here comes the sun

Or, coming out of 'Pause Poise'
...which would literally mean 'waiting to exhale'

Did I tell you that my room is, for the moment at least, "complete"?

Bedside table, assembled. Posters, up. Bookshelves, overflowing. I have the most perfect cozy nook this side of 14st street (as far as I'm concerned), and I'm not afraid to roost.

The funds are getting tighter, which makes my 'easy living' something of a game. The weather is finally turning on the charms. I remember this time last year I was discovering new land, and myself, cohabitation, and making new friends whom I wish I could see more often, or even at all. Early Spring days that feel like summer could now only mean Coney Island, gelati, and spontaneous bursts of joy - all very good things to associate with (except for Coney Island, which is just hilarious). This time around it would never be the same again, and as nostalgic as I like to be sometimes, I'm still pretty freakin' excited.

Drama school is, as common knowledge, pretty much synonymous with psycho therapy. Either replacing it, or driving you towards it. Being the usual ball of needy mess that I am (while maintaining a perfectly painted and pruned exterior), the summer finally means a chance to get my breath back. Release from the 'Pause Poise', if you will. The well of insecurities which I managed to clamp shut most of this semester finally broke a few weeks ago, and with it everything else broke too. Got sick for the first time in ages, felt alone for the first time in ages, got back on my feet on my own for the first time in ages, and looked forward to a break from everything for the first time in ages. Do you ever get the feeling that you love everything that you're doing, but you just want it to stop for a while? That you are just so absolutely exhausted from everything, you could hole up in the fetal position and stay there for months? I am there right now, even with all the shit that the humidity of New York summer dumps on my face, I say, BING. IT. ON. I am so ready for you.

Someone once told me, I write a lot, but I say nothing in these blogs, and I realised that it's annoyingly true. I hate those viciously vague blogs that waft on about intangibles, and here I am, wafting on about intangibles. It's because the people I would have to write about, would most definitely object to being written about. You should write me an email requesting for clarification or anecdotal evidence. I compose excellently juicy emails that would ramble on ad nauseam about any number of topics. I am the fountain of random inconsequential knowledge peppered with sassy opinion seasoning on absolutely everything.

Veronifugs

Why am I not surprised that, when the veronicas get together with target to design a range of clothing for pre teen girls, combining my hatred for celebrity labels and inappropriate faux punk girly fashion, that my worst fear of all was going to be involved. That's right. Leggings with stitching that's made to look like denim.

No, please do click on the image to enlarge it I beg of you. You need to understand where I'm coming from when I say the world as we know it is coming to an end. This is almost worse than the time when Bratz (the doll company) tried to sell push up bras for 6 year olds. Or that other time (now) when Linds Lo tried (trying) to sell leggings with knee pads, and leopard print, ankle, things...

Really people, this is a terrifying fashion world we live in. Inspired by a good friends upcoming house warming theme of 90s fashion, I started digging up a lot of repressed memories. I'm talking, early ninties starting from the Babysitters Club moment I had in grade 3, to afterschool adventures with Clarissa Darling, to marathon evenings with Kenan and Kel (and an entire SNICK evolution). Stay with me folks, there's a lot to get through. I would like to just outline two of these fashion heroes here in order to come up with a look suitable for the said party, even though there is a high chance I will not be able to make it.

BSC. We actually started a club, back in the day, and we each took on a role of the original four. I was always going to be Claudia can't-spell-for-her-life Kishi. I would pretend I liked Nancy Drew, eat lots of candy, and braid my side ponytail. I wanted to make my own jewelery and paint my dads shirts, when I was old enough. Lucky for everyone involved that by the time I was old enough, I'd moved on. Recently I came across a fascinating blog written by a girl who was clearly brain fart twin back in the day, because the entire blog is just a transcript of all the passages from the books, of what claudia wore. (aka the best instances of literature ever! what imagination, what style!) My only regret is that I never stuck around long enough to get to the Super Mysteries part of the series. They sound like fun.

