being miss jendar

how to pick up a chick

2011-12-18T20:51:00.000-08:00

confession #13

2011-12-15T16:05:00.001-08:00

it's kind of funny how now that I am leaving NYC, I am going on all these dates. i think I may have gone on more dates during the past few weeks than throughout the 3.5 years I have lived in the city. anyway, I am not complaining at all. I kind of really love it!

the artist

2011-12-07T07:21:00.000-08:00

last night while walking around 5th avenue looking at the christmas windows, I found myself standing in front of the Paris Theatre, which is currently showing the film The Artist, by director Michel Hazanivicious. the movie was starting in five minutes, and because my friend and I were in no rush we decided to just go into the movie. there has been some pretty amazing films this year, but I have to say that this one is by far my favorite. as I matter of fact, I dare to say that it is the best movie of the year. The Artist is a modern film done in the style of the 1920s, therefore it is a black and white silent film. I have heard about it since it was in this year's Cannes Festival but it recently opened in theaters here in NYC. throughout the movie I laughed, I cried, I smiled, etc. it is such a terrific movie and I highly recommend it. hopefully it will be showing in a theatre near you. otherwise, lets hope it goes to netflix. here is the trailer for The Artist.

francesco's christmas mix 2011

2011-12-02T11:18:00.000-08:00

hello, hello. it has been a little while since I last posted. I cannot believe it is already december! I feel like this year went by wayyyy too fast and I am still in denial that it is christmas season. anyway, my good friend francesco makes amazing christmas mixes every year and he just sent me the link to his christmas mix 2011. he did a really great job and I am pretty sure that if I listen to it every day, I may finally be in the mood for christmas. to download francesco's christmas mix 2011 go here.x

melancholia

2011-11-19T12:49:00.001-08:00

lately, I really have been in an end of the world/ post-apocalyptic mood, which probably explains why I am currently so into the show The Walking Dead and The Hunger Games books and why I was really looking forward to watching Lars von Trier's new film about the end of the world, Melancholia. this movie is super beautiful. so depressing. but so beautiful. although Kirsten Dunst is in it, and I do not necessarily love her she does a wonderful job in this film. which is probably why she won the prize for best actress at the Cannes Film Festival. anyway, watch the movie. it will get you thinking. a lot. x

to watch the trailer go here.

Carsten Höller: Experience

2011-11-10T11:16:00.000-08:00

I just visited Carsten Höller's show "Experience" at the New Museum and it was fabulous. I am huge fan of interactive art because it attracts groups of people that are not usually into more traditional art. Throughout the show I saw all different kinds of people, from all different ages and they all seem to be enjoying the show. Carsten Höller is a scientist who began making art in the ealy 90s, which already makes him so unique and different to many of his peers. The show has a giant slide that goes all the way from the 4th floor of the museum to the second. It is really fast. In the show there is also a bathtub where visitors are invited to go into naked. But do not panic, the bathtub is covered so the other visitors cannot see you. Unfortunately, I did not have time to do the bath tub, which is why I have to go back. anyway, I highly recommend you to go this show, and if you have children, bring them with you! It will definitely be an unforgettable experience for them, and even for you adults.

for more information on "Carsten Höller: Experience" at the New Museum go here.

simple kind of life

2011-11-06T20:54:00.000-08:00

growing up, I always said I would not get married or have children until I was in my 30's. I did not date at all while in high school. my first kiss was not until I was 18 years old. my first boyfriend was not until I was 20. so I guess I am kind of a late bloomer.although dating and marriage were never a priority in my life, for the past few years I have felt differently. today I woke up feeling extremely overwhelmed as some big changes are about to happen in my life. although, I feel good about them, for the most part, I have also been wondering why exactly it is that I need to go through all of this. I am about to start a project that will be extremely hard and time consuming, not even knowing for sure whether something will come out of it. it is during moments like this that I ask God: " what exactly is it that you want from me???" to be honest, I am not even sure what it is that God wants from me. all I know is that for now, God does not want me to live my idea of a simple kind of life, which is that of marriage and having children. not that marriage and having children is easy, cause I totally doubt it is, but it is the kind of life that I would love to have. just being able to go home to my lover and best friend, and be surrounded by little ones, sounds so much more exciting than moving to a place where I have never lived before to start something big and difficult. I guess I am going to have to trust, once again, God on this one. cause He knows best. He always does.

'

the drums

2011-11-06T19:28:00.000-08:00

I just saw The Drums perform at the bowery ballroom in the lower east side and it was such an amazing show. if you think their recordings are fun, their music live is a million times better. so if The Drums happen to play at a town near by you, do go. they are seriously so great!

p.s. if you like to download The Drum's new album Portamento go here. it's pretty great.

To Be Young, Hip and Mormon

2011-10-27T12:32:00.000-07:00

By ALEX WILLIAMS

WITH his manly stubble, flannel shirt and skinny black jeans, Brandon Flowers looks every bit the hipster front man for his rock band, the Killers.

With songs about drowning one’s sorrows in bourbon or exploring the seedy underbelly of his hometown, Las Vegas, Mr. Flowers has sold more than 15 million records worldwide. In the past, he has been candid about his drinking, smoking and taste for blackjack.

But in a gauzy four-minute video, an advertisement for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that was posted online earlier this month, the singer stares at the camera and says, “I’m a father, I’m a husband, and I’m a Mormon.”

For decades, the popular image of Mormon style has been shaped by clean-cut young missionaries on bicycles in dark suits, white shirts and skinny black ties — and more recently by the sculptured coif of the presidential candidate Mitt Romney or the sporty style of the motocross-bike-riding Jon Huntsman, another Republican presidential candidate.

But the boundaries of Mormon style are expanding. The highly visible “I’m a Mormon” ad campaign (the subject of a major push on television, billboards, the subway and the Internet) seeks to quash strait-laced stereotypes by showing off a cool, diverse set of Mormons, including, besides Mr. Flowers, a leather-clad Harley aficionado, knit-cap-wearing professional skateboarder and an R & B singer with a shaved head.

It’s not just in ads sponsored by the church. On college campuses, city streets and countless style blogs, a young generation of Mormons has adopted a fashion-forward urban aesthetic (geek-chic glasses, designer labels and plenty of vintage) that wouldn’t look out of place at a Bushwick party.

“There used to be a bias against being ‘cool’ in the Mormon world,” said Kendra Smoot, 31, a prop stylist who does work for Lucky and Martha Stewart, and who can be seen sporting Sartorialist-inflected ensembles on Smoot, a blog she runs with her husband, Seth Smoot, a photographer. Ten years ago, when she was a student at Brigham Young University, “there was absolutely zero fashion sense, myself included,” she said. “Now when I go back to visit, the kids there look really cool.

“I think there’s an acceptance now that you can look current and interesting but still uphold the values of the Mormon religion,” she added.

There are limits, however. According to guidelines on dress and grooming on the church’s official Web site, Mormons are discouraged from wearing immodest clothing, including “short shorts and skirts,” “tight clothing” and “shirts that do not cover the stomach.” They should “avoid extremes in clothing, appearance and hairstyle” and not “disfigure” themselves “with tattoos or body piercings.”

Those strictures can be a challenge for members of the creative class who feel the lure of scruffy, bohemian chic.

Facial hair in particular can be a complicated issue. Common on church leaders in the 19th century, beards are now deemed inappropriate for missionaries, as well as for students at B.Y.U., according to the university’s honor code (students are allowed trimmed mustaches).

Debate on whether beards are an appropriate look for church members in general persists in some corners, such as a recent online debate on the subject on LDS Living, a Mormon lifestyle Web site. One commenter invoked a 1971 address by Dallin H. Oaks, now a member of the church’s leadership known as the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who wrote: “There is nothing inherently wrong about long hair or beards, any more than there is anything inherently wrong with possessing an empty liquor bottle. But a person with a beard or an empty liquor bottle is susceptible of being misunderstood.”

When Britain Baker was at B.Y.U., he had to go to considerable effort to secure a beard waiver, to go with his vintage T-shirts and rolled selvedge jeans. Generally, students need to prove a skin condition like razor bumps. “You have to shave every day for three days,” he said, “and if you still have bumps on the third day, they will give you a special razor.” A “beard card” is granted only after the razor also fails.

Since he didn’t have a skin condition, Mr. Baker tried a novel approach: he applied for a part last year as an extra in a student film about Jesus. For four months before graduating, he was able to rock one of the rare beards on campus. “It was received with mixed reviews,” said Mr. Baker, 24, who is now living in Los Angeles and applying to medical school. “I felt like people were constantly staring at me.”
to read the rest of the article go here.

p.s. I know some of my friends are in this article, but still, it annoys me.

I'm a mormon

2011-10-24T19:58:00.000-07:00

as most of you probably know by now, I'm a mormon. the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or mormon church, started a campaign a little while back called " I'm a mormon" which features members of the church of various diverse backgrounds. to be honest, I have always found the campaign to be kind of silly. I think this mostly has to do by the fact that there are " I am a mormon" ads all around the city from cabs, to the subway to a gigantic billboard in times square and every time I see them instead of getting excited I cringe a little. anyway, last week another one of this "I'm a mormon" videos was released, this time featuring brandon flowers from the band the killers. he has always been a celebrity crush of mine, so that's probably why I am bias towards this video. either way, I was really touched by his story and testimony of the church. I hope you are too.

three years vegetarian

2011-10-24T19:51:00.000-07:00

"you can judge the moral progress of a nation by its treatment of animals."

-Gandhi

austin

2011-10-24T19:23:00.000-07:00

I have been wanting to go to austin, texas for a really long time and finally made it there last week. although I was not there for as long as I would have liked, I really loved the place! austin is such a beautiful city with very nice and attractive people, delicious food and great music and art. but my favorite part of the trip was the fact that I got to see some good old friends of mine. my friends erin flynn and ammon both live in austin. while my friend erin chapman, who lives in dallas, drove almost four hours to see me! also my friend joey drove nine hours from el paso to hang out with me in austin. it was such a great reunion! my friends are seriously the best! here are some pics from austin taken with my now defunct iphone as I left my nice camera in new york city...

el paso

2011-10-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

I know border towns are not usually the nicest, but I found el paso texas to be quite charming...

thanks joey for inviting me to your lovely state of texas!

m.i.a.

2011-10-22T06:59:00.000-07:00

so I have been a bit m.i.a. for the past little while and I would like to apologize for that. life has been crazy for the past few months. there has been some very pleasant things going on in my life and some not very pleasant things. rest assure, that despite the not very pleasant things, I am focusing on the very pleasant ones. I went home to san juan, puerto rico for a little while to spend time with my parents and brothers. I really did not want to come back. although I did not do much while I was out there as my dad have just had surgery ( btw, my dad is now cancer free! thank you to those who have been praying for him), it was so nice just to watch tons of movies with my dad and lots of the Oprah Winfrey Network, as my dad is absolutely obsessed with it. my brother recently moved back to P.R. from madrid and got himself a super tiny apartment with lots of cockroaches right in the middle of the city. so it was very nice to have a few sleepovers at his place. also, while out there, I tried out yoga in the air for the first time at the Samadhi Yoga Institute in san juan and felt in love with it!

after puerto rico, I had the opportunity to go to texas to visit some friends. I have never been to texas and really had such a great time! I visited austin, which I absolutely loved and where I'd like to live some day, san antonio, and el paso. unfortunately I left my camera in nyc so was only able to take some pictures with my iphone before it decided to die. anyway, life is good. hard. but good. and I feel so blessed to have the family and friends that I have. this year has not been the easiest for me. as a lot of things have not happened the way I expected them. but I have decided that instead of freaking out, my new mantra will be: " let life happen organically." I am at a point of my life where I just need to be flexible and I need to learn that not because I want something, that means it is the right thing for me. it is a hard lesson for me to learn, as I am, believe it or not, an absolute brat. but I am learning this lesson slowly but surely...

p.s. I love this song from the new Dum Dum Girls album. such a great album!

dumbo art festival 2011

2011-09-29T19:24:00.001-07:00

after three years of living in nyc, I finally made it to the dumbo art festival in the neighborhood of dumbo in brooklyn. I was not disappointed.

