October 16th, 2015 @ 11:00 am

i’m a complicated bird… i’m all over the place in interests.  i rarely post about sports, bc i feel like people are 50/50 on giving a shit about them.  i am on cloud nine today, so i just wanted to post about how proud i am of these mets (and yet worried).

we won the NLDS against the dodgers last night.  the last time the mets made it to the NLCS was in 2006, where we blew it against the cards.  this devastated me so badly that i stopped watching baseball altogether for a few years.  that’s why/how i started watching hockey again.  year after year, the heartbreak was adding up, and getting way too hard to deal with…

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January 16th, 2015 @ 5:39 pm

so i just got back from california again, and i got to hit up a few more halloween filming locations while i was out there. all of these locations were around the same area in south pasadena, so it was easy to kill a few birds with one stone.

halloween (1978):

the myers house. (1000 mission street)
this house was originally located a block or so away from where it is now. there are condos where the house used to be (across from the elrod house). i think it’s pretty insane that you can move a house, but i’m glad they kept it in tact and didn’t just tear it down.

the house is now home to offices, and on the front door they asked that we didn’t go up on the porch and what not. i took a couple of quickies, and kept on truckin’.

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January 2nd, 2015 @ 5:36 pm

i remember when this video first came out when i was a youngin, i was so confused as to why chevy was in this video.  i was raised on his movies, and i guess as a child i thought people could only do one thing at a time (ie: acting, music).

either way, one of my favorites, always. 🙂

July 22nd, 2014 @ 11:20 am

the stones and the beatles outlived the ramones… how insane is that?
🙁

i wasn’t fortunate enough to be born in a year where i could have grown up to see the ramones play at their peak (sads.), but i was fortunate enough to at least see marky play (yes, i know he wasn’t an original, but whatever, he’s still a fucking ramone – and an amazing one at that). when the misfits disbanded for the 2nd time, jerry only brought on marky to tour with them, and they always had a ramones set – which was always rad and sounded great.

i have a billion memories of the ramones… first and foremost, and i always think of him when i’m listening to them – i’m forever grateful for my mother’s friend leo. i’ve posted about him in the past. the man taught me many things, one most importantly (i’m not even joking) – was to LISTEN TO THE RAMONES.

one day back in 1991, my mother had a wedding to go to. i have no idea why she didn’t bring her boyfriend at the time… i guess no one could babysit my sister and i, but she stuck us with him for the day. he probably didn’t know what to do with us, so he brought us to his friend leo’s house. which was mind blowing, a super-rad time, and definitely changed my life. yes, simply going to someone’s house on day, had changed my life…

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December 28th, 2013 @ 1:31 pm

it’s fucking rough being a native new yorker right now.  i mean, i’m sure it was rough being a native new yorker whenever there was an annoying surge of people pouring in.  i only know this generation’s surge of entitled, rent-raising, lemming-like, transplant brats…  however, i don’t think they were always bratty.  i feel like the only transplants that i have respect for are from other countries.  i’m like, north-american state-to-state moving transplant racist.

i know i’ve complained about transplants on this site before, so that’s not where i’m going with this.  i was actually thinking about WHY i feel so proud to be a native new yorker from queens, and how sad it is that if i ever have kids, it probably will never be like the “old new york” i knew… because of those bastards.

♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

when i was growing up, i lived in like 13 or 14 places.  it set me up to enjoy change, but it was also great to stay put for a while.  i stayed put the longest in whitestone and college point over the years (flushing/bayside as well, but not the for large chunks of time, really).  i’m glad i grew up in the “burbs” for a million reasons.  i didn’t have a front lawn or back yard, per se, but i had big luscious parks.  my neighborhood was generally quiet, safe, homey.  my elementary schools were great back then, they weren’t terribly overcrowded like they are now.  i haven’t been near my elementary schools in ages, because i don’t live in those areas anymore, but the last few times i was, they had trailers for classrooms in the yards.  that’s so depressing.  it makes me wonder if the schools have gone downhill or do less with the kids now.  i was very fortunate to grow up when i did, because i did so much with my schools back then.

