marching bands are just homeless orchestras

"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:01:46 +0100

“

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

”

- The exquisite eloquence of Neil Gaiman.

Admittedly, there’s a slight weakness for French...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 22:00:12 +0000

Admittedly, there’s a slight weakness for French illustrators on my blog. In these latest offerings by my new discovery, curiosity piqued by the lexicon of the mundane, and my attention sustained by its perversion — there’s often an accompanying social commentary on many contemporary trends, politics and the way we live life in general that belies a lot of work that I gravitate to.

Today’s showcase features Jean Julien, a French artist based in London these days, and his work features at Kemistry gallery just down the road from my office. His sardonic wit of melding our inner voice, juxtapositions of cultural memes manifests in these technicolor visions of modern life.

It makes me chuckle, and reminds me of my friend’s work (also a Frenchie), that’d I’d thoroughly recommend if this was your thang. Speaking French helps to get the context instantly, but if you’re hopeless at languages as I am, Google translate=winner.

Audio

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 22:00:33 +0000

"To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and..."

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 22:00:22 +0000

“To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed. Many people know about camera angles now, but not so many know about sentences.”

- Joan Didion (via seemsforever)

If Animals Ate Fast Food It’d give a whole other dimension...

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 22:00:22 +0000

If Animals Ate Fast Food

It’d give a whole other dimension to David Attenborough’s docos.

Childhood classic.

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 22:00:28 +0000

Childhood classic.

"In many ways, I yearn for the partial exposure of the femme fatale to the overexposure of the..."

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 22:00:14 +0000

“

In many ways, I yearn for the partial exposure of the femme fatale to the overexposure of the ingénue. While the camera lingers on the body of vamps and vixens, their façade still seems one of power, rather than powerlessness. The femme fatale, unlike other kinds of sex bombs, is dangerous not because she is desirable, but because she has secrets. Her desires are wild and untamed, and her motives are private and unclear. The femme fatale is threatening because she is a free agent who operates according to her own moral code. Not giggly and coy like a Marilyn, not bouncy and bold like a Britney, not regal or refined like Grace Kelly, the femme fatale is blood and ice and grit. She is a hot throb of sex, naked but never exposed. Her drive is insatiable. She gives away nothing. She takes and takes and takes.

I have felt drawn to these types of female characters since I was a little girl. The minute I saw Jessica Rabbit walk onstage in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”, all slinky red dress and deep-throated whisper, I thought, “This is what it means to be a woman.” Since then I’ve loved every femme fatale I’ve seen on screen. Marlene Dietrich. Greta Garbo. Barbara Stanwyck. Rita Hayworth. Lauren Bacall. Sharon Stone. Angelina Jolie. Dangerous, powerful, sexual women.

In contrast, scenes of women exposed horrify and sadden me. I can’t watch Hannah Horvath lean over the couch and get told to “play the quiet game” while her obnoxious boyfriend may or may not be unwrapping a condom in preparation for anal sex without getting incredibly upset. The modern woman on film has been presented as a warrior (Katniss from The Hunger Games, The Bride from Kill Bill) or an ingénue (Bella from Twilight, any number of romantic comedies which fail the Bechdel test time and time again). Neither of these presentations of femininity gets us any closer to true personhood. Perhaps this is why my love for the femme fatale figure remains: if my only choice is to be a symbol then let me keep my secrets rather than confess them all away. Let me be fire and ice and blood.

The qualities I admire most about Lena Dunham are the ways in which she is pure steel. I love how she refuses to capitulate to the criticisms leveraged against her body, even though I feel this focus detracts from other important aspects of the show. Our fixation on female bodies highlights just how much we still need to be shocked into paying attention to young women’s wants and needs. Many times the bodies we are presented with are static—photo spreads, billboards, scenes of women posing, rather than actually doing anything purposeful at all. Images that illustrate the female body in motion, whether it’s Jessica Rabbit sauntering on stage, or Hannah Horvath dancing around her room, are empowering precisely because they are about claiming ownership over one’s own body, about not being a metaphor or symbol or fantasy for anyone else. They are about being a person in the world.

”

- Arielle Bernstein —

GIRLS on Film: Secrets, Seduction and Reclaiming the Body on Camera

Learn to code It’s the future Esperanto of the matrix...

