This is how I take notes, albeit, there's usually more funny looking faces.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Behind the Scenes
I have a love-hate relationship with photo shoots--there's lots and lots of waiting, and shoots often take a whole day to shoot what appears of momentary and little effort. I guess it's that appearance of ease that really shows how epic a good photographer is.
Lots of light testing during the FORMzine shoot and playing with different techniques; I'm in the yellow tank top and green shorts, adjusting light stands and hiding under desks, being a miscreant. For more extra pics by Winnie Jeng, click here; I'll update with the real shoot once post-processing is done.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Some Shameless Plugging
In his first post-Olympic performance, Johnny Weir is skating June 27th at Crème de la Crème with special guest Alissa Czisny and fashion host Jon Jordan. Y'all should go. =)
Monday, June 14, 2010
Prepared
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| ||||
I spent much of high school tutoring in various subjects and test prep. Oh, the memories......
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Look at Me, Look at Me
Dr. Jim Taylor writes:
American popular culture exacerbates our self-esteem problem by sending messages to children that they can find success, wealth, and celebrity without any capabilities, effort, or time ("By gosh, I deserve it right now just for being me").From "America's Self-Esteem Problem."
Saturday, June 12, 2010
3G Fashion
Today, more than ever, it's evident that almost everything around is in a state of flux--technological innovations are coming faster than ever, increasingly avant-garde forms of art are being passed around and probably most significant of all, the way we communicate is transforming: talk, Tweet, type, text, Facebook, sign, blog, Yelp, comment, Skype, IM... the list is almost endless. It's mindboggling.
The medium of communication I'm particularly knowledgeable in is the magazine; I spent more or less all most of my freshman year at the University of Michigan laboring under every division of SHEImagazine, the campus fashion & pop culture publication, culling the knowledge of my classmates and learning how the fashion/media biz works in the Two Hands. It's been quite educational, in a very underfunded, high-aspiring, time-sucking, nerve-wracking and giddy experience (<-- roundabout plug for recruitment & more funding).
I got so involved, I was anointed Marketing Director after a semester. And when some of my friends decided to expand from a collegiate base to the funky, wonky, awesome world of Ann Arbor and start up FORMzine, an online magazine, I decided to tag along and contribute, too.
Being so involved with magazines (to the detriment of the parents, yes), every time I go online or come across a magazine, I'm analyzing and admiring and critiquing. With fashion magazines, especially, there's an evolution that's in progress, which is really, really... cool. (Yes, my thesaurus of a mind decided on "cool").
Let's go take a super-fast, super-short look at the different generations of the modern fashion magazine:
1G} The Print Magazine
Over the last 140 years or so, the fashion magazine has changed quite a while, but the defining feature is that it is a print magazine by a publishing house, with a staff and editors coming up with and executing ideas to bring a stylized view of fashion to the masses. The most input readers get is their dollar--choosing which magazines to purchase--and the occasional publication of a letter to the editor, but the main point is that the magazine is another broadcasting* medium: the transmission of a message to a wide audience.
*Broadcasting is generally applied to television and radio, but in my opinion, the basic definition is applicable to print publishing. I believe in the power of print!
2G} The Online Magazine (1.0)
The Net really came of age in the late '90s, with the masses taking to the new medium in the last fifteen years. With basically infinite space available, fashion publications really found their niche in acting as archives and updating with occasional plugs of "Hey, we've got a new issue out; here's what the cover looks like, please subscribe!!"
Obviously, as you can see by the Teen Vogue screenshot, some sites aren't really subtle at about wanting online visitors to subscribe to the Print Magazine--you've got to close that pop-up before you can start clicking on any of that content-y goodness behind subscription invitation.
The Online Magazine 1.0 is more of a companion to the Print Magazine, providing coverage that would be too expensive to print, giving previews of content included in the magazine, providing a larger forum for reader commentary, and more recently, the introduction of exclusive content, such as editor blogs or behind-the-scenes videos. What it really, really wants, though is for you to still buy the Print Magazine.
For about the last ten years, the online magazine has been basically that--the magazine, put online. Content still run by editors and staff, but much of it much more casual and colloquial in style. And readers can now comment!
3G} The Digital Magazine (Or, The Online Magazine 2.0)
And now, we get to the content that I've been giddy about--the 3G Modern Fashion Magazine! First things first--the 3G MFM is NOT the downloadable, iPad version of <insert favorite magazine>. As one iPad reviewer said of Interview's app, "The App is basically a PDF file/style of a normal print issue."
