DSquared <3s Black Models, Too!

Dsquared’s spring/summer 09 collection featured a majority of black male models, sporting hip hop-inspired gear. this strikes me as stereotypical and shit, but i can’t bring myself to get all political. this just makes me too horny

Struggles

Bush has embargoed Zimbabwe, Mugabe is soon to be sworn in again. I wanted to post this perspective on the earlier conflicts in South Africa, an interesting perspective on the puzzling behavior of Mugabe, Mbeki, and others.

More Sexee

word has it he stays in downtown manhattan (can’t you tell?). remember when he used to date madonna?

New Magazine…File Under “Source Material”

New Pub Dossier just launched with their first issue last month. Founded by two Brooklynites–writer Katherine Krause and fashion photographer Skye Parrott–on the idea that most fashion/art mags weren’t catering to the hyper-literate crowd. Here’s their mission statement:

Dossier is a bi-annual arts and culture journal incorporating fashion, photography, creative writing, art, music and culinary pursuits. Inspired by the French word for file, Dossier has no themes, features or specific guidelines. Dossier is independently published and owned.

My first impression is that I like it. I especially like the website. It’s got a magazine section with issue info and what not but it also has a section with art/photo and creative fiction/non-fiction submissions* (they’re , which I really like. Then, they have a blog that’s completely integrated with the rest of it. I think the general concept is def worth thinking about for Zombie as an online publication.

*send fiction (*COUGHZinziCOUGH*), poetry, creative non-fiction, art or photography to submissions@dossierjournal.com. There are no guidelines or themes for submissions.

Still Sexy

Maxwell made an unexpected appearance at the BET Awards a couple nights ago performing an al green tribute and debuting his new look. he cut his hair, put on a suit and sneaks and was looking good as ever. here is a snippet of his new song. according to his myspace he’s releasing a trilogy of albums over the next few years, whcih to me sounds very ambitious for an artist who has always delivered solid, but deliberately safe albums. this track is tight though, with the synth-bells and spare vocals, he’s definitely taking his shit into the future, and still doing it sexily. sensually. im never gonna not love him. can’t wait!

An Upside To The Brit-Fem Invasion

In general, I’m pretty nauseated by the most recent crop of British artists to hit the U.S. But, in true racist form, black artists from the UK qualify as an exception to my anti-Anglophilic sentiment–at least until I hear their music. Estelle is a perfect example. I dig her. (Winehouse is pretty black too.) This girl Ebony Bones, aside form having an awesome name and a logo, is really quite dope. She’s got an unclassifiable vibe like Santogold, with some serious ESG-like funk, and a kind of British sense of the melodramatic. This song “We Know All About You” is like Missy-Elliott-goth-funk-go-go (even uses the same sample as “Ching-A-Ching.”

Ebony Bones “We Know All About You” (courtesy of The Fader)

My Heart Is Heavy

This sucks.

The Audacity of Keith Olbermann

Keith Olbermann is the focus of a huge feature in the latest new yorker. i’m not into cable news, or any tv news really, but i might start watching because this guy sounds like a badass. the above clip is in response to Hillary’s universally chided comments on a potential assassination of barack obama. words don’t do justice to Olbermann’s rant, watching it gave me chills. 

Obama and Women

i read this op-ed a few days ago, before i caught wind of Obama’s estimated double-digit lead over John McCain. At the time, it quelled a lot of my fears that were planted (mostly by spurned Hillary supporters, some of them friends) as the primaries were dying down, that many former Hillaryites would be voting for McCain. Frank Rich makes an excellent point in identifying the image of angry Hillary supporters flocking angrily to McCain as a sexist stereotype. the article was quite enlightening, reallly, and makes sense when you think bout who is saying these things and their motives. 

i read this comment by Hendrik Hertzberg after reading the Frank Rich, and wondered if Hertzberg perhaps regretted his article, as his line of thought is clearly, almost embarassingly, implicated by Rich’s piece. i’ll add to this that Hertzberg has been probably my favorite writer through the contest so far. he’s been pretty shamelessly on Obama’s dick since the get go, and even when things were looking bleak for my man, reading Hertzberg’s bleary-eyed blog always made me feel optimistic. 

Hertzberg’s piece also hits on some ill feelings i wrote about in an earlier post, basically what amounts to an “oppression contest”, to use a term used by one reader of many who responded critically to his aritcle. I hold to what i said before, and thus agree with hertzberg, in saying that African-Americans have suffered a much worse history in america than women.  perhaps, i suffer from the same angry female mob prejudice that i earlier described, or maybe i can’t escape those inescapable feelings of black victimhood, but i’ll criticize anyone who can look at the treatment of women against the systematized horror of slavery and think them equal. i think the question is, does this need to be settled? does it even need to be talked about?

“The Streets Are Speaking to Us!”

bill cunningham on… sagging? Yes, it’s that odd, but also delightful, just like bill.