Afterlife

My special day has finally come. Exactly 13 months ago, I followed my heart to a short and tumultuous career in magazines. Tomorrow, with the same level of excitement and dedication, I am ending my Midtown tenure for the greener pastures of Brooklyn.

Some stats on the year I spent shoulder to shoulder with the media elite:
Number of magazines worked for/with: 6
Number of magazines that folded during this year: 1
Number of reality shows filmed in office: 1
Estimated number of times I cried while in office: 13
Average number of people who need to be consulted to design one element of one page, such as a photo credit: 4
Cups of Flavia brand French Roast consumed: 325
Pounds gained: 15
Average number of days, weekly, spent feeling inadequate about the heel height of my shoes: 2-3
Number of pairs of shoes bought to remedy this situation: 4
Number of times I've actually worn these shoes, total: 7 (including twice, for 20 minutes, before changing into flats)
Ick factor of the tunnel between the G and E at Court Square in Long Island City, on a scale of 1 to 10: 6
Ick factor of the tunnel between 6th and 7th avenue on 14th street: 8
Ick factor of the tunnel between Port Authority and Times Square: 10
Rank of East Midtown, West Midtown, and Chinatown as most unpleasant workplace locations: 2, 1, 3
International corporate publishing headquarters visited: 4
Number of months worked before referring to my employer as "corporate media": 4
Estimated number of conversations I've engaged in about the elevator: 100
Number of times I've heard the phrase "Who are you wearing?" (not about me, obviously): 3
Ratio of time spent fearing I'd be fired to time spent wishing I'd quit: 1:4
Number of times I had to cancel my plans on a weeknight in order to work late before I stopped making them: 10
Number of times I had to cancel my plans on a Friday night in order to work late before I stopped making them: 6
Value of the feeling of seeing 4 people on one F train platform in Brooklyn engrossed in an issue I designed, heads buried in a cover I helped to create (and actually liked), on the day it came out: Priceless!

download:
One More Cup of Coffee

Mac Guy Knows My Pain

I sat there completely indifferent as my boss told me I was going to get a raise and a promotion in a couple of months (I know, boohoo to me).
Quite frankly, this job had given me enough mental and creative abuse to last a lifetime. Plus, all the raise would do was disqualify me for welfare.

It was weird. It was like realizing that you and your bf of five years just weren't right for each other. Like, he was popping the question because he knew something was wrong and thought this would keep you happy. Only, he was really terribly wrong...about everything.

I just nodded--pleased that my backup plan just got sweeter but realizing that my indifference meant that it was absolutely time to leave. Of course I didn't tell her that. I just smiled, thanked her, and slowly grew depressed that I didn't have the revelation sooner. Then, I got more depressed thinking about what a cheap whore I was for taking every promotion/raise bribe that they had thrown at me the past three years.

But then, I returned to my desk and my computer starting singing "I think this place is kiiiiiilling me....slowly. Slooooooowly." I was validated. My computer knew my pain. It was some song on Viva-Radio but I started imagining that it was the Mac guy, inside my computer, singing to me. I would totally stay if they threw the Mac guy at me. Oh, how all would be right with the world if that happened.

TRIVIA NUG--Mac guy was in "Accepted" with our fav Gossip Girl Siren Serena!

First annual Gossip Girl Slumber Party next weekend: Save the Date

Sleepover! Makeovers, horror movies / rom-com, truth or dare, prank calls, breakfast deluxe, baking, board games. Bring your pajamas and your sleeping bag. More info to follow! We're serious! We're building a pillow nest in our living room get ready!

** Astrology Zone Update **

On January 1, I was really excited about my astrological forecast as read by Susan Miller of Astrology Zone. It was so comprehensive and positive and amazing, and I really believed that 2008 was going to be my year. Apparently, it's the first time since the birth of the American Revolution that Pluto had been in a really important and special position that means that my life will be pretty much unbelievably perfect for the next 3 years. Sadly, it seems to not be shaping up as well as the Astrology Zone predicted.

