Author: nell-boeschenstein

The whole notion of a "celebrity artist" inspires a knee-jerk reaction in me that makes me want to dismiss said artist out of hand, complain that said artist is famous thanks simply to having landed on a successful gimmick and then go on to list a litany of reasons of why said artist is overrated. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I have no idea what I am talking about—I’m just being obnoxious.

There is perhaps no other artist out there (besides maybe that Damien Hirst dude) who inspires such a knee-jerk reaction in me than Graffiti Artist of This Century and All Centuries Hereafter, Banksy. You know, the British guy who goes around anonymously painting civic structures and placing his subversive artworks in upstanding institutions such as the Tate or MOMA; the guy who, if he is being written about in this column, was probably totally over, like, 10 years ago.

But the probability of Banksy being totally over, like, 10 years ago means that the probability is high that he is ripe for a coolness renaissance, right? But who cares? I don’t, really. What really matters is that I am in the midst of figuring out cheap ways to decorate my new apartment and on Banksy’s site there is an online shop in which all the images are free. Free! (Cue angel chorus and light from heaven.) You can download any of the images in high-resolution and, if you are so inspired by the simple suggestion on the page, print them on glossy paper. Tada! A poster! A gift! A something to hide a crack in the wall! While some of the images don’t appeal to me at all, there are a couple I find quite lovely: the silhouette of a little girl being carried away by a bunch of balloons or the angel taking a cigarette break in a dark alley.

Also worth reading is Banksy’s manifesto, a text he lifts from a British lieutenant colonel who was among the first to liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. I’m not going to say too much about it here. I’m not even quite sure how I feel about Banksy using it as an entrée into his work, but the image it conjures is one you won’t soon forget.

I am preparing (once again) to relocate. Once again I will not be bringing any furniture with me, just some clothes, a decorative pillow or two and some chutzpah. Naturally, there are upsides and downsides to the state of extreme brokenness that prevents one from taking one’s furniture with one when one goes. Con: No furniture. Pro: Clean decorating palette.

Knowing that my budget is going to be about the size of a toddler’s change purse has made me intent on getting the most bang for each itty bitty baby buck. To hone in on the look that I am going for and to discover undiscovered, underpriced designers, I have been reading design blogs like it’s my 80-hour/week investment designing job. (I’m an I-designer, get it?) During these preparatory marathons, I have relied heavily on the links and recommendations of Poppy Talk, a blog out of Canadialand that bears the tagline: "Mining for the beautiful, the decayed, and the handmade." There are links at the top of the site that lead you to each of the posts classified as either "beautiful," "decayed" or "handmade," but looking at the blog in its entirety makes it clear that mixing and matching these categories is what makes a truly enchanting room.

From ceramic birdhouses to lampshades made from bare, bent wood to shelves constructed from skateboards to postcards from the 1890s, I can’t help but covet and consider buying each piece that Poppy posts about. But I never do. I stop myself before inputting my credit card information because buying is not the point—inspiration is. My plan is to take the ideas from Poppy Talk—and sites like it—and then search the cheap furniture listings on Craigslist for poor or worn imitations of the magazine tear sheets I have in my head. And this is all well and good until, at the end of a three-hour date with my computer, I close it shut, thinking, "I’m sick of being broke and in my 20s."

This being the "Best Of" issue and all, I got to thinking about all the many wonderful things about Charlottesville that make it The Best Town of All Towns in The Universe to me. I love Charlottesville. Probably more than is healthy and certainly more than is necessary.

The list of what makes Charlottesville rock is long: C&O bread, Belmont Avenue, the view from Monticello, the sale rack at Eloise, a sense of "home." In other words, I am never one to say that Charlottesville is lacking in any department…except maybe its online community. It’s a good day for me when I discover a Charlottesville-based blog or website that gives me a chuckle or makes me think; roughly 99 percent of the time, Charlottesville-based sites simply inspire a desire to find another website where I can procrastinate.

That said, over the two years that I have been writing this column I have indeed found some Charlottesville Internet gems. Here is a brief rundown of my top five favorites, in no particular order. A few of them I have written about before, a couple I have not:

1. Book of Joe: Updates are posted multiple times a day and range from the topic of celebrity tattoos to Kit Kat bars. A hodgepodge of useless information.

2. No discussion of Charlottesville’s Internet community would be complete without a shoutout to old Waldo Jaquith. I’ve never written about him in this forum before because, well, it’s just too obvious. But, if you want a summary of local news, Jaquith’s Cville News is a great place to start.

