slipping into madness is good for the sake of comparison.

sorry, everyone, but i'm on a 48-hour showdown with essay revisions. the weekend has been suitably thrilling: today was library, yoga, and supermarket. tomorrow will be yoga, then library until it closes, and then back home for more work. eff. so, until monday, i'll be completely consumed in revising my arguments on jenny holzer, sophie calle, d.h. lawrence & charles bukowski.

normal programming to resume thereafter.....my gay boyfriends zach & corey from my semester abroad in france are coming to visit monday, and meg is (finally!) back in londontown, so debaucherous tomfoolery to be blogged at a flamelikeme near you shortly.

you forget you're dealing with a clinical observer of the human carnival.

so i wouldn't normally post something like this, but...


flarrrrwwwwwwwhgghgllhhhh.


clive. mutha.uckin.owen. in rome. shirtless. it almost hurts.

haunt

these photos were just unearthed by my dad's cousin, from a Brookfield Zoo Chicago outing in 1951.

top photo: my dad is the one in the very middle

bottom photo: that's my gramma in that broad smile & pretty curls !

( i love how the cuffed jeans & the sandal/sock combo are both back in style now, over 50 years later... )

the glass ceiling

methinks i need to head to mayfair to check out this new skincare boutique by Australian label Aesop, its ceiling a beautiful wave of recycled bottles.

i was willing to wait forever, and she was giving him five more minutes.

In this podcast interview with personal hero o' mine, miranda july (thoughtfully sent over by mahboob who knew i would love it), one thing in particular she said struck a chord: "The 20s are about longing," she says. "You're using your desires as a type of engine, and then by your 30s it feels like you're burnt out on those desires and you're finding other reasons , or the real reasons, why you wanted to do those things in the first place."


Lately, I've sort of been feeling nothing but longing. Longing for what in particular, I'm not exactly sure, but I feel fixed in a state of wistfulness.

It's getting warmer, I'm feeling restless, I'll be moving flats soon, I'll be travelling to berlin & greece soon, I'll be starting my dissertation soon, I'll be reunited with meg soon, I'll be seeing my mom again soon (it's been almost 6 months!), maybe I'll be falling in love soon (one can hope for such magical things), but none of that is happening yet. And I have so many creative projects I want to start and so many hopes for this next year in London, and worries about $ and career paths & sacrificing myself to The Man when I'd really just like to make my own hours and write and carve a life out of non-corporate creativity, but....there's rent to pay. And student loans to re-pay. Ah.

Anyhow, give her a listen, it's a lovely little interview (force yourself to continue beyond the frighteningly bad intro song).



The Sound of Young America: Miranda July

to me, having a mustache is like...

...catching a frisbee.

in response to lovely vic's post:
{en espagnol}

he's only crying, like, twice a day now, tops, it's great

i'm not sure how this has possibly escaped my potentially debilitating intranets attention (Ed: kira is currently sitting in her pajamas in front of said intranets. It is 2.15 pm. she has yet to fix herself a real meal (2nd Ed: low-fat peanut butter on an index finger doesn't count?) 1st Ed: No, it doesn't.), but luckily juliet clued me in last nite to the WONDER that is:

Clark & Michael.com

super crush Michael Cera (see post below) and his buddy Clark Duke have created a series of internet videos featuring their quest to get their tv series green-lit.

I'll let Michael Cera review the site himself, from his blog:

"It can bring you and a family member closer together. It can help you do your homework. It can sit and kiss your forehead until you feel better after a long string of athletic non-triumphs."

yeah. all of that and more. go!

ok, one more

because it's just. so. TRUE:



After seeing the surprisingly delightful 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall" last weekend (what the heebeejeebee is up with the shitty reviews for that film?!), much to my aunt's chagrin, I now have a massive crush on Jason Segel. gah. so what if he's slightly overweight and fairly average looking? that smile! that charm! that self-depricating wit! call me smitten.

roses are red, violets are blue

happy happy birthday
to mahboob!

one of my favorite people in the world, my dear best friend juliet, celebrates her 25th today, 5,456 long miles away from me.

Fact: we call each other "mahboob" because when she came to visit me in chicago several summers ago, we drove by a hair salon on Devon Ave., aka Little India, named "MAHBOOB." We had a really fun time experimenting with the endless permutations available to that salon's receptionist:

"Hello, what can mahboob do for you today?"

"What time would you like to come into mahboob?"

"Mahboob is open every day but Mondays."

"You will love your hair after mahboob is through with it."

anyhow, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SWEET BEST FRIEND O' MINE!!!! I LOVE YOU MADLY!!!!

no, YOU have a great day.

My best friend just wrote a highly entertaining post discussing the inanity of the American customer service mechanism and what it's like to work in the service industry.

a choice excerpt:

"yet for the most part, i'm smiling. it can become a reflex, the polite smiling, if you're not careful. at one point i had heard myself saying "have a great day!" so much that i started playing with the delivery, just to ground myself:

