August 31, 2006 (2) Comments

I spent yesterday at the VMAs' forum at Radio City Music Hall, aka Atlanta Outpost, where Piotr & I interviewed literally 42 people in six hours: the pop-journalistic equivalent of speed-dating. I was running on no food, six or eight diet cokes and a neverending stream of people. My mind is still spinning from the spectacle. Highlights:

Piotr and Al Franken somehow parlaying a conversation about politics into a "moment" between two Deadheads reminiscing on Jerry's best solos

Bryan Barber (director of Idlewild, "Aint No Other Man") describing Christina Aguilera to me as "This generation's Barbra Streisand"

Piotr and I getting super fan-dork on Lil Wayne, who is like 4'11", but we couldn't help it, it's fuckin Lil Wayne. He gave us bits on the Carter III, his amazing lyrics on Outkast's "Hollywood Divorce"--he was genuinely pleased, almost humble, that Dre put his verse first. The only other time I had to check my hyperbolic self was while interviewing Hype Williams, when I was like, "Since Belly is one of the greatest-ever translations of music to cinema..." as an intro to a question.. then like, "I'm sorry, I'm obsessed with your movie, specifically the first fifteen minutes synched to the a cappella of 'Back to Life'." I did ask him what's up with the split-screen in all his new videos, he was like, uh... it's a filmic device.

Johnny Knoxville and Hulk Hogan are totally BroFFs.

DJ Drama doesn't program his own HTML.

Clipse "support XXL" [Pusha laughs].

Anthony Mackie, star of Half Nelson (which you should see asap). He, himself, was a highlight. Smart, articulate etc.

Photos coming soon, maybe more once the shit is actually transcribed.

After it was all over, walkin back to the office down fifth ave, we randomly saw Cee-Lo just standing on the street like, checking out business-casual ass or something. I found it ironic that most of the suits probably had "Crazy" on their iPods but were just doing the new york rush hour hustle right on by. Cee-Lo Green! Soul Machine!

August 29, 2006 (1) Comments

Read this.

Urge ran my Juvenile interview today, reprinted below for the Mac-having.

Juvenile's New Orleans, Then and Now
by Julianne Shepherd

New Orleans is a storied music city, best known for its jazz, R&B, zydeco and brass bands. But since the early 1990s, no NOLA-flavored sounds have had the cultural impact of the city's hip-hop scene. Because of New Orleans' rappers and producers, rap fans hear hooks, party chants and jeep beats differently. Meanwhile, its entrepreneurs have changed the way hip-hop does business -- building (and branding) mini-rap empires and catapulting their talented friends from the neighborhoods to the charts.

Terius "Juvenile" Grey is perhaps New Orleans's most iconic rapper. The former Cash Money Millionaire has been releasing albums since 1995, becoming famous for popularizing bounce music, a type of NOLA-indigenous call-and-response club rap. As the city's hip-hop prodigal son, he's devoted several hits to his hometown, including 2004's "Nolia Clap," which gave shine to the Magnolia housing projects in New Orleans' Third Ward, the neighborhood Juvenile grew up in.

One year after the release of "Nolia Clap," Hurricane Katrina devastated what remained of the partially demolished Magnolia projects, and destroyed Juvenile's current home in Slidell, Louisana. When this interview was conducted in January of 2006, Juvenile had just completed filming the video for "Get Ya Hustle On/What's Happening" in the Lower Ninth Ward -- Katrina's worst victim. His were the first cameras allowed in the district after city officials shut off media access to the area in the hurricane's wake.

What was the first music from New Orleans you remember hearing?
Gotta be Gregory D and Mannie Fresh. When I was a kid, they had a song called “Buck Jump Time,” that pretty much catered to the whole state of Louisiana. That was the record that started getting me motivated, like "Damn, this is starting to get close, these are artists in New Orleans. There was a lotta cats that came after that, but they were the first ones. Gregory D and Mannie Fresh.

How old were you when you heard it?
Man, I had to be like, nine or ten! I had to be super-young then.

What did you like about it?
Everybody liked it! It was a song that caused a lot of problems in clubs, like if you play it in the club, nine times out of ten a fight will break out and somebody might even end up getting killed. So it was a real, reminded me of, they had a song that Three 6 Mafia came out with called “Tear Da Club Up,” that kind of resembled that song. They had a problem.

