Twitter

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Stars and Spring

For the past few weeks, whenever I've been outside after dark, I've noticed two particularly bright celestial bodies in the heavens.  The seemed out of place to me, but I'm no expert in the star signs.  The only constellation I can easily identify is Orion, and often I can't find him in Los Angeles due the purple haze light pollution that prevents this city from ever really be "dark."  But still, two weirdly bright shining objects kept catching my eye.  



As it turns out, this year we are experiencing some unusual alignments in our night skies.  The bright spots catching my eyes are most likely Jupiter and Venus.  At various times this month, Mars, Mercury and Saturn will also all be visible.  As NPR eloquently states, if this happens 200 years ago it would surely be interpreted as an astral warning of foreboding things to come.

Yesterday (March 19) was Sun-Earth Day 2012, a NASA and ESA-originated series of educational and celebratory events around the world to raise awareness and appreciation for the way the sun effects life here on earth.  Today is the Vernal Equinox, during which our days and nights are closest to being equal lengths (but not exactly) and from here on out our days will be getting longer until the peak of summer.  

But these are annual events - for 2012 we will also be experiencing the Transit of Venus.  On June 5, we will experience a rare celestial alignment that will not occur again until 2117 - Venus will be visible to us when she moves across the sun during the early morning hours.  NASA has a great post on their website about the historical significance of this event with regards to human understanding of the cosmos.  From the Babylonians to Galileo to Capt. James Cook, this astronomical occurrence has landmarked many great scientific revelations.

But historical relevance and scientific curiosity aside, what amuses me most about this event is that on some inner level, I knew those two planets were new happenings in the night sky.  Even though I couldn't identify the North Star to save my life, either of the dippers, nor do I have any understand of how the celestial bodies change across the seasons and the year.  But some animal part of my brain knew something new was happening and kept forcing my eye to it.  This reminds me of our innate and often disregarded connection to the natural world around us.  I remember being a child and realizing that I could predict the rain by the way the tree leaves turned silver just before a storm (reaching their underbellies up for water, I was told) or smell the barometric pressure drop before a snow storm.  Since getting older and being more educated in photography, I now overtly notice the changes in light that occur different times of year and in different places in the world - the light in Den Haag in January is quite a bit different than the light in Kentucky in August.  Its nice to be reminded the world keeps turning around us and beautiful things keep happening, even when we're buried in worries and work, and that on some level nestled way deep down in our primate brains, we are still attuned to it.


Sunday, March 18, 2012

Neighborhood Culture Clash

Scenes from West Hollywood.  These flyers were right next to each other on my library counter yesterday.  I snagged the photos while the desk clerk called into the back to get a Russian speaker to assist the lady in line ahead of me.





Saturday, March 17, 2012

Blog Recommendation: Underground New York Public Library



Love this.  Every day, a candid photograph of an anonymous New York City public transportation passenger reading a book, plus the title and author.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Blog Recommendation: Lisa ist auf Welstreise



Please follow my friend and colleague, Lisa Hansen (late of Frankfurt, Germany, now citizen of the world) as she realizes a life long dream of spending a full year traveling around the world.  Her bravery and ingenuity in pursuing her own dreams has gone a bit towards inspiring me to realize one of my own this year.  Perhaps I will document that process as well, as I spend the next few months trying to make my own film, in a more grown-up professional way than I did ten years ago while in college when I was poverty-stricken and soaked in bottom shelf whiskey courtesy of one too many Nickel Nights.  We'll see.  In the mean time, subscribe to Lisa's RSS feed and observe as she jet sets across the planet.



Saturday, March 10, 2012

Girl Crush: Jennifer Westfeldt

Until "Friends with Kids" opened this week, Jennifer Westfeldt was better known as Jon Hamm's long-term girlfriend.  Well, that is since "Mad Men" debuted in 2007.  Pre-Don Draper, Jon Hamm was known (or unknown, really) as the long-term girlfriend of writer/actress Jennifer Westfeldt, who kicked around sitcom-land after debuting strong with her first indie feature in 2001, "Kissing Jessica Stein."    Which, as a side note, is streaming on Netflix right now, if you're curious.


