Our Love To Admire - Interpol's third album

ahhhh, interpol. the love i have for these four suited new york-tastic musically talented men cannot be surpassed by much on this earth.

as august will arrive, so will a third album - of which, i have heard one song from.

its still very up in the air right now, i cant say that its the same as antics but i cant say that its a large deviation from it either. nothing can ever top turn on the bright lights and i dont think interpol is planning on making another album like that again. i guess we'll have to wait it out and see. in the meantime, enjoy a picture of the new carlos d. and tracklisting.



Our Love to Admire:
1. Pioneer to the Falls
2. No I in Threesome
3. The Scale
4. The Heinrich Maneuver
5. Mammoth
6. Pace Is the Trick
7. All Fired Up
8. Rest My Chemistry
9. Who Do You Think
10. Wrecking Ball
11. The Lighthouse

An Open Letter to Oprah - from Saul Williams

A little lengthy, but a good and important read.

Dear Ms. Winfrey,

It is with the greatest respect and adoration of your loving spirit that I write you. As a young child, I would sit beside my mother everyday and watch your program. As a young adult, with children of my own, I spend much less time in front of the television, but I am ever thankful for the positive effect that you continue to have on our nation, history and culture. The example that you have set as someone unafraid to answer their calling, even when the reality of that calling insists that one self-actualize beyond the point of any given example, is humbling, and serves as the cornerstone of the greatest faith. You, love, are a pioneer.

I am a poet.

Growing up in Newburgh, NY, with a father as a minister and a mother as a school teacher, at a time when we fought for our heroes to be nationally recognized, I certainly was exposed to the great names and voices of our past. I took great pride in competing in my churches Black History Quiz Bowl and the countless events my mother organized in hopes of fostering a generation of youth well versed in the greatness as well as the horrors of our history. Yet, even in a household where I had the privilege of personally interacting with some of the most outspoken and courageous luminaries of our times, I must admit that the voices that resonated the most within me and made me want to speak up were those of my peers, and these peers were emcees. Rappers.
.
Yes, Ms. Winfrey, I am what my generation would call "a Hip Hop head." Hip Hop has served as one of the greatest aspects of my self-definition. Lucky for me, I grew up in the 80's when groups like Public Enemy, Rakim, The jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah, and many more realized the power of their voices within the artform and chose to create music aimed at the upliftment of our generation.

As a student at Morehouse College where I studied Philosophy and Drama I was forced to venture across the street to Spelman College for all of my Drama classes, since Morehouse had no theater department of its own. I had few complaints. The performing arts scholarship awarded me by Michael Jackson had promised me a practically free ride to my dream school, which now had opened the doors to another campus that could make even the most focused of young boys dreamy, Spelman. One of my first theater professors, Pearle Cleage, shook me from my adolescent dream state. It was the year that Dr. Dre's "The Chronic" was released and our introduction to Snoop Dogg as he sang catchy hooks like "Bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks…" Although, it was a playwriting class, what seemed to take precedence was Ms. Cleages political ideology, which had recently been pressed and bound in her 1st book, Mad at Miles. As, you know, in this book she spoke of how she could not listen to the music of Miles Davis and his muted trumpet without hearing the muted screams of the women that he was outspoken about "man-handling". It was my first exposure to the idea of an artist being held accountable for their actions outside of their art. It was the first time I had ever heard the word, "misogyny". And as Ms. Cleage would walk into the classroom fuming over the women she would pass on campus, blasting those Snoop lyrics from their cars and jeeps, we, her students, would be privy to many freestyle rants and raves on the dangers of nodding our heads to a music that could serve as our own demise.

