willy wonka.

after watching the mtv video music awards, i know one thing for sure. p.diddy (or diddy) is the black willy wonka.

a queer, sultry summer.

it was a queer, sultry summer the summer they electrocuted the rosenbergs. (plath)

i started reading the bell jar by sylvia plath. the above is the opening line of the tale. i will enjoy it, i can tell. i will enjoy it primarily because it takes place in the 1950s & i am subtly obssessed with the era, for the time being. i took a cultural studies seminar this summer entitled, i like ike, but i love lucy: women, popular culture, and the 1950s. for my final paper, i wrote a semiotic analysis of christian dior's 1947 fashion line that he called "the new look." briefly, the new look marked a return to femininity following a more masucline, dare i say, genderbending aesthetic of wartime women. there are a few journals out there that deal exclusively in fashion theory and i will make it my mission to keep up with them. one noteable editor is named valerie steele who is the chief curator at the museum at FIT. she sometimes writes for mass media publications (elle, vogue, etc.) so note well if you ever see her name in print.

so in reading plath's tale, i imagine the central character sporting bell skirts, bustiers, & pale pastels.

in class, the professor brought in the son and granddaughter of the rosenbergs to give a talk to the class--robert and jennifer meeropol. jennifer attended harvard as wrote her women's studies thesis on the rosenberg trial. i also learned that the adoptive father of robert meerpol/rosenberg wrote the billie holliday popularize song "strange fruit" about lynching.

pay it forward.

art of the mix.

check out this website called art of the mix. individuals submit mixes with attention paid to style, vibe, theme, and song order. you then are free to spunge off their creative juices and make mixed CDs using their playlist. some mixes include "fashion deco vol. 1" and "easy like sunday morning."

your neighborhood confusion.

i'm back in meriden for a slice of time before school begins. i've taken to sloth, gluttony, & compulsive spending.

born into brothels.

i checked my suburban curbside mailbox this afternoon in hopes of a netflix delivery. expecting the brown bunny, a controversial movie i queued exclusively for the scene in which chloe sevigny performs oral sex on her co-star vincent gallo. instead, i received born into brothels, an osar winning documentary about the children of sex workers in calcutta's red light district.

the documentary is absolutely poetic & quite subtle. it hums along with traditional indian percussion in the background. i'm always taken by the purity of children. the movie follows zana briski, a photographer, who moves to the red light district to film the lives of sex workers. she, much like i was, instead became captivated by the children who bear the weight of the world on their shoulders.

being one to play favorites, i was drawn to shanti, an 11 year old with a toothy grin and a gold nose ring in her left nostril. she is an around the way girl of a different cloth. shanti would punch her younger brother affectionately & smirk in his face.

called "zana auntie" by the children, zana, the narrator, teaches the children how to photograph their environment in addition to teaching them basic english.

the success of the documentary is that the narratives of the children are told apart from their extended families. this effectively turns the indian sense of family and allegiance backwards and on its head. this is a truly beautiful film.

news of the weird.

the leader of turkmenistan banned lip-synching today. upon hearing that musical artists sometimes lip-synch during performances, he deemed it a "detriment to the development of musical art."

i'm a sinner/winner/soul-inventor.

thanks to an internet leak, i've been listening to kanye west's new album late registration set to be released next tuesday. its deliberately more mature. track 19, "gone," is a stand out powered by an otis redding sample. another good one is track 2, "heard 'em say," a duet with maroon 5's adam levine. jon brion helped west produce. brion most famously produced fiona apple's tidal, one of my top 10 favorite albums. if you haven't heard tidal, please do. non-fans tend to sleep on apple as hungry, grumpy, & grumpy because she's hungry. but, she could kill a jazz standard if she wanted to.

this might just be my subversive mind, but kanye is kinky. judging from his last two album covers, i think he might be into plushies. he just wants us to think those large stuffed animals are college mascots.

my thoughts on LA.

for such a fantasyland, LA, simply put, is uncreative and uninspired. beautiful women are cookie cutter, cars are cookie cutter. but this is not your typical, expected east coast, west coast argument. i do love the eastern board but i recognize its flaws. the fact cannot be denied that the city of angels has some sort of cosmic pull that draws wayward midwesterners and starry eyed hollywood hopefuls into its spinning orbit. its kinetic, maybe magnetic, its something.

much like the popular high school girl with hershey kiss titis and a red jetta, everyone has something to say about LA—myself included. this soured preoccupation is nothing more than an illusion because secretly, we all closed our eyes and wished for perfect cleavage and jingling car keys. maybe a trip to LA satisfies our American desire to manifest the land, to head west, to seal our destiny. that hypothesis is possible but highly unlikely. but something that’s unclear to me makes me like the city.