But,

In astrology it's always best to put in a little effort rather than sit back when you have aspects as special as you have now. That way you would be casting a wide net and reap the very best of what's out there for you!

Truer words have never been spoken!

PS. This Cathy cartoon is in honor of our fourth roommate and the newest member of the blogroll, G. Welcome!

Wigger Please!

We went to see RZA at Studio B this weekend. Growing up in Queens, you had to listen to hip hop unless you were OK with being lame and getting jumped. So, we listened. And we genuinely liked. But we knew our place and knew that even though our lunch money was safe, we'd never get to go to a show less we wanted to enter the 36 chambers of Stabville. It was a different time in New York. Jumpings and stabbings were accepted and common things to avoid in life--right up there with oncoming traffic and high cholesterol. And going to a hip hop show would just be asking for it.

Then, New York became Disney World. MTV discovered hip hop. And born was the mighty wigger. All of a sudden, hip hop was safe...and way whiter.

I have seen Wu Tang or at least one of its members at least three times last year and every audience was completely wigged out--street wear [thank you Urban Outfitters], buzz cuts, Timbs and Jordans. It was like a better-fitted, more expensive version of my childhood.

I can guarantee that most of the wiggers around me knew more about hip hop than I did. Like I said, my interest in the genre grew out of peer pressure rather than hunger. But, wigger please! What do you know about Staten Island? Not counting the time you took your parents on the free ferry tour, exactly how many times have you been to Staten Island? Will you please explain to me the enthusiasm that comes out of you when RZA gives his hometown a shout? Really, Staten Island? You are whooing a cancer-breeding landfill. I used to vacation on Staten Island. Yeah, that's right. We were poor and Staten Island is really far away. So, when we went to visit either set of cousins who lived there, we'd stay the week. The lovely Isle du Staten. I have driven its stupid windy roads looking for the Wu Tang store. I have swam amidst the landfill stank that saturates the air during a humid summer day. I have canvassed there as a short-lived NYPIRG employee. I have been to the weird clubs and dealt with the weird, weird vibe that is Staten Island. It is nothing to whoo about.

While I'm at it, I might as well also tell you that most of you who were there Friday do not live in the Brooklyn RZA talks about. My uncle owned a Chinese restaurant near Peter Luger's in the 80s. He worked behind a bulletproofed counter yet still managed to get mugged a bajillion times and stabbed twice. Even that isn't the Brooklyn he's talking about. You can just forget your brunch Brooklyn.

I am all for a fun show. And it is fabulous to see people completely stoked for a set to start. But when I reflect on what hip hop once represented to me and what it has become, I get kind of sad. Perhaps I am completely influenced by an article I just read in Newsweek about the "romantic authenticity" that white people have made for black music (a good companion piece to a recent article in the New Yorker about the de-blacking of indie rock music). Or maybe it's just the brand of hip hop that I know and subscribe to. Maybe I've just gotten too white. I'm sure somewhere in Queens, I can still find a hip hop show that I'd likely be stabbed at.

Go Limp Bizkit!

xoxo,

Hater

Mall-ternative Sampler

While working on Presidents Day, Andy and Renda and I decided to make a 90s alternative playlist. A high percentage of these songs are not technically "alternative," but they do paint a fairly accurate picture of mid-nineties radio. We thought it might be fun to have a 90s party on Kurt Cobain's birthday, but quickly discovered that his birthday was Feb. 20, which was only two days away, and the 90s party was scrapped.

On Friday, I took a detour from the free mostly-snooze-a-thon that was Studio B and stopped in at a random party in Greenpoint. Coincidentally, these friends of friends were having their own 90s party, and requested guests to BYO flannel. I was wishing I had brought my own slip dress.



In honor of the 90s and my fond memories of nights drinking unlimited coffee and eating curly fries in diners such as this one—Allentown's Hamilton Family Restaurant—here is a nineties playlist to shuffle at your leisure. Ready yourself for overwhelming feelings of angst (of both the teen and nineties variety).