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October 24th, 2013 @ 1:17 pm

does anyone remember when channel 11/WPIX (i guess maybe depending where you lived?) used to have their featured movies of the week?  i remember they would super hype up indiana jones and they even wrote a song to the indiana jones theme song.

i can’t find it online ANYWHERE for the life of me 🙁  the closest i got was to this reddit comment (I HEAR YOU LOUD N CLEAR, IHMHI!) and a tumblr post linked below.  on the reddit comment, it had:

♪ Chased by natives, chased by rocks ♫
♫ ’cause he’s Indy, he’s Indy, he’s Indy! ♪

which are part of the lyrics.  for some reason my scatter-brain remembers parts of it as well, i just don’t know how close i am to the actual lyrics…  i remember (with broken parts, and including his potentially correct lyrics):

chased by natives, chased by rocks
___????___ by a runaway truck
fast as lightning without a sword?
edit(?): wins a sword fight, with a gun [source]
’cause he’s indy, he’s indy, he’s indiana jones!

shit i could be way off, and maybe there’s more to the song i don’t remember (i kind of vaguely remember there being an “extended” version), either way, there are 93798379373 old school videos on youtube but none of this commercial.  it’s so annoying!  anyone have any leads/also remember this?  i need this!

October 6th, 2013 @ 5:50 pm

one of my favorite songs EVER ever ever ever is “never tear us apart” by INXS.  aside from the song being amazing, it reminds me of my mother.  i know that i’ve boasted about loving her musical taste that she raised me on as a child before, so i’ll spare you that repeat schpeel.  some songs just pull at my heart strings when it comes time to her/music, and that album is one of those thangs.

in addition to the adoration that i have for this album via mom, sometimes just fall into this INXS “Kick” kick, and i can’t shake it for weeks (yesterday it started up again).  that album is so amazing and i get so teary eyed thinking that michael hutchence is no longer with us.

the last time that i saw this video was on VH1 “pop-up video”, and it had to be at least a decade ago.  on my walk to and from dunkin just now, i was listening to this song and realized while i was walking, that the weather today is just like in that video.  foggy, rainy, chilly, and i was walking along side a cemetery that runs up the avenue by my apartment and it just reminded me of the video’s setting.  so i watched it…  you should also.

this video seriously makes me fight off sadness, it’s hard for me to watch it, he was so perfectly beautiful.  when he died, his coffin was carried out of the church with this song playing in the background, that makes me even sadder.</3

if i ever get married, i’m walking down the aisle to this song, and it will be my wedding song for sure.  i nearly died of jealousy and astonishment when they had it at blair’s wedding to that french price dude.  seriously, who stole my idea?!  they had an orchestra playing it, there was no lyrics, but they shortened the song by cutting out the sax solo, which was perfect.

. . .

after watching the video, i fell down a wikipedia/articles wormhole and found out a bunch of shit about michael hutchence.  i remember thinking about how when i was younger, people thought when he died, he died of some perverted asphyxiation thing.  while he did die by choking to death by his belt, the coroner said it wasn’t erotic at all, just a mixture of depression, booze and pills that led him to what happened that night.

tl;dr – he was super upset that he couldn’t have his daughter and his girlfriend’s kids for the holidays, and his choice of girlfriend was completely awful.

i never knew all of the problems that he was having in life up to that point.  the worst things were that he got injured to the point that he couldn’t smell or taste anymore, which severely depressed him and the last straw was that he got mixed up in a horrible mess of a relationship with a groupie/tv host named paula yates.  if the vast internet isn’t lying, inxs’s management tried to keep her far away from him… but she managed to have him eventually anyway.  heavy drugs and cheating, etc. – just a horrible mess.

such a shame.

