[Photo by Herbert Matter. Available to purchase at Condé Nast.]
I haven’t been sleeping well lately. But when I look at this picture it makes me want to crawl back into bed.
–c.
We’re back from NYC! Thanks to our Brooklyn friends that came out to see us on our short visit, we had a wonderful time as usual.
Before we embarked on our 8+ hour drive from NE Ohio to Brooklyn, NY, Andrew printed out a list of every local NPR station from here to there ensuring our listening capabilities. We’ve done the drive so many times that we have to keep coming up with new ideas to keep us occupied. And this brings me to the main purpose of this post!
I’m sure many people are getting weary of listening or watching the news and being bombarded with dropping employment rates, rising UNemployment rates, stimulus packages, and swine flu. Talk about a real downer! Unfortunately, the bad economy has hit us close to home so I’ve been especially happy to announce that I am contributing to a new blog dedicated completely to thinking positive.
The company I work at, Wise Group, has launched a grass-roots campaign to “Unleash the Positive” to inspire people during these tough times. My first post on the wiseUP blog is up today, you can check it out here.
You can check out all the posts by going to www.wisegroup.com/blog where you can learn about our “10 to Change” challenge where we are encouraging people to try to make a difference in the world/community/city/town/themselves with only $10. My “10 to Change” idea will be posted next Wednesday (May 20th) so check back then to see what I came up with.
If you have any ideas for a “10 to Change” please feel free to email me or my editor Ann at Wise Group and we will post it on our site.
–c.
Rainy Opening Day at Jacobs Field
Thanks to Stephanie over at even*cleveland, I have a new obsession. I’d never heard of Polyvore before and I can’t get enough. If you haven’t played with it before, now is the time. Register and start creating outfits. And if you want to check out some really sweet ensembles you should check out even*cleveland‘s “imaginary outfits” here. Some people can get really crazy with their layouts, but personally I enjoy Stephanie’s more pared down look. If only I had so many things to choose from…
–c.
This past weekend went by so fast! I’m sure it’s because we actually did something. Friday night we drove to Toledo, Saturday morning we went to the Indiana Dunes State Park on our way to Chicago to see the Eccentric Soul Revue Presented by The Numero Group. Right after the show we drove 4 hours back to Toledo and woke up 4 hours later to drive to Cleveland for the Cavs game then out to a late lunch with Andrew’s brother and his girlfriend! Whew. But we’re getting too old for this. It totally kicked our asses. We got home and went to bed at, no kidding, 6pm and woke up at 6am.
BUT I had an amazing time and it was so nice to be in Chicago again with friends, eating good food and seeing amazing music. It was even nice to take a long drive (though Andrew might disagree with me since he did the majority of the driving.) If you haven’t heard of The Numero Group, you should check out their site here. I can’t describe them better than they have themselves, so you should check out their “About” page. Their mission statement being:
“…to dig deep into the recesses of our record collections with the goal of finding the dustiest gems begging to be released from their exile on geek street. No longer would $500 singles sit in a temperature-controlled room dying for a chance to be played. No more would the artists, writers, and entrepreneurs who made these records happen go unknown and unappreciated.”
“Numero releases are sound with substance, living at the nexus of song and story. Scrupulously researched, painstakingly re-mastered, and with an attention to detail that is unmatched in the reissue field, the end result is a top-of-the-line compact disc.”
Highlight of the show being:
• The Notations, singing and dressing like bands don’t anymore: matching blue suits with black patent leather shoes without a trace of irony.
• Syl Johnson. I can’t even pull out points from this performance. I was amazed that he is still doing what he does at his age. And scared because he is still doing what he does at his age. I don’t mean to sound rude, but I was surprised he didn’t throw out his hip with all his gyrations and hip-thrusting.
• The brass section. Serious.
–c.
If you have a chance, you should see this documentary. You can find out more information about it here. We were fortunate enough to have seen this movie two weekends ago at the 33rd Annual Cleveland International Film Festival.
It’s a documentary about a community and what happens to when its livelihood is threatened. It takes place in Cairo, a city of 8 million people with no official garbage collection service. For decades, the Zabbaleen, a community of about 60,000 people, have become the unofficial garbage collectors of the city. They’ve made their living collecting and recycling the trash of the residents of Cairo. But in more recent years, they’ve had to compete with foreign garbage collection companies contracted by the government to do the job they’ve built their lives on. The film focuses on three young Zabbaleens and follows them as they “come face to face with the globalization of their trade.”
“Each of the teenage boys is forced to make choices that will impact his future and the survival of his community.”
It’s a fascinating film, not only the overall story but the boys have such character it’s hard not to find them endearing.
–c.
If you’ve had a chance to see Coraline (and even if you haven’t) maybe you’ve become as crazy about it as I have. I went through the entire movie site and found amazing videos about the making of the movie. I couldn’t resist posting about them. Here are a few of my favorites, but you should explore the site on your own for more!
Enjoy!
–c.
Yesterday we went to see the new Henry Selick directed movie, Coraline. It’s an amazingly beautiful movie done in all stop-animation movie style. It took 3 years to make and involved some of the top talents of the field. And it shows. The details are intricate and spooky. The animation, seamless.
Not only is the look of the film fantastic, the story is great. It’s based on a book by author Neil Gaiman, who is extremely talented.
Despite some reports, Tim Burton did not have a hand in making this film.
Go see it! Also check out the website for the film here. And the website of Neil Gaiman here.
–c.
I realized that I never posted about Pastel Stories. This is the website of the creator of The Submachine Series and Daymare Town.These are two of my favorite flash point-and-click adventure games. Absolutely amazing. The graphics are out of this world and the stories will have you completely addicted. If you’ve never delved into the world of adventure/escape games, these are a good place to start.
According to the site, The Submachine Series is described as “an ongoing series of point and click flash games. It’s all about puzzle solving and escaping from closed installations of the submerged machines (hence the title sub-machines). With each game You explore deeper into the dark world of the submachines.” I highly recommend it.
On a completly different note, last week Andrew and I were on our way to dinner and I asked him when he was going to get around to posting on this thing. We sort of came to the conclusion that he may never grace you all with his written presence and I think it’s a shame because I know he has a lot of wonderful and thoughtful things going on in his life and in his mind. For now, he will remain the elusive character that I will continue reference in my posts. He’s always been sort of a mystery, even to me and I’m pretty sure I know him better than anyone.
So, speaking of Andrew. Yesterday, I had to break smelling salts under his nose while my dad was cutting open Andrew’s foot in an impromptu foot procedure! This was totally unexpected on mine and Andrew’s part (the smelling salts and the foot precedure.) I’ve never had to do that before, and the really weird thing is that 10 minutes before I administered the smelling salts, Andrew and I were wondering what it smelled like. It’s got kick, for sure!
xo Crystal