ANTI-SOCIAL HOLIDAY ACTIVITY

Maurice Sendak's Nutcracker is by far the darkest take on the Tchaikovsky ballet. Set in late chi-chi 18th century Germany, starring Seattle's stellar Pacific Northwest Ballet, the production is pure amazingness. From Sendak's rich exotic sets tinged with a gothic air to the technical mastery of the PNB, your Christmas won't be complete until you watch this. You're probably sick of being around your crazy family anywayz.

1 HARD NUT

I know everyone is super excited for Where The Wild Things Are, well you can go ahead and add me to that list. When I was wee, I didn't know much about Maurice Sendak except that I wanted so badly to live in his imaginary worlds. His production design for the Pacific Northwest Ballet's 1986 Nutcracker: The Motion Picture had me obsessed: I watched this movie on the weekly for 3 adolescent years. Using a pallette and imagery straight out of Where The Wild Things Are, Sendak's vision for the E.T. Hoffman classic is given an unsually surreal twist. Peep his set for Act II and feel free to further explore his stunning creations for the ballet.

High-Impact Read

High-Rise is one of the more disturbingly poignant books I have read. A sort of urbanzied Lord of the Flies set within a mega apartment building, I finished it sometime last year and noted J.G. Ballard as a future go-to for when I might need to piss on society and human nature. Some light research on J.G. Ballard revealed that he also wrote Crash, which I assumed was the novel that inspired the Sandra Bullock/Ja Rule film that I didn't see but which sweeped the Oscars a few years ago. Last week, I actually found a copy outside of Strand for $1 and I braced myself for a moving tale of racial tension and maybe(?) a car crash or two.

Wrong. Book. Ballard's Crash is even wilder than High-Rise. As it unfolds, it reveals the twisted inner workings of a man so sexually obsessed with car crashes that he goes as far as deliberately enacting his complex fantasies, masturbating and orgasming upon impact. James Vaughn's victims become mere fetishized players in his high-impact sexual theatre. Combining his perversion with a voyeuristic obsession with celebrities and politicians, Vaughn plans and enacts his grand finale: fatal orgasmic impact with Elizabeth Taylor's limousine.

A cult classic, Crash explores our increasing addiction to technology and the ways in which that addiction has tainted human to human interaction. It's pretty fucked but Ballard's indulgence in the explicit fetishizing of each crash is cold and austere yet somehow effective, bordering on beautiful. A master of bleak social and sexual psychology, he makes it pretty easy to see the sexy in the collision of two walls of aluminum cascading inwards, pushing steering wheels into groins. I really can't do it justice so track down a copy and read it.

EDIT: It was Ludacris in Crash, not Ja Rule. Same person whatevs.

PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE WISH LIST

Hey friends!
I love you guys so much, thanks for being nice. It's been great helping you deal with your problems and helping you pass exams and getting you laid and whatnot. Anyway, some of you missed my birthday in January. Also, I was pretty nice when I didn't oblige anyone with a lame graduation party. A couple of you have offered beds, but to the rest, if you still want to be friends, you might consider giving me a token of your appreciation. So I made this list:

1.) Jean-Paul Goude "Jungle Fever". You can find this on Amazon or at Resurrection. It's not cheap but I'll let you scan copies.


2.) Arthur Elrod orange laquered and snakeskin console. This is at Todd Merrill Antiques in Noho. You get to keep it until I get an apartment but plz don't let people put their drinks down without coasters. JOSH.



3.) Pair of Joseph Andre Motte velvet club chairs. Also at Todd Merril. Hey maybe they'll cut you a deal on the chairs and console! You'll get to sit in the other one while I give you friend therapy!


4.) Oliver People's "Daddy B". Okay, these are at Bergdorf's and I'll only accept them in tortoise.


5.) Opening Ceremony M15 Boot. Hey, maybe that cute salesguy/model Jesse will give you/us his number!



6.) A Morris Louis drip-painting. Come on, you'll have awesome trips in my apartment just looking at this AND you'll feel really chic when you pay for it!


If for some legitimate reason you're a friend-on-a-budget, the following CD will sustain our friendship from being null and void.

OR Smencils. Scented pencils! I'll send you passive-aggressive notes that smell like strawberry-banana!

Thanks guys! <3,me.

Things I Did Not Know

"I think The Hills is the greatest show I have ever seen in my life... It is a modern masterpiece. I think that Adam DeVillo is a mad genius. He creates it and controls it perfectly... I'm holding off on Season 4 right now. I started watching a bit of it, but I'm waiting until the DVD comes out because I want to see it all so beautifully mastered. Even if you download the show there is that irritating MTV logo in the corner. It doesn't work for me that way. It has to be on a big screen with the sound right up. It blows me away...I'm sorry, but whoever invented Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt are just...nothing matches it. I've never see L.A. look more beautiful in a work of art. There are no movies that are as beautiful as that."
- Brett Easton Ellis, Fantastic Man

Summer Reading List

1.) Washington Square Henry James
1.) Washington Square Henry James
1.) Washington Square Henry James
1.) Washington Square Henry James
1.) Washington Square Henry James

My second goal is to successfuly translate an entire issue of Vogue Paris. At the current rate of my progress in Intro to French, this seems less likely.

my. life. question mark.

If I wasn't so lazy and it were not 2am, I would bother to change that title entirely but alas I won't. These past two weeks have been full of Ed Hardy (thank you LA), sunburns, deuche-bag boys, surprise guys, schoolwork overload, a nifty new denim jacket, the occasional joint and sporadic Fran Leibowitz-induced fits of laughter.

What else is new, you ask?

My brother told me today that I have been dressing like an ugly New Kids On The Block member. I replied, "ALRIGHT!"

Ally McBeal is the new Sex and the City.

My hair is getting really long. (For me).


I have been spreading Brett Easton Ellis like California wildfire.

I have amassed an exciting but ultimately useless vinyl collection. I'm just missing the record player.

I am remarkably poor. Great, I have rediscovered my relationship with my flask.

Fingers crossed- meeting David Lynch tomorrow. WIll blog my success.

interesting things

I officially have a problem but am unsure if a cure exists. If my friends are good, one will certainly read this and take action, preferably by cutting up my Visa or simply hiding it. After proudly declaring at a party last night that I would refuse to enter a store for two weeks, I found myself crumbling today. Alex dragged me to Opening Ceremony, where I made a concession that if I was to buy anything, it would have to be a sweater for the simple fact that it is winter and I own only one sweater. However, their collection of sweaters available failed to titilate and I found myself drooling over this John Lawrence Sullivan grey/ivory tweed blazer instead.



The tweed is thick and nubby, giving the jacket an Armani-in-the-80's feel that brought me to boner city. I bought it but I cannot afford it in any way. It's a very good thing that my father just so happened to bring me a care package from home full of enough homemade chili, chicken soup, deli meats and pasta accoutrements to feed me for a month.

Before you write me off as some shopaholic imbacile, I should let it be known that I don't spend all of my money on clothes. Just yesterday I was passing by the Alabaster Bookstore on 4th Avenue where I nabbed a Marcel Proust biography and Less Than Zero for a total of $4. I feed my dilapidated clothing rack and my mind with equal TLC.