Archive for April 2008
Miss HIV
New Yorkers,
Check out this film screening on Wednesday, April 30th @ NYU.
Info and preview of the film:
A to Zinc.
Whatever you do – don’t take zinc supplements.
I thought since I don’t eat an overly red-meaty diet (it’s true despite what you may have read in my blog) that maybe I could use a little extra zinc. You know? Boost my immune system a little? Decrease my risk of getting malaria? Increase my white blood cells? Sounds pretty good to me.
So I popped a zinc supplement and 20 minutes later I almost passed out. I got nauseous, shaky and started having hot flashes. I thought I was on the verge of becoming the world’s first person to OD on zinc supplements. The worst part of it was that I was on the V-train headed to work and I so desperately don’t want to die on the V-train. So by my fingernails, I clung onto my precious life.
At work I Googled “death by zinc” and look what I found:
“One case report cited severe nausea and vomiting within 30 minutes after the person ingested zinc supplements.”
AND I found out that the average, somewhat healthy person doesn’t need to take zinc supplements. So I decided I’d stick to a multi-vitamin, only I’m going to be safe and buy the ones for women over the age of 75. I figure I can’t go wrong there.
Cameras without Manuals
OK, Who loves vintage cameras?!!??!?!
Am I alone in this boat of habitually bidding on vintage things on Ebay late at night – particularly after a few drinks? Vintage cameras are my favorite things to bid on. The best part is the mid-week delight from a flood of vintagey things showing up at my door and text messages from my roommate like:
Yes I do. I just ordered a vintage Japanese camera that I can’t, for the life of me, figure out how to work. It’s from the 1940’s so it came without a manual and with a lot of corrosion from the batteries the previous owner left in it for probably…decades. Part of me loved that. Well, my ineptitude at working my new old-timey camera drove me to the wonderful World Wide Web where I found one of my new heroes: John S. Craig. John knows cameras. He is a master of American Photographers from 1839-1860. After 35 years in the antique photography business, his life now consists of acquiring manuals to old cameras for people who, like me, plunk down a chunk of change for a camera that was made before they were born and may or may not actually work. John stocks the world’s largest selection of instruction manuals, roughly 150,000. He buys hundreds of manuals every month. He also has multiple pages on his website dedicated to vintage photography trivia, a humorous online guide to understanding your computer – he compares it to a toilet, and a page of humorous photographs (as seen below *and please note his comments below each photo which are obviously the best parts). He is one of my new favorite people. Go to his website if you need a vintage camera manual or to see one of the few remaining people totally dedicated to ONE ambition – reuniting cameras and their instruction manuals.
http://www.craigcamera.com/
Get on the Train.
In case you needed more of a reason to support Obama, here is a list of people you may be interested in buying a one-way ticket with. That’s a one-way ticket on the Obama train. I’ve got mine and so do they (mostly in no particular order):
Oprah
George Clooney
Bruce Springsteen
Edward Norton
Will Smith
Rob Reiner
Tom Hanks
Laurence Fishburne
Warren Buffet
Ethel Kennedy
Matt Damon
Nas
Emilio Estevez
Sharon Stone
Stephen Colbert
Jon Stewart
Tiger Woods
Common
Halle Berry
Everyone at Dreamworks studios in Hollywood
Ben Affleck
Wyclef Jean
And I bet if James Dean, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis, Mother Teresa or Mark Twain were still alive they’d support him too.
Heavy Metal in Baghdad
Sometimes you need a good, hard slap in the face. And sometimes when it happens all you can do is just sit back and take it like a (wo)man. It’s usually unexpected, and it’s usually necessary. Those two words sum up the documentary I saw not long ago – unexpected and necessary.
Heavy Metal in Baghdad is a documentary film about a young group of Iraqis in the band Acrassicauda. The film is the story of the guys trying to make sense of their dreams to be rock stars and the bullet-infested streets that are stopping them. The candid look into the lives of these young rockers is absolutely jarring. It’s a raw picture of how the war and conflicts in the Middle East are stunting the lives of an entire generation of youth. I love the Middle East, I’ve researched it for years, I’ve lived there, traveled there, I have friends and family there and not much has stunned me the way Heavy Metal in Baghdad did.
I’ve been meaning to write this post since I saw the film but I was searching for ways everyone can see it. Right now it’s only playing in select cities for limited screenings but I’ll keep updates on when the showtimes open up. For now, here is the link to the website and trailer.
Cornwall, England
In Cornwall, England all of the dreams you never knew you had come true. I’ve been staying in Cornwall these past few days and have found myself saying, “Ah, I can check another one off my list.” And, “That’s another strikethrough on the dream list.” Or “I’ve been extremely productive in the dream-come-true department here.” When you’re in Cornwall some of the dreams you may find simultaneously appearing on and being crossed off of your dream list might look like:
#1. Stay in a thatched-roof cottage with a wood burning stove in a seaside fishing village called Cadgwith where singing birds wake you up every morning, you get a greeting from every person who you pass on the (cobblestone) streets, and the constant sound of the blue ocean crashing into the massive black rocks could become the soundtrack to your life.
#2. Drive a convertible around the greenest of green countryside where you can’t spot a fence if you tried but rather stone hedges with grass and flowers growing out of them to separate fields and sheep on the grassy hills. Dawdle along roads that wind in and out of twisty, curly trees growing up from both sides of the road and meeting in the middle.
#3. Visit a little stone church built into a cliff over the ocean with a tiny graveyard out back. Read the headstones that are carved with beautiful fonts for people who were born as early as the 1700’s then climb up the hill to the grassy point that juts out over the sea.
#4. Watch Cornish fishermen with white beards, red faces, and waterproof overalls haul their catches of the day in… while sitting on a bench on a rocky cliff that juts out over the sea drinking wine and watching the sun set.
#5. Walk to the local pub where the Cornish fishermen come to drink beer and while holding on to the rope handles hanging from the ceiling sing sea shanties and sway back and forth. Overhear conversations of these leathery, callused fishermen about storm experiences they had when they started fishing together…45 years ago.
#6. Generally fall in love with a place in the world that you had no idea existed and would not have been able to dream up.
If there is a dreaming bone in your body… come to Cornwall.
*To friends and family…if you don’t hear from me in the next few weeks, I may have decided to stay in Cornwall for the rest of my life cooking Cornish pasties and running a bed and breakfast.