The awesome-ness of the Internet has not developed so publishers can basically scan a print magazine and pawn off the PDF to the public as revolutionary and mind-blowing; we have bloggers doing the scanning and distributing the contents for free (and illegally) already.
Recently, though, I came across FIASCO Magazine. This may be over-excited on my part, but I find founder & editor-in-chief Vincent Nord's new publication really ushering in the Digital Magazine, or what I like to call the Online Magazine 2.0.
There is no print issue yet, but they're working on it, and in the mean time, the ENTIRE issue (there's only one so far, but it's AWESOME) is available for browsing and download online. But that's only partly why it's awesome, and not what defines it as the third-generational modern fashion magazine.
What makes FIASCO the real Digital Magazine is its interaction with the Internet--right on its front page, there's a call for submissions from readers and visitors. Taking a page from the curating nature of many blogs, not everything submitted is selected or published, but there is content from whom they like to call "young talent" as well as "established creatives." It's up to readers to provide a large portion of the content, with the editorial staff just sifting through selecting what goes in instead of creating it themselves, a new dependency and empowerment of the audience.
There are requirements, of course, so that submissions are at a certain professional-level of quality and fit a selected theme, but it is no requirement that the submitter him/herself be a professional; Google many of the names under the credits of FIASCO and you will not find links to agencies and previously published editorials.
And that's pretty cool.
The medium of communication I'm particularly knowledgeable in is the magazine; I spent more or less all most of my freshman year at the University of Michigan laboring under every division of SHEImagazine, the campus fashion & pop culture publication, culling the knowledge of my classmates and learning how the fashion/media biz works in the Two Hands. It's been quite educational, in a very underfunded, high-aspiring, time-sucking, nerve-wracking and giddy experience (<-- roundabout plug for recruitment & more funding).
The two issues this year I worked on as part of SHEI. Click on each image to flip through the issue!
I got so involved, I was anointed Marketing Director after a semester. And when some of my friends decided to expand from a collegiate base to the funky, wonky, awesome world of Ann Arbor and start up FORMzine, an online magazine, I decided to tag along and contribute, too.
Being so involved with magazines (to the detriment of the parents, yes), every time I go online or come across a magazine, I'm analyzing and admiring and critiquing. With fashion magazines, especially, there's an evolution that's in progress, which is really, really... cool. (Yes, my thesaurus of a mind decided on "cool").
Let's go take a super-fast, super-short look at the different generations of the modern fashion magazine:
1G} The Print Magazine
Over the last 140 years or so, the fashion magazine has changed quite a while, but the defining feature is that it is a print magazine by a publishing house, with a staff and editors coming up with and executing ideas to bring a stylized view of fashion to the masses. The most input readers get is their dollar--choosing which magazines to purchase--and the occasional publication of a letter to the editor, but the main point is that the magazine is another broadcasting* medium: the transmission of a message to a wide audience.
*Broadcasting is generally applied to television and radio, but in my opinion, the basic definition is applicable to print publishing. I believe in the power of print!
2G} The Online Magazine (1.0)
The Net really came of age in the late '90s, with the masses taking to the new medium in the last fifteen years. With basically infinite space available, fashion publications really found their niche in acting as archives and updating with occasional plugs of "Hey, we've got a new issue out; here's what the cover looks like, please subscribe!!"
Obviously, as you can see by the Teen Vogue screenshot, some sites aren't really subtle at about wanting online visitors to subscribe to the Print Magazine--you've got to close that pop-up before you can start clicking on any of that content-y goodness behind subscription invitation.
The Online Magazine 1.0 is more of a companion to the Print Magazine, providing coverage that would be too expensive to print, giving previews of content included in the magazine, providing a larger forum for reader commentary, and more recently, the introduction of exclusive content, such as editor blogs or behind-the-scenes videos. What it really, really wants, though is for you to still buy the Print Magazine.
Screenshot of Style.Com. Browse through fashion shows by season, show, year, designer... it goes on.
3G} The Digital Magazine (Or, The Online Magazine 2.0)
And now, we get to the content that I've been giddy about--the 3G Modern Fashion Magazine! First things first--the 3G MFM is NOT the downloadable, iPad version of <insert favorite magazine>. As one iPad reviewer said of Interview's app, "The App is basically a PDF file/style of a normal print issue."
The awesome-ness of the Internet has not developed so publishers can basically scan a print magazine and pawn off the PDF to the public as revolutionary and mind-blowing; we have bloggers doing the scanning and distributing the contents for free (and illegally) already.
