please don't go

or -- ya know what -- do.

(thanks Jaber)

point taken

At least someone was on the right track.

Testing. Testing. One deux tres. Blogging on the go? Dangerous. 

a/s/l? pic?

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school's in

this looks absolutely marvelous.

can I borrow your dog to help me trick that goat?

screaming goats. hilarity.

from Russia, with love

ignorance ain't bliss

There is an advertisement all over the city on billboards and bus stops and, frankly, it pisses me off. Not because I'm a pessimist and not because I hate these ridiculous motivational posters, but mostly because it is pretty much, well, wrong.

While Norman Rockwell gained an inescapable notoriety as "the guy who painted the Saturday Evening Post," what most people tend not to know is that he was an actual artist, one with convictions and a point of view and a real understanding of the sometimes shitty and fucked up world we live in. So when I see something like this:



I am irksome because, look people, he didn't really see the best in all of us. At best, Rockwell saw the best in some or, hell, even just a few of us. His Saturday Evening Post covers were idyllic images, ones that many used as a sort of benchmark on which they could base their own lives and families. And while, yes, the 40s and 50s were a bit easier, a bit nicer, a bit more relaxed and innocent, most people didn't have it so nice. But that's not to say they didn't want to think they they did. And that's sort of the point of magazines and advertising, right? There's always some fudging going on, an uptick of the truth, a slight exaggeration that Rockwell was no doubt aware of and paid to depict.

I know it sounds like I am undercutting Rockwell and perhaps projecting my own despondency onto him as a person and an individual, but the advertisement just strikes me as propagandist based on a collective ignorance. Because when you see Rockwell paintings like this:



And this:




or even this (note the heartbreaking loss of innocence, the insecurity freshly realized on her face):



I wouldn't quite say that Rockwell saw the best in us, so much as the truth in us. And that truth is sometimes kind of ugly.

SP

those were the days

A simpler time, a simpler fashion advertisement.

that to this to that

before:



right now:



after:






Farewell, Keith Haring.

behind The Times

Once again, the New York Times exerts its authority as the go-to news source for groundbreaking journalism and unheard of claims on what is gripping society and why (note the sarcasm) with their piece on the allure of vampires. Really? NO! Vampires are popular these days? Good God who the hell would have known that?! Well, just in case you didn't, Ruth la Ferla -- after some arm-twisting from an editor, no doubt -- theorizes:

"Rarely have monsters looked so sultry — or so camera-ready. No small part of this latest vampire mania seems to stem from the ethereal cool and youthful sexiness with which the demons are portrayed. Bela Lugosi they are not."

or how about this gem:

"Given all that baggage, what keeps vampires so alluring? One might point to their combination of deathless good looks and decadent sexuality."

I mean, really? This is what the Style section of the New York Times has to report on? Something that I and even my yet-to-be-conceived child are aware of? I only point this out because it happens ALL THE EFFING TIME in the New York Times these days, particularly The Style section. For a publication of which we are reminded daily in the back of a taxi "the best journalists in the world work at the Times, and there's no denying that," I think I can, without remorse, fucking deny that.

Ok ok, yes they cover all those things that actually, like, matter with the kind of journalistic integrity we've come to know and respect, but maybe that's why instances like these, and when they tell us two fashion seasons too late that shorts are, in fact, in for men, or -- gasp! -- food carts are popular in New York City (weren't we hunting these down last summer?), it just makes me shake my head in disappointment that they are so lagged in reporting any sort of trend. And I get that blogs are raping and leaving for dead the print media, but if the NYT wants to continue to be the NYT they're going to have to up their game in the digital age, because, while I love the daily crossword as if I bore it from my womb, I can't get behind wonky reporting.

SP

p.s. same goes for you, Wall Street Journal!