Dude You're Getting' a Dell

Last night at our holiday party at Tortilla Flats, we encountered a celebrity of the past.... Some of you may remember the "Dude you're gettin' a Dell" guy. He was the stoner persona that represented the younger generation of the Dell market. During the height of the campaign in 2003, he was arrested and charged for buying a bag of weed in NYC; it was a huge scandal all over the news. Dell thought he should not be a living example of his on screen persona and dropped him from the campaign. Anyway, he works and hangs out at Tortilla Flats in the Meat packing district. My lucky co-worker can now say she got asked out by the "Dell dude"!

Poconos and horses

Thanksgiving in the Poconos was ultimate relaxation. I was hoping to snowboard but the mountains were bare. However a nearby stable offering horseback riding allowed us to visit their four legged friends. The last 2 rows of photos are 3 ponies eager for attention, the horse up top thought we had food hidden in our palms, he was moving his lips more rapidly than Mr. Ed... Nature is always better when you live in a dirty city.

UFC in Jersey

How appropriate, let's make sure all the meatheads stay where they belong. I can say that because I went to UFC 78 Validation and am advid fan, but don't consider myself to be in the meathead category. I'm sure they would have had it in New York but NY law does not sanction the sport. It was a fun time and this was my first time at a fight so i was weary of who would be attending. I've only seen the fans on tv, veins popping out of their foreheads and screaming like rabid animals. But despite my discriminations, everyone seemed very civilized. It made me realize that the spectators actually view Ultimate Fighting as a highly trained sport that uses a good deal of strategy and skill, rather than sole brute force. With the exception of almost getting in to a fight with a couple of knuckle-heads standing in line, it was a grand night of intellect, discussion, brewskis and blood.

If you happened to catch UFC 78 on pay per view, you probably missed the most exciting fights, the prelims. I'm not going to talk about the fights, but the main event (Rashad Evans vs. Michael Bisping) was somewhat boring, Evans winning by split decision, and the main undercard (Houston Alexander vs. Thiago Silva), was totally disappoining, Silva winning by premature stoppage. If you want to read about all the fights in depth, go to here (mmamania.com) it's a great blog all about UFC/MMA.

Iphone love

Just got an iphone and I can't believe how much it rocks. Now I'll be
able to post via mobile, not that I couldn't before. But now I seem
more compelled to. Design, functionality and overall coolness factor
gets me really amped. It's not perfect yet, there are a few
drawbacks, some with at&t and some w/ apple, but hopefully that'll be
resolved with future updates. Advice to those on the fence, don't wait
it's totally worth it, esp for the price.

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Sent from my iphone bitches

Do you have Wacom Claw hand?

If you feel like you're getting the claw hand from holding the frickin' wacom pen too long. I've just invented a new attachment which will remedy that. All you need is a plastic easter egg, an exacto knife and some tape. It takes a little bit of time to get use to it, but trust me, it totally helps with the claw-hand. Depending on how big your hand is you may want to put the big end of the egg on the bottom instead of the small end (as pictured). I flipped the egg b/c it fit my hand better. Try it out, it may help!

Future of web design

Went to the future of web design conference yesterday. Overall i give it a 2 out of 5. The majority of the speakers sucked. I don't know if it had anything to do with the terrible sound problems or the fact that we couldn't see any one's presentation. Who'd ever think that there would be a problem with seeing screen projections in a room made up of windows? FYI (to the conference), learn from the movie theater people, they seem to know what they're doing.... Anyway the conference was not a total lost. There were a few good speakers to mention of, Joshua Davis (programable flash design), Jina Bolton (future of CSS3), John Snook (Ajax), Jeffery Kalmikoff (threadlist - teeshirt design community) all gave good presentations and interesting insights about web design and where it's going. I have to say though, it's good to go to these kind of events and see & hear from industry leaders. It sparks ideas and inspiration for your own work. If anything it's at least a motivational boost.

Here's a cool screenshot from Joshua Davis's presentation. It's a flash app that creates a picture of Chuck Close's face with wiggling worms:

It's a cold day in....

I officially took my winter clothing out of storage today. Sigh.

Is this a hoax?

Please let me know if you know of anyone who might be interested!

Scott rescued 6 black lab (mix) puppies out of the middle of the road on Saturday. PLEASE help me find them homes - otherwise, it's Animal Control - which means they only have 5 days. We've bathed them, sprayed them for fleas and wormed them....but we can't keep them. They are currently in a kennel in my basement since I don't have a fence. I've lost count of the number of rescue groups that I've contacted, only to be turned down due to no room. Please check with every dog person you know to see if they need a puppy.

