london life so far

engagement party: fi & chloe; mark, chloe, sam, me; brunch with jimmy, leith & tilda the wonderpup;
jimmy; tilds; james diggle
tilda; digs; london lovebirds
leet outside pub; james d; leet, both at weird sculpture thingy in london fields
james d's fridge; my books (yes, i missed them); grandma & fi
curly claire; british cigarette packs; anna and blonde clare
home; more home; sam
two floors bar in soho; HF; pad thai jay at busaba on wardour st, yum
and, um, yours truly (in two floors, where i washed down much medication with a mojito)

okay, so now it's 8:30 am and i still haven't been to sleep. i feel a little unbalanced. i think i might go and try and nap. pass the prozac, someone.

zzzzzzzzz.

well toto, we're not in jersey anymore...

so long dirty jerz, hello grey skies, cold weather, expensive drinks and travel...

and of course people i love :)

[saw 'lords of dogtown' on the plane. awesome, awesome film]

no bang! and big smoke

so my sister wanted to go out last night and i'd mentioned the Bang! party at No.1 Chinese to her, so we were more or less planning on that. then she made me meet her in bloomingdales after work to help her buy some jeans. sometimes i'm a good person to shop with, sometimes i'm not. last night was the latter. i was knackered. i think i actually dozed off in the fitting rooms for a moment whilst waiting for her. we came out and i was tired and cranky and the thought of Bang! was enough to make me cry so i dragged her into the cinema where we watched wedding crashers and had popcorn for dinner. i'm such a party animal sometimes it hurts.


people/things to see and do whilst back in the big smoke: [in no order]
* HF. Marie & Spencer. Sam & Jo [well obv, I’m going back for their freakin’ engagement party…] Uni housemates. Semoosh. Jimmy and Leet and James D and Jerry and Sal. And Nicky P, if she’ll come down. My grandma. Teddy & George. The porn corner?
* Hug my family. A lot.
* Tell my friends I’m sorry if I’ve ever taken them for granted.
* Ride my beloved BMX Raleigh Burner whenever it’s not raining, or I’m asleep. Or out.
* Sleep. A lot. In my own bed. In a room that actually attains a degree of darkness.
* pick up my Repo Man DVD. actually, pick up a bunch more DVDs to bring back over.
* Busaba/Wagamamas/New World dim sum/The Stockpot /CCK
* Enjoy the supermarkets. Aah, Sainsburys, Tescos, M&S…
* Portobello market – on Friday morning, most likely
* Brick Lane market – on Sunday as meant to be meeting the London bike gang kids round that way.
* TOPSHOP! Primark. Hennes, just in case there’s any different stock?
* Lovingly dust off my record player and vinyl and tell them how much I’ve missed them
* Kew Bridge. [ooh, Kew Gardens too if time] Chiswick Bridge. Waterloo Bridge.
* Get the good old 94 bus up to town. Bitch about how ridiculous bus fares are.
* Try not to talk with this American twang I’ve apparently picked up.
* See if I can convince my momma she really does want to pay for me to get a haircut. Or else go to one of those training session things that cost like fifteen quid.
* Go to Fouberts [i can't believe it's been bought by Soho House] for the best Italian ice cream in London. Then wander round the Old Cinema

shit, i really need to start sorting stuff out and packing. i'm just not too sure when i'm going to have time. eeek.

american twangs and i'm not okay

how fucking rad has it been having my little sister in town these past few days?

totally fucking rad.

this is at happy endings last thursday, when we made a brief pitstop to soak up their open vodka bar. i didn't balance the cam quite right so it's a little skewed...

so we went out for dinner on sunday night, me, fi (sister) and two of her friends who coincidentally happen to be in the city at the moment for a wedding and they spent the entire evening ripping the piss out of me for how i speak. apparently i've picked up an american twang. i tried my hardest not to. but according them, it's very evident. goddamnit.

right now i'm in one of those moods that can only be alleviated by playing really fucking loud music, but my itunes on my work computer has a really limited playlist 'cause i just never put much on it so at the moment it's just got my chemical romance [when the hell did i start listening to such random music?? since i moved over here, my music collection has just altered and expanded radically, it's most odd] - i'm not okay, like, on repeat [just a single mp3, i don't have the album]. i need to get some music on here that's good to play loud.

plus, i have class in like an hour and i just cannot be arsed, as ever, [see, my vocabulary still has its english roots] to finish this fucking assignment. ugh.

* * *

umm, i actually *am* okay, btw. it wasn't one of those teenage angsty things where you listen to a song moaning "that's my life...". it was just a case of work stacking up, not managing to leave the office at all during the day, not having my first meal of the day till about 3:30 'cause things were so crazy here [got dizzy spells once i managed to eat something. shouldn't that have been the other way round?], and generally needing to wake up. hence the need for loud music.

once i left the office and stepped outside i mellowed out somewhat. listened to belle & sebastian [ahh, sweet Tigermilk]. played hooky from class...

tam o'shanters and my first CMJ

tam o'shanter: a hat with a bobble. [sorry, private joke...]

