Dan, Rachel, Adam & I ventured down to Keuka Lake State Park this weekend for some Memorial Day camping adventures: wine tastings, waterfall hikes, and more! I whipped up a couple slide shows of the weekend using the Blurb mobile app that I’d been wanting to try. Click the image banners in this post to check out the photos, videos, and sound bites (once loaded, use the left/right arrows to navigate, or click and drag to scroll, and click the “play” buttons for video/audio).
This is the fifth post in my series of selected work done for CITY Newspaper in 2010. Be sure to check out the previous posts: PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4
Fall is my absolute favorite time of year. I don’t know if that necessarily translates over into my work, or if that means I spend more time outside and less in front of a computer. In any case, Fall brought 2 great cover story assignments (CSA farms and a local Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house restoration) and a bunch of cover story layouts. Not to mention all the prep for ‘Best Of,’ which won’t show up until November. These posts are apparently weighing on me as this one took two whole months to put together. Only November & December to go, though! The end is near!
Tags: City Newspaper, photography, Rochester
Several weeks ago my Mom traveled to San Francisco for the National School Board convention and I was lucky enough to be able to accompany her! Everything I’d heard was true: it was hilly, chilly, had a huge technology bent, and I instantly loved it. When she wasn’t in convention panels we jumped all over and saw an incredible amount of stuff in less than 4 full days (and when she was in panels, I wandered off on my own to explore). Of the many things we did, here are 10 of my favorites:
1. Took a boat tour around the bay
Mom picked up some free tickets, so we got to ride around on a boat for an hour. The dialogue was cheesy, the score (!) over-dramatic, and it was windy as all get out, but we had a really great time! It was cool to go underneath the Golden Gate bridge and right along Alcatraz island.
Tags: art show, breakfast, buttiro, cafe, Chinatown, chowder, Food, Golden Gate Bridge, Instagram, iPhone, MoMA, museum, park, San Francisco, travel, trip
See the full tracklist over at my Mix CDs site
Everyone I know is very passionate & defensive over their music, but over the past year I’ve been noticing just *how* passionate they are. More so than favorite books or movies, people seem to really go to the mat for what they listen to. Is it because music is more tightly integrated into other aspects of people’s lives? (You can listen to music while cleaning or running; it’s tougher to do those while also reading a book) Or is it because songs are more quickly digested — it’s easier to find a 3-minute song that you completely connect with rather than a 2-hour movie or play? And also because you can put on a song to transform your mood over the course of a few minutes, rather than a few hours? I’m not entirely sure, but I’ve been pondering it (and am interested in other people’s interpretations … )
In any case, here are some of my, personal, favorite songs from 2010 (not everything was necessary released in 2010, but that’s when I heard it for the first time). There’s some pop, r&b, and electronic; a lot of danceable tunes (I’ve always had a bias towards interesting instrumentation over interesting lyrics) ; even a tiny bit of folk and hip-hop. There aren’t any scores in here — although there are 2 songs from Glee and a remix of the “sounds” from Up — as I’m saving those for an upcoming Soundtrack Sampler. This is a pretty good summation of my musical taste, but if anyone *else* feels particularly passionate about anything here, I’d love to hear it!
Tags: Cee Lo Green, Glee, music, owen pallett, Pogo, stomacher
MAMA’s House was bored one Friday night in February, so we did what normal people would: we made a list of possible things to do. We then chose the thing normal people don’t do: write, act out, and film a puppet show. Deciding to use Rachel’s concept that we base it around her boyfriend Kevin’s penchant for bad jokes & then give it to him as a birthday present, we wrote up a quick script, grabbed props from all over the house, raided Kevin’s Twitter account for “actual” jokes, and finished it in a couple of hours. Filmed & edited entirely* with my iPhone, our bacon-hosted talk show – The Happy Hour with Kevin Gustina – is weird, dorky, and fun, just like everything we make at MAMA’s House. And, as usual, there are plenty of outtakes.
