I’ve been doing some soul searching, I’m finding some good stuff. I’m being pushed reluctantly into the foreground, a place that i purposefully abandoned several years ago. However situations keep occurring where my hermit tendencies don’t serve me. I am also being informed that my style of perfectionism doesn’t serve me. My art is like a cockroach in that for every one piece of mine that you see there are about 30 that you don’t see. Growing up I used to throw away sketch books, rhyme books and journals because they were not “perfect.” It wasn’t till i got married that i really started to save my work & even then many things never saw the light of day. I learned that just because something comes easy to me doesn’t mean it lacks value. So here i am unwilling to put things out there that are not “perfect” but in desperate need to share and make room for all the new stuff. The first challenge I put to myself is to be “out there” more. I’ve decided to do so by starting a Video Blog (which i believe is called a V-log). It is tentatively titled “2 minutes with your imaginary friend Pierre!” I begin shooting later this week…see you soon..well…you’ll see me soon but you…you get it…so yeah.

(editors’ note: in order for this story to work you must commit to the sound effects. out loud is best.)

dun duN DUN DUNNNNN!

its time for adventures in the back yard with Pierre Bennu!

budbudBUDbudBUDbudabbuda

…the sound of the eco friendly electric hedge clipper cutting hedges with NO gas or carbon…hooray environment!

budbudBUDbudBUDbudabbudaaZIZIZPHHHHZIT!!

…the sound of the eco friendly hedge clipper cutting its own wire & a tiny explosion

LOLOLOLOLOLOL!

…the sound of all the uncut hedges & all the birds & insects who saw me catch that “L”

@#$&!!

…the sound of me cursing the birds and bushes laughing at me & swearing revenge

tap tap tap tap

…the sound of me on craigs list seeing if any one wants a double dutch rope that used to be a very long electric cord

dun duN DUN DUNNNNN!

…this concludes this episode of “Adventures in the back yard with Pierre Bennu…brought to you in part by ‘eco stuff sometimes sucks’ & ’sometimes city boys need to just hire someone to do their yard’

- dear white cat. Please just give it up. No matter how slow you creep or how fast you pounce they see you coming a mile away. I hate to sound racist, but yes it’s because you’re white. you stand out against almost any background. PS the sound you hear as they fly away is not chirping it’s laughter.

- note to self: when you fall down in public again (and you will fall down in public again) DO NOT pop back up as fast as you can! Laughter directed at your pain and ripped clothing hurts your feelings instead… lie motionless for as long as possible hold your breath and when you can no longer do that roll your eyes to the top of your head and twitch violently till some one calls the ambulance. If you can muster up some drool that’s a plus. Then when you hear the paramedics, that’s when you pop up as fast as you can, dust yourself off and walk through the crowd surrounding you and off into the sunset. PS Remember to wipe the drool off.

- dear wife: 10 years! WOW that’s cool. but isn’t it kind of random how they only make a big deal on anniversaries that are divisible by 5?  I say after this, let’s celebrate on years that are prime numbers.

- dear guy with one eye working at that place: I would think (seeing as how someone poked out your eye and you have no depth perception and you wouldn’t make a good eye witness and no one is really gonna see what your saying) that you would be a nicer less rude person…oh well guess I was wrong. I got my eye on you. [Read more]

Whenever I clean my office I find these little letters that I’ve written. I usually just giggle to myself and toss em in the garbage but this time I decided to post some before I toss them. I might continue these as a series lord knows I have a billion of em.

- dear John Legend, I would like to bring to your attention that the word “love” doesn’t have a “W” after  the “O” I ask that next album you correct this error in your annunciation. Remember its LOVE not LOW-VE   thank you
- dear seagulls in the parking lot of the supermarket, I think that it’s gross that you eat chicken and I some how think that makes you sell outs.  know thy self.
- Note to self: invent an exercise or an exercise device for men that gets rid of the folds in the back of the head. Sell for 19.99, It needs nifty commercial like…do you have a pack of franks on the back of your head? Does your barber have to hold up flaps to cut your dome? When you stand sideways do you have two profiles? Well no longer with   “folds be gone” [Read more]

For a long time my baby was NOT cute. I actually applauded my wife for feeding him. Nature’s trick seems to be that as the responsibility and complexity of this parenting gig grows, the cuteness of the kid grows, too. I’m scared because he’s getting cuter by the day and if his newly flavored farts are any indication, this changing diapers thing alone is about to go to a whole new level.

