A little pizza in an uncivilized world

humansofnewyork: I am a street photographer in New York City....

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 13:28:48 -0500

I am a street photographer in New York City. Several months ago, I was approached by a representative of DKNY who asked to purchase 300 of my photos to hang in their store windows “around the world.” They offered me $15,000. A friend in the industry told me that $50 per photo was not nearly enough to receive from a company with hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. So I asked for more money. They said “no.”

Today, a fan sent me a photo from a DKNY store in Bangkok. The window is full of my photos. These photos were used without my knowledge, and without compensation.

I don’t want any money. But please REBLOG this post if you think that DKNY should donate $100,000 on my behalf to the YMCA in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. That donation would sure help a lot of deserving kids go to summer camp. I’ll let you guys know if it happens.

yaleuniversity: Happy birthday to the nation’s oldest college...

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 01:41:18 -0500

Inscription over the entrance to the YDN building.

Looking through the archives

YDN board members of years past

YDN newsroom

yaleuniversity:

Happy birthday to the nation’s oldest college daily, The Yale Daily News!

The YDN was first published on Jan. 28, 1878. (Photos: Andrew Leu ‘13)

"To be able to talk to your heart’s content about a book you like with someone who feels the same way..."

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 13:23:05 -0400

“To be able to talk to your heart’s content about a book you like with someone who feels the same way about it is one of the greatest joys that life can offer.”

- Haruki Murakami (via murakamistuff)

Photo

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 22:03:15 -0400

We’ve all seen the headlines at the check-out counter. “Kristen...

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 14:44:56 -0400

We’ve all seen the headlines at the check-out counter. “Kristen Stewart Caught.” We’ve all thumbed the glossy pages here and there. “Kris and Rob a couple?” We all catch the snaps. “I like that dress. I hate the hair. Cute couple. Bad shoes.” There’s no guilt in acknowledging the human interest in public linens. It’s as old as the hills. Lift up beautiful young people like gods and then pull them down to earth to gaze at their seams. See, they’re just like us. But we seldom consider the childhoods we unknowingly destroy in the process.

I have been an actress since I was 3 years old, 46 years to date. I have no memories of a childhood outside the public eye. I am told people look to me as a success story. Often complete strangers approach me and ask, How have you stayed so normal, so well-adjusted, so private? I usually lie and say, “Just boring I guess.” The truth is, like some curious radioactive mutant, I have invented my own gothic survival tools. I have fashioned rules to control the glaring eyes. Maybe I’ve organized my career choices to allow myself (and the ones I truly love) maximum personal dignity. And, yes, I have neurotically adapted to the gladiator sport of celebrity culture, the cruelty of a life lived as a moving target. In my era, through discipline and force of will, you could still manage to reach for a star-powered career and have the authenticity of a private life. Sure, you’d have to lose your spontaneity in the elaborate architecture. You’d have to learn to submerge beneath the foul air and breathe through a straw. But at least you could stand up and say, I will not willfully participate in my own exploitation. Not anymore. If I were a young actor or actress starting my career today in the new era of social media and its sanctioned hunting season, would I survive? Would I drown myself in drugs, sex, and parties? Would I be lost?

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: if I were a young actor today I would quit before I started. If I had to grow up in this media culture, I don’t think I could survive it emotionally. I would only hope that someone who loved me, really loved me, would put their arm around me and lead me away to safety. Sarah Tobias would never have danced before her rapists in The Accused. Clarice would never have shared the awful screaming of the lambs to Dr. Lecter. Another actress might surely have taken my place, opened her soul to create those characters, surrendered her vulnerabilities. But would she have survived the paparazzi peering into her windows, the online harassment, the public humiliations, without overdosing in a hotel room or sticking her face with needles until she became unrecognizable even to herself?