Her words, coupled with the words of the young women I found myself interacting with forever changed how I listened to Hip Hop and quite frankly ruined what would have been a number of good songs for me. I had now been burdened with a level of awareness that made it impossible for me to enjoy what the growing masses were ushering into the mainstream. I was now becoming what many Hip Hop heads would call "a Backpacker", a person who chooses to associate themselves with the more "conscious" or politically astute artists of the Hip Hop community. What we termed as "conscious" Hip Hop became our preference for dance and booming systems. Groups like X-Clan, A Tribe Called Quest, Brand Nubian, Arrested Development, Gangstarr and others became the prevailing music of our circle. We also enjoyed the more playful Hip Hop of De La Soul, Heiroglyphics, Das FX, Organized Konfusion. Digable Planets, The Fugees, and more. We had more than enough positivity to fixate on. Hip Hop was diverse.

I had not yet begun writing poetry. Most of my friends hardly knew that I had been an emcee in high school. I no longer cared to identify myself as an emcee and my love of oratory seemed misplaced at Morehouse where most orators were actually preachers in training, speaking with the Southern drawl of Dr. King although they were 19 and from the North. I spent my time doing countless plays and school performances. I was in line to become what I thought would be the next Robeson, Sidney, Ossie, Denzel, Snipes… It wasn't until I was in graduate school for acting at NYU that I was invited to a poetry reading in Manhattan where I heard Asha Bandele, Sapphire, Carl Hancock Rux, Reggie Gaines, Jessica Care Moore, and many others read poems that sometimes felt like monologues that my newly acquired journal started taking the form of a young poets'. Yet, I still noticed that I was a bit different from these poets who listed names like: Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Sekou Sundiata etc, when asked why they began to write poetry. I knew that I had been inspired to write because of emcees like Rakim, Chuck D, LL, Run DMC… Hip Hop had informed my love of poetry as much or even more than my theater background which had exposed me to Shakespeare, Baraka, Fugard, Genet, Hansberry and countless others. In those days, just a mere decade ago, I started writing to fill the void between what I was hearing and what I wished I was hearing. It was not enough for me to critique the voices I heard blasting through the walls of my Brooklyn brownstone. I needed to create examples of where Hip Hop, particularly its lyricism, could go. I ventured to poetry readings with my friends and neighbors, Dante Smith (now Mos Def), Talib Kwele, Erycka Badu, Jessica Care Moore, Mums the Schemer, Beau Sia, Suheir Hammad…all poets that frequented the open mics and poetry slams that we commonly saw as "the other direction" when Hip hop reached that fork in the road as you discussed on your show this past week. On your show you asked the question, "Are all rappers poets?" Nice. I wanted to take the opportunity to answer this question for you.

The genius, as far as the marketability, of Hip Hop is in its competitiveness. Its roots are as much in the dignified aspects of our oral tradition as it is in the tradition of "the dozens" or "signifying". In Hip Hop, every emcee is automatically pitted against every other emcee, sort of like characters with super powers in comic books. No one wants to listen to a rapper unless they claim to be the best or the greatest. This sort of braggadocio leads to all sorts of tirades, showdowns, battles, and sometimes even deaths. In all cases, confidence is the ruling card. Because of the competitive stance that all emcees are prone to take, they, like soldiers begin to believe that they can show no sign of vulnerability. Thus, the most popular emcees of our age are often those that claim to be heartless or show no feelings or signs of emotion. The poet, on the other hand, is the one who realizes that their vulnerability is their power. Like you, unafraid to shed tears on countless shows, the poet finds strength in exposing their humanity, their vulnerability, thus making it possible for us to find connection and strength through their work. Many emcees have been poets. But, no, Ms. Winfrey, not all emcees are poets. Many choose gangsterism and business over the emotional terrain through which true artistry will lead. But they are not to blame. I would now like to address your question of leadership.

You may recall that in immediate response to the attacks of September 11th, our president took the national stage to say to the American public and the world that we would "…show no sign of vulnerability". Here is the same word that distinguishes poets from rappers, but in its history, more accurately, women from men. To make such a statement is to align oneself with the ideology that instills in us a sense of vulnerability meaning "weakness". And these meanings all take their place under the heading of what we consciously or subconsciously characterize as traits of the feminine. The weapon of mass destruction is the one that asserts that a holy trinity would be a father, a male child, and a ghost when common sense tells us that the holiest of trinities would be a mother, a father, and a child: Family. The vulnerability that we see as weakness is the saving grace of the drunken driver who because of their drunken/vulnerable state survives the fatal accident that kills the passengers in the approaching vehicle who tighten their grip and show no physical vulnerability in the face of their fear. Vulnerability is also the saving grace of the skate boarder who attempts a trick and remembers to stay loose and not tense during their fall. Likewise, vulnerability has been the saving grace of the African American struggle as we have been whipped, jailed, spat upon, called names, and killed, yet continue to strive forward mostly non-violently towards our highest goals. But today we are at a crossroads, because the institutions that have sold us the crosses we wear around our necks are the most overt in the denigration of women and thus humanity. That is why I write you today, Ms. Winfrey. We cannot address the root of what plagues Hip Hop without addressing the root of what plagues today's society and the world.

You see, Ms. Winfrey, at it's worse; Hip Hop is simply a reflection of the society that birthed it. Our love affair with gangsterism and the denigration of women is not rooted in Hip Hop; rather it is rooted in the very core of our personal faith and religions. The gangsters that rule Hip Hop are the same gangsters that rule our nation. 50 Cent and George Bush have the same birthday (July 6th). For a Hip Hop artist to say "I do what I wanna do/Don't care if I get caught/The DA could play this mothaf@kin tape in court/I'll kill you/ I ain't playin'" epitomizes the confidence and braggadocio we expect an admire from a rapper who claims to represent the lowest denominator. When a world leader with the spirit of a cowboy (the true original gangster of the West: raping, stealing land, and pillaging, as we clapped and cheered.) takes the position of doing what he wants to do, regardless of whether the UN or American public would take him to court, then we have witnessed true gangsterism and violent negligence. Yet, there is nothing more negligent than attempting to address a problem one finds on a branch by censoring the leaves.

Name calling, racist generalizations, sexist perceptions, are all rooted in something much deeper than an uncensored music. Like the rest of the world, I watched footage on AOL of you dancing mindlessly to 50 Cent on your fiftieth birthday as he proclaimed, "I got the ex/if you're into taking drugs/ I'm into having sex/ I ain't into making love" and you looked like you were having a great time. No judgment. I like that song too. Just as I do, James Brown's Sex Machine or Grand Master Flashes "White Lines". Sex, drugs, and rock and roll is how the story goes. Censorship will never solve our problems. It will only foster the sub-cultures of the underground, which inevitably inhabit the mainstream. There is nothing more mainstream than the denigration of women as projected through religious doctrine. Please understand, I am by no means opposing the teachings of Jesus, by example (he wasn't Christian), but rather the men that have used his teachings to control and manipulate the masses. Hip Hop, like Rock and Roll, like the media, and the government, all reflect an idea of power that labels vulnerability as weakness. I can only imagine the non-emotive hardness that you have had to show in order to secure your empire from the grips of those that once stood in your way: the old guard. You reflect our changing times. As time progresses we sometimes outgrow what may have served us along the way. This time, what we have outgrown, is not hip hop, rather it is the festering remnants of a God depicted as an angry and jealous male, by men who were angry and jealous over the minute role that they played in the everyday story of creation. I am sure that you have covered ideas such as these on your show, but we must make a connection before our disconnect proves fatal.

We are a nation at war. What we fail to see is that we are fighting ourselves. There is no true hatred of women in Hip Hop. At the root of our nature we inherently worship the feminine. Our overall attention to the nurturing guidance of our mothers and grandmothers as well as our ideas of what is sexy and beautiful all support this. But when the idea of the feminine is taken out of the idea of what is divine or sacred then that worship becomes objectification. When our governed morality asserts that a woman is either a virgin or a whore, then our understanding of sexuality becomes warped. Note the dangling platinum crosses over the bare asses being smacked in the videos. The emcees of my generation are the ministers of my father's generation. They too had a warped perspective of the feminine. Censoring songs, sermons, or the tirades of radio personalities will change nothing except the format of our discussion. If we are to sincerely address the change we are praying for then we must first address to whom we are praying.

Thank you, Ms. Winfrey, for your forum, your heart, and your vision. May you find the strength and support to bring about the changes you wish to see in ways that do more than perpetuate the myth of enmity.

In loving kindness,

Saul Williams

[courtesy of Erika Cardona]

Go Sabres

sabretooth - the official buffalo sabres mascot.
he's wearing the old jersey, but its cool. i actually like the new ones.
dont stare too hard at the kid on the left, it might freak you out a bit.
on that note, yes, we kicked islanders ass.

Vintage Sex

Hot summer nights, old toys, new tricks. A coming-of-age memoir.
By: Noemi Lopinto [maisonneuve.org]
March 21, 2007

The summer I was seventeen I would climb down from my third floor apartment onto the roof of the neighbouring fruit-and-vegetable store to go dancing. I’d wear my sexiest summer dress, a little black number with a corset in the back, and do a series of flips, spins and cartwheels on the sticky tar.
The roof also happened to be even with the second-floor windows of the fire station across the street. The firemen would gather at the windows to watch me. They lived together at the station in fourteen-day shifts, and the atmosphere there was like a heavily pressurized can of sexual tension, sealed with blue serge. But then again, it was summer in Montreal—everyone was on the make. Or so it seemed.
I was at the stage where I innocently but desperately needed male attention, and the combination attracted all kinds of weirdos. Another one of my neighbours—a fat, hairy welfare bum—liked to spend days stretched out in a ragged La-Z-Boy with a beer in his paw, watching me. One day as I was prancing around on my roof he was expressing his approval the best way he knew how—by standing on his roof in his off-white undershirt and paisley boxer shorts, pumping away at his little dick. I was thrilled, offended, attracted and repelled all at once.
My mother’s reaction was less nuanced. Enraged, she called the police. For my own survival I had to feign horror and a kind of bland innocence. (“What’s he doing, Mom?”) That was the end of rooftop interpretive dancing for a little while.
My mother and I had the misfortune of hitting hormonal milestones at the same time. She was experiencing menopause while I was being rocked by the last contractions of puberty. Other girls I knew had figured out their developing bodies a long time ago. While I had the usual schoolgirl crushes up to then, I hadn’t  felt that violent, nameless hunger that is sexual frustration. I only knew I was suddenly, inexorably drawn to the firemen next door, who used to spill out onto the sidewalk on hot summer nights, waiting laconically for tragedy to strike. I used to walk over to read them my depressing poetry, translating it into halting French; I was a sitting duck, waiting to be plucked.
If my mother had been able to think of the opposite sex with anything other than fear and horror, I might have been able to talk to her about boys, and she might have been able to talk to me about men. Mom’s “sex talk” consisted of a stilted speech on the pleasures of intercourse, adding for balance that while she herself had never enjoyed it, there were some who said it wasn’t all bad.
Her only other approach to puberty was to hand me books with goofy, well-meaning titles like What Is Happening to Me? Another book (about reproduction) showed a yellow male canary riding a female, wings a-flapping. Very illuminating. But nothing explained why I couldn’t sleep at night; why the heat was driving me nuts; why I was so fascinated with my body. The only book that conceivably could have helped would have been a graphic novel called Why Am I Driven to Dancing on a Roof in a Skimpy Black Flamenco Dress in Broad Daylight and a High Wind?
So there was a wall there but, like in most families, until it showed itself you didn’t notice it. My mother was a baby boomer, born the middle child in a desperately unhappy Jewish family in Missouri. She came of age during the fifties in the American South, watching Joseph McCarthy and Martin Luther King duke it out on black and white television. She had few friends. She was hyperintelligent, socially isolated and utterly smothered by my grandparents’ bitter marriage. She escaped to Canada as a young married woman, but brought her fear of intimacy and her prudery with her.
Over time, she channelled both into a kind of political stance, where any form of communication with males was harmful. And then, just when her sexual imperative was ebbing away, her daughter started dancing like a honeybee on the neighbouring roof. If puberty was a drag, I can just imagine menopause. My mother was always examining her face in the mirror, spreading her cheeks back towards her ears until her eyes bulged, and pulling her forehead back towards her scalp so the new lines disappeared—over and over again—while I was in my room trying to entice the cat into licking one of my nipples to see if it would feel good.
My mother was repressed and self-obsessed, but she wasn’t stupid. She could see something was driving me. So she turned to McCarthyism’s old standbys: fearmongering, blackmail and repression. She tried to extract a promise of celibacy from me, frightened me with rape stories, hissed at every man who gave me a sidelong look on the street, bought blinds and thick curtains for every room in the house. She set up a barrier to the outside world and tried to lock me inside. It was totally counterproductive and drove me outside to read even more bad poetry to firemen.
Paranoia takes a lot of sustained effort, though, and eventually Mom got tired of it. So she formulated another plan. While I would have happily slept “tuchus aloft” well into the afternoon, my mother was a morning person, and even on weekends woke up inspired to change the world (or at least the curtains) somewhere around six a.m. She would putz around the house until seven and by eight it was time for me to listen to her in all her glorious verbiage. She would pad into my room in her nightgown, sit on the edge of my bed and launch a thousand ships. She would hop from one topic to another with virtually no link between, and I would fitfully sleep on, dreaming of newspaper obituaries, department store sales, rude bus drivers, makeover plans for the house, the bitch landlady downstairs, intended career shifts, the state of the economy, Midwestern childhood memories and breakfast plans. I was helpless to stop her. Mercifully, she would just run out of wind.
One morning my mother woke me early and ushered me into our grey, unheated “guest” room. (It goes without saying we never had any guests.) She sat opposite me in a wooden rocking chair that screeched with every movement. She began, inexplicably and without preamble, to detail her sexual failures. She spoke in a singsong, “oh, how painful a topic sex is for me” voice. She traced the beginnings of her battles with depression, then listed with confessional relish every nasty encounter with men and every mistaken therapeutic diagnosis she’d ever had. She trotted out my grandfather and my father and made them dance, like puppets in an unending play about marital misery. Finally, after hammering me into the ground with the weight of all these familial disasters, she got to her point: masturbation. She wanted me to do it. She brought out a dusty white cardboard box and handed me a vibrator that, had it contained all the proper pieces, could conceivably have possessed historical value for the Antiques Road Show. I sat there, mouth agape, wishing I could fold inward like origami and disappear into a crack in the floor.
“I have brought you a vibrator,” Mom said. “I used it a few times, but it hurt me too much. Marta gave it to me a few years ago.”
Marta was a three-hundred-pound German lady and mother of two who lived down the street from us more than seven years prior. So not only was it old, it was third-hand. The vibrator looked like a small pocket hairdryer with an empty nozzle at the top for a rubber head. Two such applicators waited in the case: one looked like a strawberry, the other an octopus. The instruction manual featured sketches of a naked, long-haired and bearded man holding hands with a woman whose hair was parted down the middle. They both had hairy pits.
“I don’t want you to be dependent on a man for sexual pleasure,” my mother said. “You’ve got to learn to pleasure yourself.”
Even if I had wanted to, the electric cord was ridiculously short—about the length of a toaster’s. I would have had to sit right next to the electrical outlet with my legs half up the wall just to use the thing at all. Worst of all, in the case was a long, empty, phallus-shaped cavity. There once was a dildo here; now it was missing. Maybe it was still in Marta.
I remember saying “you’re kidding, right?” I even had the presence of mind to laugh a little bit. But Mom pushed me into my room on strict orders not to come out until I had learned how. I did nothing of the kind; I briefly considered jumping out the window. I hid the vibrator under my bed, where it seemed to give off a sickly heat.
But my mother was dogged. I would come home from school to find the vibrator box open on my bed, the hippie couple staring up mutely at me as if begging for release from the sixties. I would shut the box tight and hide it somewhere in our apartment. The next day it would be back, opened on my desk. Once, I hid it in a closet underneath a carpet covered in cat shit. She found it, and left it open on my bed the next day. She seemed to see herself as a wily guerilla fighter on a mission to relieve me from the burden of dependence on men. For months after that morning, a ferocious battle of enforced non-masturbation ensued. I was not going to touch myself, not if my life depended on it. Exactly contrary to my mother’s wishes, I was going to find a man to have sex with. (I broke off my relationship with the cat). I moved out that fall, leaving the vibrator behind, as well-hidden as possible. I made a conscious effort to forget about it. I never wanted to see that dusty box or its tainted contents ever again. And, eventually, I did have sex.
In my mother’s defence, she probably read a book that counselled an open discussion of masturbation with your child as an antidote to teenage pregnancy, STDs and world hunger. But something got lost in translation. Forcing a used, thirty-year-old vibrator with missing parts on me was actually an attack on my sexuality and on my capacity to accept and understand it. There may have been some concern and good intentions in there somewhere, but on their way to outward expression they were consumed by her inner monsters.
A few months later on my eighteenth birthday, my mother dropped off the vibrator at the pizza joint I worked at, which was owned by Iranian immigrants. She cleverly concealed it among a few other presents, and I came within centimetres of opening it in front of my new Muslim boss. But by giving it to me unconditionally, she gave me the opportunity to get rid of it once and for all. I took it home and called the Salvation Army. When the pick up arrived, I blithely handed over my unwanted clothes, a few sticks of furniture…and a dusty white box. The Sally Ann seemed a fitting place for a stray vibrator—perhaps the missing dildo was already there, like a lost pet still waiting to be reunited with its owner.

