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out-of-body, out-of-world

I experienced a total solar eclipse on Monday (⌐■_■) A time of cosmic & geological overwhelm This rock was our viewing spot. 10 minutes before totality I knew things would ~get weird~, I knew the light would be nightmarish, I knew people often faint, scream, and cry during, but I was not prepared for: • How suddenly the world went from...

Eclipse tomorrow !

Required reading: https://pioneerworks.org/broadcast/total-eclipse-annie-dillard Made our way to Saranac Lake to experience the ~path of totality~

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983)

A year ago March 28, Ryuichi Sakamoto passed away. I primarily know his work through the movie Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, where he stars alongside David Bowie in this heart-wrenching, gorgeous film about humanity in wartime. The movie depicts the spiritual torture of realizing the humanity of your conflict-defined enemies, especial...

kwee’s weeks in photos

In Oppenheimer, we never understood why there was such a glaring typo as “trian crossing”. On my 3rd watch (!!), I realized the sign reads “pedestrian crossing” Versailles Rolo’s Calumet Can never get quite enough sleep The brilliant Ivo Dimchev NYT museum Clockwise: - an alternate NYT front page on November 9, 2016 - a letter explaini...

No Cuts to Libraries!

https://www.nypl.org/speakout Last week, leaders of NYC's three public library systems (NY, Brooklyn, Queens) launched a campaign against Mayor Eric Adams' and the NY City Council's proposed budget cuts in the coming FY 2025; these cuts would be the highest proposed budget cuts to the libraries in over a decade. If you're a NYC residen...

Godzilla (1954)

Bravo, bravo to Oppenheimer tonight, for its 7 wins, which included Best Picture. For me, it felt like the first time in a while that the Oscars have awarded cinematic achievement, for a movie that deserves to join the canon. Over the summer, there were early critiques of the movie that it didn't show what happened on the other side of...

such a perfect day 💍

Peter and I are engaged to be married !! Peter proposed with the help of my best friend Reid, and his family of talented musicians. At the end of a warm, wonderful folksy house concert featuring Cricket Blue and Bold Forbes, Bold Forbes announced they had a final song and began playing Perfect Day by Lou Reed. By the second chord, I kn...

Year of the 🐉

Happy Lunar New Year 🧧 It's Year of the Dragon! From Wikipedia, dragons are: “intense and powerful individuals capable of great good, who make great leaders but are rather unpredictable. [They] are said to be intelligent, magnanimous, charismatic, charming, authoritative, confident, eloquent, and artistic, but can also be manipulative,...

Why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near?

Sophomore year of college, I became close with a group of boys. I had just gone through my first breakup, and was feeling desperately lonely, unloved, and seriously unhappy. This group adopted me and often made it their weekend mission: Operation Cheer Claire Up. In a sea of dehumanizing frat boy behavior, these boys loved me as friend...

Saint Omer, Thelma and Louise, Céline and Julie Go Boating

Some people were frustrated/angry this week (example and example) that Barbie's Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie were not nominated for acting/directing Academy awards, even though the movie was nominated for 8 other awards (including Best Picture, where Robbie is nominated with her production company LuckyChap). The overwhelming sentime...

kwee’s weeks in photos

HNY 2024 + rose parade 🌹 —Marie Antoinette “Language-learning app Duolingo has been steadily firing contract writers and translators, replacing them with artificial intelligence, in one of the most high-profile instances yet of a company getting rid of human workers in favor of AI.” Trying to spend less on eating out, so trying to make...

2023 Movie and Book Round-up

Favorite movie(s) released in 2023 A tie: Oppenheimer and May December Oppenheimer: A brilliantly-paced, three-in-one movie: Midnight in Paris for physicists, heist flick, courtroom drama. A beautiful film to look at, with a thrilling score. Most importantly however, a movie about how a group of men convinced themselves they were simpl...

13 articles of clothing I gave away today

“If I got rid of my two copies of Powers of Horrors—even though I know I'll never read either again—it would be as if I were rejecting my younger self, saying to my younger self I never really valued you. —Dodie Bellamy in "Hoarding as Écriture"” While hoarding is generally viewed shamefully, this reflection from Bellamy honors for me ...

Tks

For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, For love and friends, For everything thy goodness sends —Ralph Waldo Emerson

5 Calls App

https://5calls.org/ iPhone app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/5-calls-contact-your-congress/id1202558609 If you're interested in calling your representatives in the US government to voice concerns, raise an issue, or make your stance as a constituent clear, I started using the 5 Calls iPhone app this week, and I highly recommend it ⭐⭐⭐...

Futuramaween

————————— Live long and prosper 🖖

this week: a play, an exchange, a movie

a play: Jaja's African Hair Braiding This play was so much fun, it made me wish it was a movie so I could watch it over and over again. Though without the stage experience, we wouldn't have gotten the crackling, cackling atmosphere of Jaja's salon. A character that stuck out to me was Bea, a woman who is an interpersonal disaster: she ...

Night Thoughts by Wallace Shawn

Earlier this week, someone was telling me about a lovely celebrity run-in she had: she was walking on the High Line in the early morning, and was enjoying the way the morning light was lighting the walkers' faces. As she stared at people, one person in particular responded with a wave and a delightful smile. It was Wallace Shawn: Which...

the wailing (2016)

The Wailing does what my favorite horror movies do best: it ruminates on and reflects our world back to us in a kaleidoscopic, creepy funhouse. There's something about entering a universe that looks like ours, but has exaggerated features in the form of horror symbolism and imagery, that makes the commentary on our world oftentimes mor...

kwee's weeks in photos

Help is on the way when the rhythm is glad there is nothing to be sad sasha ❤🔥 Montreal for Dom & Josh: Big in Japan Bar with some tips from the bartender, Dandy's Maple Butter Tart, and poutine of course ziggy peke meets ziggy peke ice packs, electric hand fans, and shade-seeking dainty little true indigo ❤ ziggy & nellie ❤ After init...