Acting is all about communicating vulnerability, allowing the truth inside yourself to shine through regardless of whether it looks foolish or shameful. To open and give yourself completely. It is an act of freedom, love, connection. Actors long to be known in the deepest way for their subtleties of character, for their imperfections, their complexities, their instincts, their willingness to fall. The more fearless you are, the more truthful the performance. How can you do that if you know you will be personally judged, skewered, betrayed? If you’re smart, you learn to willfully disassociate, to compartmentalize. Putting your emotions into a safety box definitely comes in handy when the public throws stones. The point is to survive, intact or not, whatever the emotional cost. Actors who become celebrities are supposed to be grateful for the public interest. After all, they’re getting paid. Just to set the record straight, a salary for a given on-screen performance does not include the right to invade anyone’s privacy, to destroy someone’s sense of self.

In 2001 I spent 5 months with Kristen Stewart on the set of Panic Room mostly holed up in a space the size of a Manhattan closet. We talked and laughed for hours, sharing spontaneous mysteries and venting our boredom. I grew to love that kid. She turned 11 during our shoot and on her birthday I organized a mariachi band to serenade her at the taco bar while she blew out her candles. She begrudgingly danced around a sombrero with me but soon rushed off to a basketball game with the grip and electric departments. Her mother and I watched her jump around after the ball, hooting with every team basket. “She doesn’t want to be an actor when she grows up, does she?” I asked. Her mom sighed. “Yes … unfortunately.” We both smiled and shrugged with an ambivalence born from experience. “Can’t you talk her out of it?” I offered. “Oh, I’ve tried. She loves it. She just loves it.” More sighs. We watched her run around the court for a while, both of us silent, each thinking our own thoughts. I was pregnant at the time and found myself daydreaming of the child I might have soon. Would she be just like Kristen? All that beautiful talent and fearlessness … would she jump and dunk and make me so proud?

There’s this image I have of a perfect moment. It comes to me as a square format 8mm home movie with ’70s oversaturated reds and blues, no sound, just a scratchy loop … there’s a little white-haired girl twirling in the surf. She’s singing at the top of her lungs, jumping and spinning around in the cold water, all salty, sandy, full of joy and confidence. She’s unconscious of the camera, of course, in her own world. The camera shakes a little. Perhaps her mom’s laughing behind the lens. Could a child be more loved than in this moment? She’s perfect. She is absolutely perfect.

Cut to: Today … A beautiful young woman strides down the sidewalk alone, head down, hands drawn into fists. She’s walking fast, darting around huge men with black cameras thrusting at her mouth and chest. “Kristen, how do you feel?” “Smile Kris!” “Hey, hey, did you get her?” “I got her. I got her!” The young woman doesn’t cry. Fuck no. She doesn’t look up. She’s learned. She keeps her head down, her shades on, fists in her pockets. Don’t speak. Don’t look. Don’t cry.

My mother had a saying that she doled out after every small injustice, every heartbreak, every moment of abject suffering. “This too shall pass.” God, I hated that phrase. It always seemed so banal and out of touch, like she was telling me my pain was irrelevant. Now it just seems quaint, but oddly true … Eventually this all passes. The public horrors of today eventually blow away. And, yes, you are changed by the awful wake of reckoning they leave behind. You trust less. You calculate your steps. You survive. Hopefully in the process you don’t lose your ability to throw your arms in the air again and spin in wild abandon. That is the ultimate F.U. and—finally—the most beautiful survival tool of all. Don’t let them take that away from you.

- Jodie Foster

newyorker: A Sunday morning cartoon by Roz...

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 19:28:18 -0400

newyorker:

A Sunday morning cartoon by Roz Chast: http://nyr.kr/MoBMGq

such a fun movie!

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 00:12:00 -0400

such a fun movie!

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I...

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 00:23:00 -0400

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. To put to rout all that was not life, and not when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived.”

This film is beautiful and heartbreaking. I thought that it was going to be one of those cookie-cutter inspirational films where the teacher changes his students’ lives and goes on to topple the oppressive administration. But this—this is much more real.