[courtesy of Mr. Jordan Novet]

John B. Simpson Addresses Campus Safety at the University at Buffalo

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- University at Buffalo President John B. Simpson today issued the following statement addressing campus safety at UB in the wake of the shootings yesterday at Virginia Tech:

"In the days ahead, our campus community will continue to reflect on the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of Monday's shootings, their families and the entire Virginia Tech community, as well as to those who have ties to that university.

Yesterday's shootings are a stark reminder that our world can be a violent place. Sadly, institutions of higher education are not immune from this violence when individuals are determined to harm others.

But I would like to assure students, parents, faculty and staff that the University at Buffalo places the highest priority on making our campus a safe place to study, live and work. Some of you will have questions about the ways that the University at Buffalo has prepared for such an unlikely event on our campus.

The responsibility for making UB a safe place lies foremost with the university administration and campus police, but also with each individual member of the community. Together, we have responsibility for making our campuses both open places, as well as secure places for all members of the community and visitors alike.

All UB residence halls and apartments are accessible only by swipe card from evening until morning hours. Further, all incoming students and students living in residence halls and apartments are instructed on safety procedures for doors, and are asked to report any suspicious behavior via our campus emergency phone numbers, 645-2222 and 829-2222.

UB has emergency plans in place for acts of violence on campus. And while what happened at Virginia Tech appears to be an isolated incident, like every university across the country, we will be reviewing these plans and looking for areas to strengthen them further.

While the university works closely with law enforcement agencies at the local, state and federal level, the lynchpin in our emergency plans is the UB Police Department and its 61 police officers, many of whom have specialized training as first responders to events such as those that occurred yesterday.

In such instances, UB's officers would be the first responders. The Town of Amherst Police Department and the Buffalo Police Department, with which the university has memorandums of understanding, also would be called in for assistance in such a situation.

I would be remiss not to note that there are steps we all must take to ensure personal safety and maintain our campus community as a safe environment. As individuals, we should not place ourselves in dangerous situations, and we should always be acutely aware of our surroundings.

Any suspicious behavior should be reported immediately to the UB Police Department at 645-2222 or 829-2222 or by using blue-light phones located at key locations on the North and South campuses. For specific building and office security tips, see the Police Department's Web site at http://www.public-safety.buffalo.edu/campustips.shtml."

Again, the tragedy at Virginia Tech touches all of us, and in the days ahead I will continue to communicate with you on matters related to it.

