RoleModels

aaa2zee: theeconomist: Tomorrow’s cover today: nearly 1 billion...

Thu, 30 May 2013 12:42:43 -0400

Tomorrow’s cover today: nearly 1 billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in 20 years. The world should aim to do the same again.

Rah this is an idea we can talk about for the GrandPrix beauty...

Tue, 28 May 2013 13:17:20 -0400

Rah this is an idea we can talk about for the GrandPrix beauty challenge…

dknyprgirl:

OMG! An @sephora piñata filled with cosmetics! Happy #SephoraSweet15!!!!

View more DKNY PR GIRL on WhoSay

aaa2zee: On the subjects of Purpose, Passion & Personal...

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:46:04 -0400

aaa2zee:

On the subjects of Purpose, Passion & Personal Growth…

“Why so serious?”
- Joker

It has been a scary minute (almost 4 years now) since I hit the brakes on my fast moving car of career and business and found myself a total mess on the dashboard. Since the asking of “Who am l & what on EARTH am l doing here?” I had gotten crickets in response, or at least that is what I thought I was hearing.
Well it turns out the message was simply PLAY, yup annoying isn’t it?

“What do you mean play? Play what, the Cello, Monopoly… Play? I have bills to pay, a life to live, a family to care for. Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

Yet the bleeping word chased me everywhere. So naturally I ignored it and kept searching for that super serious life that would afford me medal of honour for fighting to good hard fight. Didn’t work out so well. And just when I had had enough of the ass whooping life was handing down I surrendered (I know most of will hate this word) and PLAYED. Before I knew it I remembered what it was like to feel that freedom and giddy joy I felt as a kid, the curiosity returned, and everywhere I turned opportunity was to be had.
Yes it is still a work in progress. I haven’t ascended into Never, Never Land. I still have bills to be paid; I still wonder about what to do next. The difference is I am learning to see my life as a joyful place where I can accept the good and spread it through me; accept the bad, bless it for its lessons, and then redirect it. I go to bed with a smile a mile long and wake up excited EVERYDAY. I play all day long, with my studies, my job, my doctors, my family, my money, with my food, the news (yeah *ish is going down, I know) on walks, in the metro, at the park, at the market. I make a living playing and I find ways to be paid for it. And now I dedicate my passionate purpose to helping others learn to play again.

Today is a great day to start, in MTL here it is a MONDAY AND SCHOOL & WORK ARE OUT!

For those still with me (I am verbose today): PLAY and be JOYOUS and then see how the “hard work” feels. And as you notice the elation in your limbs and core, imagine then the bursts of satisfaction as you later bask in the fruits of your labours.

If you need help finding your way back to happiness there are many routes, but a nice quickie would be to try an Inner Fitness class through the Ismology FB group with David Lion (dude make a recording already and go global):

https://www.facebook.com/groups/479221868781297/

In the interim I want to thank as many of my favorite playmates as I can remember. Des très gros bisous à my sister from another mother Princesse Zee (get a FB page already you snob). Love you all deeply, thank you for playing.

—

Are you scared of dying? Gil: Were you scared? Ernest Hemingway:...

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:31:00 -0400

Are you scared of dying?

Gil: Were you scared?

Ernest Hemingway: Of what?

Gil: Of getting killed.

Ernest Hemingway: You’ll never write well if you fear dying. Do you?

Gil: Yeah, I do. I’d say probably, might be my greatest fear actually.

Ernest Hemingway: It’s something all men before you have done, all men will do.

Gil: I know, I know.

Ernest Hemingway: Have you ever made love to a truly great woman?

Gil: Actually, my fiancé is pretty sexy.

Ernest Hemingway: And when you make love to her you feel true and beautiful passion. And you for at least that moment lose your fear of death.

Gil: No, that doesn’t happen.

Ernest Hemingway: I believe that love that is true and real creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving, or not loving well, which is the same thing. And when the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face like some rhino hunters I know, or Belmonte, who’s truly brave. It is because they love with sufficient passion to push death out of their minds, until the return that it does to all men. And then you must make really good love again. Think about it.

