April 7 2012 8:36 AM · 2 notes
(Source: jjameslansdon)
Blurbs
About Me
I'm a writer and videographer in Oakland, California. My day job is at Colorlines.com (opinions here are my own etc). I use Twitter sometimes and Google Reader often. My wife is better at tumbling than me.Posts
Displaying 3 of 48 pages. View allApril 7 2012 8:33 AM · 2 notes
A sheet from my appointment with the allergist
…wait
excuse me
what in the fuck
WOW.
April 7 2012 8:32 AM · 72 notes
(via Super I.T.C.H » Blog Archive » Health Care)
Gerta Ries
(via willlaren)
April 7 2012 8:32 AM · 2 notes
“Facsimile of an Indian Painting: Two Indians Fighting”
by Karl Bodmer
1839“Karl Bodmer created these watercolors during Prince Maximilian zu Wied’s American west expedition (1832 -1834). For over one-hundred-fifty years, Bodmer’s aquatints have remained a major source of information regarding Plains Indian culture. These works of art were also instrumental in creating the romantic perceptions and misconceptions of these peoples, which endure to this day in art, film, and literature.”
March 26 2012 4:52 PM · 182 notes
I wrote this! I’ve gotten some pushback on it from people in the scene described, mostly around my use of “One Percent” imagery and my description of the rap scene’s ‘tech sector’ as disproportionately white. All of the pushback has been thoughtful, and a fair amount of it has used funny hashtags. #respect
good:
Making art into a full-time job—indie or industry—can require years of scraping with no guaranteed payoff. It becomes a much smoother path if you’ve got a phone full of friends from whatever art school, enough spare time to hone and promote your work, and family who can support you and who don’t need to be supported. Social capital is still capital, and in our economic system, an art career is a luxury purchase.
March 25 2012 7:43 PM · 1 note
Dream Journal 3/23/2012
Twin Peaks-era Kyle MacLachlan is the host of a food show on the Travel Channel. He’s shooting an episode in a diner, in which he taste-tests American pot brownies vs. British pot brownies. He’s taken a bite of each and is giggling a lot, describing what he’s experiencing for the cameras. In walks Portlandia-era Kyle MacLachlan (the estranged father of Twin Peaks-era Kyle MacLachlan) to check out the pastries, oblivious to the show being filmed on the other side of the diner. Twin Peaks-era Kyle MacLachlan sees his father and, overwhelmed with emotion, tremblingly reaches into his pocket for a photo he always carries, a yellowed photo of the two of them, for the day when he would need proof. But Adrien Brody, the episode’s special guest, sees what’s happening and urges prudence: “You’re clearly high as shit right now,” he reminds Twin Peaks Kyle.
March 25 2012 7:29 PM · 29 notes
A piece I submitted to Chloe Angyal’s Men Who Trust Women tumblr. Other men: you should submit one too. And yes, bleached hair / bead necklace / PearleVision frames constituted a very important look for mid-’90s midwest alt.
This is a photo of one of my family’s happiest days: the day I met my sister, when she was 31 and I was 16. (Yes, I was way into Everclear and posing funny in photos. It was 1996.) My mom got pregnant with my sister when she was still in high school; she was made to turn in her National Honor Society pin, and she had to put her baby up for adoption.
When I was ten, my mother told me I had a sister somewhere out there, and gave me a sanitized version of events. Since our family’s been reunited and I’ve heard more about it and the weeks that followed, every new detail has broken my heart again. Last year, my sister adopted a nine-year-old girl, my niece, and my sister and her husband pursued an open adoption with my new niece’s birth mother. If they hadn’t, my understanding is that my niece’s birth mom would have been in a similar position to my mom as a teen: her motherhood, the love that defines her life, would have been legally erased.
My mom, a longtime pro-choice advocate, taught me that the debate over reproductive rights is about whether to maintain a system that controls women. And through my sister, I’ve realized that even beyond contraception and abortion rights, motherhood never stops being a handle for the state to grab at — to twist at or to take away.
The state’s control over motherhood made it so that my sister’s first weeks of life were spent in some institutional crib with no one to hold her; she only found us in 1996 because a social worker bent the rules, we think, some social worker who trusted women. My niece and her birth mother might not be in each other’s lives if my sister and her husband didn’t trust women. I love my family, and I trust women.
March 24 2012 7:54 PM · 9 notes
I Could Be Trayvon: Taking a walk on a Day off of School →
My friend and coworker Dom just launched this Tumblr to collect “Trayvon stories,” stories from black and brown men (and anyone who’s subject to the prejudice that black and brown men face). The story below, submitted anonymously, has some achingly familiar elements.
It’s one thing to know that racial profiling is alive and well. But it’s another to understand that damn near every black man in America has a Trayvon story, and to get a sense of just how much injustice there is to be dismantled — both legislatively and socially. My friends’ sons won’t be safe from it.
If you want to get involved, Trayvon’s parents are running a Change.org petition to bring George Zimmerman to trial. There’s also a lot of misinformation being spread about Trayvon, and the deadly outcomes of ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws, that needs frequent debunking. Educate yourself and speak up. And tell your story at I Could Be Trayvon.
When I was a senior in High School, I ended up having a day off on a Thursday in May 2009. That day I decided to go for a walk in my neighborhood or close.
The neighborhood I lived in at that time was a predominantly white neighborhood in South Minneapolis. It was very close to the Minnehaha…
March 23 2012 2:32 PM · 3 notes
Yesterday at the bubble tea place, as I was waiting for my matcha latté, a tiny girl at the next table stared at me REALLY INTENSELY for a very long time. Eventually she walked over and handed me half a birthday card.
March 22 2012 10:39 AM
Hey y’all. I need to hire a video editor to sew up a five-minute narrative film that’s aging on my hard drive. I have the audio from the different angles all matched up, and I’ve grouped together the mostly improvised multiple takes. I really just need someone to come in and make all the small decisions — snipping together the best moments and angles of the multiple takes into coherent, compelling conversations. (Which also means cutting around the improved parts that don’t work, and around my sometimes-iffy camerawork.) Ideally, I’ll hand you a drive and my notes and let you go to town, and then make tweaks to suit myself afterwards. Bonus points if you’ve got an enthusiasm for weird digital-decay multiple-exposure effects.
This is a paying gig! Send quotes and relevant work samples to me at catjams@gmail.com. Bay Area preferred, because the ProRes files are huge, but not required. I’d like to give my money to someone who isn’t a straight white cisgender dude (#changetheratio). And I’d love to have this finished soon so I can look Michelle Tea in the eye without quaking. It’s about her LIFE! and it is hella overdue!
