July 23, 2006 (1) Comments

Lebanese student Nouhad Moawad, interning in America, relays reports from her friend back home: Lebanese people are suffering from hunger, from thirst, from terror . . . In seven days 220 persons have been killed, only three of them are known to be from Hezbollah, according to the news reports; 850 are injured and a half million of Lebanese are now forced to leave their homes. Many places don't exist anymore. A real humanitarian crisis is happening there. Does the international community pay attention to these innocent people there? What did the Lebanese people do to be punished like that? Isn't it Hezbollah's act? These questions come to every Lebanese person believing in peace not only in Lebanon but also in the Middle East.

Here, NY brews. The power shorted out briefly in Brooklyn and all the bodegas, up and down the main ave by our apartment, were shuttered and barred four two days. Electric surges killed our refrigerator: if you come over for dinner, hope you like canned goods. And Queens is aflame. My flight for WY leaves, I hope, in 12 hours and I could not be happier, though I have to take the little commuter plane from Denver to Cheyenne and I always think of Aaliyah, rest in peace. I remember vividly that day, in '96, when the seven-year-old junior pilot and her father, attempting to set a record, took off in the rain, then nose-dove into a wing of my dad's office. But the landscape is flat and the weather is decent, my mom says, so I don't have to sweat going out like that.

My mother has, sweetly, cooked green chile without pork in my honor, having finally grasped the concept of vegetarianism after 10 years.

I will bring you all back a lasso.

July 20, 2006 (0) Comments

from the space, bindle's reaction to GW bush's pukealicious NAACP speech.

speaking of myspace, heard "myspace jump-off" on hot 97 the other morning, miss info's show. nerdalicious.

excuse the terse nature of recent posts, i'm hella busy, and mentally preparing for my trip to wyoming, amid recurring nightmares about plains and planes. both involve collisions. more likely they'll be lassos but you never know, i haven't driven a car in three years. the speakeasies are in walking distance, but how am i gonna make it to the milk can dinners? really? from times square to 1868, that's how i do it.

July 19, 2006 (1) Comments

Here is the letter Code Pink sent me today. I emailed Ambassador Bolton and Kofi Annan and it took me about two minutes. Please do the same.

They recommend you read an article by Nader condeming Bush but I find this one a little more effective.

Dear Julianne,

4. Join the fast.We are entering our third week of the fast, in which over 4,000 people have already participated....

July 13, 2006 (1) Comments

Smart Tara Henley at XXL writes a concise, right-on post about the problems with Ben McGrath's Hot 97 piece in the New Yorker, and I will say it again: Sasha has proven you can write about hip-hop for the New Yorker's perceived high-falootin' audience without condescending to either your subjects or your audience. Thanks again to Smart Tara Henley, one of three or four reasons XXLmag.com/blogs is fast becoming the only essential rap-stop in the webiverse. (There would be five reasons if Elliott Wilson would actually write something.)

One of my dance teachers wrote a book. Respect to her -- she's an awesome choreographer -- but I am not exactly feeling the premise: making yrself feel good for someone else is a bad look and a trap. That said, I am vehemently "pro" on self-help, and while the frame is sticky (and making every man want me isn't very appealing) the summary doesn't seem overly reductive. I am, however, inclined to purchase her video, and considering a tattoo which reads, "CARDIO DANCE BLAST."

July 11, 2006 (7) Comments

oh robin rosenberg, your sentences as transcendant as your granola. you have to trust the cooking of a woman who notices nuance such as this:

Donut Man then offered us some fresh donuts, still warm, Krispy Kreme style. Let me tell you. This warm raised glazed donut was sublime, and like a great wine or cheese, it actually had notes: a yeasty, brioche tone followed by the county-fair fritter nuttiness, ending with a hint of lemon blossom and cotton candy as you licked the glaze off your fingers.

food editors? hire her?

as an aside, i shall be visiting portland, oregon in the second week of august. I fully expect to enjoy all the dance parties your fair city has to offer -- if you know the hot rock aug 10-15, get in touch. no debauchery, haters, dancefloor-parkers, etc. And no bad hats.

July 11, 2006 (0) Comments

for those of you who do not have URGE, my "nelly furtado explains herself" interview / album overview is up now on mtv news, complete with "graff font." it is like a slam book of her hip-hop memories.