3. The Virginia Quarterly Review‘s site is just what you would expect from the esteemed quarterly: informative and intelligent. Definitely worthwhile if you are having a "stupid day" and want to make an effort to remedy that.

4. Although I just discovered it recently (and wrote about it last week), I really do think that Beaverlike Mammals is hilarious. A repository for sightings of furry animals: What’s not to like?

5. Charlottesville Tomorrow is a development nerd’s dream because it’s a forum that encourages said nerds to get involved in the many and complicated development issues facing our area. And such involvement is exactly what the Charlottesville of tomorrow needs.

The other day a girl I know came up to me and asked, "Are you still writing that column about websites?" I said that indeed I was, flattered and astonished that she even knew I wrote a column about websites at all. She then proceeded to tell me about this website she had started about furry animals that look like beavers. "It’s for those times when you see a furry animal by the side of the road and you ask yourself, ‘Is that a beaver?!’ and then you realize that it isn’t, but it’s still fun! You should write about it," she said. I looked at her, not knowing quite what to say. In my head I was thinking, "Huh? I don’t quite get this." Out loud to my acquaintance I said, "Are you kidding? I will totally write about it! What else am I going to write about?!" She then handed me a yellow Post-It with "www.beaverlikemammals.com" written on it.

Honestly, I was skeptical. I am entirely in favor of useless things (especially useless websites, God knows). But this one sounded not so much useless as much as it sounded like a private joke that I wasn’t in on. I gave it a go anyway: In operation since April, the site is a repository for various BLM (the site’s shorthand for "beaver-like mammal") sightings everywhere from North Garden to Peru. Some sightings come complete with pictures or video, some sightings are merely missives attesting to the fact that a sighting had occurred. It took me a bit of reading to get into the groove of the site, but I am happy to report that, really, there’s no inside joke: Beaver-Like Mammals is simply a mentality (the "I-look-for-furry-things-in-the-yard-and-wonder-whether-they-are-beavers" mentality) that you have to accept, then embrace. Plus, once you start seeing those furry things, you will see them everywhere, and that only makes life more pleasant. Yay! Furry things!

The only potential danger is that once you begin to wonder whether one furry thing is a beaver, you will begin—in extreme cases—to wonder whether every furry thing is a beaver. For example, the people who wrote in from India (yes, India) about a BLM sighting. The animal was actually either a squirrel or a chipmunk, the writers could not tell. I don’t know about anyone else, but I have never seen a squirrel (or a chipmunk for that matter) by the side of the road and asked myself, "Whoa, cool! Is that a beaver?" But then again, perhaps I am just abnormally acquainted with the looks and behavior of Sciurus carolinensis.

Two thoughts on the subject of trees:

First, when I lived in Aspen, my constant argument against all those people who kept gushing over how beautiful Aspen was amounted to, “Beautiful? But it only has three kinds of trees!” (aspens, cottonwoods and pines). I would then treat these poor people who were so unschooled in the true meaning of beauty to a lecture about how much more beautiful Virginia is than Colorado thanks simply to the diversity of Virginia’s leafy populace.

Second, I find it very hot when guys know their trees. (Same goes—though to a slightly lesser degree—with bird identification.)

That said, I have only a cursory knowledge of tree identification because, of course, it is always better to expect more of others than you do of yourself. Occasionally, however, I do make a concerted effort to stem such hypocritical tendencies. It’s then that I get online and visit The National Arbor Day Foundation. While Arbor Day 2007 itself has come and gone (it’s in April which makes this column particularly untimely), the Foundation does have a superb online tree identification guide that proves informative 365 days a year.

For the semi-serious tree student such as myself, it’s easy and rewarding to get some branch and leaf samples out in the yard, then sit down at the computer and have the website guide you through the steps to identifying your loot. (That’s not nerdy at all, is it?) With detailed pictures and questions like “Does the tree bear cones that are sometimes berry-like and have leaves that hug the twig and are scale-like or awl-shaped?” you both learn helpful vocabulary words and how to ID your samples through process of elimination.

This may all seem very elementary, but elementary is the first step to expertise, no? And with any luck, this accrued knowledge will one day pay off in the form of excellent cocktail party fodder at a soiree somewhere outside…at a Connecticut country house, perhaps.