Tags: Adam, Anna, bacon, comedy, endocrinology, happy hour, humor, iPhone, jokes, Kevin G, Rachel, talk show, Video
It’s back! Sample this year’s Oscar Nominees for Best Original Score and Best Original Song with my annual Academy Awards movie music mix! Whether you want to have an educated opinion on the nominees before Sunday’s ceremony or are simply a film aficionado, this mix will catch you up on the music branch’s choices for ‘best of the year’ in just over an hour. Roughly 10 minutes of each nominated score have been coupled with the five song nominees and slapped with some unifying cover art. Be the cool kid at the Oscar party you attend: when they show Christopher Nolan on screen, be able to say “The orchestra is playing Hans Zimmer’s music from ‘Inception’!” At least, that’s how *I* watch the Oscars.
Tags: academy awards, John Powell, movie, music, oscars, score
This is the fourth post in my series of selected work done for CITY Newspaper in 2010. Be sure to check out the previous posts: PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3.
Thanks to everyone who asked me where this post was, voiced encouragement over these recaps, and asked if I was planning to finish out the year — I am! I’ve just gotten a little behind due to some freelance projects and a rabid need to watch both seasons of Dollhouse as quickly as possible. Onward to the end of summer…
Tags: City Newspaper, photography, Rochester
You know those days where you just can’t believe how much happened within 24 hours? The morning and afternoon were spent working on the HF-L Alumni Art book (with last-minute assistance from Katie who was a huge help), but then Adam and I made cookies and, with the rest of MAMA’s House, joined 10 other friends for Chinese New Year lion dancing celebration at Shanghai in Henrietta. Mixed-up reservations left us at the bar, smack in the middle of other people waiting for tables, busy waiters trying to get through, and the lions getting into costume!
Everyone had a few drinks, the lions fought for cabbage, and then we all smooshed around a single round table for our meal. When we tried to order, our waitress told us that we didn’t order nearly enough food and made us add more (“How about ‘Happy Family’?” she asked, and we cheered). She told us they were out of dumplings, but somehow found a giant bowl of them for us anyway. A giant pitcher of red mixed drinks arrived out of nowhere, platters and platters of food we didn’t order came in addition to what we had (“There’s no charge” she hurriedly told us on her way back to the kitchen), and the owner brought us a teapot of warm sake to end the meal with (“Thanks for waiting” he said). In the end we had way WAY more food than we could possibly eat, Kate made out with her creamy shrimp boyfriend, Max found the longest lo-mein noodle ever to have existed, Todd became a master of chopsticks and tried to get a job as a Lazy Susan turner, and no one left hungry.
Afterward, we carpooled to Max & Amy’s house for a rollicking board game night: Party Playoff (“The Yelling game”), Apples to Apples, Taboo; hummus, chips, desserts, beer and wine. Barbara Walters somehow lost to David Beckham (for which Eric will never forgive us), and ‘treasure hunting’ put up a good fight. It was awesome and we played well into the morning before finally heading out. On the way to taking Kate back to her car in Henrietta, the roads were awful. While trying to merge lanes to exit, I lost control of the van and we spectacularly slid backwards into a snowbank. No one was hurt, car seemed to be okay (aside from a knocked-off license plate), and no less then 3 policemen stopped to check on us. It was so icy, though, that not only did we watch a couple other cars also spin out trying to use that ramp, but the tow truck couldn’t get any traction to pull us out because he kept sliding. 3 tow trucks later, we were finally out and on our way to Wegmans to pee after all the excitement.
And to top it all off, it looks like I lost my iPod in the snowbank somewhere, and Adam and I didn’t get tickets and won’t be going to Comic-Con this year. Needless to say, when we finally got home around 4:30am, we certainly didn’t have any problem falling asleep.
Tags: board game, car, restaurant
This is the third post in my series of selected work done for CITY Newspaper in 2010. Be sure to check out the previous posts: PART 1 | PART 2.
Summertime and the living is BUSY! From dining to superadobes, and buskers to Summer Guide, May-June is certainly the busy season at CITY. There’s so much stuff in here, I’ll cut right to the chase…
Tags: City Newspaper, photography, Rochester
