Jun/100
A Tribute To Akon
A few weeks ago, while under intense sleep deprivation and pressure to finish a creative writing final that was sucking out my will to live, I e-mailed my good friend Marco Sparks for assistance. While attempting to write this absolutely terrible screenplay (it was HORRIFIC), eventually the conversation turned to jams. And, then, this happened:
MD: Also, this weird akon song actually has this lyric: "i see the guys tryin to holla/cuz you're independent and you got my attention/can i be your baby father?"
Marco Sparks: Wow. Akon. Just wow. I love that the the woman is independent, which seemingly is what attracts Akon, that and the fact that she is the object of affection for other men as well, but how does he want to appreciate that independence? By saddling that woman with responsibilities.
MD: I mean, honestly, Akon. Let her stay indepedendent! She wants to dance with guys at the club!!!
Sparks: Never mind that wasn't Akon the guy who claimed to be a bigamist? Like, he's just going out recruiting for his harem all the time?
MD: I think so. In his song, "Troublemaker" he talks about how he just likes to enjoy watching models drink and that he's not the kind of guy who will just settle down. He says he won't call her because he's too busy making money. And that he needs to be with someone who can make him feel free. he also says that being with one girl will make the other girls come to him sooner, and that's the thing he is attracted to.
The funniest part of that song is that he says that the woman's father doesn't want her to date him because the father thinks Akon sells drugs. But in 'I want to fuck you' Akon says that his former pedigree is that he used to sell amphetamines. So the woman's father is actually right to be suspicious of Akon's career.
Frankly, I think Akon is more interested in suits and guns than in romance.
Sparks: And again, because I'm a guy with a out of control imagination at times, I just picture Akon's alarm clock going off one morning - he's waking up alone, mind you - and he hops in the shower, hums a little song, then shaves, brushes his teeth, gets dressed, etc. Then he picks out today's gun, cleans it, and goes and hits the grind. The daily grind. Which is grindin' of course.
A girl calls, asks, "Hey Akon, I want (whatever these guys assume a girl actually says that equates to dinner/booty calls/whatever)" and he's like, "What? No! I'm too busy making money!"
Blood diamonds don't buy themselves, you know what I'm saying?
MD: Too busy making paper! Daddy needs new cardigans!
And then Lil Wayne pops out of a cabinet, passed out on Robitussin.
Sparks: Okay, before I watch this, let's have some clarification: Spies in his operation. Like... they're spying on him? Or they're spying for him? And if they're spying for him, why are they on his yacht and not, I don't know, like out in the Middle East? Or in the White House? Or pretending to work for Tony Stark?
MD: They're spying for him. The video really leaves you with more questions than answers. if they're really working so hard, why did they decide to take a break to do a lip dub?
Sparks: I mean, and obviously I can't speak for all members of the intelligence community here, but at some point... you just need to relax. You need to unwind. People are living fake roles, snapping photos of blueprints with tiny little cameras, sticking microfilm up their asses and smuggling it into different countries, and sometimes you just need to get the fuck away from all of that. You need to be on a yacht and you need to be drinking champagne and singing along to bad songs. You're somewhere, I don't know, perhaps the French Riviera? You're just having a great time. You're literally living "I'm On A Boat," and you're praying to God that your yacht doesn't crash into the Kate Moss/Lily Allen yacht.
MD: Yeah, because there ain't no barf bags on this boat and we'd surely need it with those two. I can understand the need to relax. You work hard for your Swarozki crystals and what better way than to pantomime singing? There is clinically no activity that is more relaxing. But, it's in those times... that you need to be on your game. What if they find you ..and make you.. un-paid?
Sparks: Un-paid is not the goal, that's true. And it's really Akon's biggest fear. What if something happens to him someday, some unforeseeable accident, something terrible out of the mists of fate and all of a sudden he can't provide for himself? WHAT IF HE COULDN'T BE STACKING UP ALL THAT PAPER?!?
