You're invited!

I know we've been vaguely hinting at some mysterious party we'll be having soon. What with talk of giftbags, djs and all things dance-y and springtime-y. We're finally ready to unveil the plans to you dear readers, you are our world.

So you may have heard of Poster Boy, we have too. We have an interview with him in the upcoming issue (due out in May!) and we wanted to collaborate on some sort of event. We came up with Brooklynnovation, and here is his take on what he wants the event to be: "This is not a show of [my] work. This is an opportunity to create [my] work yourself. This is for people who wouldn't normally partake in vandalism. The materials will be provided by [me]. Hopefully this encourages people to rethink advertising and their environment"


Pomp & Circumstance Party Invite from pomp and circumstance on Vimeo.

Shot by: Fury Young
Assisted by: Ayberk
Edited by: Dylan Thuras
Graphics by: Michelle Enemark
Actor: Royal Young
Concept : Stephen Bruckert
Producer: Kastoory Kazi
Music by: Peaches (New album out May 4th! We can't afford permission sorry!)

Be thurr or be squrr.

-The Editors

Bring It Back!

In seventh grade at my Chelsea middle school across from a gay bar called Rawhide, my Puerto Rican friend with a mushroom cut proclaimed his lunch time pizza was "Butta."

Urban Dictionaryhas a few definitions. In the Lower East Side of the mid '90s, it mostly meant:

"having a particularly illmatic quality; sweet; nice
'If lookin' good is like being on time, man, THAT girl is fifteen minutes early.'
'Yeah, she's butter.'"

This is also butter.



If brought back I propose we pronounce it "Butta" with a slight 'D' sound on the T's.

Should we bring it back?

-Royal

Pomp Videos: The Importance of Being Earnest

Whew, interesting day. Lovely weather, bit of snowfall mixed in with the sun and clouds. And then I used the term "j'ing off" in class, in front of my teacher. Neither the time, nor the place.

After class, a fellow student/friend asked me what I thought the next hipster trend would be. I thought about it for all of 2 seconds before answering, earnestness. Earnestness? asked Friend, what do you mean? I tried to explain how I think being earnest is really cool. It shows a sincere pride in what you do, but also that you don't take yourself too seriously. It illustrates a certain attachment to the world, a detachment from apathy. In other words, it's going to be all the rage (kind of like the Pride and Prejudice with ZOMBIES book, so freaking earnest).

My first example, George Michael. No, not the one who was caught j'ing off in the bathroom (ah... right time and place). The one who loves his cousin Maeby, and whose show got canceled but who kept showing up in movie screens as different versions of his television self. Or maybe it's Michael Cera. I can't really tell the difference and I don't want to. He's so earnest! As Friend so passionately said when I brought him up as my example, "I love him for that!"



This song has been on repeat in my head (and iPod, sorry roommates and neighbors) for a couple of weeks now. Then I found this and began watching it over and over.



Another lovely example of the trend is Queen Noor on The Colbert Report .

And finally, a video trailer made by the people at Harper Perennial (incidentally they will also be sponsoring our next Pomp party, read: giftbags!)



I can't help myself, I still love a good Smiths reference.

Any earnest role models that you have?

-Kastoory

Scandal Sheet: Menacing Matrons

Growing up working-class Russian-Jewish (I am half and half) in Northeast Philadelphia, as a child and teen I was always nearby violence. I learned to walk with keys in my knuckles, surviving a mugging. Considering my experimenting with boys, drugs and styles in the mid ‘90s: hippie/skater/punk/raver, I was lucky.

After living in Japan I was through with the thrill of the hood. I spent one summer in West Philly and was not enchanted with the grittiness or the harassment. I did not grow up rich or suburban and had no exoticism attached to the ghetto.

When by luck and chance my good friend’s extremely affordable room in Park Slope opened up at the exact time I needed to begin the Teaching Fellowship, I took it.

I was in love with the Slope! There were trees on the block, the park nearby to jog in and the co-op. I loved the multi-cultural feel. A global dater, I could stroll with partners without shame!

Friends of friends delight in indulging in poverty chic by slumming in Bushwick, dodging mom and dad’s trust fund payments.

I delighted in walking with my shoulders relaxed, a yoga bag not being stared at and no “Damn, girl! I wish I was your bicycle.” or other variations. Then, a Park Slope mom glared at me, “Why don’t you move to Williamsburg?” She hissed.

For a town of liberals, (yes it’s a fucking town not a neighborhood), I noticed we were never invited to fancy brownstone block film crew set parties. We were the only house renting on the block. The family on our first floor gave us resentful looks for coming home late, smoking cigarettes or-god forbid being single and childless.

I changed jobs and got a hand-me-down car. I parked one Sunday evening on my block, and let the car go for a few days, preferring to walk. When I came back there were two notes:
1) “The street could not be cleaned because of you.”
2) “Lousy parking job by the way.”
I went to move my vehicle when I realized the psycho had SLASHED MY TIRES.

