fun was had at the eagle yesterday

"Ran into brzinnyc and laughed and just enjoyed a beautiful warm summer night on the roof. Some people realized I had shavedoff my beard and others didn't seem to notice. The consensus was they think I look better with out it."

kitchenbeard looks hotter than ever...

I was back at the Eagle yesterday after 2 months of sel-imposed hiatus (2 weeks ago when I went there to show it to regi and lisa doesn't count). It was weird. I felt very anxious as I walked up 10th ave. When I got there I basically did not know anyone except Paul, the DJ, and Brad who made me his special margarita. What is this? 2 months and everybody I knew is gone. I WAS anxious.

Well, soon 'the group' was formed and, added to a couple more 'margaritas', fun was had.

Mr. RT was there too and I was remimded why I liked him to begin with: that wicked sense of humor we share...

Now, maybe we should try the wednesday after-work margarita madness that Gustavo is trying to get going on the roof.

NYC Jam 2

You can actually turn the pages of the Leonardo da Vinci's Notebook via the British Library

Celluloid Skyline: movie references are one of the things that makes NYC so special to me.

Still questioning: "If looking beautiful becomes as easy as buying a car or a dress, will beauty - or an imitation of it - become so commonplace as to be meaningless?"

KLM via [daily dose of imagery]

Soho, 2pm

KELLY AND PING

my heart aches

"Allah. What have we become? What are we becoming? I sit here as my city burns. There can be no greater pain."

BBC NEWS: Sunni Muslims riot in Karachi after gunmen shoot senior Sunni cleric.

You're fit But my gosh don't you know it

I LOVE The Streets but my gosh you don't have to. The least you can do is agree that their first album, Original Pirate Material was, hmm, original.

They have a new album out, A Grand Don't Come for Free, and I'm having as much fun with it. Favorite song: Fit But You Know It.

See I reckon you're about an 8 or a 9,
Maybe even 9 and a half in four beers time.
That blue top shop top you've got on IS nice,
Bit too much fake tan though - but yeah you score high.

But theres just one little thing that really really,
Really really annoying me about you you see,
Yeah yeah like i said you are really fit
But my gosh don't you just know it

I'm not trying to pull you
Even though i would like to
I think you are really fit
You're fit But my gosh dont you know it

The Streets- Watch the video to 'Fit But You Know It'

happy memorial day

Celebrate Memorial Day right by saluting these soldiers. Or the ones you will find here.

Hasbro building, west 23rd st.

Ollie

Satan's Laundromat:
Burma-Shave

Fleet Week New York

After spending some great time yesterday at the pier and dinner at Pastis, I was thinking about our trip to Las Vegas... Good Times...

Manhattan Equinox

Public Domain 4U: Public Domain MP3s

Brazilian Minister of Culture

Come As You Are (Nirvana)

Come As You Are, as you were,
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend, as an old enemy
Take your time, hurry up
The choice is your, don't be late
Take a rest as a friend as an old memoria

Come dowsed in mud, soaked in bleach
As I want you to be
As a trend, as a friend, as an old memoria

And I swear that I don't have a gun
No I don't have a gun

The Sunday times

Those who have read this blog more than once might have learned, among other things, that:

1. I love to read


2. I like to read the The New York Times daily and every week I post "The Sunday Times" with several items in it


3. I admire Andrew Sullivan, his republican views notwithstanding. I consider him one of the best observers of contemporary culture. The best one that is also gay without a doubt.

So, because of it, this will be the only post from the NYT for today: Andrew Sullivan's piece on 'Father Joe': The Saint and the Satirist for the Sunday Book Review in The New York Times. (Note: this has become #2 in my wishlist, after the new Sedaris. June 3rd. Thursday.) It is not only beautifully written but, in spite of being a book review, raises existential questions begging to be addressed.

listening is the beginning of understanding, the first exercise of love.

"Saints are perhaps always best evoked by sinners. (...) These ideas of sin that we have are not really sin. Or rather: they are the symptoms of sin, not its essence. And its essence is our withdrawal -- our willful withdrawal -- from God's love. This book is about Hendra's slow, aching, hilarious but profound attempt to accept God's unconditional love for him. And this truly difficult acceptance is a consequence of one other man's quiet listening and faith. Of another's love.