[okay, how retarded am i that i just posted a private joke on my own blog. ugh.]

this is a tam o'shanter:



this is not acceptable millinery for anyone. unless possibly you're a womble. or a bagpipe player. it is not okay to wear this out. it is not okay to think it's okay to wear it, even if it is to a place that in general has a flamboyant sense of dress.

tam o'shanters being worn out on the town: BANNED.

* * *
okay, so my first experience of CMJ is over. to summarise:

* we overdid the CMJ thing on thursday so that it pretty much killed doing anything else CMJ-related.

* i didn't get to see enough bands. it's a money thing. and a partying too much on thursday night so that the thought of heading over to bklyn on friday night was just too much (see above. and below).

* i did see everyone's new favourite band, Nightmare of You. they rocked. it was at CBGBs, i took my sister along (her first night in town, i think the poor thing was a little jetlagged but i ignored her plaintive cries of "sleep!") but i think the history of the place was lost on her.

* didn't attend enough after-parties, even though i was informed of some. we did hit up one at scenic on thursday. a late show or after party? i'm not too sure. i know i was talking to some english dude in the band tom vek but didn't know who they were [story of my life]. we talked our way in to the guest-list only show/afterparty, pretending to be other people.

* someone gave us a free bottle of ketel one at a hiphop club across the road from scenic. it's not really CMJ related, but a free bottle of vodka. that's always nice.

insomnia and art school

insomnia + nightmares when i do actually fall asleep = one dozy english girl right here...

on monday i almost tripped over when someone yelled hello at me 'cause i was so out of it. on my way home i got on a friggin' hoboken train. just been in a little bit of a fugue state these past couple days. i caved this morning and bought coffee. i need a caffeine injection right about now.

i was looking at the SVA/Parsons/Cooper Union sites yesterday and really wish i'd gone to art school. then when i eventually got home last night (class, etc.) we ended up watching 'Basquiat' (what a film) and i so want to take more classes. i thought that summer school at central st martins was enough, but clearly not. i've pretty much missed registration for the fall semester, so when i'm back in london in a couple weeks i'll pick up some of my bits then use the rest of this year to get some work done, throw together some kind of portfolio out of all the shit i have lying around, then register in the new year for evening classes or something. it'll also give me time to save up.

someone remind i've said this in december. i know how crap i am at following through on things.

recently i've realised:- i have a total soft spot for cheesy hip hop movies. you got served... drumline... yes, even honey... i blame my teenage years on this.
- i keep getting really unfortunate mini-crushes. unfortunate because they're either totally inappropriate, or gay.
- i shouldn't drink champagne at the start of the evening then head onto the vodka for the rest of it. anyone i saw on saturday, my apologies if i seemed like a lush.

what i've mainly been thinking:- woo hoo, my sister gets in to town on thursday! i haven't seen her in almost five months, i can't *wait* to see her.
- shit, it's her birthday today, i must call. and get a card. shite, and a present. crap i'm a bad sister.
- what the *hell* am i going to wear for halloween??

no title necessary

the rest of the 'what happened to my wrist?' tour...

saturday, wake up late and uncomfortable in a small ball on the floor. eventually four of us head out to rue st laurent [have i ever mentioned how much i love french?] and stumble around until we find coffee. idly wander up the road, stopping to play in a dollar store. buy tacky housewarming gifts and play for too long in the kids aisle, dressing up in tiaras and metal claws. leave when quebecois children start giving us filthy looks.



later, meet up with arielle. go for some food. try this infamous montreal creation, poutine - fries, cheese curds and gravy. how did someone come up with that?? not as bad as it sounds.



that night, head up to her friends' gallery where we drink their beer, dance around and make them take photos of us standing in front of a light bar [as below...] then to a senegalese restaurant for a late dinner. lovely little place. BYO. always good.



somehow end up in a strip club downtown. lame ass shit. too clinical. did nothing for me. the ladies' bathroom pretty much doubled as the strippers' dressing room, too.



sunday, up earlier, more coffee, more breakfast, more rue st laurent-wandering. in the afternoon head to mont royal with peter and CC, whilst arielle and william sleep off whatever they got up to the night before after we left them.

late night picnic in the park - we brought the alcohol, her friends brought the chicken and potatoes. three of us don't eat meat so there was a quick jaunt to hunt down grilled cheese sandwiches nearby. me and CC stole a's friends bikes and were riding round parc de la fontaine. i have to admit i was a little tipsy, but nothing quite like drunk bike riding...



managed to set off relatively early on monday, after hard goodbyes.

didn't stop as much, and much more space in the car. stopped off in woodstock in the afternoon for a much-needed break [burritos and ice-cream, the boys attempted to get some gear from everyone hanging on the village green, but to no avail...]



having been dreading the thought of still having to get back to JC once we touched back down in brooklyn, the dears actually drove me all the way home. we were driving round JC and Hoboken [yeah so we took a little detour trying to get back to my 'hood...] blasting Hot 97 and finding it hilarious. but then we had been in the car about 9 hours or something.



thanks for having us, canada.