Sarah Sze

One cold weekday afternoon in 2012, I went to a show at the Asia Society for an artist called Sarah Sze. I had the gallery entirely to myself, and as the afternoon passed, I had the sense I was convening with something truly special. I felt awe and wonder at the intricacy of her pieces, at how spontaneous, yet carefully-constructed eve...

happy national cinema day 🎦

I know that National Cinema Day is a marketing thing to get people in the door at large theater chains, but as a devoted, obsessive movie-goer, I wanted to use the occasion to highlight my NYC cinema favorites/worsts in the categories that matter most to me: Best Repertory Programming • Film Forum • BAM Film • Film at Lincoln Center • ...

thirty-fun

Cakepiles and Your most cancellable take and Love in the shape of a napkin ring and Kitti and a scoundrel Richard Burton and Late-nite Urban hikes and Fun and funky and full of food and three-movie jubilee aka Megenheimer: a space odyssey and A Pink Plastic necklace and A honk and Lamborghinis and Ice cream tiramisu.

Bday book wishlist

I’m not allowed to buy any books for the next while because I have too many (in general, but also specifically that I haven’t yet read), but here is a shortlist of books I’m most interested in right now. Would accept as a gift for my bday tho🥰 Fiction Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler: as a part of Lincoln Center's Summer for t...

Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985)

My 7 reasons: 1. The animation of inanimate objects 2. Pee-Wee's Big Expressions 3. The most colorful cast of characters francis dottie amazing larry and mario madam ruby large marge speck 4. Magical interiors 5. Laugh-out-loud funny take a picture, it'll last longer au revoir simone remember the alamo 6. Movie within a movie 7. Pure m...

remind me

https://youtu.be/VF8LMQQ0rEw https://vimeo.com/3514904 Koyaanisqatsi

kwee’s weeks in photos

July: 💋🚽 💐 Looty, seriously Saha and Coetzee ❣🥲 Friend Brian put a new album out: The Arc ♥♥♥ Halloween 2007 😭 Almost-Cerberus Alston Lake, with Alan and Cusco Drive-in Dial of Destiny on a rainy, lightning-filled night ((immersive)) https://twitter.com/svershbow/status/1675506128971526144?s=20 But I’ll eat some corn and watch a fire w...

a crossword made on/for a lazy sunday

Template from Peter on Figma (slightly modified to 8x8 because that happened to be the size of the puzzle I created with pencil and paper). Pretty cool the template has been used by 412 people since he put it on Figma 2 years ago! ((P.S. I'm sorry for breaking some crossword construction rules; I am but an infrequent crossword do-er, a...

affirmative action

After this week's Supreme Court affirmative action ruling, I kept seeing persuasive snippets of Justice Jackson's dissent and decided to go to the source: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf (Justice Jackson's dissent starts on page 209 of the .PDF) It was my first time reading a Supreme Court opinion; I think ...

kwee’s weeks in photos

A Mogwai walks among us 👬♥ The most perfect person’s bday Gentle giant James Cromwell 👏👏👏 Ziggy’s Zaddies Marc Rebillet @ Union Sq. (Didn’t know it was him at the time, realized it was him later after seeing it pop up on TikTok) An At-home Men-in-Dresses film festival: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Some Like it Hot warm and fuzzy ...

🌈Pride + Movies🎥

this month on TOILETPAPER What I've learned from my queer movie canon... All About My Mother (1999) Agrado's monologueWhen I first watched this movie as a teen, and specifically this scene with Agrado, it made me realize that another person's truth has nothing to do with mine; that my experience of my own body and gender doesn't preclu...

wildfire smoke in the city

On Tuesday, I went for a little walk in the late afternoon, and noticed it felt really spooky; there was an orange-gray pallor to the world and it smelled...smoky? I took a few pics and then went back inside: *cityscape in the image was spookier than it appears* And, then we in NYC all discovered the wonders of wildfire smoke and what ...

side quest to Dublin

Dubbalin Our layover to get home was in Dublin, but when the final leg of our flight was unexpectedly cancelled, we ended up having an extra 2 days in the city. When we went to Ireland last year, we had COVID during the portion of the trip where we would have explored Dublin, so it felt like a bit of a fortunate do-over (amidst the fru...

Italy 🤌

The Leopard, an engrossing historical fiction book written in the 1950s about the Risorgimento (Italy's unification in the 1860s). I couldn't put the book down on the plane ride over, and it felt like a useful primer for the week ahead 🐆🍝 Beautiful carsickness Story of a countryside dog 😭 Assisi, of St. Francis A most immediate and sat...

mama

My mama and my mama’s mama ~45 years ago ❤ ———————————— Saint Omer (2022) As I get older and wonder whether I want to be a mother one day, I find myself curious about, yet confounded by the idea of child-bearing. It's depicted in our culture with a happy, spiritual glow; a necessary human experience that you could only live through to ...

kwee’s weeks in photos

Big world, Teeny snail Palimpsest The boy who stares Panics, a “haunting, bizarre short story collection about violence, mental illness, and the warped contradictions of the twentieth-century female experience” by Barbara Molinard Recent foodies: nudibranch, junior’s, gage & tollner, superiority burger, LEV, Agi’s counter Post-torrenti...