(...) Father Joe, in one swoop, both undermines the current hierarchy's obsessive horror of sex itself and illumines the real point of Catholic sexual ethics: the respect and love for another human made in the image of God.

''Sex is a wonderful gift, a physical way to express the most powerful force in all existence -- love. Sex is a brilliant idea of God's, I think. Almost like a sacrament.''

''Sex is a sacrament?''

''D-d-don't tell the Abbot!''

''There's no sin in having sex?''

''Yes yes yes. There can be. But sex is a sin less often than we're led to believe. It's all a question of context. If you have sex to hurt or exploit another, or to take pleasure only for me, me, me, and not return as much or more to your lover . . . then it becomes sinful. . . . They've made sexual sins the worst sins of the lot, haven't they? Because sex is so powerful, people are fearful of it! We must take the fear out of sex as well.''

(...) In human life, this God is found in listening. ''Listening is reaching out into that unknown other self, surmounting your walls and theirs; listening is the beginning of understanding, the first exercise of love.'' This isn't easy; and our modern world is jammed with endless attempts to prevent us from such listening, from the silence that makes it possible, from the empty spaces in our work-filled days that alone can actually make us human and our lives rich.

(...) And you hear no judgments from Father Joe; no admonitions; no warnings. What you hear is the sound of someone listening. And that very sound draws Hendra back and back -- a silence that somehow pierces the cacophony of New York and Los Angeles and London.

How this story ends is not something to be dwelt on. It is the journey that matters. But in some respects, I think, the book itself is that journey. How did a man known for left-wing screeds and biting satire come to write a book that -- I'm not exaggerating -- belongs in the first tier of spiritual memoirs ever written? The answer is that Hendra resisted such an extraordinary achievement just as he resisted God's love. This short book therefore has the nature of a kind of surrender -- not to some new theology or doctrine or sensibility. It is the surrender of someone to himself as he was always meant to be, to the love he was destined to feel, to the God who refused to let go.

If you are a Catholic who feels, as I have, more estranged from his faith than ever; if you are simply a person longing to live a deeper, more meaningful life; then I beg you to read this book. (...) there is something in this book that speaks particularly to our contemporary spiritual desert and to the kind of faith that ''like clear water from solid rock'' can help us grow and heal again."

At the pier, 5pm

with X-S, Gina and Ollie.

The joy of reading

a new series where I will post excerpts from my current reading material. A moment with a dead robin in it was the first entry.

One day when she was four years old, while leafing through Sylvia's beauty magazines, Allegra had taken offense at how much white space she found. "I don't like white," she said. "It's so plain." She burst into tears. "It's so plain and there's so much of it." She sat for more than one hour, sobbing, working her way through the pages, coloring in the whites of people's eyes, their teeth, the spaces between paragraphs, the frames around ads. She was sobbing because she could see that she would never be done; her whole life would be used up in the hopeless, endless task of amending this single lapse in taste. She would grow old, and there would still be white sheets, white walls, her own white hair.

NYC Jam

Stuck in traffic on 8th Ave @ 42nd St., 6pm: the view from our cab.

NYC: expect the unexpected

Nothing better than a total lack of expectations (close to despair) to produce a perfect day: Yesterday started with some great news I received from Erik P.I., who didn't even make it to GB:NY. Then, my final visit to Bellevue Hospital, glad that is over. Hooked up with X-S, visiting from DC. We rode a cab up the entire Central Park ('It feels like we are in the country') to Harlem, then East Harlem (don't ask why). On 105th and 2nd Ave we spotted Bem Bolado, where we had lunch: since it was 'by the pound' and we have eyes bigger than our stomach, we ended up with every Brazilian dish in our plate. Warning: do not try this at home or otherwise.

With our livers hating us, we headed to Regina's place in Hell's Kitchen just to add pain to their agony: Watermelon Margaritas (the three of us but not Lisa who will not part with her Chardonnay).

After dinner (yes, we ate more) we headed to Snaxx only to find out, oddly enough, that it had happened the night before (?). Gustavo, they think I'm crazy...
Since we wanted to stretch the joy of our friendship we headed to Barracuda where we ran into Eddie and Erik (who is now entitled to one day of my slavedom), thus completing a full circled satisfying perfect day.