'floor punch the mountain' tour 09/2005 - day one

thursday night:
okay, so we'll meet you at the lorimer L stop at 10

friday morning:
okay we're running a little behind, let's say lorimer at 10:30

a little later, friday morning:
can we make that 11?

a little after that, friday morning:
you know what, they're still loading the car, you just come up to the montrose stop and meet us at the lofts...

an auspicious beginning. road trips wouldn't be road trips without the whole setting-off-hours-later-than-planned thing. finally leave brooklyn at ten to one.

catskills:
blonde redhead - william's mix CD - the ponys - electrelane, cc and arielle.3 dancing in the front, making the car swerve all over the place - the smiths, the CD was scratched - johnny cash, loretta lynn

stopping almost every two hours for pee breaks, food, coffee, stretching legs, everyone (apart from the driver) moving one seat to the left so we were in constant rotation as to who was in the front passenger seat

the albany toll booth, asking the kid there what radio station to listen to, ending up with the local albany hiphop station

the adirondacks:
ELO - beautiful sunsets - the velvet underground, talking about what this album made us all think of - telling stories about arielle

setting off firecrackers in the back lot of a remote truck stop - william, peter and arielle.3 bundling back in the car and yelling at us to go while cc and i calmly lit sparklers in front of the car - five minutes later and they're all playing with sparklers too (that we bought from the truck stop) and someone comes out and kindly asks us to move on ("hey if it was up to me, i mean, i don't care, but my boss, he wants y'all to go...")

dark driving to the border - sonic youth blaring loudly - arielle starts crying as we're waiting in line at the border checkpoint

finally arrive in montreal at about 10, 10:30. her new place is tiny and dirty. we throw stuff in, head out for a drink, but are so cracked out and travel weary, we don't last too long.

welcome to canada...

name-dropping and the art of subtlety

stuck in my head:
* A-Ha - Take On Me
* Arcade Fire - Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
* Bloc Party - Helicopter
* Beulah - Burnt By The Sun
currently all on rotation in the jukebox inside my mind.

Last night I had to go watch this video of a lecture I missed last week (I didn’t know it was on) – it was about business ethics etc. It was rubbish but there were some interesting points about truth and integrity.

And I was just thinking this morning that I’m so tired right now – not necessarily sleepy-tired, although there’s that too, I’d have much preferred to sleep in this morning – but something in me is tired of something, I’m not sure what, and I feel like if anyone asked me anything right now I’d only be able to be bluntly honest with them.

So try me. Ask me a question. Message me with anything, even if you’re not sure you want to hear the answers. Because I’m fed up with two-facedness and sycophancy and hiding. Honesty is the only way forward. It's almost even getting to the point when I'm dropping my guard. Because I don't like to lie, but there comes a point when you just avoid questions because of a self-preservation, self-defence kind of mentality.

I’m also fed up with name-dropping. People seem to have been doing it to me a lot recently.

“Yeah, I styled the Franz Ferdinand videos” [ugh, Franz Ferdinand…]

“I’m Nicki Hilton’s stylist…” [me, trying not to laugh in his face]

“I’m a Calvin Klein model” [whatever trevor]

and some more.


Subtlety really is a lost art.

* * *

i've been thinking about this since i first posted, and i'd like to update. this is what i'm tired of:
- falseness
- two-facedness (yeah, so it's not a word)
- sycophancy, for any reason
- judging on looks. i know, we all do it. i do it. i just wish we didn't, that it wasn't such an immediate thing.
- disregarding people because they don't have the right look. i may judge on looks, but i'm always happy and willing to be proven wrong. i don't care what you're wearing if you can uphold your end of a conversation or something. but i feel like too many people, too many places right now the opposite is true. if you're not wearing it, you're not worth talking to.
- disaffectation. if you're passionate about something, *be* passionate. if you like someone, tell them. if you get geeky about something, then who cares? geek out on it. embrace it. enough of this studied cool.

phew. looks like it's a good thing i'm going to montreal for the long weekend. maybe a few days out of this jungle will do me some good.


new york, my darling, i do love you so, but some of the qualities you bring out in people (yes, myself included) aren't always great.