So last night's launch party was a success! We went to the Ha-Ra Club in the colorful Tenderloin of San Francisco to meet up with a bunch of cool people for drinks, fun, some dancing, but most importantly to give out copies of the first issue of BE ABOUT IT. It was a great turn-out, and a bunch of zines found happy new homes with my friends.
The owner of the bar, Rick, was really nice and served up pretty strong drinks at for super cheap! I was sipping on an Italian lemon-infused vodka that Rick said he bought a case of for a customer who said she liked it, but then shortly after she went on the wagon and Rick was left with a case of unpopular vodka. We heard a lot of stories while sitting at the bar. I liked the drink (it was called Zone), and turned some of my friends on to it as well. It was smooth, with just enough sweetness. I love lemon-flavored things, and I especially love fruit-infused vodkas.
Here I am trying to box with my friend, Angelo. Rebekah brought up the topic of taking a boxing class together, which made me want to pretend-fight. Bekah caught this photo on her phone.
It's here! It's done! My zine, BE ABOUT IT!, is ready for you to take home!!!
Please leave me a comment or send me an email if you would like a copy for yourself. I only have 75 of these babies printed, so supplies are limited! The zine is only three dollars
This is the zine that I put together, and it features a selection of poems (including a handful by yours truly!), humor pieces, illustrations, and other odds and ends. The launch party is this Friday!!
This was going to be in my zine ( I have been working on the zine non-stop, hence the lack of blog posts recently, and am pleased to announce that it will be out by FRIDAY!!), but I cut it at the last moment. It felt too "bloggy" to me, so here is a piece of non-fiction especially reserved for the Tsaritsa sez...
It was always really easy for me to write poems whenever I felt sad or depressed. My year living in England and studying in a foreign school produced a treasure hoard of gloomy poetry-- I didn't really have any friends there besides the guy I was dating, and to make matters worse I was obsessed over some dumb boy back in the States. These perceived feelings of loneliness and longing, plus my self-induced isolation from my peers, created a prime environment for dipping into my goth side and getting my emotions onto paper. I didn't have anyone I could talk to, as far as I was concerned, so instead I wrote.
I wrote a lot of sappy and desperate poems about my homesickness and the fucked up situation I had created in my head. I'm not sure why I was so convinced that I was in love with this kid I barely knew-- a person I communicated with chiefly through letters and e-mails. It was a pathetic mess. To aggravate the already embarrassing ordeal, I was including my poems in the letters I sent to the boy, knowing that he would know the poems were about him. He even asked me in a letter he wrote in response if the poem was about him and all I could do was sheepishly tell him the truth. "I figured it was about me," he wrote back.
In Norwich's city center, looking gloomy
All this time, I was also involved with the University's poetry society, where I read my work aloud in meetings and at open mic nights, and was submitting my poems to the school newspaper and literary mags. Despite the lame source of my inspiration, I was actually getting a lot done in terms of putting my thoughts on paper and getting them published. It was a good time for me for writing and for feeling like a real writer.
Flash forward to present day: I'm in a happy and committed relationship and life is good, which means I've been going through a terrible writer's block and haven't been indentured to my craft (I realize how pompous that sounds). It's harder for me to feel poetic when I don't have anything soul-scorching to complain about. Is it wrong that negative feelings propel my creativity, that I have to feel tortured in order to make, what I deem, true art? I'm not sure, and I'm a little nervous about calling myself an "artist" back there.
Can poetry come from a happy place? I know a lot of people write happy poems about being in love and being in a good mood, but that's not really my style. I believe art-- any kind of art whether it be a poem, a rap, a painting, whatever-- should come from a real place and reflect the artist's experience. There's a reason why Oprah disowned that guy's fake autobiography-- no one wants to read, or look at, a completely false interpretation of something. Therefore I should not be afraid to embrace positivity if I'm so concerned about making a true portrayal of my life. Perhaps I'll learn something from focusing on the happy, but if I fail I will always have my memory to fall back on. My poor, tortured memory.
I drew a picture today! Drawing on the computer is kind of difficult, but it takes me back to the days when I'd spend hours creating masterpieces on KidPix, a kid-friendly software for drawing and painting on Macintosh.
So here it is, in anticipation of my zine, BE ABOUT IT, I drew a picture of a random redhead drinking coffee and reading a zine. What could be better on a Saturday? Thanks to the alabaster cow for letting me link up my drawing on her page.