made it to 💯

I made it to my 100th blog post! When I started blogging weekly (on Substack originally), it was at mrcoles' suggestion. He started blogging over 10 years ago, and he suggested it to me because his blog helped him carve out his personal real estate on the web. So, in 2020, when I was dipping my toe in tech, the idea was that I could us...

days of being wild (1990)

I first saw Days of Being Wild in 2011 during the Taipei Film Festival—at the cavernous Zhongshan Hall. I was late and entered the packed, dark space from the heavy, wet, tropical heat of the Taiwanese summer, only to be greeted by the tropical palms of the movie’s opening credits (see image on TV above). Experiencing the movie with so...

kwee’s weeks in photos

Hyperallergic Magnificent magnolias Simon subway Getting in as much TikTok as I can, while we still can shmoney Cattelan v. slack, spotted by Peter Crossword x cuddles 🚊🚞💺🚉🚂🚆🚄🚅🚃🚇🚟🛤🚝🚋🚈 The lapdog is lapping Eddie Huang on the left; the perfect tweet on the right. The attitude toward Asians onscreen has become so frickin patronizing !!!!...

Swagger and Tenderness

The South Bronx Portraits by Rigoberto Torres and John Ahearn On view thru April 30 at The Bronx Museum I took photos of all of the nameplates, but in some cases the photo I took is too low quality—some of these names may be incorrect! The ones where I'm not sure have (?) next to them: Maria; The Graduates: Bashira and Princess; Barcar...

oaxaca

oaxaca beautiful kinetic alive city the last 3 images are a boutique called Tienda Q a wedding chinese tea ceremony beautiful bride (on her 4th dress of the night) friends ❣❣❣ some of the places in these photos: Kiyo Cafe, Las Quinces Letras p&c xmas card pic time 👐👐👐 good good food food from left to right, top to bottom: Levadura de O...

kwee’s weeks in photos

He was also wearing the Hereditary sweatpants Team Superset + badgalriri and badgalzizi I spy with my little eye,,, an Emmy in a window recent dinnertime companions Z the sun god Pi day praying mantis egg sac // all hail giger 2 different restaurants, floating noods abound BAM nights with sashie and her spacious pockets The 你幹什麼 specia...

spring is springing

From left to right: - beginning to cut back the brown and dead on the High Line, to make way for new growth - the newest leaf on my fiddle leaf fig came in with a little window - every night I drink chia water, and in the morning I dump any leftover water into my watering can. It looks like a seed made it past my nightly slurping, and ...

Alternative Academy

If you liked: Movie (year) Another Movie I'd Recommend (year) [IMAGE(S)] why: a thing about Movie that I think is better portrayed or honored in Another Movie I'd Recommend If you liked: Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) 1. Tampopo (1985) why: Asians doing random, frenetic things 2. Pushing Hands (1991) why: its depiction of the...

kwee's week in photos

left: "Chester Pinning Ziggy" (2023) right: "Judith Beheading Holofernes" (Caravaggio c. 1598–1599 or 1602) late winter sun blur BRIC Poetry Slam led by Mahogany L. Browne and Jive Poetic FaceTimes with Reid TOILETPAPER's March what were once beets from bar b dog pile I luv magic 🪄♠♥♦♣🪄 lilo ❣ the old haunt I just got a ring from L'Enc...

Florida

I went to Florida last weekend for a wedding: the sights The first night was at Margaritaville: channeling Jimmy Buffett à la Beach Bum Actual wedding was on a boat ⛴, I hung out on top for the views Back 🏡 Bonus: picture of Ziggy at boarding looking like a Chinese New Year lion ______________________________ I went to Florida last wee...

Valentine

This endlessly funny, endlessly brilliant man. My safe place and harbor. With Peter, every morning, every day, and every night feels like a love affair, and also...a vaudeville show. Thank you for taking care of me ❤🔥 taking care in the way that Taiwanese people say it (screenshot from Ang Li's The Wedding Banquet) my personal movie lo...

day of feel-good

square dancing for Steph bday at Jalopy, puppy boyfriends gently kissing, xiaolongbao beanie

kwee's weeks in photos

I want this poster for the bedroom, but Peter's not sure about going to sleep every night and waking up every morning under the watchful eye of Klaus Kinski. The patron saint of destructive obsession...but I'm going to wear him down eventually (ง’̀-‘́)ง weirdest and worrying January weather here in NYC, but it made for a bright orange-...

Rest in Peace, Tyre Nichols

https://www.gofundme.com/f/tyre-nichols Tyre Nichols' Photography Website: ------------ https://twitter.com/shafinakhabani/status/1619082807585964033 ------------

新年快樂

A terrible, dark cloud hanging over this year's Lunar New Year. Late last night as I was about to go to sleep, I saw that something had happened in Monterey Park; Jeong Park's brief but important context on what Monterey Park means to Asians in LA; trying to litigate my rage, confusion, grief. https://twitter.com/beyonkz/status/1617199...

high line by the months

march Very gray-brown. Starting the season with Spring cutback april before/after; even though there is more green, still cutting back the dead always wanted to go to a shindig in the chelsea market passage space and I got to finally 🕺🏻. Altho, it was frigid, so it was a bit more stolid than I had always hoped may Finally, green happy ...

2022 Movie and Book Round-up

Favorite movie of the year All the Beauty and the Bloodshed: A movie that unexpectedly cut to the core of why we make and need art. Yes, it’s also very importantly about the Sackler Family, Nan Goldin, and the opioid crisis; but the explicitly stated topics are woven together to illustrate the power when an artist such as Nan Goldin me...

anti-resolution

Howdy, 2023 Whenever I've tried thinking about new year’s resolutions in the past, they've always felt like self-coercion, like there's a secret “better” version of myself beckoning from across the threshold of a new year. But, across that threshold, I always discover it's still me and I am me and there's not some magical version of me...

kwee’s week in photos: Xmas edition

A case of the cozies A case of the cuddles A case of the sleepies A case of the tasties The delicate, inscrutable language of the Amtrak paper slips Because one Peter is not enough Issa double rainbow 🌈🌈 Christmas savories and/or The end of the day is near when small men make long shadows. Christmas sweets Happy Christmas to All and to...

