"My heart is like a marching band, I'm a fan in the stands...."

I never grow old of seeing new talent and right now, I'm honored to say that I'm surrounded by it. There are so many people that I come in contact with that are just ridiculously creative and who are obviously going places (or at least going super hard trying to). And in the middle of it all is me, either silently or obnoxiously rooting (sp?) for my fellow create-my-own-path'ers.

Here's a few:

Cash

Her name says it all. The girls' about her paper. Biology major/two job worker/aspiring model.  She invited lil 'ol me to watch her on her first shoot with this BOSSY (and I do mean bossy) photographer Anthony Parmalee about a week ago. Honey killed. I can't wait to watch her career grow. Whichever one she chooses to roll with.

Alex

Mix equal parts Spanish blood + Marilyn Manson + bass guitar +Brooklyn pride, then sprinkle a little MGMT on top and you have Alex (aka Long Hair, Don't Care) of the Positive View. He's another dope kid I've met since I've been here.  He and his bandmates are like the cool kid version of like the Jonas Brothers or something. Mad teeny bopper bitches are gonna fall in love with them soon. I got to see them in action at their first show and I was so proud. I had a blast.

Asia

When I first got here, and I was working at that job that mad me suicidal, I met Asia.  She was like that cool older chick in high school that I always aspired to be like in a way.  I just thought she was the dopest of the dope (for lack of better words). She had a natural fro-hawk, a FIT education, a serious boyfriend she was madly in love with  and a Brooklyn toughness about her that made people think twice before saying some slick shit about her.  And on top of that, she had an online boutique. OMGeezers.  I thought I was going to talk her head off about (then named) Purple Chocolate. She specialized in knit and crochet accessories. When our work schedule started to interfere with her ability to complete orders, she considered closing the store and I nearly had a meltdown.  Thank God, she didn't do it. Instead, she quit the bullshit job (I, right along with her) and revamped the etsy shop. It is now called Hooks and Halo's and she added jewelry to the store as well. Check it out and support this handmade line of goods : http://www.etsy.com/shop/HooksandHalos?ref=pr_shop_more

I'm sure I'm leaving out people but,...I'm tired. It's after midnight and I gots shit to do in the AM. Part two coming soon though.

"I...am the one with the brightest hair,..."

I used to say that when I grew old, I'd be one cool ass grandma. I imagined I'd have a shitload of grandkids and I'd spend my retirement days hanging out with them in boho dresses and pink dreads.  Well, I just saw this chick the other day in Soho with these bright red/fuschia dreads that are seriously making me want to get a head start on my future look.

"Me, I'm a cre-a-tor"

One of my favorite things about this city is the random little gems you find unexpectedly while doing your normal routine stuff.  As usual, I was perusing through Soho on some other shit and had to take a breather on the steps of a storefront. When I looked up, this amazing street art was staring back at me. We locked glares for a good five solid minutes. 

There was no salesperson (within eyesight) around the art and there were no people hovering around to buy stuff either. So I just stared.

And stared.

And stared.

Long story short, I finally saw a guy appear out of thin air when this impeccably dressed foreign woman started inquiring about a painting of the Pink Panther. I wanted so badly to just grow some balls and start talking to the dude. But, of course, I didn't....yet.

 I eventually got up enough courage to ask the man if it was okay for me to take pics of the artwork. He told me it wasn't even his shit and when I started taking pics, the guy whose shit it actually was came up to me and started talking. I told him I was a new blogger and I could see his interest in my story plummet so I quickly shit the fuck up, got my pics and found a new place to sit.

The artist said he uses alot of mixed media in his pieces and absolutely no stencils.  Ever.  Then he glided away on his skateboard. Something like a boss, right? Fuck, I wish I were an artist.  He can be reached at ohwhenjones@gmail.com for more information.



..."Judas is the demon I cling to"

So the world was supposed to end on Saturday. Obviously it didn't.

I must say, I feel like at least a little bit of my world ended though. But in a good way. More to come on that later but...

I finally found the legendary Trash and Vaudeville on Saturday.  St. Marks Place really resusitated my love for this city.

Smile (for Keisha)

If there are two things that I almost never do, it would have to be 1) cooking and 2) crying. Yet somehow I managed to end up doing both at the same time....

The sister of my best friend lost her battle against sickle cell this past weekend and it's been hitting me in small sporadic doses.  Utter disbelief doesn't even begin to describe the way I'm feeling right now.  She hadn't even hit 35 yet. And she was a mom. 

