Go to this!

Very excited for this one... you should be too.

PLUS it's Cole's birthday at midnight, so once we close out Double Punch, the festivities will be moved to another location more suitable for escalating wildness. Get ready.

Morning after

Am I falling over or am I dancing? I don't know. But thanks, Kayvon, for an evening of A-Trak, Theophilus London, and goddamn Popscene (I hate my life). In other news, A-Trak and Armand Van Helden just announced a new project called Duck Sauce. How could that not be good?

Daggers

http://www.myspace.com/shadowdaggers

We are going to be so famous.
(I'm half kidding.)

Graaaaaaad school

I am not even IN graduate school, and it is already sapping my energy. I haven't posted for almost 2 months because every ounce of written energy I possess is currently being channeled into the early stages of writing samples and statements of purpose for my applications. Just don't ask me what I'm writing about...

So my friends started a farm...

It's called Sun Born Organics, and it's going to be amazing. Still in the planting/start-up phase, but just you wait. If I bail out of the city frequently this summer, that might be where you'll find me, frolicking with puppies and releasing ladybugs and spraying fish emulsion and planting tomatillo verde plants (like the one above). Duh. And if I'm lucky, maybe Mike and Damon will let me drive the truck. p.s. Check out the link under Places to Go, on your right.

Saturday in Brooklyn

Apple cider donuts from the farmer's market

A rad t-shirt from Species by the Thousands at the Fort Greene Flea Market

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabyyyyyyyyyyy

A Date

by Cole Marshall

Umm
I show up at your door with a box of chocolates and a bouquet of flowers...
then...
we eat french food...
then...
we go to the beach (we are both wearing bikinis)...
then...
we play frisbee...
then..
we take showers to get the sand off of us (in slow motion)...
then...
we eat klondike bars...
then...
I take you home...
then...
I go home...
then..
I think about all the mistakes I made on our "date"...
you down?

RAD.

John Hodges from Sexton Blake, Ryan Biornstad from Junkface, and Shawn Glassford from Mr. Fredrick got together and made a really rad band and called it Starfucker, and they are playing a show with my pals, White Cloud, who are also rad, at Bottom of the Hill on June 23rd, and seeing as how this show is going to be amazing, you should all come with me. Seriously. The video is for "Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second," off their debut album from Badman Recordings, and it's animated by Andrew Sloan, who is ALSO rad. This is almost too much radness for one post.

"How to Find True Love"

by Joseph Manibusan

If I get a degree and a job teaching astronomy at a planetarium at a museum, I will meet babes who are like, "Oh wow he's so cute! He teaches little kids about space!"

And I will be like, "Let me tell you all about the theory of relativity and how it determines the movement of bodies in space."

"I'm interested in this!"

"You should be. It says that smaller masses fall into bigger masses, and I am much bigger than you."

"OMG I'M SO IN LOVE CAUSE YOU'RE SMART AND HANDSOME AND LIKE KIDS AND ARE WITTY. LET MY FATHER PAY FOR OUR WEDDING."

And I'll be like, "Cool, that's fine."

Saturday's itinerary...

Put on the most hipster outfit I can comfortably contrive, much to Barbara's dismay when she comes to pick me up;
Drive down to Santa Cruz playing our new ultimate hyphy mix CDs (that I had to make because all the other CDs are in the river);
Get an acai bowl at Cafe Brazil;
Run across Mission Street and immediately eat gyros at Falafel of Santa Cruz (Barbara will climb behind the counter to make these for free);
Drive downtown and sit on the porch at Perg's for an extended period of time, drinking various iced beverages;
Drag Barbara into The Krate for records and Cardboard Spaceship to see if there's any good art on the walls;
Watch Barbara shop the sale at O'Neill;
Make Barbara watch me try on skinny jeans I can't afford at Jade;
Sit on the beach at Seabright and pretend we aren't encouraging premature aging and cancer;
Go to Charlie Hong Kong's (even though we aren't hungry at all) and eat delicious noodles;
Drive up to Stevenson Knoll on campus and get high before the drive home.

My grandpa is turning 86 soon.

Tonight was good.

I had a lot of Jell-O shots and am now in possession of more than one beer cozy. Also, I have stickers on my shirt.

Fracamama? Maybe you've heard of them...

This is tomorrow night. Go, and witness the semi-retarded beauty that is the fixed gear bicycle.

Birds are dinosaurs, for reals.

I get tired of arguing this point, in large part because I can't do it very well without notes and diagrams - I'm not really that smart or that cool. However, it comes up again and again; most recently, it came up when I tried to defend the sanctity of pigeons on the basis of their being dinosaurs (and this being, of course, a good reason for me to feed them my bread crumbs right from the table at a French bistro). My assertion of this point led to a good deal of head shaking and chuckling to the purpose of making me feel stupid. But no! I rested easy in my knowledge that I would soon be home and buried in my books and notes and papers and anatomical drawings, and thus appropriately armed, could write a largely-ignored blog post on the topic.

