Author: nell-boeschenstein

I’ve written here in the past about the ever-popular website Cute Overload that posts photographs of ridiculously cute animals—usually baby ones—that people sit in their cubicles and coo over. But where one trail is blazed, others are soon to follow, and riding on the coattails of Cute Overload comes the semi-spoof website, Ugly Overload. I say “semi-spoof,” because it’s actually not making fun of ugly animals at all. (If that was the case, I would most certainly berate the cynics responsible for the site instead of applauding their good souls). Quite the contrary: Ugly Overload simply gives the less attractive (but still adorable and lovable!) animals among us the credit they deserve. As the site’s tagline says: “Giving ugly animals their day in the sun. We avoid the simply tragic, diseased, or maimed. Rather, these creatures are only as hideous as nature—or their owners—intended.”

Animals basking in this particular spotlight range from the everyday mole to the Mekong giant catfish to the desert horned lizard to pugs. For me, however, it’s not the photographs that make the site, but the little science lesson or history lesson (or National Geographic video!) that accompany each picture. (For instance, did you know that something called a camel spider resembles both a scorpion and a spider, but is neither, and instead is its own unique kind of arachnid?) In doing so, the site is not simply about cooing at animals when they yawn or fall asleep in their milk dish. It’s about truly appreciating them, and that’s not just a way to waste time at the office.

The first time I became aware that pre-fab housing could be something other than disgusting was a number of years back when the magazine Dwell sponsored a pre-fab home design competition, then sold—through the magazine—the winning blueprints. Since then, the idea of mass-producing good design (think Apple tech design applied to architecture) has fascinated me. So naturally, the next free moment I have will be spent at “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling,” the Museum of Modern Art’s new architecture exhibit, the centerpiece of which is six prefabricated homes commissioned by the museum and constructed in an adjacent lot. 

But not everyone wants to make the trek to New York in the dead of summer. (Who can blame them?) And so, for all you design nerds out there who prefer to nerd out from the comfort of Charlottesville, I recommend a visit to the exhibit’s blog. The site includes a history of the modern American prefabricated home, archival footage of early prefab homes being constructed, and installation videos (in fast-forward time) for each of the six MoMA-commissioned houses. Even without stepping foot in these houses and strict time limits (10 weeks total for design and installation), it’s clear that each residence is a feat of architectural ingenuity. No cookie cutter megamansions to be found: These are houses that could, if we let them, change the way we house ourselves. Ah, if only our national taste in housing were as good as our taste in iPod design…

YouTube proper may primarily be the domain of lowbrow workplace procrastination outlets along the lines of “Obama Girl” or “My Son Is Gay,” but a little bird just alerted me to the VIP section of YouTube and, as in the real world, a little selectivity goes a long way. The YouTube Screening Room may not offer Dom Perignon bottle service, but you can virtually hear the masses outside begging for entrance from behind the velvet ropes. Indeed, once safely ensconced in the Screening Room, the bar is raised significantly in terms of the quality of video—film, if I may be so bold—posted there.

The idea is this: Four new short films posted every two weeks in a high-quality player format for free. And these aren’t just random home videos; these are most often films that have made the rounds at festivals and received positive attention, but haven’t been picked up by major studios or distributors, and thus have only been available to a certain class of movie buff or industry insider. Plainly put, the Screening Room is fighting elitism four films at a time (with the permission of the filmmakers, of course—this here is no pirating situation) and I’m all for it.

Recently, the Screening Room offered an animated short titled “I Met the Walrus,” which used as its soundtrack an interview that a 14-year-old boy recorded in 1969 when he ambushed John Lennon with a microphone. The short was nominated for a 2008 Academy Award for Animated Short, but I never would have seen it had it not made it to the Screening Room. I’m glad I know what I was missing.

