Crazy Cat Lady

seeeeee. everyone takes pictures with their cats. not just me. right? yay validationnnn



this last one's for nick:

i'm not so weird afterall!

Lemonade

description:
After a 37 year-old copywriter is laid off from a large ad-agency in 2008, he starts a blog for other unemployed ad professionals. Once the site launched, he decided to create a promotional video featuring the faces and stories of other laid-off execs.

Being in the ad industry, I had heard about this documentary a while ago but only just got around to watching it. It's only 35 minutes, very well put together, and super interesting. There were tons of layoffs within ad agencies during the past year/year and a half - I was fortunate enough to keep my job and escape the rounds. Or I at least think I was lucky? This documentary really portrays being laid off as a liberating experience, a push to start doing what you really want to do. And I've seen it within my own group of friends - during a few months in between jobs my friend Kevin who has always painted got back at it and now has a side business doing art (which is kicking ass), and my friend Misa started a delicious gourmet food truck and has been asked to cater Matt Groening's bday and the set of The Office.

I like my job, but the doc really made me question my ambitions and passions. I had a very different idea of how I would be taking over the world back in college - those all got put in (a sad, albeit less naive) place with the constricting realities of a 9-7 job, bills, limited PTO, etc. I definitely think I have less ambition than 3 years ago. What a depressing thing to have happened. eff.

But then again it doesn't have to be like that. This documentary although brilliant doesn't really tell you anything you haven't heard before. In fact, the core message - that you should do what you absolutely love - is old news. The last place you probably heard it was at your college commencement. Just look at Steve Job's speech to Stanford, or Conan's key note speech to Harvard. I'm pretty sure Karim said something similar at my commencement (although honestly the only thing I remember him saying was his parting words to rent the movie Airplane in which he stars. oh funnyman Karim). People kinda stop telling you inspirational things as you get older - Lemonade is like a mid-life commencement speech, reminding you that you're not stuck.

Visit the blog that started it all here.

MichMash Music: February pt 2

vampire weekend + jake gyllenhaal - tear away pants + tight short shorts = LOVESSSSS. the other cameos are coo too.

this is also one of my favs off contra, so i will declare it as the MichMash Music part 2 pick for February. enjoy!

dear google

you lookin good with those olympic shout outs. hot.

hugs and kisses,
michelle

modern love

urban outfitters apparently had a photo contest where couples submitted their best snapshot interpretation of "modern love". hipsters need them some lovin too.

Ensue: lots of lovahs. are you here without a lovah. i find the scolding waters of the hotttub are not unlike your first encounter with a new lovah. dave. dave. dave. DAVID. (hottub. gets me every time lolzz).

impressed by its woodstock oldschool feel (not technically modern but...) i like:


involves crafts, obviously i like:

i think this one won. sailor hat, so i like it, but i like the two above more.
more here at the UO site

"Woaaaaah! ... Devoured! That's... wrong"

best. mascot. ever.


halloween costume 2010??

Happy Chinese New Year & Valentines Day!

gong hai fat choi! year of the tiger!

and....


to see what why i love love, re:
Amanda video

and then go here:
www.sponsafier.com

congrats nicky, burnface and jayns!

Stop. collaborate and listen.

I've been on a stop motion kick. Two awesome stop motion shorts:


T-shirt War:


The PEN Story:



in other somewhat related news, I got my polaroid to start working again! woohoo, stop motion here i come. or should i say, next "STOP" = Motion!

(i'm lame, i know.)

tricia.

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

fantastic commercial. he makes me want to smell like him. and look in various directions.




shoutout to burnface for bringing this into my life

Truth.

“Google Wave was built to show younger people how older people feel when they try to use the Internet.”

thanks nick for bringing this quote into my life

MichMash Music: February

I've had the cd for a while but am slow, and have missed the whole Miike Snow boat.

... until NOW. liz put Animal on her PCD. The MMM (MichMash Music) song of the Month (of February) is (for now) Miike Snow: Cult Logic



And then i found this mash up (by my fav the hood internet) which i also like, but not as much as the normal version:


i'm actually more addicted to a different song, but i think i'm putting that one in my personal cd so it's under wraps for now. teehee!

Message in a Bottle

More like Tree in Bottle(s). loves!

MichMash Music: January

New feature: michelle's favorite song of the week/month. w00h00!