I called the police who filed a criminal mischief report and said they’d be back, never to return. I’ve taken to shouting things on the street like “Share the sidewalk, road, space, co-op!” and a whole lot of “Can Isabelle stamp her own receipt?” My bougie dream drowned by menacing matrons.



-A. Pinsker

Bring It Back!

I saw "Sike" scratched into a subway window Sunday and remembered in the '90s, when my third grade friends were just joking they'd scream "Sike!" Guessing it somehow comes from psych as in to psych someone out. Urban Dictionary says:

Misspelling of slang term "psych", which is short for "psyched out". It can be used at the end of a statement intended to psychologically cause its recipient to be taken off guard or aback, hence allowing for a competitive advantage by the person using the statement. It is intended to be used, & then its success is to be pointed out publicly, as further source of creating an embarrassing competitive edge.

Hey Joey, your sister let me see her naked last night. Sike!

Should we bring it back?

-Royal

Pomp Poetry: Wishful Weekends

Lately, my weekdays have been nauseous with deadlines, applications, schoolwork and other measures to ensure I’m not homeless come June.

As a break from my overcaffeinated workweek, I switched to liquor for the weekend.
On Friday, Whiskey, Diet Coke and I had a glorious reunion. It was at a party downtown with chandeliers and Courvoisier, two c-words that enter my vocabulary with much less frequency than “Colt 45” or “Cunt Circus.”

The night ended with intense PDA in the Union Square station, followed by falling asleep without sheets on my bed.
On Saturday, I woke up at 4 p.m. with a headache, wrote a Political Science paper and ate an Ess-a-Bagel. Then I got on the L to Bushwick, to meet Royal at Café Orwell for the Crowd reading series.

I’m a poet who typically hates poetry readings. But I like wine, and Crowd has a lot of it. This time around, they also had a bottle of Tequila and a poet with a cool name: Macgregor Card. He also edits The Germ.


I could attribute my fondness for Card’s poetry to his stage presence, his spasmodic delivery (does he not know all poets are required to speak in pretentious monotones?), the liquor in my system, or the fact that he’s from Brooklyn. But his poems were also the most idiosyncratic and fun (consequently, the only ones I remember).
He’s one of those poets you can enjoy line-by-line or stanza-by-stanza. “Spasmodic Tragedy” had a lot of short ones, like:
“It doesn’t take a jerk
to lose count in the dark
to jerk off all the lights
everywhere I shiver”

and

“I came to you
in hope that lights need
screwing down a hall
beauty of a ladder on all fours
everywhere at once”

Another Card poem I enjoyed was called…”Poem”:

I crow the verdant lake surf, crow
Can’t deseltzer lake of tourists into reed regatas
Out-disturb supposed gull, ex-garralous tit
Can’t resolve to cleat the former wild familiar neck
A call for drastic woolly cadillac to ease
A load of cans into estate-pie, hurry
Beach the silver and stunt-silver
Be like painter, nature’s own subultimate decider
Hang it on the beach, an actual sober beach
Where is she at, auratic solemnpuss my love
As all best cameos enfronded
Far from single hitch of my decelerrating tug
The surf I crow, self-prickery’s rushed sum
Of reasonable tics, stroke, stroke, stroke
And crow, stroke and actually crow
Like tourist through like travelled recitation, crow

On Sunday, I needed a sober beach. I drank a lot of water and wrote internship cover letters. I met Daniel at work and we ate French food. I prayed that the weekend could be just a weekend longer.

I woke up in Brooklyn to a Mazzy Star ringtone, reluctantly ready for another Monday.

-Hannah Miet

Joke's On Me

It's April Fool's and my cat died. I woke up this morning and watched him dying on the kitchen floor, his fat black body stretched out, mouth open. I was afraid everyone would think I was joking, but they didn't. I guess it was my eyes, they go from gray to clear when I've been crying. I admit I did, briefly, in the bathroom of the preschool where I work, after watching three year-old kids racing at recess. I remember in first grade my teacher read us a short April Fool's chapter of Sideways Stories from Wayside School at storytime. It was only a page long and the whole class begged for another more substantial Louis Sachar fix. She promised us one, licked a finger, turned a page and then smiled "April Fool's!" she shouted. That's how I feel right now. Like a disappointed first grader, not sure what has been taken from me or why. I never understood cruelly twisting someone's expectations, though through elementary school I continued the vicious cycle, generally convincing a friend one of my parents was dead. Now, the loss is real and I'm still stupidly thinking: I wish the cat had told me. Under the scalding spray of my morning shower I half expected to open the bathroom door to him purring over his Meow Mix, a higher power's cruel idea of what this day should be.

-Royal