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The Takeaway

Fri, 16 May 2008 07:55:28 -0500

The Takeaway is a new morning news program that debuted on WNYC about three weeks ago. I've been holding back my opinion to give the show a chance to get into its groove; unfortunately the show has not lived up to my expectations, and I've switched my radio alarm to CBS FM for now (fun music but the DJ and commercials are supremely annoying). I guess it doesn't help either that it's spring fundraising time for public radio and they've seriously damaged my confidence in them.

The reason why I listen to NPR is that the news is presented in a calm, measured and thoughtful manner. In interview segments, the interviewer gives the interviewee plenty of time to state his or her case. Most of the time the line of questioning makes logical sense and the interview feels like it has a beginning, middle and end. The interviewer isn't doing most of the talking, the interviewee is. To me, this is the hallmark of NPR's style and why I choose to listen to WNYC and not talk radio in the morning. NPR also has a knack for bringing stories to the radio (both local and national) that don't necessarily make it onto most people's radar, and I very much appreciate that as well.

The Takeaway seems like the exact opposite to these qualities. The segments are ultra short, so short that the hosts are perpetually cutting off the interviewees in mid-sentence. It feels rather rude and amateurish. I don't really get a sense of the issue they're discussing either way, because it seems like the hosts are just trying to create quick, quotable sound bites that sound cool but don't actually mean anything. They aren't facilitating any kind of discussion in a serious way, they just seem to be following a script and ask the question, regardless of whether or not it had anything to do with the response. When they do go off-script, it's pretty obvious because the questions are so awkward that the interviewee doesn't even know how to respond to it. And asking the audience such inane questions as "What's on your personal endangered list?" seems so patronizing.

One example that stood out was a discussion about Grand Theft Auto. Both hosts had only contempt for the game, you can hear it in their voices and the questions that they ask. Have either of them even played GTA? I personally have not, but I expect a more evenhanded approach to it. All I got from the segment is that Grand Theft Auto is "evil" and "violent", a typical knee jerk reaction. Contrast this with the the discussion of GTA on "On the Media", where Brooke Gladstone is "playing" the game. It was such a different approach, it wasn't about buzzwords, it was about discussing research on games like GTA and if it had any measurable effect on children, and creating a historical context for violence in popular culture. The segment was careful in not taking one side or another in promoting or condemning the game, which to me is one of NPR's strengths.

The only thing that I can give them kudos for are having a decent website, and trying to incorporate that more into the radio show. Why not facilitate an actual, real-life discussion instead of just spewing sound bites? Judging by the 200-plus comments on this post, many people feel the same way I do, perhaps with some more vitriol. Let me give some suggestions instead of just bitching about it.

Make the segments longer. You don't need to fit in every topic under the sun. I'm not saying just focus on one topic per hour like Brian Lehrer or Leonard Lopate, but maybe pick 4 and really delve into them. You're on every morning of the week, so why are you in such a hurry?
Get more than one person with a different point of view on the issue. It seems like they bring in one person who is an "expert" and end up chatting with him or her for about two and a half minutes before cutting them off.
The music is really irritating. You totally ripped off a Depeche Mode song from the Ultra album. I love me some Depeche Mode but not at 6 in the morning.
Try listening to the people you're interviewing. Instead of talking over them, really listen and respond to what they're saying. This is key in facilitating discourse.
Why not do some more research into talking about topics that aren't on the front page of the NY Times?
One more thing: put the comments on the same page as your post. Separating the comments out onto another page just gives more of an impression that you are not facilitating a dialogue and just relegating people's comments to the wayside.

I even tried giving the Takeaway another chance. This morning I was lying in bed listening to the show and completely cringing at the lame banter between John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji. Listen, it's not funny. Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me is funny. And that's fine for Sunday morning. But this is the weekday, I want my news. I don't want the opinion of some lame radio host injected into my news. There are about a hundred other radio stations that do that. Please take the advice of your listeners, WNYC. The Takeaway doesn't need to be a clone of Morning Edition, but consider why people listen to public radio. You talk about it all the time during your spring fundraisers, why can't you take your own advice?

Spring is here! Your footwear is on notice.