Last night, I was sitting around drinking a pinot grigio that tasted like a chardonnay (does that sound obnoxious?) with a few of my favorite people, when our idle chitchat turned to one of my favorite topics of conversation: real estate. This discussion, however, differed from previous conversations about real estate in that this conversation was no longer about the eventuality of buying a place sometime in the distant and nebulous future. This time, one of my companions had already bought a house and the other was talking about a specific house in which she is interested. “God,” I thought. “Two years ago I didn’t think that I would ever be old enough to have a conversation about home ownership.” But no sooner had I thought this thought than I had to admit that I am old and that I, too, am interested in buying—sooner rather than later—should the perfect piece of Belmont brickitecture present itself. I want a place of my own: a piece of real estate to make of it what I will.

So when I got home, slightly buzzed and having set new goals of financial responsibility for myself, I started investigating local real estate blogs because, given that I am old and anxious to call myself a homeowner, I should approach the market as an old, yet informed, future Donald Trump, should I not? This is how I arrived at Real Central Virginia, a real estate blog by local Realtor Jim Duncan who, not coincidentally, is quoted to distraction in all manner of local media. It should be no surprise that the vast majority of local Charlottesville blogs are insanely boring or stupid or both. Ditto local real estate blogs (or all real estate blogs for that matter). Which is why this one stands out as being none of the above: It’s both good looking and good reading. It makes good use of TV clips from YouTube, links to articles on the topic (“The Upside of a Down Market” on RealBlogging.com), and personal observations.

It’s also refreshing that Duncan doesn’t take the typical Realtor’s approach of basically shilling the properties that he lists. The way Duncan writes about real estate and the articles he links to make it clear that he is not just in the business to make a living; the man seems genuinely interested in real estate as a topic of intelligent discussion, in sharing what he knows and in learning more. It’s a bit premature yet, but Duncan’s name is getting stored away in my little brain and I’m going to look him up when a “For Sale” sign pops up that has my name on it.

O.K. So. Everyone knows that Rosie O’Donnell blogs, right? Everyone has heard tell about her weird blogging style that often involves what some might refer to as “poems” (e.g., “a book is not a blog/a book has very few strict rules/so does singing/and comedy too/you never know to…what?”), right? Well, you may have heard that Rosie blogs, but have you ever actually visited said blog? Because…well…um…a visit to the R Blog is definitely worth the trip. And I say that with a completely straight face.

It’s easy to laugh at the bad poetry and to wonder aloud at that insane photo of her daughter dressed up in ammunition and to scratch your head at her video postings (in a recent one she casually mentions a red spot on her face as being the result of her trying to dislodge an ingrown hair with a thumbtack). What is not easy, however —and what makes this blog so interesting to me—is trying to separate Rosie from her celebrity. I mean, as a general rule, blogs reveal the most personal, useless, boring shit about random people. People confess; they show their best sides and their worst sides; they are who they are probably because they are—or think they are—writing for their own eyes only. No one ever cares about the weird things people disclose about themselves on their blogs. That’s life: People are weird or crazy or both. Period. Blah blah blah blaaaaahhgggg.

Now, Rosie’s blog is rife with the intimacy that you see on every other blog in the universe and rife with the stuff that no one cares about—the dirty details of life. But the things on Rosie’s blog that could elicit the response from me of “ho-hum-just-another-weird-person” if anyone else were responsible for the posts, instead make me think, “Man, that Rosie O’Donnell is one weird chick. How in God’s name did she get to where she is?” Thing is, this woman is completely uninhibited by her celebrity when it comes to blogging: Girlfriend does not give one shit. And while this is not a thought that I am remotely proud to admit about myself, Rosie’s forthcomingness makes me distinctly uncomfortable. Apparently celebrities are not allowed to have ingrown hairs and, apparently, celebrities are not allowed to be exactly like me.

I think I’ve spoken before in this forum about my childhood wish to go into advertising. How, thanks to ads like Play Station’s 1998 classic pedaling Metal Gear Solid and the Tiny House ad for Geico, I am convinced that the advertising business is full of the coolest, smartest, funniest people in the world. While he may be out to prove my naïve assumptions about his chosen profession null and void, Copyranter manages to do just the opposite: He actually furthers my perception of advertising as that mythical place of hilarious people I decided it was way back in the day.

Allow me to introduce him: “Copyranter” is the pseudonym chosen by the blogger behind the Copyranter blog. A 15-year veteran of the New York City advertising world, two years ago this guy decided to take on the mission of exposing the advertising world as a total sham in which no one knows what the hell they are doing. His blog took off and, as bloggers go, he’s now a virtual celebrity. (I think these peeps are referred to as “blogebrities,” but whatever.)

