True Story: Twilight Addict

I’m 24. I’m a Photographer, sales girl, and blogger. I’m an nyc native, fiancee, and Gemini. I’m also a Twihard. I’m not the type to deny things I love.

I come from a household of readers and love good books. The closest I’ve gotten to cheesy best-sellers before was a stint with Steven King in middle school and Nicholas Sparks when I’m feeling sentimental. I’ve steered clear ofAnne Rice.

But below my cynical city girl facade, I’m a sucker for classic forbidden love stories. Like everyone obsessed with something, I turned to the internet. The rumor mill was always on overdrive with Rob Pattinson but when I heard confirmation he was filming Remember Me in the city for two months this summer, I lost my mind. What did I do? Did I find him? Where did I draw the line? My best girlfriends and I went searching after dark.

Finding the movie set was no problem, it was getting a picture with him that was the obstacle. So we did what us city girls do best, we sat on a stoop and brought out the one hitter. 3am Rob Pattinson strolled passed us to his trailer. There were three of us and we all wanted a picture. My heart kicked into overdrive. I could barely look him in the eyes as we spoke. After our picture, the three of us ran to our car.



A vampire shoot and obsession with all things sparkly and cold is the last thing I would expect from myself. Blood and lust were never the game I played and previously held no interest to me. Twilight made me branch into unknown territory. It made me conscious of our quest for beauty and immortality and forced me to look into myself and my darker forms of love. Relax. I’m not here to over-analyze everything. Really, I just want to bone a vampire.










-Photos & Words, Amanda Segur
Make-Up, Alana Hays

Dreamscape

Growing up the son of two Jewish shrinks, I lived in a world where dreams took on otherworldly importance. My earliest recurring nightmares were of visiting a distant relative who turned out to be a Vampire, stalking five year-old me even in my waking hours on New York's Lower East Side.



Now that Carl Jung's "Red Book", locked in a Switzerland bank vault for years is being published, I find a famous champion of the importance in dreamscapes.







The Zombie dreams I suffered from while spending a year at a clothing optional isolated college campus in the hills of Vermont clearly illustrate my feelings of claustrophobia and loneliness. I hope in Jung's bravery by exposing his lucid psychic struggles (whether he meant to publish them or not?) will inspire me to face the light and dark inner workings of my own unconscious.

-Royal

Happy New Year!

Ah... expectations of '09. You've been keeping me up at night. As I lay in bed with the holiday cheer wearing off like a hangover: sweat and smokers' breath, I've come up with a few theories, each one bleaker than the last of what the new year will bring. I don't know about you, but I'm a consummate believer in low expectations leading to high results. If your expectations are high, then you might as well lay down and let the new year walk all over your tender hopes and dreams.



That being said, I'm pretty sure that in 2009 we'll be driving around in flying cars, or just lifting off ourselves into orbit. I predict streets paved in recycled concrete and cars running on solar power. A return to prohibition times for a whole two weeks before an uproar occurs which leads to the de-criminalization of marijuana. Weekends on Mars and summers on the Moon. I predict lots of strollers, lots of coffins, lots of success and petty failures. I expect some hardships, a moment of grace, and then all that good stuff we've been imagining, dreaming and holding onto, rolling in like waves off an ocean touching the grains of a parched beach.

I don't know what I'm saying. Just publicly publishing dreams I have. People twirling, flying, expanding and contracting, a whole sky full of people playing, laughing, dancing and jumping. In my dreams, no one ever touches. The digital revolution at a high price. Will we become nothing but ideas conversing in an open space of more ideas, forgetting the physicallity of the human experience?



Before I get too carried away let's have a round up of great '08 things:

1) vampires
2) "consumer rebellion"
3) dance pop


4) free shows
5) parties
6) accountability
7) new way of life
8) change
9) green revolution
10) OBAMA

and of course the not-so-great:

1) Palin

2) recession
3) bail out
4) corporate corruption
5) nihilism
6) loss
8) prop 8
9) break-ups
10) rock

and the in-between

1)the digital revolution

For a roaring '09 a couple of bottles of champagne. What's the point of celebrating if what you're drinking isn't bubbly and doesn't light up the inside of your heart and head like a christmas tree? At midnight, instead of searching for that magical kiss supposed to erase all our troubles so we can start fresh, I'll be standing outside looking at the sky and seeing our future written in the stars.

-Kastoory