HNY 2024 + rose parade 🌹 —Marie Antoinette “Language-learning app Duolingo has been steadily firing contract writers and translators, replacing them with artificial intelligence, in one of the most high-profile instances yet of a company getting rid of human workers in favor of AI.” Trying to spend less on eating out, so trying to make...

Favorite movie(s) released in 2023 A tie: Oppenheimer and May December Oppenheimer: A brilliantly-paced, three-in-one movie: Midnight in Paris for physicists, heist flick, courtroom drama. A beautiful film to look at, with a thrilling score. Most importantly however, a movie about how a group of men convinced themselves they were simpl...

“If I got rid of my two copies of Powers of Horrors—even though I know I'll never read either again—it would be as if I were rejecting my younger self, saying to my younger self I never really valued you. —Dodie Bellamy in "Hoarding as Écriture"” While hoarding is generally viewed shamefully, this reflection from Bellamy honors for me ...

For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, For love and friends, For everything thy goodness sends —Ralph Waldo Emerson

https://5calls.org/ iPhone app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/5-calls-contact-your-congress/id1202558609 If you're interested in calling your representatives in the US government to voice concerns, raise an issue, or make your stance as a constituent clear, I started using the 5 Calls iPhone app this week, and I highly recommend it ⭐⭐⭐...

————————— Live long and prosper 🖖

a play: Jaja's African Hair Braiding This play was so much fun, it made me wish it was a movie so I could watch it over and over again. Though without the stage experience, we wouldn't have gotten the crackling, cackling atmosphere of Jaja's salon. A character that stuck out to me was Bea, a woman who is an interpersonal disaster: she ...

Earlier this week, someone was telling me about a lovely celebrity run-in she had: she was walking on the High Line in the early morning, and was enjoying the way the morning light was lighting the walkers' faces. As she stared at people, one person in particular responded with a wave and a delightful smile. It was Wallace Shawn: Which...

The Wailing does what my favorite horror movies do best: it ruminates on and reflects our world back to us in a kaleidoscopic, creepy funhouse. There's something about entering a universe that looks like ours, but has exaggerated features in the form of horror symbolism and imagery, that makes the commentary on our world oftentimes mor...

Help is on the way when the rhythm is glad there is nothing to be sad sasha ❤🔥 Montreal for Dom & Josh: Big in Japan Bar with some tips from the bartender, Dandy's Maple Butter Tart, and poutine of course ziggy peke meets ziggy peke ice packs, electric hand fans, and shade-seeking dainty little true indigo ❤ ziggy & nellie ❤ After init...

One cold weekday afternoon in 2012, I went to a show at the Asia Society for an artist called Sarah Sze. I had the gallery entirely to myself, and as the afternoon passed, I had the sense I was convening with something truly special. I felt awe and wonder at the intricacy of her pieces, at how spontaneous, yet carefully-constructed eve...

I know that National Cinema Day is a marketing thing to get people in the door at large theater chains, but as a devoted, obsessive movie-goer, I wanted to use the occasion to highlight my NYC cinema favorites/worsts in the categories that matter most to me: Best Repertory Programming • Film Forum • BAM Film • Film at Lincoln Center • ...

Cakepiles and Your most cancellable take and Love in the shape of a napkin ring and Kitti and a scoundrel Richard Burton and Late-nite Urban hikes and Fun and funky and full of food and three-movie jubilee aka Megenheimer: a space odyssey and A Pink Plastic necklace and A honk and Lamborghinis and Ice cream tiramisu.

I’m not allowed to buy any books for the next while because I have too many (in general, but also specifically that I haven’t yet read), but here is a shortlist of books I’m most interested in right now. Would accept as a gift for my bday tho🥰 Fiction Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler: as a part of Lincoln Center's Summer for t...

My 7 reasons: 1. The animation of inanimate objects 2. Pee-Wee's Big Expressions 3. The most colorful cast of characters francis dottie amazing larry and mario madam ruby large marge speck 4. Magical interiors 5. Laugh-out-loud funny take a picture, it'll last longer au revoir simone remember the alamo 6. Movie within a movie 7. Pure m...

https://youtu.be/VF8LMQQ0rEw https://vimeo.com/3514904 Koyaanisqatsi

July: 💋🚽 💐 Looty, seriously Saha and Coetzee ❣🥲 Friend Brian put a new album out: The Arc ♥♥♥ Halloween 2007 😭 Almost-Cerberus Alston Lake, with Alan and Cusco Drive-in Dial of Destiny on a rainy, lightning-filled night ((immersive)) https://twitter.com/svershbow/status/1675506128971526144?s=20 But I’ll eat some corn and watch a fire w...

