prep.

now that RH is behind us, it's time to start mentally and spiritually preparing for YK. and if you are immature like me, you should check out this article from tabletmag - some good ideas for getting you through the fast.

you could also just listen to shlock rock's yom kippur song "tefillah"...

obsessed.

"this is a book that i'd love to read" - dan brown

yesss!

handed out in the lobby today:

we've got dan brown fever!

i'm sorry. what?!

as i was rushing home today, i breezed past the gap on 57th street. since gap is making a huge push for jeans these days, perhaps its no surprise... but in the window of the baby gap section i saw - skinny jeans for toddlers. i kid you not. the description online is "cool skinny jeans for your future fashionista." whatever happened to kids just being kids? the days when children had separate types of clothes, and not just shrunken adult clothes?

fyi - gap is also selling "boyfriend" jeans (which look insane on even the adult models... how do they look on normal sized adults?! let alone toddlers!), boot cut jeans, wide leg jeans..... basically everything on the adult side, just shrunk down for the kids. gap? stop it!

will my kids kill me if i don't let them wear skinny jeans? (or the future equivalent... skinny spacesuits, maybe.) i don't want them to be forced to be "future fashionistas." just let them work on being kids.

spoiler?

not going to even post a pic of who this may be about in case you really don't want to know details. but if you care about a potentially very good lost spoiler, check it out and see who you think it is!

what up, random house!

ever wonder how a book is made? ever wonder how a super awesome book is made (and 5 million copies of it)?? wonder no more! watch the superb video below that features the random house warehouse in maryland as they show you how they assemble and print (and protect) dan brown's new book, the lost symbol, in stores september 15th!

un-fun.

bought this on the street today.

book seller man: "usually when people buy books from me, i tell them to enjoy the book. but...."

first few pages were quite depressing, and i was reading in washington square park in the sunshine. i better finish this before fall really sets in....

you know you are a true new yorker when....

...a taxi is on fire and you don't walk the other way but go in for a closer look.

A taxi burst into flames today at 53rd and 7th Avenue. Of course, as firefighters tried to put it out, cars slowed down, and walkers stopped to check it out. Too bad I didn't know sooner, otherwise I would have gone outside to check it out! Z - this is what you're missing in NY!

what would tim say?

so, i'm a fan of skinny jeans. most of my current jeans are of the skinny variety. but this i just don't understand. why in the heck would i want "black ankle skinny jeans that feature sheer mesh panels"?? nymag suggests this means that either true pants are on their way out, or this is a way to ease people back into pants who haven't worn them in a while.

sidenote: who decided that the back should be normal skinny jean? would these make more sense if they were mesh all the way around, like jean shorts attached to mesh leggings, or do they then lose their "skinny jean" appeal?

you heard it here... probably not first.

what we're (that is, me and l) listening to this morning:

rebloga recommends.

looking to escape whatever terrible weather climate change has decided to bestow upon you (perhaps it's extreme heat, wildfires or sudden chill)? here's a suggestion - go to the movies! maybe you haven't been all summer in an effort to be outdoors as much as possible? i understand. but allow me to recommend two movies that we've seen recently that were quite, quite good.

1. Moon
I can't say too much about the plot in this one. To say more than a few sentences would give it all away. But here's the premise: It's sometime in the future, when we have figured out how to harness energy from the moon. So now all the energy we use on Earth is harvested from the moon. Sam Bell is an astronaut at the tail-end of a 3-year stint as the lone energy harvester on the moon. We see him interacting with GERTY (voiced by the awesome Kevin Spacey), a computery robot that is his sole interaction (other than viewing video uplinks from his wife). Basically, things get kind of crazy for Sam as loneliness sets in, and he mentally prepares to finally go home. Hopefully that set-up interests you enough to check out the movie. And if none of that got you, does it help that the director is David Bowie's son (Duncan Jones)?

2. District 9
So, you've seen the previews, right? At first, it seems like it will be an interesting documentary about South Africa. It will have cool footage and you'll hear about humanitarian aid efforts and firsthand accounts, and what the government is/is not doing right, etc. And then you see the space ship that is hanging over the city like an ominous gray storm cloud and you think to yourself, "...this is not a documentary."

Well, if you haven't seen the preview, that's what you would have thought. (And if you haven't even seen a preview yet... I anticipate that this is not your genre of movie.) That being said, the preview does not even touch the surface of the awesomeness of this movie.

Anyhow, the movie starts out similar to the trailer - interview footage, documentary-style footage. It sets up the scene for you, which is: 20-some years ago, this huge spaceship just sputtered out over Johannesburg. A review I read said that unlike the classic alien movie that explores "what would they do to us" this movie shows "what would we do to them." And we see that what we did was put the aliens in a camp (District 9), take away their rights and basically otherwise bully them around and ruin their lives. Our story starts when they decide that the camps have gotten so overrun, they are going to relocate 1.2 million aliens to a camp outside of the city. To do so, they need to get every alien's signature on the eviction notices (I know, it sounds ridiculous, but just hang on). Our hero is Wikus Van De Merwe (yea, I'm not sure how to pronounce that either) who heads up the committee to go into District 9 to get these signatures. After he has a run-in with a particular alien (Christopher Johnson - of course we'd dole out stupid generic names to the aliens), who seems to be suspiciously less drone-ish than the others, his life is never the same, as they say... There's really something for everyone in this - biology, science, aliens, family, betrayal, heart, and explodey bits (i.e., the alien guns don't just kill you, they explode you and everything around you).

Let me know if you go see/have seen either of these, and what you thought. Any others that I should make it my business to see?

confusement.

did anyone else see this story on tmz today? btw, you may need to avert your eyes, or look really quickly. it's that bad. jon - we were all on your side! and now you have forced us to root for kate. that's how bad of a person you are.

questions:
- where is this?
- why is jon up in a window/booth? is he handing out the chips?
- what is this girl wearing (my vote is that it's a sparkly pillowcase)

SPOILER alert!

when we last saw our heroes, jim and pam were at the hospital waiting to get some test results back, while dwight was doing his best to stall the volleyball game against corporate. want to know the rest? nymag is glad to spoil it for you. i'll remind you again that this is highly spoilery, but i doubt you'll be surprised if you do take a peek.

vomit-fest.

thank you to tlc for inundating me with commercials about the time traveler's wife movie, coming out this friday! even though i previously said i was "excited" for this movie to come out, that was only because it's one of my all time favorite books of all time. unfortunately, the trailer makes me want to stab my eyes out, and makes me so sad for its suckiness. here it is, but don't say i didn't warn you...




if you see it, let me know what you think (especially if you read/enjoyed the book).

that being said - i will remind you all that i will be away for the next 2-ish weeks. i will be sure to look out for goo blobs, and do bucko updates when i return!

faraday plays evil??

first off, it's really difficult to imagine my man faraday in any sinister role. on lost he plays a nerd-tastic scientist, he's in love, he's loyal to his mother. not the meanie type.

but according to ew.com, this same man (well, the actor anyhow) plays charles manson in a 2004 tv movie! manson AND jeremy davies?! this i must see. and if you click on the ew.com article, you can barely tell who is the actor and who is the real manson. scary stuff. apparently his performance is on fire, so this is a must see for me. has anyone else seen it? do tell!