Any advice for struggling actors?
Yeah - you'll make it. I just find that the harder you work and the more effort you put into yourself, the better you'll be. Also, the more you're not focused on showbiz and instead focused on life, learning about other people, and keeping your eyes open and trying to be aware of the world.
- jason schwartzman, "Jason Schwartzman, Actor, Shopgirl," gothamist october 21, 2005
posted November 08, 2005 in printhow about that drug habit of yours you think I don't know about?
"I was crossing Third Avenue yesterday and I was coughing so hard I had to stop and barely made it across," a patient told me last week. "I'm really scared I'm getting the avian flu."
I just looked at him. What could I say? He has smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for the last 50 years. He has coughed and wheezed and gasped his way across Third Avenue now for the last 10 years. His emphysema is not going to get any better, but it might stop getting worse if he were to stop smoking. [...]
A few years ago, a young woman waited patiently to be seen in our office after hours. She was a patient of one of my colleagues, but she couldn't wait for their scheduled appointment; she needed to see someone right away.
"I'm worried I have Lyme disease," she said. "I have all the symptoms. I think I need to be treated."
"But you have AIDS," I said.
"I'm tired and weak and I have fevers and sweats. I've lost my appetite. I can't think straight. I'm losing so much weight!"
She had seen a TV news report on Lyme disease, and then she had checked the Internet. All her symptoms were right there.
"But you have AIDS," I said. "And you don't want to take meds. That's why you're feeling so bad."
"I'm really scared about Lyme disease," she said. "I really need to get treated."
"If you want to be scared, how about that untreated AIDS of yours?"
We looked at each other. It was an impasse. The fact that logic was on my side mattered not at all: evidently the real was just a little too real for her. How much better to find another illness to be scared of, obsess over, get treated for, get rid of.
Eventually she coerced my colleague into testing her for Lyme disease and treating her despite negative tests. Then she decided her symptoms might actually be due to a brain tumor, instead. And so it went, until she died of AIDS.
Of four patients I saw in a single hour last week, three announced how scared they were of the avian flu. I reassured them, but there was quite a bit I did not say, and here it is.
I did not say: If you want to be scared, then how about that drug habit of yours you think I don't know about? How about the fact that you are 100 pounds overweight and eat nothing but junk? How about the fact that in a few short months Medicaid is going to stop paying for your very expensive medications and no one knows how just high that Medicare Part D deductible and co-payment are going to be? I did not say: If you want something to be scared of, how about the drug-resistant Klebsiella that is all over this very hospital, an ordinary run-of-the-mill bacterial strain that has become so resistant to so many antibiotics that we've had to resurrect a few we stopped using 30 years ago because they were so toxic.
That Klebsiella is one scary germ. It's in hospitals all over the country, and by now it's probably killed a thousandfold more people than the avian flu.
- ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D., "Scare Yourself Silly, but the Real Terrors Are at Your Feet," new york times October 25, 2005
posted October 26, 2005 in printi never let men touch me
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 8:21 PM
Subject: comment
Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
([email protected]) on Tuesday, October 25, 2005 at 17:20:52
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
thoughts: PLEASE STOP WRITING THINGS TO PEOPLE THAT ARE NOT TRUE. I NEVER DID DRUGS OR HAD SEX W/ STRANGE MEN, I NEVER LET MEN TOUCH ME. I MADE U OUT OF MY LIFE, MYLIFE IS MUCH HAPPIER THAT YOU ARE MY PAST. PLEASE STAY OUT DO NOT SAY OR DO ANYTHING THAT HAS TO DO W/ ME OR MY FAMILY. DO NOT PRAY FOR ME. OR MY MOTHER. KEEP MY GRANDFATHERS NAME OUT OF YOUR MOUTH. BESIDES THAT ISN'T EVEN MY GRANDFATHERS NAME. PLEASE STOP TYPING MY NAME EVERYWHERE!
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posted October 25, 2005 in deliveryoften-overlooked cheapness
Preppies had money, but not necessarily a lot, and they wanted to hang onto what was there, to turn it over to the next generation. Hence their often-overlooked cheapness; in preppy precincts of Connecticut in the 1970's a pair of Lucite salad tongs was a perfectly respectable wedding present. Their curious wardrobes were formed by the same instincts: Madras jackets might and did go out of mainstream fashion but that was no reason to stop wearing them.