First up: Vampire Weekend - Diplomat's Son.
I couldn't find a video on youtube.... so in its place is my second favorite new VW song: Giving up the Gun

Living in the Shadows

works from artist kumy yamashita. she positions wood or metal in these seemingly random places, but in just the right light these crazy shadow people emerge.

Rule #2: Double Tap

totally a zombie.

also i just watched zombieland 3 times in the past 4 days. first time with nick, but he fell asleep so we watched it the next night with katie, but then katie left half way through to do work, so then there's me and katie now finishing up the movie. this being the third time i've seen it all the way through. that's a lot of zombies.

movie is great though. time to nut u or shut up. hell yeah. the adventureland dude is like a curly haired knock-off of michael cera, but still very entertaining. and woody is of course hilar.

also more zombieness for you:

(great song, ay ay ay in your head, stuck for the next day)

If we Mustard enough speed, we can Ketchup to them!

about time - heinz has come out with a new design for their single use ketchup packets. LOVE IT! it looks cute and it has two usage options: you can tear at the top and squeeze it out, or use it as a dipping dish if you rip at the bottom. this way you wont have to contaminate the ketchup by pouring it onto a napkin which inevitably leads to you eating some napkin fibers.

My Favorite Font Is Akzidenz Grotesk BE Light...

... what's yours?!

These two designers Matt Robinson Tom Wrigglesworth the ink usage of some commonly-used typefaces by hand drawing them with ballpoint pens.

they doodled away and ended up with this sweet bar chart with ink usage measured by... well, ink.
save pens. use garamond.

impact is unnecessary in ink usage and unnecessarily ugly.

original article here

Holy Hippogriff

as you know (re: Hogsmead, FL) harry potter land is opening in florida. i am very excited. more excited now that they released the first picture of hogwarts via VP of creative development's twitter:
it looks like a million feet big!! just like in real life - er... the book! but it's apparently "only" 15 stories high. looking effing amazing. or wondrous, as they would say in HP.

Last week there was an article in USA Today (which has a killer opening line: "Universal Orlando Resort honchos are keeping a veritable Invisibility Cloak over the landscape of the highly anticipated Wizarding World of Harry Potter.") which had this awesome augmented reality 3D feature thing. AR is when they have this coded thing and you hold it up to your computer's video cam and a whole other awesome image comes up. That may not have made sense, but the tutorial video here probably will:
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/wizarding-world-of-harry-potter-preview.htm
and you can read the rest of the article.

CANT WAIT TO FIND MY WAND AT OLLIVANDERS!

... i'm a dumbledork

Celebrity Collage by MyHeritage

MyHeritage: Celebrity Collage - Family pictures - Drawing a family tree

Kabooooom: Paul Octavious

thanks to smeggs aka lil segna for this find.

cool photography pieces by octavious. not sure, but it looks like the clouds are made from some sort of fiber or fabric? either way, crazy looking. wonder if i can replicate with a tap light and cotton ball...

Jumping on the Stupid Avatar Bandwagon

i didn't want to like the movie James Cameron is a little douchey/cocky and it was getting so much hype and things that get a lot of hype get me all bothered (re: Slumdog Millionaire.... it was good but come on it wasn't THAT great right) and theaters were crowded etc etc. so that coupled with the fact i was in egypt when the movie came out left me avatar-less until last night.

But turns out the movie was kick-ass, especially (or rather particularly) in terms of the 3D. was so amazing I didn't get nauseous or anything (ahem CORALINE ahem). Kinda curious to see what it would look like in IMAX... either way i concede and avatar gets a thumbs up from me. i will stop drinking the haterade.

Found works from roger dean, his stuff is what the world of Pandora was loosely based off of. Maybe not so much loosely. It's a weird mix of kinda looking like looney toons cartoon style and salvador dali, dont you think?




also awesome in the movie is how the forest would glow - reminded me of when i went to puerto rico and we took a night excursion to this lagoon where there was bioluminescent plankton. we swam around and as we moved it would agitate the planket and glow this awesome aqua/blue. really the coolest thing ever. that's where my favorite color came from.

this video is pretty much how it looked. just had to be careful not to duck your head underwater and accidentally swallow some plankton. i'm sure the water looked nast murky in the daylight. lets not think about that.