toe upon toe, a snowing flesh

one-woman waterfall, she wears

her slow descent like a long cape

photos by akif celebi (via debauchette) and akif hakan. akif doubling purely incidental.

life-changing fiction

milla of the girl who married a bear wrote a lovely, witty post on life-changing fiction (an apparently copyrighted phrase -- see her post for the absurd reason as to why). anyhow, i thought i'd share some of the books that have changed my life: the way i look at writing & the world around me. i'd love to hear yours, too.

(mommy's book <3 )





this will be a new installment on this here blog: LIFE-CHANGING WEDNESDAYS. I'll share bits & pieces of the world that have changed my participation in it: life-changing art, music, etc. 

keep passing open windows

images that never fail to make my heart flip: birds in flight, windows, (someone's) grandparents.  he's got it all.

i would be so up for this challenge.

Best idea for an antidote to middle-aged ennui that I've seen (courtesy of kirsten): Looking for a nemesis on Craigslist.

"Trip me when i'm running to catch the BART and occasionally whisper in my ear: 'A-ha, we meet again.' That kind of thing. Keep me on my toes. British accent preferred."

Blast! If only I already lived in SF, I'd be all over this "6-month project with possibility to extend." Any takers??

(image of BART station found here)

juice makes me happy, yes.

last nite's Talk Soup on E! (our standard intellectual evening fare 'round these parts when my eyes have glazed over from a day of dissertation reading) introduced my mother to the wonder that is TANISHA. Now I've never seen a full episode of Bad Girls Club, nor do I really want to, but I DO want to see a full episode of Tanisha. Ten bucks says she gets her own tv show next season. Just LOOK AT THIS MADNESS (if only for those first 30 seconds, pure gold):

In London, Mark & I would watch this clip like 7 times in a row, laughing 'til we cried, so after the Talk Soup roundup and showing my mum this clip, she, too, announced her love for Tanisha. Afterwards, I tried flipping to that Bravo show with Jo & Slade, but that was short-lived as mum announced that she wouldn't be watching any reality show with Jo or anyone else unless Tanisha lived in the house with them. 

living means leaving traces

For all you Chicagoan readers, there's a pretty sweet art show going on the 15th of August. OUTDATED: Polaroid Art Show at Country Club Chicago will be celebrating the last hurrah of the Polaroid (since Polaroid Corp. has announced they'll be discontinuing the production of all instant films). I'd say "see you there," but I'll be in lovely los angeles that evening. 

(photos here and here)

more more more, how d'ya like it, how d'ya like it

a few more postcards from hydra:

leonard cohen's house. everyone on the island has their own (usually boring) leonard cohen story. his ex-wife lives there now, and it's the only house on the island with a cctv camera.

this woman caught an octopus in a plastic bag and proceeded to pulverize the shit out of it on a rock. we watched her beat the octopus for literally 20 minutes: the greek workout.



our sunrise swim.

postcards from the edge

some scenes from my greek working holiday on the magical island of hydra, where i played on-camera host to mum's documentary/travel series. here's hoping to many more years of this gig....

you give love a bad name

A New Zealand judge just made a 9-year old girl a ward of court so that she could change her name from TALULA DOES THE HULA FROM HAWAII, which she, uh, understandably hated. 

Holy eff, who are these people??! Makes Brittany and Kaitlin seem not so bad.

this morning was something.

lovely, surreal silence by elkie vanstiphout, or elle qui reve.

my cracked family

my cracked aunt, mock-eating one of my mother's English Budgies. she explains that he "likes it." this calls to mind a scene from one of my favorite movies (The Ref):

"You call your patients 'whackos'?!"

"Yeah, they, uh...they like it."

my adorable mum and her cute freckled nose.

the new barackobamaisyournewbicycle site

...modified for hipsters this time.

BARACK OBAMA IS OKAY WITH YOUR BICURIOUS PHASE

BARACK OBAMA GAVE YOU HIS EXTRA JUSTICE TICKET

BARACK OBAMA WAS YOUR ROOMMATE IN WILLIAMSBURG

man, these sites totally nail the palpable sense of exorbitant adoration we have for this ManGodPresident. Love the updated hipster sensibility.

it's not sex you're addicted to, it's betrayal

it's been a laaaaaazy week here over at tiniestspark's {chicago} headquarters. i learned how to do The Laze from the mistress of them all, my mum (her blue toes above, next to mine). we have watched about 17 episodes of Six Feet Under in the past 2 days (look who else did, too!), and we show no signs of stopping. we went through the entire 4th season today, one of the most intense seasons of all -- the disappearance of lisa, claire's brief homosexual interlude, david's hijacking, the rise and heartbreaking fall of brenda's relationship with insanely, ridiculously, tummy-churningly beautiful justin theroux:

i fall in love with cinematic characters almost as easily as i do people in real life, and...boy. i feel very strongly for theroux. and his french horn-playing alter-ego, joe. swoon. his parting words to brenda comprise one of the most powerful scenes in the show's history.

