vamp upgrade: “let the right one in”

Do you want to get in on this GIGANTIC vampire trend but feel a little weird toting a copy of twilight to your works of classic literature class (ahem)? Well, last night I saw a screening of the Swedish flick, “Let the Right One In” with my fellow vampire fanatic, M (she is a SUPER fan as she has twilight contacts), and it is perfect for those wishing to get a little bit artier a little less cheesy with their fang-bearing obsession. Not quite horror, not quite romance, this film is a genre-defying drama which takes the overhyped, overused, overdone idea of bloodsucking fiend and revamps the image completely.

Centering around Oskar, a bullied 12 year old, coming to terms with his need for revenge against his opressors and the mysterious girl-next-door, Eli (the vamp), the two band together in a wintry Stockholm against a world which can accept neither of them.

Parts grotesque and cutesy, the juxtaposition of growing out of childhood and the pained stagnancy of vampire-hood somehow fit together. In a subtle way it questions the love one can feel for another and just how far one should go to defend that love.

Only attempt this movie if you can handle gory scenes: decapitation, fangs-sinking-into-flesh and rabid-bear sounds, and sloppy blood abound. Though there isn’t anything outright horrifying, these effects had me covering my ears a couple of times. Director Tomas Alfredson, however, does the job of a true artist is balancing this gruesomeness and the beauty of the story and setting. Steeped in a variety vampire myths and allusions, the nuances of the movie (including slight subconscious face-changes in scenes) are what make it so exciting and decidedly academic to watch.

With 43 aclaimed wins (mostly for best foreign film), this vampire movie is something you can be proud to be caught watching.

the coolest internet site? application? genuinely cool thingie?

My current obsession is a site/application for firefox called stumbleupon.com. When you go to the site you sign up with your e-mail and download an application for your firefox browser. From there you check off interests. With that information in mind, on the application you click “stumble” and it takes you to random, yet pertaining websites. I have found SO MANY cool things from this app and I have only had it for two days: from gorgeous art and stunning pictures to a “caffeine map” of all the starbucks in America, stumbleupon has shown me some new ways to entertain myself. I think sometimes I get into my internet rut and only go to my favorite/necessary websites: e-mail, blog, fb, picnik…you get the picture. This application re-introduces us to how expansive and awesome the internet can be, if we only exert our web capabilities beyond the boredom of repetition. Here are some awesome web pages I’ve found stumbling around:

Earth Album: combines googleEarth and Flickr to show the most captivating and everyday photos from around the world…in America: each state, city, county is documented…in the world: everything from bike riding in Budapest to building a yurt in Mongolia is pictured.

Etsy-Shop By Color: Are you obsessed with a certain color? Trying to coordinate? Choose a color and etsy.com will give a list of things falling into that category…I’m not just talking primary either, every shade and tone!

Yardsale Treasure Map: this brings me back to my childhood that brought me my greatest dress up clothes and items I still use today. Instead of the classifieds…check the internet for great finds at great prices…close to home.

Foodgawker: Most “favorited” recipes of all time look delicious but maybe that’s just because I’m without oven to bake it all with…And you can make your own favorites list once you try them out!

OneWord: For all you creative writers out there, this site gives you one word and 60 seconds to write about it and then it is published. Its so cool to see all the different perspectives and may just give you a spring board for more writing!

cool discoveries of past days

The sensational Balthrop, Alabama:

Just discovered this awesome Decemberists-esque band off of Rainn Wilson’s twitter. Go to their website and check out the video “explode.” Really, their music is quite awesomely indie-ish and, well, perfect. The innocent, naive voices of the full on 11-member band is as refreshing as a road trip through a small town in the summertime. As they describe themselves: “A whole town full of people hollerin’ about dead people they used to love.” For fans of the Decemberists/Camera Obscura/Rilo Kiley/Shins…Balthrop, Alabama is the perfect addition…and good news: four albums to choose from.

Free Stuff on craigslist.org:

Seriously. Under the “for sale” section check out “FREE.” There, updates on promotional giveaways and just weird stuff people don’t want to sell is in abundance. Piano? Futon? Lava Rock? I couldn’t make this up.

Season Two online premiere of “Flight of the Conchords” at funnyordie.com:

I can’t decide if I like season two or not yet. Something seems, different. However, its exciting to get to get a glimpse of what the dvds will eventually offer not to mention a hilarious “fem-o-dent” t.v. jingle.

Ryan, aka Benjamin Mackenzie on SouthLAnd:

Are they for serious? Somehow, our dear old bad-boy-turned-hero Benny Boo from the O.C. (love!) has been cast in a show about cops as the EXACT SAME CHARACTER but quasi-reversed. He still has all the angsty somewhat violent traits of Ryan Atwood but his unknown past leads us to believe he comes from the good side of the tracks this time. Don’t expect Ben to say much in the pilot but you already guessed that from his Newport days.

WaLa! Your daily dose of random!

day two: the guilt sets in

NO!

Much akin to the voicemail left ignored and unchecked, the second day of facebook freedom has made me feel a bit guilty. Part of this comes from realizing that my facebook page is not accessible, thus no one could see my announcement of sabbatical and link to this here blog. I feel bad that I won’t be able to write on friends’ walls but overall I’m not missing it so much. I’ve been alarmingly productive–finished the rest of my reading for my russian lit class, wrote my performance paper, and started my 12 page paper two weeks early.