July 10, 2006 (2) Comments

my opinion on "digital art" is that if it is heartless, gestural and nostalgic it is wack (as are most things embodying the preceding traits). But like, this shit on the world cup, it is enjoyable for today.

ALMOST MAKES UP FOR THE FACT THAT PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN II HAS ZERO ARC! IT IS LIKE READING CHAPTERS 7-12 in a 16 chapter book -- its end is the beginning of the third film! And while I could watch Johnny Depp swishily buckling swashes every second of my life, such a lovely gothic pirate queen is he -- and while I am no enemy of experimental film -- I really require my $137 million-grossing summer blockbusters to approach something involving "conflict resolution" on or near the end credits.

July 10, 2006 (1) Comments

DJ Sickamore: "If I heard one more mixtape rapper talk about "bringing New York back" I would've personally hijacked an airplane and crashed it right into Canal Street." Touche!

Ben McGrath: Can we make a petition that Sasha is the only New Yorker staffer who gets to write about rappers?

July 6, 2006 (2) Comments

I forgot about how much I love Peter Murphy's cavernous singing 'til I saw this video of TVOTR, Peter Murphy, and Trent Reznor doing "Dreams" to eight of the luckiest chumps in DC, sent via Joey with the appropriate jizzthusiasm. (Jazzthusiasm?) His voice flings knives, and p.s. here's another context for the one working band that can believably assert, "I don't know... I listen to everything."

Here's Reznor and TVOTR accompanying Murphy's "Final Solution" and doing Bauhaus' 37-minute club epic Bela Lugosi's Dead

IF YOU ARE SLEEPING, DO NOT SLEEP: Murphy's only song *not* about cutting

On this tip, YouTube has no Jarboe live footage, but here is another song *not* about cutting

song *definitely* about cutting. Jarboe looks like Courtney Love, Debbie Harry, Mink Stole, Marianne Faithfull and David Bowie simultaneously.

July 5, 2006 (1) Comments

yes:

* TV on the Radio, the only band I care about the way I care about, and this TV on the Radio-commissioned short: "Mr. President, what do you think about the social injustices of the last 450 years?" "BOOOO-RRRing"

* Ana Castillo

* Elliot Spitzer for Governor

* the mexican election would be the 2000 american election redux if mexico hadn't already perfected the process

* the climate crisis: "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through."

* vintage jazzbo: more fun than a bushel of advil

no:

* "new york" (as symbolic cultural endzone) as dead, alive, resurrected or getting a $650 haircut at ted gibson -- fool's gold. red herring.

* you and your buddy, upon noticing my la virgen de guadalupe lightbox / shrine, invent a dating-fuckstory for the motif of juan diego and his apparition, and whether you "feel" "uncomfortable" at my correction of your narrative. i also do not care whether you will ever comprehend the magic of the words "Tonantzin" and "conquistador"

* whether tequila is my birthright or just distracts me from your lack of backbone / your character, of flimsy build / your public face, a ruse

* whether tequila is my distraction or just births me from your lack of backbone / or from my gait, impenetrable. And if it seems like rage is the only character i can accurately portray these days, that's the only instinct you can trust: i want my home back.

* happy 60th birthday, george w. bush.

in other words:

The window was wide open, the screen splayed, and slices in the shape of fangs gave up its fate. Our cat, growling and poised on the third floor ledge, had waited to race off until we returned home at dawn's pique. When all we ever wanted was to love her, and for her keep away the mice, she stayed until we could witness her departure, as if to let us know how little she thought of us, how thin her respect. One last swipe. She fought with a small, butter-colored Tom on her way down the fire escape and as the sun lifted, she vanished into the shrubs below in the neighbor's courtyard garden, somewhere in the dirt between a lawn jockey and the head of a small plastic donkey. This was Saturday night. I watered and pruned her cat-mint plant and left it on the sill with her saucer of kibble, but still, she has not come back. Not even a hiss in the tone of her voice wafts up the building from below. She has erased herself, or us. I always imagined her to be part feral but the screen is still off in case she decides to return, because we cannot stop hoping. Realistically, though, a rat or squirrel will sniff out the bits of cat food and jump through in her stead. I pray our grief is not so blinding that we can tell the difference.

If you live in the Brooklyn neighborhood of the peeping tom, the giant iguana, my substitute abuela Victoria, and the two golden bodegas at the crossroads where the street names change -- and if you happen to see our tortoiseshell tabby, please send her home. Like me, she is brown and white, and responds to many names.