Posts published in May 2013

Let’s shake this regularly occuring blog feature up, down, right, and left until it’s in a new order. I added the Newsletter I Totally Love feature too! I recommend signging up for each and every one. Bravo, fellow humans.

Newsletters I Totally Love

• Chefs+Tech is @KH’s observant and sly collection of news that covers foodstuff and technology (beep boop beep boop)
• Robin Sloan’s infrequent but oh-so-smart thought missives
• The Ann Friedman Weekly is a little like this here blog post, but with animated gifs. It makes me … with delight:
• Alexandra Franzen—the newsletter that taught me that newsletter are OK

Real, Actual Books

• One or two chapters to go: Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott
• This is beautiful still: Chroma by Derek Jarman
• Halfway mark and due back! InGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity by Tina Seelig
• Two chapters left: The Art of Collage by Gerald Brommer
• Slow but steady: Interaction of Color by Josef Albers
• Still working on it: I Just Like to Make Things by Lilla Rogers
• Still going: Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon

Read on the Internets

• friday’s confession: I was a hot mess. by Tiffany Han, “As creatives, we often feel like we aren’t 100% on top of things. We have big ideas! It’s hard to focus! We make messes!”
• friday’s confession: some people don’t like me. by Tiffany Han, “I am a good person. I inject love and inspiration and enthusiasm into this world on the daily. And I cannot live my life in accordance to any other person’s standards. Mine are high enough and they are my own.” (Side note: Whoo hoo, yes ma’am!)
• Matt Dick’s indigo spirit colors his creations, “Indigo is very old,” says Dick. “It originated in Egypt, and it’s now being studied on an anthropological level, but it wasn’t until recently that it became coveted in terms of denim.”
• Blog-Tied: How a Hunger for Clicks Drives New York’s Brutally Fickle Food Scene by Josh Ozersky, “The only catch is that most restaurants don’t have the kind of direction and organizational support needed to reinvent so frequently. They are running in place, like the blogs that cover them, undermanned, under pressure and attempting vainly to keep up with unquenchable appetites.”
• No Age announces new album, ‘An Object’ on latimes.com
• Omphalodes linifolia Wikipedia entry
• Iberis sempervirens Wikipedia entry
• Giant, fluorescent pink slugs found on mountain
• How to throw a fancy donut party on Oh Happy Day
• A mother helps son in his struggle with schizophrenia on WashingtonPost.com
• America’s Most Colorful Congresswoman: Kyrsten Sinema by Ann Friedman
• Chefs+Tech 5.28.2013 by Kristen Hawley
• Three things, none for sharing newsletter by Robin Sloan (No link! He’d be so proud.)
• We were made to accomplish the easy things by Willo O’Brien, “We were made to accomplish the easy things, but with so many of these easy things in our lives, how often are we just on a hamster wheel, going from one thing to the next to the next, without any recognition of the path we are on, let alone the celebration of what we’ve accomplished thus far. This is important and crucial to our being conscious as we walk through this life.”
• 7 Reasons Child Stars Go Crazy (An Insider’s Perspective) by Mara Wilson, “If former child actors bring up their past, they’re washed-up opportunists shilling for attention. If they never do, they’re clearly in denial. If they say it was fantastic, they’re full of shit. If they acknowledge that it wasn’t always fantastic, they’re bitter.”
• Ask Polly: Jesus, My Struggling Writer Friends Never Shut Up!
• #Realtalk for the j-school graduate on the first five years of your career by Ann Friedman, “Write something short every day. … Your ideas matter more than your prose. …Read good articles twice. If you read something you love, ask yourself, “Why’s this so good?” Then read it again.” (Some really excellent advice here. Recommended read!)
• unomoralez.com (super creepy 11 panel comic)

While lovely, four day weekends seriously screw with my ability to get this out on Friday SO! Here we are. The fascinating reads sit with the fluffy stuff and a fair amount of video, so if you pick off this list, stay sharp.

• Watched: Billabong X Maya Hayuk
• Influences #15 Bob Ross
• One Stinky Breath at a Time by Laurie Wagner, “If you’ve figured out anything it’s to have as much compassion for yourself as possible. … You do your best, just as I am, one breath at a time.”
• lisa congdon : THink — a glimpse into the studio + creative world of the artist on Woodnote Photography, “Those were early tattoos, and I got them at a time in my life when I was trying to be more truthful — in my actions & words, to myself, to others — and also to be more courageous. Fear ran my life when I was younger. Then one day in my early 30′s I woke up and decided that needed to change. I wanted to take more risks, be bolder, be myself more.”
• Accidental discovery produces durable new blue pigment, “…one day a graduate student who is working in the project was taking samples out of a very hot furnace while I was walking by, and it was blue, a very beautiful blue,” he said. “I realized immediately that something amazing had happened.”
• The To-Do List Pie by Ann Friedman, “What have we been meaning to do forever?”
• Me and Sad Keanu: A 3D-Printing Story
• A Tome to Rival the Artist Himself, “Mr. Ahrenberg bought the publishing rights, and the gallery is now reissuing “Pablo Picasso,” or as art world denizens call it, “the Zervos,” the most prominent catalogue raisonné of Picasso’s paintings and drawings.”
• Dance the flip-flop by Robin Sloan, “There’s a particular process that I’m fascinated by, and I tell people about it all the time, but I realized I’d never actually written about it—so here you go. … the flip-flop (n.) the process of pushing a work of art or craft from the physical world to the digital world and back again—maybe more than once”
• Watched: WRECKING CREW ORCHESTRA-EL SQUAD
• The Pastry Box Project on May 23rd by Daniel Burka
• When Life Gives You Lemons, Donate a Kidney by Meighan L. O’Toole, “One thing’s for sure though, it made my life and the world around me so tangible, and so very crystal clear.”
• Learned: artist Emily Glaubinger via her Clarion Alley mural Dear Face
• Watched: Oklahoma tornado 2013
• The Long, Hard, Stupid Way by Laura Helen Winn, “Everyone needs help, everyone keeps learning. Over time, the anxiety that accompanies getting help as a beginner fades.”
• Zach Galifianakis’ Red Carpet Date: A Woman He Saved from Homelessness
• Did a Murderer Just Give Himself Away on Yelp?
• Watched: The Lonely Island – Spring Break Anthem (Between Two Ferns Version)
• Yahoo didn’t buy Tumblr. They bought Tumblr’s market position
• Vast Oklahoma Tornado Kills at Least 91
• Watched: hand lettering is fun! and Calligraphy – Have a fantastic day
• Watched: New Xanax for Gay Summer Weddings
• The “Office” Finale on The New Yorker
• How To Attend a Funeral by Mike Monteiro
• Watched: Inside Amy Schumer: Lunch at O’Nutters, Uncensored – Sext Photographer, Compliments
• thoughts on creative burnout by Kelly Rae Roberts, “what i’ve learned in the last couple of weeks is this: that i am not alone. that there’s a lot of creative burnout out in the world. that we need to give ourselves permission to not only feel it, but to sit with it, face its direction, acknowledge it, then take action.”
• “Ten Rules for Maker Businesses” by Wired’s Chris Anderson,
• How to Take Great Photos: A Guide for Makers, Crafters, and Artists

Real, Actual Books

• Finished: Mauve: How one man invented a color that changed the world
• Don’t want it to end: Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott
• Still going: Chroma by Derek Jarman
• Making headway: InGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity by Tina Seelig
• Still into: The Art of Collage by Gerald Brommer
• Recently working through: I Just Like to Make Things by Lilla Rogers
• Just started: Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon
• Try again later: Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel