Cam'ron, "Hey Ma"
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The other night at Max's Karaoke in Little Tokyo there was this mega-hot longhair skater dude who requested a private room so he could do karaoke by himself. Which is the most fascinating thing that's ever happened, and now I wish I knew everything about that boy. Hopefully I'll run into him there again someday, at which point I'll ask him to interrupt his solo-karaoking to duet with me on either this song or "Islands in the Stream." (Liz)

If there's one thing that's true about me, it's that I absolutely cannot resist a movie like Black Swan, which is the new Darren Aronofsky film about the toxic world of professional ballet, out in theatres this December. I know that's a long time away, but dudes, WATCH THIS TRAILER, IT'S SO GOOD. You could seriously take lessons from this trailer on how to put together a teaser for a movie:

It was like this movie was reverse-engineered out of a "Things That Kat Loves" list:

1. BALLET! Especially Swan Lake, my favorite ballet of all time. Ballet is generally an art form obsessed with the purity of its aesthetics, and Swan Lake's are the purest of them all. It's always a sheer visual delight to watch, even if you're watching the all-swan-dude Matthew Bourne version (which is, by the way, gorgeous.) Loads of beautiful white feathers, gorgeous headpieces, amazing makeup...how could you go wrong with such visuals?
2. Demented ballet dancers played by doe-eyed brunettes!
3. A Winona Ryder cameo!
4. Darren Aronofsky directing! One of the most visceral dude directors around--quite excited to see what he does with the feminine world of ballet. Word has it this project was developed at the same time as The Wrestler, so I'm curious to see the kinship between the two films.
5. My friend JUST saw it at Venice Film Festival and emailed me to say that I was "going to adore the shit out of it." She also said that Mila Kunis is "fantastic," the costumes are "stunning," but she wouldn't give up the goods on the Mila Kunis-Natalie Portman makeout scene. COME ON DAMN IT!
6. Black Swan is supposed to be akin to Polanski's early movies. Now, I'm not too keen on a child rapist, but it's kind of undeniable that his early films like Knife in the Water, Rosemary's Baby, and Repulsion are brilliant. I love a good psychological thriller.
7. The performance costumes were co-designed by Rodarte! It's perfect that they're doing ballet costumes, especially for aforementioned demented ballet dancers!
8. I'm not a huge Natalie Portman fan, but it looks like the film takes advantage of her limitations as an actress and screen presence (perpetual little girl voice, even if she's playing FUCKING ANNE BOLEYN, perpetually tightly-wound) and transplants them perfectly into the darkness of the character.
9. I'm also a fan of any film with a vague Single White Female-type thematic focus. Female transference = YES.
10. And did you get that last bit in the trailer, the stuff with the red eyes and crazyface? I gotta know WTF that is all about.

It's so much fun for me when Paul McCartney plays the trumpet! Like in this photo, of which John Lennon is clearly the star.

(blahblahcutestfamilyeverblah)*

"Once she was on the freeway and had maneuvered her way to a fast lane she turned on the radio at high volume and she drove. She drove the San Diego to the Harbor, the Harbor up to the Hollywood, the Hollywood to the Golden State, the Santa Monica, the Santa Ana, the Pasadena, the Ventura. She drove it as a riverman runs a river, every day more attuned to its currents, its deceptions, and just as a riverman feels the pull of the rapids in the lull between sleeping and waking, so Maria lay at night in the still of Beverly Hills and saw the great signs soar overhead at seventy miles an hour. Normandie 1/4 Vermont 3/4 Harbor Fwy I. Again and again she returned to an intricate stretch just south of the interchange where successful passage from the Hollywood onto the Harbor required a diagonal move across four lanes of traffic. On the afternoon she finally did it without once braking or once losing the beat on the radio she was exhilarated, and that night slept dreamlessly."

I've never been able to do that.

Because it is.