{The Beautiful Era (Is Over)}

Perhaps it was an impossible dream. Over the past several
years there have been dozens of events outside the blight
of the super-club mainstream but recently our ranks are
thinning. The goal is simple, we want nights of
exultation, conversation and reckless engagement - to live
the wild life this city deserves. But in the end, this
scene struggles to survive because of over zealous
authorities, pious neighbors and the party crowd itself.

For those that don't know, most of the problems with
events lately from Rubulad to 3rd Ward to the new (and
over) Danger Space have been caused by a few inconsiderate
souls. To those who piss on the street in view of the
cops, to those who climb on our sprinkler pipes, to the
few who go out of your way to annoy the neighbors, it is
you who are killing the scene. The good news is, those
mentioned above are few and far-between. But it only
takes one inconsiderate soul to ruin an event, and over
the past couple months many parties have been shutdown,
flooded out and evicted because of it.

This beautiful era is over.

Three weeks ago, during the infamous Lightning Bolt show
at 3rd Ward, the cops gave the space its final warning
because of Indyrockers raising raucous in the streets.
That same weekend we were evicted from our new space a
block away. These events don't make enough money to even
sustain themselves, it's a labor of love and self-delusion
- and it's slowly dying.

But the end is not-so-near. This Friday you are invited
to the final event in the raw space at 3rd Ward Brooklyn.
This space has seen a thousand revelers, fire-spinners,
artistic creations, brilliant conversations, major acts
and minor follies through dozens nights of splendor,
serenity and everything in between. But even the raw
beautiful things die.

This is it. This is the end. This beautiful era is over.

____________________________________


Friday, April 13th
you are invited to:

This Beautiful Era...
11:27pm through morning.

One last night of indelicate celebration across the
massive third floor loft at 3rd Ward Brooklyn, featuring:
the tightest DJ's in the east, immaculate moments of
performance, wild acts of engagement, brief glimpses of
nudity, kisses from strangers, manna from heaven and all
the of the best you expect from this space, one last time.

thedanger

no one was ever irresponsible or skeevy for the most part. we were just a couple of people that loved to have fun and dance. now, its over because there are a few who didnt want to respect those ideas. another good thing is lost.

wed. 4/18 - southpaw, brooklyn, $15.
$3 miller lights all night.
18+ kiddies - save the date.

a night with hip hop sa

i was resistant at first to actually attend a hip-hop sa meeting despite seeing flyers every so often for panel discussions that seemed pretty interesting. honestly, what does a small asian girl from flushing know about hip hop?

it kept biting at me though, simply because i really wanted to see the guest speaker, who is a part-time african-american studies professor at UB. it turned out really well and i really enjoyed myself. all of the issues that he raised were really on point with some of the themes and ideas that ive been trying to explore and hash out myself. it was pretty chill and the professor was extremely cool. he curses like a sailor but is a fifth grade social studies teacher. that gives him brownie points in my book, in addition to his pop and lock skills. so now, im definately going to try and take his course, "hip hop and social issues". exciting.

this brings me to another issue. ive been watching the hip-hop section at the radio station go to shit and its been bothering me. it feels almost like a personal insult simply because i care a lot about that section. lack-luster reviews that consist sometimes of maybe 5 words and a sad display of selection really brings me down. i really want that job next year. i am planning a coup to overthrow the hip hop director. i would do it on bastille day to make it a bit more symbolic, but that isnt during the school year. nonetheless, the day will come. im so close i can taste it. yum.

Marry Me Ms. Pacman

the go! team - "junior kickstart"
sometimes i feel like the go! team is sonic youth on antidepressants and weed with a horn section.

Yes, Mommie Dearest.

before:




after:


oh shit. yeah.
four swiffers and some comet cleaner later, all the pubes were gone from the toilet and the leftover disposable contact lens was actually disposed of.
i really dont know where that giant amoeba shaped dirt spot came from, but it grew over time. i also have a suspicion that my suitemate's boyfriend cannot aim very well.
my suitemate is digusting. - i dont talk trash. its just not my fault youre a douchebag and no one likes you on this floor.

"Helga, I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at the dirt." - Joan Crawford