As Lou Reed would say.

Appearances 2

The Perfect Margaret Trigg is a must-read 'true re-account' of the life of everybody I know, including myself. With varying degrees of obsession about our appearance (from healthy to margaret), only some details change. The outcome is one, thankfully.

I was a thin kid, a no-no in a Latin society where subconsciously food equals love. A thin kid meant one of two things (sometimes both):
1. You were poor.
2. You did not love him enough to feed him.
Being middle-class culturally more so than financially, it was a source of headache to my parents. They started using means, physical and psychological, to force me to 'clean my plate'. To this day, I am unable to stop eating until all the food is gone from my plate.

I became an overweight adolescent.

My parents were happy but I was miserable. I'm not certain how I came up with the idea to use laxatives and diuretic but it was not until my 20's I was able to shit again on my own. Aren't you glad I'm telling you that?

Please, please, read Margaret's story.

signs of summer

Sweet South Jersey Strawberries (my favorite fruit)
Farmers Market @ Abingdon Square, 9AM

Bellevue #3

Bunnies

Following the HUGE success of The Exorcist:
The Shining
in 30 seconds with bunnies.
Via him again.

Grocery Porn

"My neighborhood is an interesting place to buy groceries. Some time ago, I came across a wonderful soup mix. The actual mix is salty MSG death with very little actual cock, but I love the package." Glennalicious

So do I. And what it was packaging when I last saw it.

orange rusted metal things

Appearances

Today is my last hospital visit to take care of warts (mostly gone now) that grew on my face like wild mushrooms. Not two. More like 20.

Right when I was ready, willing and in need of a job, I was afraid to even leave my room. Self-imposed exile. Afraid of the disgusted reaction from my friends.

Like wearing a tie, or not having facial hair, the warts would not affect in any way my performance at any job. It was all about the perception that existed in other people's head.

It's a shallow world the one we live in. I'm part of that world, no denying. It's a constant battle trying to get over preconceived notions of beauty or why they matter.

Will it be the ultimate sign of maturity?

My prototypical ideal has been liberated from being the all-American Ralph-Lauren model to being accepted as the man of the eagle. Some of my (intelligent, in my opinion) friends still make fun of me: there goes Mr. V's type. Some of my (intelligent, in my opinion) friends still idolize the 'Chelsea look'. It's hard not too when pretty much every gay media outlet - as well as the straight ones - broadcast image after image of buffed hairless six-packed unattainable gods. It makes for a close to impossible to satisfy group of people. The Chelsea look.

Now, when I say Chelsea I do not mean the geographic area contained between 14&23 west of 6th in NYC. Since that's where the gay Mafia lives and/or socializes, it's the center from which these notions are imposed on the less enlightned.

THERE IS a Chelsea mentality in Boston. THERE is a Chelsea mentality in Brazil. And most certainly there is one in Singapore. The Chelsea boy does not need to live in Chelsea, not even in NYC (but in Brazil they are called Barbies).

The power of the media, bombarding images of unattainable ideals, creating fake desires in people's mind.

I hope the Guardian UK is right about the potbelly as the new gay ideal.

THINGS YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT KENTUCKY.

I miss Mr. DW.

Kentucky is not just a border state. We are THE border state! Our Old Kentucky Home is the place where the South, Appalachia and the Midwest all come together to meet and mingle. Kentucky is so neither here nor there that we spent the first two years of the Civil War playing the Union and the Confederacy off each other (the Union finally got fed up with our waffling and occupied the state). We introduced the mint julep and people around the world think of us whenever fried chicken comes up. Our accent is the Appalachian Twang, not the Southern Drawl, and we play basketball as good as the best flat-landed Midwesterner. This cultural burgoo is what it means to be from the Bluegrass State.

Dating tips from the animal kingdom

1. Our good friends and co-evolutionaries Canis familiaris (the domestic dog) show that when in doubt which hole to aim for, thrust wildly. You are bound to land in something good.


2. Shrimps' hearts are in their heads. Men have neither hearts nor heads.


3. Dolphins engage in group sex. If those squeaky grey-skinned fisheaters can do it, so can you.

read the rest of the list at Belle de Jour

Quote of the month

"I fell in love with the pipe... That motherfucker says, 'Don't answer the phone, we have some smoking to do'"
Richard Pryor via POPBITCH

graphic eye

A long time ago, a friend who is an editor at Brazilian Vogue, told me, after looking at some pictures I had taken during her visit to NY, that I had a graphic eye.

I do not consider myself a good photographer nor am I a great graphic designer. For NY standards, anyway, as they are more common than... What's the expression?

Anyway, Eduardinho has just provided me with photosh..., I mean, the means to improve on the pictures I take. Thank you.

With graphic I I am not striving to be recognized as an artist. I just want to share how I look at things. And with it, share what helps me be (?). One hundred people would look at the pier 55 above and just see a dilapidated structure. When Mr. JJ goes see a movie what he experiences transcends the act itself. That's the beauty of it. Beauty. It's everywhere you just need to be willing to look. (that last sentence was sooo fucking corny, I'm definitely NOT a writer).

The NYTimes had a photoessay recently called Poverty's Palette. Preposterous (W.O.T.D.)? Check it out...

"If this were beer, I'd be an alcoholic."

"Blogging is a pastime for many, even a livelihood for a few. For some, it becomes an obsession. Such bloggers often feel compelled to write several times daily and feel anxious if they don't keep up. As they spend more time hunkered over their computers, they neglect family, friends and jobs. They blog at home, at work and on the road. They blog openly or sometimes, (...), quietly so as not to call attention to their habit."

Blogging has helped me get thru the darkest period of my life. It has been my lifeline and my cry for help. Even at the lowest points of the past year you could at least find out if I was still alive by simply checking josé. A lot of 'friends' gave up on me because I wouldn't return calls or I wasn't able to open up yet they were unwilling to read my 'diary'. REALLY read it. Between the lines. The worst I felt, the least personal the entries were. Yet, here it was, the little door I kept open. Rigth, Mr. DF? You found that door. And used it.

who is driving?

[picture by quarlo]

gmail swap: people are desperate for an invitation... i still have one left and will freely give it to the person that offers me the most money.

rings that tell an user you are thinking about them when you rub yours.

BIG LUG: Bear + Cub Nite

Bear Glossary, from the Big Lug site.

but i digress...

Read on the window of Marc Jacobs on Bleecker St.:
"At least when Clinton lied no one died"
Pic on the left: current MJ windows, taken by Emery, sent to me by Mr. RT

Naked Brazilian Stars.

Byrdhouse: Breaking The Rules.

Madonna cancels her second LA show.

OPP's Medicine Cabinets as art.

The Gay Vote : "US servicepeople discharged for having profiles on gay websites"

Another hundred people

Another hundred people just got off of the train
And came up through the ground,
While another hundred people just got off of the bus
And are looking around
At another hundred people who got off of the plane
And are looking at us
Who got off of the train
And the plane and the bus
Maybe yesterday.

It's a city of strangers,
Some come to work, some to play.
A city of strangers,
Some come to stare, some to stay.
And every day
The ones who stay
Can find each other in the crowded streets and the guarded parks,
By the rusty fountains and the dusty trees with the battered barks,
And they walk together past upholstered walls with the crude remarks.
And they meet at parties through the friends of friends who they never
know"
Company

Christopher street pier, 3pm

The gay beach, as I call it.

raison d'etre

word du jour: "the purpose that justifies a thing's existence"
dedicated to LSM

the still (in)famous omelet

"It's standard marketing practice to lure customers into thinking they're getting a bargain by making an item $9.99 instead of $10. But Norma's frittata works through an inverse psychological ploy: The four-figure domain is crucial. Like diamonds, fur coats, champagne, you're paying for the price more than the thing itself—a public display of the fact that money's nothing to you. (Of course, the only people who can afford these forms of conspicuous consumption are those whose every waking minute is devoted to money—making it, monitoring their investments, moving it around to make more money out of it.) At Norma's, the element of ostentatious largesse is turned into a ritual: When someone orders the $1,000 omelet, says Steven Pipes, general manager of Le Parker Meridien, 'we have a bell we ring and we make an announcement to the whole dining room. Some people clap.'"

to be gay & muslim

Hot Sexy Swimmer Guy (Holding head) Whooooaaaaaa !!!!
"Psychotic Me (Stammering) Oh, I am so sorry, are you hurt?
Hot Sexy Swimmer Guy (Holding head) No no, its ok. Its ok. You didnt get hurt did you.
Psychotic Me (Stuttering) So the water is so warm huh?
Hot Sexy Swimmer Guy (Confused at the SUDDEN change of topic) Huh? What? Yeah, maybe it is ...
Psychotic Me (Stuttering with wild confusion) And it isnt very clean is it.
Hot Sexy Swimmer Guy (Confused at the SUDDEN change of topic yet again) Yeah, maybe it is ...