Went to Dave & Buster’s

For the first time, and had lots! of! fun! 👾🏀🎮🎳🕹 Also: my brothers used to love DDR and I got to try it for myself finally. Am wondering if I should get really into ~*the revolution*~ at this stage of my life

kwee’s weeks in photos

Reid, such a constant heart ♥ The Washington Post is ending its magazine. From a recent round-up, a heartbreaking, poignant piece on animal abuse from Gene Weingarten. It made me want to be a better human, and especially more gentle to my little beastie. A lil puffer fish @ Singlish I met a very nice man recently who works for the ever...

Criterion haul

It's been awhile since I took advantage of a Criterion 50% off sale, but a couple things have happened in recent months/years that made me begin buying physical media again: • HBO Max/Warner Bros. removed/didn't release content; I realized we take streaming content for granted as always being available to us, but it's under threat more...

tks

What I’m grateful for: • thinking & feeling people The thinker-feelers that express things the most profoundly for me are the moviemaking philosophers 🎥 • chosen family A very stylish Taiwanese kid gang from Growing Up (1983) • family • Long, winding conversations, over food Over hot pot, most preferably • 55-70 degree days and sunshin...

the silliest, but also very real, phobia

The Polish film poster for E.T. A lot of things scare me, but the image/thing that has dominated my fearscape the most: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. While not so common in an anecdotal or everyday way, you can find some recounting of the fear online. I relate intensely to what my fellow E.T.-phobics describe: • "I used to have dreams, r...

eulogizing Twitter

Who knows what's going to happen to Twitter. But if it changes into something unrecognizable or goes kaputt entirely, I do want to honor how important it was to me for a ~10-year window of time, and take a snapshot of the public square as I loved it. To do this, I'm going to do what I do best, which is lurk, like, laugh, and learn, and...

30 favorite movie-music moments

In no particular order: 1. Doing it to Death by The Kills > Titane https://youtu.be/X-GkUA_Bzp0, screenshot from hulu 2. Dies Irae > The Shining https://youtu.be/LjLip2FZLuA, screenshot from video; Dies Irae has been used countless times in media and this will always be the best, most spine-chilling use of all time 3. Moonlight by John...

spook rock

3 or 4 Octobers ago, I was at a midnight screening at Spectacle, where they were running through some very special, very campy, low production value horror movies. As we waited for the movie to begin, we realized the music playing was super spooky vibey, but also funky and fun. We asked for some of the songs from the guy manning the ti...

Kwee’s October in photos

Tehe Life finds a way. The last photo: bags of dog poo accumulate on the windshield of this car as week(s) go by. The car doesn’t move from this spot despite weekly street cleaning, and even though poo bags accumulate, parking tickets do not. A mystery! I’m just happy to see dog poo conquering a car (it’s not Ziggy’s poo bags, our bags...

One year in this world

Ziggy at 1 year; Ziggy at just over 3 months The 1-year landmark I genuinely believe, like most dog owners, that my dog is the cutest, best, most perfect dog in the world, but the truth is it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows living with and raising him. At the hardest moments, I've been reassured by other owners that it gets much ...

Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Does this movie "make sense"? If you make some leaps of the imagination! But is it an all-you-can-eat buffet of visuals like no other?? Most certainly!! Here's my 8 reasons: 1. good ole creepy vampiric stuff 2. the horny Fragonard girlies For reference: a famous Jean-Honore Fragonard piece called "The Swing" 3. the ✝✝✝ 4. the landscape...

kwee’s week in photos

Large milkweed bugs, harmless & vibrant 文文, get there at 5pm for one of the five BDSM chickens they make a day ! the sky is so trendy The goblin-dog bestows a rare gift of the sits wet chewie // impatient peter blue bath bliss he’s my best friend, he’s my pal. He’s my homeboy, My rotten soldier. He’s my sweet cheese, My good time boy R...

kwee’s week in photos

A boy and his dog Z meets a snake ! 👑🦋💀😭 Gala, Fuji, Honeycrisp Long zucchini boi Thank you to Reid for meeting us at grand central and picking ziggy up from us so we could go straight to radio city to see the one and only lil nas x 😭😭😭😭😭 we stan a man that facilitates our stanning From Genesis ❤🔥 ✋🏻 Put a finger down if you’ve ever be...

Some things about the Royals that aren’t The Crown

In a May 2002 Martin Amis piece about Elizabeth II, he says early on: “As in all matters royal, we are dealing here not with pros and cons, with arguments and counter-arguments; we are dealing with signs and symbols, with fever and magic. ” Whenever there’s a Royal event/headline, I am generally confused by the Royalist supporters, def...

three colors (1993, 1994, 1994)

Three Colors: Blue (1993) Three Colors: White (1994) Three Colors: Red (1994) The Three Colors Trilogy The final masterworks from the Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski Krzysztof Kieślowski died at 54, two years after he announced that Three Colors: Red would be his final movie. It is absolutely astounding to realize he made these m...

Kwee’s week in photos

Z goes boating 🛶 A $5,500 book of the baddest gal Ice scream You scream We all scream For ice scream Determination A cake for every decade 🥲🥲🥲 M’love Giraffe-ic park singlish The Artist // The Art // The Process A puppy-plant Zaddy Discovered that my bestie and I both independently believe the only valid mani is a glittery one The last...