After you heard that, what else did you come up on that was New Orleans? Anything besides rap?
Nah, they had jazz music and all that, but my era and my age we wasn’t listening to that, we was listening to straight rap. Rap and if there was a hell of an R&B singer, which we had none, so it was really just rap.

Not even people like Alan Toussaint?
Nah.

Who else were you listening to then?
Rakim! Rakim, Slick Rick, Public Enemy, Run-DMC, Whodini, all the old cats. The Furious Five. Cause you gotta remember, I’ve been around since the beginning of rap. I know everybody who rapped, from the beginning to now, and I’m a real hip-hop fan, I’ll be here all day telling you who I liked. Sir Mix-a-Lot, KRS-One, LL Cool J. Everybody was an inspiration on me, but the main one was Rakim.

But as far as New Orleans, I been a star in New Orleans. After that Mannie Fresh era, came me. I been a star in New Orleans. So it’d be better for you to ask that question of somebody else that’s a star, because then they’d be sayin me! I winded up being the big star in New Orleans for all those years.

Did anyone come after you in New Orleans that you really liked?
A couple more cats came before me that I really liked. They had a cat named Tim Smooth. Then again, he didn’t necessarily come out before me, but he came out with a solo album before me. His solo album [Straight Up Drivin] was nice. It was nice. Bust Down, the dude that invented pussy poppin’, he came out with a record that was real big called “Putch' Ballys On,” and he had “Nasty Bitch,” and that record got him a deal with Luke Skywalker, and Luke Skywalker kinda shelved him and took the whole pussy poppin thing away from him. But there was a few cats from New Orleans that were bumpin. We had a cat named MC Spud that had a good following. I’m from the T. Tucker era, and dude came out with a sound like no other. You know, people get it mixed up because they compare bounce music to what he was doing, but what he was doing we called "Where they at." We never called that bounce music. We called it ‘Where they at," cause he was really doing "Where they at, where they at?" the whole song. When the bounce era came, "bounce for me," was really what we sayin. It was more "bounce for me, bounce for me," or "Put your boy in it."

There was a lotta cats that had to do with molding New Orleans, but out of all of them, I was the strongest, because I’m the one that lasted the longest. I came from the Master P era, the Cash Money era, and I’m still here.

Can you explain the difference between bounce and rap?
Bounce is “Triggaman.” Bounce is straight Show Boys, the “Triggaman” record and the “Brown Beat” record. As far as making the sound, nobody can claim that because it’s a sound that was already made. It’s the DJ scratching the record. Mixing them together makes it the bounce sound. But Cash Money never made a bounce record. The only thing that comes close is “Back that Azz Up,” because I’m the inventor of bounce. It ain’t the way the tracks are, it ain’t the way the music sounds. To everybody who’s from New Orleans that been in there for all of those years they’ll tell you, it’s the records. Bounce is not rap, you know when a cat go to rappin, that ain’t bounce. It’s different.

Do you remember who introduced you to music?
I didn’t live that kinda life. I didn’t have a parent that listened to rap, an uncle that listened to rap. It all started from me. I didn’t have nobody around me, my mom didn’t even like rap, know what I mean? Forbidding me to write raps. I won talent shows and left the trophies in my partner’s house. If you try to go into the history of New Orleans rap, and you’re asking me, I can’t really go past me, because I am the history!

LIFE AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA

Talk about the video you just shot for "Reality Check"? You were the first people allowed down in the Lower Ninth Ward with cameras in Katrina's aftermath.
We were just trying to show everybody what the government should have done. That’s why we got three little boys in there with different masks on, walking around: one is Dick Cheney, one is Bush, and the other one is [New Orleans Mayor] Ray Nagin. One of them shoulda been [Lousiana governor] Kathleen Blanco -- I don’t know why we didn’t do that, we shoulda had a little girl in a Kathleen Blanco mask.

We just wanted people to see what they should have done. So we got these little boys walking through the Lower 9th Ward, and you see all these houses and stuff, all messed up, stuff all in the street debris everywhere, and we got these cats with these signs saying: ‘WE WAITIN.’ ‘WE STILL WAITIN.’ ‘YOU FORGOT ABOUT US.’ You know what I’m saying, all through the video there’s a different sign.

