Hint: April on the radio. Weekly.
More information will be posted in the coming days.
More information will be posted in the coming days.
...are featured in this YouTube video promo by platform expert Suzanne Falter-Barns. Can you guess which are "mine?"
I have been working a LOT lately, but most of my web projects are not live yet (or are being held for official release for various reasons). Here's one I was actually able to launch tonight:
I have a confession: When I go on vacation, I usually pick up a Star. It's the perfect thing to shut off my intellect and begin to relax... Maybe it's the dearth of real news and reciprocal abundance of useless trivia (as my friend Halie mentioned in her stand-up routine, "Victoria Beckham's waist is 23 inches, the same circumference as a soccer ball!"), but I suspect it's more likely the stupid photos of celebrities--and the horrendous retouching and effects--that really gets me having fun.
For someone who truly understands how to use Photoshop, it's easy (and fun!) to spot and decode the mistakes of amateur photo techs:
• relying on the airbrush tool to even skin tone
• overwhitening eyes and teeth (check out the Celebrity Hairstyles cover for another good example of this)
• oversaturating colors or doing no color-correction• drastically changing the shapes of celebrity's features
• outlining people with the magic lasso
• sloppily pasting together photos (check out the cover of Star above... which I saw at the grocery tonight... I think they copied Angelina's face onto a Jennifer Garner's body and forgot to take out Jen's bangs)
For the record, owning Adobe Suite applications doesn't necessarily make you a designer.
It does, however, help me relax on vacation, and that's worth something.
P.S. SECRETS & LIES!
Yesterday, I had the perfect birthday lunch with Dan. Here's what I think makes a "perfect" such occasion:
1. Pick a nice place and go in the late afternoon, after the lunch crowd and before the dinner crowd. (Going then ensures quietude, good service, and acceptance of casual attire.)
2. Order the beef carpaccio, crab-and-avocado salad, (homemade) sausage and wild mushroom risotto, and strawberry-balsamic panna cotta. In other words, order something you wouldn't normally have.
3. Wash it all down with some wine.
4. Have someone with you who will talk about how great you are... and mean it.
5. Go home and take a nap.
:)
1. Pick a nice place and go in the late afternoon, after the lunch crowd and before the dinner crowd. (Going then ensures quietude, good service, and acceptance of casual attire.)
2. Order the beef carpaccio, crab-and-avocado salad, (homemade) sausage and wild mushroom risotto, and strawberry-balsamic panna cotta. In other words, order something you wouldn't normally have.
3. Wash it all down with some wine.
4. Have someone with you who will talk about how great you are... and mean it.
5. Go home and take a nap.
:)
I just reserved the rental car, which means our June trip is pretty much finalized. I can't wait to go to Meg's wedding and also take some time off to relax. We decided to add a short side trip, so we're going from LA to Vegas for a day to Denver to Omaha, staying somewhere in Nebraska for a few days, then driving to the wedding and staying for a few days, and flying back to Vegas. It is less hectic than it sounds and will be a much-needed meandering road trip. Yay for Alamo Rent-a-Car, who have had no issues with our one-way, multi-state rentals throughout the years.
Really, I can't believe Ace of Cakes is still on. Chef Duff of Charm City Cakes is hardly interesting, but most importantly, the cakes for which they're supposedly renowned SUCK! I marvel at how people are so dazzled... it goes to show you that most people just need to be told they're going to like something to decide that they do like it. Maybe people in Baltimore have no standards when it comes to cake.
Here are some issues:
- The designs are not very good. The team is given themes and requests most creative cake-makers would die to work on, but every time, the finished result is lackluster and boring.
- There is no execution finesse. For your consideration, a ratio to illustrate my frustration: Charm City skills is to true cakemaster skills as Crayola Chubby crayon is to .005 Rapidograph. (That's another way of saying that they're clumsy and heavy-handed.)
- Forget about people on your cake. Every Charm City Cake figure looks like it came from the land of Playmobil.
- Nevermind eating the cake. Someone forgot to tell Duff that the primary function of cake is to serve as something to eat. These guys use so much cardboard, styrofoam, and fondant in their "cakes" that eating a slice is probably hazardous to your health.
Please, Food Network, can't you find another cake-design team to give a show? (But no more of those damned cake-themed Food Network Challenges at Disneyworld, please.)
Is that frosting, or it that blood?
Wouldn't you feel good about yourself if someone sculpted your car, face, and arm like this?
Look how clunky the leaves are? Also, there is no detail anywhere. It looks like
they used a press for the brick look, and it's probably 50/50 styrofoam/fondant.
This doesn't look like a firetruck. Or a fireman. It looks like a rectangular block painted red with some silver icing. No details. I'm willing to bet, though, that the wheels are inedible.
That doesn't look like Wonder Woman's crown, and excuse me... did he use those
hard-sugar cake letters you get when you've left a birthday to the last second and
are scrambling to customize a Costco sheet cake?
Is that cake, or is that clay? Also, how about that lettering? Looks all fondant
and cardboard. "No! Alex! Don't let those kids eat the cake! You can't actually
eat it! What were you thinking?"
This was in my yard one day when I got home. Fortunately, after a call to Animal Control, the thing was picked up sometime after bedtime and before "Reveille." Click for a close-up.
Shot in sunlight in my backyard.
This week, I had a little get-together to watch HBO's Grey Gardens. To
make it more fun, I plied my friends with wine and pesto potatoes and
made them pose for me in headwraps like little Edie. Here's a preview
of some photos I took that night. Maybe I'll soon have enough time to
actually look through and process the images.