Any kid worth their salt in basic, vague dinosaur knowledge, knows about Archaeopteryx, the feathered, flighted dinosaur. It's long since been accepted that Archaeopteryx is a member of the clade Aviale due to its feathers: all birds have feathers; Archaeopteryx has feathers; Archaeopteryx is a bird. Since Archaeopteryx is clearly a member of Aviale, it's easy to do a cladistic analysis to see the relationship of living birds to dinosaurs, because we only need trace the higher taxanomic relationships of Archaeopteryx.

BTW: Cladistics refers to the use character hierarchies to establish groups with shared derived characters, illustrating the creation of new species from ancestral populations. These groups are called clades, which includes an ancestor and all of its descendants. A monophyletic clade is one that is evolved from a common ancestor - and living birds are in fact a monophyletic group. For some illustration of this crap, look at my handy little diagram (which, in addition to a couple of cladograms, also includes my annotated pigeon skeleton as a bonus).

So... Cladistically, if you follow the various diagnostic characteristics of Archaeopteryx, starting with the Archosauria (which includes crocodiles), all the way to the clade of Aviale (which includes modern birds), it shows that birds must, indeed, be members of the Dinosauria clade. Both birds and Archaeopteryx possess, 1) an antoribital opening on the skull, thus making them both members of the clade Archosauria, 2) a four-toed clawed foot, with symmetry around digit III, and digit I reduced, thus making them members of the clade Ornithodira (although digit I is rotated backwards in living birds, rather than lying alongside digit II), 3) three or more sacral vertebrate, a reorientation of the shoulder, reduction of the fourth finger in the hand, and a semi-perforate acetabulum, thus making making them members of the clade Dinosauria. Dinosauria = dinosaurs! Heyyyy-oooooh!

The conclusion: Archaeopteryx is placed within Aviale as well as Dinosauria, therefore birds must be a subset of Dinosauria. BAM.

Life isn't really like this...

...but it should be. Gene Kelly, get into my life.

Mr. Hammond... the phones are working.

Tonight at midnight, Clay Theater. If you aren't there, I'll presume you to have questionable taste in film.

Artistic collaborations

Sometimes I go to bars and coffee shops with my friends. Sometimes we draw while we're there. Sometimes the drawings are awesome and I put them online.

Bears Love Accessories
w/ Ryan de la Hoz

Seafaring Gentleman
w/ Ryan de la Hoz

Brainbot and Friends
w/ Cole Marshall

The Saga of Julia and Leonardo DiCaprio
w/ Cole Marshall

Tomorrow night!

Ryan de la Hoz, my dearest friend, who is currently sitting next to me drinking coffee (which he rarely does), curated this glorious show, which is opening tomorrow night at Double Punch in North Beach. You should all be there. It will be fun.

Deth P. Sun makes excellent art.

I've been loosely following Deth P Sun's work for several years now, and every time I come back to it, I like it even better than before. Acrylic on wood, phenomenal use of color, a sword-wielding, questing cat from Oakland, wolves and ghosts and seals... DUH. There's some kind of epic narrative running through these pieces that I can't seem to get ahold of, but I love them just the same.

Prom? Prom.

It's been awhile since my last prom. 7 years, actually. But every spring, I desperately wish I had a similarly good excuse to make my parents buy me a really sassy dress, because alas, those excuses run few and far between these days. It all seems so terribly unfair, because given the chance, my dresses now would kick the shit out of my dresses then. What was I thinking back then? I mean, aside from the fact that the local Macy's didn't carry, say, Christopher Decarnin for Balmain. But still. These dresses from the Spring/Summer '09 shows would be at the top of my prom wish list (how very Cosmo Girl of me). Although, were I to show up at a dance wearing any of them, I would probably be incapable of dancing without exposing myself and my date probably wouldn't be able to touch me without disturbing some priceless crystal or fold of fabric... But who really cares when they're this amazing.

Balmain:

Marchesa:


Luella:

Andrew James Larsen

was born on April 2nd, at 12:53 p.m. He is 7 pounds 8.9 ounces, and 19 inches tall. He is my nephew. If you think you've seen a cuter (or better dressed) baby before, please allow me to inform you how terribly mistaken you are. In addition, he is already showing a precocious skill for making squishy old man faces and inciting frenzied jealousy in dogs.

Damn it!

Only 5 hours of sleep, for the 3rd night in a row. Pretty sure this is bad for me. Damn you slumber parties/cute boys/karaoke/iChat!

Right now!

Curated by my dear pal, Ryan de la Hoz:

Last night at the Rickshaw...

In other news, Har Mar Superstar was one of the most impressive live shows I've had the pleasure of witnessing in awhile. Short, fat, balding, naked man in sequined gloves singing electro pop ditties about drinking and babes and male camel toe. Instant classic, duh.
p.s. Enchanting photo courtesy of Jeff Luger's flickr, acquired via Kayvon.