It’s real, I think it’s self-explanatory, like our cry out. Like, "Man, y’all coulda done more than what y’all did. Y’all came here with cameras. I saw NBC, Fox, ABC, MTV, BET. I saw all these cameras. Now don’t get me wrong—MTV, BET, both of these companies, they came, they kicked money out. But what happened to Fox? What happened to NBC? What happened to ABC? We ain’t hear nothing from them. We watched their cameras. We saw them.

They had cameras filming the people on top of their roofs. They could've dropped water out of their helicopters.

A floatation device ain’t hard to make. It's real easy. You hook a parachute up to it and drop it out the damn helicopter. We made it on the video. If we can make it on the video and throw it off a bridge, then surely that's what y'all shoulda done. When people see the video, they’re gonna be like, "If some little kids can walk on top of that bridge and throw that [floatation device] off that bridge like that, a grownup coulda thought of that."

That’s what I was screaming from day one. Y'all shoulda been dropping floatation devices, canned goods, and water. People were dying from starvation. People were dying because they was thirsty. You know? You can’t drink that water, you know what I’m saying? It was crazy.

People were just coming in, filming, and not trying to save anyone?
Basically. Basically. That’s why a lot of the city officials got mad. They came to this point where we not letting nobody down here, I don’t care who you is, you can’t come shoot, nothin’. You can’t bring no camera crews in New Orleans right now. They said you had to be a person from New Orleans -- you had to be a person to actually go through what they went through to actually go down in the lower ninth ward.

When they found out I was the person that wanted to shoot the video, they opened their arms. They treated me like the president. They gave me full access.

I think I did the right thing. For the first time, you know. Cause I did a lot of wrong things in my life. I think for the first time in my life, I’m really doing my ten percent.

What about what’s going on there right now? I know that you lost your house.
You know, insurance companies, they’re not paying as fast as we want 'em to, but they reaching out. Right now, it’s just a lot of people that just want jobs. Believe it or not, they got a lot of jobs that’s payin' a lot of money, but the problem is, a lot of [New Orleans residents] are not credible to get those jobs.

What do you mean by "not credible"?
Criminal records. Criminal records, or bad job history. I think all that should be out the window right now. The people from New Orleans should be able to get jobs. The hurricane hit, and all that shoulda went out the window.

What we’re seeing is, they’re bringing a lot of Mexicans in and they’re treating them wrong. Cause I’m not sure if they paying ‘em the proper amount of money they should be getting. So it’s double jeopardy. They’re rippin' the Mexicans off, they’re bringing them to New Orleans, and they’re creating an animosity between the people that live in New Orleans and Mexicans. And you know when I speak I’m not just speaking for black people, I’m speaking for black, white, Chinese people, Arabs, we had a lot of people that lived there that lost their homes and we should be the ones. If you was a New Orleans resident, you should have first shot at any job in New Orleans. But they’re not treating people like that.

Why do you think that’s happening?
I don’t know. I don’t know. You know Louisiana never had Mexicans. Never, there’s like, people and you know, you was from New Orleans and you see that, you know what’s going on.

I’m doing whatever I can, you know? It’s like telling someone who lived upper class, "Look you lost everything, I’m sorry. Can’t do nothing for you." You make a person that lived a good life, you turn 'em into a career criminal when you take everything from ‘em. And you demoralize them. They sitting there thinking, “Man, I just had a house, a car, my kids was in college, I was doing right and saving money, and I lost all of that, and now you telling me you not gonna help me?" It angers them. And what does an angry person do? Makes dumb decisions. That’s why the Houston crime rate is high. That’s why every state where people from Louisiana traveled to, they got a crime rate that went up at least twenty percent. Because people mad. Just imagine you being in a fix somewhere and they telling you they gonna do something for you. They put you up in hotels, then they tell you they don’t have money to send you back. What you gonna do? What you gonna do? The next move is gonna be a criminal act, you know what I’m saying?

How can individual citizens help Katrina victims?
The best way is hand-to-hand. Everybody says to donate money. Naw. Go down there, and just hand-to-hand. I do hand-to-hand. I don’t like these organizations. I don’t trust people like that. I feel like these are my people, I’m gonna put money in their hand myself. You from New Orleans? Show me your ID. Talk to me, there’s a certain language we got where I’m gonna know if you from New Orleans. Here, that’s all I can do for you. You know what I’m saying? That’s my way of doing my ten percent.

