doubt into hope

Herakut have long fascinated me, and the day I met Jasmin (one half of the duo) was seriously one of the better days I've ever had. She is so authentic and intelligent and genuinely talented. The cool, but sometimes even frustrating thing, is that she doesn't seem to know how amazing her and her artistry really is and so when she sent me a long email about her recent struggles with doubt and how she battled those thoughts and fears by embracing hope through her work, I was really flattered. She was so open and I could relate to much of what she had to share.
This is the new video she sent along explaining their last 6mos. Their short films always amaze me. The text, the imagery, the editing. Hera always makes me happy.

Rainbows in Rio

I finally learned more on this amazing rainbow project in Rio. "The initial idea of the Favela Painting project has always been to paint an entire hillside favela in the center of Rio, visible to all inhabitants and visitors."
I gotta see this in person some day.
www.favelapainting.com/

feels like summertime today

remember when old school hip-hop videos always featured the rappers chillin and/or dancing with a bunch of girls -- and everyone actually looked relatively normal and were friends who actually knew each other? I should have been born about a decade earlier. I would have rocked a mean crimped half-ponytail.

can't get enough

of my inspiring friend Kristin here. bad days? not here.

Andre3000

Hey, thanks for existing Andre3000. You changed my life and don't get enough credit for all you've done for the music and fashion industry. Southern rap owes you a whole lot, as do a ton of other biters out there. You are a true innovator. I fucking love you but you really need to get your ass back in the studio.

Reports: Military Fails To Diagnose Brain Injuries

I almost never post negative things here because I use it as a sort of online bookmark for lots of things I like, but this news enraged me to such a degree that I had to share it.
NPR reports: “The military's medical system is failing to diagnose brain injuries in troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. NPR's Daniel Zwerdling and T. Christian Miller, of the nonprofit investigative news organization ProPublica, talk to Steve Inskeep about a new series of investigative reports. They looked into the military's system of caring for soldiers, who suffer from traumatic brain injury.”
Listen to the story here. The portion where the soldier (tries to) speak brought me to tears.

Linda + Paul

For one reason or another, I started reading up about Paul McCartney today (probably because he just received the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song — the American government's highest honor for pop music). I grew up listening to and loving The Beatles. Their songs were simple, short, and the quartet seemed to symbolize all that was fun and groovy about the sixties when I fancied myself a sort of budding hippie flower child.

A successful and talented poet is able to sum up truths we all know succinctly and beautifully. Each and every word seems to pack more meaning than the average paragraph and I think this is why The Beatles, and especially Paul, were so successful. They said a lot without saying too much.

In one of the bios I was reading on Paul, I learned that in their 30-year marriage (1969-1998) Linda and Paul spent one night apart from one another (when Paul was jailed in Japan).

“I always think of Linda still as my girlfriend. That's how we started out in the '60s, just as friends. Whenever I was working late somewhere, I just never fancied it. I thought: Well, I could stay overnight in this posh hotel, or I could go home to Linda. And it was always the brighter of the two options: Yeah, go home to Linda. It was just I liked being with her, quite frankly.”

Sometimes (okay, well at lot of the time) I find myself dreaming of the simpler America. The America that really was a place of hopes and dreams; of new ideas, no internet, and civil unrest. True, the grass really does always seem greener, but with the debt crisis, oil spill, volcano, earthquake, war…the world at large does seem to be getting a little melancholy if you really stop and think about it.

“When we went for a drive, Linda always wanted to get lost. I had an in-built panic about being lost. I always want to know where London is. I don’t want to get to, say, Staines and not know my way back. We would go down to the most obscure places, have a great time, find a little tearoom or a riverbank. She taught me little things like that, to relax and be down to earth. It was very valuable to me then, a great part of the healing process after The Beatles broke up ... Linda was a very natural woman. She loved the fresh air and the freedom and the privacy of the countryside ... She was just a great person to hang out with: very funny, very smart and very talented.”

Nasa scientists discover evidence 'that alien life exists on Saturn's moon'

ummm...okay. So there are totally aliens out there. The other month, genius man Stephen Hawking pretty much confirmed that other life forms exist (and told us not to try and talk to them), and now Nasa does as well? I find this super duper exciting and not scary in the slightest. Finally, we have some proof that we're not the center of the universe.

“Researchers at the space agency believe they have discovered vital clues that appeared to indicate that primitive aliens could be living on the moon.

“Data from Nasa's Cassini probe has analysed the complex chemistry on the surface of Titan, which experts say is the only moon around the planet to have a dense atmosphere.

“They suggest that life forms may have been breathing in the planet’s atmosphere and also feeding on its surface’s fuel.”
Read it all from the UK telegraph here.

well, this is thought provoking

Mad Men + Broken Bells = seriously awesome video.