Westfeldt directed this month's "Friends with Kids," a charming and small romantic comedy with an "I made this with my friends - who happen to be disturbingly talented and wonderful" vibe and an usually convincing central couple.  The female part of this couple is Westfeldt herself, who not only starred in and directed but also co-produced and wrote this feature film.  So even though I'm resoundingly anti-rom-com and this movie has been vetoed by many of my favorite film critics, I really enjoyed this movie and walked away with a ton of admiration for the 42-year-old independent filmmaker and actress, cutting her own quiet swath across such a male-dominated industry.  Who happens to be in a 15 year+ relationship with Jon Hamm.

Westfeldt's Biography - Wikipedia

Jennifer Westfeldt and Jon Hamm Give Birth (To a Movie) - New York Times Magazine

Jennifer Westfeldt Becomes a Triple Threat with "Friends with Kids" - Hollywood Reporter


Bonus Boy Crush: Chris O'Dowd.  First "Bridesmaids" and now "Friends with Kids."  Adorable = cornered.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Recipe: One Ingredient Ice Cream

This is old news on the blogosphere, but I just recently started making it myself so I can vouch for its ease and yumminess.  If you've got access to a food processor, you can make this.  



One Ingredient Ice Cream:
1 serving
1 banana, frozen

Toss your frozen banana (1 per serving) into a food processor and whir it around until it has the texture of soft serve ice cream.  This doesn't take long, and doesn't require any additional ingredients!  There is something about the fiber/fat content of the banana that makes it turn into a very creamy texture when frozen and blended.  Some recipes call for adding a tiny amount of milk-product, but this isn't required.  I have made this with and without almond milk and there isn't  a noticeable difference, except some liquid might make it blend faster.

I have made this several ways so far:
plain banana
banana & honey (if I had marshmallow I would have added some for an Elvis-inspired dish)
banana, almond butter & chocolate chips
banana, frozen mango, coconut flakes

Pretty much everything is delicious.  Plus, it's vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, high in nutrients, and depending on what you're adding to it, calorie-friendly, so it pretty much covers all dietary limitations you might run in to.  I think this would also be delicious with fresh fruit added.  The only requirement is that you need to like the flavor of banana ice cream, which not everyone does.  The flavor isn't overpowering, and I think the strength of it has to do with how ripe your bananas are, but adding some ingredients definitely lessens it.  


This is my new go-to solution for when the bananas are ripening faster than I can eat them.  Way easier and healthier than banana bread.  I am eating it for dessert right now but I think it would be great for a summer breakfast too.


Check out The Ktchn's entry about this hidden gem of a recipe for photos and additional instructions.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Blog Recommendation: TasteSpotting



I am getting most of my recipes these days from a website called TasteSpotting, which defines itself as a "community drive visual potluck."  Every day, dozens of new recipes pop up from every variety of food that you could possibly encounter with a brief description.  If you click on the photo, it takes you to the website that hosts the recipe.  It filters out great food from food blogs and newspapers and magazines all over the internet so you can scour most of the internet just by stopping on this site.  You can also key word search or sort by date, category or popularity.  I added it to my blog roll and just skim the daily upload of recipes when I'm looking over my blogs.  Anything I like, I click on and bookmark and eventually cook at some later date.  They also do theme days for holidays or ingredient days, and it's an interesting way to spot food trends.  When one ingredient or style of food keeps popping up repeatedly, you know its suddenly a hot (or seasonal) item.  If I'm ever posting some recipe that's got your mouth water, it's probably coming from this website.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

One Story


For my birthday this past December, Danielle gave me a gift subscription to a monthly literary "magazine" called One Story, and it has quickly become my favorite reason to check the mail.  It's only a magazine in the loosest sense, because it features one single story each issue and is published every three weeks.  The issue arrives in a tiny 5''x3'' soft covered pamphlet and is easily devoured one sitting with a cup of coffee, which I've taken to doing around the corner at my local bistro while warming myself to attempt some writing of my own.  The short story itself is a bit of a lost art, and I'm not sure that anyone outside of literary or academic spheres even reads them anymore.  As both of my parents are writers, I grew up around them, and was further intrigued by them when Francis Ford Coppola inaugurated his Zoetrope: All-Story when I was in high school.  Admittedly this was due more to movie-making fascination than short story fascination, but I grew up more aware of the short story as a storytelling means than the average person.  

