Spotted in the Ohio Union at THE Ohio State University during my cousin’s swanky vet school graduation party.
by Jeff Hersey and Robert Swanson
Needed for my apartment. Immediately.
Category Archives: stuff i like
Ohio in License Plates
by Jeff Hersey and Robert Swanson
A Pathetic Attempt to Regain Your Love After a Week of Absence
Between recovering from the Hamptons and getting ready to leave for Ohio tomorrow night, I don’t know if I’m going to have time to blog. Ever again.
Or at least this week.
Instead, here’s a set of wildly off-kilter skits and songs by the I’m-not-sure-if-he’s-actually-retarded-or-not YouTube sensation Julian Smith, whom my friend Chantee introduced us to one night in the Hamptons while we were busy holing up indoors, trying not to get Long-Island-serial-killed:
These are listed in order of awesomeness. So don’t skip around, ya jerk.
I Have a New Camera! And Apparently I’m Now a Nikon Person.
Before I bought my Canon S90 a year and a half ago, I thought long and hard about getting a DSLR. On one hand, I knew that a compact camera, all-manual functions and 3200 ISO availability or not, simply wasn’t going to take the best-quality photos because of its tiny lens. But on the other hand, I knew I wasn’t going to lug around four pounds of camera every day, and not having a camera with me at all times is not an option.
So I bought the S90 and have loved every moment with it; it’s forever impressing me with pictures like this and this. But no matter what photographers tell me, I still think owning a really great camera is half the battle, so I wrote $900 into my budget this year for a DSLR and figured I’d be able to afford it after Christmas if I didn’t blow my wad on more cat butt magnets for my cousin.
But then Kamran offered to buy one for me right away! My attachment to my Canon made me think that I was a Canon person, despite having loved a Sony before that and an HP of all things before that, so I almost immediately settled on the Canon EOS Rebel T3i. I read all about the differences between the T2i and T3i, looked at sample pictures from the Canon line, thought about the lenses I’d put on my birthday list this year, and pictured myself having a whole family full of expensiver and expensiver Canon cameras.
But then, on a total whim, I happened to find Snapsort, a site that compares cameras side-by-side. And it turns out that almost everything about the Nikon D5100 beat the Canon. And then I found a site that showed the same scene shot by the two different cameras, and I just plain liked the way the Nikon photos looked more: the colors were more realistic, and everything was just a little more crisp. Every review I read said that the biggest part of being a Canon or a Nikon person was just liking the way one or the other felt in your hands, but since I like the way all cameras feel, I just went for it and asked Kamran to get me the glorious Nikon D5100.
And I love it! I haven’t, you know, taken any actual photos with it yet, but it feels so fine in my hands, like it was molded just for them. Now if only I can get over the fact that Ashton Kutcher is the Nikon spokeman.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly, Incredibly Close
Filed under living in new york is neat, narcissism, readin' and writin', stuff i like, there's a difference between films and movies
Tagged as living in new york is neat, narcissism, readin' and writin', stuff i like, there's a difference between films and movies
Tagged as living in new york is neat, narcissism, readin' and writin', stuff i like, there's a difference between films and movies
I got to Kamran’s apartment after work yesterday to find these signs taped in front of his building:
I know it really steps on a lot of people’s toes to say things like this, but I really feel like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close means more to me than it does to anyone else.
Okay, maybe it means more to one other person. And maybe it means just as much to you. But it means a lot–a lot–to me.
I read it just after I started working at Barnes & Noble in December of 2005. I had lived here for just over five months and was, as I’ve previously embarrassingly admitted–crying all over the damned city. And of course the book is about walking all over the damned city. I missed my dead mom, and Oscar was trying to find a piece of his dead dad. I knew I was being manipulated by cutesy phrases like heavy boots, but I felt like my own boots were dragging me into the concrete, so I didn’t care.
My then-boyfriend kept asking me why I was reading this book that would make me cry two minutes after I sat down with it, but it was too beautiful to put aside. Ability to produce continual, pathetic tears or not, a well-written book still eases my mind. I haven’t been able to touch it since, and my copy sits on my bookshelf still tabbed with sticky notes on every other page to mark my favourite spots. And I’ll never forget the way the pages leading up to the end just fly by, building up to the climax so much that I felt like I could actually hear a trumpet fanfare in my head. Apparently this is something that happens to me with books I really, really love, because I remember it with my very favourite book, Dandelion Wine, and one of my other Top Fives, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
So it seems really meaningful somehow that the movie version of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is taping right outside of Kamran’s apartment tomorrow. I feel like I should take off work to watch. I feel like I should have desperately tried to become an extra. I feel like I should rush the set and try to talk about the book with Tom Hanks.
But I doubt it means as much to him as it does to me.
In your FACE, Hanks.
This Business of Art
It’s weird to think of yourself as a totally diversified human being with wildly varied tastes and then to realize one day that all of the art you like looks exactly the same:
Camille Rose Garcia
Mark Ryden
Khuan + Ktron
Sami Viljanto
Tim Biskup
I should either be ashamed to be so small-minded or pleased to have an aesthetic.