From the movie: Midnight in Paris

G R I M E S: I don't want to have to compromise my morals in order to make a living

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:14:30 -0400

G R I M E S: I don't want to have to compromise my morals in order to make a living :

actuallygrimes:

i dont want my words to be taken out of context

i dont want to be infantilized because i refuse to be sexualized

i dont want to be molested at shows or on the street by people who perceive me as an object that exists for their personal satisfaction

i dont want to live in a world where…

The Artist’s Process: Section of interview with Derek...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 22:04:00 -0400

The Artist’s Process:

Section of interview with Derek Cianfrance, Director and Co-Writer of The Place Beyond The Pines (courtesy of Alliance Films)

- Interviewer: Let’s talk about your design team.

- … The DP (Director of Photography) was Sean Bobbitt. I originally had planned on using Andrij Parekh who did BLUE VALENTINE, but he had this vision one night that he was going to die if he did PINES and so he dropped out. I’m not kidding. So I met a number of DPs and when I met with Sean, he was telling me things about his process, the way he approaches his work and how he prefers using handheld cameras and natural lighting, and his theories on camera movement, etc. I had come to find out that Sean was a war photographer and I asked him if he thought he was going to die doing Pines and he said, “No, he had been to war many times.” He was just fearless and he helped us all be fearless in the film. We knew the first shot of this film should be an epic shot. It should take us, like a dream, from the space of Luke’s trailer, through a working fairground, and into a circus tent where HANDSOME LUKE AND THE HEARTTHROBS would begin riding their motorcycles in a metal globe of death upside down. And Sean had wanted to go inside of that globe (where the motorcycle riders race). He suited up in armor and we did the whole 5 minute shot and he went in the center of the globe and it was a beautiful shot and I’m watching the monitor and I hear a crash. The monitor that I’m looking at goes fuzzy and I look over at the globe and I see Sean on the bottom of a pile of 3 motorcycles. He was run over. The paramedics run in and everyone’s asking if he’s ok. Sean gets up and he’s not okay – he’s angry he didn’t get the shot!! And he says, “Let’s do it again.” And I said, “Sean, don’t do it again.” And he said, “I’m doing it again. We must get this shot and go to the center of it.” So we went back, filmed from the trailer all the way into the center of the globe of death, and again at the same exact moment, the monitor goes static and I look up to find Sean under a pile of motorcycles again. This time he was even more shaken up and even angrier at himself for not getting the shot. We cancelled the shoot for that night. Then later, at around 3AM, Sean woke up in the hotel and didn’t know what country he was in. So we took him to the emergency room and he had a concussion. And the next night we did it again, and I forced him not go inside, but he is a warrior. To me, Bobbitt has such a strong composition and I wanted this to be like a story book. Like flipping through the pages of a mythical storybook.

"If you ride like lightening you crash like thunder."

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 21:59:27 -0400

“If you ride like lightening you crash like thunder.”

- Robin (Ben Mendelson’s character in The Place Beyond The Pines)

Someday my painSomeday my pain will mark youHarness your...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 21:59:00 -0400

Someday my pain
Someday my pain will mark you
Harness your blame
Harness your blame, walk through

- The Wolves (Act I & II)

theatlantic: In Focus: China’s Toxic Water On World Water Day,...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 13:29:58 -0400

theatlantic:

In Focus: China’s Toxic Water

On World Water Day, I’d like to share with you a strong collection of images from southern China, showing local activists fighting against industrial pollution in their waterways, and cancer sufferers in so-called “cancer villages”, linked to pollution from hazardous chemicals. Earlier this year, China’s environment ministry released a report officially acknowledging the existence of these villages for the first time and signaling its willingness to address toxic water pollution. Greenpeace reached out to World Press Photo award-winner Lu Guang and other photographers to bear witness and has allowed me to share their images here on World Water Day, in an effort to bring this environmental and human tragedy to the world’s attention. Photos and captions were provided by the photographers and Greenpeace.

See more. [Images: Greenpeace]

"An erosion of self-esteem is one of the commonest symptoms of dispossession. It does not occur only..."