September 20th, 2013 @ 1:31 am

i tried to look via the waybackmachine on other websites that i used to run/own over the years, but i couldn’t find any post about when 09/11 happened in 2001.  i also am not sure i ever posted about it in general, but the anniversary was just a week ago, and the topic is still fresh in my mind.  i personally don’t have a story about THAT day, but the day preceding.  my ex-boyfriend and i were both off from work and we slept right through it, and we didn’t wake up until around 11AM.

i had chinese food on september 9th, 2001, and i got a fortune cookie that read something along the lines of “don’t stray too far from home, you will be needed”.  on september 10th, i went to my friend becca’s house in montclair, new jersey.  i took that trip over there a billion times before.  it was pretty easy…  just take the 7 train to times square and take the decamp bus from the port authority.  it’s only a half an hour from the city, if that.  my friend frank (from my hometown in queens) had just moved into a house in montclair, right by becca’s apartment, so i killed two birds with one stone and saw them both that day.

for some reason i kept thinking about my fortune cookie.  towards the late afternoon/early evening, becca wanted me to sleep at her house in jersey, and for some reason i just kept pulling to go back to queens.  i’d gauge it at majorly fortune cookie, and partly that i just wanted to be with jeff (my bf at the time).  jeff’s mom was a bartender, so she wouldn’t be home until the wee AM hours, and jeff and i both weren’t scheduled to work the next morning at the video store…  that meant friends would be coming over, or just freedom in general at the house.  i said fuck it, and went home to him.

when you take the decamp bus on that bus route in particular, the view of the NYC skyline coming back to the city is spectacular.  the buildings look so large, because of the angle that the bus drives in on.

i wish i had taken pictures of it at some point, but those were pre-iphone/cell phone in general days, and my sister had stolen my digital camera from me.  i will always have the last time i saw it burned into my brain, though.  by the time i left jersey, it was dark out and the skyline was all lit up.  i remember looking at the enormous twin towers, and just thinking/feeling really strange.  i don’t know how to put it, but it definitely felt like the last time i’d see them.  i just remember the skyline looking like one of those classic NYC wide souvenir posters or something.  it looked perfect.

i was one of the last hundreds or thousands of people to see those towers lit up that night in all their glory.  it’s crazy to think about that.  i almost feel honored as a new yorker to say that.

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September 5th, 2013 @ 1:53 pm

my mothers friend leo was a great addition to my life.  he taught me many things…  to cherish the past, to have tons of friends, to eat and live well, to listen to the ramones, to take lots of pictures, and to have patience.

i guess as a child, leo’s $50/$100 “little christmas” (russian orthodox) presents to my sister and i were torturous.  now that i look back, it was to teach us monetary value and patience.  i appreciate these now that i’m older.

there are three examples of gifts he hooked us up with… lol

my partner jae pinned this earlier today, which made me think about these gifts.

i remember when my sister and i got the ice cubes, we were trying to melt it, break it, crack it for hours.
and the full sheet of singles lasted less than 4 months, i’m sure of it.

terrible.

August 29th, 2013 @ 12:26 pm

back in the early 1990’s, my BFF cousin marie and i were always trying to be cool/older than we were…  i titled this “goals of your average 90’s teenager” because the desires/goals of your average teens/tweens back then are so different from now.  i blame it mostly on technology.

i remember growing up wanting/looking forward to my own private bedroom phone line, a tv/VCR in my room, my own stereo, a perm (i never did this), a beeper, a scanner, my own computer, my own AOL account…  now, i don’t even know what they long for.  their own ipads? iphones? ombre hair?  either way, on the technological side, all 5 things i longed for can now be found in ONE device.

i feel like my generation had it weird/lucky.  we had such a major technological crossover in the mid/late 90’s that the newer generations will never experience, and we appreciate the technology as it evolved.  i mean, sure someday we may have floating cars…  BUT, will our cars of today feel like the rotary phones of yesterday?  iiiiiiiiiii don’t know about that.

my friend amy and i were discussing pagers/beepers as of last night, and how back when we were tweens, it was SOOOOOOO imperative that we have them.  back when i had mine, i had to BEGGGG for it.  i guess the monthly cost must have been like $10-$20 a month before the $1.99 smartbeep franchise came along.  at the same time that i had my beeper (with all like, five people that would even page me, one being my mother), i also always had my magic diary in tow.

it’s sort of funny how we were back then as 13/14 yr olds compared to the ones that exist now.

when i think back to these times…  here’s a list of what were my steeze (no really, this shit was SO cool), the important things that made me, me (i’d probably be bullied if i were these things as a fresh teenager, NOW).

jessica leigh – circa 1994/1995:

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August 8th, 2013 @ 4:51 pm

buy it in t-shirt form, here.