And now they're back. It makes sense, I suppose, from a fashion point of view. We just got through the hippie phase and preppy was due to be recycled. The alligator shirts and wood-framed handbags are a pure fashion revival, though, with little reference to the original subculture that spawned them. The proof? I recently typed "Nantucket red" into eBay and got 15 hits. Every pair of pants was from J. Crew.
- CAROL McD. WALLACE, We're All Preppies Now, new york times October 24, 2005
posted October 24, 2005 in printnew favorite song
hard-fi, "hard to beat"
not available on itunes in the u.s. yet. goddammit.
posted October 15, 2005 in musicwhat if all the bleeding hearts
took it on themselves
to make a brand new start.
organs pumpin on their sleeves,
paint murals on the white house
feed the leaders L.S.D
grab your fife and drum,
grab yor gold baton
and let's meet on the lawn,
shut down this hypocrisy.
- tv on the radio, "dry drunk emperor"
posted October 15, 2005 in musicsnicker posted October 10, 2005 in print
tried surfing for the first time today
managed to get up for a few seconds. awesome!
posted September 17, 2005 in deliverycathy drops mad knowledge
Boredom influences everything in fashion.
- CATHY HORYN, "To Stand Out in a Crowd: Don't Shout (Mick Excepted)," new york times September 15, 2005
posted September 16, 2005 in art, printserve the monster
Sponsor me in the AIDS walk and reserve your time to Serve The Monster - 44
You sponsor me and I feed you. If you were thinking of
contributing to the A.I.D.S. walk this year, why don’t you sponsor me
and as a reward I will feed you my monster meat.
Check my pics below. A couple of the Monster and a couple of a bud that has already made his pledge.
All pledges of 100.00 or more will have a 30 min shot at the MONSTER.
For the highest pledge I will honor any request to make your MONSTER COCK FANTASY come true… safely of course..
As usual, I do not cum fast or easy unless you are very very good
and catch me by surprise.… You have to work for it, earn it… Choke you
just a bit.
44 6’ HIV- clean… all results as of today 9/12/05. I just left the
doctor and feel I should walk so that the AIDS walk does not suffer
this year due to the tragedy in New Orleans.
To make your pledge go to the link below. Then shoot me some email and set up a time to cum get your fresh, hot load.
If you can’t get the link below to work. Email and I will send you the link.
Good luck MEN
aidswalklosangeles2005. kintera. org/dearjamie
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- via bj's gay porno-crazed ramblings posted September 14, 2005 in politics, print, sex
Notes From Inside New Orleans
Notes From Inside New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
Friday, September 2, 2005
I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago. I traveled from the apartment I was staying in by boat to a helicopter to a refugee camp. If anyone wants to examine the attitude of federal and state officials towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of the refugee camps.
In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway, thousands of people (at least 90% black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would come through, it would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was going. Once inside (we were told) evacuees would be told where the bus was taking them - Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas, Dallas, or other locations. I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for Arkansas (for example), even people with family and a place to stay in Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge. You had no choice but to go to the shelter in Arkansas. If you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up, they could not come within 17 miles of the camp.
I traveled throughout the camp and spoke to Red Cross workers, Salvation Army workers, National Guard, and state police, and although they were friendly, no one could give me any details on when buses would arrive, how many, where they would go to, or any other information. I spoke to the several teams of journalists nearby, and asked if any of them had been able to get any information from any federal or state officials on any of these questions, and all of them, from Australian tv to local Fox affiliates complained of an unorganized, non-communicative, mess. One cameraman told me “as someone who’s been here in this camp for two days, the only information I can give you is this: get out by nightfall. You don’t want to be here at night.”
There was also no visible attempt by any of those running the camp to set up any sort of transparent and consistent system, for instance a line to get on buses, a way to register contact information or find family members, special needs services for children and infirm, phone services, treatment for possible disease exposure, nor even a single trash can.
To understand the dimensions of this tragedy, its important to look at New Orleans itself. For those who have not lived in New Orleans, you have missed a incredible, glorious, vital, city. A place with a culture and energy unlike anywhere else in the world. A 70% African-American city where resistance to white supremacy has supported a generous, subversive and unique culture of vivid beauty. From jazz, blues and hiphop, to secondlines, Mardi Gras Indians, Parades, Beads, Jazz Funerals, and red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a place of art and music and dance and sexuality and liberation unlike anywhere else in the world.
It is a city of kindness and hospitality, where walking down the block can take two hours because you stop and talk to someone on every porch, and where a community pulls together when someone is in need. It is a city of extended families and social networks filling the gaps left by city, state and federal governments that have abdicated their responsibility for the public welfare. It is a city where someone you walk past on the street not only asks how you are, they wait for an answer.