30 photos

No description

mood board for 30

meta angel "its rich ambiguities leave enough room for us to see that the price of freedom depends on what kind of freedom you want...absolute freedom and love are opposites." joy and silliness in all its forms part 1 joy and silliness in all its forms part 2 ROY G BIV gr andope nin And the insight of others

the neverhood

For years, I've been trying to figure out where some strange imagery in my head originally came from: visions of a red-earthy, doughy, empty world undulating in front of a black backdrop. And I'm delighted to say, it finally came to me! What I was beginning to think was a fever dream was actually from a 1996 videogame called the Neverh...

🎡 Xmas in July 🎆

A summer annual tradition for Casa Coles: ! Coney Island Friday Night Fireworks! It is without question my favorite night of the year, and involves 8 essential steps: 1. Getting rocked by a surprisingly wild rollercoaster, The Cyclone. *important* to do this first, before you’ve eaten anything, for Barfy reasons 2. Indigestion via Nath...

kwee's week in photos

PLEASE SEND TO REAL LIFE: Ray Johnson Photographs I'm becoming a bit of a sudoku fiend, and also a whiz at the Apple photo editing tools this taproot!! proud!!! 2 people I love are engaged ❣❣❣ "can't believe this website is free", as they say I loved Nope. so, so much. a frickin spectacle, layered if you want it to be, straightforward ...

🌊how to keep house while drowning🌊

I came across this Tweet a couple weeks ago: https://twitter.com/Bibliogato/status/1542623256661876739 And it truly called to me! Living and working out of the same space has indeed left me feeling like I am drowning, tidying only to have to tidy even more, enjoying my space for one whole hour before it falls into disrepair again, rins...

ireland

Some highlights from a family trip that had been planned for 2020, but was delayed 3 times. We were finally able to go this past June! castles left to right: Blarney Castle; kissing the Blarney stone (was actually kind of scary, hanging over the edge of the stone with a little grate underneath); the Rock of Cashel (according to legend,...

kwee’s week in photos

Hudson yards King ziggy HeBD MVC ❤❤❤ Fact or Fiction?: Smog Creates Beautiful Sunsets Hangmen A stamp of approval from a heavily-invested person Keith Haring’s last structural piece before his death in 1990, in bronze and white gold: The Life of Christ The Cathedral of St. John the Divine MDW Time for some rhubarb fool Buttdial pano, a...

the graduate

A ceremony 2 years belated…marking what is likely the end of my formal schooling, and the end of my undergrad/grad 🍎Columbia🦁 tenure: A bit rainy & gray Caught on the kiss-cam From where I sat, I could see the windows of my undergrad freshman, sophomore, and junior year dorms 😭😭😭 2022 // 2014 accoutrements 🧙🏻♀ *CLAIRE COMMENCEMENT MAYB...

nathalie djurberg

About 10 years ago, I went to an art exhibit at the Kunsthaus Zürich called “Deftig Barock” (translated as “Riotous Baroque”). The curators placed especially decadent contemporary artists alongside famous baroque pieces to great effect. (Think contemporary artists such as Marilyn Minter, Cindy Sherman, Robert Crumb, Maurizio Cattelan, ...

snippets

Helpers “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."” —Mr. Rogers On Tuesday evening, I went to CVTC's Advocate Certification Ceremony (the 25th!). I had spent the day in a daze, reeling from the news about the Supreme Court's...

earth is the turf

🌎happy earth day 2022🌏 One way I've been trying to work through climate and eco-anxiety is by getting closer to plants, things that grow, soil, leaves, earthworms, bugs. I've been a city girl my entire life, and have never really had much experience with gardens. But I was lucky in 2020/2021 to be staying in a relatively rural place, w...

kwee’s week in photos

fun friend food a rough week for our friend ziggy An ever so brief moment of peace and quiet I started this week as a volunteer Horticulture Partner at the High Line! I’ll be working for a shift each week out in the sun with plants and soil and gardeners in a place that has been my go-to green space in NY 🌱🌲🌿🌾 TROPIC ZONE: THE RAINFORE...

a powerful anti-war ballet from 1932

Screenshots from a 2000 performance by the Joffrey Ballet, staged by Anna Markard (the daughter of Kurt Joos) A mesmerizing, concise, and effective ballet from Kurt Joos, a German choreographer who first staged and performed in this ballet on July 3, 1932. Unfortunately and tragically still relevant 90 years later—to the invasion of Uk...

space is the place (1974)

Seeing this movie was a long time coming, and I finally had the good fortune to see it on the *big screen* at Film Forum. I was aware of Sun Ra and had seen images from the film before. And, based off of these images/references I had seen before, I thought Space is the Place was mainly known for being a fun, shiny, imaginative, and vis...

kwee’s week in photos

Isle of Dogs Baby’s first train ride NY street style: Stella, ring bearer at her peoples’ wedding The piglet + Dominique March birthday bonanza madness HBD Taylor Han PETER !!!!!! 🏹 🎯 🎈 Misc. ヾ(￣▽￣) ヽ(✿ﾟ▽ﾟ)ノ (⌐■_■) o(*°▽°*)o And sometimes y Georgina Gratrix, "Shape Shifter/Princess" 2019

On juries, fact-finding, truth

For absolutely no reason at all (see addenda at bottom), I found myself with a lot of time this week to reflect on courtrooms, trials, juries, judges, prosecutors, attorneys, evidence, arguments. Some of what came to mind: Exhibit A: Rashomon a famous sequence from Rashomon, the camera is moving along the forest floor pointed directly ...

kwee’s weeks in photos

This flavor is no longer as of this week 😭, but I’ve been obsessed with the Van Leeuwen Blue Jasmine winter seasonal flavor ~*laundry*~ •{a never ENDING cycle}• Sleeping pets all the way down I participated in a panel conversation this week… …And was nervous, so Peter wore matching socks in solidarity 🥺😭🧦 Can’t ever get the damn dog to...

the week in tweet threads

There was so much reporting and analysis this week on what's happening in Ukraine. I didn't (and still don't) know the history and geopolitics surrounding the crisis, but turned to Twitter, my favorite firehose of information, to try and begin parsing the conflict through the lens of commentators I trust (or are trusted by those I trus...