I woke up this morning with my least favorite Lady Gaga song stuck in my head. It's the one that begins "Silicone, saline, poison, inject me baby I'm a free bitch..." I have no idea why I get some songs stuck in my head, but I think it's related to recent Heidi Montag news. My sister sent me a link yesterday about Heidi reversing her multiple plastic surgeries and wanting to go back to the way she used to look. What a poor, silly thing. I'm against plastic surgery for most people and do not understand why ANYONE would want to cut themselves up and stuff themselves with foreign materials in order to look like another person or fit in with society's standards. It's bizarre to me. Of course, there are people who have been in accidents or women who have lost their breasts to cancer, or women who suffer from back problems because of their breasts, and surgery is helpful and life-saving in that way, and I understand that. What I don't get is why a beautiful girl would undergo twelve separate surgeries to completely change her appearance.
Own who you are.
Apparently she was interviewed by tabloid Life & Style (but you can read about the interview on Celebitchy for free) in case you want to hear her side of the story and why she thought it would be a good idea to cut up her chest, cheeks, eyebrows, ass, lips, ears, et cetera. Oh Heidi, you little famewhore. Are you happy now? Will you be happy once you get your boobs reduced? I sure hope so.
For Day 14 of my 30 day Twitter-inspired challenge (click here to see where it all began) I am to address someone I've drifted away from. Today's challenge could go in a number of ways, but I think I will approach it in a nice way. Everyone has friends that they've drifted away from. It's only natural that as we get older and our interests change that we lose touch with some people that we once considered close friends. I don't feel bad about it-- sure, we could sit around and reminisce about the stuff we used to do together, but how fun is that when we could be making new memories?
@DriftedFriend: Yo! I hope you're well and life is good for you. I've been great, no complaints here. But maybe you could find out if your company's hiring?
In other news, did you watch the Daily Show last night? Jon Stewart went on a ten minute long rant, albeit eloquent and humorous, about Glenn Beck and his brilliant idea to have a march to the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's Freedom March, where he gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech to an audience of hundreds of thousands in 1963. I highly doubt that the date and location of Beck's rally was a coincidence, but then again I don't really care.
I will not support the idiot or give him an even bigger platform than he already has, but I will say that Jon Stewart hit the nail on the head when he proved Beck's hypocritical nature. Beck talks about Democrats doing all this fear-mongering to scare people into believing their agenda. Um, Mr. Beck, isn't that THE SOLE PURPOSE OF YOUR SHOW??? All you do is drum up fear and scare people into buying into the bullshit that spews from your mouth. And no, I do not think that the government is out to get me, and no I do not have to listen to anything you say. It saddens me that people take this schmuck seriously.
Here is the link to the video of Jon Stewart ripping Beck a proverbial new one.
I went to a San Francisco Giants game last night and it was awesome! Despite the fact that I overdosed on garlic fries (my stomach was not happy with me afterward) it was a blast-- we had great seats, it was an exciting game, and I was with cool peeps. My friend, Rebekah, is a diehard Giants fan and buys a slew of tickets every year, and she was nice enough to invite me to last night's game as her guest.
Rebekah on the right and Jaime on the left.
We had a lot of fun taunting the fielders from the Red Sox Cincinnati Reds (whatever, I'm a PHILLIES GIRL!!), cheering along with the crowd: "What's the matter with Stu-ubbs? HE'S A BUM!" haha
The guy in front of us asked if the three of us were sisters! We all look a little ginger, here.
We left during the seventh inning (I don't think I've ever stayed for the entire duration of a game), but not before the man sitting in front of us caught a homerun ball-- it was a Giants homerun ball, of course. Someone earlier in the game caught a ball hit by the other team, which was promptly thrown back onto the field. You gotta love sports fans!
Here I am posing with the homerun ball and the man who caught it, and the large bruise on his hand that formed after catching the ball. It sure traveled a long way!
For today's installation of 30 Tweets to 30 Peeps I'm supposed to address someone I wish would forgive me. Um? I don't think I know anyone like that... I don't want to skip Day 13 of the challenge, so I guess I'll either make something up or make a joke out of it. Here goes:
@PC4Lyfe: Listen, I'm sorry I offended you for whatever reason. You should learn how to laugh more. Forgive me when you're ready, I'm not in a rush.
Haha, that was a total mockery of the challenge, but it's funny and makes sense. It's not addressed to any real person, just people who take everything wayyy too seriously. Life is a lot of fun. Enjoy it!
And to cap off this ridiculous blog post (can you tell it's filler?), I would like you to listen to this song that I heard over the weekend. The lyrics are super stupid, but I love the beat. Reminds me of early 90s dance music-- it takes me back to the days when Q102 in Philly was obsessed with club music, and so was everyone else. Check this song out. It's by a group from the Bay Area called Far East Movement. I hope you like it.