Suzanne Spence
sspence82@gmail.com

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This morning my coworker forwarded me this email. Like a good samaritan I forwarded it on to my friend, asking him if he wanted to adopt any of these adorable pups, hoping to keep them out of the doggy gas chamber. A couple of hours had past and the friend who I had initially informed., told me that his coworker showed him the exact same email. Apparently this email had spread extremely fast. As somewhat of a joke I said, "It's a hoax!!!", wondering who would abandon a litter of black Labs on the side of the road..... As a test, I asked another friend about this email and they got the exact same thing? HMMMM, I can't believe how fast this spread., but he apparently called for the puppies and told that they were gone., So maybe it was real. But I still have my suspicions.

Mini-Kiss

As promised I found mini-Kiss. However they are much bigger (in popularity) than mini-MJ, because they actually do ticketed shows, you can't find them in the subways. This performance is from the Jimmy Kimmel show. I love it at the end when Jimmy ask mini-gene if they ever do other impersonations like The Village People and mini-gene answers "no we want girls man!"

I just found another mini-sensation, mini-Britney! It's so awful I'm not posting it on my blog, but will give you the link. Here it is.

Mini Michael Jackson

About 1 & 1/2 years ago I encountered a Mini Michael Jackson in the Union Square subway. He's probably about 3 feet in height, has perfected the dance movements of MJ, and has even added some 21st century flare to it. Just to get this out of the way, this mini impersonator is not a child prodigy but a little person, if that's the correct term. This Friday, deep in the Times Square subway station, I was blessed to receive another random encounter with this pint sized moon-walker. Luckily i had my trusty camera and videoed his performance of Beat It. This weekend I shared my video with some friends and was made aware that mini-MJ is not the only mini impersonator to entertain the bowels of NYC. Somewhere, there is mini-Kiss, and apparently the mini-Gene Simons has an extremely long mini tongue. I will be on the look out for them, so stay tuned.

A story of love, or a load of crap?

We've all seen the story about the surrogate cat that adopting abandoned puppies, the mother tiger taking in piglets as her own young, and the tortoise and hippo duo. Well here's another heart touching story about an orphaned monkey and his new found companion, which happens to be a pigeon. Ohh how convenient.... Common, now they're just insulting our intelligence! What's next an elephant with an ant-farm? What's gonna happen when the bird takes the monkey to side of cliff and tries to teach him to fly. I'll tell you what, dead-ass monkey! Yeah yeah, i'm sooo cruel. But this will never happen because the story is fake, made up by a bunch of con-artists from a zoo in china. Let me tell what really happened:
A hungry carnivorous chimp, perched up in tree, spotted a pigeon on the ground. He leaped off the branch at the pigeon with one thing mind, pigeon ala king. He obviously captured and killed the bird. Zoo keepers or maybe an onlooker caught everything on video. Instead of submitting it to When Animals Attack, this cleaver manipulator grabbed the still image of the exact moment when the monkey captured the pigeon. When taken out of context, it looks like the two are in an amorous embrace. Do you remember when the someone caught their dog and cat fighting in a room? But when they sent it out, it was written as love story. See pic below


Let's get real and stop encouraging these wannabe soap-opera writers. We need start seeing the true harsh reality of the wild kingdom. Let's bring back The Under Sea World of Jacque Cousteau, the Crocodile Hunter and other such shows. They are accurate! This on the other hand is fake, the Care Bears are fake, Rocky and Bullwinkle is fake. Let's remember that!

Baseball at Shea

This year the Amazings are in the running for the pennant. But the crowds at Shea were surprisingly low. I mean not incredibly low, but I got to move seats 3 times, eventually making it down to the near bottom. Going to the first level requires you showing your ticket to the ushers, making sure you really did pay for what you're getting. Here's a few pictures of the view. I didn't take a shot of our first seats in the upper deck, because it sucked so bad. But you can definitely see the difference between the last 2 seats. The crowds also get more rowdy as you get lower. I guess the real fans don't bother with shitty seats, and there's no sense in cheering when you nobody can hear you.

Cindy, an avid Mets fan, told me to eat the sausage and peppers, a Shea stadium classic. When your wash that down with your favorite beer and the Mets win, that's as close as you can get to perfection. Ohh yeah, the Mets beat the Atlanta Braves that night, 3-2.

Hezzy for Trapezy

Pier 40 on the west side hwy. offers trapeze lessons. Yesterday a bunch of us from the office went out there and had a swinging time.

Pacemaker

Attention all bedroom DJs!!! this will save you so much space you'll actually have room for a bed. I'm so overwhelmed about this technology that i can't even express my excitement. It's like the iphone for DJ's but better. Can you imagine fitting 2 turntables, 1 mixer and a crate of records in the palm of your hand? Well here it is. Beat matching, faders, filters, audio controls, and 120 gig hard drive! The only thing i didn't see was the ability to scratch, but i'm sure that will be available on the next software update. Check out the official website here, and pics of people trying it out here. It's suppose to be released this fall and no one seems to know what the pricing will be. I'm assuming it won't be that cheep.

Coolest site ever

The site EYE-PROJECT , takes video clips and pictures people post, then maps them out to create 1 big video or still image. Each video clip/picture that acts as a pixel, is posted by anyone along with a message. Ludicrous! this takes the Mona Lisa to the next level bitches!!! video creating video, luckily we have the bandwidth, but if you don't it'll take forever.

Type ring

Super cool type writer rings. It looks like a real type-ball from the electric typewriters. But if you look closely, it's not actually from the real type-balls. The letters are facing wrong way. The real ones would be flipped, reading backwards. That way when you punch someone in the face you'll be able to read the letters on their forehead correctly. This is the link to artist who created these.

Magic Wheel

Found this alternative to the scooter, it says you can go up to 20 mph on this thing but i don't know. Check out this page, for more details and a video which shows some losers riding around. I'm holding out for a mini-longboard skateboard.

Word of the day: Plethora

I love it when movies entertain us, while teaching us at the same time. The Three Amigos is a classic comedic flick with a plethora of insights.

Deutsch bank fire

I just so happened to be by the WTC site on Saturday at the same time of the Deutsch bank fire. There was a really bad burning plastic smell, and tons of tourist standing around watching. Two fire fighters died from carbon monoxide poisoning. I learned that the Deutsch bank building is in the process of being demolished, but has taken over 6 years because of all the asbestos contained in the structure. That morning, before the fire, my friend said to me that the weather felt oddly similar to the weather on 9-11.

070829

This is a screen shot from a website called 070829 . See if you can figure it out, maybe there's nothing to figure out.

Contemplate, Belgium brewskis

So I'm continuing on my Belgium brew hunt, diving in sippy-straw first to the world of holy, yeast free beers. According to local folklore, all the beers in Belgium are brewed at the mountainous monasteries by the monks themselves. Also, another fact that hasn't been thoroughly checked out is, the air around the monasteries contains enough yeast that there is none added in the brewing process. HMMMMM or YUMMMM? Well I have always been fond of Leffe beer available at the higher class delis. But recently a local bar called Valhala on 54th & 9th that serves around 30 beers on tap, including Chimay, Leffe, Rodenbach and few others that I can't remember, brought in a special beer on tap called Triple Karmeliet. It's a wonderfully refreshing beer with color similar to Leffe, a little more caramely in flavor but with much more depth. I'm no where close to being a food writer so using words like nutty, caramel, bouquet etc... is a bit foreign, so bare with me. Chris G. was the one who turned me on to Triple Karmeliet and opened my eyes to world of Belgium brew dogs. Last night I ate and drank at a wonderful little restaurant and bar called B. Cafe on 75th btw. 2nd/3rd, I think 'B' stands for Belgium but who knows, the owner's name might be Barney or Barnibus or Bart or Brian or Brice or Bailey or Benny or Basil or Bonnie or Benjamin or Biff. Thea recommended the Redbach Rodenbach, which was delicious! Similar to Lambic but much less sweet! Here's the entire selection of beers:

Draft Beers:
Stella Artois
Hoegaarden Wit Beer
Leffe Blonde
Leffe Dark
St. Bernardus A12

Amber Ales:
Kwak
Delirium Tremens
Kasteel Dark
Kasteel Gouden - Triple D'Or
Tripel Karmelict
De Koninck

Abbey Ales:
Grimbergen Blonde Ale
Grimbergen Brown
Corsendonk Abbey Brown Ale
St. Feuillien Triple Abbey Ale
Maredsous Dark
Maredsous Triple

Trappiste:
Chimay Blue
Chimay Red
Chimay Gold
Westmalle Trappist Ale
Orval
Trappistes Rochefort