They come from a big, very close family and as you can imagine, everyone has been taking it really hard. My friend is the one who usually knows just the right shit to say to someone when they're hurting. She's so good with 'being there' and consoling people. To see her as the person who could use some comforting is...weird. I couldn't take it. Just knowing my friend's hurting so badly and I'm a million miles away just hurts. Our other best friends are there with her, as well as her family so I know she's getting all the comfort she needs, but still.

For as long as I've known her, Keisha's been in and out of the hospital from her sickness. Doctor's didn't expect for her to have too much of a life, it seems.  Of course they were wrong.  She managed to complete college, become a nurse, get married and have TWO children. They tried to say she couldn't have one. She fought hard. She fought so damn hard that I just believed she couldn't be beat. She was hospitalized routinely, especially around holidays and birthdays which sucked because hers was on Valentine's Day. But she always came back.

The most memorable thing about her had to be her laugh. She was one of those people who was ALWAYS happy. Like, stupid happy for no reason at all. Always joking and smiling. Why her? There's plenty of miserable non-smilers that the world could do without (sorry). Why did we have to lose a person that brought light into people's lives? She was such a boss for being able to carry on a normal, successful life despite having an illness that has probably crippled others from doing the same. Her story screams inspiration. It screams strength. It screams empowerment. We need her here to share that story and help others.  Then again, I think she'll be more effective doing that as the angel I'm sure she is :)


Rest In Peace, beautiful

Eighteenth NYC

Apparently someone got the memo that not all girls aim to dress like whores in the summer.  Eighteenth NYC is what I've been looking for but have yet to find until now: easy-going, lightweight shit I can rock with anything. Really dope for making clothes that are simple yet make a statement same time. And it's all in the $100- 200 price range

"Baby I got a plan, runaway fast as you can"

Yesterday was pretty boss.


I used to volunteer at the Atlanta Children's Shelter when I lived there and I loved the experience. Since then I have been looking for a similar opp to be a part of right now.  It seemed as if alot of the volunteer opportunities that I wanted to be a part of had a shitload of hoops to jump through before you could actually help someone. That, or they were only interested in your money and not your time. So when I finally found out about Stand Up For Kids, I was stoked. They are a nonprofit that provide resources to homeless youth across the country. I said I would definitely get involved with them because it seemed like their only intention was to help. Period.

About two weeks ago I recieved an email from them announcing an orientation type of meeting for interested volunteers so I jumped right on it.  I learned a lot about the organization and really felt some kind of connection and a sense of sincerity on behalf of the administrators of the meeting.  I was sold pretty easily. So when I recieved a text this week about doing some outreach, I was totally down.

Yesterday me and a couple of volunteers met in the park at Union Square to try to get the name of the organization out and possibly get information from the homeless there on where to find more kids.  We passed out flyers, cards, clothes and food to the homeless people that were scattered around the park and listened to their stories.  It was a mild experience being that it was around 10 am but it was still a lot to take in and think about.

There were mostly adult homeless people there and they told us that alot of the kids usually live 'underground' and don't come out until after midnite. I gathered that the kids probably tried to remain as invisible as society wished they actually were. When I went to see Kelly Cutrone the other day she randomly let off about how nonchalantly we ignore the homeless and dismiss them as either drug addicts or mental patients when often time, they are regualr people who fell on hard times. Alot of the young ones are leaving fucked up situations at home only to move on to even more fucked up situations on the streets. Its a lose/lose for alot of these kids.

I overheard another volunteer talking to a kid who wasn't homeless but apparently had a homeless friend who must have had issues staying in the shelters and was now moving from couch to couch.  It was a reality check for me. Homeless is a very broad term. It doesn't just mean that a person sleeps on the train or on park benches. You have some homeless kids who just 'spend the night' at a different house every night. You also have the 'surviving' homeless, like me in a way,  who are only one paycheck away from homeless.  Its crazy because most people feel like they are too loved, too smart or too whatever else to end up like that but you never know.

The older homeless people at the park also told us where we would most likely find homeless youth and that we need not go without the company of a man.  At first, I was thinking, Dude, don't play this sexist bullshit with me, but the man that was most adamant about it looked like one bad ass motherfucker. I figured he must know what the hell he's talking about, so I left it alone despite feeling very much like I'd eff somebody up if they even tried... 