August 2nd, 2013 @ 5:03 pm

i am soooooooooooo hyped about my unintentional new collection of vintage items! the image to the left with the illustrated leopard cub on it is a little tiny t-shirt… that was mine from 1981 when i was less than a year old (i’m so glad that my mother kept it!)!!! i’ve always kept it in this little “LIFE” box that i have, holding more cute little-stu stuff (including another mini-stu shirt that reads “mommy’s little angel”).

aaaaanyways! so i was a vendor at the ridgewood market again last weekend, and there was a girl there selling vintage pyrex/cookware and mugs. as soon as i saw her put down that gorilla, i had to have it. i bought it on the spot.

when i got home that night, i checked ebay and lo and behold, there was the little coin purse (how cute is that happy little sloth?!)!!! FATE!

i’m so excited and hope there are other pieces out there in the world ♥
i’ve been trying to google/hunt stuff down, but i’m not really seeing anything as of yet.

you ever see anything, let me know! 🙂

April 16th, 2013 @ 6:18 pm

i remember being around six, and wanting these soooooooooo badly…

i googled them earlier today and found that they didn’t make them anymore, but i did find these gems anddd these gems.  i absolutely love the idea of this – kids actually getting to build what they play with – getting hands-on vs. being lazy videogame playing little shits!

i think that this was an amazing idea, although i’m sure there was a handful of weak/moron kids that fell off and cracked their heads open, or something.

boo those children.

my kid(s?) will definitely have this.

March 6th, 2013 @ 6:55 pm

in september of 1981, exactly one week after i was born, my (favorite/bff) cousin marie was born. we have been inseparable all of our lives and spent so much time together over the years, even though she lived/lives in upstate new york. when we were little, we both had this really cute piece of art hanging in our rooms (the image on the left). i kept mine, because i’m a total pack rat, but marie’s is probably long gone. i texted a picture of it to her last night and she wants to try to find one for her daughter.

marie had her baby girl two years ago, and i think that she wants sentimental things like that, just as i would if i didn’t actually have this stuff from over the years. we are very attached to our things and especially our childhood together. i have been googling/etsy searching the hell out of this little piece of art, to no avail. however, i did find some other cute stuff on ebay i might snatch up. mainly some coffee mugs. this line of “dear god” kids stuff is all cute kids stuff focusing on innocent/childlike questions to god.

i think i might want to just scan/print and frame the piece that i have, so that she has the exact one. i hope i can find the actual one, though. 🙂

January 23rd, 2013 @ 9:25 pm

so the artist/etsy seller that made this cross-stitch has nothing in her shop, so i didn’t link from this post.  i must figure out how to make this mine.<333

next up: joseph senior’s hello kitty illustration AKA vinyl dream toys! [flickr]
(i’m a little late on this, he’s been illustrating them for years now, but how amazing are they?)

January 8th, 2013 @ 2:14 pm

i have cherished everything about my aunt necie’s house for all of my life.  it was just a solid, constant rock for me, always one of my favorite comfort places.  in fact, i cried when she redecorated the living room, lol (it’s that bad).

my grandmother had 10 kids, and my mother was the second to last kid… she died when my mother was only 17 years old.  i honestly think more of my aunt necie as my grandmother, than i do my aunt.  she was so wonderful over the years, and i think that’s why her house is so special to me.