Anyone with even a passing interest in advertising can see why this guy is such a hit: He takes ads that we see every day and points out both the ridiculous and the sublime (and the ridiculously sublime) that we, as we turn the pages of a magazine or change the channels on the TV, do not often take the time to think about. He’s consumed with advertising in a truly intellectual way and yet he blogs about the business without being pretentious or sanctimonious—he blogs about it in a way that makes me laugh out loud the way no sit-com ever has.

For example, one of my favorite bones he has to pick is with the Ketel One advertising campaign. Just this past week he posted the following Ketel One ad: “Dear Kettle One Drinker [sic] Can you make one hundred words of four letters or more, from the letters in Kettle One Vodka?”

Copyranter’s response: “Dear Ketel One Drinker COLON? Dear Ketel One Drinker COMMA? Dear Ketel One Drinker DASH? Dear Ketel One Drinker ELLIPSIS? How about you nimrods learn how to punctuate your own doodle-brained ads before you invite me (well not me, I don’t drink Ketel One) to play a stupid fucking language game?”
I love this guy. I wish I worked in the cubicle next to him.

Vague memories from the Food & Wine Classic that recently wrapped up here in Aspen from where I write: the girl at the table next to me telling her companion that she used to have sex with Bobby Flay in the bathroom of the restaurant at which we were dining; me getting so drunk on some rare scotch that, after the event, I walked into a store, tried a dress on, and decided I needed it before hearing the salesgirl say, “Honey, I think you have that on inside-out”; watching my friend get hit on by one of the dudes from Naughty By Nature (“Do you have a boyfriend?” “No.” “Then, girl, you are in trouble”).

The weekend wasn’t, however, just a good laugh. Meandering through the Grand Tasting, glass of wine in hand, I found myself honestly wishing I were more versed in the vocabulary of good food and fine wine. And it was then I decided that it was finally time to make my New Year’s resolution: I, too, would fashion myself into an amateur foodie.

Since I can’t really afford to go out to eat, I (of course) headed to the Internet to start my self-taught course on food and wine appreciation. And so I discovered Restaurant Girl. A food writer in New York, her coverage is limited to the eating scene in the Big Apple. But really that just kills two birds with one stone (and plates them impeccably): I get to learn about food and get a taste of the big city at the same time.

I know nothing about food in New York, but reading Restaurant Girl’s posts makes me feel like a total insider. Wondering where to get a killer mojito? Just ask me! It’s at Little Branch, on Seventh Avenue at Leroy Street. What was the biggest culinary disappointment of last year? Oh, honey, Buddha Bar. Boo hiss. What cheese goes well with a dry Sauvignon Blanc? Well, a Humboldt Fog, duh.

Because she’s a writer, the prose is—pardon the pun—icing on the cake. Readable, light and accessible for an easily-intimidated amateur such as myself. Clearly, I have a long way to go before the “foodie” distinction is mine to add to my resume, but Restaurant Girl is as good a place as any to start.

The thing about the Internet is that it keeps getting more and more ambitious. Bigger and better and more and lots more. This is what we call “progress” in cliché moments of cynicism when we are using that word to denegrate that same word. I, however, am not using the word in this way in this context. I am using this word thoroughly in earnest when I say that Digg is bigger and better and more and lots more than anything else out there on the interwebs. It’s cool. It’s iProgress. It’s one-stop browsing. It’s the Mall of America for superdorks. It’s progress.

The site describes itself as being “all about user powered content” wherein “everything is submitted and voted on by the Digg community.” That “everything” can mean, well, everything from news articles (this being a popular one since the Digg community is typically a nerdy one) to YouTube videos to online games. The more people who vote on any particular item, the higher it gets on the list; luckily, the Digg community is large and thus, by virtue of many opinions, the cream, as they say, really does rise to the top.

For example, (I’m going to bypass the news stories at the top of the list because, when I was writing this, they were all the usual suspects—John Travolta blaming the Virginia Tech massacre on anti-depressants, Jon Stewart getting courted by NBC, Sicko getting pulled from YouTube) and admit that what sucked me in were the games. In particular, one that was a cross between Sudoku and a crossword puzzle. Or maybe more like “Wheel of Fortune.” Whatever.

But perhaps the most popular feature is that you can create your own profile that brings together all the stories, videos, games, what-have-you, that you “dig” for your friends to see. If you have friends, that is, and don’t spend all your time communing with the computer.