This column is susceptible to nothing if not to accusations of extreme nerdiness, and the site I want to point you in the direction of today is no different. Fortunately for you, there’s a significant population of Charlottesville who will actually find this site quite useful. There’s a fair number of professors, researchers, students and hangers-on milling about from the Rotunda to Belmont who have known, are currently experiencing, or are soon to experience, the pain of a bibliography—the pain of tracking down the year and city of publication, long after you have returned the book to the UVA stacks, the pain of asking yourself, “Does the essay name come before the book title or after?”

Well, you’re welcome, because I recently found that pain can be significantly diminished in the future with a little help from BibMe, a website that creates a bibliography for you. It has the capacity to write bibliographies for books, newspapers, magazines, websites, journals, or films in MLA, APA, Chicago or Turabian formats. Just type in the title, author, or ISBN number and add that entry to your online bibliography. Then, when you’ve gotten all your sources together, just print the damn thing out and be done with it. Maybe with a little help from this site, you’ll get your next paper in an hour before the final, absolute, die-hard deadline. Instead of five minutes before, like last time.

When I think about the three things I would want if left alone on a desert island, my first thought is: “A sense of humor.” I would also need my one true love, and either an endless supply of alcohol or water (it’s a tough decision between the two when faced with spending the rest of your days stranded on a pile of sand in the middle of the ocean). I wonder if “Saturday Night Live” wunderkind Andy Samberg had desert island scenarios in mind when he named his comedy video website “The Lonely Island.” I, for one, like to think that he did.

Andy is a funny guy. For those who care, he’s also pretty hot. So are his friends, who also have videos up. Their strength is certainly the music video genre, from a white-boy hipster rapping about his pants to a Nokia keyboard melody entitled “Daquiri Girl,” not to mention a Beastie Boys spoof that attempts to coin a new slang term—“Kablam-o”—that apparently means everything from “that’s whack” to “that’s awesome” to “that sucks.” It’s an all-purpose word, really. Also worth checking out is “the original” version of “The Office.” Oh, and by the way, “the original” version of “The Office” is the Japanese version, for those of you who keep complaining that the American version isn’t as good as the faux-“original” British version.

Hmmm. So, I guess the conclusion that I’ve reached here is that an ideal desert island scenario would be to have my one true love be Andy Samberg. Then I would have to choose between water and wine. How ’bout that?

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who care about fonts and those who have never heard of such a ridiculous thing as caring about fonts. Those who care about fonts care passionately. For example, my father’s font is Helvetica; my friend Abbye’s font is Garamond; my friend Bridget’s font is Book Antiqua; C-VILLE’s font is Minion. Those who do not care about fonts allow their lives to pass them by in a fog of Times New Roman.

But these are all traditional fonts found on Microsoft Word—fonts merely for the casual font-watcher. For the true font fiend, or even just for the font-curious, Typographica, an online journal that posts (approximately) a new article a month, is on hand to satisfy inquiring minds. The relative infrequency of new content is made up for in the quality of said content. If you want to be up-to-date on the most relevant news from the world of fonts, this isn’t a bad place to start.

Say, for instance, you neglected to read a single article in the past year and a half about new fonts on the market in 2007. Well, you’re in luck, because the March article on Typographica rounds up the editor’s font picks from that year. And there are some nice ones: I very much like Lineare Serif, Feijoa, and National. But it’s window-shopping only. And, like window shopping in front of Prada before returning to your closet full of Gap, Goudy Old Style awaits me in Microsoft Word.

Every week, I consider writing up something about the Huffington Post for this column, and every week I postpone it because, I tell myself, “It can wait. The HuffPo is a perennial.” And it’s true: “HuffPo” (as those in the know refer to it) is a good read for Internet newsies, 24/7/365. Its readability does not wax and wane with current events or time of year or fads or the popular people, because current events, fads, the popular people, and commentary on all of the above are precisely what the site covers.

“So, why now?” one might ask. To which I would respond that, with the presidential campaign nearing a fever pitch, the HuffPo is an excellent place to go if you’re looking for the latest news, gossip, or table scrap from the race. Especially if you’re liberally inclined, I should say. If you’re more conservatively inclined, maybe just check in with me next week…or never. The site has been monitoring Obama and McCain’s every move, and it regularly has opinion pieces and commentary on everything from dissecting the possible field of VP candidates to John McCain as a new Bob Dole figure.