It is also a city of exploitation and segregation and fear. The city of New Orleans has a population of just over 500,000 and was expecting 300 murders this year, most of them centered on just a few, overwhelmingly black, neighborhoods. Police have been quoted as saying that they don’t need to search out the perpetrators, because usually a few days after a shooting, the attacker is shot in revenge.
There is an atmosphere of intense hostility and distrust between much of Black New Orleans and the N.O. Police Department. In recent months, officers have been accused of everything from drug running to corruption to theft. In separate incidents, two New Orleans police officers were recently charged with rape (while in uniform), and there have been several high profile police killings of unarmed youth, including the murder of Jenard Thomas, which has inspired ongoing weekly protests for several months.
The city has a 40% illiteracy rate, and over 50% of black ninth graders will not graduate in four years. Louisiana spends on average $4,724 per child’s education and ranks 48th in the country for lowest teacher salaries. The equivalent of more than two classrooms of young people drop out of Louisiana schools every day and about 50,000 students are absent from school on any given day. Far too many young black men from New Orleans end up enslaved in Angola Prison, a former slave plantation where inmates still do manual farm labor, and over 90% of inmates eventually die in the prison. It is a city where industry has left, and most remaining jobs are are low-paying, transient, insecure jobs in the service economy.
Race has always been the undercurrent of Louisiana politics. This disaster is one that was constructed out of racism, neglect and incompetence. Hurricane Katrina was the inevitable spark igniting the gasoline of cruelty and corruption. From the neighborhoods left most at risk, to the treatment of the refugees to the the media portrayal of the victims, this disaster is shaped by race.
Louisiana politics is famously corrupt, but with the tragedies of this week our political leaders have defined a new level of incompetence. As hurricane Katrina approached, our Governor urged us to “Pray the hurricane down” to a level two. Trapped in a building two days after the hurricane, we tuned our battery-operated radio into local radio and tv stations, hoping for vital news, and were told that our governor had called for a day of prayer. As rumors and panic began to rule, they was no source of solid dependable information. Tuesday night, politicians and reporters said the water level would rise another 12 feet - instead it stabilized. Rumors spread like wildfire, and the politicians and media only made it worse.
While the rich escaped New Orleans, those with nowhere to go and no way to get there were left behind. Adding salt to the wound, the local and national media have spent the last week demonizing those left behind. As someone that loves New Orleans and the people in it, this is the part of this tragedy that hurts me the most, and it hurts me deeply.
No sane person should classify someone who takes food from indefinitely closed stores in a desperate, starving city as a “looter,” but that's just what the media did over and over again. Sheriffs and politicians talked of having troops protect stores instead of perform rescue operations.
Images of New Orleans’ hurricane-ravaged population were transformed into black, out-of-control, criminals. As if taking a stereo from a store that will clearly be insured against loss is a greater crime than the governmental neglect and incompetence that did billions of dollars of damage and destroyed a city. This media focus is a tactic, just as the eighties focus on “welfare queens” and “super-predators” obscured the simultaneous and much larger crimes of the Savings and Loan scams and mass layoffs, the hyper-exploited people of New Orleans are being used as a scapegoat to cover up much larger crimes.
City, state and national politicians are the real criminals here. Since at least the mid-1800s, its been widely known the danger faced by flooding to New Orleans. The flood of 1927, which, like this week’s events, was more about politics and racism than any kind of natural disaster, illustrated exactly the danger faced. Yet government officials have consistently refused to spend the money to protect this poor, overwhelmingly black, city. While FEMA and others warned of the urgent impending danger to New Orleans and put forward proposals for funding to reinforce and protect the city, the Bush administration, in every year since 2001, has cut or refused to fund New Orleans flood control, and ignored scientists warnings of increased hurricanes as a result of global warming. And, as the dangers rose with the floodlines, the lack of coordinated response dramatized vividly the callous disregard of our elected leaders. The aftermath from the 1927 flood helped shape the elections of both a US President and a Governor, and ushered in the southern populist politics of Huey Long.
In the coming months, billions of dollars will likely flood into New Orleans. This money can either be spent to usher in a “New Deal” for the city, with public investment, creation of stable union jobs, new schools, cultural programs and housing restoration, or the city can be “rebuilt and revitalized” to a shell of its former self, with newer hotels, more casinos, and with chain stores and theme parks replacing the former neighborhoods, cultural centers and corner jazz clubs.