And then he swims off into the setting sun with me standing there and cursing myself for being such a complete moron that I might never ever get laid."

Search for love in Karachi, in his own words: Thoughts, emotions, actions, desires and feelings of Jalaluddin Ahmed Khan. A twenty three year old psychotic sarcastic blogger from Karachi. Cute, smart, funny, sexy and interesting (well, of course everyone exaggerates).

In Movie News

"Highly anticipated disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow opens the day after tomorrow.

On Friday, the day after tomorrow, when The Day After Tomorrow opens, the day after tomorrow will be Sunday."
from low culture

The entire place is an elective.

"But the unfortunate, yet truly exciting thing about your life, is that there is no core curriculum. The entire place is an elective. The paths are infinite and the results uncertain. And it can be maddening to those that go here, especially here, because your strength has always been achievement. So if there’s any real advice I can give you it’s this.

College is something you complete. Life is something you experience. So don’t worry about your grade, or the results or success. Success is defined in myriad ways, and you will find it, and people will no longer be grading you, but it will come from your own internal sense of decency which I imagine, after going through the program here, is quite strong…although I’m sure downloading illegal files…but, nah, that’s a different story."
Jon Stewart's ('84) Commencement Address via A.S.

spanky is spooky

I have a profound dislike for clowns...

Spanky the clown arrested on porn charges: "Spanky, a clown with the renowned Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, has been arrested on charges stemming from a child pornography investigation."

My favorite living writer.

David Sedaris will be reading from his new book at the Union Square Barnes&Nobles, June 1st, 7pm.

Recently I found some of his work that I had never read before at The New Yorker:

The summer I was twelve, a tropical storm moved up the coast, leaving a sky the same mottled pewter as Gretchen’s subsequent bruises, but the following year we started with luck. My father found a golf course that suited him, and for the first time in memory even he seemed to enjoy himself. Relaxing on the deck with a gin-and-tonic, surrounded by his toast-colored wife and children, he admitted that this really wasn’t so bad. “I’ve been thinking, to hell with these rental cottages,” he said. “What do you say we skip the middleman and just buy a place?”


He spoke in the same tone he used when promising ice cream. “Who’s up for something sweet?” he’d ask, and we’d pile into the car, passing the Tastee- Freez and driving to the grocery store, where he’d buy a block of pus-colored ice milk reduced for quick sale. Experience had taught us not to trust him, but we wanted a beach house so badly it was impossible not to get caught up in the excitement. Even our mother fell for it.


“Do you really mean this?” she asked.


“Absolutely,” he said."

times are such...

One of my favorite artworks gets a spongebath
"The marks on 'David' recount much of the statue's life story, starting with an 18-foot-high marble bloc from Carrara that had been exposed to the elements for 40 years before Michelangelo began transforming it. 'It is very poor quality marble,' Ms. Parnigoni said after working inches from its surface for months on end. Even Michelangelo had to spend four months polishing the marble before it was presented in public in 1504."

That (in)famous omelet...
"$1,000 will get you a six-egg frittata with lobster, cream and 10 ounces of sevruga caviar. The restaurant staff rings a cowbell when the egg dish is served, lest other diners miss the event. With that tab — more than $1,200 with tax and tip — trumpets might be expected."

Big City, Big Dogs
"In a city defined by small spaces - cabs, elevators, cramped apartments and crowded sidewalks - it is often cause for bewilderment that New Yorkers would willingly choose to live with Great Danes, Newfoundlands, St. Bernards and Irish wolfhounds. Everything is outsize: the hair, the smell, the pull of a passing squirrel, the grooming bills, the food intake and its inevitable digestive exit, which can summon spectators like some kind of street show."