There was this kid there (not a homeless one) that was filming this outing for a school project he was doing on homelessness in NYC. He asked me what made me want to do it and all I could manage to muster is 'I don't know'. That seems to be my answer to everything these days but its the truth. I don't know. I guess it gives me peace knowing that I am trying to be a part of the solution and not the problem.  Doing stuff like this also helps me keep things in perspective. It helps me remember the things that actually matter in life when I get absorbed in my own little superficial shit from time to time.




http://www.facebook.com/SUFKNY
newyork@standupforkids.org
 

"...and I might see you in my nightmare"

I'm giving up on giving up on boys. I had planned on bannishing the distraction-from-my-mission-causing asswads from my mental but I am failing epic-ly. And I hate it. I hate it so much that I had to blog about it. And I hate that I am about to dedicate yet another post to this bullshit exhausted ass topic. #thatsall

lol.

I've been listening to "See You In My Nightmares" by Kanye and Lil Wayne pretty heavy lately and .....Gosh, I'm such a fucking basket case. You ever try to make yourself NOT like someone? Shits harder than the SAT's.

I mean, let's back this up for a second. I really don't even think I like this jackass. What the hell does like entail exactly, anyways?  I mean, how can you like a person you don't even know like that? Right? Impossible. Maybe I like what I think he is. And what do I  think he is? Fucking awesome I don't know. Right now he is my fucking nightmare. I hate him. I need his head on a platter.

Uggghhhhhhhh.

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck

And here I am trying to break up with someone I never even dated. I need a shrink. I'm irreparably deranged. And this is why I hate it when I like someone. I like being romantically numb, like Gucci Mane says he is :). This shit is NOT in the game plan. Liking someone is not allowed on this newyorkcitymission. That wasn't on the itinerary. So what shall I do? I am going to commit every fraction of my existence to deleting this 'situation' from my memory. I have too much real shit on my agenda to be liking someone right now :)

excuses, excuses.

I wish Kanye was my friend in real life.

"Okay I'm back up on my grind
You do you and I'm just gon' do mine
You do you cause I'm just gon' be fine
O.kay I got you out my mind
And the night is young
The drinks is cold

The stars is out

I'm ready to go"

 

"I was a lil different, I didn't do what the fast girls dooo..."

   I think I'm an alien. Real shit. I think I come from another planet or something. I have always felt different but after this conversation that I had last night, I think I'm another species altogether.

   Somehow I ended up engulfed in a conversation about girls (broad, I know) and basically how horrible they/we are. This conversation consisted of three guys, a twenty year old girl and myself. From the stories I heard from these guys about sorry-excuses-for-women, I was kinda like, Damn! Me, nor any of my besties are anything like this idea that they have of ALL women. But as I began reflecting, I could actually understand why they would find such a broad ass generalization like that to be true. There ARE alot of douchebag girls out there. I'm no saint, and I definitely have doucher capabilities in certain situations, but I'm not as bad as they made girls out to be.

   All the talk of girls being sneaky and envious just made me feel some type of way. Perhaps it's because I found it to be partially true, and that bothered me. And at the same time, I was reassured of how dope me and mine are for not being stereotypical assholes. I always thought we were a different breed but I kind of forget from time to time.  It isn't until someone is astonished by the fact that my "price" (don't ask) is a billion dollars minimum that I remember just how different I am. It isn't until I naturally shy away from slut-talk and have a room full of practical strangers staring at me like, 'WTF? Why aren't you sharing?', that I remember just how different I am.... No judgement...And I definitely enjoy hearing your perv stories...But I'm just saying.

   It's just crazy that there are so many chickenhead girls nowadays. Like, if you take a net and snatch up ten girls, at least six of them are gonna be birds. I really sound like a womanbasher right now, I know, but I just can't believe it.  Society is filled with chickenheads masquerading as real women.  Truly BOSS bitches are so rare and hard to find that people don't even know how to take them when they're standing in front of them; they almost seem like a phony, to good to be true.  I don't know what it is, but I swear I wish there were more of those type of chicks. I want more Solange's, Janelle Monae's, Kelis's, etc. But I guess they wouldn't be so great if they came a dime a dozen, correct?  I think a lightbulb just went off.

   Ahh, fuck. Its 8am. Just got in from work. I'm sleep deprived. Let's see if I have all these opinions after I've had some rest.

Hey, this is where my head is right now.

In the words of Beyonce, "...Boy,I'm just play-ing/ Come here, bay-bee/ Hope you still liiike me...Eff you, PAY ME" :)

I was a little different;

I didnt do what the fast girls do

Studied my rhythm.....

Now you can speed me up when you want to

 

I'm an alien from outer space
I'm a cybergirl without a face a heart or a mind

Im a saviour without a race (without a face)

They've come to destroy me

"walk, walk fashion, baby"

Normal Gets You Nowhere

   It's offical. Head bitch in charge, Kelly Cutrone, told me so. Well, me and about a million other folks in the form of her new book with that title.

