I LOVE JAPAN

currently with Seth Plattnet

Song of the moment: "Ain't No Way" Aretha Franklin

Phrase I'm Using Too Much: "I want to go to there"

Over it: hah. duh.

Girl Crush: Leslie Knope

Obsession: NCAA basketball (seriously!)

Reading: Nine Stories

color me bad

via ELLE.com

In another life, I could have been an amazing artist (or: a concert pianist, a gymnast, a downhill skier, a dancer, or zoologist), but a chronic lack of interest in practice and technique in favor of pleasurable free-handing led me to be one who just “dabbles.” Still, I owe any and all interest in drawing and painting to the very basic exercise of coloring. As in, a coloring book, a box of crayons, and my adherence—or lack there of—to the palette of the world. I still remember my older brother sitting me down at age 4 and teaching me how to color, instructing me to outline the object first, then color it in so I could better stay in the lines. That tiny bit of know-how was instrumental in the many accolades and awards I received for my coloring skills in the early years of elementary school.

Twenty-years later, RxArt is allowing me to indulge, once again, that small, almost Zen-like luxury of simply coloring, albeit on a more adult level. Now in its second volume, Between the Line: A Coloring Book of Drawings by Contemporary Artists is available to those adults who have since forgotten how joyous filling in a colorless image can be. With drawings by forty-eight artists including Takashi Murakami, Adam McEwen, Aurel Schmidt, and fashion designer Cynthia Rowley, there’s a picture and a style for any artistic taste—there’s even a few pages of stickers to play around with. I took the first picture in the book by McEwan and had a go on my lunch break. She’s got blue skin and green hair, but so what? I stayed in the lines, didn’t I? My older brother would be proud.

Both volumes of the contemporary artist coloring books are available online, or in the RxArt store at 208 Forsyth Street, New York, NY 10002 (212.260.8797).

—Seth Platter, Assistant Editor

if only typewriters cured my hangovers as well

my year, in song

This mash-up of all the hits from the past year has been floating around the internet today and I'm kind of obsessed with it. I listened to it this morning and it got me to thinking about how integral music is to my life in that I tie so much memory to certain songs -- where I was, what I was doing, who I was with, when, in that singular moment, it imprinted on my brain and will forever remind me of a time and place (good or bad).

So I decided to sort of dissect the mash-up and illuminate the memories that come with some of the sampled songs. In doing so it was kind of a great way to time stamp the last year, which obviously had a lot of ups and downs. I'm going to go the way of the optimist and say that it was all for the best.

The Black Eyed Peas - BOOM BOOM POW
-- Logan Slaughter's twinky sidekick busting out Fergie's "people in the place..." bridge at Barracuda, sending the whole place into a riot of laughter and dance.

Lady Gaga - POKER FACE
-- Andy Dodds. Period.

Lady Gaga Featuring Colby O'Donis - JUST DANCE
-- more from 2008, but dancing at Splash on Thursdays with Ryan and Michael and anyone else who decided to be as delightfully tragic as we were each week.

The Black Eyed Peas - I GOTTA FEELING
-- cruising to the beach in San Diego with Aja, Charlotte, and Caitlin."Mozel tov??!!"

Taylor Swift - LOVE STORY
-- runs along The East River.

Flo Rida - RIGHT ROUND
-- general skankiness throughout the year

Jason Mraz - I'M YOURS
-- singing to myself alone in my room...sometimes way too loudly.

Beyonce - SINGLE LADIES (PUT A RING ON IT)
-- Lauren Murphy busting out the dance, full stop, at any opportunity available, sometimes with her sister as backup

Kanye West - HEARTLESS
-- lamenting our love lives with Christine

Taylor Swift - YOU BELONG WITH ME
-- T. Swift jam sessions at ELLE

The Fray - YOU FOUND ME
-- watching So You Think You Can Dance with my ladies of Hotel 194

Kings Of Leon - USE SOMEBODY
-- moments like this

Jamie Foxx Featuring T-Pain - BLAME IT
-- giving my number, yelling at someone, or eating something when I shouldn't have

Pitbull - I KNOW YOU WANT ME (CALLE OCHO)
-- the top 16 group dance of SYTYCD season 5. BEYOND.

T.I. Featuring Rihanna - LIVE YOUR LIFE
-- Ringing in the New Year at our kick-ass party NYE party

Jay Sean Featuring Lil Wayne - DOWN
-- getting low at Elena's wedding

Miley Cyrus - THE CLIMB
-- camping out on Lauren and Blythe's floor, watching Hannah Montana: The Movie, and noming on Mexican food before saying goodbye to my chica as she leaves New York.

Kelly Clarkson - MY LIFE WOULD SUCK WITHOUT YOU
-- all my friends who kept my chin up through 2009 and who, truly, without my life would so suck.

Beyonce - HALO
-- weekend ski trip to Vermont with my harem of women: Aja, Charlotte, Caitlin and Lauren.

Katy Perry - HOT N COLD
-- jumping around like fools at Hiro with Patrick (aka Tragitwin) and Mary at the Paper+H&M party/Katy Perry concert

are you there, Santa? it's me, Seth

I went to a Christmas party/variety show of sorts last night and we played a game that involved reading quotes from notable Christmas movies and then trying to guess what film they were gleaned from. I got this gem:

The worst thing that ever happened to me was on Christmas. Oh, God. It was so horrible. It was Christmas Eve. I was 9 years old. Me and Mom were decorating the tree, waiting for Dad to come home from work. A couple hours went by. Dad wasn't home. So Mom called the office. No answer. Christmas Day came and went, and still nothing. So the police began a search. Four or five days went by. Neither one of us could eat or sleep. Everything was falling apart. It was snowing outside. The house was freezing, so I went to try to light up the fire. That's when I noticed the smell. The firemen came and broke through the chimney top. And me and Mom were expecting them to pull out a dead cat or a bird. And instead they pulled out my father. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit. He'd been climbing down the chimney... his arms loaded with presents. He was gonna surprise us. He slipped and broke his neck. He died instantly. And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus.

