[Street Snapshot] I Will Never Be a Professional Street Photographer

I was on my way to Planned Parenthood, not to carry out my never-to-be-fulfilled Teen Mom fantasy, just saving some money on my health care budget; to which my eyes were immediately set on this lovely woman. I'm already a sucker for a girl with a Mia Farrow haircut, but even her clothes were reminiscent of the 60s casual elegance of Farrow sported during her career.

I think those are the people I admire most are those who don't try too hard to be impeccable but manage to be classic anyway.

Luckily I caught these snapshots quickly because she was (understandably) suspicious and probably assumed I was gonna stalk her or something. Maybe I'm destined to be a really uncomfortable paparazzo who brings vanilla wafers to the cars of the celebrities I'm trying to photograph. "I really, really need this job or they're gonna cut off my HBO!" I could see that happening.



Someday when I am comfortable with this (or meet someone who doesn't find me insane), I will ask what brands they're wearing a la Joan Rivers. Or a la Rivers Cuomo.

Monty Montage

CURATING MY LIFE TO LOOK ARTY AND INTERESTING IS GETTING DIFFICULT. I need pictures of garbage cans with pouty faces or something.

Franny packs and Zoo-ey

Despite my religious dedication to waking up at least after 2, I have friends who get up before lunch is finished. So I dragged myself up and went with my buds Danielle and Sophia to the Bronx Zoo on free Wednesday to sit with some peacocks while they sketched like people with their art degrees. I took pictures like a scowly tourist who almost has their art degree.

I'll let the photos mostly speak for themselves. Enjoy the photo bomb of cuddly and scaly animals.




It's Mardis Gras favorite, George Clinton!


Don't use flash on the animals! I did on the mice by accident that will shame me forever but luckily these guys didn't flinch much.

Bronze animal street cred.













I felt these pants were most appropriate for the occasion.

The difficulty with awesome print coat is getting one long enough or to match with whatever is sticking out. I'm usually guilty of ignoring that which drives my mom nuts but it's hard to argue if you're wearing all black.



So if you want to avoid the zoo's horrible crowding in the summer, the winter still has opportunities for (mostly) peace and quiet. Just bundle up comfortably with style still in mind.

Also insertminipromotion, cannon powershots may not be cool professional cameras but they're really good for trips like this.

Partying Like An Out of Work Rockstar

Other than my parent’s anniversary dinner last week to which I will reminisce on in another post, I’ve kept up a consistent schedule of waking up after 1:30 and watching That 70s Show in my underwear until the sun is almost ready to come up again. It’s like what I do in Chicago only longer than a weekend.

So of course I would have a rather low key New Years but instead of the usual Twilight Zone marathon, I actually left my domicile and hung out with my bff-in-Brooklyn Sophia. We went to my favorite greasy spoon in my neighborhood and then walked towards the park until the fireworks went off.

My Sophichka likes her coffee light & sugared and her face hidden by objects.

Under new developments of 2011, a deep abiding love for fried chicken has been learned. My meat repertoire slowly expands.

Your face will be captured for posterity or my name isn’t Carmen Miranda.

I realize both my bffs Camila and Sophia were better motivated to dress better after internships in the fashion industry. Employment: the sartorial saviors.

It’s weird how only a picture of someone’s hair can turn a picture into an emo etsy listing for braided headbands. But it’s at least not in a sun-kissed wheat field, right?

(Shirt: Vintage from my mom’s closet, Belt: Eugenia Kim, Pants: Old Navy, Boots: Vintage)

It’s distressing by how many pants I’ve been wearing lately, but I’ve been wearing these a lot since I don’t pack many clothes when I get back from Chicago. My mom somehow got them for 97¢

Even from across the nation we’ve been absorbing each other: she’s been getting rid of her jeans for skirts and I’ve been buying more pants.

Wish I had better photos of these snakeskin boots my mom just got me. Other than the belt and earmuffs, everything else is responsible via my mom. Showing good taste can be inherited.

I was channeling Sandra Lee at the drunken blackout tablescaping for Donna Summer’s mansion that nobody ever talks about. You know it would have to be serious if the Food Network wasn’t selling a DVD of it.



Personally fireworks don’t really interest me; I think something about things that are intended to be spectacles are too deliberate to be naturally magical. The real show is how people react to these tools of wonderment, the way they crowd together and find themselves so small in the grand scheme of things.

Blah blah blah, fireworks as metaphor for the new year and change. I’m not afraid of being sentimental, I’m just too lazy to commit to writing out the visual imagery, but you get the idea, right? Also it's kind of the day my mom was born so that sort of takes precedence. It definitely makes tracking her age easier.

