A Brie Grows in Brooklyn

New summer dress.

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:05:00 -0400

New summer dress.

Art In General (at Art in General)

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:28:51 -0400

Art In General (at Art in General)

Home economics, an earlier time.

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:56:13 -0400

Home economics, an earlier time.

During one of the many iterations of my life thus far, I worked...

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:05:00 -0400

During one of the many iterations of my life thus far, I worked as the executive director of a non-profit that rescued endangered animals. The non-profit was funded by a very wealthy woman who, along with being addicted to percocet, loved animals far more than she did human beings.

After the tsunami in 2004, she wrote an email to the President of Sri Lanka. On the email, she cc’ed George Bush and Hilary Clinton, both of whose addresses she had in her Rolodex. She was infuriated that, in an attempt to make room for the survivors of the tsunami, the President had re-located a number of wild elephants. The human lives, in her opinion, were less valuable than those of the animals. The President of Sri Lanka answered the email; he asked her to come meet with him.

I lasted at this particular job for four months, which is a relatively long period for me.

I’m thinking a lot of the woman today, looking at the images of the destruction in the wake of the Oklahoma City tornado. It’s a tragedy that, yet again, is beyond words. I don’t know how to process what it means.

What I can process is the imagery. And what I’m noticing about the photographs from this particular horrific event, in comparison to other recent ones, is that the media is showing a lot of hurt pets.

This is probably fucked up to say, but I wonder if a lot of that is because of some subconscious connection we make between tornadoes and “The Wizard of Oz.” Dorothy and her Toto. The news has become so closely entwined with entertainment that the way that even The New York Times reports on events is informed by the associations we make with pop culture. The image above, for instance, is one of 17 the paper chose to display on their homepage to capture the event. A horrifying image of a hurt dog.

I try to think of what good it does, to show all of these photographs. A lot of people do, and have since the advent of media.

Today, I think of the woman I used to work for who cares more about animals than she does human beings. And I think of her seeing these images of dogs, and feeling profoundly, deeply affected by them. Maybe it will call her, and all of her money, to action.

I think it’s important for all of us to look at these photographs. I think it’s important because it prepares us. I think it’s important because, I suspect, these new super storms have a lot to do with what we’ve done to our environment. I think it’s important because bearing witness, collectively, as a society, is the only way we’ll take action to change things.

And I think it’s important because the people in the midst of it need our collective empathy and love, even if it doesn’t help them directly. They need the dignity of acknowledgement. They need to know that we are with them, that we care about them, that their suffering is ours.

I could ignore the images; I chose to feel them instead.

Caleb and I are trying to watch every movie he rented on his...

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:41:00 -0400

Caleb and I are trying to watch every movie he rented on his iPad for his trip to Asia, which by the way, is a lot of movies. They expire tonight, and we still have four left.

Watching movies because you’re ostensibly not wasting money by doing so allows for a real freedom to indulge. I’ve been like a junkie. I might say sayonara to life in a few minutes, and just polish the rest off.

Before I go, I must say, you should maybe consider watching “The Double Hour,” an Italian thriller from 2009. I was expecting like Memento level confusing plot twists, thanks to this New York Times review by Stephen Holden, but instead, was able to guess the ending by the second twist. Twist. Twister. Tornado. (I’m sorry for the victims.)

I probably shouldn’t have read the review.

Basically it’s about a Polish chambermaid who meets an Italian stallion at a speed dating class. He’s a damaged man. He’s also a former police officer/current security guard at a very wealthy person’s home in Turin. While the pair are on a romantic date in the woods behind the house, they get robbed at gunpoint by a bunch of art thieves, who cart away millions of dollars worth of precious objects. Before the thieves leave, they shoot the chambermaid, or the Stallion, or neither one. Who knows. This is when the movie becomes a plot twisting thriller.

I would actually recommend watching it. Thrillers are fun! So are Italian sex scenes. The actress who plays the chambermaid looks like Monica Vitti. And the Italian stallion looks like a hot Colombian guy I once knew. I forgot how enjoyable it was to stay up late — and be tired the next morning — for a movie.