❣❣❣❣❣

This week marks 5 years with this one: 5 years of living laughing loving For Valentine's, we saw The Lady Eve (1941), which was an absolute laugh-a-minute riot. The movie’s highlight is an absurd, comic-romantic scene involving a proposal and a horse that just wants to hang: https://youtu.be/9GLvvQFHST8 And for our anniv, we took in Da...

10 lessons from the first 3 weeks of pup

The first 3 weeks of baby dog have been...a lot !! We're lucky to have a puppy that is curious, engaged, observant, smart, personable; the flipside is Ziggy requires huge amounts of attention, touch, entertainment, engagement, and challenge. We've heard a lot of advice around "a tired dog is a happy dog", and I want to scream, do you h...

🐅 🐅 🐅

https://twitter.com/ottofernandez/status/1488526054482493441?s=10 https://twitter.com/nancywyuen/status/1488580311382302720?s=21 https://twitter.com/thefakesilong/status/1488650313468837889?s=21 Happy year of the tiger 🐯 To ring in the lunar new year, we made and really enjoyed this very(!) spicy recipe: https://thatspicychick.com/chic...

hellraiser (1987)

“This is a movie without wit, style or reason, and the true horror is that actors were made to portray, and technicians to realize, its bankruptcy of imagination.” - from a 1987 Roger Ebert review I wish I was living in whatever phantasmagoria Roger Ebert was living in 1987, because my mind is boggled by his assessment. I found Hellrai...

ziggy + a bday 🎉

New puppy alert: Say hello to our new tiny little terror: Ziggy The Pekingese dog breed were said to be lions turned into dogs by the Buddha, so just in time for Chinese New Year: a little lion 🦁 for the year of the tiger 🐯 Ziggy is actually only his nickname; his full name is Amazing Larry. Here’s a glimpse we get of a rainbow-mohawke...

vollis simpson's windmills

if you ever happen to be passing through Wilson, North Carolina, make sure to stop for a beat at the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park (though Simpson preferred to call the pieces windmills 🌬) Vollis Simpson's Whirligigs were designated the official folk art of North Carolina in 2013 ✨ This park was such a special space, a sanctuary of joy...

some dream things

mood: The Cranberries' Dreams My high school French teacher was the most glamorous, passionate, unsparing, and intense person I've ever known (and I realize now has been the template for a lot of how I try to be in the world). Among the things I remember about her: • She wore a different fragrance for each season; • When we studied a p...

Keep Christmas with you /

All through the year / When Christmas is over / You can keep it near wishing that you and yours have the Happiest Holidays and a Happy New Year \(￣︶￣*\)). And wishing that anyone whose holiday plans were disrupted has an opportunity to honor whatever about the holidays feels special to you at a safer, better time our deco of late sleep...

~*favorite recipes of 2021*~

Here were the recipes that I kept returning to over and over this year: they were tasty, easy, felt good in the body, made leftovers I could get excited about... (╹ڡ╹ )(╹ڡ╹ ) That Spicy Chick's Sundried Tomato Pesto Pasta with Cajun Chicken https://thatspicychick.com/sundried-tomato-pesto-pasta-cajun-chicken/ We initially found this re...

OOTD + supporting indie film

every day is halloween I put on an outfit this morning that I thought was a feelin-myself, fun-girl, girl-about-town look. Black long-sleeve shirt, gold chain, blue jeans—pretty standard stuff?? But then halfway through the day Peter innocently asked to take a picture of me and it turned out I was just cosplaying the one, the only, ⛰th...

book wishlist

I'm beginning to have a moderate Tsundoku/book-hoarding problem, so I've decided to *stop* buying books willy-nilly and to *start* a book wishlist (side note: isn't it too bad Indiebound discontinued their wishlist feature?). From here on out, I can work my way through my book wishlist only after I've really read my way through my pile...

boosting

got the boost, get the boost! https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/19/us/politics/coronavirus-boosters-fda.html ———————— Boosting this video (that you've probably seen): https://twitter.com/ambermruffin/status/1461870102060535813 ———————— a sleepytime boost: Recently, on nights where I haven't dropped off to sleep immediately, I've been run...

a fly on the wall

Does everyone wish as badly as I do that they could be a fly on a wall to everything, all the time?? Maybe not everything, but there are so many closed doors that I'd like to know what it's like behind, so many dynamics I would never be privvy to that I'd like to see for myself, so many dynamics that I am privvy to that I'd be curious ...

crumb

a documentary that had been on my list for around 10 years, I finally found my way to it recently. A complex portrait of the brilliant and problematic artist R. Crumb: Robert Crumb aka R. Crumb, a cartoonist most active and known for his work in the '60s and '70s. A documentary made by Terry Zwigoff over the course of a reportedly angu...

spoopy

One of my silly Halloween costume ideas a couple years ago was Ghost the Direwolf from Game of Thrones. I took a picture of what that costume would be, basically just a big fur coat, and promptly forgot about it. In December 2020, I got a notification from the Apple Photo app that an automatic complication of “Fluffy Friends” from 2019...

something’s fishy

and it’s my new lil friend, Fionnuala: a dragon scale male betta fish Fionnuala is a traditional Irish name, sometimes spelled Finnguala/Fionnghuala and pronounced Fin-oo-lah. ((Although this choir seems to pronounce it Finn-ah-gah-wala. Open for an Irish language treat if you're not familiar with the language)). Literal meaning: "whit...

kwee’s weeks in photos

back in my old world, back with a lot of former places, peoples, and things. Feeling differently, sometimes better, sometimes worse—but knowing when to leave and when to stay, and the spaces/ppl that are good for da energy ⚡ Fun fact: I used to live below Sarah, who was recently described by the New Yorker as having "a voice that could...