Q & A
Why do my fingers wrinkle after I swim for an hour when my friend's fingers don't?
Since cells of the lower layers of the skin do not absorb water and do not change shape, the usual explanation for puckered fingers and toes is that the expanding stratum corneum ends up pleating like corrugated cardboard.

stepford

Prada Store, Soho

My Neil Sedaka Story

when i was a young boy... my family.... grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, great aunts and great uncles... 2nd cousins... etc... all took vacation together... they would pick a hotel in the catskill mountains... aka the jewish alps .... and descend upon it for 2 weeks .... very much like the movie Dirty Dancing ... the second hotel in my memory banks was a small very nice hotel called "the Esther Manor" .... since the owners wife was named Esther hence the name of the hotel ... quelle surprise ... my family loved this hotel and we spent many years enjoying our 2 weeks out of the city in the clean, cool country air ... well...  we used to eat our dinner in the small children's dining room...while the parents and teenage children got to eat in the fancy large dining room... me and my cousin's were young children ranging from 3- 9 yrs old... in the lobby of the hotel... was a baby grand piano and to me it was like pandora's box- magical ... while we waited for our parents to finish we would go to the lobby and wait with grown up supervision... one night a young man sat the piano and started to play... i was always mesmerized at live performance... he was playing and singing... and to me he was unbelievable... but again i was about 5 years old... i was told by my mom that he was dating the owner's daughter... and he would be around quite often... and he was.... i loved to sit and hear him perform... i was told he eventually married the girl... and that was that ...... my family moved on to some place else ... we heard many years later that the Esther Manor was sold and torn down .... well... it was in the early 70's that a revival of some 50's-60's music came around... and i loved the song "breaking up is hard to do" ... one afternoon i was playing the guitar (something you didn't know about me) and singing in my bedroom ... my mom said "do you know who originally sang that song and wrote it?" ... i said "yeah... Neil Sedaka" ... he was a cousin of my classmate Robin Sedeca (that's the way her family spelled the name)... my mom said "do you remember the guy who used to play the pianio for you at the Esther Manor?" ... i told her i remembered a man and the situation ...but not the face... well... of course it was Neil Sedaka... the end!

as told by Mr. DF

but i digress...

Endangered: 2 Columbus Circle

Baby conceived with 21-year-old sperm.

Sedaka is Hebrew for charity.

Word of the day: the recall of memories not recognized as such but thought to be original creations.

Picasso sculpture @ NYU

Mr. DF's choice of image for today.

survivor:colonial

Mr DF and I watched Colonial House last night over chinese take-out. Granted out attention gravitated from the TV to the food to the chit-chat. But it felt cheap to me that PBS was using a format so beaten up already. I understand they might attract viewers that normally would not watch public television and the premise is extremely interesting. So I will withhold my final judgement. For now.

We also saw the last 3 minutes of The Swan and, to me, it was more than I should have bothered to. You could see everything that was wrong with THAT idea.

But we managed to have fun.

Dans mon île

Manhattan
Lyrics by Lorenz Hart
Music by Richard Rodgers
From the Show The Garrick Gaieties (1925)

I'll take Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island too, it's lovely going through the zoo. It's very fancy on old Delancey Street, you know. The subway charms us so, when balmy breezes blow to and fro. And tell me what street compares with Mott street in July, sweet push carts gently gliding by.

The great big city's a wondrous toy, just made for a girl and boy. I'll turn Manhattan into an isle of joy.

I'll go to Greenwich, where modern men itch to be free. And Bowling Green you'll see with me. We'll bathe at Brighton, the fish you'll frighten. When you're in your bathing suit so thin, will make shellfish grin fin to fin. I'd like to take a sail on Jamaica Bay with you, the fair Canarsies Lake we'll view

The city's bustle cannot destroy the dreams of a girl and boy,I'll turn Manhattan into an isle of joy.

23rd and Lexington, 1pm

Expanding on an idea

Pyramid of Needs
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is often depicted as a pyramid consisting of five levels: the four lower levels are grouped together as deficit needs, the top level is referred to as being needs. While deficit needs can be met, being needs are a continuing driving force. The basic idea of this hierarchy is, that higher needs come into focus only after all needs lower in the pyramid are met. Growth forces result in upward movement on the hierarchy, whereas regressive forces push prepotent needs down in the hierarchy.