One of my favorite photography books of all time is...

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:25:00 -0400

One of my favorite photography books of all time is “Tulsa” by Larry Clark, which incidentally also happens to be one of the most disturbing photography books of all time. Clark writes in the introduction:

i was born in tulsa oklahoma in 1943. when i was sixteen i started shooting amphetamine. i shot with my friends everyday for three years and then left town but i’ve gone back through the years. once the needle goes in it never comes out.

Because I’m going to Tulsa on Thursday, this week will be Clark week on my blog. The above picture is one he took in New Mexico. Read a sort of interesting interview with him here.

I’m going to Tulsa on Thursday.

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:12:14 -0400

I’m going to Tulsa on Thursday.

Thanks to a fan girl post I wrote about Julie Delpy a while back...

Mon, 20 May 2013 17:30:00 -0400

Thanks to a fan girl post I wrote about Julie Delpy a while back (you can read it here), HuffPost Live asked me to sit down with her and Richard Linklater tonight to discuss “Before Midnight.”

The segment airs at 7:30pm EST, and you can watch it here. I am literally so excited, I might not be able to talk when it goes live. Julie Delpy is one of my idols. I am obsessed with her. She is gorgeous. And brilliant. And funny.

Not to mention that “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset” might be the only movies I can watch endlessly, on repeat, and never stop loving.

In case you missed it this weekend, definitely check out this fantastic profile of Delpy in the New York Times Magazine. And watch me tonight!

Interiors (1978) by Woody Allen: Some Thoughts

Mon, 20 May 2013 09:53:00 -0400

Before I watched Interiors, a 1978 film by Woody Allen, last night, I read that it was very...

People whom I intensely dislike today. 1. Beyonce (False...

Sun, 19 May 2013 21:57:58 -0400

People whom I intensely dislike today.

1. Beyonce

(False pregnancy rumors are not cause for outrage. Why not just tell the public: “Listen, I had a little belly in my blue sparkly onesie last week because I ate fucking Mexican food.”)

2. Angelina Jolie.

(Way to use a procedure that most women can’t afford to catapult yourself back into the spotlight. How about telling someone else’s story to raise awareness for the fact that the majority of women who die from breast cancer are low income and in the ethnic minority? Enough with the publicity blitz — you are not a hero.)

3. Judd Apatow

(Your movie “This is 40” sucked, and thanks for wasting 2 hours and 30 minutes of my life this morning.)

Sleepy Sunday.

Sun, 19 May 2013 11:53:38 -0400

Sleepy Sunday.

The place where the city keeps its snow plows.

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:41:14 -0400

The place where the city keeps its snow plows.

Strange desolation.

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:39:12 -0400

Strange desolation.

Being men. @bensheena @calebzipperer (at The Crystal House)

Sat, 18 May 2013 12:31:33 -0400

Being men. @bensheena @calebzipperer (at The Crystal House)

I know I’m like music lightyears behind on this, but I...

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:19:41 -0400

I know I’m like music lightyears behind on this, but I just started listening to a leaked copy The National’s new album “Trouble Will Find Me,” and I have a feeling it’s going to be “Boxer” good. I’m prickling with goosebumps.

Violet is one of Franke’s only friends (and Violet is...

Fri, 17 May 2013 09:31:49 -0400

Violet is one of Franke’s only friends (and Violet is terrified of her).

In the loving calm of your arms

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:29:00 -0400

One of the most difficult things about being really busy is adjusting to the lull of when...

At BKLYN Designs last week, Caleb and I shared a little corner...

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:53:00 -0400

At BKLYN Designs last week, Caleb and I shared a little corner of the St. Ann’s Warehouse with an older couple who have been living and working together for many, many years. Their names are Tim and Andrea — I thought, at first, that they must be in their 60s, but Tim told me that their son is 50, which means that unless they were children when they had him, they must be at least in their mid-70s. They do tromp l’oeil in rich people’s homes to make a living — on the side, they make gorgeous gilded art deco coffee tables in a tiny studio in Dumbo. Their son is a career bike messenger, still working in the city.