LA: a wedding & Everything Now

we went to a beautiful, lovely dovely, love-filled wedding in LA last week for our dear friends Ben & Regina: all in attendance were vaccinated, we tested negative for COVID before and after the event. it felt all the more precious to be with much-loved friends after a good amount of time away. we definitely aren't making gatherings a ...

johnny mnemonic

cult classic The term "cult classic" is thrown around a lot, and I feel like I've found the closest validation of something's cult classic-status...by comparing a movie's Amazon Prime Video rating with its IMDb rating: although the website description on Amazon Prime for Johnny Mnemonic (on the left) appears to be from another Keanu Re...

kwee’s week in photos

Have you ever seen a 6-foot tall dandelion forest The most never-ending yet satisfying The pha a a a a a a ntom of the opera is there inside your mind 🥠the good kind of pithy🥠 Hbd Clio Drive-in Shang-chi Give us a kiss Chugga chugga choo choo new york is b a c k baybee Look at this happy, happy dog, just a happy happy dog . . . . . . ....

read receipts

Read 10:50 PM Today, I was reading a lil column on one of my favorite people on the internet, Jaboukie Young-White. In the piece, he talks a bit about coded online-speak / generational grammatical etiquette, and eventually gets to *read receipts*: “Once, as a New Year’s resolution, Young-White turned on read receipts, which notify the ...

kwee’s week in photos

holy matrimony 👰💒🤵 congrats to amanda brian ♥ Out of sight, out of mind my friend's upper-floor apartment flooded this week because of Hurricane Ida...from the roof down the central stairwell 😰. She's okay though frustrated, and temporarily displaced. we were okay in our neighborhood, but are horrified at and shaken by the chaos being ...

Repairing your COVID-19 Vaccine record with the DOH (for NYC), an o...

How to prove you’re vaccinated for COVID-19 In NYC, you can currently prove your vaccination status in 3 ways: 1. The paper CDC COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card that you received when you were vaccinated 2. By uploading a picture of your vaccination record card to the NYC COVID SAFE app 3. By logging in and receiving QR-code credential...

🚗 Berkshires weekend 🚗

Last weekend we made a nice lil weekend trip to the Berkshires towns we visited: Lenox, Lee, Becket, Stockbridge, Great Barrington And on *Friday the 13th* we took in: a ghost tour at The Mount, Edith Wharton's home. It was thundering and lightning-ing, and the air had a damp heat to it. I wasn't exactly scared, but I didn't feel right...

When Google removes your Chrome Extension from the web store...

I posted this article on Indie Hackers this week: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/google-removed-our-4m-user-chrome-extension-this-is-what-happened-and-how-we-fixed-it-851c785b10 I'm still getting a feel for "building in public" and different ways of using public online spaces to share lessons learned, ask questions, seek support, et...

kwee’s week in photos

A slow-time, family week: sweet sweet nellie red sky at night, sailor's delight; red sky in the morning, sailors take warning calm cat our favorite #love-island-lingo: are you muggin me off, I think he's graftin, you're a bit o me, she's got good chat, how about we crack on, they're gettin on like a house on fire, is yur head gettin tu...

kwee’s week in photos

The desperately-loving-New-York-and-almost-but-not-quite-fully-moved-back Edition Il faut cultiver notre jardin 🍦 Mommy where do barbies come from Dis one ☝🏻 ❤ https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/15/saving-the-butterfly-forest 🥨 Bumped into college friendie and his new doggie Ellie https://www.ferry.nyc/routes-and-schedules/rout...

a GoFullPage by any other name would smell as sweet 🌹

For the past year and some change, I've been operating an app mrcoles built almost 10 years ago: GoFullPage (fka Full Page Screen Capture). One of the first things I did was change our name—we had learned the hard way that we had no IP protection in the face of a copycat app. For the name change, I became aware of trademark defensibili...

ciao to connecticut: creepy crawlies and a carnival

For the past year and a half, we've been living in Connecticut with family. It's been earthy, warm, and cozy, and a fascinating experience of multi-generational living. The locale itself is very different from anywhere else I've ever lived or spent time in. Somewhere between suburban and rural, slightly closer to rural: very wooded, a ...

kwee’s week in photos

Saw my old Chinese teacher from the ICLP program in the translation acknowledgments of an incredible piece of Taiwanese queer speculative fiction (The Membranes) First Shabu-Shabu in a year and a half: https://www.springshabu.com/ Celebrated 4th of July by taking in a US anthem lip sync from Marti Allen-Cummings !!! Made all the more p...

los angeles

my home city, and a place that feels very weird to me. I typically go back 2 or 3 times a year to see family, but I haven't been able to since December 2019 because of COVID-19. My heart has ached so much over the last 18 months with the simple desire to give my mom a hug. So I just spent a week in the city, this time staying in Downto...

kwee's week in photos

first time in a theater in 15 months magical jellies left: god's creation; right: man's creation have you ever heard of a dessert called a fool?? first time on the NYC subway in 15 months https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/28/remembering-janet-malcolm-who-wrote-and-lived-with-bravery-and-kindness She's a maniac, maniac on the f...