Recently, though, I came across FIASCO Magazine. This may be over-excited on my part, but I find founder & editor-in-chief Vincent Nord's new publication really ushering in the Digital Magazine, or what I like to call the Online Magazine 2.0.
There is no print issue yet, but they're working on it, and in the mean time, the ENTIRE issue (there's only one so far, but it's AWESOME) is available for browsing and download online. But that's only partly why it's awesome, and not what defines it as the third-generational modern fashion magazine.
Screenshot of the table of contents. So snazzy!
What makes FIASCO the real Digital Magazine is its interaction with the Internet--right on its front page, there's a call for submissions from readers and visitors. Taking a page from the curating nature of many blogs, not everything submitted is selected or published, but there is content from whom they like to call "young talent" as well as "established creatives." It's up to readers to provide a large portion of the content, with the editorial staff just sifting through selecting what goes in instead of creating it themselves, a new dependency and empowerment of the audience.
There are requirements, of course, so that submissions are at a certain professional-level of quality and fit a selected theme, but it is no requirement that the submitter him/herself be a professional; Google many of the names under the credits of FIASCO and you will not find links to agencies and previously published editorials.
And that's pretty cool.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Lacking Imagination
This article by Phil Perrier made me laugh; currently working on a case study of FIASCO Magazine (if you love fashion + photography + free content, go read it), but here are two snippets of "If You Don't Like TV, You're a Bad Person" to titillate some neurons:
(On the second excerpt, after twelve years of Chinese school, getting my native culture drummed into my head & missing the network broadcast morning cartoons every Saturday, I have no idea where Perrier got that 'old Chinese proverb.' It must be an American thing, to attribute every random, somewhat educational adage to an 'old Chinese proverb.')
...who needs TV? I mean, when Neil Armstrong stepped off the ladder onto the moon, a charcoal etching was good for me. Who needs to see Lee Harvey Oswald getting shot or Kobe Bryant hitting a three pointer at the buzzer, when a friend can describe it to you? "Yeah, and then this dumpy guy in a suit comes outa' nowhere and shoots Oswald!" Isn't that satisfying?
...In truth, if you don't like TV, you may just lack imagination. Which brings to mind an old Chinese proverb in which a young man moves to a new village and he visits an old wise man (this was when old people were respected for their knowledge and not just medicated and sent to a "home." Weird, huh?) and asks, "Old wise man, what are the people like in this village?" And the old wise man says, "What were the people like in the village you just came from?" And the young guy says, "They were petty and spiteful and dishonest." And the old man said, "The people are the same here." Meaning, that we see what we expect to see. Or, possibly that the old man and the young man both lived in a village fulls of dicks. But I'd rather go with that first thing.In a way, TV makes me sad that people don't invest time the same way they did before the Internet to reading and becoming engrossed in words that can show you something amazing without presenting a picture. But my eyeballs do appreciate TV giving me other people's visual constructions, because it widens my perspective.
(On the second excerpt, after twelve years of Chinese school, getting my native culture drummed into my head & missing the network broadcast morning cartoons every Saturday, I have no idea where Perrier got that 'old Chinese proverb.' It must be an American thing, to attribute every random, somewhat educational adage to an 'old Chinese proverb.')
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Photo Ops
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Slim Fast & Secret Fat
When I think of Slim Fast, I always think back to my fifth grade teacher Mrs. M, who was a rather tall, large woman of impressive stature and intimidating nature; she was a bit like a human-sized bull dog with a propensity for barking out advice and demanding discipline (a bit similar to this lady, but slightly less dominatrix/Nazi-like), and part of her own discipline was downing many a can of Slim Fast everyday (my third-grade teacher Mr. L had a similar addiction to a canned beverage, but he didn't need to lose weight; he drank Coca Cola during the day to stave off cravings for the cocaine he had to wait until school let out to snort).
Coming across these Slim Fast wedding cake ads on Fashion Foie Gras, I was immediately immersed in a nostalgia for those long-gone elementary school days of simple humor:
Coming across these Slim Fast wedding cake ads on Fashion Foie Gras, I was immediately immersed in a nostalgia for those long-gone elementary school days of simple humor:
Saturday, June 5, 2010
The Differences Between Seeing, Looking & Watching
There's a lot of television out in the world, and there's a lot of flak about watching too much television, that it's dumbing down America and we're all wasting our lives, vegetating away in front of giant plasma screens with our super-sized soft drinks and jumbo bags of deep-fried, thinly-cut bites of artificial goodness. Mmmmm. Noming our way to a slow, sleazy and squalid surrender of sloth and gluttony.
