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Life on the East Side Ep. 3- "First Date"

Annie Hall is my number three favorite movie. Ask me on days when I’m feeling romantic and melancholic, and I’ll tell you it’s my number one favorite movie.

This short has nothing to do with Annie Hall.

And no, the female character is not based off of me….that much.

Boy: “Gosh, I never thought you’d actually respond to my Missed Connection!”

Girl: “I know! How many other girls in Austin fit the description, “Liz Lemon/Joanna Newsom combination that was sitting in Whole Foods reading a copy of Infinite Jest and drinking coconut water on November 12th?”

Boy: Probably around 8 girls?


November 16, 2010 by
Writing

This Ain’t No Disco

I’m in an East Village mood today.
The sort of day where I daydream about waking up in my rat-infested loft next to my boyfriend who is lying next to his boyfriend who is lying next to a nightstand full of hypodermic needles and a vinyl of Talking Heads: 77.

When I feel pretty uninspired, I just think of all the music and art that came out of New York City in the 70’s and 80’s.
Some of it was great.
Some of it was pretentious and overhyped.
Nonetheless, people were always creating.

And that’s what I gotta do…

If you can guess everyone in the pictures below (for a few of them guess the photographer), I will give you a copy of “Low Rent: A Decade of Prose and Photographs from The Portable Lower East Side“. It’s a fantastic collection of short stories, poems, and photographs from artists who lived or live in LES.

November 15, 2010 by
Writing

Ruin Porn

So, I’m really into ruin porn.

I’m glad to finally know that there is a name for this because I’m tired of listing, “I like abandoned stuff”, as an interest on bios and applications. Ruin porn sounds so much better.

Ever since I was a little kid I’ve been fascinated with run-down, derelict, and vacant structures. I love history so to me each building tells a story- a moment that was captured in time yet all the players have been removed and is ever so slowly deteriorating back into the earth.

My love for “abandoned stuff” often poses a problem during family vacations because I could care less about things, oh say, like, the Grand Canyon. I’m off looking for some shack someone left behind.

In fact, during our Grand Canyon trip, I couldn’t wait to get to f’ed up place known as The Salton Sea. That was my Grand Canyon.

Here are some of my favorite examples of ruin porn:

Ambassador Hotel– Los Angeles, CA

Built in the the 1920’s in the Mid-Wilshire District of Los Angeles, this grand hotel with sprawling (more…)
November 12, 2010 by
Writing

Slave to Blog


I’ve been listening to a lot of Bryan Ferry lately- particularly the song, “Slave to Love”. If I had a time machine, I would go back to 1985 and tell Mr. Ferry to change the song title to “Slave to Blog” because that’s what I feel like as of lately. He would be all like, “What the bloody hell is a blog?” and I’d say, “JUST CHANGE IT, BRIT, OR I’LL TAKE YOUR PRECIOUS CIGARETTES AND MODELS AWAY!” I’d also tell him that I would have to be in his music video and that we would be making out in said video.

Last night I stared at my computer screen for a good hour before giving up on writing a blog post. In fact, I got so angry at my inability to come up with anything remotely interesting to say that I spited myself and the world by going to bed at 9:30! Nine-freaking-thirty! Granted, this Day Light Savings Time is really jacking with my body, but last night made me realize that my emotions are at the whim of my blog. How did I become my blog’s bitch? I thought I was the one in charge, Blog! I (more…)
November 10, 2010 by
Writing

Life on the East Side- Episode 2

Life on the East Side- Episode 2

For those of you who don’t live in Austin, Texas, something that we’ve become known for as of late is our near dysfunctional obsession with food trailers. Like insatiable rabbits, these mini-restaurants are popping up left and right. Actually, this morning, I saw one sprouting out of the ground in my backyard.

We also really like Kate Bush.

A lot.

A lot lot.

November 8, 2010 by
Writing

My Response to "My Son is Gay"


A blog post about a kick-ass momma defending her 5 year-old’s desire to dress as a woman for Halloween took the Internet by storm yesterday. The story- written by a mother of three who goes by the moniker Nerdy Apple Bottom– got picked up by CNN, Gawker, The Guardian, and The Advocate and now has over 20,000 comments. Her story is simple and concise, but managed to create a stir between readers who related and those who did not. In short, the mother vents her anger towards other mothers at her son’s church preschool who questioned why she let him dress as Daphne from Scooby Doo for Halloween. It is difficult for me to imagine that anyone would disagree with the mother’s support of her son. To tell a child “no” due to your own insecurities about gender roles and sexuality just seems like bad parenting to me.