Poor Kate. I guess a story like that puts the whole gremlins-are-trying-to-claw-my-face-off situation into perspective....

Think dad dead in the chimney trumps your older brother telling you Santa isn't real when you're only four years old? It's debatable, me thinks.

Seth

currently with Seth Plattner

Song of the moment: "Alejandro" Lady GaGa

Phrase I'm Using Too Much: "deal breaker!"

Over it: Serena's philandering

Girl Crush: Cate Blanchett

obsession: athletes

shout out

to Mikey at a gay hockey kids life

Because I remember what you're going through.

Hang in there.

It gets better.

It gets easier.

Do what you have to do right now.

You'll know when it's time.

Seth

step and repeat

Ya know those times when you walk out of your apartment on a cold-ish type day, where the sun is just starting to shine through a gray morning, just enough that you put on your sunglasses not to look cool but maybe to just to protect yourself, and you have a converse feeling of solitude before you become enveloped by the city and all you want is something other than your own self-awareness, your own self-analysis to do all the work for you, to be like "hey, this is how you're feeling right now and if it's not how you're feeling I'm going to make you feel this way because you sometimes don't have a fucking clue what to feel" and what that something is is a song that comes on in a moment of kismet timing so you just go with it and it feels good, really good, to just get lost in something, even if it's just on the walk to the subway station and even if it kind of hurts at least you know if it hurts something is working and everything isn't covered in scars where only phantoms get the last laugh?

these are those songs:

allow me ruminate, dammit.

How hot is this poster?!

I originally had no plans to take to my blog to talk about New Moon, because -- while I'm finally OK with admitting I'm a Twihard -- I didn't want to contribute to the collective Twitteratti that is making everyone else want to put a gun in their mouths.

Nevertheless, this is my blog, and I need to realize that it's perfectly fine to indulge my obsessions so long as they don't become destructive and/or all consuming (thanks for go-ahead, Dr. Kelly!). That being said, I'm simply going to expound on Twilight v. New Moon. This isn't review so much as observation; so observe me observing.

Given I saw New Moon two times in 24 hours, I can't say I didn't like the movie. I obviously did. I know how to walk into a movie like this and reduce my critical eye to that of an untreated, nearly blind syphilitic (STD reference is intentional and appropriate), able to enjoy spoonful after spoonful of schmultz because, look, there's pleasure in the lowbrow if you just get over your ego for a couple of hours. And so I "eee!"-d a bit when the title came across the screen; I clapped when Edward did his first slow-motion walk across the school parking towards Bella; I gaped and then cried when Jacob took off his shirt; I snapped my fingers and said "Yeah, bitch!" when Dakota Fanning was all "Pain." You watch for moments like these that speak do your immature whims, not Oscars and accolades.

Still, if I have to be comparatively critical, I liked Twilight better, and here's where I'm going to get all first-year-film-major on you. There are moments when New Moon certainly exceeds Twilight. The overall scope of the story is more easily managed by Chris Weitz. That is to say he's able to take the remarkability of vampires and wolves and capture it with more technical savoir faire. It just felt like a bigger, meatier movie with him at the helm. However (and this is a big however), I really really missed Hardwicke's direction when it came to the emotion of the story. One of the reasons I was unable to stop watching Twilight over and over again was due to her ability to take the complexities of teenage emotion and attraction and desire and channel them through Bella's experience. Across the board, any emotion a teenager has is going to be affected by some type of angst, and no one does adolescent angst better than Hardwicke. Watch 20 minutes of Hardwicke's raw masterpiece, Thirteen, and you'll understand that. So when I saw New Moon, I just couldn't help but wonder what she would have done with Bella's gyre of despair post-Edward walk-out. And even Bella's recovery at the hands of Jacob would have been more treated, more palpably wearisome and painful. Hardwicke noted in the commentary of Twilight that she inserted a lot of Thirteen-type shots and scene set-ups that were, for me, really effective in conveying the story. And while she got a few knocks for having a directorial style that was too narrowed and sometimes careless, I actually felt it worked in the movie. The fact that she would approach certain scenes with a "let's-just-film-and-see-where-it-goes" mentality made for a movie who's instabilities only enhanced the themes of the books and the nature of teenage main characters. I'll cite the first time Bella comes to The Cullens in Twilight, when we get the whole dancing in Edward's room/climbing through pine trees/Edward playing the piano to example how she can seriously set a mood and capture sensibility.

It's a pity Hardwicke never got her shot at New Moon, but given her lack of experience with CGI, it could have been an embarrassing disaster. When it's all said and done she got to introduce the world to what will -- lamentably, perhaps -- become one of the greatest love stories ever told. Weitz did an OK job with his turn, but I'm glad there will be some new blood in Eclipse with David Slade, who directed 30 Days of Night, where vampires looked like this:



So if anyone is going to bring a darker, more mature element to this franchise, it's going to be Slade. Let's hope for an epic werewolves + The Cullens v. new vampire army battle.

Seth