   I lovethisbitchdotcom. I can't even really put it into words. She is another one of those women who makes her own rules that I love. She does nothing 'by the book'. She has mastered the art of balancing all of the contradicting personality traits that comes with being a woman.  She's tough, bold, painfully honest, compassionate, opinionated, creative, and she says "fucking" almost as much as I do.

   As far as what she 'does'...she's like the fairy godmother of fashion kids. Technically, she's a PoweR bitch, a PR head honcho in the fashion world. She owns People's Revolution, a fashion PR company that represents alot of boss ass fashion lines (Jeffrey Campbell included). She's also had her own show on Bravo (Kell on Earth) and was always on The City with Whitney Port.

   I read her first book, If You Have To Cry Go Outside and I fell in love. I bought it on the Barnes and Noble app I had and I will never do that again. I purchased the thing on my old iPod Touch but when I got my iPhone, the purchase was lost. Anyways, back to the story. The book was fucking awesome. It was the story of her life, in a nutshell. It was full of advice about how to manuever through life and handle some of the bullshit situations you often find yourself in.

I need to read that book again.

   Well, she had a book reading/signing at the Barnes and Noble in Tribeca yesterday and I actually went. I could've shit myself. I was so stoked. She showed up in all black, of course, and gave me (and everyone else there) a free session, in the form of a q & a.  I was too fucking nervous to ask my burning question of "what the fuck do I do next? And how do I shut up that little bitch in the back of my head that keeps telling me that maybe I don't have what it takes?"....I know.

   Nonetheless, I pulled some inspiration and guideance from the event. I even caught alot of it on my phone and will attempt to post it as well (but we know how that goes).

Meantime, I'm gonna let my freak flag flow.

"Turn up the lights in here baby, Extra bright, I want y'all to see this"

I saw Beyonce!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously.

I. Saw. Beyonce. In Real Life.

Let me explain...

I have a tendency to find out about things happening in the city and just blow it off. Yesterday, I was bitching about the Kid Sister/Pusha T show, Vashtie Kola's b-day bash and Lupe's THREE gigs that I missed last week because of various BS reasons. That, on top of me missing Kelis, Nas, MIA, and Nina Sky all doing shows for less than $20 a few months ago had brought me to the conclusion that I needed to get it together. I told my sister how much I end up regretting it every time I missed/skipped something and I said I wouldn't do it again.

As soon as we got off the train in BK from a shopping trip to the city, I saw, on Twitter, a photo of Beyonce and Jay-Z arriving at the Met museum. I had remembered blogging (tumblr) about Daphne Guinness doing some performance art piece in the window of a store on 5th Ave for the Alexander McQueen exhibit that the museum was doing. I eventually put two and two together and hauled ass back to Manhattan.

I wasn't convinced that we'd (me and my sis) actually get anywhere near the museum, let alone close enough to see anything....Thank God I was wrong. As soon as we got to Park Avenue we could see the lights. If Kanye's song would've been playing, it would have been thee perfect moment. We literally ran..full speed...an entire block.




There was a crowd of folks just like us standing across from the red carpet. We found a spot and started going nuts. My memory of what happened after that is just as blurry as the pictures I attempted to take with my shitty camera.

The first person I spotted was Keri Hilson. She looked like a bonafide white woman. She was beautiful. I just thought she was a white lady at first. She was actually standing with a guy at the curb waiting for her car. After that, I saw everyone.

Marc Jacobs
Vera Wang
Diane Von Furstenburg
Naomi Campbell and Iman left together
Chanel Iman
Zoe Saldana (fucking gorgeous times a bajillion)
Kristen Stewart
Gisele and Tom Brady
Cassie
John Legend and his girl
LA Reid
Rachel Roy and Amare Stoudemire were together (I guess for their new line)
Carolina Herrara ( I got a pic)
Grace (the bossiest chick in the fash mag game)
Swizz Beatz ( we couldn't make out Alicia)
Carmelo Anthony and Lala (they got in a Maybach with suicide/butterfly/whateverthefuck doors)
Yoko Ono
Dakota Fanning
Leighton Meester (who was really bubbly and actually walked alongside the crowd and down the street to her car with....
Chace Fucking Crawford! (no words.)
Fergie
Pat McGrath

and....

the most memorable ones of the night

Sarah Jessica Parker
Rihanna
Pharell
Beyonce and Jay Z

I'm done.