For the past 22 years, they’ve lived in my dream building — the lofty old school house on the corner of Vanderbilt and Sterling in Prospect Heights. When I first moved to the neighborhood in 2005, I swear I walked by that building every day, and said out loud, “I would give anything to live there.”

Today, it’s too expensive for all of us. But Tim & Andrea bought their 2-bedroom for a song in the early 1990s — when they sold it earlier this month, they made an 800% profit. They’re moving because the neighborhood has changed too rapidly. “They planted trees in the middle of Vanderbilt Avenue!” Tim exclaimed of the main street in Prospect Heights, which is bursting with new restaurants and artisanal food stores. Until a few years ago, all there were was barber shops, liquor stores and one tiny restaurant. In the summer, there were stoop parties. In the winter, desolation.

They’re also moving because it will give them a nice little nest egg for when the work runs dry, as it always does when you’re an artist, and you’re making a living from it. They bought a studio apartment in a doorman building — “A doorman building, can you imagine?” — in Brooklyn Heights. They’ll give away most of their belongings — “We’re tired of them anyway,” Andrea said — even though she admits that she’ll have trouble getting rid of her jackets and shoes. “My shoes!” she proclaimed. “I put so much working into taking care of them!”

The one thing they’ll keep is their full bed, which they’ve been sleeping in for many years. “When we travel, and the bed is a queen, I don’t like it, because I can’t find her in it,” Tim says. They still sleep close together. Tim has a big handlebar moustache. He gently squeezes your arm when you pass him. Andrea is tiny and dresses all in black. She has a white bob, and a face that, although she says she hasn’t gotten any treatments, looks as though it’s been lifted and tucked a few times. “Every night, I put cream on it,” she told me. When my sister, who works for a plastic surgeon, came to visit the booth, Andrea asked her for her card for the future.

They drank their daily allotment of free Modelos out of plastic cocktail cups. Throughout the weekend, people came to visit them. A man with tattoos and dreadlocks who does the metal work on the bases of their tables. An Icelandic woman who lives in the apartment next door to them. “They collect rare music, that’s their career,” Andrea told me. “When you walk in their apartment, there’s no furniture, just shelves and shelves and shelves of records.”

I see them, and sometimes I see myself and Caleb, although not this morning, after he gave me some lip when I asked him to take out the recycling. I knocked his bike over on purpose on my way out the door to walk Franke. I have a bad temper. Caleb likes to be the boss.

“Go get a room,” Tim and Andrea joked whenever I would lean against Caleb, and turn my face towards him for a kiss.

I asked them if I could interview them. But interviewing people is what I do for a living, and it can be a fucking pain in the ass to transcribe, and sift, and edit, and reorganize the way that people tell their own stories so that it fits some idea of what you think is interesting. So instead, I think that I’ll write a story about how Tim and Andrea met, entirely made up. It will probably really be a story about me.

“One of them, toothless, clad in a dirty tracksuit and a...

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:11:34 -0400

“One of them, toothless, clad in a dirty tracksuit and a wool beanie, with a nebulous tattoo of a heart (which he gave himself when he was nineteen and in love with a cousin) partly covered over by a lion (which he gave himself six years later, when her father forbade her to marry him), told me one day, ‘When we were younger, we used to come here to swim and fish.’ And then, ‘Once, I was trying to pull a body from the river. The current was strong, I grabbed the body by its hand, and the arm came off.’”

I read “The River Martyrs,” an article by Luke Mogelson in The New Yorker, about the men who drag the bodies of people — men, women and children — out of the river in Aleppo after they’ve been killed by government forces. (I know, I’m weeks behind.)

I haven’t been paying much attention to the war — it seems so far away, and so unreal — which is why I think it’s important to read the piece. It brings the atrocities in Syria to life — I don’t know if we can, or should, do anything, but it certainly is more important than reading about failures in Benghazi, or whatever other nonsense is in the news this week.

Cannes Fashion: Nicole Kidman

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:53:33 -0400

I’m adoring everything about Nicole Kidman’s outfits so far at Cannes. She looks as...