"Monster" is so brilliant that it even manages to transcend the extreme stupidity of the lyric, "Have you ever had sex with a Pharaoh? Eguuuhhhhh I put the pussy in a sarcophagus." The rest of the Kanye verse is pretty cool, though. I get the impression he's in the midst of a total emotional breakdown these days, which is working really well for him. I hate when Kanye gets all glossy and fratty (fratty= like a frat boy). Speaking of emotional breakdowns, what the fuck is going on with Hov? I thought his scary breathey monster voice was just a gimmick employed to highlight the age/wisdom dichotomy of Jay vs. Drake in "Light Up," but apparently not. Apparently Jay-Z just sounds like a dragon all the time now, and that's something I have to accept about him. But, no, I don't know. I don't know if I can do that. The part where he talks about how his Achilles heel is love? It makes me feel uncomfortable, and kind of pity Jay. Why am I pitying Jay-Z? Jay-Z is emotionally manipulating me. But that's just part of the impressiveness of "Monster." I'm down to be emotionally manipulated by Kanye and Jay. By the way, if Jay-Z and Kanye West were John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who would be who? Please help me figure this out.

But really the whole point of "Monster" is the Nicki Minaj verse, and everybody knows that. Nicki Minaj is a genius. I don't know anything about Rick Ross or Bon Iver, so I have no opinions about their contributions to this song. Nicki Minaj is my hero.

(L: Also I like peeling peaches. R: Freeman's Superfruits Facial Mask.)

Listening: Class Actress, Smog, Sade, Aaliyah (R.I.P. baby girl)
Watching: Lebanon, which takes place inside an Israeli tank during the first Lebanon War. Pretty intense, but SO GOOD. And this week I will see Going the Distance, starring my good friend Drew Barrymore. And footage we shot of the web series I'm working on, SEE BELOW FOR DUDENESS. What is it about a group of dudes where it always boils down to a body joke?
Reading: Madame Bovary.
Wearing: jeans and a shitty striped t-shirt. Schlep day!
Wanting: A day off

+ Liz

Listening: songs from Popdose's "Late Summer, Late Seventy-something" mixtape, espesh "Superlungs My Supergirl"
Watching: the one where Pete Campbell says "Christ on a cracker!" and it's kinda a bit much. Poor Sally.
Reading: nearly finished with To Have Not by Frances Lefkowitz and I'm loving the hell out of it
Wearing: last night I wore my Spirit Animal House dress & felt nostalgic for when Kat and LJ kept addressing me as "barKER!!!"
Wanting: another Allston Yacht Club jalapeno margarita, high-waist flared jeans still

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

See! He really does look just like Miss Hannigan!

(via the beautiful cosmic gypsy hunter, who also gave us the The Love Rug, which strokes your bodies as you make love)

Elton John, "Amoreena"
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Imagine if Elton John was a babe? Imagine if he looked just like Graham Nash, or Jackson Browne, or whichever pretty-faced '60s/'70s rock god you most want to sweetly bone forever and ever? Would you love him more, if he looked like that? I sure would, and not just because I'm shallow. I've posted this song here before but I felt like throwing it on the jukebox again - partly for pretending-Elton-John-looks-like-Graham-Nash purposes, but also cuz I'm not gonna stop till everyone in the world gives "Amoreena" a shot and loves it to death. (Liz)

SAY HELLO, DUH

Awhile this dude was telling about about some "pick-up artist" (or something like that) who basically taught men how to hit on women. His name is Neil something? (Neil Strauss.) Anyway, apparently one of these tricks was this thing of hitting on a girl's friend to make the girl you're actually interested in jealous. Or something like that. It doesn't matter what the particulars are, because this is the stuff that makes the invention of the slang term "douchebag" a total necessity. Dudes, if you are reading this, PLEASE don't listen to this vagina repellent. It might work on femmebots who clog up the Meatpacking District on a Friday night, and hey, if that's your type, THEN WHY THE HELL ARE YOU READING NOGOODFORME? But if you're into a cool, smart, hot girl (who sees through this shit in a second), then a basic "Hi" followed by a genuinely interested question about the book we're reading/magazine we're carrying/notebook we're scribbling in/whatever often works. Sounds simple, but it does work. (Kat)

Way to John Lennon it, Paul McCartney!

PS: Do you think that these are self-portraits? I kind of get the impression that they are. Oh, Paul.

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P.S. See? Robert Plant is hideously unattractive.

Italians, obviously.

P.S. A fun fact about me is I find Robert Plant hideously unattractive.