when there, i found myself unexcited by the scenery & uninspired to venture out to landmarks. reason being, you cannot wander the streets of LA. you must know where you’re going, the best way to get there, & the most effective way of avoiding traffic. this eliminates city wandering & any chance at happening upon a small store or restaurant or gallery or something.

the city, unfortunately, does not belong to the populous. unlike other cities where the wealthy are stacked atop one another in high-rise apartments, the wealthy own sprawling properties. this changes the dynamics of a city—that is, physical space translates into social dominance. the social landscape of the city is not focused on the center but on the outskirts. this inverted equation made for a curious experience. plus, people who live 45 minutes away from downtown LA claim to be from LA. in a word, that claim is fraudulent. you call it urban sprawl & i’ll call it disorganization. and where is the human feel, the social cohesive, that something?

quite frankly, i left my heart in san francisco.

this is where the magic happens.

i love it--this is summer embodied. the shot is taken from 114th.net, a photoblog owned and operated by chris, my friend and a captivating photographer.

20 questions.

for those of ya'll who don't know, the harvard black men's forum publishes a magazine entitled remix. for the upcoming issue, i am among some undergraduates choosen for student profiles. for the interview, i am supposed to think and respond thoughtfully to the following questions.

1. How do you describe your personal style?

2. What do you think of the social culture at Harvard?

3. What do you look for in the opposite sex?

4. What is feminism, do you consider yourself a feminist?

5. What did you decide to become a Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies concentrator?

6. Where do you place yourself on the political spectrum?

7. What are your favorite things in the world? What inspires you?

8. What have you been doing this summer? Any interesting stories?

9. What are your five favorite albums and artists?

10. What do you see yourself doing in 15 years?

Between Netflix, sleep, and personal maintenance, I am going to work on these questions and some of the others.

joss stone.

i purchased 2 tickets (for me and precious) to see joss stone at avalon on october 2nd.

reality television junkie.

i had the pleasure of seeing tyler last night before he goes on to live in pop culture infamy. speaking of the real world, i saw randy of real world san diego in boston common a few days ago. in the words of tyler, randy is "frumpy." i disagree. he was noticeably more attractive than most individuals in a 70 foot radius. he looks boston, very boston and i have a love-hate relationship with this fine city.

erykah says, "bag lady."

if there was ever a song about emotional baggage and independence, erykah badu's bag lady is it. she talks of gucci bag, dimebag, and plastic bag ladies--that is, women bogged down by materialism, addiction, and poverty. precious commented on my summer handbag--a camel colored, wrangler sack. more specifically, precious pointed out that i'm a "bag lady"--not for my emotional baggage--but for the fact that i carry the world on my shoulder. the contents of my bag at said moment:

a large, yellow wallet
nearly 10 dollars in change
cointreau
the latest vogue
an ipod
a cellphone
a yellow umbrella
a digital camera

indian summer.

last night capped off the psuedo-end to a beautiful summer. aaron prepared an amazing mexican meal (plus, an amazing d'angelo serenade)--the final installment of our weekly dinner party series. i had the pleasure of being around people committed to enjoying themselves. i look fondly upon the davis square apartment, the music, the art, dinner parties, and excessive intoxicants. this summer, i had a different sort of unadulerated fun & i am thankful for it.

girls on film.

this weekend, leda came to visit me in cambridge. she's a slice of the best of home--appropriately cynical, streetwise, well dressed, and universally intelligent. she can talk about sartre & ciara, almodovar and amerie, marc jacobs & flee markets.

we went to this art gallery called girls on film--both an homage & critique--of old hollywood women test models. dubbed "china girls," these women were expected to smile for the camera in order to achieve near perfect lighting. industry heads claim not to know why these women were referred to as "china girls." for me, the name smacks of racial stereotype. though most are not chinese--many look like knock off sandra dees'--they were expected to sit quietly, follow orders, and remain nameless.

aside: i purchased tickets to see gwen stefani on halloween.

angst is for teenagers.

i'm hopelessly nostalgic for summer. check here for photo updates.

pussy & playtime.

ain't nothing like weed & gymnastics on a sunday evening. see me doing my best impression of an a-town stripper here. thank you ludacris.

pussy poppin' on a headstand.

marilyn monroe on a beach
my hermeunetic view

untitled.

she can make up her mind; but she would be so much better at explaining how indeed she is making up her mind.