The site is also known for its media coverage, and it’s got you covered when it comes to gossip, entertainment, and business, too. Really, the HuffPo is a good place to start in the morning as you’re drinking your coffee. It wakes you up; it gets your brain thinking beyond the cubicle.

It’s probably common knowledge that the two best places to catch up on your light reading are the bathroom and the office. Any bathroom worth its salt has somewhere among its various reading materials a copy of Our Dumb World: The Onion’s Atlas of Planet Earth, which patient bathroom-goers can flip through as they wait for something to, uh, happen. Likewise, an office worker should get acquainted—if he or she is not already—with The Onion’s website, because those spreadsheets don’t need to be done by tomorrow! The site, which features a good portion of what is in the print edition of the paper, is even better for Charlottesville office workers, because, last time I checked, The Onion was a little difficult to find around town, even if the Starlight Express does bring back a load with every trip (hint hint).

In case you didn’t know, The Onion (“America’s finest news source”) is an institution. It was “The Daily Show” before “The Daily Show” was “The Daily Show.” A humorous fake newspaper, the headlines are the highlights (sometimes the jokes wear themselves out after the first paragraph or two of an actual story) because, with surprising consistency, they cut straight to the heart of what is ridiculous, depressing, extraordinary, terrifying and horrible about life as we know it. A few recent highlights include “Black Man Asks Nation for Change” and an opinion column entitled “Ask a Girl Whose Boyfriend Went to Six Flags With Someone Else.” I mean, that pretty much sums up a political climate and a personal life in 18 words. Try it—it’s harder than it looks.

The other day the old “Have you read…?” “You should read…” “Let me loan you…” conversation started up at a friend’s barbeque, when our gracious host announced that she never loans books, she simply gives them away. Another friend then piped up that there was a website in existence that fostered exactly that road to good karma: Paperback Swap.

The site takes the conventional conversation of “Have you read…”, puts it on the Internet, and expands the number of participants in the conversation exponentially. You pay for the postage of the books that you send out and, in return, when you have books sent to you, the sender pays the postage. For each book you send out, you get a credit towards a book that can be sent to you at some point in the future. Say you read Eat, Pray, Love, hated it and see no reason why it should still be on your bookshelf; put it on Paperback Swap, send it out, and then order yourself a book you really want for your bookshelf! There’s no room for schlock ‘round these parts!

It’s not a particularly pretty site. In fact, the graphics remind me of those Scholastic book order forms circa 1988, but it’s user-friendly and does the job without much fuss. I’m not complaining; I’m just looking for something to complain about.

The Gawker Media empire gets a lot of attention from the media. Why, just the other week, former Gawker editor Emily Gould was sprawled out in a “Come hither” pose on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. And yet, I think it’s time the youngest member of Gawker Media (the Condé Nast of the blogging world, for those of you who still didn’t know) got a shout-out. Perhaps I’m also feeling especially susceptible to the charms of Jezebel.com because all this insane Sex and the City promotion has me wondering, “Wow, um…so…what else does it mean to be a sexy lady in New York City?”

Jezebel offers women options aside from Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte, and still unapologetically fills the “girl talk” slot for Gawker Media. For example, sex toys? Yes, they cover that—a blogger known as “Slut Machine” recently reviewed a mermaid-shaped dildo. Hot men? Yes, that too, most recently in the form of über-hotties Clive Owen and Barack Obama. Male insecurities that date back to high school rejections? For sure! And, of course, there is the obligatory SATC coverage from time to time.

Whether you love the Gawker style of snarkiness, or whether you’ve come to the well-informed decision that snarkiness is so 2004, Jezebel is a women’s magazine for smart women. It takes the Cosmo (no, that’s not a SATC reference) model and turns it on its head.