Deficit Needs
Physiological Needs: If all of a human's needs are unmet then the physiological need takes the highest priority. Given hunger for love and food, a human is more likely to find a solution for the latter first. As a result all other desires and capacities are pushed on to the back burner.
Safety Needs: When the physiological needs are met then the human turns towards safety needs. Safety attains the highest priority over all other desires. However, in the case of acute danger, safety comes before physiological needs (for example eating).
Love Needs (Belonging Needs): If safety and physiological needs are met then the human being gravitates towards achieving fulfilment of love needs. A note worth making here is that sex is not equivalent to love. Love can and is often expressed sexually. Sexuality can at points be considered solely for its physiological basis.
Esteem Needs: This refers to the valuation given to oneself by other people.

Being Needs
Self-actualization is the instinctoid need of a human to make the most of their unique abilities. Maslow described it as:

A musician must make music, the artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualisation. (Motivation and Personality, 1954)

While other needs can be met fully, self-actualization is seen as 'growing', i.e. as a continuing driving force. This is related to tikkun olam in the Jewish tradition — using one's skills to fix what is broken in the world.

Critique
While Maslow's theory was seen as an improvement on previous theories of personality and motivation, concepts such as self-actualization are somewhat vague. In recent years, the theory as a whole and especially this term have been somewhat overused and are sometimes perceived as psycho-babble.

It is also problematic to operationalize and test Maslow's theory. There is no proof that every person has the ability to become self-actualized.

from Wikipedia

The Cookie Monster

Trojans

"To some people - perhaps those who exercise a lot and don't have a classical education - the word Achilles refers primarily to a body part that gets inflamed with too much long-distance running. For those people, it's coincidental that there was once a Greek hero by that name."
Hollywood Help Wanted: Classicists With Style
"We need writers who can make clear and entertaining the links between these two disparate eras in which the word Trojan has such different connotations."

maslow's pyramid

During the siege of Kuito, Angola, in the early 1990's, Carlos Sicato, a World Food Program worker, described a man producing an old chair and promising his family, 'If we don't die today, we can survive for four more.' He soaked its leather for 15 hours to soften it and remove the tanning chemicals. Then, with boiling water, he made 'lamb soup.'

Anne-Sophie Fournier, director of the American branch of Action Against Hunger, said she had read that the victims of the Soviet famines of the 1930's ate furniture, too. The scene in 'Gold Rush' in which Charlie Chaplin, trapped in a Yukon cabin, ate his shoe (actually made of licorice) was not entirely fanciful.

Starvation brings out what professional famine fighters call 'coping mechanisms.'

The simplest is such a truism that it seems absurd: When there is little food, people eat less.

Have you ever been REALLY hungry? So hungry that the only thing you think about is how to stop it, even if it means stealing food? Or eating your shoes, a la Chaplin?

Maslow's Pyramid seems obvious but I can tell you from experience that if you will need each level, from bottom up, taken care of before you can advance to the next level.

I have been hungry.

In a world where the rich spend millions on ways to avoid carbohydrates and the United Nations declares obesity a global health threat, the cruel reality is that far more people struggle each day just to get enough calories.
The New York Times > Week in Review > Staving Off Starvation: When Real Food Isn't an Option

Puss in Boots

Went to see Shrek 2 last night with Eduardinho and Marcello Reeves among other friends...

Fairy Godmother was a great new character for obvious (gay) reasons (I actually owned the complete screenplay for the first season of Ab Fab).

But the biggest surprise was Puss in Boots, my favorite. Suave. When he gets busted and the cops pull out a little plastic bag from his pocket he immediately offers: "Not mine. You guys planted it in there". This happens so quickly that kids will totally miss it, thankfully. And so do the other 'adult' jokes. When they need to run out of a 'Farbucks', they run across the street to the other one... It's so clever that I will need to see it again to catch all the jokes I missed while crying from hysterically laughing.

Of course, I was the one laughing the hardest.

It was a perfect night, thank you guys.

but i digress...

'Fahrenheit 9/11' Wins Top Prize at Cannes

swirl via kottke

james' dogs

I love these dogs. The male is deaf but understands sign language. It has always amazed me.