my mom's retarded english budgies (birds) were being an incredible nuissance (THEY'RE SO FUCKING LOUD), so we placed them outside her door and left them on the landing for most of the afternoon. don't call PETA on us.

see, she made sure they were okay.

lovely&amazing

One of my favorite young labels, vena cava, has created fall line that is making my heart go all a-flutter. I can't wait to try to re-create the delicate & lovely wimbledon 1930s throwback of the first two, and the pseudo-gothic victorian sweetness of the last two. 

this is pretty, pretty good news.

oh, YEAH. 7th season is on its way to us, everyone. we can rest easy now.

and, my favorite ever scene from curb:

"MY GRANDMOTHER'S BROOCH, WHICH SHE MANAGED TO BRING BACK, FROM THE POGROM, IN RUSSIA, IS GONE, BECAUSE OF YOUR FAT FUCK MANAGER"

True artists are almost the only men who do their work for pleasure

~rodin

by joao araujo

more balloon love on this blog

there's a revolution in the streets, and it's no longer being waged with spray paint cans. 

3-D ONOMATOPOEIAC BALLOON GRAFFITI ART by D. Billy

::love::

das ist der hammer

hello there, woefully neglected blog!

betwixt all the travelling, plus the lack of computer, this blog now has some serious commitment issues. 

but it's ok. i'm back now, all is well -- nay, better than 'well', it's been a fantastic month all around, from germany to greece to london and back home to chicago for a wee summer stretch. i'll post about greece in the coming days, but here are some more photos from berlin.

{this post coming to you via my SHINY SEXY PIECE O' MACBOOK, purchased this morning on michigan avenue, where a line was still forming around the block for iphones, which came out FOUR DAYS AGO OMG.}

posing on my fantasy vehicle, with juan & paula.

the excellent club Watergate, set right on the river, whose bay windows look over a gorgeous old bridge and all the street and building lights reflecting off of the dark water. Around 3.30am, black shades automatically descended over the windows and we wondered why until we took a dancing breather on the terrace and realized, ah, the next day was dawning. we shuffled back inside to dance to some seriously excellent electro-house DJs til 7, hiding from the onslaught of daylight under the colorful LED lights above the dance floor (pictured above).

that guy behind me: "ME, ENGLISH NO VERY GOOD. YOU, DRINK, ME?" 

Outside club Zapata, a bar that turned into a dance party in the late hours. Like many clubs in Berlin, it's housed inside of an artists squatter area with an outdoor sandy beach play-land in its backyard. That was one of my favorite aspects of Berlin -- around every corner was a hidden surprise, a sandy riverside beach bar disco just behind the Berlin Wall, a wee hours playground set just apart from a busy restaurant district. We just had to listen for music and follow the sound to the party, wherever we happened to be in the city. Fantastic.

The Holocaust Tower at the Jewish Museum. You pull a heavy door to enter an incredibly claustrophobic, cement-floored "room" whose stone walls reach upwards and inwards to a tiny, insurmountable sliver of sunlight. There is a grey ladder whose bottom rungs are unreachable, adding to the sense of hopelessness. It's very quiet, and every word echoes powerfully. 

The museum is full of artifacts from the aborted lives of those who were killed in the Holocaust. Here a typewriter, there a silver menorah, chinaware, clothing, letters written from concentration camps. It is eerie and very sad, these items silently waiting behind glass, relics from lives unfinished, with placards explaining their origins like bronze bracelets dug up from ancient civilizations, only they're from not even 70 years ago.

Contemporary Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman created this piece, entitled Fallen Leaves. 10,000 open faces are coarsely cut from iron, which you are supposed to walk over. It is a surprisingly horrible, gut-wrenching feeling, walking over these metal faces, and it took me several minutes to gather up the courage to do so, but finally decided to because I wanted to do justice to the piece by engaging in the full experience the artist intended. The faces are unsteady, and therefore it is a precarious and difficult walk, slowed by the discomfort of walking on such gruesome visages and the shaking of the metal faces, all clinking against each other like so many tinny pleas.

Homosexual Memorial, a several-minute video looped and housed inside a metal structure which depicts several minutes of two men slowly removing each other's clothes and kissing. I like the reflective juxtaposition of the old bloke peering in.