It's become something of an aphorism that short stories are to films as novels are to television, all the more true in the past decade since cable entered the scripted realm and started pushing the parameters of long form visual narrative to increasing depths.  This analogy makes the short story that much more important, as far as I am concerned, to the creative types in the entertainment business.  We are always seeing novels turned into popular movie (can't beat the built in audience) but there is fruitful ground to traverse in the short story and essay world.  Stylistically there is certainly more in common with a get-in-late-get-out-early style of short fiction writing and screenwriting than the laconic, meandering style available to a long form writer.  

Anyway, there's something really nice and satisfying about being able to sit down for 20 minutes and read a complete story from beginning to end, finish the entire issue over one cup of coffee, and be able to go on with my day.  I used to have a subscription to Harper's Magazine, which has been the highest end in magazine writing for nearly 160 years, but the darn thing was so dense I couldn't find the time to get through one issue before the next arrived and found myself with piles of magazines on my floor never to be finished.  The fact that it is easily portable and several loved ones also receive One Story, giving us instant conversation topics, only makes it better.  An annual subscription is only $21.00.

The manifesto on their F.A.Q sums up what's great about this little magazine:

Why? We believe that short stories are best read alone. They should not be sandwiched in between a review and an exposé on liposuction, or placed after another work of fiction that is so sad or funny or long that the reader is worn out by the time they turn to it.

The experience of reading a story by itself is usually found only in MFA programs or writing workshops. This is a shame.

Besides, there is always time to read one story.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Duross & Langel: Skin Care Recommendation


Six years ago, while wandering around South Philadelphia on some random Saturday afternoon with Lauren in an effort to get to know my then-new neighborhood, I stepped into a tiny hand-made skin care shop called Duross & Langel.  At the time it was a hole-in-the-wall closet-sized boutique and I was not only skeptical, but afraid to buy too much as my sensitive skin is likely to break out into hives at the introduction of any new products.  So I bought some travel sized bottles to test it out, and thus began a love affair so epic that today a box full of refill products landed on my doorstep in Los Angeles courtesy of UPS.  Even in an image-obsessed city where I can lay hands on any product I desire, I'm still shipping myself Duross & Langel items across the continent because they're the best I've found.  If you're ever in need of gifts of skin care upgrades, I can't recommend them highly enough.

At some point since I first found the shop, they expanded into a new and larger space on 13th Street.  I visited again with Danielle this past May and stocked myself up on products again.  I rely so heavily on their Naked ABA-BHA Toner that I had to get myself a refill (last nearly 10 months and I credit it 100% for any skin compliments I receive), and I also got some eye serum and body scrub while I was at it.  I can also highly recommend their 3 in 1 series, good for hair face and body and a handy space saver for travel (buttercream smells like frosting and it's my favorite), and the detox soak (which kept my skin smooth during last winter's trip back to snowy Pennsylvania).  


The product line was created by Steve Duross and James Langel, who Philadelphia residents in search of local, safe, effective skin care.  Follow Steve's blog here.

Well worth the $10 shipping fee to have the products sent from Philadelphia to your doorstep.  They also create gift assortments, if anyone is in need of present ideas, and host hands-on parties.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

"Letters of Note"

My new favorite thing on the entire interweb is this a website called Letters of Note, where a collection of famous, historical, fictional or regular people's written communication is posted daily in the form of one letter.  I suggest you add this to your blogroll immediately.

To get you started:
11 Amazing Thank You Notes from Famous People (DailyGood) 


Some of my favorites:
Mark Twain's Advice to The Next Burglar
A Slave Decline's His Former Master's Offer for Employment
John Steinbeck Argues with Alfred Hitchcock
Nick Cave Decline's MTV's Award Nomination