a diary of what i love and what i do

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

Tootie. She is the cutest little girl on the planet. She dances with everything she's got. She can eat a whole watermelon. She asks for hamburgers in the morning. I can learn a lot from her.

When it was time to paint nails she softly said 5 times "Can I do it myself?" and soon there was pink nail polish more on her toes rather than her nails, then on her hands, then her dress but she remained perfect.

Isn't it awesome that we can't fuck it up no matter how hard we try? Even if we paint outside of the lines.

Friday, May 27, 2011

There are 3 types of people in the Bay Area. The first being people who know and love Point Richmond. The second being the people who know of it but refuse to visit because of the Chevron oil factories and neighboring ghetto. Lastly, there are the people who don't know about it at all. I am of the first kind. It's a special little town and I love it dearly.

This Monday is their 17th annual Memorial Day sale! The whole town comes together to put on one huge yard sale. It's rad. I have always found treasures for good prices, but this year I will be selling instead of buying (or at least trying). I've been doing some major summer cleaning and have bags of clothes, decorations, misc items and furniture. If nothing sells, I'll just add it to the crackhead collection.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

This spring was my first semester back in school since a million years ago and a million years ago the only thing I was serious about was getting my party on. One could say that back then I was getting my "life" education. After all this time, going back to school was both exciting and scary. I was looking forward to learning new things but I was also scared to learn that I was undeniably and uniquely stupid. Irreversibly dumb. Hopeless. Well, I was wrong. I'm not especially stupid or smart. I'm just me....and it's fun. Tonight I submitted my last assignment and the semester is officially over. I worked my ass off in all my classes and went from academic probation to straight A's.                   
                                                                                Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

My friend Kate


My friend Kate is awesome. She has started a blog called, The Styley, and as part of it she has also invented "My Styley Friend" in which she takes photos of her stylish friends in their stylish clothes and posts them on her stylish blog. A couple of weekends ago, I got to be her styley friend, we had a photo shoot and voila!!!

Aside from getting to spend the afternoon with my darling Kate, it was also fun for me to have my clothes documented. I love my clothes. I admittedly have a fun wardrobe. What can I say? Amelda Marcus' blood runs through my veins.You fancy huh?



Click here for the post on our shoot and read below for more on Kate.

How did you start The Styley?
I started The Styley because I was looking to make a career change. I've always liked clothes, but never thought of myself as a fashion person. (I never thought I was well-dressed enough to be a fashion person.) Somehow (it's a longer story) I managed to convince this woman Catherine Moellering, the head of the trend forecasting company Tobe Report, to do an informational interview with me. She said there were two ways to break into trend forecasting, to begin as an intern and work my way up, or to start a blog. Since I'm a writer, the choice was clear, and that's how The Styley was born.
 
My dream is that one day The Styley could be a job, or that it will lead to writing and photography jobs in the future. The best would be to do a book based on the blog, with great pictures and essays about people. (That's a hint to any publishers out there who might be reading this. :) )

What's it all about?
The Styley is really about people. It's about the way style really manifests itself in the world, the way people wear clothes and put outfits together, and how style is reflection of who we are and what inspires us. Everything we do is a reflection of our personal style: the way we talk, the way we dress, the culture we consume, the kinds of friends and lovers we are, the way we walk through the world. The last few years I've been on a journey to figure out who I am, and as a result, I've been figuring out my personal style. It's so easy to feel like you don't look the right way or don't dress the right way or can't dress the right way because you don't have money, but what I'm realizing is that style should be about feeling good and having fun. Ultimately, the goal is to feel right in your skin, not to impress anyone else, although I realize that sometimes that's easier said than done.

What do you enjoy about it most?
I derive enormous satisfaction and pleasure from the photography--walking around neighborhoods taking pictures of random people is fun, because I get to ask them about themselves. People are endlessly fascinating to me. Doing the photo shoots is also great, but in a different way. Street stuff requires you to have a vision for the picture right away, because you can't detain people forever. What's awesome about photo shoots is having time as well as resources, like scenery and costume changes, to create narrative, which is probably my favorite thing ever.

I also love the writing, though. Putting together the images and the words is kind of like solving a riddle. It's a game I get to play every day