Style Points to take from Claudia:
- Side Ponytail
- Overalls
- Denim Cutoffs
- Oversized Men's shirts, ideally hand painted with a pattern of some sort, and fitting with the overall theme of an outfit
- Having themes for outfits, such as: the sea, fruits, body parts.
- Fluro leggings
- Wide Belts
- The Entire American Apparel catalogue

Clarissa Explains It All.
now THAT was a show. Back when Melissa Joan Heart was still cute and a good at what she does, back when a completely platonic relationship between a girl and a boy was still plausable, back when parents are seen as the bumbling, well meaning, but ultimately foolish financial facilitators. Clarissa was way cool. She made arcade style computer games in every episode that serve no purpose. She was intelligent, had great taste in music, she wanted to be a tv journalist, and she broke the fourth wall!! Her fashion sense was off the wall as well. I'm still downloading the entire first season so I can revel in it's 90s greatness, but from memory, and what I can dredge up from youtube, I came up with the following:

Style Points to take from Clarissa
- Layers, lots of it, in block contrasting colours
- Coloured scrunchies
- Brightly coloured leggings under torn jeans
- Vests, suspenders, grandpa cardigans
- Headbands
- Polka dots, Stripes
- Billowy silhouettes
- Oversized shirts with rolled up sleeves worn as a vest over an oversized t-shirt.

Man and she had awesome diagrams and charts. This girl was way cool, how she turned into Sabrina I'll never understand.

These are my two biggest inspirations of my primary school phase. It's pretty late, so I'm going to leave it at that. But if I was to go into a whole spill on old Nick shows I'll never leave. Secret World of Alex Mack, Are You Afraid Of The Dark, All That, Adventures of Shirley Holmes, and Kenan and Kel made up most of my childhood. As dated as some of these might seem, it sure beats whatever crap the Veronicas could ever come up with, that's for sure.

speaking of which

urgh...
as Clarissa would say, they are such a burr in my butt.

(ps/ you can watch quite a few episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark on youtube now, some are still quite creepy, some with Ryan Gosling, and all with terrible special effects)

MIFF 08 Adventures

It's only a week away, and sadly, as I was stupid enough to not sign up for volunteering work this year, I had to buy a Minipass with my hard earned dollar. I just wanted to keep ya'll updated on what I'm seeing, where I'm going to be etc etc

* - denotes a session already booked on my minipass (I get 10 of these)
# - denotes a session on my minipass that's before 4pm (you get 3 freebies of these)

everything else denotes stuff I still need to confirm/would like to see/might need to buy single tickets for/maybe forkout for a second minipass... god willing

---------------------------------------------------------------
*Dainipponjin - 26/07 @ 11:15 (GU5)
California Dreamin' - 27/07 @ 9:15 (Capitol)
Jesus Christ Saviour - 30/07 @ 9:40 ( GU5)
Ben X - 1/08 @ 5:15 (GU4)
*Three Monkeys - 2/08 @ 5:00 (Capitol)
*Waltz With Bashir - 2/08 @ 7:15 (Forum)
Sukiyaki Western Django - 2/08 @ 11:30 (GU6)
*Seven Days Sunday - 4/08 @ 7:15 (GU5)
*My Winnipeg - 8/08 @ 7:00 (GU4)
*Best MIFF Shorts - 8/08 @ 9:00 (Capitol)
#The Wackness - 9/08 @ 3:00 (Forum)
A Complete History of my Sexual Failures - 9/08 @ 7:15 (Forum)
The Death of Mister Lazarescu - 9/08 @ 9:15 (GU5)
#Ahes of Time Redux - 10/08 @ 1:00 (GU6)

Coopers Lounge:
*In Conversation with George A Romero

------------------------------------------------------------------
These are the "See How I Feels". a lot of these are convenient times at convenient locations:

Rock N Roll Nerd - 30/07 @ 9:30 (ACMI)
Jar City - 1/08 @ 7:15 (GU5)
Experimental Shorts - 5/08 @ 7:00 (ACMI)
Cargo 200 - 9/08 @ 5:30 (Forum)
Rumba - 10/08 @ 3:15 (GU5)

passes progress : 7 passes/2 day passes...eek
If there's something you implore me to see, please let me know!!!

