pixelated.me

there something so intriguing about the way something like an american apparel advert stuck on a wall can seem to gain an ounce of truth in its decay

I just finished reading a GQ interview/profile/excuse for having someone to photograph/ on Jessica Alba.
She comes off as low key, sweet natured, trying very hard to be something more than just a tantalizingly sexy woman who seems plague by an public interest that doesn't stray far from "when is she going to do a nude scene"
The interviewer in his own description seems empathic to this, to the fact that the 'industry' keeps trying to put her into bikini's and yet the accompanying photo shoot seems to go in direct contrary to this empathy. The last photo of the piece is a medium close up of Jessica Alba in a white bikini top, holding a water bottle and dribbling water down her lower lip and onto her chest. What the fucking fuck?!?
It is a good photo, sexy, well shot, and Alba seems to nail the whole pseudo improvised, "i don't care" attitude of the shot but i still felt a mild revulsion towards it.
I'm a pretty straight shooter, i like calling things what they are and the rest be damned, so if you want Jessica Alba for a cover so you can put her in fucking bikini then for god sake don't fill an interview with empathy over her having to do the whole 'bikini thing'. Acknowledge that you too GQ are part of that 'industry'

In the end it got me thinking about the role of beauty. It's a old debate but frankly i'm getting a little bored with beautiful women who seem so aware of their beauty. I believe in the following quote that I've always heard attributed to Ingmar Bergman "beauty that is unaware of itself is the most beautiful"

and really, girls. women, any and all of you who are genetically blessed. How many times can you hear a guy tell you you're beautiful before you begin to crave something a bit more substantial, substantial even if it is still superficial, like...wow you're really elegant, or poised, or stylish, hell...even cool would seem an improvement on 'you have beautiful eyes'

Maybe i'm wrong, but i've dated very beautiful women and in most cases it wasn't me telling them they were beautiful that carried any weight, but the substance of conversation, connection, click that really gave the situation any headway. I love a pair of beautiful eyes, or a striking nose but both are really quite dull if it isn't in the context of a brilliant cackle. laugh, a witty remark, or a bit sincerity.

So while in reading this celebrity interview, a genre which gets more and more painfully predictable with each issue (notable exception of a recent GQ interview with Halle Berry)
I can't help but wonder why bother with the pretense of intimacy, why mention that Alba considers herself clumsy, or that she tugs at her shirt nervously, but that it also makes her shoulders look sexy. Why bother when the accompanying pictorial rarely ever reflects the superficial intimacy gleamed by the author for the interview?

i'm 26 years old. tonight i wore a tuxedo for the first time. These are my thoughts at 3:20 am sitting in my boxers and black socks, having careful undressed and hung up my tuxedo and its accouterments in the closet:

Tuxedos make you feel like the pimpest motherfucker in the room, unless that room is full of other equally pimp feeling motherfuckers. (or any other fuckers for that fact.)
walking down the street, stepping out of the taxi, running into your hot 19 yr old neighbor and her friends drunk in the elevator, you feel like one pimp, suave, debonair, GQing son of a bitch!
but for the most part the occasions in which one is required to wear tuxedos are those in which every bloke wears a tuxedo, and lets face it, tuxedos vary very little, trying to...differentiate the tux from others usually ends poorly, like the bloke i saw with the pink cravat.

So right now i'm thinking come tomorrow morning i should wear that tux to grab a morning cup of coffee while i read the paper, i should wear a tuxedo next time i get laid, not TO get laid, but while doing the laying, i should wear a tuxedo taking myself for a walk, because man does it feel good! Tuxedo's are wonderful things to wear just as long as you're not in a room full of other blokes wearing the same.

the average human life span is 73.43890 years. (That figure is completely made up)
We divide and subdivide our personal narrative into years, months,
relationships, cities lived, people known but almost always within a
very narrow forecast.
But in doing so we overlook the fact that some patterns will only
emerge over the course of longer units of time. Decades for example.

I've spent the last 18 months of my life trying to forecast patterns
for some of the people who are or have been in my life, trying to find
the ways that the might fit into the narrative, like an overcaffeinated
writing staff on a sitcom trying to write back in a character.

I've felt jittery, I've commented on it in various forms on this very
blog, and in the end i realized that in trying to script them into my
narrative i was just getting in the way.

sometimes you meet the love of your life a decade too soon, and
sometimes the love of your life becomes a life long friend...and
sometimes people are just momentary catalyst that poke at your insides
and remind you that you still have them.

you were 5.
every picture of you showed you pouting or frowning.
you hated being photographed.
you're on a beach and don't want your picture taken.
your father tells you that if you close your eyes you'll turn invisible and won't show up in the picture.
you told me this as i looked at a photo of you, 5 years of age, in only your swimsuit bottoms with your eyes firmly closed.
I was glad your dad lied.
it's a beautiful picture.

this is what's left behind.
talking to a woman who happened to mention what she was like when she was a baby, i found myself distracted by the memory of your childhood pictures.
i will remember you in random moments.
inopportune moments.
i will randomly remember something random from the drawer marked 2000-2005