I may not have washed my hair but got up and put on pants for all two of my readers. To me, that defines commitment.

Wayne's World Gangsta Paradise

So my final semester to my schooling experience is done although inexplicably the worst work has yet to be done:

- Leftover horrendous writing/editing papers
- Putting the Tyra in tyrannous is all the stuff I gotta do for my BFA thesis performance

Wah wah wah. I'll get there, I'm just a procrastinator to epically bad proportions.

Luckily Christmas time has come, I have a bunch of cleaning to do among the work before I go back to Brooklyn for a good month. But I really needed a few days to de-stress. Spent last night partying it up i.e. - eating a bombshell of a calzone and clapping gleefully with friends as we watched Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion on VHS. We're pretty hardcore.

Today in the aftermath I got to chill out and go to Chinatown with Camila to have dinner, exchange gifts and toast to the end of the evil SAIC reign.

Even better than turbans I have realized giant bows are the answer to greasy hair days (+ controlling my insatiable cowlick). It is 50s housewife alone but I'll show how pairing can change the connotation of an accessory.

Camila readin' my card and got her some snacks along with a fabulous Rachel Roy top that I got another style of for myself in the same color from Filene's Basement. I mourn the closing of the chain with the proper grief it deserves for a historical East Coast chain.

And why use wrapping paper when you can use a misleading store bag?

Camila got me this adorable ring in a cute 'lil tin. I think wood rings > metal rings because there is something comforting about the material, it doesn't feel like it cuts off your circulation.

Sad grunge white girl version of being hood! Or umpire signals, who knows.

I offer little explanation for being in my bathtub other than I desperately need a tripod.

I'm rocking the Tupac-as-a-Dandy, no?

Don't hesitate to get me Life Alert for Christmas.

Enjoy the holidays, kiddies. "Where the hell's my limo? Peace to the Middle East!"

I want to come through so badly

I'm a research hoarder. A regular hoarder too, but I don't intend to discuss that because you guys know enough about me as it is. I have a gazillion little links and images for future projects in countless folders that I often end up forgetting what they inspired me to do. They will sit there for eternity but occasionally I will write about it (thus the use for my blog) so I feel less guilty about having them stocked up in said files.

In one of my typical insomnia rabbit trails to which I blame Billy Corgan on a reality show red carpet with Tila Tequila and somehow ended up reading the letters and various materials of Percy Grainger.

Image via Modernist Maundering

Hottie with half a dis-em-body

To give a quicky background on him, he's a (supposedly, I am not trained to make that distinction) brilliant Australian composer who thought a great deal of himself to prepare a museum on his life and the people who influenced him. He documented his history from the mundane to his mostly sado, occasionally masochist, penchant for flagellation. Of course it's related to mommy issues and surprise, she was a controlling racist.

He's like the tolerant, rich man's Prussian Blue.*

Aside from the self-involved bigot thing, he also had a lot of hobbies i.e. the non-sexual kind, like making little inventions and to my interest, clothing.

With the help of his wife Ella, they made these really cool garments as well as beadwork. The museum sites seem to refer to the process as "towelling" but I don't actually know if they are referring to huck towelling, meaning for you non-weavers is taking a woven towel where 2 threads are skipped or "exposed" (Grainger would enjoy that word use) and embroidering, or sewing a weave in it. It sounds more like they just cut towels, sewed them and tied the fringes as this article suggests. On off chance you click that article, for the record, no, I do not consider him a Dada artist. Sorry, bro.


*Though a recent article has revealed their inevitable shedding of their white supremacy propaganda spiel to Urban Outfitters potheads.

Ella, Ella, A, A, A ::gurgling sounds of being strangled::

Drawing for beaded chest piece

Eat your heart out, Fiona Paxton

Madonna needed this for her Blonde Ambition Tour, as would I
(not sure if he made this, it did belong to his wife)

Images via Music Australia

Image via Australia Art Monthly

Image via University of Melbourne

I wish I could see his house he ended up moving to in White Plains, but I have no reason to go to upstate New York unless I need freezing snow or something.

These works are historical but so could be worn today in a non-exoticizing history kind of way.
Percy Grainger and his wife Ella are perfect examples of this recurring trend of doing all different mediums but in a casual way and not being half-assed about it. I'm enamored of people who can show they're multi-dimensional personally and as creative people, his wife was also a painter to add to their list of Renaissancery talents. Yeah, that's right, color me jealous. Or bad.

To see more beading and such from the archives, here's one page of it at Music Australia.