The mother’s story really hit home for me because I was made fun of for wearing men’s clothing as a kid.

When I was in junior high I came to school dressed in suits. Sometimes (more…)

November 5, 2010 by
Writing

It’s a Pee-Wee Herman Kind of Day

It’s B-List Actor Thursday again! A day to celebrate the true talent that gets overshadowed by the hacks in A-list.
Being a child of the 80’s, Pee-Wee Herman epitomized my early introduction to unconventionality. To me, Pee-Wee represented confidence- feeling comfortable in your own skin…or tiny suit. He did his own thing, did not care what people thought of him, and though enjoyed interacting with others, found solace in his own world. As years went on, Pee-Wee took on a secondary significant role as a symbol of my childhood. When I watch him now, I recall the days I would sit in front of the television mimicking the “Tequila” dance over and over in my mother’s platform shoes. His movies and TV show now have dual entertainment purposes- I remember all the scenes and jokes that struck me as a five year-old- how they made me feel- but now as an adult I understand the irreverence, the eccentricity, and the reminiscence of a time long past. Just as Pee-Wee served as a nostalgia gatekeeper (more…)
November 4, 2010 by
Writing

Life on the East Side

Hey All!
My apologies if you’ve already seen this video that I made. I wasn’t able to write a post last night due to an elections viewing/Texas Tribune anniversary party where, incidentally, I ran into a boy I formerly dated and we both acted like we didn’t see each other. I was also harassed outside by a man who stated that he was from Africa and asked if I spoke French. He did not have a detectable accent other than that of “high as a kite”, and when I asked him if he had eaten at the new and delicious African food trailer, Cazamance, owned by a lovely gentleman from Senegal, he asked me if the food was Mediterranean. I explained to him that Senegal is on the Western side of Africa and then he proceeded to walk into me and shout, “I’m chill! I’m no asshole! I just do my thing! Wait, where are you going?!”
The video below is made on the new movie-making platform, Xtranormal. I first came across Xtranormal after a Twitter follower of my former boss- a Hollywood producer- made a video about (more…)
November 3, 2010 by
Writing

The "Young, Creative Urbanite" In Its Many Forms

Are you sick of all this hipster talk on the web?
Yeah, I kind of am too.
Don’t let the name of my blog fool you.
That was just for branding purposes.

People have been trying to kill off hipsters for a long time now.
The truth of the matter is, the phrase blew into epic proportions that society lost control of.
Now they’re trying to reel it back in.

“Hipster” became an easy way to identify any young person who 1.) wears trendy or vintage clothing 2.) has interests other than mainstream contemporary culture 3.) has a creative job or no job.

Shit, that’s like 75% of young people nowadays. It’s not fair to lump everyone into one identifying phrase…

…You have to break them up into 4 or 5 identifying phrases, duh!

Second to Brooklyn, the supposed epicenter of Hipsterville, I would take a guess that Austin, Texas and Portland, Oregon vie for the next spot in line. Since I live in Austin, I can tell you that it is one giant cesspool of every facet of hipsterdom.

But I don’t want to use that word- hipster– (more…)
November 2, 2010 by
Writing

Guest Post: A Eulogy for the Hipster?


Last week another article popped up in a major publication about the twenty-something hipster. However, this essay claimed that this generation of hipster is dead. The PBR-drinking (do we really drink that much PBR?), flannel-wearing, vinyl-buying hipster is gone.



Done. Finished.

I have my own theories on this (which I will post tomorrow), but one of my favorite bloggers, Meghan over at Blackberries to Apples, has some thoughts on this topic that I’d like to share with you…



A Eulogy for the Hipster
By Meghan Blalock

On this week’s cover of New York magazine reads the line: “The Last Word on the Hipster: A Historiography by Mark Greif.” The story on the inside opens in large black font with, “What Was The Hipster?” and Greif extrapolates in past-tense his four-page argument that the contemporary Hipster is dead: that “it is evident that we have reached the end of an epoch in the life of the [hipster],” whose lifespan was approximately 1999 to 2009, and while the hipster seems to persist (more…)

November 1, 2010 by