Thank you mama

For providing strength, encouragement, positivity, humor and hope

For imparting the knowledge of spirituality and empathy

For helping me to grow and change

For teaching me to find beauty in the mundane and to appreciate the present as a gift

For being a guiding light of creativity, wisdom and kindness

For supporting my every dream and endeavor ... 

I appreciate this now more than ever, as I finish an education you did everything to provide. 

I only wish that someday I will be half as amazing a mother and a human as you are. 

I know that we will always be dancing together on the beaches of this planet, and for teaching me to dance my way down often-unpaved streets, I can never thank you enough.

Banksy's pet shop

Famed underground street artist Banksy has gone commercial with his first-ever show in New York, called the Village Pet Shop and Charcoal Grill.  The project is on from now til Halloween, and it kinda looks like you've gotta see it to believe it.  

In his own words:

“New Yorkers don’t care about art, they care about pets. So I’m exhibiting them instead. I wanted to make art that questioned our relationship with animals and the ethics and sustainability of factory farming, but it ended up as chicken nuggets singing. I took all the money I made exploiting an animal in my last show and used it to fund a new show about the exploitation of animals. If its art and you can see it from the street, I guess it could still be considered street art."

via Wooster Collective (thanks Claire!)

Coke on crack

This Summer 09 Coca Cola commercial is one of the strangest pieces of advertising I've ever seen.  Kanye digs it, so you know it's weird.

The Last Emperor

Image courtesy of NY Times

Watch this new documentary on Italian couturier Valentino Garavani and experience the feeling of going two hours without blinking.  Sighs all around at the sight of his Roman villa, the private jet, the dresses, the ski and cruise vacations .... almost enough to leave you feeling nauseous with overindulgence, but it's a good kind of nausea.  Although the 77-year-old designer's insistence on perfection (every stitch is sewn by hand) and penchant for opulence have made him the stuff of fashion legends, the emotion, humor and pain of the film stem largely from his 50-year partnership and love affair with the strikingly handsome Giancarlo Giametti.  The film's cameos are a veritable who's-who of the industry, with insiders such as Karl Lagerfeld, Donatella Versace, Anna Wintour, Gwyneth Paltrow and Liz Hurley showing up to pay their respects to the king of couture.  And in true Valentino fashion, it all ends in a giant, gorgeous spectacle overlooking the Colosseum - I'm sighing again just thinking about it.

Summer is nearly here

In more Manhattan-based news, here's the lineup for Central Park Summerstage 2009.  Q-Tip and Chester French July 18th - yes please.

Not too far from the island, Celebrate Brooklyn, offering free performances in Prospect Park all summer long, has also posted their schedule.  David Byrne kicks it off on June 8th - who's with me?

Psychedelic puppetman

Jim Henson's hourlong documentary about the counterculture, unscreened since its original airing in 1968, is being screened tomorrow at 92Y Tribeca.  Youth '68 has no Muppets, but it does boast appearances from Jefferson Airplane and the Mamas and the Papas - wish I was home for this!

Philip Roth goes all nature-boy

Props to Htmlgiant's Jimmy Chen for making me laugh so hard I spit coffee on my keyboard.  Oops.

"I love the smell of fresh-cut grass and foreskin."  Brilliant.  More on pastures and penises here.

The Swedes are alright

Saw Peter Bjorn and John at the 9:30 Club in D.C. last night (thanks to Dana for the free tix).  They were wonderful - exactly what I needed in my life.  My new pre-graduation anthem:

Postcards from yo momma

Where people post hilarious emails from their mothers, because moms really do say the darndest things:

http://www.postcardsfromyomomma.com/

The Untouchables

My and Juliette's final photo project based on a prose poem I wrote long ago ... thought I'd share:

They tumble into Chelsea and the Lower West Side, dripping green tea ice cream from the corners of rapidly drying lips and they are so high from the galleries and the cotton candy nudes and the pot and the “magnitude of art” and the cigarette smoke and tangled whipping hair that she finally can't take it anymore, breaking herself off from the three of them like peanut brittle limbs, crrraaaaccck, and rolls down West 23^rd, holding her hands like earmuffs to block the echoes of “I feel like this one work has expanded my entire conscious,” and, “It's like a whole other level of creative energy, you know?” until she hears only a slight buzz, quieting her mind enough to make the approaching couple loom dangerously toward her in the stale light emanating from the bodega and she squeezes her head like an orange and wills it to juice and when it refuses to, she drapes herself over the ice cream counter and licks her face until it is sugared and covered in green-tea-flavored makeup and she sees herself in the reflection of the glass candy jar, dropping into a pool of her own profundity.

Many thanks to our lovely models - Claire, Dana, Amelia and Mike, you're all beautiful.