GET EXCITED.

Rorschach from The Watchmen movie is probably the dopest part ever, and it’s totally getting played by Jackie Earle Haley, who was that creepy motherfucker in Little Children. This shit is gonna be so awesome. I’m glad they actually decided to film, and release, this movie before the Mayan apocalypse.

I am over stupid people in my life. WAY OVER IT. Particularly this crazy asshole. Just wrote her a letter explaining I cant wait for the next New York Senate election so I can vote for the other woman. FUCK HER FOR LIFE.

birthday weekend was awesome, but it’s the aftermath that counts.

Friday was my birthday so we had a very special FADED RADIO: as a bday present Sam let me play all sorts of classic JSHEP R&B without making fun of me (including Control-era Janet, whose bday is also May 16) and I also threw down many rap tracks about oral sex (boy on girl, obvs). Then Jokers of the Scene, famous Canadians, came through and did jackhammer rave jams and me and Nick talked at the end. YOU HAVE TO LISTEN!

Praise Allah, Sarah is back safely in New York after evacuating Beirut amid the clashes and imminent Civil War. She did not have to escape via Syria as previously thought, instead she was able to leave through a window when the airport was open. She took a plane routed through Greece. She is shaken but safe, and very sad. I’m hoping she publishes about her experiences, particularly ones walking through the streets with a German journalist and talking to 19-year-old Sunni militia groups, wearing masks, patrolling neighborhoods, armed with machine guns, ready to kill and to die to protect their families. And using pick-up lines: “Hezbollah would come here in a minute and I could kill them if they knew what a beautiful girl I was talking to.” Humor, it seems, gets real high in times of crisis. She brought me back an amazing lighter with an attached flashlight that projects Nasrallah’s face. She told me a story of a man she had met who had been kidnapped and tortured by Sunnis and, upon return, killed three Syrian guest workers for no reason but, presumably, post traumatic stress. “I know what kinds of sounds come from different types of weapons now,” she told me. “Machine guns sound different from rocket launchers, which make a pop and a swoosh as the missle goes through the air.”
But the thing is, she explained, Hezbollah aren’t terrorists–they provide very well for the Shiites in a way that the government never had (problem being: they only provide for the Shiites)–and given that there has not even been a president of Lebanon for months, not to mention a decapitated government that wasn’t very good at doing much in the first place, obviously there’s going to be more strife after a point, particularly since the Sunnis and Shiites have been beefing over particulars of the Qur’an for nigh eons. It is all very complicated, and very sad. She said as she was leaving her neighborhood, a Christian neighborhood (cause you are allowed to wear skirts and not be a virgin), she saw many neighbors on motorcycles carrying gun-shaped bags and boxes. They are arming themselves for what is coming.
I’m so glad she was able to get home in time. Today, we walked the 5th avenue street fair and she ate fatoosh and halal chicken shishkabobs (“you just got back from the middle east and you want to eat middle eastern food?”) and then we got pedicures for my birthday and she tried, I presume, not to think about it.

Based on reviews of concerts and other concerts i didn’t attend, did everyone bite the Janelle Monae or am I trippin?

Is a word used twice in this review of a book I now desperately want to read, to show how the author, Aleksander Hemon, annexes the page with his liberal use of the oft-debated semicolon. To use or to shun? DSW hated it as her writing (and editing!) shows; she writes short sentences with periods, deliberate sentences. Sentences that are beautiful and precise. I like the semicolon, but then I am in my heart a stream of consciousness writer as you probably know if you have ever read more than one entry of this blog. The semicolon gives breadth to a thought and is more elegant and decisive than parentheses (though I am a slutty parentheses writer, too).
Well apparently Aleksander Hemon wrote his entire book with long semicolonic (ew) phrases, about an immigrant in Chicago at the start of the 20th century who was murdered, and the writer a hundred years later who sets about to trace his steps and uncover the truth. It seems like my kind of writing, my kind of book. My birthday is coming up, as ever, on the same day as Janet Jackson. I, too, will be 20 Y.O. No actually I will be turning $&@O#*^$@ and if you are the type of person who wants to get me a present (though I don’t require it) The Lazarus Project by Aleksander Hemon is it. Also the new Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves, which is supposed to be her best (based on: this, of course; aren’t they all? I mean all works of fiction. They were all born at some point as a short story in the New Yorker. Every last one of them). Also, Louise Erdrich, she is one of my favorite novelists.
I would also like to read The Importance of Music to Girls by Lavinia Greenlaw, even though its title is mushy like half-chewed grits. She’s an amazing writer and I saw her read the germ of this book at EMP Pop Con like three or four years ago or whenever I last went. She talked about having her first kiss to punk in the middle of Picadilly Circus, or at least I remember it that way. this person gave it a bad review because it is not a memoir like the woeful hack Nick Hornby, and because it was not what the reviewer wanted it to be. As I remember the story it’s more about finding oneself within the music, and the experiences attached to it, rather than, like, a novelized eve in the ILM wanktank. But I guess my true critique shall come later.
The new issue of the FADER, the magazine where I edit, write, and basically live, is on your newsstand shelf tomorrow. It is our icon issue and has Aaliyah on the cover. I spent two months thinking about it and her, to the point where I started having bad dreams after our creative director gave me an unauthorized Aaliyah commemorative DVD that, tastelessly and rather sadistically, opened with actual footage of the fallen plane. But I am extraordinarily proud of how the book turned out. I hope it does her justice. They showed and discussed it on 106 & Park last week. Rocsi pronounced everything right, so that was cool.
We are posting Will Caps’ special two-part exclusive Aaliyah mix on The Fader Dot Com tomorrow so you definitely will want to go and cop that. He spent a lot of time working on it and it’s chronological and very beautiful.
We miss you Baby Girl.