Long before Katrina, New Orleans was hit by a hurricane of poverty, racism, disinvestment, deindustrialization and corruption. Simply the damage from this pre-Katrina hurricane will take billions to repair.
Now that the money is flowing in, and the world’s eyes are focused on Katrina, its vital that progressive-minded people take this opportunity to fight for a rebuilding with justice. New Orleans is a special place, and we need to fight for its rebirth.
Jordan Flaherty is a union organizer and an editor of Left Turn
Magazine (www.leftturn.org). He is not planning on moving out of New Orleans.
Below are some small, grassroots and New Orleans-based resources,
organizations and institutions that will need your support in the coming months.
Social Justice:
jjpl.org
iftheycanlearn.org
nolaps.org
thepeoplesinstitute.org
criticalresistance.org/index.php?name=crno_home
Cultural Resources:
backstreetculturalmuseum.com
ashecac.org
198.66.50.128/gallery
nolahumanrights.org
freewebs.com/ironrail
girlgangproductions.com
Current Info and Resources:
neworleans.craigslist.org/about/help/katrina_cl.html
classmates in biloxi are blogging about hurricane katrina posted August 29, 2005 in print
Gravestones Have Pentagon Slogans
ARLINGTON, Va. -- Unlike earlier wars, nearly all Arlington National Cemetery gravestones for troops killed in Iraq or Afghanistan are inscribed with the slogan-like operation names the Pentagon selected to promote public support for the conflicts.
Families of fallen soldiers and Marines are being told they have the option to have the government-furnished headstones engraved with "Operation Enduring Freedom" or "Operation Iraqi Freedom" at no extra charge, whether they are buried in Arlington or elsewhere. A mock-up shown to many families includes the operation names.
The vast majority of military gravestones from other eras are inscribed with just the basic, required information: name, rank, military branch, date of death and, if applicable, the war and foreign country in which the person served.
Families are supposed to have final approval over what goes on the tombstones. That hasn't always happened.
Nadia and Robert McCaffrey, whose son Patrick was killed in Iraq in June 2004, said "Operation Iraqi Freedom" ended up on his government-supplied headstone in Oceanside, Calif., without family approval.
"I was a little taken aback," Robert McCaffrey said, describing his reaction when he first saw the operation name on Patrick's tombstone. "They certainly didn't ask my wife; they didn't ask me." He said Patrick's widow told him she had not been asked either.
"In one way, I feel it's taking advantage to a small degree," McCaffrey said. "Patrick did not want to be there, that is a definite fact."
The owner of the company that has been making gravestones for Arlington and other national cemeteries for nearly two decades is uncomfortable, too.
"It just seems a little brazen that that's put on stones," said Jeff Martell, owner of Granite Industries of Vermont. "It seems like it might be connected to politics."
- david pace, "Troops' Gravestones Have Pentagon Slogans," washington post august 24, 2005
posted August 25, 2005 in politicson kanye
Kanye’s remarks are making such a seismic impact because no part of the explosion of media images dealing with LGBT people in recent years has come from or been targeted at the Black community. Despite all of the talk about how easily gay people have integrated into pop culture, as Kanye West points out, “the exact opposite word of ‘hip-hop,' I think, is ‘gay’” – which makes it the opposite of a defining part of young, Black life and culture.
Black people must see other Black people confront homophobia, and must see LGBT people as Black people as well, if we are ever going to make real progress shifting attitudes. Kanye, bravely and boldly, has realized this fact. And his testimony couldn’t have come at a more apt time, in the midst of a summer in which we have once again heard startling news about HIV’s rampage among Black gay men – a reality that, in no small part, is driven by the Black community’s failure to embrace and support us.
Kanye opened his story on MTV by talking about his close relationship with his mother, which is captured in a song on his new CD entitled “Hey Mama.” He explained that growing up with his mother meant that he also took on some of her mannerisms. When he got to high school, this fact meant he was often ridiculed for being a “fag.” And, in turn, he became very homophobic.
But when Kanye learned through one of his cousins that another cousin in the family was gay, he began to rethink his stance. "It was kind of like a turning point,” he told MTV VJ Sway, “when I was like, `Yo, this is my cousin. I love him and I've been discriminating against gays.'"
And there it was, the cycle of homophobia broken.