Mon, 05 May 2008 17:42:16 -0500

The weather has finally turned springlike in New York in past few weeks and I can't wait to spend more time outdoors. But as I've been roaming the streets, I've been forced to notice the horrible, horrible footwear choices of so many New Yorkers. What so many people don't understand is that what looks good on a model or what may be trendy looks completely horrible on you.

Everyone knows the UGGs example. Those boots make any girl look like the abominable snowman. I still don't understand how this trend hasn't died yet. Perhaps it's because of the hordes of tourists from other places other than New York that invade Soho, and the styles they wear are about three years behind in the rest of the country. Don't get me wrong, I am not dissing middle America, but everyone knew that UGGs are horrible looking, why continue the trend? I can't wait until UGG fanatics look at photos of themselves in five years, and think, "God, what was I thinking? I looked like a total tool!" Sort of like anyone who grew up in the 80s and wore a side ponytail.

So here are my top five rules on spring footwear. Well, footwear in general.

Do not, under any circumstances, wear those flat boots without heels and tuck your jeans in to said boots. Unless you wear a size -1. Otherwise your legs will just look like tree stumps. Just because some chick in that Urban Outfitters catalog you received last week can pull it off doesn't mean you can!
Do not wear leggings with ballet flats. Your legs will STILL look like tree stumps. And for godssakes, pick up your feet when you walk, that shuffling duck walk is so unappealing.
Do not wear those really really flat sandals or flip flops. YOU ARE NOT AT THE BEACH. And again, did you realize you walk like a duck?
Men: do not wear flip flops. Especially you jocks with those black Adidas sandals. What the hell? If you have ugly, uncared-for feet, I don't want to see them. If your girlfriend doesn't want to see your feet, neither do we. At least trim your toenails and get rid of that fungus if you're going to show us your toes. (addendum: if you have a nice pair of leather sandals, go for it. it's just the OP-surfer-dude-crappy sandals that I can't stand.)
extra super pointy shoes. Don't do it. Do you really want to look like a medieval court jester? Because that's exactly what you look like.
sorry, one more rule: don't wear Crocs. You're not Mario Batali. And what's up with the holes? Are those shoes really going to protect you when you spill a bucket of hot grease on them?

Banning UGG boots goes without saying. Besides, has anyone poked their head out the window lately? Guess what, it's spring and I don't see any snow, do you?

Next fashion topic: wearing leggings without a skirt. Banned? Discuss.

Theory & Practice

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:44:21 -0500

Theory and Practice
April 19-May 17, 2008
Curated by Evonne M. Davis
with full color catalog

Reception on April 19th, 2007
7-10pm
at Gallery Aferro
73 Market St Newark NJ 07102

"There are no countries now" -from artist Alan Bigelow's When I was President

Theory+ Practice is an acknowledgment, interrogation and fete of the void between what the world could be and what it is.
Artists: Andrew Leo Baron, Alan Bigelow, Deric Carner, Robert Ladislas Derr, Nisha Drinkard, Katarina Jerinic, Darren Jones, Tracie Lee, Paula McCartney, Tori Purcell, Stephanie Standish, Alina Tenser, Matthew Verdon, Brian Wondergem

View more about my project, Pieces of Sky

I heart Tumblr. But I'm not dissing you, Movable Type.

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:21:21 -0500

Recently I started a tumblelog on Tumblr. I wanted to see what was out there - I figured that I work with Movable Type every day and it'd probably be a good idea to get a handle on the competition. I had heard about Tumblr before but it never really made sense to me. It seemed so stripped down, what could you possibly do with it? Then I actually started using it.

It was like a whole different world. I could post short little notes, almost like a sketchbook. Suddenly I felt free to post whatever caught my fancy, whatever crossed my path at the moment and seemed interesting and noteworthy. My attitude towards posting had suddenly changed. I think over the years I've come to regard this blog (run on MT) as something that needed thought and had to be...well, interesting. I couldn't clog it up with frilly little posts, I had to really consider what I was putting out there. Which meant that I posted less and less as time went on...I sort of felt this pressure that what I was writing had to be good.