confession #12

2011-09-29T08:34:00.000-07:00

can somebody please tell me what the hell it is that I need to do to get over a guy? This is getting absolutely ridiculous and I don't think I can take it anymore. so if you have any suggestions that do not include eating tons of ice cream, watching dirty dancing, or making out with another guy, please, please share with me. thanks.

john 14:2

2011-09-15T21:21:00.001-07:00

strange mercy

2011-09-12T05:32:00.000-07:00

in case you're interested, st. vincent just released a new album! and you can go here to download it. enjoy. x

west indian-american day parade

2011-09-05T18:40:00.000-07:00

the west indian-american day parade is held every year on labor day in the neighborhood of crown heights, brooklyn. since moving to the city I have always heard great things about this parade but had never been. so I decided to go this year, and let me tell you, I was VERY disappointed. I was expecting beautiful traditional costumes, dancing, and live music, but there was none of the above. there were definitely a lot of traditional costumes, except that they seemed to be way too small for the women wearing them. also, the dancing... apparently freak dancing is the official style of dancing of all the island in the west indies? so unless you are into watching creepy women freak dancing, do not even bother. x

buffy the vampire slayer

2011-09-04T17:22:00.000-07:00

a friend once said that you can learn all you need to know in life by watching buffy the vampire slayer. well, I do not know if that is necessarily true, but I just finished watching the 7th and final season of buffy and let me tell you, my life will never be the same again. I will surely miss buffy, spike and the scoobie gang.

p.s. if anybody would like to buy me this ring, i would love you forever and ever. and if you've seen buffy you may understand the reason why I want it so badly...

generation limbo

2011-09-01T10:36:00.000-07:00

once upon a time, having a a good education meant getting a good job in the end. unfortunately those days are over. over a year ago I finished a master's degree in museum studies at new york university and let me tell you, it has not been easy. although I have a job, it is only part-time and it will probably stay that way forever. in addition to my museum job I also take care of a 9 year old girl, who by the way, is awesome. but like me there are thousands of other 20-somethings, and even 30-somethings, all around the world who are well educated, absolutely brilliant and who are also struggling to make it. for those of you who are part of this such called "generation limbo" you may enjoy the following article from the new york times.

Generation Limbo: Waiting It Out
By JENNIFER 8. LEE

WHEN Stephanie Kelly, a 2009 graduate of the University of Florida, looked for a job in her chosen field, advertising, she found few prospects and even fewer takers. So now she has two jobs: as a part-time “senior secretary” at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville and a freelance gig writing for Elfster.com, a “secret Santa” Web site.

But is Ms. Kelly stressed out about the lack of a career path she spent four years preparing for? Not at all. Instead, she has come to appreciate her life. “I can cook and write at my own pace,” she said. “I kind of like that about my life.”

Likewise, Amy Klein, who graduated from Harvard in 2007 with a degree in English literature, couldn’t find a job in publishing. At one point, she had applied for an editorial-assistant job at Gourmet magazine. Less than two weeks later, Condé Nast shut down that 68- year-old magazine. “So much for that job application,” said Ms. Klein, now 26.

One night she bumped into a friend, who asked her to join a punk rock band, Titus Andronicus, as a guitarist. Once, that might have been considered professional suicide. But weighed against a dreary day job, music suddenly held considerable appeal. So last spring, she sublet her room in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn and toured the country in an old Chevy minivan.

“I’m fulfilling my artistic goals,” Ms. Klein said.

Meet the members of what might be called Generation Limbo: highly educated 20-somethings, whose careers are stuck in neutral, coping with dead-end jobs and listless prospects.

And so they wait: for the economy to turn, for good jobs to materialize, for their lucky break. Some do so bitterly, frustrated that their well-mapped careers have gone astray. Others do so anxiously, wondering how they are going to pay their rent, their school loans, their living expenses — sometimes resorting to once-unthinkable government handouts.

“We did everything we were supposed to,” said Stephanie Morales, 23, who graduated from Dartmouth College in 2009 with hopes of working in the arts. Instead she ended up waiting tables at a Chart House restaurant in Weehawken, N.J., earning $2.17 an hour plus tips, to pay off her student loans. “What was the point of working so hard for 22 years if there was nothing out there?” said Ms. Morales, who is now a paralegal and plans on attending law school.

Some of Ms. Morales’s classmates have found themselves on welfare. “You don’t expect someone who just spent four years in Ivy League schools to be on food stamps,” said Ms. Morales, who estimates that a half-dozen of her friends are on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. A few are even helping younger graduates figure out how to apply. “We are passing on these traditions on how to work in the adult world as working poor,” Ms. Morales said.

But then there are people like Ms. Kelly and Ms. Klein, who are more laissez-faire. With the job market still bleak, their motto might as well be: “No career? No prospects? No worries!” (Well, at least for the time being.)

After all, much of the situation is out of their control, as victims of bad timing. Ms. Klein contrasted her Harvard classmates with the ones of her older sister, who graduated from Harvard seven years earlier. Those graduates, she said, were career-obsessed and, helped along by a strong economy, aggressively pursued high-powered jobs right after graduation.

By comparison, Ms. Klein said her classmates seemed resigned to waiting for the economic tides to turn. “Plenty of people work in bookstores and work in low-end administrative jobs, even though they have a Harvard degree,” she said. “They are thinking more in terms of creating their own kinds of life that interests them, rather than following a conventional idea of success and job security.”

The numbers are not encouraging. About 14 percent of those who graduated from college between 2006 and 2010 are looking for full-time jobs, either because they are unemployed or have only part-time jobs, according to a survey of 571 recent college graduates released in May by the Heldrich Center at Rutgers.

And then there is the slice of graduates effectively underemployed, using a college degree for positions that don’t require one or barely scraping by, working in call centers, bars or art-supply stores.

“They are a postponed generation,” said Cliff Zukin, an author of the Heldrich Center study. He noted that recent graduates seemed to be living with parents longer and taking longer to become financially secure. The journey on the life path, for many, is essentially stalled.

The Heldrich survey also found that the portion of graduates who described their first job as a “career” fell from 30 percent, if they graduated before the 2008 economic downturn (in 2006 and 2007), to 22 percent, if they graduated after the downturn (in 2009 and 2010).

In an ominous sign, those figures didn’t change much for second jobs, Dr. Zukin added, suggesting that recent graduates were stumbling from field to field. Indeed, Till Marco von Wachter, an economics professor at Columbia University who has studied the impact of recessions on young workers, said the effect on earnings took about a decade to fade.

MEANWHILE, modest jobs mean modest lives. Benjamin Shore, 23, graduated from the University of Maryland last year with a business degree and planned to go into consulting. Instead, he moved back into his parents’ house in Cherry Hill, N.J., and spent his days browsing for jobs online.

But when his parents started charging him $500 a month for rent, he moved into a windowless room in a Baltimore row house and took a $12-an-hour job at a Baltimore call center, making calls for a university, encouraging prospects to go back to school. “There’s no point in being diplomatic: it is horrible,” Mr. Shore said.

“I have a college education that I feel like I am wasting by being there,” he added. “I am supposed to do something interesting, something with my brain.” For a while, Mr. Shore ran LongevityDrugstore.com, an online drug retailer that he started, but it went nowhere. To stretch his pay check, he made beans and rice at home and drove slowly to save gas. Eventually he quit, got work as a dock hand and is now thinking of becoming a doctor.

Perhaps not surprisingly, volunteering has become a popular outlet for a generation that seeks meaning in its work. Sarah Weinstein, 25, a 2008 graduate of Boston University, manages a bar in Austin because she couldn’t find an advertising job. In her spare time, she volunteers, doing media relations for Austin Pets Alive, an animal rescue shelter.

“It’d be nice to make more money,” Ms. Weinstein said, but “I prefer it this way so that I have the extra time to spend volunteering and pursuing other things.” Volunteering, however, goes only so far. After three years without an advertising job, she is now applying to graduate school to freshen up her résumé.

Meanwhile, people forced out of the rat race are re-evaluating their values and looking elsewhere for satisfaction. “They have to revise their ideas of what they are looking for,” said Kenneth Jedding, author of “Higher Education: On Life, Landing a Job, and Everything Else They Didn’t Teach You in College.”

For Geo Wyeth, 27, who graduated from Yale in 2007, that means adopting a do-it-yourself approach to his career. After college, he worked at an Apple Store in New York as a salesclerk and trainer, while furthering his music career in an experimental rock band. He has observed, he said, a shift among his peers away from the corporate track and toward a more artistic mentality.

“You have to make opportunities happen for yourself, and I think a lot of my classmates weren’t thinking in that way,” he said. “It’s the equivalent of setting up your own lemonade stand.”

to find this article in the new york times go here.

st. vincent

2011-08-30T20:15:00.000-07:00

If I had to marry a girl, I would definitely marry st. vincent. I just love this woman, this song and this music video.I am so excited for her new album "Strange Mercy" to come out on september 13th. I. cannot. wait.

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Irene

2011-08-27T12:05:00.000-07:00

as many of you know, I grew up in Puerto Rico. and as most of you know by now, hurricane Irene is heading to NYC in a few hours. I have lived through many hurricanes and have seen how devastating they can be. although in P.R. people are used by now to hurricanes and know how to prepare for them, here in NYC that is not the case. about a month ago at my church, they talked about preparing ourselves for hurricanes. unfortunately most people in that room were not paying attention to that which was being said. once again I feel humbled and grateful for the inspiration given to church leaders as a month after that lesson I am sitting in my NYC apartment waiting for hurricane Irene, the first hurricane to hit NYC in decades. at noon today the nyc bus/train system was shut down completely and it will not re-open until at least monday morning. thousands of people have been evacuated. Irene hit Puerto Rico last weekend and although it was still a storm then, it caused enough damage that thousands of people still have no electricity (my parents have been without electricity since last Sunday) or running water. anyway, I know I have been through this before but I am a bit nervous. mostly cause my family is not here, and in moments like this, being with the family makes things a lot easier. but I am hopeful that we will be okay and that maybe this will be a lesson for all of us to have our 72 hours kits ready ( I have one that my sister gave me as a graduation present and I have been adding more things to it) and to be prepared for whatever disaster comes our way, whether it is an earthquake, a terrorist act or a hurricane. so please pray for the people of new york city so that we may all be safe! xo

some thoughts on a previous post

2011-08-22T18:52:00.000-07:00

In response to my previous post st love is a funny little thing, I would like to clarify, as I believe I was not clear enough, that I am by no means opposed to dating or marrying a non-member, as long as this person is respectful of my belief system and life style. unfortunately the guy that I am in love with is not respectful of these things, and therefore that is where the main problem lies. my good friend megan benton emailed me some thoughts which I found extremely insightful. I asked her if I could share them with all of my readers and she agreed. so here are her thoughts:

"To my dear friend Jendar and her other readers who are struggling with finding Mormon boys to date, and have realized they may be happy marrying a nonmber:

First, I'm going to refer you to a podcast I listen to called "The Round Table." Get it on itunes, and listen to the July episodes. It's a podcast that discusses LDS Womens issues, by women. And it's not put out by the Church, so people will talk straight and reveal what they really struggle with. They talk about improving our marriages and spiritual issues in marriage, and they hold an interview with a woman who married a nonmember. She is happy with her husband and her marriage. Also, I want you to check out the "Mormon Women Project" blog, because it gives spotlight profiles on women who are doing amazing things in the face of real challenges, or breaking molds in Mormonism. Also, I want you to google "Joanna Brooks Ask Mormon Girl" and "Feminist Mormon Housewives" and the "Exponent II." They are all rockstar resources for getting to know your other LDS sisters in a way you never realized you could.

Lastly, if everything I say in this blog doesn't resonate with you, then by all means keep dating members of the Church and get yourself some online dating memberships. You can meet people you wouldn't have otherwise met through your weekly Church activities. Lots of people in the LDS Church are shy about it. Don't be. Consider 1 in 5 relationships today start from meeting online. That's 20%, pretty significant.