My messy diapers system is well strategized: I classify them in order from easiest to hardest. For future reference, be sure to multiply each # by about 3 to know how many baby wipes to use. [Read more]

“iPad” by pierre bennu
photo taken by my wife’s iPhone

(click ‘read more’ for bigger picture) [Read more]

I remember the first time I saw George Carlin. I was maybe eight years old, and was flipping though channels at my father’s house. I came across this bearded man speaking to a large crowd of young people. In my mind he was a professor and those were his students… my father being a professor at Hunter College at the time was my only point of reference for that dynamic. He seemed almost too smart to be a comic. I remember watching him & being fascinated by the way he used words and thinking what school is this? Clearly he is teaching but what is the subject? And how fun it must be to be one of his students.

He will be remembered.

He left so much good stuff to for us to marvel at.

I would’ve loved to have been able to tell him to his face how much what he had to say and how he said it meant to me.

He is one of the greats.

i keep an old hotmail account. it used to be my main one, back in the early days of my internet life, and was a bit of a gangster situation because it was just my-name-at-hotmail, which clearly signified that i was ahead of the curve with getting email addresses, wasn’t i? no “my-name-plus-zip-code” or “name-plus-year-of-graduation” hotmail address for me, dammit. i am vanguard nerd. i am O.G. emailer. who runs this hotmail world, beeyotch? i do.

over time, of course, it became clogged with spam and useless, and besides in the interim i had gotten a yahoo address (way more storage; i used it to sign up to mailing lists i’d likely never read), built my own website and had my own domain-based address (way more fancy, even almost professional; it became my main address) and even most recently, gotten a gmail account (another moment of not being able to resist the uber nerdy chic since i got it super early when it was invite-only) (and yes, i know this matters to no one other than me, and only in that secret cyber place in my heart that is vain about my tech prowess. but don’t worry because really, that’s not what matters. it’s how you USE it.)

so, the hotmail had become mainly a place to let myspace send its constant friend request emails, and it sat there collecting mailing lists i no longer read but feel nostalgic enough about to not unsubscribe from.

it also housed like, 10 years or so of my early internet communication history. if i ever wanted to chronicle the trajectory of certain relationships, revisit correspondence between myself and my sister when one or the other of us was living abroad, refresh for myself just exactly why my various exes are just that – i was secure in the knowledge that the historical effluvia was archived there for my personal posterity.

and then.

i go to login one time to doublecheck an amazon order status, and those bastards had dismantled my account! there was a screen where i had to reactivate it, and they tried to play like it was just some routine maintenance shit b/c i hadn’t logged in in 30 days or whatever… and so i click the button that said, “yeah, assholes, i DO want this account, what kind of jerks are you guys anyway?”

and when i get in, i see that the entire history was wiped clean.

brand new.

inbox at zero.

spitwads.

.
.

inspired by the hubbub around 3-6 mafia’s oscar win.

copied from a comment made on kenji’s blog.

b/c it is late and i am a lazy bastard.

————————-

for the record, i was disgruntled wayyy before the oscar win. black culture’s strange fascination with pimpery is as inexplicable to me as its delight with black men cross dressing as their own grandmothers. i don’t get it. and i think it all speaks to a discomfort and dysfunction we have around gender and sexuality that we really need to deal with in a responsible way if we are going to survive with our collective minds, families, intact.

but at the end of the day, i definitely think songs like the oscar-winner are a result of a deeper issue, not the cause.

or, is that a chicken and egg sort of distinction?

i most often fall asleep with my face inside my husband’s neck; in that warm delicious crook where his chin and shoulder meet. the rest of us is often similarly entwined, with assorted variance required by mood temperament and pre-sleep activity; but this fact remains nearly constant. last night, (i had previously drunk coffee and was slightly wired) (and, to be honest, it was actually 7am this morning, when i finally wound down/finished work to an extent that i felt comfortable getting into the bed) his pulse seemed thunderous to me. insistent. i was struck with his intense aliveness, the juiciness and fluidity and solidness and heat of him. and felt in the core of me a huge gratitude and awe for this. but also felt like there was no way i could sleep with that much tireless rhythm right in my ear. i turned. and this is a thing about him that i love – his ability to have entire interaction and conversations with me in his sleep – when i gave him my back he curled right into me and pressed and held and instead of his bold intense heartbeat it was his deep and sweet breath in my ear. and i slept.