But you can't worry about that. Not now. Just keep dancing on a boat and drinking champagne and singing along to songs and throwing up over the side. It's just the ocean. Fuck it.
MD: This is where the independent woman referred to in "Troublemaker" comes in.. She can provide for him, which is why he wants to be her baby's father. See, Akon, is tired. All this dealing and rapping is exhausting. He just needs some me time! Maybe a day at the spa? He had to miss out on the recent Young Money trip to the outlet mall. They even went to Outback Steakhouse for dinner!
Sparks: And if there's one thing Akon hates, it's going to Outback by himself. He orders a drink and he tries to hold back the tears. "I want my baby back," he whispers to himself softly. "I want my baby back... ribs!" And his wail of loss and sadness is inhuman.
Mar/100
South By Combination Pizza Hut And Taco Bell
This year was my second South By. And yes, it's annoying to call it that, but guess what, when you start going, that's what you'll call it. The level of jealous hateration was off the charts this year, probably because there were more of us than ever before, and all we could do was send our locations to Twitter. Except I don't do that because I think it's bad form.
I still think SXSW is a magical time, full of delight, wonder and way too much alcohol. I still have a hangover so intense I've barely been able to function these past few days. Thank God I wised up and did my reading on the plane, so I'm actually not behind in my classes at all (the 19 year old me is laughing at the 28 year old me). So, what happened?
Well, thanks to my habit of drinking alone in hotel bars, I met a lovely geeky couple from New Mexico (the lovely Emily Lewis and Jason Nakai) within an hour of my arrival. They took me out drinking with them, where I ended up meeting a bunch of Expression Engine developers (including an EE 'celebrity' Brandon Kelly who actually gave me a fake name when I met him, you know, in case I almost fainted). It makes me laugh to think of all the complaining various bloggers have done about how the conference isn't tech-y enough anymore, since you'll find those people if you just go looking for them. They probably just aren't at the Mashable party.
I spent two loooong nights on the RVIPLounge, that lovely beautiful thing of wonder that makes us happy to be alive and which truly makes my SXSW experience. If you can't find a bar, just hop on the bus. Everyone's a star and everything's free. I'm considering naming my first child Kestrin Pantera (one of the hosts and founders of the lounge) because that's how much I love what she and her man have created. On the second night, Will Forte hopped on the bus and we all sang "I want to know what love is" with him.
As for the rest? I got to meet up with a BravoFan reader, Elisa Kreisinger at Danah Boyd's fantastic keynote (where she called out the casual racism on Twitter and the general cluelessness of tech companies towards privacy concerns), but the only other panels I saw involved friends: Alice Marwick's celebrity panel and my friend (and former KJ) Roger Niner on the karaoke panel. I did think a lot of the content this year was a little too much about branding/marketing. How many times can we discuss the same thing? I'll always be more interested in the social implications of what we're doing on here. All I know is I don't want to be marketed to, and I don't think companies are my "friend."
I also saw Michel Gondry, which was painfully awkward and also: wonderful. I'm not used to being so effusive, but Austin does that to me. Everything is amazing, epic, and all other superlatives. I sat in the sun talking to a local for a few hours while drinking free Sobe drinks, I had dinner with my friend Chelsea from Oberlin, I watched Ana Marie Cox do karaoke, and I sang "Ignition (Remix)" to a mostly empty bus with a broken voice. The stories you tell your grandchildren. Or in my case, my nieces and nephews.
Like I said last year, it IS all the annoying things you hear about and more. The lines are too long, the convention center is too big, and there are douchebags all over the place. But is it worth going to? Yes. I will keep going, if only for the stories and the random friends, and the karaoke in a moving van, and the Tex-Mex. Ohhh, the Tex-Mex.
Dec/091
I Will Not Be Attached To Wackness
Changed the theme on this blog to be this cheesy teenage girl obsessed with Amelie theme. I love it. I kind of fell off the "real blogging" radar, but that's what happens when you get a J-O-B. It's fine, my writing gets edited constantly at this job and it's been nice for my blogger's ego, where you essentially are never taken to task about anything, because even when you are, you just wave that "stop being a hater" flag and the commenter goes away.
So, 2009, you are almost over. I'm not the type to make resolutions. I'm not built for dissapointment, and I am already hard on myself. But I've learned a lot. Leaving San Francisco wasn't the end of the world. Living at home the past 9 months has completely humbled me and I'm a better person for it. And again, moving back home and admitting you're in a shitty spot isn't the end of the world, either. Worst things have happened. Worst things will happen. Sex is not that important (until it is, but pursuing it is a complete waste of time and it just falls in your lap when you don't think it will). Real success is hard to come by and everything is based on connections. I mean, you can say the latter and know it intellectually, but until you start paying attention and seeing it in action, you won't realize how real it is.
I don't feel as if I've had this great year, the way you feel at the end of a wonderful meal or a great night with friends. I feel restless and ready to move on. While living at home has been mostly positive, it's also reminded me of why I left in the first place. This place is stagnant and no one wants to change, not even a little bit. That's why I'm going West for New Year's Eve, to start the new year in the same place so many others before me have started over and pursued their dreams. I also had a great Virgin America code, and an overwhelming need to take a vacation after months of non-stop work, but that big philosophical reason sounds nice, too right?
And oh yeah, about the non-stop work part. I am currently writing three blogs for b5media (and I treat BravoFan like a spoiled princess and give her a lot of attention) as well as working at my job 4 nights a week. I know I could be a generic pageview blogger and not put any care into my celebrity blogs, but all that shit has my name on it and like Real Housewife of Atlanta Kandi Burruss says, I will not be attached to wackness.
So, that's why I've been absent from bitchbuzz and haven't done anything fun like Ignite or In The Flesh recently. I just don't have the mental energy right now to write anymore than I already do. I know writing is easy and that's why we get paid pennies to do it, but my brain hurts.
This is my current favorite song:
So. You Guys. Tell me more about your 2009!
Sep/098
I hate self promotion
But, I guess part of this job is letting other people know what I'm doing. I barely know who reads this (leave a comment if you like, anonymous is fine, I'm genuinely curious if anyone is reading this beside the regulars + people I know IRL) and it is kind of embarassing to have the last post up be a semi-depressing review of a sad television show.
Anyway, let's try to be "professonal" (LOL) and do that thing Real Internet Writers do when they write stuff. Besides all the gossiping I do over at BravoFan, I'm also writing a new b5media blog about celebrity kids called CelebTots. This is a strange blog for me to write, because I hate the whole "baby bump" nonsense, but I'm trying to give it a voice that is my own. I have no clue how to really do outreach for this particular blog, so I'll figure that out. BravoFan's built up a small community because I was able to really write in-depth about some stuff most of the blogs were just lightly glossing over.
What else? I've been offered a part-time job, also writing about television (kind of) but it's with a major corporation and some of the red tape is taking a little bit of time. It'll be a huge relief to have much more consistent income, and doing something that is relevant to all the other stuff I am doing. I love writing about the Internet, but writing about TV is my home. I'm sometimes conflicted about the things that I'm doing, that's it not good enough, that it's not important, especially in the face of so many other people I know who are doing so many cool, creative things. But I do need to remember that it's all a process, and that this will lead to other things.
I wrote a review of SLC Punk for the blog Filmosophy. I went to the MTV Video Music Awards Red Carpet and interviewed some people for another b5media blog, popmusicscene. That was insane and surreal. I met a former TMZ paparazzi dude who was fascinating to talk to (he went on the up and up with one of the big image sites) and my spot on the carpet was smooshed between girls from a teenybopper mag and some guys doing video. That could be a whole other entry, so I'm not going to get derailed. I went to my very first fashion show and wrote about that for bitchbuzz.