Next time you're watching a television show, though, take a closer look at what you're watching--what kind of nuances are there? Do you understand all of the jokes? Do you get all the references made by the characters in their dialog, or search for hidden clues as to discover who exactly is the villain or where the plot is going?
I'm not going to argue that television is a wholly educational or completely cognitive-challenging medium--it's really not. There's a lot of crude exploitation--of humor, of stereotypes, of human nature and of controversial subjects--but there's also a new wave of 'intellectual' programming that should not be put down, just because it's surrounded by simplistic padding.
The incredibly intelligent television show that immediately comes to mind nowadays is irrefutably, Lost.
I've never watched it (but as soon as school lets out, every episode's available on Hulu!), but when in the first episode, you have a plane crash, a mysterious tropical island and polar bears and a smoke monster, it's mind-boggling and intriguing. Reading Time's James Poniewozik's article on "TV After 'Lost,'" I discovered that Lost is more than a Gilligan's Island or Cast Away, but some funky, time-traveling and very philosophical drama that is confusing, even with a handy summary. Lost is about a lot:
What do you see when you see this promo pic? If you said The Last Supper, you've got brains.
Image via IMDB.
Lost is part of a new wave of television watching where it's more interactive than ever, and not just because you can Tweet or update your Facebook status in real time as you watch an episode; there are fan sites and forums where viewers congregate, and it's all part of "a multimedia experience of which the show itself is the first component." Watching TV is now a really complicated thing.
A case study in Media & Culture analyzes the new wave of television:
Next time you're watching a television show, though, take a closer look at what you're watching--what kind of nuances are there? Do you understand all of the jokes? Do you get all the references made by the characters in their dialog, or search for hidden clues as to discover who exactly is the villain or where the plot is going?
I'm not going to argue that television is a wholly educational or completely cognitive-challenging medium--it's really not. There's a lot of crude exploitation--of humor, of stereotypes, of human nature and of controversial subjects--but there's also a new wave of 'intellectual' programming that should not be put down, just because it's surrounded by simplistic padding.
The incredibly intelligent television show that immediately comes to mind nowadays is irrefutably, Lost.
I've never watched it (but as soon as school lets out, every episode's available on Hulu!), but when in the first episode, you have a plane crash, a mysterious tropical island and polar bears and a smoke monster, it's mind-boggling and intriguing. Reading Time's James Poniewozik's article on "TV After 'Lost,'" I discovered that Lost is more than a Gilligan's Island or Cast Away, but some funky, time-traveling and very philosophical drama that is confusing, even with a handy summary. Lost is about a lot:
...Lost would not be about tribal elections, digging wells or devising systems of coconut-shell currency. It would be a weird mystery involving time travel, the butterfly effect and conspiracies within conspiracies. It would be a spiritual journey about characters seeking redemption. It would be about big ideas: free will and predestination, science and faith, mankind's essential good or evil. Through this prism — and through narrative flashbacks, flash-forwards and flashes into an alternate reality — it would be about, well, everything.
Lost doesn't attempt to answer those eternal questions. What it does instead is challenge the audience to ponder such mysteries themselves. Cuse and Lindelof have dropped plenty of guideposts along the way. Several characters are named for authors or philosophers (Locke, Milton, Rousseau, the Zen master Dogen) whose concepts play into the story, and classic works of literature sneak into key scenes. The writers say they use these references as "a tip of the cap" to their influences, as Lindelof puts it, "as opposed to saying, 'Hey, we came up with this idea for the first time.' " Also, says Cuse, "it's usually meant to say, If you want to go deeper, here's something that you can explore." Lost is like a TV show with footnotes.
What do you see when you see this promo pic? If you said The Last Supper, you've got brains.
Image via IMDB.
Lost is part of a new wave of television watching where it's more interactive than ever, and not just because you can Tweet or update your Facebook status in real time as you watch an episode; there are fan sites and forums where viewers congregate, and it's all part of "a multimedia experience of which the show itself is the first component." Watching TV is now a really complicated thing.