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 22:00:23 +0000

Learn to code

It’s the future Esperanto of the ~~matrix~~ world.

"God is like Robert Pattinson: It’s not the person you have a problem with, it’s the fan club that..."

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 22:00:31 +0000

“God is like Robert Pattinson: It’s not the person you have a problem with, it’s the fan club that freaks you out.”

- Anurag Sahay (via littlestory)

kanyewesanderson: Hotel Chevalier / All Falls Down Mr. Wes is...

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 22:00:24 +0000

kanyewesanderson:

Hotel Chevalier / All Falls Down

Mr. Wes is in da house.
Bonus meta movie points.

really-shit: Stay Close - Flume

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 19:38:05 +0000

really-shit:

Stay Close - Flume

Everyday Hitchcock.

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 22:00:08 +0000

Everyday Hitchcock.

Fuck, the only way to describe this dress, is that it is the...

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 22:00:00 +0000

Fuck, the only way to describe this dress, is that it is the Cat’s Meow.
See you on the dance floor, doing the Charleston.

Photo

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 22:00:36 +0000

+15 °C, Spanish wear caps, gloves and winter coats, Finns...

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 22:00:20 +0000

+15 °C, Spanish wear caps, gloves and winter coats, Finns are sunbathing.
+10 °C, French desperately try to get their central heating on. Finns plant flowers.
+5 °C, Italian cars won’t start. Finns drive with convertibles.
0 °C, Pure water

freezes. Water in river Vantaa thickens a bit.
−5 °C, First people are found frozen in California. Finnish midsummer festival ends.
−10 °C, Scottish turn the heat on in their houses. Finns start to use long-sleeve shirts.
−20 °C, Swedes stay indoors. Finns are having last barbeque before winter.
−30 °C, Half of the Greek people have frozen to death. Finns start to dry their laundry indoors.
−50 °C, Polar bears evacuate North Pole. Finnish army starts it’s winter training.
−70 °C, Siberian people are moving to Moscow. Finns are furious since the Koskenkorva booze can’t be stored outdoors anymore.
−273 °C, Absolute zero. Finns admit that it is quite cold outside.
−300 °C, Hell freezes over. Finland wins the football World Cup.

allthingseurope: Gorges de l’Areuse, Switzerland ( by...

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 22:00:14 +0000

allthingseurope:

Gorges de l’Areuse, Switzerland ( by sevenbrane)

You’re going on The List.

When an anonymous advice columnist by the name of “Dear Sugar”...

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 22:00:09 +0000

When an anonymous advice columnist by the name of “Dear Sugar” introduced herself on The Rumpus on March 11, 2010, she made her proposition clear: a “by-the-book common sense of Dear Abby and the earnest spiritual cheesiness of Cary Tennis and the butt-pluggy irreverence of Dan Savage and the closeted Upper East Side nymphomania of Miss Manners.” But in the two-some years that followed, she proceeded to deliver something tenfold punchier, more honest, more existentially profound than even such an intelligently irreverent promise could foretell. This week, all of Sugar’s no-bullshit, wholehearted wisdom on life’s trickiest contexts — sometimes the simplest, sometimes the most complex, always the most deeply human — is released in Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar (public library), along with several never-before-published columns, under Sugar’s real name: Cheryl Strayed.

The book is titled after Dear Sugar #64, which remains my own favorite by a long stretch. It’s exquisite in its entirety, but this particular bit makes the heart tremble with raw heartness:

Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to you to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you.

When you meet a man in the doorway of a Mexican restaurant who later kisses you while explaining that this kiss doesn’t ‘mean anything’ because, much as he likes you, he is not interested in having a relationship with you or anyone right now, just laugh and kiss him back. Your daughter will have his sense of humor. Your son will have his eyes.

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.

One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life.

Say thank you.

via Maria Popova

la-fumee: Jay-Z & Kanye West — No Church In The Wild ft....

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 22:00:29 +0000

la-fumee:

Jay-Z & Kanye West — No Church In The Wild ft. Frank Ocean

Coke on her black skin made a stripe like a zebra / I call that jungle fever

I’m gonna be just as cool as this granny at 100.

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 22:00:34 +0000

I’m gonna be just as cool as this granny at 100.

“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.” — Oscar Wilder,...

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 22:00:18 +0000

“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
— Oscar Wilder, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays