Showing posts with label me. Show all posts
Showing posts with label me. Show all posts
Monday, February 4, 2013
Fresh Water Pearls
Last week Brody. Monique and myself went to dinner at a place called Hog & Rocks (www.hogandrocks.com) which is basically a bar that serves bacon and oysters in the Mission.
At the beginning of the year Brody and her husband Serge made homemade 'artisanal' pizzas for us. For weeks since New Years, I'd begun making jokes about all things artisanal and one of the offerings on the menu was an artisanal pretzel, which I had and was delicious and at $4 ought to be. Also on the menu were winter pickles about which I panicked when it dawned on me that I had been eating regular pickles not knowing that there were seasons or that you could charge six dollars for them. The Kumamotos were small and cost less so we got those instead. Still...
After coffee with a high school friend Guthrie the week before that at Cafe Arlequin (www.arlequincafe.com) upon returning to the lot where his car was parked we happened upon a gorgeous blue 80's Toyota Land Cruiser a car we both coveted. As we inspected the car we were reminded that it was now close to thirty years old and wondered at what point something becomes vintage. Later that night I remembered I was wearing a style of jean AG calls vintage wash. Guthrie and l lamented about the loss of regular jeans you wash yourself decrying the absurdity of the urban lumberjack fashion trend attacking heterosexual Californian men and how we've both escaped this by the narrowest of margins. At least his Lexus had heated seats. It was then that he told me he ate only organic dinosaur kale from Whole Foods. With a grimace I asked why hadn't he simply grown his own?
Monday, February 6, 2012
Friday, August 26, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Vanity Fair Questionnaire 2011: Jason Duvalle Jones
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Privacy.
What is your greatest fear?
Boredom.
Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Jonah.
Which living person do you most admire?
Many.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Drama.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Myopia.
What is your greatest extravagance?
Music.
What is your favorite journey?
Home.
What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Chastity.
On what occasion do you lie?
Occasionally.
What do you dislike most about your appearance?
Teeth.
Which living person do you most despise?
Few.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
"Perfect" or "That's funny...".
What is your greatest regret?
Herschel C. Walker.
What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Patricia A. Jones.
When and where were you happiest?
Here, now.
Which talent would you most like to have?
Piano.
What is your current state of mind?
Different.
If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?
Tact.
If you could change one thing about your family what would it be?
Frequency.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Dance.
If you were to come back as a person or thing what do you think it would be?
Thing.
If you could choose what to come back as what would it be?
Person.
What is you most treasured possession?
Health.
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Addiction.
Where would you like to live?
Corfu.
What is your favorite occupation?
Sex.
What is your most marked characteristic?
Eyebrows.
What is the quality you most like in a man?
Grace.
What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Poise.
What do you most value in your friends?
Discretion.
Who are your favorite writers?
Lao Tzu, Augusten Burroughs, Fran Lebowitz, Martin Amis..
Who is you favorite hero of fiction?
Clark Kent.
Who are your heroes in real life?
Kids.
What are your favorite names?
Chase, Celeste, Pilar, Marina, Tip,
What is it that you most dislike?
Pettiness.
How would you like to die?
Later.
What is your motto?
'Wait for the wiggle'.
Privacy.
What is your greatest fear?
Boredom.
Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Jonah.
Which living person do you most admire?
Many.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Drama.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Myopia.
What is your greatest extravagance?
Music.
What is your favorite journey?
Home.
What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Chastity.
On what occasion do you lie?
Occasionally.
What do you dislike most about your appearance?
Teeth.
Which living person do you most despise?
Few.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
"Perfect" or "That's funny...".
What is your greatest regret?
Herschel C. Walker.
What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Patricia A. Jones.
When and where were you happiest?
Here, now.
Which talent would you most like to have?
Piano.
What is your current state of mind?
Different.
If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?
Tact.
If you could change one thing about your family what would it be?
Frequency.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Dance.
If you were to come back as a person or thing what do you think it would be?
Thing.
If you could choose what to come back as what would it be?
Person.
What is you most treasured possession?
Health.
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Addiction.
Where would you like to live?
Corfu.
What is your favorite occupation?
Sex.
What is your most marked characteristic?
Eyebrows.
What is the quality you most like in a man?
Grace.
What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Poise.
What do you most value in your friends?
Discretion.
Who are your favorite writers?
Lao Tzu, Augusten Burroughs, Fran Lebowitz, Martin Amis..
Who is you favorite hero of fiction?
Clark Kent.
Who are your heroes in real life?
Kids.
What are your favorite names?
Chase, Celeste, Pilar, Marina, Tip,
What is it that you most dislike?
Pettiness.
How would you like to die?
Later.
What is your motto?
'Wait for the wiggle'.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
I'm A Stitch
There is a picture of me from the Seventies one day that was in the seventies.
I’m about 4 years old and as cute as can be in a tiny yellow party outfit. Tiny yellow shirt, tiny yellow shorts, teensy white socks and little yellow Keds. I was adorable with bushy eyebrows and a gap-toothed grimace. A cousin, Jeanette, is also in the snapshot towering over me. I’m holding an orange lollipop and crying. Her outfit isn’t as cute and she was teasing me. The photo illustrates this.
Aunt Rosalie’s house. At one point my grandfather, Douglas the second lived there, then my uncle-in-law,
Vaughn, I guess. But Aunt Rosalie took it over and re-everything’d the place and there I was, on summer vacation, in Paterson, New Jersey, sobbing.
Aunt Rosalie covered the furniture in plastic with plastic-lined walkways throughout the house. Rosalie was rich, strict and loud so everything had to be just so. She did a gorgeous job restoring the place to its shiny original perfection and I remember thinking the house was grand because it had a finished attic and basement. Each floor was shiny and varnished and while we kids already knew, we were told ahead of arrival to watch it. So we took off our shoes.
Hidden passageways and secret staircases within this vast playground of a house made it ideal for 'hide & seek'. One staircase went from the attic to the kitchen, on the ground floor. Another from the mezzanine to the foyer was steep and if you weren’t careful you could fall down and bust your head open at a bottom door which was always left closed. We were like wild animals, running up and down those stairs and me and my cousins Kevin, Kyle and Uncle Michael were enjoying a ruthless game of 'You're It'.
It was a humid Saturday afternoon and every relative I'd ever known was at Aunt Rosalie’s place, drinkin’, smokin’, laughin’, cookin’ and carrying on. The smell of ribs, links, barbeque chicken and burgers was intoxicating but our focus was on sugar, specifically candy and desserts. Ornery children were always hyped up on candy. Now ‘n’ Laters, Sweet Tarts, Twizzlers, Jolly Ranchers, Rollos- this was the currency of first graders and we were flush!
I don’t recall how it all happened exactly, playing tag that afternoon, on what would otherwise have been a prison sentence. By then, Mom had moved us to California and this was one of the last occasions I'd visit to the East Coast again before my late teens. I wasn’t the most gregarious of kids but I was having the most fun I had had since our arrival finally playing with other kids my age.
Our homebase was the entrance door which was actually two doors. The outside door was part glass and
aluminum and on the inside a screened door. I was clocking about sixty miles an hour barreling down the plastic-coated but carpeted front stairs. Simultaneously, a cousin- was it Kevin?- emerged stealthily to add me to his list of detainees, rightfully winning the game. On my way to the door, I slipped on the slick parquet floor and went flying like Superman through the screen door and then the glass door, causing a terrible crash. I hadn’t made it entirely through the threshold of the door and was caught in it before the crush of family came to see what all the commotion was about. My cousins, the first on the scene, stood motionless, suspended in time, unable to believe the spectacle. They knew I was in trouble. I was semi-conscious.
I remember laying on the freshly painted grey porch looking up at the blurry face of my Aunt Lulu. I smiled at her and her face was reassuring. I looked around me but could only really see my arm, a sea of flesh and blood. It looked like grits and ketchup. Later I would sustain 72 stitches, on my right arm, forehead and on my knee.
