this past saturday, the dc metro got more snow than i think it has in the last 10 years put together! kind of fun to be snowed in for a day but i’m pretty over it now. especially since no one around here CLEARS THE SIDEWALKS! just walking to the metro is a broken bone waiting to happen. oh well, i just hope more of it melts before we head up to brooklyn for christmas.

this year, just like last year, me and my family will be skipping the traditional gift exchange and donating to charity. personally it feels much better to me to and i enjoy the holidays more when i am not running around looking for gifts for people that really don’t need them. i also think our society has made christmas into a holiday more about receiving presents than anything else and there are too many people and animals that truly are in need to be giving frivolous presents to people that have everything anyway.
if this sounds like a good idea too and you want to donate, these are a few of my favorite charities - ASPCA,World Wildlife Fund,The Humane Society and the local Washington Animal Rescue League

Another blast from my past courtesy of YouTube…I used to LOVE this movie and it’s still pretty cute watching it as an adult. I also never knew it was by Chuck Jones. Looking at it now I can totally see the similarities to his more famous Looney Tunes work but I guess that’s not really what I was paying attention to as a little kid. Enjoy!

Once in a while you find some cool stuff the sale area of Urban Outfitters… last Thursday was one of those times. I was picking through all the kitschy sale crap when I came across a little brown box labeled “perch! tiny basket”- I love tiny things, so naturally I opened it and was happy to find the little ceramic basket pictured below inside! So cute! Perfect for holding rings, earrings, and other little stuff, or holding nothing at all. And for $5 how could I NOT get it?

When I got home I looked up Perch! and found out it’s the Brooklyn based ceramic studio of Amy Adams (and a few other folks including a Kitty named Gus). They specialize in simple, beautifully designed ceramic tableware, lighting and other home accessories. I want one of everything! Especially the early bird pendant light,letter candle ball, and spot bowl.

Aaaaahhhhh! Friday morning, I was looking for tickets for me and my sister to one of Lady Gaga’s concerts at Radio City Music Hall this coming January and found it was sold out – not even 30 minutes after tickets went on sale. Tickets from TicketMaster ranged for $50 to $400 (for a meet & greet). I checked StubHub and there are already 7 pages of available tickets ranging from $250 - $4,000… Are you fucking kidding me? How is that legal? What normal person, especially in these economic times, can afford concert tickets at prices like that? Not me!

This is not the first time I have had this happen to me either. 2 years ago Björk was playing the United Palace New York and tickets were gone within minutes. Björk doesn’t tour that often so I would expect the show to sell out but come on… Me and my sister ended up paying $130 EACH for tickets in the VERY LAST ROW in the balcony that were originally $35. (purchased from StubHub of course) The show was amazing, despite the fact I could barely even see the stage, but it was pretty hard to stomach paying that much for a ticket that was clearly marked $35. It’s really disgusting and infuriating to me to that people can “harvest” tickets like this and blatantly rip people for hundreds of dollars. It keeps real fans from seeing artists they truly admire. The most annoying thing is most of the time the artists aren’t even getting any of the money from these bloated ticket prices…unless you are Madonna .

In fact, according to TechFold “StubHub and eBay are profiting hugely on what can best be described as gray area behavior, and in many jurisdictions, what would be outright illegal.” The New York Times wrote an article about the same thing happening with Hannah Montana tickets. The article states “Ticket sales for big-name concerts now follow a distressingly consistent pattern: At 10 a.m. on a Saturday, tickets go on sale, and by 10:05 a.m., all tickets are sold. Yet by 10:05, StubHub and other ticket exchanges already have a plenitude of tickets listed for the sold-out event — only now, they cost much more. Montana tickets, whose face value is $21 to $66, have been resold on StubHub, on average, for $258, the company says, and that is without taking into account StubHub’s 25 percent commission (10 percent paid by the buyer, 15 percent by the seller). None of the proceeds from the resale of tickets at inflated prices make their way back to Ms. Cyrus. “

I hope people will just stop buying these tickets (if they are even buying them in the first place) and the artists that are playing to “sold out” shows in half full venues will step in a prohibit these secondary ticket sites from ripping off fans that really want to see the show. Until then, I guess I’ll just be watching Lady Gaga on YouTube….

“bad romance” is definitely not one of my favorite lady gaga songs but this video is SICK

Holy beautiful bird pictures! I found the most amazing website/photographer today.

Andrew Zuckerman is a New York-based photographer and film director who has received critical acclaim for his 3 portrait books - “Creature”, “Bird”, and “Wisdom: The Greatest Gift One Generation Can Give To Another” . The first 2 books are filled with portraits of wild animals and birds. “Wisdom” consists of portraits of different famous figures like Jane Goodall and Buzz Aldrin along with their words of wisdom. Zuckerman has a really simple, beautiful style of photography - just the subject on a white background. It seems to make them more “human”, especially the birds. For example the condor looks almost shy and timid.

Personally,  I like the “Bird” book the best, the colors and textures of all the birds are just incredible to look through and I could definitely fritter away a few hours just going through all the images on the site. I don’t have the actual book so if anyone needs a Christmas gift idea….

For your viewing pleasure I have included a few picture of the birds I really liked…

Now, I don’t normally play the lottery but I sure as hell want to after seeing all these ads for New York Lottery Sweet Millions. This campaign by DDB is amazing - it’s almost too much cute to handle. See for yourself…

(sorry the pictures kind of suck - I took them with my phone)

So I just came across this book, movie, blog called “No Impact Man” written by this guy Colin Beavan in New York. Colin and his family pledged for a year to try to live in a way that made little to no impact on the environment. No bottled water, no toilet paper, no new stuff, no imported foods etc. It’s pretty cool, and really inspiring to read about all the things him and his family tried to help their environmental impact. I don’t think I would be able to do it all but every little bit helps and there are a lot of little bits to be taken from his experience. One bit would be if you are going to buy something new, get rid of something you already have (sell it, donate it etc.) so you are not constantly increasing the amount of things you have. For example, I just bought 3 new pairs of shoes but I also donated about 20 pairs to Soles 4 Soles. Another thing would be going to the library for book instead of buying it - it’s greener and in the long run saves you quite a bit of money. Pretty simple stuff. Here is an entry I really liked, it’s a message from his dog Frankie in response to an email he received that said having a dog was not very green…