To a strange and exciting New Year

Zohar Lazar

Zohar Lazar is definitely a new favorite painter of mine.  I love the cartoony quality while at times expressing drama and sadness. Awesome stuff!

Ewan McGregor: Tested to the limits in Honduras

BBC did this interesting trip to through La Mosquitia, the rainforest of Honduras, with Ewan McGregor.  Above is just a clip of survival tricks of having drinking water by using a banana tree as a well and water filter of sorts.  For the whole story watch the video here.

Junot Díaz

I recently read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz - and I LOVED it.  I love his style, through equal street talk and intellectual speak.  He is so accessible- and brings you right in- connects you and even educates you.  It's the type of book that left me wanting to give it off to someone else immediately so they can experience it too. He won the Pulitzer prize for this book- and he completely deserved it!  I'm excited to start his newest book This Is How You Lose Her.

Brandon Stanton - Humans of New York

 

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"His birthday is coming up. We’re going to shut down the entire block and have an ice sculpture."
“A sculpture of the dog?”
“Life sized.”

"I tend to be cynical about a lot of things, but Maya Angelou is somebody that no matter how much I pick her apart, she still has integrity. She was a victim of incest and rape, and she worked as a stripper. And now she’s a literary icon and Nobel Laureate. It goes to show that life is cumulative, and you can’t devalue any type of experience."

"I spotted these two from a block away.  They were walking away from me, so I chased them down to see if I could photograph the girl for a micro fashion post.When I finally caught up to them, however, I noticed the father was reading to her as they walked"

You’d be hard pressed to find Brandon Stanton, the brain behind storytelling blog turned New York Times bestseller, “Humans of New York,” without a camera in his hands. He needs it for the 5 to 6 portraits he takes each day and posts for his thousands of social media fans and website visitors to see. Stanton turned to photography full time after being laid off from his job as a Chicago bond trader in 2010. He took a chance on an idea he had to take 10,000 portraits of people around New York City and plot them on a map like a census of the metropolitan area. The resulting project has turned into something larger than he ever could have expected. Stanton’s photos are being imitated all over the world (see Humans of India, Humans of Tehran, Humans of Bronx Science and Humans of LaGuardia), and the 29-year-old is garnering major media attention for his capsules of a moment in time. TIME 30 Under 30

I have been following him through his Facebook page.  It's so nice to be reminded of humanity and people's individual stories daily. Love his work.

Her Trailer

New Spike Jonze movie comes out January 10th, 2014. Can't wait.

Maurice Sendak

35 and Single

An Argentine woman, documenting her relationships, begins an intimate investigation searching for love and answers: must she settle down or continue to be a free spirit in order to be happy? NYT