I remember being taken to Barnard Hospital the same hospital I was born a few years earlier, in a Country Squire station wagon and that’s all. Swollen and looking like Frankenstein, I awoke to pale yellow powdered scrambled eggs, applesauce, toast, juice, and the Jetsons on the overhead television. Groggy and disoriented, I was told of what had happened, that nothing was broken and soon I’d be returning home.
I’m about 4 years old and as cute as can be in a tiny yellow party outfit. Tiny yellow shirt, tiny yellow shorts, teensy white socks and little yellow Keds. I was adorable with bushy eyebrows and a gap-toothed grimace. A cousin, Jeanette, is also in the snapshot towering over me. I’m holding an orange lollipop and crying. Her outfit isn’t as cute and she was teasing me. The photo illustrates this.
Aunt Rosalie’s house. At one point my grandfather, Douglas the second lived there, then my uncle-in-law,
Vaughn, I guess. But Aunt Rosalie took it over and re-everything’d the place and there I was, on summer vacation, in Paterson, New Jersey, sobbing.
Aunt Rosalie covered the furniture in plastic with plastic-lined walkways throughout the house. Rosalie was rich, strict and loud so everything had to be just so. She did a gorgeous job restoring the place to its shiny original perfection and I remember thinking the house was grand because it had a finished attic and basement. Each floor was shiny and varnished and while we kids already knew, we were told ahead of arrival to watch it. So we took off our shoes.
Hidden passageways and secret staircases within this vast playground of a house made it ideal for 'hide & seek'. One staircase went from the attic to the kitchen, on the ground floor. Another from the mezzanine to the foyer was steep and if you weren’t careful you could fall down and bust your head open at a bottom door which was always left closed. We were like wild animals, running up and down those stairs and me and my cousins Kevin, Kyle and Uncle Michael were enjoying a ruthless game of 'You're It'.
It was a humid Saturday afternoon and every relative I'd ever known was at Aunt Rosalie’s place, drinkin’, smokin’, laughin’, cookin’ and carrying on. The smell of ribs, links, barbeque chicken and burgers was intoxicating but our focus was on sugar, specifically candy and desserts. Ornery children were always hyped up on candy. Now ‘n’ Laters, Sweet Tarts, Twizzlers, Jolly Ranchers, Rollos- this was the currency of first graders and we were flush!
I don’t recall how it all happened exactly, playing tag that afternoon, on what would otherwise have been a prison sentence. By then, Mom had moved us to California and this was one of the last occasions I'd visit to the East Coast again before my late teens. I wasn’t the most gregarious of kids but I was having the most fun I had had since our arrival finally playing with other kids my age.
Our homebase was the entrance door which was actually two doors. The outside door was part glass and
aluminum and on the inside a screened door. I was clocking about sixty miles an hour barreling down the plastic-coated but carpeted front stairs. Simultaneously, a cousin- was it Kevin?- emerged stealthily to add me to his list of detainees, rightfully winning the game. On my way to the door, I slipped on the slick parquet floor and went flying like Superman through the screen door and then the glass door, causing a terrible crash. I hadn’t made it entirely through the threshold of the door and was caught in it before the crush of family came to see what all the commotion was about. My cousins, the first on the scene, stood motionless, suspended in time, unable to believe the spectacle. They knew I was in trouble. I was semi-conscious.
I remember laying on the freshly painted grey porch looking up at the blurry face of my Aunt Lulu. I smiled at her and her face was reassuring. I looked around me but could only really see my arm, a sea of flesh and blood. It looked like grits and ketchup. Later I would sustain 72 stitches, on my right arm, forehead and on my knee.
I remember being taken to Barnard Hospital the same hospital I was born a few years earlier, in a Country Squire station wagon and that’s all. Swollen and looking like Frankenstein, I awoke to pale yellow powdered scrambled eggs, applesauce, toast, juice, and the Jetsons on the overhead television. Groggy and disoriented, I was told of what had happened, that nothing was broken and soon I’d be returning home.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
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