Summer Party on the High Line

This is bound to be an amazing summer night. 100% of the ticket sales goes directly towards the High Line maintenance and operation of the High Line. Just picture yourself dancing in the street like Martha and the Vandellas. BTB.

My apartment overlooks the High Line and I have to admit, at first, I thought it was time to move. But last summer buttercup and I took the High Line every morning on the way to our daily activities and loved it. The High Line has turned out to be a great addition to the neighborhood. Plus, I can determine the weather outside just by looking at the High Line visitors.

Besos from the west village.

DID

City chic

(Taken by a stranger in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

fordproject's Summer Affair

SUMMER AFFAIR at fordPROJECT highlights the work of eight artists.

Exhibition on display from June 29 to August 10, 2011

Ben l'oncle Soul

I saw Ben tonight at SummerStage in central park it was a rocking good time. He can only be described as a frenchie with Motown soul. His music is playful and reminded me of long summer afternoons drinking champagne (followed by long naps).

Phoeeeeeeebeeee

Philo has done it again! Celine's 2012 resort collection rocks my peasant-girl world. Makes me want to get up and climb to the rooftop of my apartment and sing fiddler on the roof/Gwen Stefani style. 

(images via style.com)

Nice place for a romantic picnic

Central park west - high above the ruckus.

One...two...three...awwww!

Adorable baby announcement

This is too cute for words.

Sydney Evan's love ring

I am in a very fragile state of mind from a weekend of way too much partying. You see, it turns out, I'm a college student posing as a married woman living in Manhattan. Who knew?

So today, my posts may appear to be a little overly sentimental or a bit too cutesy. Deal with it!

Love this ring? Click here.

Massive girl crush: Marianne Faithful

Drunk facebooking

Wake up and discover you have 40 new facebook friends?

Did you send 40 friend requests in a row without stopping to confirm the identities of your requests? Are they all to people from your past or people you barely know? If so, you have become victim of the 21-century version of drunk dialing...drunk facebooking.

Remember the good old days when a friendly 2am call to an ex-boyfriend did not result in continuous awkwardness served in daily doses of updates on that person's life? I do. I remember those sunny sundays in college spent sorting through our call logs and cringing just a little bit.

Here's a little song I wrote about the new phenomenon. Properly sung to the melody from the saved by the bell theme song.

Ten ways to treat post wedding blues syndrome (PWBS)

PWBS is a very common phenomenon. Women spend months, sometimes years, planning their weddings and once the celebration is over slide into a depression.

PWBS tends to be short-lived, but is very real. Symptoms include: obsessive reviewing of ones wedding photos, incessant discussing of wedding events, cutting your hair inappropriately short for your face, changing your look drastically (e.g. from classic chic to grunge chic), feeling like your life is over, singing your wedding song over and over, trying on your wedding dress just to be sure it still fits, and fighting with your in-laws.

Here are a few ways to combat PWBS:

1. Plan your best friend's wedding. Engaged or not, she will be grateful that someone did the planning ahead of time.
2. Write a wedding blog. These are insanely popular and require new content everyday. See here and here. Wedding planning can live on, you see!
3. Start a wedding planning business and start consulting for other women. One or two clients later and you will be grateful that your wedding is over.
4. Start a PWBS support group. Post fliers in your neighborhood featuring a picture of you in your wedding dress. A great opportunity to utilize the picture titled group 5804. Seriously how many photos did you photographer take!
5. Research the history of marriage and write a book.
6. Travel around the world filming wedding traditions of different cultures. Make a documentary about it and submit to the various film festivals. Wait - I should really do that. Hmmm.
7. Plan a party for a friend. You get to plan a party and make someone feel special. Do it.
8. Practice laughter yoga. I don't know about you, but I love to laugh more than anything else - who doesn't? Plus laughter helps create social bonds, which make us happy. Click here to read about the science of laughter.
9. Contact the NY times and suggest they start a wedding critic section. Volunteer to be the Michiko Kakutani of weddings. I should do this too. Ignore this suggestion.
10. Write a song about it. I've got the PW bluessss.

Annabelle Dexter-Jones

The Tale of Annabelle Dexter-Jones from Tales of Endearment on Vimeo.

Daughter of foreigner guitarist, Mick Jones, and diva-model. Sassy little minx. I like her tomboy style and adorable smile. Big time girl crush here. Perhaps I should go blonde and live it up a bit.

Currently reading

From Yale University Press:


The island of Puerto Rico has a severely distressed economy, is one of the most densely populated places on earth, and enjoys only limited political freedom. As a United States commonwealth, it is still treated by Congress as one of the last remaining colonies in the world. In this book a distinguished Puerto Rican legal scholar and former government official discusses the island’s century-old relationship with the United States and argues that the process of decolonization should begin immediately.

José Trías Monge first describes the Spanish rule over Puerto Rico and then traces the impact of American colonial policies there, comparing them with those in the Pacific and the British, French, and Dutch experiences in the Caribbean. He argues that the large amounts of money the United States has given to Puerto Rico have not been productive: not only has the island become frightfully dependent on United States munificence but more than 60 percent of Puerto Rican families still live below the poverty line. Politically, the situation is even worse. The United States has granted Puerto Rico limited self-government but has ignored the wishes of the Puerto Rican people—as expressed in two plebiscites—for greater autonomy, since it cannot make up its mind which decolonization option best serves American interests. Trías Monge discusses the various options of Puerto Rican independence, statehood, and an enhanced commonwealth status and urges the United States to end its present policy of inattention and inaction.

José Trías Monge was Attorney General of Puerto Rico from 1953 to 1957 and Chief Justice of Puerto Rico from 1974 to 1985.

A frog in a well cannot conceive of the ocean

(no naka no kawazu, taikai o shirazu)

-Japanese proverb

Hot Iraqi artist dazzles the art world

Ahmed Alsoudani is a Baghdad-born artist featured here in a NY times article. His work represents the strife and unrest experienced during the Iran-Iraq war.

Mr. Alsoudani is one of the six artists who represents the Iraq Pavilion's exhibition (click here to view some of his work), which was previewed at the 54th Venice Biennale.

A fellow Iraqi artist and exhibitor, Adel Abidin, is quoted in the article as saying:

"The revolution in the Middle East has made me believe that we still have the capacity for believing in our dreams," referring to the Arab Spring.

Amazing! How people come of age in a war-torn nation and remain inspired is incredible.

Italian Vogue did this video on Ahmed Alsoudani:
http://www.vogue.it/en/uomo-vogue/people/2011/06/ahmed-alsoudani

(image via Italian Vogue)

Erdem resort collection 2012

(images via vogue.com)

Ten Reasons Why You Should Get Your S**t Together

Romance

Ghazal

It’s wine I need. Is it a sin to have another?
No harm in merlot, no harm in another.

In Ramadan, we’ll break our fast with dates and wine—
Must we pray in one room and dance in another?

Crushed blossoms at the end of the summer: teach me
how to coax nectar from the bloom of another.

Burned rice on the stove again: what’s to love 
but my imperfections—you’ll forgive me another.

Butter by a kettle always melts, warns the proverb.
Heated, greased, we slip one into the other.

When, inexplicably, you enter my prayers,
I hear messages from one god or another.

Me encanta cantar, cuando estoy sola, en el carro.
My mother tongue dissolves. I speak in another.

Heart thief, enter the fields like a woman in love,
vase in one hand, shears in the other. 
by Dilruba Ahmed
from Blackbird, Spring 2010