're all part gay...in the dark.

Words, to your mother.

Epic moment this (late) morning: I was struck with what I like to call "the beat". Words came to me before I'd even gotten out of bed and I began writing a story that I cannot wait to finish. Such an exhilarating feeling.

Then I thought I lost my keys, credit card, licence, and student ID, but I just found them, at 7:30 p.m., in my kitchen. I sketched into the building, the intrepid that I am, while a boy was leaving. He gave me weird eyes.

London lost an estimated 700 million GBP from yesterday's complete infrastructural failure. And the transport chief says, "We did the best we could." Weak.
Just watched Elem Klimov's Добро пожаловать, или Посторонним вход воспрещён (Dobro pozhalovat, ili Postoronnim vkhod Vaspryecyhon) which is a Krushev-era Russian film about kids at summer camp and it was hi-larious. In one scene the boys dove into a poison ivy grove so that they would not have to see their parents at visitor's week. Adorable! I could watch Russian films all day long.

Shite Me Sideways, It's Snowing!

I got charged 22 quid for an 11 quid cab ride because..."The minimum is 50 quid, love."

LIAR!!!!


I started watching the Super Bowl at Crofton, where Sarah and Johanna and their friends from BU live. Chatted Russian Jewish ancestry and African civil wars with those kids while looking up tickets to Amsterdam.
Also, I was doing my Russian homework the whole time. Katherine made bean dip that made me weak in the knees. Then the buses stopped running because there's nearly a foot of snow on the street. Now it's 2:30 a.m. Also, this:

Talk about great American heroes. I see why Rex hates Olympians.

Also, the Steelers are winning the Super Bowl, "no duh". But there will be rioting in Ahrn City tonight!!