UPDATE: I CANNOT, for the life of me, get this song out of my head! Sippin sizzurp in my ride, in my ride like 3-6 [Mafia], now I'm feelin so fly like a G-6... It's so addicting, and the only way I know to get a song out of my head is to listen to it a bunch of times until I'm sick of it. I guess I know what I'll be doing the rest of the day!
I wonder if the group would let me interview them. Now that would be something!
The weather outside is beautiful, which is why I am only taking a few minutes to update my blog today. This weather is highly unusual for San Francisco, but I'm loving it! Finally, for the second time this year, I can wear shorts! Not only that, but I can wear a tank top without the assistance of a hoodie. It's awesome! Living here, I really miss summer time.
Hooray for cutoff shorts! I love these things and rarely get a chance to wear them in the city. Also wearing a great pair of Sam Edelman flats that I found at Marshall's on sale. My mom also got the same pair.
Trying to take a photo outside without wearing sunglasses was nearly impossible, thus the squinting. What can I do? The sun is really bright!
Here I managed to keep my eyes open, which also caused a weird expression to form on my face. No, I'm not actually disgusted by anything, I just appear to be. I have no idea how models keep their eyes open in some of these photo shoots without sunglasses. The closing your eyes and opening them quickly for the shot is a hard maneuver to pull off.
I'm going to a baseball game tonight and I'm very excited! It should be an awesome time, especially with the weather so nice today.
Come here. I have a confession to divulge. It's kind of embarrassing, so you have to promise to tell no one. Okay, so it's not that embarrassing at all, and I guess posting this on my blog is not going to keep the secret between just you and me, and I'm pretty much over being embarrassed about stupid stuff. Here it is: I like Britney Spears.
Go ahead, judge me. Britney is fabulous, and even though her songs are silly, they are a whole lot of fun to dance and rock out (pop out?) to. Take this song, "If U Seek Amy," for example. On the surface it's just a fun song about trying to find a girl named Amy in the club, but if you listen again it's also a cheeky double entendre Love me, hate me, say what you want about me, but all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek Amy is actually ...But all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to F-U-C-K me. Haha! Britney, you're a bad girl! I didn't know you had it in you!
I was NOT a fan of Britney Spears when she first came out on the musical scene. I may have liked her when she was on the Mickey Mouse Club, but I'm not really sure-- my memories from those days are fuzzy, at best (though I can clearly remember fighting with my little sister, around that same time, about who got to hold the VHS box for The Little Mermaid while we watched the movie). I remember making a parody version of her first single "Baby One More Time" about kicking people's asses (I was really into Weird Al at the time and writing my own funny songs).
But I like her now. Her producers are amazing-- the beats are always hot and danceable-- and you gotta admit that the girl knows how to put on a show. I'm happy that I came around and grew to accept Britney. This blog is only a little bit ridiculous today, and I think I'm being silly because the weather is really beautiful today and I want to go back out.
Let's move on to my Daily Tweet... today is Day 12, and this one is addressed to the person I hate most/caused me a lot of pain. Fun! Who comes up with this stuff? I guess it must be said, though.
@MiserableShit: You're a terrible person. A sociopath. Hateful. Scary. A liar. A thief. I wish death on no one, except you. All you do is ruin lives, CREEP!
And that's all I'm gonna say about that person.
This weekend was so fun!! My DYL on Friday night was a huge success and a lot of fun, even though we did leave early (when you start partying at 4:30 PM it's hard to carry it on to the late evening). Good times. On Saturday I went to a birthday party for my friend Laura and had a blast-- first we went to a salon/spa and got pampered up. It was really relaxing to just chill out in a big comfy chair while getting my nails did. Getting a manicure was fun, even though the paint started chipping later that night.
We all later went out for a delicious feast at Andalu. Laura treated us to a tasting menu and we got a bunch of little American tapas plates. Sliders, onion rings, salads, fondue, the list went on... Man, did I pig out! My favorite dish I tried there was the deep fried macaroni and cheese-- lawd, that was divine!
On Sunday, Ben and I took a car ride over to the East Bay to check out his friend's plant sale and also get some sunshine. We ended up taking a hike up some hill on a trail called "Bear Creek Trail." Oh yeah, that name is really comforting. The hike was all well and good and we were enjoying being out in the woods and away from people, until I heard a low-pitched roar and took off walking fast back down the trail. It was probably the sound of a tree about to fall, but it freaked me out, and I wasn't dressed properly. Next time we go off into the wilderness I'll remember to bring a big stick, and also wear some hiking boots.
What was funny, although you can't tell in this photo, is that we were both wearing shirts depicting big cats, totally unplanned. Mine had a tiger and Ben's had a black panther. It would have been dorky if we had coordinated a "couple's costume," but this wasn't the case. We just both really love cats.