"have a great day."
"you have a great day."
"would you do me a favor? have yourself a great day."
(that last one is best delivered in a half-whisper, like a precious secret.)"

~~~

When I moved back to Chicago for the summer last year and got a (horrific) job working the front desk at a posh hotel catering to stupidly rich, affected 20-somethings and even richer, entitled businessmen , it was my first job out of the confines of a restaurant in 2 years. I found myself accidentally suggesting "Enjoy!" to everyone I handed something to, be it a room key, a pen, a map.

Palms outstretched over the high marble-topped desk, I would hand over a duplicate key because the guest had lost the first one. "Enjoy!" I would doltishly twitter. You enjoy that new room key!

At 6 am, when the newspaper delivery woman would collect the room lists from me, I would hand over the document and say "Here you go, enjoy!" like some sort of Pollyanna automaton. Because that woman is going to have a great time dropping USA Today's in front of hundreds of rooms for the next three hours of her life.

And when I moved to London, I realised that America is the only place where it is not only okay, but expected, that people wish others to have a great day. The French and Germans actually take offense to it -- something about strangers telling others what to do with their day and how to live it doesn't appeal to them, they find it an ingratiating American-ism. And the English customer service ethic (fairly oxymoronic) does not include well wishes for the customer's day. You're there to get a service, and you get it, and everyone acknowledges this and goes on their merry way. It's not someone's job to wish the customer anything beyond the confines of the service being doled out. Instead, I more often than not find myself suggesting to the shop keepers that they have a great day "Bye! Thank you! Have a good day/weekend/afternoon!" whilst exiting the shop, which consistently meets a bewildered look followed by a "...thank you?"

I'd stop doing it, since it's obviously not necessary or all that welcome here, but I kind of...can't.

(photos via reinagnoma and chuckbiscuito)

yore.

A few days back I posted some photos from ponygraph and said they looked like my mom at 19. Here she is I think around 22, obviously not the best photo but the only one I have with me in London of her at that age. Awful quality thanks to my extremely shitty camera, but voila:

me mum. i think it's pretty uncanny. click to enlarge and compare to link above.

here is a photo from the 70s of my adorable, sweet, funny, cracked, sarcastic, witty aunt leslie. her middle name is ann. she was mercilessly taunted in grammar school with calls of "lez-bee-an." but it's ok, because she more than made up for it by turning into a major badass and kicking the shit out of pretty much everyone in high school, including fighting on my mother's behalf in her fights. a few years back she got out of her car at a red light and punched a guy in the face who had just cut her off "because that's what jagoffs get when they cut off women driving with their babies in the backseat." here's to you, badass auntie. ::raises glass::

and here is blurry, wee me, on vacation in florida, i think. or maybe hawaii. i want that hair again. that bathing suit, too.

in the morning i call you

London broke out of its long, wintry coma this weekend. it reached 80 degrees, and everyone headed out to one of london's fantastic parks to properly indulge. some friends and i brought ice lollies, hummus, & fruit to hampstead heath and watched crazy cloud formations like this go by:

But some of my favourite moments in london are those days when i set out on my own in comfy shoes and a loose agenda. last week, i walked all over central london, read my book in st. james's park, took myself to Cecil Court to wander thru the rare/used bookshops, the National Portrait Gallery for the first time (sublime building, and what a collection...) and checked out a new, racy John Currin exhibit at a small gallery in Mayfair. I fell in love with his strangely distorted female fairy paintings 4 years ago and this was the first time I finally got to see his work in the oil-painted flesh...his new theme is much more pornographic, but jarringly juxtaposed against his Renaissance style. He even managed to make still lifes of Delftware sexy in context.

walking to hyde park corner...




fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high.

SPOTTED: S. IN THE PARK.

SPOTTED: S. strolling hand in hand through Green Park with her boytoy, circa 1.30 pm.

In case you guys didn't get that, I SAW SIENNA MOTHA-UCKIN' MILLER TODAY! first celebrity sighting since i've lived here, bloody hell, 7 months later! with miss moss, et. al. regularly falling out of every soho nightclub, you'd think i'd have seen one of them by now.


sienna miller and rhys ifans strolled FOUR FEET from my beach blanket to-day. i was lying in the lovely Green Park, getting my tan on (it's 80 degrees here! amaRzing!) and reading margaret atwood's latest short story collection, when i look up and who do i see but the unmistakable pair -- him, tall, platinum blonde, goofy looking but actually kind of a babe, and sienna, just really truly gorgeous, longish straw blonde hair parted center, looking natural and lovely, no makeup or sunglasses, with a cute belted mini-dress. they cut right through the area where i was, and i made eye contact with them briefly and smiled and went back to my book and then of course, as soon as they walked off, i took a photo. it's from behind, because i didn't want to be ONE OF THOSE who gawk so as to make them fully aware of the gawking. when they walked away i looked around and none of the other 7 clusters of people around me had noticed that it was them! i was so googly excited. whee. she's pretty. i like her. Factory Girl blew but she was actually pretty great in it, and in that steve buscemi film, too.

well, anyway, it was a thrilling moment. much better than walking next to madonna & lourdes on the upper east side a few years back.

nostalgia

i can't figure out how to make these one-frame only and larger, but go to ponygraph for more more more.
this looks exactly like my mom at 19.
more balloons !boys in showers. is there anything more heart-wrenchingly lovely? what fantastic framing on this one.
(via my new favourite website, design for mankind)

help me be good tomorrow

look at these whilst listening to cocorosie's noah's ark. like a snowy hushed scandinavian moment, tree branches crackling underfoot. achingly beautiful photos by lina.s

the sight of bridges and balloons...

...makes calm canaries irritable

i love balloons, so much i have a wee red one tattooed on the side of my waist. i think it has something to do with watching le ballon rouge so many times in french class as a kid, the magical notion of following a silent, bobbing, brightly-colored friend around the monochromatic streets of paris all day thrills me.

i know that feeling.


seriously stunning photo round up via smashing magazine.

with nothing under my feet

In love with Chinese artist Li Wei's performance art.




(photo via the guardian)

None of the photos are digitally altered, and are all executed by physical exertion. His aim: to explore those tenuous moments of uncertainty and insecurity we're all capable of, those times with nothing "underneath" us for support. I like the sartorial uniformity, too.