On College and Forgetting

Upon entering college, I had presumed that by the time I got out I would have attained such a solid grasp on my field of study that it would be impossible to lose. Well. It's been about 3 years since I graduated, and although I have retained an impressive amount of my acquired knowledge, I came across an item today, while cleaning out a box of papers, that gave me pause. During Winter quarter of my senior year I took a course called Modernity and Its Discontents in the History of Consciousness department. As I'd already had the pleasure of reading a good deal of the material on the syllabus, it was intended as an easy foil to the incredibly difficult Senior Seminar (on Anarchy, no less!) that I was taking the same quarter. A good deal of it would be rehashing and/or narrowing the focus on things I had already learned. I breezed through the course and easily got an A. So today, when I came across the topics list for the final paper for that same course, I was stunned to realize that I can no longer easily provide a lengthy and articulate answer to every one of the proposed topics. They were as follows:

1. Discuss Marx's idea of dialectical materialism.
2. What, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, is the legacy of Enlightenment reason?
3. Discuss the relationship between love and aggressivity in Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents.
4. What does Hannah Arendt mean by the phrase 'banality of evil'?
5. Discuss Fanon's reading of Hegel's master-slave conflict in Black Skin, White Masks.

None of these is a tremendously advanced concept in political theory. Not easy, to be certain, but also not unbelievably difficult. Now, I know I could still give a roundabout, stumbling, and wholly unsatisfactory response to any one of these, but... really? Is it really so easy to lose 4 years of excruciatingly hard work? I find this incredibly disheartening and frustrating. Not to mention, it's going to make my graduate school applications a hell of a lot harder. So... I suck.

I think I'm in love.

I have a new cat. She is 3 and I named her Claudine. Everyone should rush out to the SFSPCA immediately and adopt a cat, because they were all wonderful.

A show to attend

So, there's this band called Casy & Brian, and they're pretty good, and they're playing a super awesome show on February 7th at Kimo's, as well as one at Bottom of the Hill on the 18th, which will also be super awesome, and everyone should go, and the fact that it's my boyfriend's band has absolutely nothing to do with my promotion.

Toys for fascist children!

In case you are currently training your little one in, say, management of a police state, or the imposition of martial law, here is a nice little toy set that will help you in said endeavor. Playmobil, my beloved childhood toy of choice, now manufactures a security checkpoint set.

http://www.amazon.com/Playmobil-3172-Security-Check-Point/dp/B0002CYTL2/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Check out the customer tags and reviews; they are a laugh riot. I wonder how many other products on Amazon.com can claim tags under "police state," "tyranny," "fascism," "fear," "martial law," and "1984." Some sample gems from the customer reviews include:

"...Worst of all, since the suitcase did not actually open, the baggage inspector made a call to the FBI and ATF bomb squads which then segregated the family's suitcase (which btw was the only suitcase they provided for our educational family experience) and according to the advanced TSA regulations, had to blow it up, (since they could not otherwise mutilate the luggage, break off the locks and put one of those nice little advisory stickers on it), which we had to simulate out in the backyard with a few M-80s and other fireworks."

"My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger's shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger's scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said "that's the worst security ever!". But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital."

"Thank you Playmobil for allowing me to teach my 5-year old the importance of recognizing what a failing bureaucracy in a ever growing fascist state looks like. Sometimes it's a hard lesson for kids to learn because not all pigs carry billy clubs and wear body armor."

So basically, amazing.

Way to go!

The Palestinian death toll has passed 500. Israel claims the casualties have been primarily militants, placing the civilian casualty count at below 100. Is there anyone out there who believes this? Considering the tolls come from the mouths of Israeli officials and reporters are currently barred from entering Gaza, I certainly don't. The fact that Gaza's hospitals have already been overwhelmed doesn't inspire confidence in those claims, either. Not to mention, Israeli rocket fire landing in the middle of a marketplace in Gaza City, where civilians were stocking up on necessities for the coming raids, doesn't inspire confidence in the Israeli promise to avoid soft targets. Nor, for that matter, did their striking a U.N. school in Gaza, which had been opened to house those seeking refuge. Way to go, Israel!

Not that I have much confidence in the United States right now, either. The United Nations Security Council attempted to issue a formal statement calling for an immediate cease-fire, only to be blocked by - guess who? That's right, the United States! Way to go, U.S.A.! It would seem that, according to our strict humanitarian standards, the fact that we can't verify whether or not Hamas will abide by a cease-fire is cause enough to continue brutalizing Gaza.

And, per usual, President-elect Obama is still deferring publicly to the Bush administration, so as not to leak his pro-Israel sentiments while he still has the avid support of the would-be Left. Way to go, Obama!

This is the arm of a little girl who was killed in the strike at the U.N. school. I wonder what Obama would have to say if this were one of his little girls.