Here are my thoughts about dating nonmembers. Keep in mind that I am undergoing a faith transition. In other words, my beliefs in religion are becoming less literal and historical and much more symbolic in nature. So I'm coming at this from a liberal Mormon perspective. I realize that not everyone is comfortable with that. I was not, even 2 years ago. That being said, I would love for our church to get less focused on why we are Mormon, and why that is so great and more focused on how to make our characters Christ-like. I want us to stop focusing on why we are the best church in the world, and instead talk about how we as Christians can become more loving people. How to use some of our creative energies for real social problems. I believe there's a lot of beautiful doctrine in our church, but if we just focus on things like why we are so great, then we are becoming like the Pharisees. There's a lot that other religions have to offer.

What does that have to do with marriage? Well, I feel like our discussions on marriage in church have a lot more with getting yourself to the temple so you can be righteous. I think it would be earlier to talk about how do I live with this other person from day to day and be happy? In the global church, not that many women are married to members of the Church.

In the church in America, we're all about getting to the temple, and getting there NOW. We hear about a couple that "just" got civilly married and we hear oh, what a tragedy. Um, hello? That's a WEDDING that just happened! Two people are in love and just publicly declared monogamy! That's a BIG DEAL!

When we focus on spiritual compatability from a purely ceremonial perspective then yes, we have problems. But what about what happens day in and day out of your marriage? It's not just a matter of, does this person keep the commandments? We as humans are so much more complex than that. Meaningful relationships and bonds take place between all kinds of people, not just the so-called "Righteous Mormons." Consider this: most marriages outside of the Church are mixed-faith. I don't know how faith problems factor into their relationships, but many people manage to stay together even though they come from different faith backgrounds. Sometimes it's a matter of one spouse coming to the other's church to make them happy. Others it's a matter of raising the kids in a certain tradition. The point is, lots of other people do it. And their families don't seem to be bemoaning their poor lost souls the way that many Mormon families do.

I think that the way that we talk about marriage preparation in the Church leaves a lot of room for spiritual coersion in marriage relationships. And I think that's wrong. Let me give you an example. I recently had dinner with some other women in my ward, and a woman who I hadn't known just opened up to us and said her husband didn't let her use birth control. She's been married maybe two years and is already expecting her second child. She loves her babies but she seemed stressed. She goes to school and it sounds like she's the primary caregiver of her babies, because her husband works and studies too. Plus he sounds pretty traditional. She approached the bishop about her problem with her husband about the birth control. But our bishop refused to talk to her husband. I think that is wrong, and shouldn't happen. This woman's husband has spiritual justification for his actions: being the breadwinner, the priesthood holder, and some really old-fashioned Church doctrine about birth-control to boot. Has this man been taught in priesthood about equal partnership in his marriage? Probably, but he is taking the spiritual doctrine that he likes. As does, I might add, everyone, whether you fall on the conservative or liberal side of interpretation. Even the general authorities have different approaches on topics, and represent a broad spectrum of opinion. Google the talk "Liahona Mormon" and you'll read about how two different prophets of our church had different opinions on evolution. So, in other words, in all marriages, whether it's between two hippy-dippies living in Berkley who do naked yoga on Sundays, or two conservative Ultra Orthodox Jews living in Queens, there are differences in how the partners experience and express their spirituality. You want a partner who respects your spiritual path and does not guilt you into doing things their own way. The late Sister Chieko Okazaki, who recently passed, was a Japanese-American living in Hawaii when she converted to the gospel at age 15. She married a nonmember, but was completely respectful of his spiritual path and did not force him to come with her. Later he joined the Church. She later served in the General Relief Society Presidency in the 90s. Even if her husband had not converted, Sis. Okazaki would have, I have no doubt, had a tremendous spiritual ministry and influence on people.

Here's another thing to consider: it's really hard to find priesthood holders to date because they are leaving the Church. It's because they're finding out things about Church history online that is really difficult to deal with. Or they're unhappy with the Church because it doesn't speak to them in some way or another. It's happening with women too, but at a slower pace. In any case, I'm just saying that many people are faced these days with a spouse who leaves the Church. Or maybe you have are faced with wanting to stay in the Church or not. There are other really faith-testing trials that people go through that break their marriages. Lots of LDS couples get divorced. A temple sealing is not a stamp of approval from God than exempts you from all trials and a fast-pass to the Celestial Kingdom. You will be faced with trials you never expected. But the love you have for your spouse can be a relief. When both spouses approach their trials in a compatible way and can keep respect for each other through it, that keeps them together. Check out "The 7 Principles That Make Marriage Work" by the Gottman Institute. I suggested it to my mother who is a Relief Society president currently, and she commented to me how many wives in her relief society are having marital trouble and publicly bash their husbands. Not exactly marital bliss.

Ultimately what I'm saying is, you should fall in love and enjoy your marriage. I enjoy being married. I love my husband. He is adorable and completely his own person. Mormonism has bonded us together in kind of an unexpected way: we look for the spiritual edification that speaks to us in ways that touch our hearts and try to shuff off the self-congratulatory or bullying dogma. It can be a challenge. I have to really pay attention that I'm putting my faith in the big things like Christ, the atonement, forgiveness, loving our neighbors. If we were to get caught up in what I call the surface things or even "certain personality things" of Mormonism like facial hair or caffeine or movie ratings, we would go crazy. We know what works for us and that's what matters.

People change in all kinds of ways: they change their hair, their weight, their careers, their hobbies, their health, even their faith. Hell, people can even change their genitals. Our beliefs are constantly evolving and being challenged. Do you experience your faith the way you did when you were a kid? Should we experience faith the same way we did when we were in Laurels? No, we are constantly developing. That makes me realize how human my Mormon belief system is. That makes me ask myself, am I a Mormon first or a human? I think I'm a human first. And so is your spouse, and so are the prophets.

Good luck Jendar, and to all your readers. I wish you the best. No matter what your marriage decisions are, I will celebrate with you."

salt lake city temple

2011-08-22T17:45:00.001-07:00

one of my favorite places in the whole world...

another earth

2011-08-18T07:21:00.000-07:00

just watched the film Another Earth and I highly recommend it. to watch the trailer go here.

for all of you new yorkers, the film is currently playing at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema in the lower east side and at BAM Rose Cinemas in fort greene, brooklyn. x

mormons are cool...

2011-08-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

and even stephen colbert agrees..

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Yahweh or No Way? - Mormons & God's Poll Numbers

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

Video Archive

governor's island

2011-08-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

one of my favorite places to go this summer is governor's island, which is only half a mile from the southern tip of manhattan. to get there is only a five minute ferry boat ride, which is free, and voilá! you're in paradise. governor's island is 172 acres and from 1966-1996 it used to be a coast guard base. now it is a national park with beautiful houses, art installations, art galleries, an etsy shop, tiny churches, a bike path, and the most incredible view of manhattan. they also have music and art festivals. governor's island is only open throughout the summer from fridays-sundays and holiday mondays through september 25th. so if you feel like leaving manhattan for a few hours, you should consider a visit to governor's island.

photos by the very beautiful and talented nathalie van empel. to see more of her photography go here.
to learn more about governor's island go here.

charlie horsey

2011-08-11T20:06:00.000-07:00

I would like to introduce you to my newest friend Charlie Horsey...

he is handsome...

he loves animals...

he has great style...

and he is the friendliest horsey you'll ever meet...

if you want to be friends with Charlie Horsey you can do so by following him here. Let Charlie Horsey know you're a reader of my blog and he'll send you a FREE gift! x

rachel getting married

2011-08-10T19:54:00.001-07:00

I met my friend rachel hunt a little over four years ago. although I feel like I have known her my whole life. I first heard of rachel when I became friends with some of her friends. at this point rachel was serving a mormon mission and I was getting ready to leave on my mission so it was not until two years later, after the two of us had returned, that we met. I first met rachel at a computer lab in Brigham Young University, where I was a student at the time. I remember seeing her and thinking she looked familiar. after a few minutes of debating in my head who she was, I realized she was my friends' friend rachel who they always talked about. I had seen pictures of her and hence went ahead and introduced myself. as soon as I told her who I was she already knew. and from that day on we became friends. very good friends. we both left utah at the same time to attend grad school in the east coast. rachel moved to boston. I moved to new york city. we both became vegetarians around the same time. we also would often chat about boys, religion, grad school, etc. also, rachel was with me the first time that I got my palm read. now rachel lives in los angeles. she is getting a phd in theology. she is also engaged to be married to her best friend spencer. next week I will be attending her wedding at the salt lake city temple. I am so happy to know rachel and even more happy that she has found such a lovely man which whom she will spend the rest of her life and eternity. I am so grateful for friends like rachel. congratulations rachel! xo

c. 2007, photobooth at muse music in provo, utah.

san francisco 2008

2011-08-07T13:16:00.000-07:00

I was just going over old pictures and found these ones...

I love san francisco and these girls!

love is a funny little thing

2011-08-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

a palm reader once said to me: “ of all those men who you have loved, none of them have loved you back. yet those men who have loved you, you have never been able to love back.” this my friends summarizes the tragedy of my love life. I often complain on this blog about my love life, although I should not. I have realized lately (and finally) that my love life has gone absolutely nowhere because of my tendency to fall in love with men who I have absolutely no future with. so instead of blaming all my love problems on men, from now on I am simply blaming them on myself. for the past year, I have been in love with one of these men. the man I am in love with is handsome, smart, funny, ridiculously talented, much older, (everybody gasp!) not mormon and there is absolutely no future with him. in the eyes of a bohemian arty girl he can definitely be considered as the perfect man. But we most remember that although I like to consider myself the bohemian artsy type, I am also a practicing mormon. In which case this such called “perfect man” may not really be as perfect.

I am currently 27 years old and there is nothing more than I wish in this life than to find a good man to marry and start a family with. when it comes to getting into good schools, traveling the world, or growing tomatoes, I am pretty good at, but falling in love with a nice guy, that I just cannot do. although I know that this man I am in love with cannot give me the things I want (marriage, family, etc) there is still some hope left in me that tells me that my love for him in addition to my coolness will pull him to me. and then one day he will realize how amazing I am and then he will want to join the mormon church, marry me in a mormon temple and have artsy mormon babies with me. and how I really wish this would happen! and maybe it could happen… except that it will not happen. and once again I am left with a broken heart and extremely mad at myself. like the wise Britney Spears once said: “Oops!... I did it again!” and oops!...I have done it once again indeed.

my babies

2011-07-29T20:35:00.001-07:00

It is kind of ironic how living in nyc totally brought out my inner farmer. growing my own veggies this summer has been such a wonderful experience and I totally regret not having done this before. It really has been such a beautiful process to plant the seeds, water them every day and see them grow little by little until producing healthy and delicious vegetables. my garden has been producing tomatoes and cucumbers. they are so tasty and fresh! there is no better feeling than that of knowing where your food is coming from. and if I, who live right in new york city, can grow my own vegetables then everyone can! x

I picked these tomatoes from my garden earlier today. If you live in nyc and would like to try some let me know.

only in nyc

2011-07-29T13:24:00.000-07:00

waking around Harlem, a homeless man asked me if I had any food. I said no and continued walking. I immediately began to feel guilty because I did have some delicious home made pizza in my bag. I walked back.

"would you like some pizza?" I asked.

homeless man asked: " does it have cheese?"