Tomorrow night (or I guess tonight) I am doing an Ignite talk. It should be...interesting. I just hope people "get it." It's about the Real Housewives and the lessons I've learned from them. So you know, it is a big fucking joke. This Saturday I am going to the vegan cooking competition, Veggie Conquest, and will be covering them for Vegansaurus. I'm also writing the weekly Top Chef recaps over there.
That's all the action I got for you today. Before I leave you again, I'll give you this gift. I first saw this video last year, and it came back into my life when the woman in it, Beth Crosby, e-mailed me on BravoFan with a link to her Rachel Zoe Project parody video. I poked around her profile and found that same video again, of these two ridiculous Hollywood fauxsalites. I'd love to do something like this with the NYC fauxsalites. Time to go read a bunch of GuestofAGuest for character inspiration!
And now, I give you...Jessica and Hunter:
Aug/090
Why I’m Totally Obsessed With Pulling
I recently watched all of the BBC series, Pulling (which yes I read after the glowing posts on both Jezebel and The Awl, whatever, they usually have excellent taste) and if there was ever a Right Time and a Right Place for a TV show, this was it. If Sex and The City is meant to be idealized, a funny, it'll all work out in the end, version of single life, Pulling is the total opposite. It is the grim reality. Things don't always work out, and many things, maybe even most things don't have a lesson or a neat little pun-filled sentence to wrap it all up.
I appreciated that most of all. Too often, stories about single people try to connect everything, as if every failed relationship was some kind of pieces of a puzzle. Most of the time, we fuck up and get involved in things we shouldn't because we're lonely, because we're tired of trying to have fun, as every coupled person advises. Just go out and have fun, they always say. Oh, if only it was so easy. And I won't deny, there's still fun to be had, but fuck if sometimes I just want someone where you don't have to try.
But, this isn't about me. This is about Pulling and how the show does a brilliant job of showing that desperation, of wanting your life to be more, but not knowing what to do, or realizing that maybe your life will never be more. The main character Donna leaves her fiancee but spends most of the series two seasons relieved he wants her back or frustrated when he starts to move on. You don't want her to get back with him, you know once she gets what she wants, she'll just be bored again. When she temporarily dates someone else, she ruins it with her insecurity about his yuppie friends, preferring the comfort of sitting on the couch with her old boyfriend eating junk food and watching bad movies. She has a one night stand, calls him again and then forces herself to get drunk in her kitchen when she doesn't want to have sex with him. It doesn't frame the sex we have in terms of another notch as you get closer to the goal of Husband (that Sex and the City did) and it doesn't frame it as "empowering." It's complicated; everyone has needs and everyone tries to get them met, to varying degrees. This is the appeal of the show, it doesn't make its characters learn anything for the sake of the TV happy ending. It just is; it just exists.
Or rather, it used to exist. The BBC canceled Pulling last year and the show ended with a one-hour special that aired in May of this year. Its star, Sharon Horgan, who plays Donna appears just as funny in person. And its no wonder she can pull off portraying that slow drudgery: she attributes her success to starting late and wasting her 20s. Like some other late blooming writers you may know blew 6 years of their 20s on shitty office jobs and then proceeded to blow a bit more time not thinking things through. I'm trying to catch up, though. Maybe one day I'll have my very own version of Pulling.
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Aug/090
24 Hour Defcon Party People
When we last left our sordid Vegas tale, I had an insane day which resulted me in me not actually arriving in Vegas until 11pm, knowing I would have to leave 24 hours later. Other, more rational people, would have turned around and returned home, but by the middle of the afternoon, and with the gate agents working hard at getting rid of the enormous standby list that had accumulated after they cancelled the second flight of the day, I decided to continue and put myself on list after list, along with all the other freeloaders. I finally made it on the 9:30 flight, which didn't leave until a whole hour later because the pilots were flying in another plane and were late. I held my breath until the plane door was closed and they had no choice but to fly us all to Las Vegas. And fly us they did, eventually I found myself at the MGM Grand, reunited with my ladiez and in search of Red Bull on a drip.