can you spot mark ronson in this clip?! hint: he is wearing a Mark Ecko puffy jacket, word to the homies at complex. at the time he was dating rashida and her sister kidada was aaliyah’s bff so aaliyah called him up and asked him to play “the DJ” in this video. you could have read that in our Aaliyah issue, except we had to cut it for space, so I’m telling you now.

Me and B saw Baby Mama this weekend, which inspired me to troll for Tina Fey clips on SNL. This is the best, and appropriate for mother’s day.

So Baby Mama was really funny – Amy Poehler was brilliant, Steve Martin stole the whole movie as a ponytail-sporting hippie guru/entrepreneur. It was a semi-spoof on the upper class working woman impulse to have a kid at any cost (in this case, $100,000 for a surrogate, which Tina Fey’s character, a VP at a Whole Foods-like organic food company, didn’t blink an eye at). All the obvs feminist issues came up – her doctor regarded her with skepticism (“I don’t like your uterus!”) because of her advanced age (37), her singledom, her lack of fertility, her lack of a man, etc etc etc etc. Then Amy Poehler comes along as the hip-hop loving “white trash” young STefani type (it was set in Philly so I kept imagining the screenwriter totally modeled her after Amanda Blank). Amy is her surrogate, which sets off all sorts of class issues for both of them, the central conceit of it all, and honestly, I think if it hadn’t had such an amazing cast, who understand the importance of pulling off the subtlety of the humor, it might have been super offensive. But coming into it knowing it’s a feminist film, it worked. Also it was fucking hilarious.
I also hope I am never in the situation where I am 37 and single and desperately want a baby. Not because there’s anything wrong with single adoption, but having grown up with a single mom, I know how hard that shit is, even when you’re rich like Fey’s character (um, we weren’t). I’m not tryna do that shit dolo, no fuckin way. And I want my kids to have a dad. A cool dad. With a job. And an arsenal of witty bon mots.
I do not want kids for a long, long, long time! I AM TOO DEEP IN THE CLUBS!

I mean, considering there is a flyer. Sheesh.
Something MAGICAL is about to happen.

First: Sarah came back from Beirut to get her computer fixed. She had files of work on the hard drive she needed and to access it there, they said, it would take maybe two months…. maybe three. So she traveled to NY, to the Apple store. Then she flew back to Beirut and there was chaos. If Abuela was still alive I would say, “Let’s pray for her.” Abuela is dead, I am not religious, and still I do it. For everyone. But S.C. espesh.
Second: I shall take it down many notches. Mariah is on the cover of VIBE. Haven’t read it yet, though you know how I love Mariah, best singer ever. She married Nick Cannon for fake-real. You know when you are dating someone your friends are like… WHAaaaa….whyyy…you are far too good and you’re like fuck you, this is what I’m doing, you don’t know him, he is amazing? Yeah, well, that is that I feel like.. from the friend side…like NICK CANNON? COULDNT YOU JUST HAVE HAD SOME AFFAIR WITH JADAKISS INSTEAD? Only, I think he is MAJORLY WHATEVS, AKA THE KATIE HOLMES OF R&B.
The whole point is, this is one of the best writers I will ever know, and B. MARIAHS ALBUM IS ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD. It’s no emancipation, I think, but ask me in awhile.
THIRD: there is no third.
LOVE,
JS