“Natural Beauty” is storytelling that is unafraid of speaking truth. Smart and poignant and tender and terrifying. An engrossing portrait of music’s inescapable power, immigrant families, and a daughter seeking and recognizing the beauty in herself in a world filled with such deep ugliness.

Oh Shane Gillis, when will you ever learn? one of the most unfunny monologues I’ve ever come across in my lifetime. going from fat jokes to anti-queer jokes, saying that women dress like “whores” when they’re at the gym to then “you’re either gay or you’re Hitler”.

I wrote about the Cornell case and spoke to a survivor of fraternity SA at UCLA, Zoe Doe. lataco.com/college-univ...

Opinion: College Campuses Were Built to Protect Abusers, Not Victims ~ L.A. TACO

Meet Zoe Doe, a UCLA student who knows firsthand how easily fraternities can "cover up" sexual assaults.

lataco.com

I aspire to continue to dress as myself the way Anne Carson herself does. simply fly as fuck.

I can’t decide which is worse, coming up against the limitations of their souls or the limitations of my love. —Ling Ling Huang, “Natural Beauty”

If you are in Los Angeles, CA, or in Brooklyn, NY, and you go to Canyon Coffee to spend your money there, you might want to reconsider ever visiting there again. A Black woman just shared that she was 🍇ed a few months ago by the Echo Park location owner.

time to start purchasing and saving physical copies of your favorite art. and also, to redirect our time & money & energy away from whatever they are about to do now that the deal has been sealed.

Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 6d ago

Paramount has closed its $81 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, creating “Skydance”

More than 500 U.S. citizens have been detained by ICE, according to ProPublica. 70% of ICE detainees have no criminal conviction. Trump’s promise to go after the “worst of the worst” was always a lie. It was always a pretext to terrorize Black and brown communities. Remember this.

More Than 500 U.S. Citizens Have Been Detained, Including Handcuffed or Held at Gunpoint, in Trump’s Immigration Crackdown — ProPublica

The government doesn’t track how often immigration officers detain U.S. citizens. So ProPublica did. We’ve found more th

projects.propublica.org

I find it interesting that some people have said that he has no idea what he’s saying, and that he’s simply saying random shit for the sake of shock value. It is that AND also the opposite; he knows exactly what he’s doing, and is fooling you into thinking he’s not. That is fascism itself.

If this sick pervert of a president insists that places like Los Angeles and San Diego be taken down, I’d like to see him himself try. because I guarantee and know we will fuck him up spectacularly, and he will cry about it. I am eager for the day he rots in piss.

revisited a queer masterpiece. 💙💜🦋

A tender, generous, and deeply wise book. A moving ode to womanhood, friendship, writing, and women carving out the paths for them to live the lives they seek out to be in, live in, and breathe in.

So many different kinds of exhaustion, and they're all so exhausting. I would say when does this end but it doesn't. So many different kinds of exhaustion. I would say when does this end but it doesn't. So many different kinds of exhaustion.

this had me chuckled the first time reading this. and, it also makes sense of how we’ve gone from the idea that any two women being friends are automatically deemed queer to the 21st century rendition of this, in the phrase that men like to throw at known as “girl’s girl”. my, what idiots we are.

I’m walking my way to my job on Hollywood Boulevard, and I look across from me, I see and hear a Black woman was singing her heart out to “Amor Prohibido”. It warms my heart to know that Selena’s memory has never left. She’s loved and respected and admired by so many people. We don’t play about her.

thee Zora Neale Hurston. an extraordinary life lived in spite of the world never giving her her flowers. 💐 “A Life Of One’s Own”, Joanna Biggs (Ecco, 2023)

—but you can’t be a prisoner to your ideals if you discover they don’t make you happy. Joanna Biggs, “A Life Of One’s Own”

Dana Johnson has done it again for me. The stories in “Break Any Woman Down” are simply spectacular. Compelling and tender and nuanced and funny and sharp and downright engrossing. One of my new favorite collections by one of my favorite writers. She is Los Angeles and Los Angeles is her.

Learning that Candace Owens, the same Candace Owens who wore a hoodie sweater with the line “White Lives Matter” written on the back, having had past relationships with women is hilarious. and the hair is in no way helping her hide that.

I’m still in the feels of it all, and that’s how I know and acknowledge that I am witness in the presence of art that moves and shifts how we consider humanity itself even further. an incredible film that carries so much heart and truth, genuinely loving & incredibly tender at best. Go see it!

Congratulations to the brilliant Layli Long Soldier on being a 2026 MacArthur Fellow. If you haven’t read “WHEREAS”, you must.

“Television” is a formidable debút, and life itself is like the best television you’ve come across. Funny, insightful, very seductive and very smart, firm in its own assertion, and one of the realest depictions of Hollywood & contemporary Los Angeles I’ve come across.

This may sound pretty concerning to some people when I say this: in a world where the rich continue to be rich and the working class & poor (as in many of us) continue finding ourselves “working” our way out of the possibility of being impoverished, I’d rather be broke and unhoused than be gaslit.

I mean, how do you share a place, even with yourself? —Lauren Rothery, “Television”

As someone who is not from the state of Mississippi and not from the U.S South, I’ve noticed that on social media that people have come to say that they hate Mississippi. As a non-Southern person, I cannot say that I despise Mississippi simply because I do not know much about the state and place.

I love the many ways Solange expresses her sense of freedom. Whether it’s music, song, dance, friendship, kin, joy, childlikeness, femininity etc…, we can all learn a thing or two about how we can be our own free selves through Solange. She’s an ethereal musician and woman.

Beyonce Solange Hair Flip

ALT: Beyonce Solange Hair Flip

static.klipy.com

I am reminded of a certain saying of sorts: when one has money and privilege and power, it can make you become something that you know you’re not, and you end up making some really ill-fitted decisions, some that will affect others and most especially yourself.

In grave, seriously unbelievable times, whenever I need the presence of art, wherever I seek the strength that art brings and does, I am grateful and blessed to be living and breathing in the same breath as Hilton Als, writer and art connoisseur and fabulous human spirit.

The stories in “The World With Its Mouth Open” are tender, poignant, funny, quietly radiant, and fully humane. So much uncertainty and so much grief, yet these characters still manage to figure out how to continue living and build memories and seek connection, in the face of war, violence and loss.

It is wild that some of you are completely content with genocide, fascism, homophobia, misogyny, and white supremacy more so than you rather combating against it. and it shows. it’s such a mindfuck, one that you did to yourself which then fucks everybody up.