"yes." I replied.

his response: " No thank you. I am vegan."

the cloisters

2011-07-20T10:37:00.001-07:00

my favorite spot in nyc is The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan. The Cloisters is the branch of the Metropolitan Museum devoted to medieval art. not a lot of people know about it. luckily, I only live a few train stops away so I go visit as often as possible. visiting the Cloisters is like taking a trip back in time to a monastery somewhere in southern France. the building and gardens are absolutely stunning and there is a peace and quiet there that you may not experience anywhere else in the island. last Friday, I introduced my photographer friend jessica p. to the Cloisters and she took some lovely pictures.

for more info about The Cloisters go here.

confession #11

2011-07-18T07:32:00.001-07:00

I want a baby.

the end.

au revoir harry

2011-07-16T13:24:00.000-07:00

I just watched harry potter and the deathly hallows part 2 and was not disappointed. I may have even cried a little. I will surely miss you harry.x

c'est la vie

2011-07-15T06:52:00.000-07:00

because apparently my life has not been stressful enough, yesterday as I was checking my bank account I realized that all my money (which is not much at all), has been stolen. I was already broke as it was so to say that I cried like a baby last night is an understatement.

merde.

beach babes

2011-07-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

I love the summer
I love the beach
I love these girls

harlem garden

2011-07-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

I may have mentioned previously on this blog that I have a small garden plot that I am sharing with two other friends at a community garden owned by my church. last summer, I became obsessed with the idea of growing my own veggies after reading Barbara Kingsolver's book " Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." although none of my two friends and I had ever grown a veggie garden before, in april we went ahead and planted tomatoes, cucumbers, hot peppers, and spinach. three months later the garden is looking great.our tomatoes are looking healthy. the cucumbers should be ready in a few days. the hot peppers and spinach are growing slowly but surely. hopefully the veggies will taste delicious. here are some pictures of the garden.

and if you happen to be wondering why I look so chic in these pictures is because the garden is around the corner from my church building. so after church today I went to water my little babies, even if that meant getting my awesome five inches platform shoes covered with mud. x

beginners

2011-07-08T12:46:00.001-07:00

just watched this film and absolutely loved it. such a beautiful story, with great music and an excellent cast (ewan mcgregor is in it, what else can I say?) and my new girl crush may be on mélanie laurent.

to watch the "Beginners" trailer go here.

only seven more days...

2011-07-07T20:21:00.000-07:00

I already have my ticket. I just cannot wait...

thoughts on gay marriage

2011-07-04T20:23:00.001-07:00

happy 4th of july. x

ironic

2011-06-29T19:21:00.001-07:00

alanis morissette describes perfectly how I am feeling today.

p.s. i miss the 90s.

jazz age lawn party

2011-06-26T06:42:00.000-07:00

yesterday I attended the Jazz Age Lawn Party at Governor's Island which ends today. this event is held twice a summer and it consists of getting together lovers of everything 1920s. there were antique cars, live hot jazz, delicious ice cream and beautiful people dressed up in beautiful vintage clothe mostly from the 20s but also from the 30s, 40s and in my case 50s (unfortunately I don't own anything 1920ish, even though that's my favorite era). Michael Aranella and his Dreamland Orchestra performed and they were amazing. so if you did not have a chance to attend this party yesterday you could still try to make it today or wait for August 20th & 21st when they will be having it again. for more information go here.

confession #10

2011-06-24T19:11:00.001-07:00

it would be nice once in a while to go out on dates on friday night instead of staying at home writing silly love songs and eating trader joe's dark chocolate. although really what I should be doing is working on the relief society lesson that I will be teaching this sunday at church. but I just can't focus. too many things going on in my head. and if you're wondering if this has anything to do with a boy, the answer is yes...the answer is always yes.

rockaway

2011-06-24T16:15:00.000-07:00

what better way to forget all your boy and work troubles than by going to rockaway beach and eating delicious tacos from rockaway taco.

to go to rockaway beach in queens take the A train that goes to far rockaway (don't take the A train that goes to Lefferts Blvd.) and then transfer to the shuttle train at the broad channel train station. is a nice beach and best of all, it's free! yes, some beaches in nyc aren't free.

beirut

2011-06-18T05:51:00.000-07:00

last night at McCarren Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I finally saw one of my favorite bands: Beirut. to say the show was amazing is an absolute understatement.

I love you zach condon and your french horn tattos on your wrists. marry me, s'il vous plait. x

savage beauty

2011-06-17T10:58:00.000-07:00

"There is no way back for me now. I am going to take you on journeys you’ve never dreamed were possible."
-Alexander McQueen

why did I wait so long to go see it? show closes on august 7th. to read more about Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty go here.

mariya and zach's wedding

2011-06-14T16:24:00.000-07:00

the reason I went to Kyiv was to attend my friends mariya and zach's wedding. although the whole trip was hard on my "working for a non-profit" pocket, it was absolutely worth it. both mariya and zach are very dear friends of mine whom I have known individually for many years and I am incredibly happy that they found each other. I had the opportunity to attend their sealing at the Kyev LDS temple and the whole ceremony was incredibly special. I am pretty sure everyone in that room was in tears.happy ones obviously. for those of you who are not LDS, the difference between a temple marriage and a civil marriage is that when a couple is married in the temple, or sealed as we also call it, there are married not only for life but for eternity. meaning that even after death the couple remains married to each other. but also not only do the couple remains together after death, but their children remain sealed to them, which means that even after death the couple and their children will continue to be a family. which is why in our church you can often hear the phrase " Families can be together forever." so it is for this reason that temple marriages are so important to us and from a young age we are taught to prepare ourselves to one day get married in the temple. although I have always loved the temple and the doctrine of eternal families, which in fact is what led my parents and sisters to join the mormon church in the first place, for the past year I have somehow forgotten of the importance of this doctrine. which is why I believe that being at my friends' wedding was a huge blessing in my life as it has reminded me of how much I do want a temple marriage. I mean, if you truly love someone, why not want to be with that person forever? I know we live in a world where people do not really look at the bigger picture, and I often fall under that category, but ultimately I know that what I really want is to be with the man I love and our children forever. and as crazy as this idea may sound to many, in my opinion it sounds like an excellent idea.

for more pictures of the wedding go here.

prypiat

2011-06-09T18:37:00.000-07:00

founded in 1970 to house workers for the chernobyl nuclear plant, prypyat was abandoned by its 50,000 inhabitants, who left most of their belongings, days after the chernobyl nuclear disaster. for those who have visited pompeii, visiting prypiat is kind of a similar experience but sans the bodies.

to see more of my prypiat pictures visit my flickr.

chernobyl

2011-06-08T16:52:00.000-07:00

on April 26, 1986 the worst nuclear disaster in history occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, 68 miles from Kyiv, when reactor four suffered a power increase that led to an explosion in its core, therefore releasing large quantities of radioactive and core materials in the atmosphere. Many claim that the Chernobyl disaster released over 300 times as much radiation as the bomb dropped in Hiroshima. 25 years have passed since this disaster and although the levels of radiation have diminished immensely, access to the nuclear plant is restricted. But I did have the chance to visit the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant and Prypyat, a ghost town near the nuclear plant. The visit was an incredibly surreal experience.

To read more about the Chernobyl disaster go here.

PinchukArtCentre

2011-06-08T16:09:00.000-07:00

1/3-2, "А" Block,
Velyka Vasylkivska / Baseyna vul.,
Kyiv , Ukraine 01004
tel.: +38 (044) 590/08/58
pinchukartcentre.org

"Your emotional future", solo exhibition by Olafur Eliasson

everything is illuminated

2011-05-27T05:28:00.000-07:00

I leave today to ukraine. I will be going for my friends' mariya and zach wedding. they'll be getting married at the LDS Kyev temple. I couldn't be happier for them. while out there, I will also be going to Chernobyl, Lviv and Odessa. I've never been to eastern europe and I speak like zero russian. oh, and did I forget to mention that I am also vegetarian? because according to jonathan safran foer in "everything is illuminated," everyone in ukraine eats meat. go here to see what i mean. either way, I am excited. Do svidaniya!!!x

jendar love

2011-05-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

short film by becca thomas
song by patsy cline

Jendar Love from Electrick Children on Vimeo.

to watch more of becca's short films go here.x

sugarloaf hill

2011-05-21T12:43:00.000-07:00

hike: sugarloaf
location: garrison, new york
difficulty: easy
distance: 4 miles
elevation gain: 600 feet

perfect way to spend a saturday morning.

bridesmaids

2011-05-20T21:07:00.000-07:00

I just watched this movie tonight and it was absolutely hilarious. When I left the theatre my abs were hurting. I don't think I ever stopped laughing throughout the movie.

you.must.watch.it. x

p.s. one week for ukraine.

carmensita

2011-05-12T09:52:00.000-07:00

sorry I haven't been blogging much lately. I've been busy with work, choir rehearsals, my garden, planning my upcoming trip and getting ready for my parents' visit this weekend. in the meantime, please enjoy the following song, which I can't get out of my head.

duck beach

2011-04-29T19:15:00.001-07:00

some of you may have heard of duck beach. but in case you have not, duck beach is considered the cancún of mormons. every year during memorial day weekend hundreds (maybe thousands?) of lds singles from all around the country gather at duck beach for a weekend of fun at the beach without alcohol, drugs and sex. a group of filmmakers, both lds and non-lds, came up with the idea of making a documentary about this event. my friend stephen is one of the filmmakers. the documentary will be following four single mormons as they attend this year's event. I was interviewed for the documentary and was considered to be one of the four people but unfortunately had to turn down the invitation because I will be in Ukraine that weekend. either way, I think the whole idea is great and I pretty much look forward to the final piece. but before that happens, the filmmakers have to raise money to fund the project. here are the filmmakers talking about the project:

if you would like to contribute to this project by making a donation go here.

royal wedding

2011-04-29T06:13:00.000-07:00

congratulations william and kate!

kate's dress is by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen. I love it.

to watch the wedding ceremony go here.

bonheur

2011-04-25T19:44:00.000-07:00

salut mes amours! sorry I haven't been posting much lately. I've been busy. but good busy. it seems that now that is warming up I am coming out of hibernation. just in case you're wondering what I have been up to lately. here is a list:

1. work is going great. i may be getting a promotion soon. let's cross our fingers.

2. I got into FIT's photography program. I have known this for almost a month but have felt hesitant to share the news with all my blog friends because most people I have shared the news with have only said things such as: " you going back to school again?" or "how will you pay for FIT, don't you have like a million dollars in students loans?" for those who are asking themselves those questions, all I will say is: " it's none of your business whether I want to go back to school AND how I will pay for FIT." but if you really want to know, I've always wanted to study photography so if I am able to go back to school part-time I will and this time I will pay it with my own money as FIT is cheap.

3. Last summer I read an amazing book by Barbara Kingsolver called "Animal, Miracle, Vegetable." Since reading that book I decided to grow my own veggies. Two of my friends and I were able to get a plot at a community garden in Harlem. We will be growing tomatoes, spinach,red peppers, and some other veggie I can't remember. I am also going to be having a mini garden on my fire escape. I will be growing some herbs such as basil, mint, and cilantro. I also bought some lavender seeds! Maybe I will grow strawberries too. We shall see how this goes as I have never grown a thing in my life. I am super excited.

4. My friend Liz, who will be moving out of the city in a month ( so sad!) is leaving me her schwinn. I am so happy to finally have a bike in the city!

5. I am doing this cleansing and I have been feeling amazing.

6. I just finished a vegan diet. Which means that I haven't had pizza in a month!

7. I have a crush on a very nice and handsome boy. Let's cross our fingers for that one too.

8. And last but not least, my birthday is in two days! Because I am not on facebook anymore, I have decided to announce it here on my blog so you don't forget to send me good wishes. I will be turning 27 years old. Which in all honesty sounds a lot older than 26. I thought I would be panicking about reaching such an age but I'm not. I feel good. I feel healthy. I feel young. so who cares if being 27 means that I will be 30 years old in three years. I think this year will be awesome. Oh, and I will be going to atlantic city to celebrate my birthday! woo-woo!

so I think that's all for now. soon I will post some pictures of my garden and my new bike. I am really looking forward for this summer. I will be going to ukraine, I will be eating fresh veggies, I will be riding my schwinn all around town (harlem that is) and I will be having as many picnics in the park as I possibly can have. hopefully with a cute boy on my side. x

Keep Your Thumbs Still When I’m Talking to You

2011-04-17T15:22:00.000-07:00

By DAVID CARR

YOU are at a party and the person in front of you is not really listening to you. Yes, she is murmuring occasional assent to your remarks, or nodding at appropriate junctures, but for the most part she is looking beyond you, scanning in search of something or someone more compelling.

Here’s the funny part: If she is looking over your shoulder at a room full of potentially more interesting people, she is ill-mannered. If, however, she is not looking over your shoulder, but into a smartphone in her hand, she is not only well within modern social norms, but is also a wired, well-put-together person.

Add one more achievement to the digital revolution: It has made it fashionable to be rude.

I thought about that a lot at South by Southwest Interactive, the annual campfire of the digitally interested held in Austin, Tex., the second week of March; inside, conference rooms brimmed with wireless connections, and the people on the dais competed with a screen in almost every seat: laptops, or even more commonly, tablets. In that context, the live presentation that the people in the audience had ostensibly come many miles to see was merely companion media.

But even more remarkably, once the badge-decorated horde spilled into the halls or went to the hundreds of parties that mark the ritual, almost everyone walked or talked with one eye, or both, on a little screen. We were adjacent but essentially alone, texting and talking our way through what should have been a great chance to engage flesh-and-blood human beings. The wait in line for panels, badges or food became one more chance to check in digitally instead of an opportunity to meet someone you didn’t know.

I moderated a panel there called “I’m So Productive, I Never Get Anything Done,” which was ostensibly about how answering e-mail and looking after various avatars on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr left little time to do what we actually care about or get paid for. The biggest reaction in the session by far came when Anthony De Rosa, a product manager and programmer at Reuters and a big presence on Twitter and Tumblr, said that mobile connectedness has eroded fundamental human courtesies.

“When people are out and they’re among other people they need to just put everything down,” he said. “It’s fine when you’re at home or at work when you’re distracted by things, but we need to give that respect to each other back.”

His words brought sudden and tumultuous applause. It was sort of a moment, given that we were sitting amid some of the most digitally devoted people in the hemisphere. Perhaps somewhere on the way to the merger of the online and offline world, we had all stepped across a line without knowing it.

In an e-mail later, Mr. De Rosa wrote: “I’m fine with people stepping aside to check something, but when I’m standing in front of someone and in the middle of my conversation they whip out their phone, I’ll just stop talking to them and walk away. If they’re going to be rude, I’ll be rude right back.”

After the panel, one of the younger people in the audience came up to me to talk earnestly about the importance of actual connection, which was nice, except he was casting sidelong glances at his iPhone while we talked. I’m not even sure he knew he was doing it. It’s not just conferences full of inforati where this happens. In places all over America (theaters, sports arenas, apartments), people gather in groups only to disperse into lone pursuits between themselves and their phones.

Every meal out with friends or colleagues represents a negotiation between connectedness to the grid and interaction with those on hand. “Last year, for my friend’s birthday, my gift to her was to stay off my phone at her birthday dinner,” said Molly McAleer, who blogs and sends Twitter messages under the name Molls. “How embarrassing.”

If South by Southwest is, as its attendees claim, an indicator of what is to come, we won’t be seeing a lot of one another even if we happen to be in the same room. Anthony Breznican, a reporter for Entertainment Weekly, said all it takes is for one person at a dinner to excuse himself into his phone, and the race is on among everyone else.

“Instead of continuing with the conversation, we all take out our phones and check them in earnest,” he said. “For a few minutes everybody is typing away. A silence falls over the group and we all engage in a mass thumb-wrestling competition between man and little machine. Then the moment passes, the BlackBerrys and iPhones are reholstered, and we return to being humans again after a brief trance.”

In the instance of screen etiquette, sharing is not always caring, and sometimes, the bigger the screen, the larger the faux pas: On an elevator in the Austin Convention Center, some crazed social media promoter jammed his iPad under my nose and started demo-ing his hideously complicated social networking app that was going to change the world. I leaped to safety as soon as the door opened.

Still, many are finished apologizing for what has become a very natural mix of online and offline pursuits. In an essay on TechCrunch entitled “I Will Check My Phone at Dinner and You Will Deal With It,” MG Siegler wrote, “Forgive me, but it’s Dinner 2.0.”

He added: “This is the way the world works now. We’re always connected and always on call. And some of us prefer it that way.”

It scans as progress, but doesn’t always feel that way. There are a number of reasons why people at conferences and out in the world treat their phones like a Tamagotchi, the digital pet invented in Japan that died if it wasn’t constantly looked after and fed.

To begin with, phones glow. It is a very normal impulse to stare at something in your hand that is emitting light.

Beyond the gadget itself, the screen offers a data stream of many people, as opposed to the individual you happen to be near. Your e-mail, Twitter, Facebook and other online social groups all offer a data stream of many individuals, and you can choose the most interesting one, unlike the human rain delay you may be stuck with at a party.

Then there is also a specific kind of narcissism that the social Web engenders. By grooming and updating your various avatars, you are making sure you remain at the popular kid’s table. One of the more seductive data points in real-time media is what people think of you. The metrics of followers and retweets beget a kind of always-on day trading in the unstable currency of the self.

“My personal pet peeve is people who live-tweet every interaction,” said Roxanna Asgarian, a student at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism who attended South by Southwest this year. “I prefer to experience the thing itself over the experience of telling people I’m doing the thing.”

Still, for those of us who are afraid of missing something, having the grid at our fingertips offers reassurance that we are in the right spot or gives indicators of heat elsewhere.

But all is not vanity. For anybody with children, a job or a significant other, the expectation these days is that certain special people, usually beginning with our bosses, can reach us at any minute of any day. Every once in a while something truly important tumbles into our in-box that requires immediate attention.

Mobile devices do indeed make us more mobile, but that tether is also a leash, letting everyone know that they can get you at any second, most often to tell you they are late, but on their way. (Another bit of bad manners that the always-on world helps facilitate, by the way.)

At the conference, I saw people who waited 90 minutes to get into a party with a very tough door, peering into their phones the whole while, only to breach the door finally and resume staring into the same screen and only occasionally glancing up.

In that sense, the scenery never really changes when you are riding with your digital wingman. I saw people who were sitting on panels surfing or e-mailing during lulls, and then were taken by surprise when it was their turn to talk. (And it’s not just those children. I was hosting a discussion at another conference with Martha Stewart, no slouch when it comes to manners, and she kept us all waiting while she checked “one more thing” on her Twitter.)

I should sheepishly mention I was on highest alert for electronic offense because I switched out my smartphone before South by Southwest and was on a new Droid that I’m pretty sure could guide the next mission to Mars, but it was clunky when it came to sending texts and Twitter messages. Digital natives (read “young people”) will tell you that they can easily toggle between online and offline. My colleague Brian Stelter can almost pull it off, in part because he always seems to be creating media and consuming it.

And in Austin I saw Andy Carvin, NPR’s one-man signal tower of North African revolution on Twitter, sitting in front of a screen while the British band Yuck played a killer outdoor set at Stubb’s. He sent Twitter messages about the show, and about Bahrain as well.

William Powers, the author of “Hamlet’s BlackBerry,” a book about getting control of your digital life, appeared on a panel at South by Southwest and wrote that he came away thinking he had witnessed “a gigantic competition to see who can be more absent from the people and conversations happening right around them. Everyone in Austin was gazing into their little devices — a bit desperately, too, as if their lives depended on not missing the next tweet.”

In a phone conversation a few weeks afterward, Mr. Powers said that he is far from being a Luddite, but that he doesn’t “buy into the idea that digital natives can do both screen and eye contact.”

“They are not fully present because we are not built that way,” he said.

Where other people saw freedom — from the desktop, from social convention, from the boring guy in front of them — Mr. Powers saw “a kind of imprisonment.”

“There is a great deal of conformity under way, actually,” he added.

And therein lies the real problem. When someone you are trying to talk to ends up getting busy on a phone, the most natural response is not to scold, but to emulate. It’s mutually assured distraction.

p.s. to find the article on the nyt go here.

californication

2011-04-01T22:17:00.000-07:00

p.s. I would like to apologize to all my LA friends as I wasn't able to see any of you! my sister lives in palm springs and I was only in LA for a few hours as my flight back to nyc was leaving from there. please don't think I was ignoring you!next time I go visit my sister I will spend a few days in LA so I can see you all. until then! x

jendar's winter/spring 2011 soundtrack

2011-03-28T23:08:00.000-07:00

p.s. for jendar's winter/spring 2011 mix go here. bisous!

question

2011-03-28T14:18:00.000-07:00

is it possible to fall in love with someone who is 2000 miles away? I know some of you may be in long distance relationships or may have had successful long distance relationships so could you please share some advice with me? I would really love it. gracias!x

friday

2011-03-27T22:55:00.000-07:00

I arrived to southern california a few days ago, where I'm visiting the sis and her four kids ages 3-14. as I rarely watch tv and haven't listened to the radio in years, they've been helping me catch up with pop culture. so for those of you who don't have nephews and nieces that watch way too much tv and youtube, and know all the top 40 hits by heart, let me introduce you to what may be the worst song and music video ever made. and just in case you're wondering, I've had this song stuck in my head for the last three days, so watch this video at your own risk. enjoy!

philly

2011-03-14T19:32:00.000-07:00

this past weekend my friends jessica e., liz and I visited philadelphia. we had such a great time. to be honest, it's nice to leave nyc every little while. that way when I come back, I fall in love with this city all over again. here is philly...

hostel

heaven

eastern state penitentiary

al capone's cell

philadelphia museum of art

jess

rocky balboa

24 dates

2011-03-10T18:36:00.000-08:00

a few days ago, I was talking to a friend and she was telling me how one of her goals this year is to go on at least 12 dates. she has already gone on a few. I loved her goal so much that I want to follow her steps, but instead of 12 dates this year, I want to go on at least 24! I'm pretty and smart (I think) and have already gone on four dates this year so going on at least 20 more is possible right?

(most recent picture of me taken by a co-worker two days ago for the museum's newsletter)

full name: jendar marie morales

height: 5'6"

weight: 125-130 pounds, depending whether i've had pizza that day or not

eye color: brown

zodiac sign: taurus

favorite food: pizza

guilty pleasure: coke

profession: museum educator

religion: LDS/ mormon

currently listening to: M83

so if you're a smart, funny, attractive, artsy, single man out there between the ages of 23-40 ( i don't mind dating men a little bit younger or older) ask me out! if not, I will! oh, and no sex. thank you!

four years ago...

2011-03-07T18:58:00.000-08:00

I returned from serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. if any of you knew me back then, you probably remember how awkward I was when I got back from my mission. the thing is that I really didn't want to come back from my mission. I loved it too much. for those who do not know, I served as a missionary for one year and half in southern utah. back in the day it was known as the provo mission. when I put in my mission papers, I was pretty sure I would be sent somewhere in latin america or to some cool city. I secretly hoped, because I speak french, that I would sent to a french speaking place such as montreal or paris. but I was not. I was sent to serve in Utah, where I happened to be living at the time, and I was super angry. so angry that I considered not going on a mission at all. anyway, I've shared this story before on this blog. but basically, I did go on my mission and although it took me a few months to get used to missionary life and to start loving my mission, by the end of the mission I did not want to come back. serving a mission changed my life. although I already had a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ, by looking at how the lives of those who I taught changed so drastically in so many positive ways, it made me love and appreciate the gospel even more. I am so grateful for having served a mission. yes it was hard. sometimes very hard. most especially during those first few months. but the whole experience was totally worth it. and I am just so grateful for it.

so yes, it has been four years since coming back from my mission. four years full of so many good things. I remember thinking the other day how I thought that by now I would probably be married or something, because as missionaries they encourage us to get married as soon as possible when coming back. well, I am not married, not even close to be married. but that is fine. being single gives me the opportunity to do so many things that as a married woman with children, it would be harder to do. so I see this time as a time of preparation. I want to serve, strengthen myself spiritually, develop strong relationships with all those around me, use my talents more, gain more education, travel the world, etc. and no, I am not saying that I cannot do these things while being married. but what I am saying is that I do not need to be married to start living my life (unfortunately too many girls in the church think this way). also I am saying that not because I get married life ends. the last few months have taught me that I need to love life no matter my circumstances and the truth is that I live in really good circumstances. I am grateful to be where I am right now at this point of my life. the past four years have been great and I hope that in the upcoming years many great things will come. I am pretty sure they will. or at least, I hope! x

p.s. super interesting article published on The Economist about mormons in politics. to read go here.

the armory show 2011

2011-03-06T06:34:00.001-08:00

it's hard for me not to feel like a little kid in a toy store when surrounded by art from all around the world, cool people and attractive (very!) artsy men. such was my feeling yesterday while at the armory show 2011...

so while at the armory, my friend jessica, who is an mfa student at the pratt institute, and I, both went to a panel discussion on post-conceptual art, which was extremely fascinating. during the discussion, they kept bringing up conceptual artist joseph kasoth. after the panel discussion was over and the q&a began, this older man all dressed in black, with a scarf on his neck, thick glasses and a hat stood up and was like: " hello everyone. i'm joseph kasoth." everyone gasped. most especially my friend as he was sitting right behind us. it was kind of funny. and unless you're an art freak you wouldn't think this is at all interesting so I'll stop now. le fin.

p.s. here is a very interesting article that came out today in the new york times about one of my favorite neighborhoods in the city of san juan, where I grew up. the article mentions my brother's band "fantasmes." to read the article go here.

kiev

2011-03-01T19:35:00.000-08:00

in exactly 87 days from today, I will be going to kiev, ukraine for my friends' wedding. I have known my ukrainian friend mariya for almost nine years. I met her on my second day of school at Brigham Young University. we both studied the same exact thing: humanities with an art history emphasis and a french studies minor. so obviously we took tons of classes together and we became pretty close. although for the last few years we have lived at different cities, we have always stayed in touch and I consider her one of my dearest friends. I have known mariya's fiancé zach for almost four years. we both have friends in common and we took a class on Milton. we became close. a year and a half ago I found out that both mariya and zach, who at the time were living in washington d.c., had become friends. they later began dating and now they are engaged to be married. to say that I am happy for both of them is an understatement. I am always excited when my friends find amazing people to married, and I know for a fact that both mariya and zach are marrying wonderful people. so because mariya is from kiev, they will be getting married there and I was invited. I feel honored. anyway, I cannot wait for them to get married! but also I am super excited to go to the ukraine, where I will be spending ten days. I've never been to eastern europe and I've always been fascinated by the russian language and culture. so if you have been to kiev and surrounding area, and know of cool stuff to do there please share. I will make sure to take as many pictures so I can post some on this blog. I have also started getting into the mood by listening to a lot of Devotchka, which music is inspired by eastern european sounds. here is a little taste. x

changes

2011-03-01T05:20:00.000-08:00

this past weekend was busy (I had to work both on saturday and sunday) but so great at the same time. this is the thing. for the past few months, I have been having a bit of a hard time spiritually. I made some not very smart decisions, and I am currently in the process of changing and trying to become better. although I have been wanting to change some things in my life, I have to admit there still was some hesitancy. I felt like I was trying to be both Godly and worldly at the same time. but the truth is, that is just impossible. either I am Godly all the way, or just worldly. I cannot be both. this past friday, I had the great opportunity to hear Elder David A. Bednar, an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint, speak to the single adults together with Elder Whitney Clayton from the presidency of the seventy.as a matter of fact, he did not really speak to us, but instead asked us to ask him questions. all the questions asked were really good and he gave (obviously) some pretty amazing answers. here are some of the things Elder Bednar said during his Q&A:

- if we understand the plan of happinness, everything else will fall into place.

- the atonement both cleans us from our sins and gives us the strength to be good and do hard things.

- as we accept the terms and conditions when making a covenant, it is not about us anymore but we become agents of our Lord.

- after making covenants, we have agreed to give our will to the Lord.

-overcoming sin is not the purpose of the gospel of jesus christ but for us to become new creatures in christ.

- there's is a joy in obedience (we cannot see obedience as a chore).

-we are capable to act upon and not be acted upon.

- faith is a principle of action and power.

-let not the things of the world get in our way for us to be able to partake of our eternal birth right.

he also said some other amazing things. but the reason I am writing about this is because after hearing elder B. say all these simple yet powerful things, I felt the spirit so strongly and now I feel a real desire to change and become better. I feel like for the last few months I have been acted upon but now I want to start acting upon instead. and no matter how hard it may seem, I know it's possible. x

i love museums/ museums love me

2011-02-28T21:18:00.001-08:00

as most of you know, I love museums. I work at a museum, I have an MA in museum studies and one of my favorite hobbies is (guess what?) visiting museums. the main reason I decided to move to NYC is because of the many amazing museums the city has. one of my goals this year is to visit a different museum or gallery every week. so far, I have been successful. on president's day weekend, I visited three different museums and saw four amazing exhibitions. if you live in the city, or will be visiting in the next few months, I highly recommend you to go see these shows:

new museum

George Condo: Mental States

January 26 - May 8, 2011

Lynda Benglis

February 9- June 19, 2011

the jewish museum

Houdini: Art and Magic

October 29, 2010 - March 27, 2011

the museum of the city of new york

Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing: How the Apollo Theater Shaped American Entertainment

Feb 8- May 1, 2011

p.s. I know that visiting museums can sometimes be expensive. The American Association of Museums (AAM) has very affordable one year memberships that allows you to get into all museums that are part of the association for free. most museums are part of the AAM, including the MET, MoMA, AMNH, Whitney, New Museum, etc. if you are a museum freak like me, this membership is absolutely worth it. if interested in becoming a member of the AAM go here.x

thom yorke's "single ladies"

2011-02-23T08:05:00.000-08:00

I know i've posted way too many videos lately, but this one is just too good...

p.s. so it's official, I am heading west in the end of march to go visit my sister and her little ones in california. x

where have the good men gone?

2011-02-22T11:08:00.000-08:00

my friend jessica emailed me last night this amazing article from The Wall Street Journal. if you have any thoughts, please share.

Where Have The Good Men Gone?
Kay S. Hymowitz argues that too many men in their 20s are living in a new kind of extended adolescence.
By KAY S. HYMOWITZ

Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This "pre-adulthood" has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it's time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn't bring out the best in men.

Between his lack of responsibilities and an entertainment media devoted to his every pleasure, today's young man has no reason to grow up, says author Kay Hymowitz. She discusses her book, "Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys."
"We are sick of hooking up with guys," writes the comedian Julie Klausner, author of a touchingly funny 2010 book, "I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters and Other Guys I've Dated." What Ms. Klausner means by "guys" is males who are not boys or men but something in between. "Guys talk about 'Star Wars' like it's not a movie made for people half their age; a guy's idea of a perfect night is a hang around the PlayStation with his bandmates, or a trip to Vegas with his college friends.... They are more like the kids we babysat than the dads who drove us home." One female reviewer of Ms. Kausner's book wrote, "I had to stop several times while reading and think: Wait, did I date this same guy?"

For most of us, the cultural habitat of pre-adulthood no longer seems noteworthy. After all, popular culture has been crowded with pre-adults for almost two decades. Hollywood started the affair in the early 1990s with movies like "Singles," "Reality Bites," "Single White Female" and "Swingers." Television soon deepened the relationship, giving us the agreeable company of Monica, Joey, Rachel and Ross; Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer; Carrie, Miranda, et al.

But for all its familiarity, pre-adulthood represents a momentous sociological development. It's no exaggeration to say that having large numbers of single young men and women living independently, while also having enough disposable income to avoid ever messing up their kitchens, is something entirely new in human experience. Yes, at other points in Western history young people have waited well into their 20s to marry, and yes, office girls and bachelor lawyers have been working and finding amusement in cities for more than a century. But their numbers and their money supply were always relatively small. Today's pre-adults are a different matter. They are a major demographic event.

What also makes pre-adulthood something new is its radical reversal of the sexual hierarchy. Among pre-adults, women are the first sex. They graduate from college in greater numbers (among Americans ages 25 to 34, 34% of women now have a bachelor's degree but just 27% of men), and they have higher GPAs. As most professors tell it, they also have more confidence and drive. These strengths carry women through their 20s, when they are more likely than men to be in grad school and making strides in the workplace. In a number of cities, they are even out-earning their brothers and boyfriends.

Still, for these women, one key question won't go away: Where have the good men gone? Their male peers often come across as aging frat boys, maladroit geeks or grubby slackers—a gender gap neatly crystallized by the director Judd Apatow in his hit 2007 movie "Knocked Up." The story's hero is 23-year-old Ben Stone (Seth Rogen), who has a drunken fling with Allison Scott (Katherine Heigl) and gets her pregnant. Ben lives in a Los Angeles crash pad with a group of grubby friends who spend their days playing videogames, smoking pot and unsuccessfully planning to launch a porn website. Allison, by contrast, is on her way up as a television reporter and lives in a neatly kept apartment with what appear to be clean sheets and towels. Once she decides to have the baby, she figures out what needs to be done and does it. Ben can only stumble his way toward being a responsible grownup.

So where did these pre-adults come from? You might assume that their appearance is a result of spoiled 24-year-olds trying to prolong the campus drinking and hook-up scene while exploiting the largesse of mom and dad. But the causes run deeper than that. Beginning in the 1980s, the economic advantage of higher education—the "college premium"—began to increase dramatically. Between 1960 and 2000, the percentage of younger adults enrolled in college or graduate school more than doubled. In the "knowledge economy," good jobs go to those with degrees. And degrees take years.

Another factor in the lengthening of the road to adulthood is our increasingly labyrinthine labor market. The past decades' economic expansion and the digital revolution have transformed the high-end labor market into a fierce competition for the most stimulating, creative and glamorous jobs. Fields that attract ambitious young men and women often require years of moving between school and internships, between internships and jobs, laterally and horizontally between jobs, and between cities in the U.S. and abroad. The knowledge economy gives the educated young an unprecedented opportunity to think about work in personal terms. They are looking not just for jobs but for "careers," work in which they can exercise their talents and express their deepest passions. They expect their careers to give shape to their identity. For today's pre-adults, "what you do" is almost synonymous with "who you are," and starting a family is seldom part of the picture.

Pre-adulthood can be compared to adolescence, an idea invented in the mid-20th century as American teenagers were herded away from the fields and the workplace and into that new institution, the high school. For a long time, the poor and recent immigrants were not part of adolescent life; they went straight to work, since their families couldn't afford the lost labor and income. But the country had grown rich enough to carve out space and time to create a more highly educated citizenry and work force. Teenagers quickly became a marketing and cultural phenomenon. They also earned their own psychological profile. One of the most influential of the psychologists of adolescence was Erik Erikson, who described the stage as a "moratorium," a limbo between childhood and adulthood characterized by role confusion, emotional turmoil and identity conflict.

Like adolescents in the 20th century, today's pre-adults have been wait-listed for adulthood. Marketers and culture creators help to promote pre-adulthood as a lifestyle. And like adolescence, pre-adulthood is a class-based social phenomenon, reserved for the relatively well-to-do. Those who don't get a four-year college degree are not in a position to compete for the more satisfying jobs of the knowledge economy.

But pre-adults differ in one major respect from adolescents. They write their own biographies, and they do it from scratch. Sociologists use the term "life script" to describe a particular society's ordering of life's large events and stages. Though such scripts vary across cultures, the archetypal plot is deeply rooted in our biological nature. The invention of adolescence did not change the large Roman numerals of the American script. Adults continued to be those who took over the primary tasks of the economy and culture. For women, the central task usually involved the day-to-day rearing of the next generation; for men, it involved protecting and providing for their wives and children. If you followed the script, you became an adult, a temporary custodian of the social order until your own old age and demise.

Unlike adolescents, however, pre-adults don't know what is supposed to come next. For them, marriage and parenthood come in many forms, or can be skipped altogether. In 1970, just 16% of Americans ages 25 to 29 had never been married; today that's true of an astonishing 55% of the age group. In the U.S., the mean age at first marriage has been climbing toward 30 (a point past which it has already gone in much of Europe). It is no wonder that so many young Americans suffer through a "quarter-life crisis," a period of depression and worry over their future.

Given the rigors of contemporary career-building, pre-adults who do marry and start families do so later than ever before in human history. Husbands, wives and children are a drag on the footloose life required for the early career track and identity search. Pre-adulthood has also confounded the primordial search for a mate. It has delayed a stable sense of identity, dramatically expanded the pool of possible spouses, mystified courtship routines and helped to throw into doubt the very meaning of marriage. In 1970, to cite just one of many numbers proving the point, nearly seven in 10 25-year-olds were married; by 2000, only one-third had reached that milestone.

American men have been struggling with finding an acceptable adult identity since at least the mid-19th century. We often hear about the miseries of women confined to the domestic sphere once men began to work in offices and factories away from home. But it seems that men didn't much like the arrangement either. They balked at the stuffy propriety of the bourgeois parlor, as they did later at the banal activities of the suburban living room. They turned to hobbies and adventures, like hunting and fishing. At midcentury, fathers who at first had refused to put down the money to buy those newfangled televisions changed their minds when the networks began broadcasting boxing matches and baseball games. The arrival of Playboy in the 1950s seemed like the ultimate protest against male domestication; think of the refusal implied by the magazine's title alone.

In his disregard for domestic life, the playboy was prologue for today's pre-adult male. Unlike the playboy with his jazz and art-filled pad, however, our boy rebel is a creature of the animal house. In the 1990s, Maxim, the rude, lewd and hugely popular "lad" magazine arrived from England. Its philosophy and tone were so juvenile, so entirely undomesticated, that it made Playboy look like Camus.

At the same time, young men were tuning in to cable channels like Comedy Central, the Cartoon Network and Spike, whose shows reflected the adolescent male preferences of its targeted male audiences. They watched movies with overgrown boy actors like Steve Carell, Luke and Owen Wilson, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Will Farrell and Seth Rogen, cheering their awesome car crashes, fart jokes, breast and crotch shots, beer pong competitions and other frat-boy pranks. Americans had always struck foreigners as youthful, even childlike, in their energy and optimism. But this was too much.

What explains this puerile shallowness? I see it as an expression of our cultural uncertainty about the social role of men. It's been an almost universal rule of civilization that girls became women simply by reaching physical maturity, but boys had to pass a test. They needed to demonstrate courage, physical prowess or mastery of the necessary skills. The goal was to prove their competence as protectors and providers. Today, however, with women moving ahead in our advanced economy, husbands and fathers are now optional, and the qualities of character men once needed to play their roles—fortitude, stoicism, courage, fidelity—are obsolete, even a little embarrassing.

Today's pre-adult male is like an actor in a drama in which he only knows what he shouldn't say. He has to compete in a fierce job market, but he can't act too bossy or self-confident. He should be sensitive but not paternalistic, smart but not cocky. To deepen his predicament, because he is single, his advisers and confidants are generally undomesticated guys just like him.

Single men have never been civilization's most responsible actors; they continue to be more troubled and less successful than men who deliberately choose to become husbands and fathers. So we can be disgusted if some of them continue to live in rooms decorated with "Star Wars" posters and crushed beer cans and to treat women like disposable estrogen toys, but we shouldn't be surprised.

Relatively affluent, free of family responsibilities, and entertained by an array of media devoted to his every pleasure, the single young man can live in pig heaven—and often does. Women put up with him for a while, but then in fear and disgust either give up on any idea of a husband and kids or just go to a sperm bank and get the DNA without the troublesome man. But these rational choices on the part of women only serve to legitimize men's attachment to the sand box. Why should they grow up? No one needs them anyway. There's nothing they have to do.

to find the article go here.

the king of limbs

2011-02-19T22:32:00.000-08:00

radiohead has released their new album and I just cannot stop smiling.

when I grow up, I'd like to be as good a dancer as thom yorke. to download "the king of limbs" go here. x

bye bye facebook

2011-02-17T19:11:00.000-08:00

I deactivated my facebook account. finally. I've been thinking about doing it for a while but have always been to nervous. I think facebook is great. I like how it allows me to keep in touch more easily with family and friends, especially because they are spread out all around the world. but it also annoys me how so many reandom people add me on facebook such as high school class mates whom I am not friends with, cousins that I do not really know, people from my church in P.R. who I have not seen in years, etc, and the sad part is that if I do not accept their request they get mad! seriously? I remember when I moved from utah to nyc, I deleted half the people on my facebook as I was not really friends with any of them. I later heard a few people got offended by it. so little things like that really bug me. but what bugs me the most is the stalking. most people who add me on facebook never write to say hi nor to ask how I am doing. so I am guessing they just add me so they can look at my pictures and try to figure out what I am up to without really having to ask me themselves. and that I really dislike. so I deleted facebook and I feel good about it. so far. I am sure I will miss it. I really love sharing news articles, sometimes posting pictures, looking at people's pictures (I admit it, that is probably my favorite part of having facebook),and writing random comments on my status. but I think I need a break. most especially after getting into an argument a few days ago with my mother because of a facebook incident. I mean, is it really worth getting into an argument with somebody I love so much because of facebook? no. not really. so I just got rid of the thing. now, I know that I will have to put more effort into keeping in touch with my friends. but that is fine. I am up to the challenge. one of my goals this year is to develop better and stronger relationships with people and facebook does not always offer that. so getting rid of facebook is one step towards achieving that goal. anyway, if any of you is sad because I left facebook, do not worry, I am still here. I will continue blogging. forever and ever. I just love it too much!x

tickle fight

2011-02-14T05:46:00.000-08:00

my friends chris, jeremy and james just started a comedy group called The Angel Murkurker. here is their first video:

happy v-day! xo

home is whenever i'm with you...

2011-02-13T19:07:00.000-08:00

I feel so happy and warm inside every time I watch this video...

"one day i'm gonna whistle?" love that!

fortune cookie

2011-02-12T08:14:00.000-08:00

now the question is, who will the lucky guy be?

p.s. i love this guy.

trés

2011-02-09T20:42:00.000-08:00

a day like today three years ago, my youngest nephew joaquin, who is the only toddler I know who wears skinny jeans, was born. he is seriously the coolest little kid and it's a shame that I haven't seen him in two years. hopefully i'll get to see him soon. happy birthday little j! x

straight hair

2011-02-04T05:33:00.000-08:00

coney island sleeps

2011-01-31T16:16:00.000-08:00

even when it's 35 degrees and covered with three feet of snow, I love this place...

sunday morning

2011-01-31T14:53:00.001-08:00

i love sundays.
i love harlem.
i love sundays in harlem.

p.s. my good friend Jasie, who is one of the smartest people I know and is currently getting a phd at the London Consortium, just started an editing website called Arch Editing. jasie has edited dozens of my papers including my master's thesis so I know for a fact that she is pretty amazing. so if you are looking for someone to go over your academic papers, cv's, resumés, etc., etc., I promise you that she will do an amazing job. x

mormon mommy blogs

2011-01-29T16:45:00.001-08:00

my friend nicole sent me this article a few weeks ago and finally today (when I a should be working on an essay but I am catching up on all my favorite blogs instead) I've read it. the article is about a 20 something non-mormon atheist feminist who is obsessed with mormon mommy blogs. like her, I often find myself reading these blogs too and wondering if maybe someday I will become part of the mormon-stay at home mom-who wears adorable vintage clothes- who has a cute dog- who's married to an equally fashionable mormon husband- blogger club. maybe, but in the meantime I will continue reading these blogs and wondering whether there is a something terribly wrong really going on in the lives of these women, or that maybe there's such a thing as having a happily ever after. to read the article go here. x

jendar's speed dating story

2011-01-28T06:22:00.000-08:00

last saturday was the speed dating event I've been talking about for the past few weeks. when I signed up to participate, I was super excited to do it as I was planning on making a mini documentary about the whole experience. well, I was not allowed to film the event and therefore, I thought I had no good reason to go. but after convincing two of my co-workers (who are not mormon) to sign up, I decided that in that case it would be fun to go. so the speed dating thing was not that bad. as a matter of fact, I had a lot of fun. that night I went on 30 mini-dates which were each two minutes long.we were given a piece of paper to write down the name and number of our dates and a yes or no next to each name (a yes if I'd be interested in going out with them and a no if I wasn't interested). because the dates were so short there was absolutely no awkwardness, plus I have good conversation skills. so after an hour of speed dating, I was absolutely exhausted, my throat hurt and I had no desire to keep socializing so my co-workers and I left and had dinner at this place in Harlem called Dino BBQ, which has the best mac and cheese I've ever had. like me, my co-workers also had a really good time. they found most of the girls they "dated" cute and wrote down a yes for most of them. in my case, I wrote down a yes for around ten guys, most of which I was not super attracted to but I felt I could be good friends with. from all of the 30 guys I speed dated there was only one who called my attention and who of course every single girl absolutely loved. he is a mountain man, has a beard and is originally from st. george, utah, where I served a mormon mission. what else can I say, I'm a sucker for outdoorsy bearded dudes. sigh. yesterday I got an email with the results. from the ten guys that I said yes to, six of them said yes too. not bad huh? one of them is my co-worker Will who I went on a mini-date with and we both agreed to say yes to each other just in case nobody else did. so you are probably wondering if mr. bearded st. george man said yes, well... he did not. and I am totally fine with that. he is probably a looser anyway. ha. anyway, now I have the names and information of these guys. I will wait for them to contact me. to be really honest with you, I kind of don't feel like going on dates with any of them. but because I have absolutely nothing to loose, I will! and that my friends, is my speed dating story. le fin.

la traviata

2011-01-20T19:41:00.000-08:00

once upon a time, I wanted to be an opera singer, which lead me to study it for seven years. although I later decided I did not want to pursue a classical singing career, I still love opera. last night, I saw Giuseppe Verdi's " La Traviata" at the Metropolitan Opera and yes, it brought tears to my eyes. opera always does that to me.

p.s. in case you don't know this already, I absolutely love picnics in the park. and one of the reasons I hate winter so much is because I can't have picnics. which is why when I heard about a temporary indoor fake park down in soho, I went there the next day and had a picnic. the park will be open until january 30th and there are different free events held there such as yoga classes, coquet, movie nights, etc. just like summer. for more information go here.

pps. two more days for speed dating... what should I wear?

portlandia

2011-01-16T12:31:00.001-08:00

I love the northwest. when I move out out of nyc, whenever that ends up happening, I will probably move somewhere in the northwest. among the places I've considered moving, there is portland. a few months ago, I heard that comedian Fred Armisen (SNL) and musician Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney) were creating a show about the city which would be called "Portlandia." upon finding this out, I was really looking forward to watch it. yesterday I watched the first episode, and it is absolutely hilarious. so if you happen to be from portland, or, like me, are a big fan of portland, you may enjoy this show very much. here is a little taste of "Portlandia:"

" In Portland you can put a bird on something and call it art..."

to watch the rest of the first episode go here.

une soirée d'hiver à brooklyn

2011-01-15T16:51:00.000-08:00

there is no better way to spend a cold friday night than eating delicious home made tomato basil soup (par moi!) and grilled cheese sandwiches with friends at a cozy apartment in prospect heights...

p.s. I don't know about you, but I'm having a mini existential crisis since it was announced a few days ago that there is a new zodiac sign, which means that instead of being a taurus I am an aries now? what the what?

speed dating

2011-01-11T20:02:00.000-08:00

first of all, thank you so much for all the amazing comments you shared on my previous post. I am so grateful to have so many amazing, beautiful, smart, strong women around me who live my same standards. you are such an example to me and I don't know where I would be without you! you truly inspire me and are such a source of strength to me so thank you, thank you, thank you! by reading all your comments I've realized, once again, how often I criticize men in the church.yes, they are imperfect but so am I! as a matter of fact, I've had many amazing men pursue me during the past few years but because I can be very dumb some times, or most of the time, I've rejected many of them. yes, I am the kind of girl that ignores a guy just because he wears baggy pants. dumb me. I am aware I need to change that as I am missing out on getting to know some amazing men. anyways, at church once a year they organize a huge speed dating event for all the single mormons in the city. although I've lived here for a few years, I've always thought myself too cool to go. so I haven't. I remember how last year my friends suvi and josh organized what they called the Blind Date Project, in which they set up a bunch of their friends with each other. when they asked me to participate, I hesitated at first but later agreed. although my previous blind date experiences had not been good, this one was! I didn't find true love, but I did make a new friend and that's good enough for me. so why not try speed dating right? which is why I've signed up to participate. I am a bit nervous about it, and I am sure "awkward Jendar" will take over me that day, but there is really nothing to loose so whatevs. as a matter of fact, a friend of mine and I will be filming the whole experience to make a mini-documentary, which means that you'll get to see me in action! I'm getting excited about this and you should too! x

p.s. if you are a single person living in nyc who doesn't mind being in a room full of virgins, then maybe you should try out this speed dating thing. go here to sign up.