Eventually, through some Facebook connections, we found ourselves at something called the "ninja party" (held in honor of Defcon, a hacker's conference) in the garden of the truly amazing Artisan Hotel, which our host kept calling "The Artesian" and which our cab driver ended up almost not being able to find and turning her meter off when we drove too far and found ourselves by the Spearmint Rhino. In the "catacombs" of the ninja party, I made a friend. A friend who nervously gave me story ideas once he found out I was a writer but would later make me swear that I would keep his identity a secret.
I had no idea that previous writers covering Defcon had attempted to infiltrate and were then literally chased out of the con. But, having read 2600 in my teens and dabbled in some hacker-esque communities in the late 90s on IRC, I knew the drill and if there's one group of people you don't want to piss off, it's anyone in the hacker community. I've been dabbling on the faux geek side of the Internet for a long time now, but I ain't no fool.
I'm not working this, I explained. If I were working, I would have at least gone to a talk or two and not just crashed a party. He seemed genuinely interested in me getting my story, any story, though. When I came back from the ladies room, he asked me "Did you see anything in there? Was there anything interesting?" and I had to say no. Just a bunch of gothed out women, a sea of black t-shirts, a pissed off looking night auditor and an unplugged ATM. He let me know when security celebrity Dan Kaminsky had shown up and gave me all the dirt on how he had recently been hacked because of his ridiculously easy to figure out passwords. Later on, as we sat at the Riviera bar at 3 in the morning, I asked him to point out anyone else particularly high up or interesting. "Just a bunch of nobodies." When his more well-connected friend showed up to take us to the Double Down Salloon, he said "Talk to him. He knows everyone."
I mention all of these things because he was the perfect tour guide into this world, and what's funny about this person being so hell-bent on me getting an article out of the evening we spent and of me keeping him anonymous is that now I can't find him anywhere. And that is such a strange feeling from the usual aftermath of the usual conferences I go to, where I am able to piece together someone's entire life with a simple Google search. Here, with my anonymous source, it's as if I invented him and he has melted into the ether. Was I there? Was he there? I have the foursquare check in to prove that I was indeed at a bar at 5 am on Sunday August 2. I have the Riviera matches I stole. I can remember his website address ending with a .net. But I can't find him anywhere, or any of the other people that were around us, the other friends I made, the guy who made fun of my pink iPhone cover, the other guy who was from New Jersey.
I've long been obsessed with the idea that nothing is anonymous and that nothing is private and that everything is being tracked somewhere. It's strange and uncomfortable to not have a social media reminder of someone else's existence. This is what life has become.
I'll end with this, on an unrelated note: I loved my slice of defcon (and will probably go for real next year), feeling truly out of my league, and reminding us that Internet culture has not been completely taken over by marketers and cheerleaders, there is still room for fake names, and green text on black backgrounds.
Aug/091
I’m A Kid, That’s My Job
I'm very sad about the passing of John Hughes. It makes me mad that this comes fresh off the tails of the Michael Jackson hysteria, because now everyone's all cynical about talking celebrity death on the Internet and has already moved. John Hughes' work meant so much more to me, in that way that you forget how much it impacted you until you really think about where something comes from and you realize it was a scene you saw in a movie or a line from one of his films. That's how much it was a part of you, you just always assumed it was there.
And who will replace him? Who will capture that kind of normalcy, that innocence? Does it even exist anymore? I do know that his movies framed my ideas of what love was, of being an outsider, of what it felt like to yearn for something you couldn't have, of staying friends with them anyway.
That being said, my favorite John Hughes movie, probably because of my age when the movie came out, is Uncle Buck with John Candy. I watched it over and over again, like kids do.
And my second favorite, which I know he only wrote, is Some Kind Of Wonderful. What's great is even Lea Thompson's "hot girl" character has layers to her. A similar movie made today would have just turned her into nothing but a sex object, of that I am sure. But, Watts! Watts was so cool. She was kind of an asshole, but we rooted for her, we wanted her to win, we knew she was the right one.
So, here's to you, John Hughes. Here's to teenage crushes, heartbreak, laughs, Chicago, high school outsiders, detention, forgotten birthdays, breakfast clubs, and hope that people continue watching your movies. I know I will be.
Aug/090
From The Draft Folder: No Sleep Till Vegas
Wrote this while in the Dallas Airport, on what ended up being a complete and utter clusterfuck of a day:
I've been awake so long that, while laying on the blue & brown carpeting of the A Terminal of Dallas Fort Worth Airport, while dozing off to the non-stop CNN, I thought the voice coming from the screen was gibberish. She just had a strong accent. And part of the show, a special on the Middle East, was in Arabic. I woke up 20 minutes later to hear a painstakingly detailed interview by a supposed protege of Michael Jackson.
still life with suitcase, DFW terminal A
The air conditioning at full blast and me in my typical complete incompetence at dressing with contingency plans, in a knee-length dress and no tights, was forced to take out my nightgown and wrap it around my legs, while I put both my arms inside my cardigan to stop from constantly shivering. I tried laying on the airport provided cots (too obsessed with falling and breaking a 27 year old hip), I tried putting my sunglasses on, I tried burying my head in the crook of my arm. And nothing, no sleep.
my sleeping bag solution/nightgown.
On the flight here, instead of napping, I listened to David Cross, Shut Up You Fucking Baby, which I've heard dozens of times and tried to dissect his tone. Because of my standby status, I was forced into the middle seat, which as an experienced traveler, I never, ever get, and spied on my neighbors: skinny Asian guy to my left who slept for most of the way, and then in the last hour, pulled out a big DSLR camera and meticulously looked at all his photos. It was obvious he was trying to hide what he was looking at at certain points in the roll, which of course made me crazy with curiousity. At one point, I glanced and he was watching what appeared to be a cock fighting video.
That was written at 4.18 am. I didn't make it to Vegas until 11.00 pm the next night and didn't get to sleep until (I'm guessing here) 7 or 8 am, fueled by Red Bull, whiskey/cokes & something called "Ass Juice." More on all of those amazing things later.
don't forget your clothing, ladies! i know you sluts are always getting naked in the bathroom at airpors.
Jul/090
Break It Down Again
I have been obsessively listening to Tears for Fears Break It Down Again, the way I obsessively listen to anything when I am troubled. And right now, I am deeply troubled. But, when have I not been? Chronic depression means more wasted time than normal, more paralysis, more fear. I thought all my setbacks were making me stronger, but instead they are just doing the opposite: they're making me cower and all the what-ifs that go through my head are becoming more and more elaborate.
Junot Diaz wrote a story in his first collection called Aguantando, which means putting up with it, which is a Dominican way of life if I've ever seen one. That's what we do in my house: you put up with it, you live with it. In my family, this means hoarding medicines until you really "need" them and never expressing any displeasure because don't you know how lucky you have it?
You, with your college education, lo aguanta in your own way: you repeat all the self-help maxims, follow all the new-age tricks: cut out sugar, cut out alcohol, relax, take a deep breath, make your fucking gratitude list, act like the chemical imbalance in your brain is something you can help and something you can fix. Pain is life, la vida es dura, life is full of suffering, in any language, in any religion, all this equals: put up or shut up.
And shut up I do, until it rises and curdles, like spoiled milk in coffee, till I can't ignore it, till it's all I can think about. At these moments, I think about my depression like someone I have to run off the road, knowing that at any point, it's just going to re-start and chase me back down until it catches me again. It's my lurker, ready to strike at any time.