NEVER SORRY “Out of the forty cats, there is one cat who...

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 19:56:00 -0400

NEVER SORRY

“Out of the forty cats, there is one cat who knows how to open doors. If I’d never met this cat, I wouldn’t know that cats can open doors.”

I’m really excited about this new documentary about the Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei!

"So it goes."

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 19:36:00 -0400

“So it goes.”

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-5

Photo

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 01:01:08 -0400

alecshao: Kurt Perschke - The RedBall Project (2012) Artist’s...

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 23:19:13 -0400

alecshao:

Kurt Perschke - The RedBall Project (2012)

Artist’s statement:

“Through the RedBall Project I utilize my opportunity as an artist to be a catalyst for new encounters within the everyday. Through the magnetic, playful, and charismatic nature of the RedBall the work is able to access the imagination embedded in all of us.

On the surface, the experience seems to be about the ball itself as an object, but the true power of the project is what it can create for those who experience it. It opens a doorway to imagine what if? As RedBall travels around the world people approach me on the street with excited suggestions about where to put it in their city. In that moment the person is not a spectator but a participant in the act of imagination.

I have witnessed it across continents, diverse age spans, cultures, and languages, always issuing an invitation. That invitation to engage, to collectively imagine, is the true essence of the RedBall Project. The larger arc of the project is how each city responds to that invitation and, over time, what the developing story reveals about our individual and cultural imagination.”

"Write until you hit bone."

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 00:44:17 -0400

“Write until you hit bone.”

- (via michellelynking)

"When you listen to somebody’s story and and then try to reproduce it in writing, the..."

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 20:01:00 -0400

“When you listen to somebody’s story and and then try to reproduce it in writing, the tone’s the main thing. Get the tone right and you have a true story on your hands. Maybe some of the facts aren’t quite correct, but that doesn’t matter—it actually might elevate the truth factor of the story. Turn this around, and you could say there’re stories that are factually accurate yet aren’t true at all. Those are the kind of stories you can count on to be boring, and even, in some instances, dangerous.”

- Haruki Murakami, A Folklore for My Generation

“Focus on what’s important to you today, because you...

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 19:45:00 -0400

“Focus on what’s important to you today, because you never know if you’ll have a chance to pursue it tomorrow.” - Matt Lauer to Time on how Steve Jobs’s death impacted him

“No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go,...

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 19:41:08 -0400

“No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That’s all.” - Haruki Murakami, Birthday Girl

I’ve never really bought into the idea that going to new places can change you. I love travelling, and each time I’ve stepped foot in a new place I’ve felt uplifted in some way. But it’s never been a transformational experience. I’ve always come back the same person, albeit richer in different stories.

mayosjustanickname: devidsketchbook: SALAR DE UYUNI (or Salar...

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 13:12:28 -0400

mayosjustanickname:

devidsketchbook:

SALAR DE UYUNI (or Salar de Tunupa)

The geological history of the Salar is associated with a sequential transformation between several vast lakes. Some 30,000–42,000 years ago, the area was part of a giant prehistoric lake, Lake Minchin.

Amazing photos | via

:O

THIS IS A LAND OF DREAMS

lemonlights: One of the most empowering sets of images I’ve...

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 23:24:27 -0400

lemonlights:

One of the most empowering sets of images I’ve come across this summer. And of course, Hill is on a phone.

Political Powerhouses in Vogue: Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Condoleezza Rice - Magazine - Vogue

"When I hear a writer say that they ‘put in a call,’ I want to pull my hair out."

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 17:12:21 -0400

“When I hear a writer say that they ‘put in a call,’ I want to pull my hair out.””

- New Yorker editor David Remnick, on how good reporting can mean calling a source so many times that “the person [decides] it’s better to give you the time than to endure the constant assaults of your calls and emails.”

Storyboard: David Remnick on the Art of the Profile

(via jessbennett)

"It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another..."

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 12:18:05 -0400

“It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.”

- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises