He may be no Banksy, but I sure love my Dickchicken:
Pussy Ham, not so much.
Can you believe there’s actually an anti-Dickchicken Facebook group? Who could possibly be annoyed by this?!
Monthly Archives: April 2010
5 Ways My Kindle Surprised Me
Now that the iPad has been released, several people have asked me if I wish I would’ve waited another week to buy my Kindle.
And my answer is always, “Are you kidding?” The iPad is great-looking and probably fun to use, but it’s not an e-reader. The Kindle is actually everything I hoped it’d be and more, for half the price of even the cheapest iPad (and almost $600 cheaper than the most expensive one). I feel like I didn’t know half of what it was capable of before I bought it, and I wouldn’t have hesitated as long as I did had I known what I was in store for.
• Built-In Dictionary: A small button on the front acts as a mouse that allows you to scroll around pages. When you rest the cursor beside any word, a text bubble pops up at the bottom of the page with the definition. I always thought I was a smartypants who was soooo good at figuring out words from their context clues, but it turns out that no, no, I am not.
• Free Wireless 3G Internet Access: Why is this not the main point they’re using to sell the Kindle other than, you know, the whole being-able-to-read-books-on-it thing? The Amazon store is of course built right in, but Google and Wikipedia searches are, too, and I was even able to view this very blog on it. It was the text version, like you might see on a BlackBerry, but still. Dedicated wireless!
• Highlighting and Notes: I used to carry around miniature sticky notes to plop down all over my book pages, but the Kindle not only lets you highlight the text itself, it also lets you type notes on the page you’re reading. It collects your highlights and notes in a file that lists them and includes a small excerpt from each one so you can find what you’re looking for at a glance. When you plug your Kindle into your computer’s USB port, you can copy the file from your Kindle to your computer and edit it from there. GENIUS.
• Text-to-Speech: Yeah, it reads to you. I’m not talking about playing audiobooks on it. I’m talking about a male or female voice (that’s not too robotic) that recites the text for you while you eat a sandwich with one hand and wipe your butt with the other. I will never use this, but I’m pleased with its existence nonetheless.
• MP3s: It plays them. While you read, on the subway, with the gangster-looking guy next to you listening to some sappy Beyoncé that you can be so thankful you don’t have to hear.
I don’t need a free hand on the train to flip the page, I don’t have to lug five paperbacks on the plane with me every time I visit my family, and I can catch up on (for free!) all of the classics I should’ve read in college but was too busy being a band groupie to take time for.
There’s one negative: the Kindle can read PDFs, but it can’t read them as well as the ebooks you buy from Amazon.com. Meaning that you can’t highlight or write notes in them. NOT A FAN. Luckily, there’s a free program called MobiPocket Creator that lets you convert your PDFs into a format the Kindle likes and can highlight/notate.
Of course, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, and all of these things were clear to everyone else. Anyway, are you convinced yet?
Million Dollar Quartet on Broadway
Filed under living in new york is neat, music is my boyfriend
Tagged as living in new york is neat, music is my boyfriend, times square
Tagged as living in new york is neat, music is my boyfriend, times square
My friend Alison works for a concierge company that books activities for clueless NYC tourists. Because she spends so much of her day recommending Broadway shows and selling expensive dinners, she’s constantly being wooed by theatres and restaurants. Last week, she let me be wooed with her.
We met at an Upper East Side restaurant for fried hors d’oeuvres that I couldn’t eat because I was trying to play it cool on the calories before my impending trip to Ohio to see my family. (Every time I lose five pounds, my great-aunt, godloveher, likes to hug me and tell me how she and my great-uncle were so worried I’d end up “round-shouldered” and alone.) Afterward, we boarded a shiny new tour bus to take us the twenty blocks down Broadway to the theatre district, and I had to look on as Alison ate a Magnolia Bakery cupcake:
I’m not really up on my Broadway, so I hadn’t heard of Million Dollar Quartet and honestly wasn’t expecting much from it. Especially when the theatre where it was playing, the Nederlander, was one of the tiniest I’ve been in. Of course crap doesn’t make it to Broadway, though, and the size of the theatre made it so that our front-row mezzanine seats were approximately a foot from the stage.
The musical revolves around the night in 1956 when Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis all came together in Memphis to record an impromptu jam session. It’s really a musical for people who don’t like musicals, because it actually makes sense when the actors break into song. And there’s nothing cheesy about the music or lyrics; it feels like you’re at a rock concert, only you don’t have to put up with any deafening 1950s-era Elvis fans.
All of the performances were spot-on, but Johnny Cash blew our minds with how close his voice sounded. And at the end, when I thought, “Okay, this has been nice, but there’s nothing they can do at the end that’ll surprise me,” they totally gave me chills with something as simple as taking a picture. You’ll understand it when you see it. And you should see it.
You should also wait outside after the show like we did and happen to run into Elvis. And when he tells you he’s on his way to dinner like he did with us, remind him to stay away from the fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches lest he die an early death.
This is Not a Game of Dress-Up
Kamran said he was going to buy me his glasses for my birthday last year, but then he bought me a Wii instead, so I had to resort to getting myself cheap plastic ones from my local teenybopper store:
Please host 80s-themed events and invite me so I have an excuse to wear them and jump into the foreground of every photo you try to take of yourself and your real friends.