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:34:53 -0400

“An erosion of self-esteem is one of the commonest symptoms of dispossession. It does not occur only at the naive level…; even more troubling is when it comes in the company of sophistication and learning. It may then take the form of an excessive eagerness to demonstrate flair and worldliness; a facility to tag on to whatever the metropolis says is the latest movement, without asking the commonsense question: later than what? Let us imagine a man who stumbles into an alien ritual in its closing stages when the devotees are winding down to a concluding chorus of amens, and who immediately and enthusiastically takes up the singing with such loudness and gusto that the owners of the ritual stop their singing and turn, one and all, to look in wonder at this postmodernist stranger. Their wonder increases tenfold when they ask the visitor later what kind of modernism his people had had, and it transpires that neither he nor his people had ever heard the world modernism…. [E]ccentricities such as his can liven up the gathering and may even save it from righteousness and solemnity; but in the final reckoning the people who will advance the universal conversation will be not copycats but those able to bring hitherto untold stories, along with new ways of telling.”

- Chinua Achebe, from Home and Exile, 2000, posted by The Awl. (via yayitsrob)

"Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the..."

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:32:02 -0400

“Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit — in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.”

- Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah. (via alixlambert)

Photo

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:06:34 -0500

"The abusive man’s problem with anger is almost the opposite of what is commonly believed. The..."

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:41:22 -0500

“

The abusive man’s problem with anger is almost the opposite of what is commonly believed. The reality is:

Your abusive partner doesn’t have a problem with HIS anger; he has a problem with YOUR anger.

One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him. No matter how badly he treats you, he believes that your voice shouldn’t rise and your blood shouldn’t boil. The privilege of rage is reserved for him alone. When your anger does jump out of you —as will happen to any abused woman from time to time —he is likely to try to jam it back down your throat as quickly as he can. Then he uses your anger against you to prove what an irrational person you are. Abuse can make you feel straightjacketed. You may develop physical or emotional reactions to swallowing your anger, such as depression, nightmares, emotional numbing, or eating and sleeping problems, which your partner may use as an excuse to belittle you further or make you feel crazy.

”

- Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men (via queeringmisogyny)

Montreal is #trending! afrobarnet: Fashionista! #naturalhair...

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:38:15 -0500

Montreal is #trending!

afrobarnet:

Fashionista! #naturalhair #fashionista #afro #fro #photography #beautiful by itsacurlsworld http://instagr.am/p/WkOzRguWJ9/

"Courage is fear holding on a minute longer."

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:23:05 -0500

“Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.”

- George S. Patton

(via showslow)

Photo

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:22:26 -0500

neuewave: Lorena Angjeli By Dario Catellani

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:22:08 -0500

neuewave:

Lorena Angjeli By Dario Catellani

vanityfair: Solange has found her niche! Performing at the...

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:17:37 -0500

vanityfair:

Solange has found her niche! Performing at the Armory Party, a benefit hosted by MoMA to celebrate the opening of the 2013 Armory Show, the demure diva sauntered onto the stage in the Agnes Gund Garden Lobby to take her place in front of Rodin’s formidable Monument to Balzac. Big sister Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Jessica Biel (sans Timberlake), DJ Harley Viera-Newton and style-maven Alexa Chung were among those who looked on as the effortlessly cool, 26-year-old chanteuse charmed the audience with her signature dance moves (check ’em out here) and songs from her newest album, True.

See photos of Solange at the V.F. Oscar party.

Photograph by Rachel Williams

"Documentary claims to have this privileged purchase on a truthful version of reality – it’s not..."

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:17:23 -0500

“Documentary claims to have this privileged purchase on a truthful version of reality – it’s not fiction, this is the real – but most documentaries’ representation of the real is so attenuated and so discourse-based and language-based. We lie and we mystify ourselves with words. Words can only take us so far.”

- Lucien Castaing-Taylor (via taekwonjew)

NYC dating scene! From the men’s perspective. On this Pardon My...

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 04:14:52 -0500

NYC dating scene! From the men’s perspective.

On this Pardon My French, Wes Del Val, who you already know.
Peter Giang, who’s a surfer and photographer
Brian Trunzo, who is just about to open a men’s clothing shop in New York.
And last, but not least, Luke Forbes, an actor.