A lotta people went out they way and donated money to these organizations, but these organizations wasn’t right. Personally, I think the Red Cross is full of shit. I know this as a fact that only thirty percent of each dollar gets to a person. So if they receive a hundred million dollars, it’s only thirty million that gets to the people. What happened to the other seventy million?

I went down there and told people the truth. I was like, "Man, don’t wait for nothing. Get off your ass and do something."

August 28, 2006 (0) Comments

i love the first half of the officially official video for "chicken noodle soup" 'cause kids, dancing, high school gymnasiums, young b's girl-next-door poise, a tennis ensemble and -- is that a yorkie?

August 28, 2006 (1) Comments

my sleater-kinney farewell on la horca.

"if i'm to run the future, you've got to let the old world go!" so sez Corin Tucker. They know life cycle. Still, One Beat is my favorite right now.

August 23, 2006 (0) Comments

Whitney Houston's "So Emotional" : "proto snap"
really perfect lyrics for Osama bin Laden's purported Whitney fetish. Ain't it shocking what - uh - love can do?

August 23, 2006 (0) Comments

"Where has she got off to?" you might be wondering, and I would have several answers. Being alone is the first, and feeling right in the solitude. Reading the essentials: This, and This, and This. (In an interview I did last year, and will repost here in about a week, Juvenile says NO to the Red Cross -- that the best way to go is hand-to-hand donations.) Classes: pilates, dance (funk, hip-hop, house, crump). Errday. Watching the director's commentary of Season Three (reading a new interview with creator David Simon). Writing. Getting up at the Met. Likitsakos on 87th and Lex for Greek yogurt. That is, my friends, what's up.

The Anglophile fashion exhibit at the Met is exquisitely displayed -- plastic mannequins in 19th century Brit royalty gowns and Vivienne Westwood / Malcolm McLaren punk-screened t-shirts, capped in fake mohawk hats of cigarettes and bird plumes -- but I was most fixated by the human skull, encased in glass, on a desk. As you know, the "skull" has become a cliche signifier of fashion both high and hipster this season, perhaps the first and only fashion trend attributable to Three 6 Mafia. I was thinking about how the "skull," the actual human skull, as an object, used to signify the transition into the age of reason -- now everywhere as commodity and symbol, not exactly desensitization i guess but symbolic of our total surrender to science, to war, and a surrender of mystery. Cheap existence, enabled by our general and supposed lack of proximity to the war(s) in which we participate. Before I get all NY Times trend piece I'd like to take you over to the Met's Susan Sontag "On Photography" exhibit, the real reason I went (tho I was derailed for a bit by the mind-blowingly symmetrical Frank Lloyd Wright installation in a wing I'd never seen before -- the Met is island-sized). In general I think Sontag was a better critic than philosopher (tho Gore Vidal has a terrific and terrifically mean decon of "Notes on Camp" readable here) but I love this quote, embossed on the wall above a couple of Edward Steicher's war images: "all photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person's (or thing's) mortality, vulnerability, mutability." Documents of our lasting consequence.

August 18, 2006 (0) Comments

Nick has alerted me to the existence of a Miami rapper by the name of D-Shep, whose single, "Stay Real," is available now. Protective of my name, I predicted a problem, but his music convinced me we should leave it at a collabo.

August 18, 2006 (2) Comments

Not eaten by voracious VMAs, my bouncing soul gets vh-1 dot commed.

my best portland booty, besides stumptown coffee and higher taste vegetarian sandwiches of heaven: Swan Island and, more specifically, their song Crumble, which haunts and slices, and promises end: "there are cities made of cardboard, cities made of diamonds, all will be revealed." i'm pretty sure the shredder pedal never before accompanied meditations on fallen empire, that is unless Sisters of Mercy were talking about America ever, but that's their thing on this song, they smart up the brittle guitars, or react to the inevitable, and Brisa Gonzalez has a voice like a ghost in a rainstorm. I am going to see them at tweezone in manhattan on september 15, if anyone wants to go (tweezone being my special name for cakeshop)

August 14, 2006 (4) Comments

A cowboy-themed strip club called "the outlaw" advertised "live hot girls" and country music on the third floor, and even though Naughty by Nature's "OPP" floated from the windows above, the sleazy foil flash of cheap dance lights twinkled, signifying strippers but not giving anything away. We walked in cause Chantelle wanted to show off the cheesy box-office foyer, where Prodigy's "Firestarter" was entertaining, loudly. I stole a Toby Keith poster from the wall, one advertising his new album "White Tra$h With Money," as indicated by the poly-cotton paisley cowboy print shirt and gold dollar-sign chain. This is country.