Part I
Part II

My favorite party of all time is tonight

For the last 10 (I think!) years, my old college friend Abby has been throwing the best party of the year in honor of Valentines Day. Loosely organized around a theme (swans, astrology, chocolate, and tonight future tribal "nomadic neuromancer"), they are so incredibly artfully crafty and inspiring. The last time I went was 2006, and it was called Taj Mahal Twilight (see review here).

There were, as per usual, one million varieties of beautiful and delicious treats, extreme decoration hanging from a 20 x 20 section of industrial rafters, a specially made quilt, a smoke machine, a serious dj dance party that lasts all night. Abby told fortunes and hand-printed and assembled a fortune teller book. This party takes about a half-year to organize and create everything for. I hope this really good thing lasts forever.

How H Will Get Her Funk Back

[TK FUNKY TYPE HERE. WOULD BE SO GOOD] H needs to regain her passion in rotating, stretching, and tracking type so that she can help make the under-developed, under-reported, regurgitated stories we editors write more relevant, urgent, and...funky. You know, hip! Most of us writers are nerds. Were it not for funky type, our words would lay flat on paper looking as nerdy as we do.

A plan needed to be devised. Because we watch BET all the time, we quickly saw the similarities between H's situation and that of a certain Terry McMillan heroine. It was clear what H needed to do--basically, put on the womyn's studies playlist (see way below) and live the life of our favorite strong black lady. We also realized that she was already really close.

THE SUBJECT:

STELLA

H

THE LOCATION:

JAMAICA

CORPORATE PUBLISHER

THE FUNK:

DUDE

TYPE

H, YOU GO GET THAT FUNK BACK! YOU ALMOST THERE GIRL!

Magazines Kill Young People: The last days of funky type are approaching rapidly

In approximately 9 days, I will say goodbye to funky type forever (I hope!). That's right folks, I have a secret: I hate funky type. If you have ever looked at a consumer magazine, you know what I mean. I hate the undulating display type that decorates and adds "concepts" to editorial design. I hate making it and I hate looking at it.



There are different ways of thinking about design, and the emphasis on conceptual type treatments at the magazine I work at can seriously drive me out of my mind. I am not interested in "scale shifts" "big words" "big letters" "connecting things" and other visual tricks that make someone think the article they are about to be reading will be more interesting than it is. I am not interested in designing in a way that feels forced and not my own. I do not like having people telling me - in this way that expresses that the gravity of my design decisions will somehow rock the design world forever - to make a word I set at a rational size bigger to "add interest" (for whom? I don't know—I read the internet now, not magazines, and frankly that big word isn't fooling anyone).

A while ago, I posted about going for an interview for a job at a magazine, "ny". Instead, I went to an interview with the person who I would be replacing at "ny" who was leaving for "gaydar," and upon further reflection I canceled the original interview at "ny" (indecipherable code, right?). My reasoning is rock-solid: I just cannot design old-fashioned funky type for a living. There are lots of things I am good at, but funky type is not one of them. I have not enjoyed spending the past two days moving things blindly around on the screen, waiting for some kind of magic to happen that will never be magical to me. Perhaps funky type is one of the reasons we say magazines kill young people.

This week's free table: 2/16

lol he threw a cut out D on a paper that said "bitch" lol that made me laugh

I learned about this song by watching The N / Noggin.

Notes on Tusk, First Draft

Fleetwood Mac was the synergistic link between the many 'Storms' within my psyche during Dec / Jan. Why? Tusk opened the door. Tusk Remastered threw away the key.

- Joan Didion, in The White Album. She's living in this crazy big house in Los Angeles and going crazy herself. People come in and out endlessly, tons of random strange people, musicians etc. And she talks about this weird time in life and listening to "Visions of Johanna" and "Lay Lady Lay" and I think about this while listening to Tusk. I think about what Carl said his parents and their friends thought about Fleetwood Mac in the context of their time: Fleetwood Mac was always on, always there, but never really this pop radio thing. It was just always playing, this constant undercurrent. Rumors is the highest selling record of all time - 30 million copies have been sold. Tusk was the disastrous follow-up, at only 4 million copies sold.