In a way, Tumblr freed me of that. The learning curve is barely a bump, it takes almost nothing to get it going and to customize it a bit. It's minimal in a really great way. It's like it makes the task of blogging almost transparent - it's a tool that you use that you don't have to think about, it just works. Sure, Movable Type is super powerful and customizable to the nth degree, but sometimes I don't want that, I just don't have the time for it. (have you noticed how the design of this freaking blog has totally languished?)

I've been comparing the relationship that I have between MT and Tumblr with painting and mixed media. With painting, you could do anything in the world, there are so many options. You're presented with a completely blank canvas and you have to run with it. In a way it's kind of scary. Mixed media, on the other hand, is based on whatever you've gathered - newspapers, magazine clippings, junk that you found at the local thrift shop. Suddenly having some parameters is comforting, yet liberating at the same time. It just depends on how I need to work at the moment.

Now I just have to install the Actionstreams plugin on this blog so that I can get my tumblelog, flickr stream and last.fm playlist in one place.

The Night Sky

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 16:50:15 -0500

This was inspired by a piece in the New Yorker about light pollution via kottke.org , I wrote it a while back but I never posted it.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the thought of becoming an astronaut. Not just for the thrill of floating in zero gravity and eating freeze dried ice cream. There was something compelling about leaving the Earth and seeing the sky for it really is - the billions of stars, the moon in all its glory. But really the night sky that had fired my imagination had been an amalgam of glossy hardcovers from the Air and Space Museum, IMAX films, and PBS shows like Nova. The stars were so dim in the suburb that I grew up in that all I could really identify were Orion and the Big Dipper.

As I grew older, I forgot about my obsession with the sky. Through college and my early adult years, I was living in mostly urban environments where you'd be lucky to even spot the moon. Perhaps that sense of wonder and excitement about "what's out there" dimmed a bit as well. I remember clearly though the first time I really felt like I "saw" the sky: I was in a small village called Bulungula on the east coast of South Africa. I wanted to cry for joy; I could have stayed out all night just gazing at the millions of points of shimmering light. I felt so tiny and in awe, it felt like I was spinning and the ground had dropped away. It was so clear and bright that you could see the clouds of galactic dust that blotted out the starlight from beyond the dust. And I really understood why the Milky Way is called the Milky Way.

Maybe the reason why we have become so careless and destructive of the environment is because we can't see the night sky anymore. We can't stand in awe of where we came from and what we're made of.

Martha Rosler

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 10:56:13 -0500

I recently attended a talk by Martha Rosler, an artist that's been making work since the 70s. I first heard about her work through a class I had taken long ago - her piece The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems had always stuck with me; these were photos of the Bowery that I knew from when I was a child, and the dissonance between those images and my own memories and my experience of the Bowery now always strikes me whenever I'm walking down it to visit my grandmother. I noticed that throughout her work she's used the theme of absence to talk about many subjects, and it gives the work a sense of power that perhaps would have been lacking if it had been dealt with straightforwardly.

Instead of using images of homeless people or people being tortured or war victims, she uses other methods - collaborating with groups of homeless people, using the sound of falling dishes and excruciatingly loud grindcore music as the viewer crosses a space, a video of a toy soldier playing "God Bless America" on a bugle with its mechanical leg exposed. By not using those images, she is able to avoid the superficial shock that the mainstream media uses to numb people into inaction.

Taking the Plunge

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 15:15:13 -0500

I installed Movable Type 4.1 just the other day on my server (yea open source!), just to get the ball rolling on updating my site. I was just going to poke around a bit, export my data, run it in a test directory for a bit. But then I realized that continuing to use MT 2.x was completely silly - it's like driving a Ford Pinto held together by duct tape while you've got a brand new Mini sitting in the driveway.

So I've decided instead to relaunch my site - temporarily. Actually it's a huge relief, at least I can start posting again and not have spammers junking up my site. So for now I'm using a (boring but utilitarian) default design - soon to be remedied - and that will act as another kick in the pants to redo the site like i've been saying for the past two years. And apologies for any files that have gone missing. I'm pretty sure no one's going to miss them much anyway.

Watch this space for more good things to come...with a redesign on the way and more content!