Template from Peter on Figma (slightly modified to 8x8 because that happened to be the size of the puzzle I created with pencil and paper). Pretty cool the template has been used by 412 people since he put it on Figma 2 years ago! ((P.S. I'm sorry for breaking some crossword construction rules; I am but an infrequent crossword do-er, a...

After this week's Supreme Court affirmative action ruling, I kept seeing persuasive snippets of Justice Jackson's dissent and decided to go to the source: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf (Justice Jackson's dissent starts on page 209 of the .PDF) It was my first time reading a Supreme Court opinion; I think ...

A Mogwai walks among us 👬♥ The most perfect person’s bday Gentle giant James Cromwell 👏👏👏 Ziggy’s Zaddies Marc Rebillet @ Union Sq. (Didn’t know it was him at the time, realized it was him later after seeing it pop up on TikTok) An At-home Men-in-Dresses film festival: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Some Like it Hot warm and fuzzy ...

this month on TOILETPAPER What I've learned from my queer movie canon... All About My Mother (1999) Agrado's monologue When I first watched this movie as a teen, and specifically this scene with Agrado, it made me realize that another person's truth has nothing to do with mine; that my experience of my own body and gender doesn't precl...

On Tuesday, I went for a little walk in the late afternoon, and noticed it felt really spooky; there was an orange-gray pallor to the world and it smelled...smoky? I took a few pics and then went back inside: *cityscape in the image was spookier than it appears* And, then we in NYC all discovered the wonders of wildfire smoke and what ...

Dubbalin Our layover to get home was in Dublin, but when the final leg of our flight was unexpectedly cancelled, we ended up having an extra 2 days in the city. When we went to Ireland last year, we had COVID during the portion of the trip where we would have explored Dublin, so it felt like a bit of a fortunate do-over (amidst the fru...

The Leopard, an engrossing historical fiction book written in the 1950s about the Risorgimento (Italy's unification in the 1860s). I couldn't put the book down on the plane ride over, and it felt like a useful primer for the week ahead 🐆🍝 Beautiful carsickness Story of a countryside dog 😭 Assisi, of St. Francis A most immediate and sat...

My mama and my mama’s mama ~45 years ago ❤ ———————————— Saint Omer (2022) As I get older and wonder whether I want to be a mother one day, I find myself curious about, yet confounded by the idea of child-bearing. It's depicted in our culture with a happy, spiritual glow; a necessary human experience that you could only live through to ...

Big world, Teeny snail Palimpsest The boy who stares Panics, a “haunting, bizarre short story collection about violence, mental illness, and the warped contradictions of the twentieth-century female experience” by Barbara Molinard Recent foodies: nudibranch, junior’s, gage & tollner, superiority burger, LEV, Agi’s counter Post-torrenti...

I made it to my 100th blog post! When I started blogging weekly (on Substack originally), it was at mrcoles' suggestion. He started blogging over 10 years ago, and he suggested it to me because his blog helped him carve out his personal real estate on the web. So, in 2020, when I was dipping my toe in tech, the idea was that I could us...

I first saw Days of Being Wild in 2011 during the Taipei Film Festival—at the cavernous Zhongshan Hall. I was late and entered the packed, dark space from the heavy, wet, tropical heat of the Taiwanese summer, only to be greeted by the tropical palms of the movie’s opening credits (see image on TV above). Experiencing the movie with so...

Hyperallergic Magnificent magnolias Simon subway Getting in as much TikTok as I can, while we still can shmoney Cattelan v. slack, spotted by Peter Crossword x cuddles 🚊🚞💺🚉🚂🚆🚄🚅🚃🚇🚟🛤🚝🚋🚈 The lapdog is lapping Eddie Huang on the left; the perfect tweet on the right. The attitude toward Asians onscreen has become so frickin patronizing !!!!...

The South Bronx Portraits by Rigoberto Torres and John Ahearn On view thru April 30 at The Bronx Museum I took photos of all of the nameplates, but in some cases the photo I took is too low quality—some of these names may be incorrect! The ones where I'm not sure have (?) next to them: Maria; The Graduates: Bashira and Princess; Barcar...