- i think about other musical obsessions i have had, and how they didn't run as deep. perhaps this is because their catalogue is smaller. see nina simone, nico

- think about tusk vs tusk remastered, "sara" and its soaring peaks, additional verses. the fact that this song may be about an abortion, and the baby may have been don henley's.

- trying to replace the fleetwood mac obsession, first with r&B (alicia keys, usher, r kelly instead) then the smiths


The Mystical Experience and the Rise of New Age
Chorus from "Angel"
So I close my eyes softly
Til I become that part of the wind
That we all long for sometime








From Wikipedia / Self-actualization:
People who are self actualized have had peak experiences. Peak experiences are situations that are so intense that the person loses all sense of self and they find themselves in the flow of the event. These are often religious or mystical experiences.

8. The mystic experience, the oceanic feeling. Self-actualising people commonly have mystic or `peak' experiences or times of intense emotions in which they transcend self. During a peak experience, they experience feelings of ecstasy, awe, and wonder with feelings of limitless horizons opening up, feelings of unlimited power and at the same time feelings of being more helpless than ever before. The experience ends with the conviction that something extremely important and valuable has happened so that the person is to some extent transformed and strengthened by the experience that has a carry-over into everyday life.

-major themes in the Stevie Nicks songs: crystals, building houses, loss, the witch, ascension.
- "Planets of the Universe" "Crystal" "Sisters of the Moon"




Versus Self-Destruction
- Fleetwood Mac, during the production of Tusk, which cost over $1 million to make did a legendary amount of cocaine. They were all sexually involved with each other. they are writing about each other.

I wear black on the outside because black is how I feel on the inside

see also:http://www.flickr.com/photos/renda/820044105/

Mike Mills, Human

Humans Manifesto 03:

1. Be more positive.

2. Try to stop anthropomorphizing the animals I know, or at least do it less.

3. Play games that require abandon.

4. Get better at maintaining relationships with friends.

5. Look at how I'm not fully conscious of my real life, admit that I'm groping in the dark, overwhelmed by the consequences of my acts and that at every moment I'm faced with outcomes I did not intend.

http://www.humans.jp/blog/

Women's Studies addendum: Since You've Been Gone

How could we have forgotten about this one? Pop + empowerment, Kelly Clarkson, America's sweetheart. She is totally liberated and really rocking for the first time.

Oh, that Sassy

In seventh grade, Sassy mysteriously arrived in the mail, addressed to my great-grandmother who lived with us. I don't know where it came from, but that ghost subscription was perhaps the most important event of my teen years.

I studied it. I memorized every detail. How to get into Columbia. Who Thurston Moore was. Places in New York City to go vintage shopping. Why obsessing over your physical appearance and relationship status were unhealthy behaviors. How to start a rock band. Etc etc. When Sassy folded / was bought out by Peterson publishing, losing its indie status, I wrote the angriest letter of my life and canceled my subscription. I think I cried.

Looking back, one article perhaps remains the most influential piece of Sassy literature: "The Tormented Boy: An Ethnological Study." I loved it. I hung it up on my bedroom wall and memorized every characteristic of every type of sensitive guy they created: Disaffected Writer Boy, The Soulful Musician Boy... The point of this article was to point out types of guys to avoid. I think I took it the wrong way.

At least I'm not the only one: http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/jesella/cutebandalert/index.asp?page=3

This week's free table: 2/1

Vampire Weekend: Some Thoughts

On Wednesday night I saw Vampire Weekend for the first time at their second sold-out night at Bowery Ballroom. Perhaps at the peak of their hype cycle, they only released their first album this week, though I have been listening to them on a near-daily basis for the last three months. This is what I was thinking about when I watched them.

1. An ampitheater or stadium in July, get fucked up in the car, hemp necklace. On a summer night when you are 16 or even 19, this would be a night to remember. This could be the next Dave Matthews Band.