A case study in Media & Culture analyzes the new wave of television:
...In contrast to older popular programs like Dallas or Dynasty, contemporary popular layers "each scene with a thick network of affiliations. You have to focus to follow the plot, and in focusing you're exercising the parts of your brain that map social networks, that fill in missing information, that connect multiple narrative threads." Johnson argues that younger audiences today--brought up in the Age of the Internet and in an era of complicated interactive visual games--bring high expectations to other kinds of popular culture as well, including television. "The mind," Johnson writes, "likes to be challenged; there's real pleasure to be found in solving puzzles, detecting patterns or unpacking a complex narrative system."The author referenced by the case study, Steven Johnson, wrote 2005's Everything Bad is Good For You. In a pull quote, Media & Culture highlights specifically Johnson's view on the Internet's impact complicating television.
The Web has created a forum for annotation and commentary that allows more complicated shows to prosper, thanks to the fan sites where each episode of shows like Lost or Alias is dissected with an intensity usually reserved for Talmud scholars.I think media does a lot for us, and there shouldn't be a definitively one-sided 'television is horrible for you' kind of broad statement made by critics or parents, because it really isn't.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Smarty Pants, Redux
Seth Freeman just wrote an awesome article on The Huffington Post titled 'Gifted and At-Risk,' which provides a much more cogently-worded article than mine on the 'tragedy' that befalls the ingenious.
Notable excerpts, for those who don't want to read the whole thing:
Notable excerpts, for those who don't want to read the whole thing:
Everyone is aware of the dire straights in which our school systems currently operate, but as bad as things are generally, they are sometimes even worse for our students with the greatest potential. It turns out that this population, the very people our society will most need in the future to be competitive with other countries and to solve our toughest problems, is one of the most underserved. Less than 1 percent of the funds for special programs in our schools goes to meet the needs of gifted kids.
What may be less obvious is that gifted children often have a tougher time in school specifically as a consequence of their intelligence or talent or unique way of seeing the world.
In our schools, which are presently struggling to educate so many children to a basic low standard of knowledge and skills, the curriculum can be so boring and inane for bright kids that they become restless, occasionally disruptive but more often tuning out or not even showing up. A gifted kid who comes from a family living in poverty, or from a discriminated against minority, or who is burdened with other social disadvantages, faces a double dose of adversity. And yet, despite facing these difficulties but precisely because gifted kids are capable of understanding the material and keeping up with the work, they frequently receive less attention than their peers.
It is a tragic situation for these kids. It may be an even greater tragedy for our country's future.
On Homophobia
The following is an excerpt from Roger R. Hock's Forty Studies That Changed Psychology: Explorations into the History of Psychological Research (6th Edition) that is an assigned reading for my psychology class. In the reading about Sigmund Freud's concept of ego defense mechanisms (defined by the book as "psychological 'weapons' that your ego uses to protect you from your self-created anxiety") and Anna Freud's (his daughter) elaborations on those mechanisms, a passage regarding homophobia caught my eye:
One fascinating study may have found supporting scientific evidence that homophobia, an irrational fear, avoidance, and prejudice toward gay and lesbian individuals, may be a reaction formation used to ward off the extreme anxiety caused by a person's own repressed homosexual tendencies (Adams, Wright, & Lohr, 1996). In this study, a group of men were given a written test to determine their level of homophobia and then divided into two groups: homophobic and nonhomophobic. Then participants were exposed to videos depicting explicit heterosexual gay, or lesbian sexual scenes, and while they viewed these videos they were monitored for physiological signs of sexual arousal. The only difference found between the groups was when they viewed the videos of gay males. In this condition, "The results indicate that hte homophobic men showed a significant increase in [arousal], but that the [nonhomophobic] men did not" (p. 443). In fact, 66% of the nonhomophobic group showed no significant signs of arousal while viewing the homosexual video, but only 20% of the homophobic group showed little or no evidence of arousal. Furthermore, when asked to rate their level of arousal, the homophobic men underestimated their degree of arousal in response to the homosexual video. This study's results are clearly consistent with Anna Freud's description of the defense mechanism of reaction formation and lend support for a possible explanation of violence targeted against gay individuals.
Adams, H., Wright, L., & Lohr, B. (1996). Is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal? Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 105(3), 440-445.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
RIP Rue
Rue McClanahan, most famous for portraying Blanche Devereaux on The Golden Girls. Image via The Mick's Grill.
I never really watched her show, but whenever I flipped to it and she came on the screen so unabashedly comfortable and vibrant with her need for physical intercourse in the years where we don't like to think about people having sex (spoiler! The Notebook's ending = 2 old people having sex = ewwwwwwww). Blanche really knew how and quite shamelessly liked to get it on. She's like the original Samantha, so props.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Misleading
I understand the necessity to drive traffic, gather hits and push sales in the publishing industry, but purposely using deceptive headlines makes me angry.
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