aunt necie and uncle joe have always lived 10/15 minutes away from us my entire life, so we spent enormous amounts of time there.  friday night pizza TGIF sessions, hanging out with aunt carol/aunt judy, playing my cousin michael’s NES for hours, every christmas eve was there, birthday parties, family parties, we practically lived there during the summers she had her pool, sick days from school, etc. – like, my entire life… lol.

anyways, we haven’t gone there for christmas eve in a few years because my aunt has become sick over the years 🙁  it’s harder for her to host it now.  this year we went, though (and i took the picture floating to the right over there, of her kitchen chairs)! 🙂

getting to the point here, all of my first everything’s probably happened in that house.  when i first started walking, i was flying around this house…  when i first started talking, i went on and on and on…  i used to go through all of the cabinets and organize pots and pans and tupperware…  i took baths in that kitchen’s sink.  all of my first memories are in that house, and i also mean my first memories were formed there.  shapes, colours, pieces of furniture, smells, textures, etc.  i can close my eyes and know how that basement smells, or how the cushions from the old couch feel, or how the living room cabinet where all of our toys/crayons were stored smells…  that’s kind of how those chairs make me feel.

i don’t know why, but i started googling last night to try to figure out who makes them, and apparently it’s this company called “the hitchcock chair co.” (founded in 1818, in CT) and this is the “inn side chair” model. the company had closed its doors, but then another guy bought all of the rights and has kept it going since two years ago. that’s nice to hear 🙂

it’s kind of cool knowing who created them.  my aunt has had those for decades, i just wonder how many exactly.  i don’t know when she even moved into that house, but i know they’ve been there at least through the 70’s.

i love that. i hope all that stuff never gets trashed, and i hope to god my uncle/cousins never sell that house to anyone but in the family.  i would take that house in a heartbeat<3

January 4th, 2013 @ 5:24 pm

back in 1992, i hung out with this cool chickadee named suzie.  i’ve known her since i was like 8 or 9, and we went to elementary school together for many years.  it wasn’t until she graduated a year early and left for intermediate school, that we started hanging out (here in NYC, it’s kindergarten-6th grade and then 7-9 (JHS), unlike most other places that are K-5 and then 6-8 and then high school).

anyways, with her going to a new school, we started hanging out, outside of school.  summer vacation, weekends, we’d watch TGIF, play on my babysitters block (where she also lived) and had tons of sleepovers… i remember we used to have a secret club, and we’d go to the beach with her mom, and most importantly… we’d play with our legos.

i don’t remember which was my first set, but i do remember one of my first sets was pool side paradise set. i remember after i discovered that there were sets like that (ones that weren’t all just red/yellow/green bricks), i was *obsessed*.  i got a bunch of those, and then i started adding in the POLICE lego sets, because they had high/tall lego pieces and awesome/modern windows.

as i was growing up, my mom was trying to become an interior decorator on the side. she got all of these different design/decorating magazines that i would sit and sift through for HOURS/days/weeks at a time.

it was the early 90’s, and i was obsessed with built-in/lacquer furniture (even though i didn’t have it) and modern style.  i was constantly re-arranging my room and putting my furniture together to try to mimic that type of design, since i had to make do with what i had… (view commericals // 01 02).  the magazines had floor plans and layouts and i started drawing up my own.  i was constantly drawing up dream houses and started building them in lego form.  i also got really into frank lloyd wright that year (i still even have a few books on him, and his works).

i don’t know where i went wrong, but i fell off of the architecture-dream-future wagon, i think it was because i was horrible in math and really just wasn’t a book-confident kid.  i guess i was just always more of a street-smart kid.

i STILL collect legos and even have some of mine from 20 years ago.  mainly smaller sets and minifigures, because my apartment is too small at the moment for displaying cool/large sets.  funny enough, lego released frank lloyd wright lego sets (which i do NOT own, yet?).  i think it’s super cool seeing your interests come together that way.

in closing, i thank suz and mom for leaving me with interests that still hold strong, 20 years later.

funny enough, i just found suzie on instagram again recently (i forget how), but she still also has lego interest going on.  she has a few big pirate ships hanging out on top of a book case, and she also built a light house that even lights up, lol.

