a place for things

insights from my mom while watching X Factor

“look at this 15-year-old dancing. stupid.” -on Justin Bieber

“I’m so glad you don’t dance for rappers. that’s not success.”

“why don’t people have names? 50 cent? Nee-yo? Pitbull? Jesus is coming, honey.”

“maybe they’ll get married.” -final two contestants duet

i need this swimsuit (california design @ lacma) (Taken with instagram)

i need this swimsuit (california design @ lacma) (Taken with instagram)

Taken with instagram

Taken with instagram

his favorite thing to do: find a patch of sun and lay there like he’s dead. we’re so alike!

his favorite thing to do: find a patch of sun and lay there like he’s dead. we’re so alike!

being a mom is like being dead.
— my mom

may 5, 2010—mukhtar, a bus-driver in Copenhagen, had no idea that a group of people planned to celebrate him on his birthday.

old-school funny

“There’s a clip of Don Rickles. Still unbelievable. It’s in the ’70s, I imagine. He’s filling for Johnny Carson. And he’s in the audience, doing crowd work, and there was this attractive black woman. He stands her up and asks her a few questions. He’s not done talking to her, but she just decides to sit back down on her own. And he turns to the audience and he says, ‘Ever since Roots, they do what they want.’ And of course the audience starts laughing. If that had happened now, it would have been such a crazy knee-jerk reaction.”

-zach galifianakis to GQ

a letter

my mom was sorting through some old papers and found a note my little brother wrote to her when he was seven or eight, just after they had gotten into some kind of fight. enjoy:

All I did from the very beginning was love you. I never stopped. We always used to say I love you to the moon, or I love you more than life itself. But now when you say I don’t love you that hurts more than anything in the world. I would have rather been shot in the head 8 times. Thanks your the best.

*for the record, my mom insists that she never told any of her kids “i don’t love you.” more likely, she said, “i probably told him to leave me alone when he said ‘i love you.’”

I came to love You late, O Beauty so ancient and new; I came to love You late. You were within me and I was outside, where I rushed about wildly searching for You like some monster loose in Your beautiful world. You were with me, but I was not with You. You called me, You shouted to me, You wrapped me in Your splendor, You sent my blindness reeling. You gave out such a delightful fragrance, and I drew it in and came breathing hard after You. I tasted and it made me hunger and thirst; You touched me, and I burned to know Your peace.

-St. Augustine of Hippo