28 June 2009

Great Parisian Adventure


I've been watching a lot of French cinema lately, don't ask me why. I think my obsession with things French is a result of my frustration with all things New Jersey. The more time I spend here, the more time I spend wishing I was as far away as possible.

On that note, can someone send me to yoga camp, too? I miss Kyle.

24 June 2009

Great American Adventure

Just returned from Detroit, where I accompanied my granny on a trip to visit a childhood love of hers who is terminally ill. It would have all been so romantic had I not spent the majority of a trip in a very real, very un-romantic hospital. Old people are a drag (when they're not absolutely crazy, which is how I'd prefer to turn out).

In any case, the only place worth going in Detroit (aside from Bell Isle, which is not in Detroit at all but is instead in a kind of Canada/U.S. purgatory that made my cell phone blink "International!"), is Motown, pictured above (taken from Flickr). Detroit is distinctly depressing and profoundly abandoned. I've never seen so many derelict buildings. I'll only ever visit again via Motown tunes on my iPod, I've decided.

14 June 2009

small wonders

I should not, but do, take pleasure in the fact that you are getting fat.

Munchies, perhaps?

11 June 2009

Black, Heavy, Bold, Medium, Roman


This is an amazing documentary about the conceptual development and evolution of the world's most ubiquitous type face, Helvetica. You'd be surprised how often you see it (especially in New York) and how often it surrounds you completely unnoticed. Maybe only worth the hour and a half if you're a complete design/aesthetics freak, but definitely entertaining.

I'll never forget the conversation I had with my dad at around 6 when I told him I wanted to be an artist. His response was, of course, being my dad, that I should be an architect instead because that is where "the money is." As much as I love and appreciate good architecture (as it is an extension of my general appreciation for good design of all kinds) more and more each day I find myself wanting to study graphic design and learn to design on a smaller scale. A part of me even wishes I went to art school. And then I remember the kinds of kids that go to art school and I renege. But in any case, if I do ever end up at grad school, it will not be for a degree in architecture.

10 June 2009

tea & self-pity

Back from a stint as a wandering job-hunter in the city, I realize now that perhaps I do need to spend the month of June in New Jersey at home and return to Gotham in July. It's a tough realization to come to only because I do miss New York so much and I hate feeling as though I'm not making any kind of productive use of, well, myself at the moment.

Went to several small cafés, tea shops, and bakeries in both Manhattan and Brooklyn (including a wine bar/restaurant a lá Max Café) for both meals and to drop my résumé off. Kyle, always the gentleman, accompanied me. I guess it all boils down to my desire to get out from inside the nest and out into the world. After all, I'm (almost) 20. =)

p.s. the American Apparel casting was like a hipster cattle corral/absolutely and hilariously ridiculous.

06 June 2009

capitalism done right


the title of this post is the line I intend to use when the folks at American Apparel ask me why I want to work there. Rather than saying, of course, that I'm a struggling art history student with bills to pay and moderately expensive taste in sweaters. Thoughts?

In other news on capitalism, I found this extremely entertaining.

02 June 2009

"the summer is young"

The title of this post is from the end of a friend's most recent post on her own blog, Margin Notes (link to the right). Her writing's always evocative, but for whatever reason that phrase really stuck: the summer is young.

The summer, after all, is young- at least for the next three months, until it isn't anymore. And I still don't have any concrete plan as of this very moment, as I sit here writing this and "the summer is young" is what I keep telling myself. But I'm going to wake up and it will be August 31st and I'll be saying, "where did the summer go?" The odd old couple that lives in the violently purple house beside my family's own muted, yellow one was also most likely, at some point, in the habit of telling themselves that the summer, their relationship, their eldest daughter (now in her 40s) was "young." And then, suddenly, none of it is. It's just a striking notion, that time moves in such a way that seems so ample from a distance. I have all of my life ahead of me and these are the days of my youth, sure, but they're numbered. And I think I like it that way. Or I will at least until I'm not young anymore either...

I say all of this to say that I need to get the hell off my ass and do something with my summer. But also to remember that sure, the summer is young on the second of June but'll be no spring chicken come just a couple of months from now.