Connie and I, both thrilled and appalled, yelled at the screen through all of Step Up -- a fine dance movie for fans of You Got Served, Fame, Save the Last Dance, Honey, Flashdance, Breakin, Dirty Dancing, Beat Street, Take the Lead, Lambada: The Forbidden Dance, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Teen Witch, West Side Story or HBO's The Wire. A few moments of cogent LCD social commentary, and a grown ass love scene choreographed to a raphael saadiq song and shot like a karaoke video, the sun off a baltimore port shining into the lens, its light fracturing off into star-rays and soft-focusing on the hair of dance. lyrical ballet, to be specific.

but prepare to suspend your disbelief: nobody dances like that in a club.

Sleater-Kinney played "One More Hour," their most iconic song and one about a break-up, last. "In one more hour, I leave this room." I collected stories from audience members: a boy from Minneapolis who started listening in '97 because he was intrigued by the idea of "chicks actually rocking"; Nicole Georges of Portland, who drove to Lawrence, KS at age 16 to see S-K only to discover the show was 18+; three 17-year-old Rock & Roll Camp for Girls interns who first listened to the CD "because it's what our parents listen to. But I'd rather listen to local bands [sic]."

i know it's so hard for you to say goodbye. i know you need just a little more time.

August 10, 2006 (2) Comments

if you are going to fly in a commercial airplane in the united states, it is a good idea not to do it the day an alleged band of terrorists planned to blow up planes with liquid explosives. If you do, it is a good idea not to pack your beloved lipgloss pot in your purse, unless you are prepared to argue with a security agent who apparently doesn't know the difference between plutonium and Nars.

portland feels like a weekend spa getaway. chantelle's house lords above from a mountainside, ceiling-to-floor glass doors at eye level with the city's modest cluster of skyscrapers, and everything is silent, even, easy, but for car noise lifting up from the freeway like zen din.

I have been to a loft warehouse space that is begging for a Times style page feature. "Quirky young designers in shabby chic tech space" and whatnot.

gus van sant is advertising for skaters 15-30 to vamp as extras in his new movie, Paranoia Park. Teen skater-meth docudrama? Gator biopic?

August 9, 2006 (1) Comments

cause i'm about to descend on your shit and pillage all your stumptown.
thank you duane, supplier for life.

August 9, 2006 (18) Comments

THAT IS ALL

August 8, 2006 (0) Comments

time to get a new lesson

August 7, 2006 (5) Comments

Thank you to Jona for the amazing redesign of CnP, and indulging my interest in silhouettes of cell phones.

Two seperate dudes emailed me Claire Hoffman's piece from the LA Times within a span of an hour: I once saw a very thorough docudrama on Joe Francis, creator of Girls Gone Wild, so I knew he was the type of hustling industry-capitalist douchebag aggressors that I try to avoid at all costs, but I never thought he'd go so far as to inflict violence on a reporter. Still naive even after all I know, I spose. Dumb. One of the most important points the writer makes: that kids who've grown up on the internet has different boundaries than prior generations:

Francis has aimed his cameras at a generation whose notions of privacy and sexuality are different from any other. Nursed on MySpace profiles and reality television, many young people today are comfortable with being perpetually photographed and having those images posted on the Internet for anyone to see. The boundaries that once contained sexuality have also fallen away. Whether it's 13-year-olds watching a Britney Spears video, 16-year-olds getting their pubic hair waxed to emulate porn stars or 17-year-olds viewing videos of celebrities performing the most intimate acts, youth culture is soaked in sexuality.

And then there's the end:

When I think back on that night, our very public scuffle isn't what seems the most revealing. Instead, the moment I saw Francis most clearly—his charm, his rage, his cunning and even his regret—came later, when no one was looking. I was waiting, still shaken, outside the club for a cab to take me back to my hotel. Francis, who had disappeared inside the bus, returned.

I stared down at the dirt as he whispered in my ear, "I'm sorry, baby, give me a kiss. Give me a kiss."

I hope Claire Hoffman gets a Pulitzer.

August 5, 2006 (0) Comments

My feature on Crunk & B is up at Urge. If you have no PC to attend the Urge party, but would still like to read it, click here. If you would like to see the accompanying playlist, click here.