Kanye’s seeing his cousin as gay helped to humanize Black LGBT people in his eyes and prompted him to in turn abandon the sort of knee-jerk attitudes that prevent people like his cousin from being able to come out in the first place. As Kanye so articulately explained in describing the roots of his own homophobia, “If you see something and you don't want to be that because there's such a negative connotation toward it, you try to separate yourself from it so much that it made me homophobic by the time I was through high school. Anybody that was gay I was like, ‘Yo, get away from me.’”
It is often assumed that the Black community is more homophobic than the white gay community. But while there is certainly homophobia in the Black community, the buzz surrounding Kanye’s remarks shows the real issue may be how rarely the topic is actually addressed substantively and humanly.
- kenyon farrow, "Kanye West Rewrites Hip-Hop’s Gay Record," Black AIDS Institute august 22, 2005
posted August 23, 2005 in printtop 5 choices, 8/11/05
1. man date or girl crush? girl crush
2. vince, shane or hal? shane, followed by hal
3. mulder, scully or skinner? skinner all the way
4. e-mail this, printer-friendly, single-page or reprints? single-page
5. cjr or ajr? ajr
top 3 annoyances of 8/9/05
1. misplaced coffee thermos
2. ran out of half-and-half
3. wilford brimley's pronunciation of "dye-uh-BEAT-us"
top 7 things i like that he doesn't
1. eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
2. raisins
3. rachael ray
4. beagles
5. alicia keys
6. jason kidd
7. chicken on the bone
top 5 things bf likes that i don't
1. pimp my ride
2. liver
3. madagascar hissing cockroaches
4. lobster
5. seann william scott
top 5 things my bf and i both dislike
1. meringue
2. merengue
3. emeril
4. the white stripes
5. ugg boots
top 8 things my bf and i both like
1. psylocke
2. age of apocalypse vol. 1
3. gregg araki on his good days (nowhere, mysterious skin)
4. scott bakula
5. wet walnuts
6. bitter greens
7. degrassi: the next generation
8. magic hat no. 9
top 9 hangout movies*
1. high fidelity
2. blue crush
3. ghost world
4. nowhere
5. rules of attraction
6. almost famous
7. heathers
8. clueless
9. darko
*hangout movie: one you view repeatedly just for the sake of spending time with its characters rather than being gripped by the story or wowed by cinematic technique. - Richard Alleva, "About a Boy" commonweal december 5, 2003
posted August 08, 2005 in listtop 4 shows i am campily glad are always on
1. roseanne
2. law & order: special victims unit
3. law & order
4. the west wing
top 5 things noticed in boston suburbia
1. ubiquitous baseball caps
2. ditto re: steak tips
3. softer-edged alt weeklies
4. non-delivering thai restaurants
5. silverfish
through my clothes
japanese girls still tend to sow their wild fashion oats before they settle down with a mate and disappear, if not into the shadows, into a chanel suit. but kawakubo started out making clothes, in the seventies, she said, for a woman "who is not swayed by what her husband thinks." (she was then deep into her black period, and her devotees were known in tokyo as "the crows.") two decades later, and shortly after her own wedding, to adrian joffe—a south african-born student of asian culture ten years her junior, who is the president of comme des garcons international—she told an interview from elle that "one's lifestyle should not be affected by the formality of marriage." [...]
from the beginning of her career, she has insisted that the only way to know her is "through my clothes." her employees, including joffe, treat her with a gingerly deference that seems to be a mixture of awe for her talent and forbearance with her moods. [...]
each of the [guerilla] stores is an ephemeral installation that opens without fanfare and closes after a year. their decorating budgets are less than the price of some handbags at gucci and prada, and original fixtures, including raw cinder block and peeling wallpaper, are left as they are found. brecht might have approved the poetic clothes and the poletarian mise en scene, if not the insurrectionary conceit. "but the word 'guerilla' as rei understands it isn't political," joffe says. "it refers to a small group of like-minded spirits at odds with the majority. she's fascinated by the amish, for example, and the orthodox jews."
- judith thurman, "the misfit: rei kawakubo," new yorker july 4, 2005
posted July 17, 2005 in printdepths of many marvelous moments
billy couldn't read tralfamadorian, of course, but he could at least see how the books were laid out—in brief clumps of symbols separated by stars. billy commented that the clumps might be telegrams.
"exactly," said the voice.
"they are telegrams?"
"there are no telegrams on tralfamadore. but you're right: each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message—describing a situation, a scene. we tralfamadorians read them all at once, not one after the other. there isn't any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. there is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. what we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time."
- sf, p 84
posted July 17, 2005 in print