October 24th, 2012 @ 11:45 am

i think both my mother and my aunt necie (who is like a grandmother to me) had one of these. god knows where it is now, i’m sure my mother either broke it or threw it away… but i can’t find one online ANYWHERE. (etsy, ebay… etc.)

anyone have one? you’d make my dreams come true and my little heart so happy<3

my neighbor rose has one, but refuses to part with it, lol. i may have to hijack it…

October 12th, 2012 @ 7:24 pm

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO i’m a HUGE fan of the halloween movie series… my mother got my sister and i into these movies from when i was like seven. like, i know every word/sound/whatevers going to happen next… and i know most of the film useless trivia as most halloween fans do, which is why i was surprised when i had no idea that 4, 5 and 6 were all filmed in salt lake city… AND JUST BLOCKS AWAY FROM WHERE I STAY EVERY TIME I VISIT…

i got so. fucking. hyped. when i realized i knew where most of these places are located in reference to landmarks i set for myself, every time that i’m there.

so as soon as i found this out, i started compiling a list of all of these halloween filming location places that i wanted bee to take me while i was there… and she made my little horror nerd dreams come true. (luhh you grrrl<3)

here’s a quick halloween 4 rundown, in case you’ve never seen it: michael myers wakes from a coma, goes back to haddonfield to go after his neice jamie (jamie lee curtis’s daughter) after she’d been adopted by the carruthers family (script says jamie lee curtis’s character, laurie (his sister) was killed). rachel carruthers is the teenage daughter and a main character in the movie. that’s all i’ll say if you haven’t seen it…

annddddddddddddddd :begin horror nerd excitement post:

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June 12th, 2012 @ 11:27 pm

the other night, i decided to throw on halloween I and II.  it’s been ages, and sometimes i just need it.  when i was a kid, my mother always had the halloween movies on, and my sister and i loved them.  we must have watched them 93879847947 times.  in fact, i’m sure if you got us together in one room, between quotes from young frankenstein, the wedding singer, overboard, drop dead fred and halloween, you would want to shoot us.  we’re ridiculous.

back to the point of the post…  so i was looking at wikipedia info about the movie and its filming locations.  i had remembered that the first two were filmed in california, but i wasn’t sure about 4, 5, and 6.  so i googled it and found out that it was filmed on location in salt lake city.  the more i googled address’s, the more astonished that i became.  three of the main houses used in the film are literally blocks away from one of my best friends houses! …where i stay, every time i’m there! i couldn’t believe it.

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February 13th, 2012 @ 7:26 pm

[my week in pictures]

decided to bleach half of my bangs again, i was getting reeeeeeeeeally tired of my hair being all one colour. went purple, planning on back to blue soon 🙂

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December 1st, 2011 @ 3:58 pm

first off, i hate the term “tween”, but i’m using it because it is an accurate term used via this article…

okay the whole hair removal thing… i 10000000000% agree that tweeny eyebrows should be taken care of… case in point, the image below… my eyebrows were about this FULL from ages 9/10 moving forward, until the ripe age of 16 (when i decided to go behind my mothers back and wax them fuckers down). my mother is always going on and on with “you were so beautiful” and “you were a natural beauty”, but come on… seriously? they were horrible. and once i hit junior high school, them shits should have been taken care of. i mean, junior high school is when all the social shit really kicks in. first kisses, first boyfriends, dances, etc… she couldn’t help me out? even today first thing out of her mouth is shit like “brooke shields eyebrows were full and beautiful”… um, we (unfortunately) aren’t in the 80’s… what was she thinking?!

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November 19th, 2011 @ 12:26 am

one of my favorite jewelry designers, steven shein (neivz) has collaborated with sanrio to come out with a fun new line.  i don’t really wear rings that often, but i’d totally rock the big, flat, red bow ring and the double finger twin stars jammy.  i LOVE LOVE LOVE little twin stars<333

soooooooooooooooo cute.  check out the pic after the jump, buy the collection here.