August 4, 2006 (1) Comments

Notes from hometown visit:
In the past two years, the Cheyenne city council and land conservation department have built a miles-long "greenway": a concrete sidewalk vivisecting a stretch of tumbleweeds, several cottonwood trees, and a long, cattailed marsh. The path follows several major boulevards, crosses behind a Barnes & Noble, and overlooks the Frontier Mall. If you look west on the greenway, a billboard reads, "Straightforward. It's the Wyoming Way." A small but consistent stream of cars pass, but most vehicles are extended cab pick-up trucks, the width and length of a trailerhome, and most are brand new, and I breathed in their fumes while trying to jog. Nothing like the fumes you inhale running down Flatbush but lung-choking nevertheless.

The trucks signify "macho shit," as my dad put it to me, describing his 2005 Dodge Ram-- macho shit and all the same testosterone-affirmation that some people (both genders) glean from owning large cars, large chains, large record collections. Ownership, period. But there is also a sense of claiming space, not just because in the country there seems to be so much space to claim, but because, simply, people can. Dodge Rams, to me, look like moving parcels of land, the homesteader lifestyle mutated for mobility.

Dierks Bentley, a masterstoryteller in that country way, is super-popular in Wyoming. He gets the truck appeal with his song called "Cab of my Truck," the lyrics of which would be more believable to my knowledge of "the actual country," were it not for his line about the glove box full of parking tickets --- because parking tickets are an amenity of cityfolk, obviously. It glamorizes the dolo lifestyle of livin in said cab of truck, truck-cab as altar. But it doesn't get at the meat of proper truckonia (word to Kandia Crazy Horse) -- ttruck worship -- as much as Toby Keith's "Big Ol' Truck," which immortalizes a truck-driving woman almost to the point of fetish and you wonder which he likes more: trucks, chicks or America.

I never met a real cowboy who listened to Wilco, Richmond Fontaine, Neko Case. Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette sure, for old time's sake. But real cowboys listening only to Haggard and Cash is exactly like New York rap fans listening only to Run-DMC, or LA punkers rocking Black Flag exclusively: a case of misguided purism, cast in amber. The good ole days happened once, and they will happen again, only somewhere else; the cowboy predilection for simplicity should not be confused with nostalgia. The roster for Cheyenne Frontier Days, the "daddy" of all rodeos [or the American cowboy's world cup] is dotted with CMT-fodder -- Martina McBride, Dierks Bentley, Montgomery Gentry -- all sold out. In Frontier Park, a tour bus with Rascall Flatts, Martina McBride, and Tim McGraw was parked next to a replica of a homesteader camp, with real 19th century wagons and beans baking in a cauldron over a spit, the air, pungent with leather, furs, horses.

One day my dad and I drove a gravel road following the back end of FE Warren Air Force Base. He pointed just beyond a chain-link fence to what looked like an oversize barn, woodsiding, thatched roof, and said, "That over there is a nuclear warhead repair facility." Which is scarier, the idea of warheads needing repair, or the fact that the facility appeared slightly less secure than my Brooklyn apartment?

Meanwhile my aunt told me that when non-Mexican people ask her what she thinks about "the immigration problem," she cackles, "I think they should send us all back!"

August 4, 2006 (0) Comments

Today: my interview w/Xtina Aguilera is up on La Horca. And my long-labored Crunk & B feature is up on Urge, which I shall reprint here in like a hour for those who do not have PCs (everyone I know besides my parents).

August 4, 2006 (4) Comments

Yesterday, on our lunch break, Chris Ryan dragged me out onto the heart of Times Square. "I want to show you something." We crossed the street, past the deli, past the Army Recruiter, past the Sephora, and stopped in front of that mysterious triangular building on 42nd and Broadway, you know the one that doesn't actually appear to serve any purpose, but is always surrounded by 18 security guards.

Chris pointed his finger skyward. "Look," he whispered.

There, gloriously, with the glitter and sheen of a phoenix in ascent: a billboard advertising the fourth season of The Wire. "Begins September 20."

And, because this season's theme is the failure of the education system:

"No Corner Left Behind."

I am so excited I can barely breathe.

August 1, 2006 (1) Comments

i'm back, intact, and scorching like global warming. finna interview CASSIE aka "I think I bought a tube top from you" -- also reading miranda jane's bl'entry on what the bastards did to b-girl. includes many temperature-appropriate freeze photos.