The Phantom of the Opera, unmasked.

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 17:33:18 -0500

Another embarrassing admission - I totally love Phantom of the Opera. Well, loved is more like it. Yes, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that is STILL on Broadway. For twenty years. And when I say love, I don't mean in an active way, I mean in a more, well, nostalgic way. But now love has turned to past tense. A better adjective would be annoyed.

For some reason - probably nostalgia - I put the Phantom of the Opera movie in our Netflix queue and promoted it all the way to the top. I came in the mail last week, and I immediately popped it into the DVD player. I was so excited! I hadn't heard those songs for ages. I know ALL the words. When I mean all the words, I mean that I listened to the soundtrack from the musical for days on end when I was a kid. I'm amazed that my parents hadn't thrown my stereo out the window by then. As soon as it started, Wayne said "no singing along!" That was pretty hard to do. So I just lip synched. He doesn't understand my obsession with certain musicals. Sometimes I don't either.

But I digress. In watching the movie, something changed. The words and music were so familiar - yet - there was something lacking. I knew exactly what was going to happen, but every step felt so disappointing. It was like the curtain had been pulled back. I actually thought about the lyrics and what they meant. Goddamnit the metaphors were so...obvious!!! (The Phantom = dark = evil, Raoul = light = good. meh.) The plot was non-existent! The girl who played Christine didn't have much a voice to enchant anyone! All the songs were ridiculously bombastic! And Wayne didn't help in pointing out that the Phantom would have basically been a pedophile if he had fallen in love with Christine "years ago". Ew.

The realization set in that the only reason that I thought that I liked it was that I had listened to it when I was a child. As an adult, it just made me kind of squirm. All my illusions about how great this musical was were totally shattered. Unfortunately the songs have been stuck in my head for the past week and a half and I still haven't been able to banish them to some deep dark dungeon no matter what else I listen to.

At least I still have the Sound of Music.

poor neglected blog.

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 17:22:56 -0500

I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I'm apologizing to my blog for such serious neglect. It's been so long since I've made a post that comment spam/cruft has totally built up. And you'd think that I would have fixed my blog up by now, considering that my day job involves building blogs (with MT!) for lots of other people. Sigh. And how embarassing is it that I'm using MT 2.64!! geez!

Well, fear not. I'm going to upgrade this whole thing. For now I'm working on a (not so) super secret project to get my paintings up, and I'll be running it with MT4. Until then, this blog will continue to hobble along.

meltingly hot. brooklyn still rules.

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 22:59:10 -0500

damn, the front page of my blog is blank again. Obviously too much time has gone by since the last time I posted. Ideas for posts, never got around to actually writing anything.

It's so hot today that I thought I was swimming through the air on the way to work today. I bought an iced coffee and all the ice melted before I got back to the office. This is why half of the city empties out after July 4th.

Reason #139 that Brooklyn kicks Manhattan's ass: coming out of the subway near our house, there was a cool breeze that smelled like the sea. try to top that, manhattan. By the way, don't ever go to Jones Beach if you don't own a car. It's reallly not worth the torturous bus ride. Why can't public transportation officials figure out that if you provide X number of buses TO location B, you'll have to provide the same X number of buses BACK to location A? It's not like I suddenly magically acquired a car in the couple of hours that I was sitting on the beach.

Reason #140 that Brooklyn kicks Manhattan's ass: In the space of about three minutes of gazing out the window, not only did I see a robin, but I also saw a female cardinal AND a male cardinal. It's freaking Wild America out here folks.

spring in brooklyn

Tue, 08 May 2007 10:41:21 -0500

dramatic blossoms
Originally uploaded by ambienttraffic.

i suppose my lack of posting is due to the fact that it is finally NICE outside and that I preferred to be outdoors. That said, I finally posted some new photos on flickr. I spent the day with with dad on saturday, we went to Bouchon Bakery, then walked through Central Park and went to the Met. I think he had a really good time and he was super happy that he wasn't mowing the lawn.

