Urban Dictionary

Here's a short article I wrote for City newspaper on internet oddity, UrbanDictionary.com:
Read here, or below:

Think you're hip? Can you understand the mock conversation below?
Bob: Man, I have such a food baby! Djeetyat?
Jill: No. The cinemuck really turned my scrangina.
Bob: Shaw, it was skody! Let's globnick.
Jill: Sounds like a larf.
If you have no idea what Bob and Jill are discussing, then you obviously haven't been introduced to UrbanDictionary.com, an online community-edited slang dictionary. Started by Aaron Peckham in 2001, the website boasts more than 1 million entries, and almost 2,000 new ones are added each day. New entries are frequently repeats, and the site allows users to vote on entries (thumbs up or thumbs down) so that entries with higher ratings take prominence on the page.
Many of the words and phrases featured on UrbanDictionary.com are common sayings (like "cool"), some were derived from television, movies, or other pop-culture venues (and Urban Dictionary does its best to note the origins). Some entries are instances of offbeat vernacular, and at times, they are simply words made up by the site's users.
Most Gen-X and Gen-Y'ers will recognize terms like "drunk-dialing," defined by Urban Dictionary as making a phone call while inebriated to former flings, ex-boyfriends or girlfriends, or guys or girls that you want to hook up with; "shoulder surfing," looking over the shoulder(s) of a person with whom you are currently engaged in conversation to see if you can find someone better to talk to; or "rock star parking," the rare occurrence of obtaining a parking space directly outside the door of a bar, club, or restaurant.
But other words and expressions, like the ones used in the mock conversation above, are so new that they haven't yet made our everyday vocabulary. This is why Urban Dictionary's cultural role is twofold. It serves as a reference for individuals (and often businesses trying to market to younger, hip audiences). And as a continually updated database, it actually works to create new cultural expressions instead of being a mere reference for existing urban slang.
In the fall of 2005, Urban Dictionary expanded from just a website to a printed reference guide. The 352-page book contains only about 2,000 definitions from the website's massive collection. With online updates taking place daily, the book was outdated before it is even released. In other words, it is so five minutes ago.
Check it out at www.urbandictionary.com. It's da bomb.

Review of Carrie Mae Weems exhibit in Rochester

Read the review written for City newspaper in Rochester here, or below:

Many modern women are hesitant to admit that they are feminists. The term typically requires clarification via a string of qualifiers, given the myriad negative cultural connotations and a history defined by divided opinion. Identifying as a feminist is even trickier for the feminist artist, who is already positioned outside a world often reserved for the male genius, resulting in further categorization and placement in a marginalized position. Carrie Mae Weems, an internationally renowned female, African-American photographer who often bitingly confronts issues of gender and race in her artwork, is no stranger to this concept. In fact, Weems uses the complications inherent in being a female artist as fuel for her work, flipping stereotypes and playing on viewers' assumptions in order to usurp them.
Currently on display at the University of Rochester's Hartnett Gallery, All About Eve is a cross-section of Weems' work from 1990 to 2006 that directly confronts gender issues. The exhibition's title evokes a dual meaning: the 1950 film of the same name and the biblical Eve. The artwork in the exhibition mirrors the title's multifaceted meaning as well, containing pieces that force viewers to explore several different female identity constructs --- the virgin and the whore, the mother and the daughter, the seducer and the seduced, the passive object and the aggressive subject.
Working with Hartnett Gallery director Derek Rushton, Weems selected 19 works from six distinct series and arranged them in a way that utilizes the gallery's idiosyncratic shape. Situated within Wilson Commons --- an oddly shaped building designed by architect I.M. Pei --- the triangular gallery provides a challenge to both artists and curators, but Weems and Rushton successfully use the space so that it actually enhances the work's strengths.
The left wall of the gallery, covered in a Weems-designed black-and-white wallpaper featuring a recurring female figure, contains a triptych from the series The Shape of Things (1993), and six photographs from the series Not Manet's Type (1997). The right wall is filled with five images from Weems' Kitchen Table (1990) series and three photographs from the series Framed by Modernism (1999).
The cleverest use of the gallery's space is where Weems has situated the piece The Apple of Adam's Eye (1995), a fabric folding screen that cuts across the acute corner connecting the gallery's left and right walls. The crimson partition employs a silk-screened image of a woman, shrouded in a royal blue sheet, and gold embroidered text to retell the biblical story of Adam and Eve. The front side of the panel reads "She'd always been the apple of Adam's Eye," but it is on the reverse side, which requires viewers to "trespass" into a tight corner, where Weems has left the rest of her humorous retelling: "Temptation my ass, desire has its place, and besides, they were both doomed from the start."
In the piece itself, Weems merges her talent as a visual artist and her acerbic humor. By selecting its unconventional gallery positioning, the poignancy is actually augmented. Forcing viewers to squeeze between the wall and the partition to view the back part of the screen is risky --- some patrons may be too timid to navigate the tight area and others will feel awkward as they work their way into the confined corner --- but it's necessary, as it heightens the themes of trespass and negotiation of space that are so common in Weems' artwork.

These themes are more prevalent in Weems' newest work, a short video titled Italian Dreams (2006), which plays on a loop on the gallery's back wall. Weems' eye for evocative visuals is readily apparent in this new video; it's an admirable addition to her already remarkable body of work. In the video, Weems (often the subject in her artwork) walks, with her back to the camera, through the hallways and gardens of Cinecittà, the studio in Rome made famous by Federico Fellini. Weems has admitted a love/hate relationship with Fellini's work due to his overt denigration of women, and here she consciously carves out a place for herself --- and women --- in that history.

This premise is apparent in several of the works on display. In the series Not Manet's Type, a woman (Weems again) shifts around a room in front of a mirror, the subject of both her own gaze and the viewer's. The text accompanying one panel states, "It was clear I was not Manet's type. Picasso --- who had a way with women --- only used me and Duchamp never even considered me."
All About Eve is a modest, but worthy exhibition of Weems' work. The skillfully nuanced pieces, seemingly disparate at first, are linked together by recurring themes, and their careful placement within the space-conscious gallery serves to reinforce their subtext. In her award-winning career, Weems has not only reclaimed historical settings for herself and women, but she has also proven herself a significant artist --- no qualifiers necessary.
All About Eve through March 9 Hartnett Gallery, Room 201, Wilson Commons, University of Rochester's River Campus Gallery hours: Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, noon-6 p.m.