Thursday, May 29, 2014

#spark #muse #etc


Yesterday, I was moonlighting as a music video art director for uber-pal, Haviland on her upcoming single "Muse." In case you missed it, she released a fierce/catchy/inspired dance album called Spark a lil bit ago. I'm a privileged bitch, so it's been on my ipod for about a year now (at least pieces of it) but now it's available on itunes and whatnot. 

For the video, she wanted to keep it simple and easy to do. Just the idea of a modern muse. We used water (because we had it) and lights and Hav's natural je ne sais quoi. 

Haviland had been raving about the photographer who did her most recent set of headshots, Elliot London, and I was excited a finally got to meet him on this shoot. I quickly learned he's just my kind of creative dude: casual, innovative, and creative as hell. Just jimmy-rig it until it works. That's my motto. And the stuff he got was SO beautiful! Doesn't Hav look so preeeeety? I can't wait to see how it turns out!!

I can't really tell you how proud I am of her for this album and all the work she put into it. She's a mover!

Get Muse on her album here!

**Disclaimer: Boss the Chihuahua isn't actually in the video. His fee was too high. So he just supervised. 

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Reading Rainbow: The Third Plate


Ever since I came back to the US, I've been pretty paranoid about what I eat. I have a pretty serious problem with the way America farms, raises, and grows its food. I think most of us are pretty familiar with a lot of those problems. But aside from pesticides, chemicals, and hormones, there's this other aspect which I've been worried about for a while.

Remember in elementary school science, when we learned about soil nutrients, crop rotation, and seven year cycles of fallow earth? (I do. Largely because I am frequently using it as a metaphor for creativity. Also because I regularly help a fourth grade boy with his homework.) 

The new book I'm reading talks about the future of food-- from the failures and missteps of the farm to table movement to how farmers and chefs can work together change the public image of certain foods. Foods can be and are just as trendy as anything else. Sometimes just to the benefit of big agri-business (like the terrible terrible soy trend. Processed soy jacks with your estrogen levels.) but also for real health. Did you eat kale three years ago? Or quinoa? Or ramps? No. You do now because chefs got creative and made delicious recipes with those ingredients. 

Dan Barber, author of the The Third Plate is the executive chef of Blue Hill in Manhattan. I haven't had the pleasure of eating there-- alas, the price tag is outrageous...more on that later-- but I've heard nothing but good things about the quality and flavor. 

From the book's review in The Wall Street Journal:

Yet after reading Mr. Barber's compelling book, "The Third Plate," I realize the problem may be with my conditioning: I associate value with top-of-the-food-chain proteins like tuna and beef. But the truth is, it takes 13 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of beef, and the Bluefin tuna is almost depleted. Ours is a food culture based on the expectation of immoderate consumption, and that's just not sustainable. Mr. Barber's solution is no less than an overhaul of American cuisine, so that the value of an ingredient is based on flavor, not folly.
Mr. Barber uses the metaphor of the plate—as in plates of food—to describe three stages of modern eating habits and the agriculture that has supported them. The first plate contains a 7-ounce corn-fed steak and a small vegetable side, say, carrots, produced by industrialized agriculture as it developed over the course of the 20th century. On the second plate, where we are today with the farm-to-table movement, the steak is free-range, the carrots organically grown. But the two aren't that different. The future, Mr. Barber suggests, is the third plate: a carrot dish flavored with a sauce made from a secondary cut like beef shank.
The third plate sounds a lot like the way my Italian grandmother used to cook on her subsistence farm. Her tradition called for managing the land. Soil health, seed diversity, crop rotation and diverse animal husbandry kept the farm fruitful and also produced delicious, healthy food. There was modesty to her cooking: The family primarily ate vegetables and killed one pig a year that had been fed on table leavings. There was no deprivation. We've replaced this model with industrialized farming and fishing, and we aren't eating well. We feed.
Let's go back to price. Part of how we can bring down some of the cost of flavorful, nutrient-rich foods is by giving new light to the crops that farmer's plant in between the main crop. If those farmers can make the same amount of money on mustard greens or buckwheat or milkweed that they can on wheat, they do better and then we can do better. And there's incentive for other farmers to return to this way of farming before industrialized farming manipulated the ecosystem into oblivion. I mean, sure, it's important to produce enough. So much of how we farm is a reactionary product of The Dust Bowl, The Irish Potato Famine and other plague of locusts style crop failures. But at some point, you have to ask, is my all-you-can eat more important than the flavor and nutrition of what I eat? And then no wonder we're fat. We have to keep eating and eating to get less flavor and less nutrition. It's hard to stay aware of all this all the time, but you gotta try, right? 

Check out the book, and Dan Barber on NPR. I listened to a much longer version of this interview and I wish I could find it. This is the closest I could find. Scroll to the bottom.

FYI: I'm probably buying this book as a gift for everyone I know for holidays for the next year. 

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Frightened Rabbit's alter ego, Owl John


CONCEIVED IN TWO DISPARATE WORLDS: THE ISLAND OF MULL ON THE WEST COAST OF SCOTLAND AND IN LOS ANGELES ON THE WEST COAST OF THE UNITED STATES. MAYBE THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THAT THESE PLACES HAVE MET. MAYBE NOT. OWL JOHN IS ABOUT WHAT CAN BE FOUND IN BOTH OF THESE STRANGE WORLDS. IT'S ABOUT FINDING A BIT OF FREEDOM IN AN ANXIOUS, ROTTING BRAIN. IT IS ABOUT BEING AN ALIEN MAN. IT IS ABOUT LOSING YOUR WITS COMPLETELY THEN TRYING DESPERATELY TO FIND THEM AGAIN.

The conjunction where Scotland meets Los Angeles is not a new intersection for me. It's every day. But I'm glad there's a mind as articulate as Scott Hutchison out there to explore it and express it. I'm happy and always seeking to find "a bit of freedom in an anxious mind." 

Scott apparently has so much going on in that head of his, he had to have a while additional band and persona for it. Enter Owl John. And apparently:

John is a homeless. 
John is a priest.
John is a witness.
John is a beast. 
John is a weirdo. 
John is a thief. 
John is a wino. 


I look forward to the entirety of this album and hope it's released soon. Until then, I'll listen to "Hate Music" and wait. 

Friday, May 23, 2014

Formulating a Friday Return Links


Hi there. It's me. Remember me, dear void? I don't want to make a lot of excuses or anything. I just want to lay it on you and proceed without any promises. I'll start with the links. Because it feels like the easiest way to resume without tucking my blog tail between my legs. Just think of all the links I've been sitting on these months telling myself I'd share them with you. Ah, velleity. Alas, most of them have evaporated from my memory. Anyhoo.

-My life is embodied in THIS article right now. I am the bespoke series lady. 

-Amy Poehler's Smart Girls is looking for contributors. They're basically the best. Wish I had the energy for any additional free writing work. If I did, I'd be all over this bitch. 

-We know this. But it's always good to reiterate. 

-Africa. And Britain. Together. Weirdly. Giraffe Castle

- A weekend getaway to Edinburgh. Sigh.

-The Great Whiskey Shortage. We drink more than they can make. Thankfully, it's not the single malt Scottish whisky that is my own personal jam. 

- Did I already share this? I don't care. I'm doing it again. Anastasia takes a selfie

- Don and Peggy dancing to "My Way" is one of my favorite TV moments ever. 

I can't keep white shirts nice, I ruin computers in three years no matter what, and my manicure never dries before I mess it up-- ever-- but here's my pinterest if you're interested. I look pretty with it there. I think.  There's this too. It's a lot of other people's dogs and kids. 

I love you like XO.

Why Stop Now?

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