I've gotten a renewed energy with the change of seasons. I've been working in the studio and started up my "Painting a Day" project again. (now that my studio space isn't an icebox anymore.) woohoo! I'm starting a new job soon - more about that once I start. My little sister is graduating from college (!) in a couple of weeks, I'm totally excited and proud of her. AND she got a scholarship to study for another year in Germany, which is totally awesome. And in less than a month Wayne and I will be traveling down to Texas for his dad and stepmom's 25th wedding anniversary.

So lots going on. I love this weather.

my ipod was killed by the flaming lips

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 10:38:21 -0500

well, not really. I was on the subway and my ipod suddenly froze in the middle of "Do You Realize". So I restarted it and the sad ipod icon came up. It's like the equivalent of getting the bomb icon or the sad mac icon in system 9. So now I have to drag my sorry ass over to the apple store and probably get the hard drive replaced.

I was just thinking the other day about how my listening habits have changed over the years with technology. I was the kid who had a portable cassette player with her at all times. I would drag around at least 10 tapes with me in a giant neon pink fanny pack (i swore i never wore it, i just used it for storing my tapes and game boy). I am also embarrassed to say that I joined Columbia House in the sixth grade. (10 free cassettes?? hell yea!) I'd make mix tapes from other tapes and records and listen to them straight through, because i knew that fast-forwarding or rewinding would totally drain the batteries. Remember how you knew that your batteries were running out? The song would get slower and slower and slower.....Besides, do you know how hard it is to find the beginning of a song on a cassette? I put up with the scratchy sound and only being able to listen to the number of tapes I could carry.

Then the portable CD player became ubiquitous just as I was making the transition to CDs in middle school, so I saved up some money and bought myself one. What sucked: no more mix tapes. No one had figured out yet that you could organize music on your computer and burn it to a disc. Hell, people were just getting their first home computers and Prodigy and BBS's were the hot thing. At least you could skip a song without it draining your batteries. But another major point of suckage: the first generation CD players were HEAVY and BIG and they skipped ALL THE TIME. They also ate batteries like there was no tomorrow (although I am proud to say that I got a set of rechargeable ones). The more buffer time a CD player had, the more expensive it was. I still had to carry around discs, and again only as many as I was willing to carry. Plus that meant that the chance that a CD would get scratched and ruined was much higher. At this point I was still making mix tapes from CDs, so I was carrying around a CD player AND a tape player AND CDs AND tapes.

So this whole method of listening went on for a while, pretty much into college. Then I fell into a weird technology called minidiscs. Mainly because you could record audio through a mic that sounded way better than what you could record to a cassette - I had a radio show with a friend and that's how we ended up recording our broadcasts. Ripping CDs still wasn't quite viable yet - hard drive space was still expensive. So at least now I didn't have to lug around cassettes because I could make mixes on minidiscs, but recording everything was still in real time. Plus I had to transfer everything to minidisc - the format never caught on here so you couldn't buy albums directly on minidisc. Plus now I was carrying around 10 minidiscs at any given time, and often I'd misplace them.

Then came the era of ripping CDs. My friends and I started making mixes for each other. Which was cool. Except that you still had to carry around a CD player. Yes, they didn't skip as much, and they were lighter, but there was still something missing. Mp3 players started appearing - they were promising, but they had crappy interfaces and puny storage capacities.

Then Apple came out with the ipod. It was like nirvana. It's the way that I've been wanting to listen to music since I had my very first cassette player.

Damn you, Apple. I funnel hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a year into your pocket and I've had three of your products (2 ipods plus dual G5 tower) die on me over the few months. Am I cursed? Or maybe your products are just crappy. But unfortunately I am just going to crawl back to you every time this happens because there isn't any other company out there that comes close to how you've changed the way that I listen to my music, and HOW I've wanted to listen to my music. Damn you!

(not so) small update

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:59:25 -0500

it's been so long since I last posted that my homepage has been blank! and that's just unacceptable. I guess it's because I've been thinking about various posts but I never got around to it. So a small update on what I've been doing the past two months.