What? I mean, I’ve jokingly told people that I spend half of my life on facebook but this change has me wondering, was I? I’ve also been a bit more concentratingful during class when normally the existence of a wireless connection would mean the chance to escape and check stati updates once the dental arcade of lorises got a little boring.

MIKA! aka FIRST SEMESTER OF SENIOR YEAR

Another thing I’ve realized is that its easier to pick up on interesting stories as in the fact MIKA will performing in Beverly Hills tommorow and I’M GOING. I might have been in my room checking newly posted pictures instead of hearing the story of my friend Randall meeting MIKA and Perez Hilton in an ice cream truck today. Okay, well maybe I would have  heard about it anyway buttttttttttttttttttt…What what? This is very exciting as Mika was the soundtrack to my senior year of high school–literally. Every newspaper deadline, “Grace Kelly” or “Love Today” was blaring. His music is so weird, wacky, and uplifting its hard not to wish you could wear flashy pink skinny jeans just as he does.

day one: surprising feeling of…relief?

NO!

Last night, in a fit of insomniacal (rearrange that to be insoMANIACAL) I decided I wanted to try life without facebook for a while. So I deactivated. And despite a number of worried texts I’ve gotten, my fall from social networking glory has been perfectly fine. Indeed, so far, I feel a bit of relief.
I don’t know why, its not like I ever considered facebook a burden or something, but I guess I don’t feel the weight of 521 web-eyes bearing down on my every cyber move. was it self-inflicted weight? yes. but now its self-inflicted lightness. I’m sure the moment some “breaking news” airs over stati update, I’m going to be regretting this decision. Indeed, I’m sure I’ll be back. But right now, it feels essential to my college transformation that I not keep everyone in the know about my every move. People I actually probably need/want to keep in contact with will find me here, call me on the phone, e-mail me, whatever.
We’ll see how this self-implicated fb abstinence goes, I’ll try to update on being out-of-the-loop in my over-informed iGen. Here goes…

so s’ited: work, realized

For several months now I have been interning with USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, working with the educational programming department. The Shoah-the Hebrew word meaning ‘catastrophe’- Foundation has catalogued over 50,000 holocaust survivor’s testimonies from Jews, to Gypsies, to Jehovah’s Witness, from survivors, to liberators, to prosecutors, to nurses. Endowed by Steven Spielberg after his research for ‘Schindler’s List,’ the foundation works on online exhibits, teaching materials, cataloguing/indexing, interviewing, and does work to prevent further genocides.

My first project with the department was to work on an online exhibit for Yom Hashoah, the international day for Holocaust remembrance, called “Witnesses for Change: Stories of Liberation.”

"He held the door open for me and let me proceed in and restored me to my humanity again."-Gerda Klein, Holocaust survivor, on her liberation experience.

This exhibit takes snippits of testimony speaking of their experience being liberated from and liberating concentration camps. I did research about the people who gave the testimonies in this exhibit, and helped choose/edit the clips featured, wrote the biographies of the people.

Learning something from the Holocaust is a cause near and dear to my heart, not only because of the people I know but because the only way we can atone for the passive inaction of our past is to take action for the future. Nothing is more humbling than hearing these amazing stories of making good out of one of the most horrible acts of human existence. I am really, really proud of this exhibit, probably more proud of it than anything I have done in a while.  So…you should check it out.

Witnesses for Change: Stories of Liberation

so s’ited: mapping the news

Today in my journalism class, we had an awesome presenter. While normally I have been let a bit down by our journalism guests (not because of their journalistic achievements or speaking ability but because of their journalistic philosophy), I was really excited about our guest today: Robert Hernandez.

Not only does he seem like a really genuine guy, but he also believes that good journalism comes when the news source serves the reader (ie mixes both stories about what the readers want and what they need to hear and packages them really, really well). Robert Hernandez currently works for the Seattle Times as the Director of Development where he leads development of the online version of the newspaper. He has also worked as a News Producer, a Web Designer, and online editor of various newspapers including the San Franscisco Examiner, La Prensa Grafíca, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Basically, the guy knows his stuff. And he is the first person who has talked about online press in a way that isn’t negative in regards to “the demise of the printed word” but instead works in conjunction with it. He seemed to appreciate both mediums and did not consider, as many journalists I have met do, writing for an online newspaper as a downgrade but rather something that opens up a lot my doors to be creative. For me, someone who enjoys both web and print design and doesn’t care where she writes so long as she gets to write somewhere, it was nice to hear that he agreed.

One of the coolest things he mentioned in our class was something pioneered on the Seattle Times website called “Mapping the News.” It is based off of something called “twittervision” which logs different tweets on a giant map showing where they were twittered from–which, for me, is a resounding ‘ick’ as I really don’t care about what Billy Bob is doing with his cousin in Arkansas. However, the Seattle Times, took that idea and ran with it, integrating the idea of news. On a giant map on their website they have all the cities with big newspapers across the world and scrolling allows the reader to check out the most recently posted stories from reputable news sources. Cool, huh? Because sometimes I feel like there are just way too many ways for me to find news online, its nice to have the biggest world news summarized on this awesome interactive map. I now have another site to obsessively stalk and its not even in a creepy way! Upgrade!

Check out this AWESOME news site: Mapping the News

To learn more about Robert Hernandez: iSoar