Single, Female, Mormon, Alone

2011-01-09T12:22:00.000-08:00

here is an essay published a few days ago on the new york times by nicole hardy, who is a poet and mormon. I can identify with this woman in so many levels. I think some of you may too. here is the essay:

Single, Female, Mormon, Alone
By NICOLE HARDY
Of all the places I felt sure I’d never go, Planned Parenthood topped the list. Because, you know, they perform abortions and give condoms to kids, or so I’d been warned. Yet one spring afternoon found me in its waiting room next to a teenage girl, who was clearly perplexed by the intake form and likely bound for an uncomfortable, humiliating four minutes in the back of a borrowed Chevy Chevelle.

But what did I know? I was a 35-year-old virgin, preparing for my own “first time,” which, incidentally, didn’t happen until I was well into 36.

I was not frigid, fearful or socially inept. Not overweight or unattractive. Didn’t suffer from halitosis or social anxiety disorder. I was a practicing Mormon, and Mormons “wait” until marriage. So I had waited, spent the first two decades of my adult life celibate and, for the most part, alone. Because only after the trial of my faith would I be blessed with an eternal marriage, which, I prayed, would also blow my mind in the bedroom.

It never occurred to me that I would remain unmarried, especially in a system where marriage is not only a commandment, but also one of life’s primary purposes. Turns out, though, that there is no place in that community for a single woman who doesn’t want children.

My only available choice within the church was to wait for my reward in heaven, as Mormon doctrine promises that single members denied marriage, family and sex lives on earth will have them after death. Needless to say, this wasn’t a compelling argument.

Most troubling was the fact that as I grew older I had the distinct sense of remaining a child in a woman’s body; virginity brought with it arrested development on the level of a handicapping condition, like the Russian orphans I’d read about whose lack of physical contact altered their neurobiology and prevented them from forming emotional bonds. Similarly, it felt as if celibacy was stunting my growth; it wasn’t just sex I lacked but relationships with men entirely. Too independent for Mormon men, and too much a virgin for the other set, I felt trapped in adolescence.

My first act of open rebellion was to go see “Brokeback Mountain” in Seattle’s rainbow-striped Capitol Hill neighborhood with a pair of lesbian friends. I was not ready to have an alcoholic beverage or a cup of coffee, to lie with a man or smoke a cigarette. But I could watch a movie, even if that movie was an obvious attack on the sanctity of hetero marriage, with its handsome, straight, Hollywood actors acting as if homosexuality were not perverse. Because while I am also straight and believe in God, one thing became clear that day: I could empathize with those gay cowboys. I knew, as an unmarried, 30-something, happy-without-children Mormon woman, how it felt to grow apart from one’s community. I knew what it was to be fundamentally bound to an ill-fitting life, to be the object of pity and judgment, to feel I had no choice but to be the thing that made me “other,” and to be told that if I prayed hard enough, God would bless me to want what I was supposed to want.

Stage 2 of my rebellion happened immediately after the movie, at Babeland, our city’s world-renowned sex-toy store. My lesbian companions were supportive of, if perplexed by, my commitment to the Law of Chastity; they were protective of my innocence, in the same way another friend once knocked a pot cookie out of my hand, lest I become unwittingly stoned on her watch. But what could be more fun than taking a 34-year-old virgin to a shop selling everything from art-glass dildos to vibrating nipple clamps? And what could be funnier than watching said virgin earnestly study each product’s list of features for water resistance, battery life, noise factor, shape, size and heft?

The few relationships I did have — all with non-Mormon men — lasted only a few weeks, months if it was summertime, and all dates could begin and end outside, in daylight, delaying the expectation of physical contact that darkness inspires. The pattern was predictable: at first, men were intrigued, turned on by my virginity, the landscape of uncharted territory, my innocence and curiosity. In certain scenarios, a man believes (or hopes) I’m playing an elaborate game of hard to get, that the whole charade will culminate one night in a seedy, sweaty, up-against-the-wall scene out of “Road House,” starring himself as a young Patrick Swayze.

However, every time fantasy met reality these men went in search of something simpler. And who could blame them? We were grown adults. Most of them had been having active sex lives for decades, and it was weird for them (some would say ridiculous) to suddenly be thrust back into the eighth grade.

So why wasn’t I dating Mormon men? In a nutshell, the pool is small, and people marry young, for obvious reasons. The leftovers were left over: closeted gay men, porn-addicted virgins, along with the merely awkward, uncompromising and unlucky. My favorite was the movie industry veteran who, after offering me a peanut butter cup, said: “Marie loves peanut butter. You know — Marie Osmond? We dated in college. She was into it, but I just couldn’t handle being Mister Marie Osmond.”

Obviously, I was left over, too — I was just never sure what my problem was. Until one man let me know. After overhearing a friend and me comparing our weekend horror-date stories, he walked up to me and asked, “You know what your problem is?”

No, I did not know what my problem was. And I was dying to find out.

“Your problem,” he said, “is you don’t need a man.”

I thought that was a good thing — to be able to take care of oneself.

He asked if I had a job.

“Yes.”

“A car?”

“Yes.”

“A house?”

“Yes.”

“Clothes?”

“Of course.”

“Food?”

“Obviously.”

“That’s your problem.”

“Excuse me?”

“Men in the church are raised to be providers. We are the breadwinners, the stewards of the household. If you have all the things we’re supposed to provide, we have nothing to give you.”

“What of love?” I asked. “What of intimacy and partnership and making a run at the world together?”

“Nope,” he said. “We’re providers.”

Regardless of my tragic dating history, the fact that I had no reason to feel hopeful, I tried for 15 years not to lose hope. The gospel was the answer. It had saved my parents, each of whom had converted, separately, when they were young. Thanks to the Mormon church, they escaped childhoods rife with abuse, alcoholism and neglect. They found God, found each other, and were rescued by a community committed to family, forgiveness and joy.

Out of chaos they created a tiny space where our family of four lived happily and prospered. I was surrounded by love, taught that I am a child of God, that I have a divine purpose — my whole life I’d felt secure, fulfilled, purposeful and connected. And further, I’d made a commitment. Why would I abandon God and his church now when in all ways but one I had asked and had received?

Perhaps the failure was mine — I’m sure many church members see it that way. I was too weak to endure. They’ll say I should have waited another decade, or spent my whole life alone if that’s what God required.

I’m just unwilling to believe that’s what God wants for anyone, and was unwilling to continue spiraling further into a disconnected life, feeling abandoned, being discounted.

Oddly, my trip to Planned Parenthood provided much that the church had not in recent years. During my exam, the clinician explained every move before she made it, asked permission to touch me during the most routine procedures. I was mystified: by her compassion, by the level of attention paid to my body — as if it were fragile, or sacred. Only then did it occur to me how many terrified and abused women Planned Parenthood must treat every day.

And that brought me to tears, sorrowful for the ways in which we all suffer, in whatever ways we do, and grateful for the unlikely refuge of this place. Grateful also for the safety granted my own tears, prompted by the delicate weight of a hand on my shoulder, the warmth of her palm against my back.

How unprepared I was to experience tenderness in the place I had been warned so vehemently against. How unprepared for the flood of relief, the bud of hope, after a life devoted to keeping myself separate from my body. Here was a path, an opening; here was empathy.

I would have an IUD instead of children; I would have intellectual and spiritual freedom; I would write poems and finally live inside my body; I would, for the love of God, feel a man’s hands on me before I died.

Nicole Hardy, who lives in Seattle, is the author of two books of poetry, including “This Blonde” (Main Street Rag).

to find the essay on the nyt go here.

p.s. and those who have seen black swan may find the following clip hilarious. I do at least. It's nice to be reminded that jim carrey can still be funny.

the pizza club

2011-01-06T20:15:00.000-08:00

and because I love pizza so much, I have started the pizza club, to meet and bring together other pizza monsters like me who live in the city of new york. so if you are a new yorker who likes talking about pizza and eating pizza, join my pizza club!!! x

coming soon...

2011-01-04T20:47:00.001-08:00

the pizza club.

jendar's thoughts on 2011

2011-01-03T19:14:00.000-08:00

happy new year my little monsters! I hope all of you enjoyed your holidays. I got back from florida a few days ago and although I was extremely sad to leave my family and the sun, it's also nice to be back. just in case you are wondering, I am very excited for 2011. I think it will be a good year. I can feel it. while in Florida I had plenty of time to analyze last year and think about my goals for this upcoming year. the past few years, I always had a main idea of what I would be doing and where I would be that year. for example in 2006, I knew I would spend the whole year as a missionary for my church. in 2007, I would be coming back from my mission and would finish my undergraduate degree. in 2008, I would finish my bachelors degree and go somewhere for grad school. in 2009, I would be getting my master's degree at nyu and would move to Italy for a little while to intern at a museum. in 2010, I would write my master's thesis, graduate, freak out about graduating, be unemployed for a while and then find a job. in 2011, I am not so sure. hopefully I will still be working at my current job and will be going to Ukraine for my good friend's wedding in june but other than that, I have no idea what else will happen. will I still be in nyc? will I get a dog? will james franco finally realize that we are meant to be together? will I continue making secret music? I don't know guys. but you know what? that's totally fine. I remember how during my grad school graduation I felt like I could do anything. I almost screamed: " this is for you 1st grade teacher who told my dad that I had a learning disability! take this biatch!" so I am not sure what florida did to me, but I came back feeling like I can do whatever I want in 2011. and I will biatches. I definitely will. but also while in florida I realized a few more other things.

nyc can be brutal on people emotionally, spiritually,financially, etc. It's very easy to loose focus in a city where everyone is super busy, where most people put way too much effort on appearances, and where is so easy to feel invisible among the crowds. when I first moved out here, I was so fascinated by the energy, the music, the art and pretty much everything this city has to offer. I often get caught up in my own little nyc world and when I do, the worst of me comes out. spending time with my sister ( who is seriously one of the most amazing human beings I know), having my one year old twin nieces wake me up every morning, etc., had such a great effect on me. I've been reminded of the importance of relationships. although I am super goal driven and there are so many things I want to do in this life, ultimately what I want to do the most is develop strong relationships with my family and others, and someday have my own little family of course. my mom has always said that the two things I can take with me when I die are 1. knowledge. 2. relationships. so although I am unsure about what will be happening in 2011, I do know that I want to build better relationships with those around me. I also want to continue growing intellectually and spiritually as much as I can. so anyway, I am excited for 2011. you should be too. x

p.s. those who had a hard time in 2010 and who are not offended by the f word may enjoy this post.

role model

2010-12-29T20:25:00.000-08:00

i've never thought of myself as a role model until my sister sent me this picture of my 13 year old niece alejandra trying to look just like her favorite aunt...

p.s. still stranded in florida but loving it. maybe some day i'll come back to nyc.

somewhere

2010-12-27T17:28:00.000-08:00

sofia coppola+music by Phoenix=

if anyone is interested in watching this movie let me know. x

floridian christmas

2010-12-26T21:12:00.000-08:00

contrary to many of you, I don't believe in white christmases. while growing up in the p.r., every year my family would spend christmas break at an apartment right across the beach. so for me christmas is synonymous to warm weather, sand, swimming, rice and beans, spanish, family, etc. although I was not able to make it to my little island this year (trop cher!) for the holidays, I did go visit my sister Dioni and her family in ft. lauderdale. these past few months have been kind of hard for me and spending time with some of my favorite people at such a beautiful place was exactly what I needed. x

i'm in love...

p.s. thank you snow storm for allowing me to stay in florida a few more days.

feliz navidad

2010-12-25T07:55:00.000-08:00

wishing you a cozy christmas with your favorite people. as for me, I will be at the beach with la familia. x

43 years ago...

2010-12-23T07:46:00.000-08:00

these two beautiful people got married...

and since then they have brought a few more beautiful people to this world...

(c. 2007)

feliz aniversario #43 mami y papi! x

dear mr. darren aronofsky,

2010-12-22T22:48:00.000-08:00

thanks for totally ruining ballet for me.

sincerely yours,

jendar