Latest Dance Craze
30 September 2005



After class yesterday, I rented my girlfriend's boyfriend for the afternoon. Sounds silly, but we partake in such odd, couples-oriented activity together that if there was any hint of attraction involved, a few eyebrows would certainly be raised. We went shopping on Broadway for a bit before meeting up with his girlfriend and her friends for dinner, then headed down to a beer garden in Battery Park for some PSP gamers forum meet-up. Suffice it to say that everyone there thought I was his ditsy girlfriend, of the technologically deficient, non-PSPing crowd. When asked what my favorite game was, all I could do was shrug and say "Maniac Mansion for Nintendo". Eyes rolled in every direction. 1987, y'all.

In all my years of living in New York, I'd never once stepped foot on the Staten Island Ferry. After leaving the beer garden, we both looked at the station, figured it was a free ride and climbed aboard. Smiling wider than a kid on Christmas morning, I ran up to the top deck and insisted on hanging out over the edge to get the best view of Manhattan possible as we left the dock. I also acquired one of the best, wind-swept hairdos of the evening after the trip.

Back to Manhattan for the TTC show at Knitting Factory. Their performance was perhaps one of the best I've seen all year, no exaggerations whatsoever. They even had DJ Orgasmic in tow who threw on the Modeselektor/TTC collaboration "Dancing Box" right before they took the stage. You know, I've never particularly envied the French, but everytime Cuizinier was on the mic a tiny piece of me conceded their superiority to other acts of the same ilk and wished that more foreign MCs could have a flow that tight. They came out for an encore of "Dans Le Club" and everyone went batshit crazy. Orgasmic jumped out from behind the decks and grabbed a mic. Teki took off his shirt. Cuizinier took off his shirt. Money grew on trees. Pigs flew. Toilet water in the northern hemisphere began to flush in a clockwise direction. Shit was bananas.

My friends and I worked up a serious sweat on the dancefloor. I thought I'd refuel at Happy Ending afterwards and then Mars Bar, ground zero for alcohol-induced retardation. I met some kids visiting from Gothenburg and enthusiastically shouted "Hej, jag talar inte svenska!" which translates into "Hi, I don't speak Swedish", perhaps not the best way to begin a conversation with a Swede. It was the only phrase I remembered from a trip I made to Stockholm. We made nice and they ushered me into a group photo. Someone gave me a business card. Turns out they all work for Denimzine.

After that, well... things got stupid. I'm too tall for these small, little couches everyone keeps in their living rooms. At 5'10", my legs are always dangling from the knee down. Friends, please invest in sofa beds or futons.


Posted by La Decadanse @ 19:35 | |


Deep Sea Diver
24 September 2005

Apart from being one of the most charming dinner dates I've ever had, Tyler Coburn is an extremely precocious and talented individual. We happened to be living in the same dorm while I was attending Charles University and he was studying at the film academy, FAMU, where we were first acquainted with one another through the magic of iTunes network sharing.

His latest project comes in the form of an animated music video for the song "Deep Sea Diver" by Brooklyn-based band, Grizzly Bear.



Click to View Video (.mov)

If you enjoyed his work, I urge you to come out to an Opium Magazine party at Happy Ending on Thursday, September 29th for a screening of "Fashion Victims No. 92, Case Notes: Jahn and Jan". The event is free and starts at 8pm.


Posted by La Decadanse @ 23:14 | |


Morphine Generation & Flaunt Magazine Party
22 September 2005

The other night I dropped by Movida for the Morphine Generation/Flaunt Magazine party with a performance by Suicide Club. Two words: drink specials. Five words and one contraction: couldn't care less about anything else.

Flaunt is your typical photography/high fashion magazine complete with token sob story about poor Africans or more specifically Ugandan night commuters, children that've escaped abduction by the Lord's Resistance Army. It's hard to ignore some obvious contradictions in content and the disgusting disparity of wealth as you flip from D&G ads, shirtless celebrity fold-out spreads and a feature on the new Rockstar Games release to that article. So I wonder how it appeals to your average Flaunt reader, whether they find it just as odd. But I admit, despite the article reading like a condensed, amateur account of the situation, it was overwhelmed by these intensely beautiful photographs of the children taken by Chris Floyd.

I wonder what the implications of making something so tragic so aesthetically appealing are. If only we could resurrect Kevin Carter and certain members of the Bang-Bang Club! I appreciate the attempt photojournalists make to bring these issues to light, but when they pawn their work off to publications like these, their message is sadly lost among glossy blondes and titles like "The Worst Videos Ever Made: Raedon & the 80s Video Boom". There must be a better venue for this sort of material. I'm surprised at the number of politically charged awareness pieces I come across in these and other magazines where it just doesn't seem to fit with the prescribed content.

Then I think of what a possible alternative to serious pieces in magazines like this would be. For some reason it conjures up disturbingly funny images of the following premise: what if Merlin Bronques was on assignment in the Sudan taking photos of last night's Janjaweed militia party?


Posted by La Decadanse @ 19:31 | |