mock jeans

It's about time i made a new post. throughout the last couple of weeks i kept making mental notes on whines and moans to crap on about but really can't be bothered now. first order of business, a spot of geeklicious widgetry. to the left, under my pretty twitter badge, is a drop.io widget. through this you can send me anything you want, pictures, videos, music, documents, and i won't know who it's from. if it starts filling up i could just create a new free account of 100mbs. if it gets good enough i might publish the link where it all gets collected. the site is a really neat idea, you could even leave voicemail for me, it'll be an expensive call to new york to get it into my folder but that's not that much through the magic of skype. probably cheaper than leaving a message on my mobile even. anyway that's enough advertising for them. (and of course all this excitement is happening on the blog and not the facebook imported note)

the mental notes that i have basically consisted of bitching about how astoundingly bad cashmere mafia is (the production value of hollywood blockbusters, with the look and feel of soft core porn and playtime for lucy liu in costumes. lethal lethal mix), how surprisingly entertaining So You Thing You Can Dance Australia is (rhys, the resident flaming queer is the very same M.A.C. makeup artist that helped me pick out my base and powder shades), and horror upon horror, the leggins made to look like pants phenomenon that comatosed me before christmas, is now sweeping box hill, and most likely the nation, available at all good asian owned sock stands in shopping centers.

that's a pretty bad phone picture, so they might look like denim, but rest assured they all have the spandex and fake stitching of leggings. someone needs to bleed for this atrocity, and my finger is pointed at not linds lo, but people who do exercise. people who think a pair of nike's means it's ok to wrap your lumps in something black and stretchy and go out into daylight.

It was also the opening night of the French Film Festival last night, the full force of Palaise du Como was armed at the ready. finishing at quarter to two and having close to half a bottle of champagne down my shoe, the most unpleasant moment would still have to be when the greased back hair'd first born spawn to the zeccola legacy, my boss's boss, man who runs the Film division of the Palace family said to me (as i was passing trays of food around being attacked by vultures on all sides) "i just want you to stand next to me you're so beautiful". there. it's out on the internet now, i feel better.

thinking of having another movie night sometime in the near future. volunteer your most forlorn dates and we'll hug it out with chips and experimental cinema. speaking of which, my personal demi-god, felicity colman is keeping a new blog for her class this year at screen machine. the lastest lecture apparently touched on Gordon Matta-Clarke whice i blogged about not too long ago, but she included movies! so here i am shamlessly ripping off flick ripping off ubuweb.

Splitting (1974), Conical Insert (1975), City Slivers (1976).

two tails

*warning: filler post. actual content pending*

Charlie Parker, that's the second cat, and Miles Davis have settled quite well. i think. All day i watched them eat, drink, poop, and wrestle. no matter how hard i try to block out all access to under my bed they always seem to find a way in and retire for two hours at a time until i go in to fish them out, when they'll go eat, drink, poop, and wrestle. i think they're adapting to me now. instead of retreating they now wrestle over, around, and on top of me like i'm part of the furniture. i've given up on keeping them away from under my bed, instead i just leave them a gap for safe passage at the top of the bed so that if my worst fears of my bed collapsing is ever realised they can run out easily. i'm also trying to introduce them to the top of my bed. it's working, they now jump on, and run through it quite regularly on their routes of their chase games.

i've taken a few videos but you really have to see them. they're scratching the hell out of my room but they're the darn tootin' cutest things you ever saw. miles can climb half way up my curtains now!

oops. they both got distracted by my tapping away at the keypad half way through a half nelson and fell sidelong in a heap off my bed. i think i will introduce them to the rest of the house tomorrow. this room suddenly seems too small for them.

aah, miles has just learned the difference between pillow and doona. similar texture, but very different leverage points for attack. they're both perfecting the hind legs pounce, sometimes toppling over mid pounce. miles has these stubby little legs, so it's pretty funny. charlie is just beautiful, but a little schizo. frantically chasing his tail in jerky movements, and sometimes chasing something entirely imaginary.

twist, pounce. twist, pounce.

at air.

the game just got vicious, they're starting to push each other off the bed.

and now charlie's gone to the bathroom and miles can't find him. i am so becoming a cat lady but how can i help it when they're so cute when they're little?