Wayne and I finally went on our honeymoon to Mexico. It was a rather last minute decision, but we had a great time and got some fun and sun in the process. We found a flight to Puerto Vallarta - definitely a town that has its charms, but for us perhaps a bit too much on the touristy side. We only stayed for a night in PV, and headed on farther south in the bay to Yelapa, a wonderful village that was the perfect getaway. We stayed at Casa Milagros, a beautiful house on a hill owned by Hugo and Antonia. They were such gracious and friendly hosts - Hugo had the best stories ever and Antonia can cook up a storm!

Wayne and I finally had some time to relax together and do the things that we love to do...cook, take photos, paint, sit on the beach. Plus we got to do things that we've never done before or do very rarely - I went fishing for really the first time ever (I caught three bonito!!! but got super sea sick), and kayaking as well. I would love to go back again soon, and this time armed with some knowledge of spanish so that I can actually have a conversation with Antonia and maybe learn some of her recipes. ;-)

I recently earned my green belt in karate - woohoo! Honestly I never thought that I would make it to this point, but I've been training for almost two years now. Ha before you know it i'll be a black belt. I just have to keep my determination to continue training. I'm just psyched that I can actually spar now.

I just went through a cycle of wanting to be in the kitchen, so I've tried making everything from preserved lemons to japanese style curry to hummus to bolognese sauce to banana bread. And surprisingly everything came out pretty well. I still haven't actually tried any of the preserved lemons yet, I need to figure out some dish they'd be good in (some kind of tagine perhaps?). and hummus is so ridiculously easy to make and so much tastier when it's fresh that I wonder why I never made it myself to begin with. The japanese style curry was inspired by a story on Serious Eats, but I did a couple of modifications - I used stew meat instead so it took longer, but so so tasty. Definitely one that I'll be adding to my repetoire for cold wintery nights. And the banana bread came out the best that I've ever made it - perhaps in part with help from the new Kitchen Aid mixer and the fact that I let the dough rest for a bit in the fridge before popping it in the oven. The outside was so crusty and golden, and the inside was fluffy and, well, marvelous. Go Irma!

Hrm that's about it for now. I'm looking forward to visiting Sannie in Vermont, we're planning a little bit of snowboarding action which I have been missing with tales of all this snowdumping all over the country this year. However I am looking forward to spring - I think Wayne and I will actually have a functional herb garden this year seeing as we have a bona fide patio (and nice landlords who offered us a plot in their section of the backyard) as part of our apartment. So I suppose I should start reading up on that. And before you know it we'll be hosting fabulous cocktail parties in our itsy bitsy apartment way out in Brooklyn. Come and visit! ;-)

kitchen aid

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 22:01:48 -0500

i'm in love. I finally got a chance to use the kitchen aid mixer that we received as a wedding gift. Originally I didn't even really want one - they're so huge and heavy, and I was afraid that it would take up way too much space in our cabinets. Plus we already had a mixer. But I said, OK, why not, add it to the registry. Our friends Andrew and Anindita (the awesome friends that they are) actually bought it for us (they have one too!). I haven't had much time to cook since we moved, so it was just gathering dust in the cabinet and I had kind of forgotten about it.

Of course, with Christmas being right around the corner, I wanted to make some holiday cookies. So I broke out the kitchen aid. And it was AMAZING. It's like I've been driving a Hyundai all my life, thinking that it was a pretty good car, and then I test drive a BMW. Geez. It's quiet and fast. It mixed the dough really evenly, and I barely put it above the second lowest setting. Everything about it is smooth - the lever to raise and lower the bowl, the switch that turns it on, the mixing action itself.

Everyone should have a kitchen aid.

(small) tour of my studio space

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 13:49:40 -0500

my studio space
Originally uploaded by ambienttraffic.

the light in the studio is so beautiful today, i just had to put a photo up. We were so lucky to find an apartment with an extra room, and it gets gorgeous light during the day. and it even has a door out to the patio, so i'm looking forward to spring days with the door wide open for some fresh air. And the tile floor is so easy to clean up. I couldn't have asked for a nicer space!

I've been working on a study of a Pontormo painting for the past week or so. and it finally struck me that the paint samples that I had chosen for painting the rest of the house came directly from that painting. And I had picked those paint chips up more than 2 months ago. Can you say superdork?

Now I've just got to get rid of the boxes of old work...