🦷🦷 4 less teeth 🦷🦷

💀💀💀💀 + cute lil permanent retainer teeth had been showing up a lot for me in recent months (see: the 7th entry in this recent post) so obviously I was psychosomatically setting myself up for tooth troubles. And guess what, I had to get all 4 of my wisdom teeth removed this week (!!!). It was my first time experiencing complete general ...

🗳️ NYC mayoral primary 🗳️

RANKED CHOICE!! has! arrived! in NYC! (This is for the 2021 New York City mayoral Democratic and Republican primaries on June 22, 2021). I am so excited to participate in a ranked choice election. I genuinely believe that we would have a different president today (and not Trump) if we had a ranked choice election for the 2020 Democrati...

Phantom of the Paradise dir. by Brian De Palma (1974)

Phantom of the Opera + Faust + Hitchcock + Rocky Horror Picture Show + Frankenstein + The Little Mermaid + The Picture of Dorian Gray ==

烏 なぜ啼くの // 恐怖分子

烏 なぜ啼くの (Karasu naze nakuno) my grandfather texted me a couple weeks ago to ask if I remembered a Japanese nursery song he taught me when I was a kid: I can't read or understand Japanese, so this is a completely Google Translate-assisted convo: he asks if I remember the song, and I reply of course, and with a video I found on YouTube T...

kwee's week in reading

There was a point this week where I noticed a lot of what I was reading and holding onto was intersecting under a wider umbrella: the implications and human cost of tech scalability/accessibility; technology as mere reflection, catalyst, and/or driver of wider ills in society; how we understand/learn about tech's externalities and hold...

kwee's week in photos

645am light I had never seen Jumanji before 🦇🐒🦟🦁🦏🐘🐊 Just the right amount of tackiness/wackiness for a drive-in A 13-yo Kirsten Dunst ⭐ Enjoyed a fruity sour beer descriptively named Purple Beer at local brewery High Nine a fine English breakfast fry: chipolatas, baked beans, mash, bacon, fried eggs, buttered toast, fried tomato, iced ...

the rotten egg trope

eggs as insult In Mandarin, there are a whole host of insults based around the word egg. This was very funny to my brothers and me growing up as we had only the most basic awareness of Chinese: • húndàn (混蛋, mixed egg), wándàn (完蛋, finished egg), wángbādàn (王八蛋, this one is a very complicated reference to turtles that also somehow gets...

kwee's week in photos

Solaris / 2001 Solaris / Upstream Color via Kneipp's Lavender Bath Oil a conversation between Gloria Steinem and Vanessa Springora, the latter of whom wrote the completely devastating and spell-binding book Consent 小白菜 (baby bok choy) my absolute favorite vegetable finally the streets of new york city are rightfully tarred and feathere...

kwee's week in photos

livin' in a box summer interlude they are beauty, they are grace, they are elegance and taste happy birthday brudda Meet Dante, A Rhodesian Ridgeback that once won Best in Show my beautiful beautiful friend Reid released the most delightful music video for his song, Pillow Song, on Friday mangod

🌫

it was a dark, heavy, relentless week. Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo, the continuing trauma of George Floyd's murder at the Derek Chauvin trial. The villainization of victims, the villainization of justified outrage. brutality at the protests protesting police brutality, brutality all the way down. Jim Pagels. An urbanist and bike safety ...

🍝 rao's pronounced ray-oh's 🍝

in 2016, I became aware of Rao's in two different ways and I don't remember which came first. 1. one night I came home to my roommate making a nice heaping plate of simple spaghetti and tomato sauce. I sat down to say hello and he proudly showed me the tomato sauce he was using: Rao's. He said this was the very best tomato sauce, a tru...

love letter to cinema culture in nyc

at my happiest, - I'm going to the movies several times a week (mainly repertory) - only a few people are at the screening - I'm able to sit in my favorite seat and exit quickly through a quiet little side door - I recognize a person or two and we might say a brief hello between screenings and there's no better place to do this than in...

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ missing and loving animals

yesterday, I had the completely silly experience of meeting a pack of 5 alpacas I learned alpacas are an entirely domesticated breed, and are distant relatives of the camel 🐫. They like being around people, but don't particularly like being petted/touched ⛔👉🏻👈🏻⛔ a group of alpacas is actually called a herd, but I think a pack o' alpaca...

CLUE 11

You've made it nearly to the end! This is your final clue. Go to the site of a former body of water where the S.S. ________ used to make berth. Look for a box that has “Peter” written on it in large neon green lettering.

conversations-thoughts from a year ago

“What final pre-pandemic memory do you keep returning to? What were you and your loved ones or colleagues talking about a year ago?” When: February 20, 2020 Where: NYC, driving to JFK Airport for a flight to South America Mental state: Harried, running late Medium: Phone call -- My mom: are you bringing any masks with you? Me: Why mask...

...and I find myself jumping platforms yet again

I've been writing on Substack, but now I'm jumping headfirst into a brand spankin' new space for writing/sharing: world.hey.com ! For some context, hey.com is a paid email provider that unfurled to much fanfare this past summer. I was collapsing under the weight of the 5-8 personal email addresses I use, and so what better way to comba...

What am I doing on Hey World?

Migrated from Instagram to Substack, now migrating from Substack to Hey World. Writing as a part of an Iron Blogger and toying with how I experience, articulate, and share my way through the world. Friends & loved ones: I’ll send a missive to your email once a week, generally Sunday nights!