High Percentage Alcohol Golden Ales:
La Chouffe Artissanal Belgian Golden Ale
Duvel Belgian Golden Ale

Fruit Beers:
Redbach Rodenbach Kissed by Cherries
Kriek Lambic Cherry Flavor
Gueuze Lambic
Cassis Lambic Black Currants Flavor

By the way the mussels and fries were the best i've ever tasted!!! No joke.
There are a few other Belgium bars that Thea recommended also, Vol De Nuit on W. 4th and Burp Cast in Astor place. Haven't gone to them yet but will report back when I do. By the way, most of the Belgium beers have a higher percentage of alcohol so having more than a few will kick you in the ass! Just like this one below.

kona

Over crowding

Living in NYC, we're use to herds of people in small cramped places. Just like this woman in Russia, who lives in a 2 bedroom apartment with 130 cats. It seems insane, but I guess it's all relative. Below the video is the human version of 130 cats in an apartment. It happen on Friday night at the Luna Lounge in Brooklyn.

We'll take off with this

Most of you probably know this, but you can watch helicopters take off and land on the westside hwy. yeah yeah, I'll reveal cooler stuff soon... weather permitting.

mid-end summer bike

Got a new bike! This one. And i'm just starting to realize that NYC from a biker's view is much different than a pedestrian's.

Scotch Tape Art

Robin sent me these pictures of some amazing tape sculptures. I'm not sure who does them, but they are fuckin cool!

Mercury F#%$in' Retrograde is upon us!

Yesterday my friend Mo said to me, "ok I want to get this done quickly because you know, Mercury Retrograde is starting tomorrow...."

"Hold on, what the hell is Mercury Retrograde?" I asked. To make a long story short Mercury (the planet) is in retrograde when it appears to be moving backward. So in essence it's not actually moving back but looks like it is, which is due to "the illusory planetary motion created by the orbital rotation of the earth, with relation to other planets in our solar system.

"Ok great, so what does that mean?" I will explain this by quoting Mo's email to me:

In Astrology, Mercury rules intellect, communication, perception, transportation, and shipping, as well as all moving parts within machines and electronics. When Mercury retrogrades, it is in resting state and not operating at full force. You will note delays and miscommunications, and you may also notice that you and others become forgetful or more "off" in judgment. Certain appliances, computers, electronic items, and other machines may suddenly show signs of wear and tear, and need repair. It's never a good time to make large purchases when Mercury is retrograde. Back up your computer to protect your data, and for now, put off installing new software.

If you are given a contract to sign, read through it very carefully, as it's likely that you will find clauses to change. Contracts signed while Mercury is retrograde never work out as planned. If you later decide to continue the relationship when the term is up, the deal would have to be renegotiated from top to bottom.

Here's the vital information

The Dates: June 15 - July 9 (yes it's that long....) You still may feel the affect a few day after the end date.

The good side:
It is definitely a very good period for some actions. No time is completely bad for anything, there is a reason in everything happens. The key is the reversed direction of movement: take any known Mercurian action, reverse its flow, consider the keywords "re-doing something", "double-checking", "finish the old projects" and there you are, you've found the good side of Mercury retrograde.

For instance, you may want to read again a book you particularly liked, a subject you studied before, meet and discuss with old friends you haven't met for a long time, travel to places you've already been to before.

This is an excellent time to work on old projects that never got to be finished. So, think about the things you started and never finalized.

Next, you might wish to prevent any bad things to happen to you: so double-check your agenda, call your business partners to confirm that everything goes as planned, have everything ready before the deadline and leave some extra time for unexpected events. Make copies of your important files and documents, save your work more often.

The other solution is to go on vacation or at least slow down the pace of your projects. You will find that going slowly during the Mercury retrograde period will spare you many efforts of redoing the same action that wasn't performed right the first time.

Above all, be generous and compassionate: you are already aware about the influence of this period, but the others aren't aware of it or there may be uncontrollable events. That's why you should have more diligence with the others and give them some more time. It'll be your mental health that you'll be sparing actually.

You don't have to obsess about this or let it rule your life for the next 3 - 1/2 weeks but just beware. As Mo said, "forewarned, forlorn." Just so you know got my first incident of Mercury Retrograde today. This email is a perfect example of miscommunication through machines.

SOFA show

I went to the SOFA (Sculpture Objects & Functional Art) show last weekend at the Armory, and even though it was disappointing, there were a few pieces that stood out from the rest. Here are the highlights. The last pic was Marissa's favorite piece. Feel free to write a comment/caption for it.