spring did not happen this year.

I want to wear this everyday (if I moved to a cooler climate). it is my exact color palette. seriously considering getting my hands on a pair of those slingbacks.

"Please Vote For Me" (2007) dir. Weijun Chen

perhaps a microcosm of people's perception of democracy and the voting process through the eyes of a group of Chinese third-graders.

by the way, I found this via a Wholphin dvd set, just as a personal note to myself and any other interested people to check out the rest of those jawns.

ULTRA 10

I wonder if I could do something like this.

A 10-piece wardrobe project for one year.

But, in order to further project the idea ofminimalist living, I'd have to get rid of all of my other clothes. That's something that was off for me about the Uniform Project. Even though the same dress provided the basis of her outfits for a whole year, she wore different clothes, shoes, and accessories every day. I think I read that those were all donated but I don't know about that..

Anyway, it's definitely something to consider.

Green Porno

I love her.

Melancholia

this looks kind of interesting. it is written and directed by Lars von Trier, who also did Dancer in the Dark with Bjork.

Marianne... Renoir

illustration by ree*rosee

Pierrot Le Fou is my favorite Godard film for a number of reasons, but let's talk about Anna Karina's clothes. for someone who was on the run, she sure had some good duds. I really enjoy this illustration by ree*rosee (who also does a bunch of other fashion illustrations with references to cinema!) as a color palette for the summer.

a title from my list of books to read:
Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in the South Asian Diaspora by Junaid Rana

might I direct you here to read an excellent interview with the author about the politicization of the Muslim body.

and related to this, threadbared also posted a link to photographs by Shadi Ghadirian that I think are fantastic.

my first thought today was the possibility of my being a masochist.

are you affected by self-defeating personality disorder?
do you:

1. choose people and situations that lead to disappointment, failure, or mistreatment even when better options are clearly available
2. reject or render ineffective the attempts of others to help him or her
3. following positive personal events (e.g., new achievement), respond with depression, guilt, or a behavior that produces pain (e.g., an accident)
4. incite angry or rejecting responses from others and then feels hurt, defeated, or humiliated (e.g., makes fun of spouse in public, provoking an angry retort, then feels devastated)
5. reject opportunities for pleasure, or is reluctant to acknowledge enjoying himself or herself (despite having adequate social skills and the capacity for pleasure)
6. fail to accomplish tasks crucial to his or her personal objectives despite demonstrated ability to do so, e.g., helps fellow students write papers, but is unable to write his or her own
7. is uninterested in or rejects people who consistently treat him or her well, e.g., is unattracted to caring sexual partners
8. engage in excessive self-sacrifice that is unsolicited by the intended recipients of the sacrifice

I am developing more of an interest in personality and emotional disorders, and with the upcoming graduation I will have a lot more time on my hands to do some reading.. so if you have any suggestions, let me know. actually, let's make this a call for any good reads/music/blogs/events/cuisines/adult classes/hair braiding techniques/whateva.

... yeah right!

a return to sunday thoughts, due to popular demand

nights and weekends (watch)

saudade (read)




these explain everything.

YES

strawberry shortcakes (2006)

Good Timing

This is an excerpt from my journal that I wrote on April 18, 2010, 22:43:

I should be 'working myself to the bone' right now but I just re-re-re-re-etc-watched The Science of Sleep again and I just realized that I am Stephane Miroux. maybe you're really fucked when you are at the point of reading IMDB discussion boards for life advice but this one 'really spoke to me.' from thegrue:

[I think the Science of Sleep is about being let down and the realities of the search for love and meaning in life... it's about building up images of things and people in your mind only to set yourself up for rejection. Stephane does this with everything in his life... he trusts his own mind instead of what he sees in front of him and he keeps getting let down by the reality of situations. whether it's with his job (which he dreams a certain way but in reality is nothing like what he wants) or his love life.

Stephane is originally more interested in Zoe but finds himself having to compromise and go for Stephanie because he thinks she is more interested in him. then he starts to convince himself that Stephanie is really the right one, building up this image of her in his head as somebody who is much more creative, deep, and in need of encouragement/stable love than she really is... and then he's consistently let down by her the more he learns about her... and the more he starts to realize that he was never so much in love with the actual Stephanie than the one he had built up in his mind. then that last scene, he becomes defensive and childish because he wants to place all his bitterness on Stephanie for the tricks his own mind played on him. I took the last dream sequence as his one last attempt to dream up what would be the perfect ending for the relationship he had wanted but wasn't meant to be.

I think one of the reasons why Science of Sleep didn't get better reviews when it opened was that people were fooled by the dream sequences and the style into expecting a flowery and dreamlike movie, when in reality the message of the movie is really rather realistic and more depressing than anything.]

Speculation says that the Science of Sleep is somewhat autobiographical for Michel Gondry. how does one feel like this and channel it into something so beautiful and so comprehensible? I always feel so crazy and like no one could possibly like me if they knew this side of me. you empathize with Stephane though. I guess pain makes very good material for art. and pain in the very fit form of Gael Garcia Bernal doesn't hurt either.



and now I'm writing this part on may 5, 2011, 3:19: it is funny and tragic that one year later I have landed at the same exact spot. I have not been at this spot the entire year, but perhaps just half of it. happy anniversary, feelings. you can go fuck yourself now.

It's that time of year again..

sun is shining, flowers in bloom, love in the air, and CULTURAL APPROPRIATION OF "OTHERS" seem to be some kind of contagion, particularly in warm weather. It is of great interest to me how brands like Free People and Anthropologie keep bringing back that "Indian Summer" theme every year (both Native American and from India). The most recent Anthropologie catalogue is set in India.




For most fashion catalogues of this variety, the models get to travel to different countries to model the brand's clothes. In every image, they seem to use the background of native people as props [appropriation] to further emphasize the tallness and whiteness of the main model. It is a bit unsettling to me. What exactly do these clothes have to do with India? Furthermore, the company and its advertisements seem to promote a kind of well-rounded and conscious lifestyle (the Anthropologie woman can look chic even while travelling in a third world country!), but there is never any semblance of interaction with the native people, so what exactly is the point of having them in the photo?

I'm not saying that fashion has to be a political thing or that you can't wear clothes that don't "belong" to your culture. It's iffy territory, I think because clothing as something that you can change in and out of so easily is not necessarily considered a very vital part of cultural identity, outside the realm of religious or ritual regalia (even this is not altogether recognized, as evidenced by the number of hipster heads adorned by Native American headdresses at summer music festivals). Personally, I think it is really dumb when white people wear dreads, for instance, or when they wear a bindi on their forehead or something like that. It's great that you are interested in other people's cultures but for something that has more cultural and historical significance, you better have a better reason than "it looks cool." I know that in the case of garments like the keffiyeh, harem pants, and even fabric that have used batik dyeing, people have appropriated it so much to the point that we don't even think about its origin, but that is the very root of the issue.

I might have posted about this before, but Yellow Apparel: When the Coolie Becomes Cool is an excellent film about this very topic. Look, I'll even embed it for you.

yellow apparel: when the coolie becomes cool from Yellow Apparel on Vimeo.