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You’re engaged. But what wedding #hashtag will you choose?

January 6, 2015

article-2589685-1C931B4900000578-449_634x427If you’ve been in a healthy-ish relationship for a few years now and you’re not currently having money problems, there is a good chance you got engaged this holiday season. Congratulations! (I meant to like your photo, but I wasn’t near a computer!)

But proposals, those are easy as shit. It’s wedding planning that (pro)poses the real challenge. And no part of that planning will test you to your core quite like selecting the right hashtag.

“What’s a hashtag?” is probably the first — no, that’s stupid, you know what a hashtag is. Jane Gilmore Kurtz, my grandmother, knows what a hashtag is. But wedding hashtags, those serve a purpose way more specific than acknowledging your good fortune (#blessed) or halting the tyranny of feminism (#NotAllMen).

You see, at today’s fully social media-friendly nuptials, your friends and family are your collective wedding photographer. Whether you ask them to or not, they’ll snap and shoot anything and everything. They’ll capture candid moments that not even the most adept professional could get to, like bathroom stuff, and they’ll do it just for the privilege of basking in your wedding glow and/or free well drinks. But how to mobilize all those shots? How to truly harness this awesome power?

Find out after the jump!

Posted in Junk Drawer | Leave a Comment »

Fear and Loathing in Public Storage

April 17, 2014

Public_Storage_doors

It was only supposed to last a month. Two, tops, if I really couldn’t get my shit together on the apartment hunting front. The plan made perfect sense to me: I’d couch surf with my friend Baily for whatever time it took, and when that was over — optimistically, end of November 2013 — I’d return to Unit 395 at Venice Public Storage to reclaim the stuff I’d very carefully shoved and thrown in a month earlier. A temporary vacation for all my worldly possessions, and a great series of spooky Instagrams to boot. And the first month was just a dollar*! I was scamming Public Storage, I was in control, I was a winner.

*plus insurance and account opening fees and “green credits” so, you know, way more than a dollar

Five months and somewhere in the neighborhood of $1100 later I finally loaded up the last of my furniture into a medium-load Uhaul and signed the closing paperwork that said no, I never cooked meth in my storage unit. Over the previous week or so I’d been making quick trips to grab smaller items that I’d…well, failed to properly pack in the first place. Duffel bags full of liquor. Beach chairs. A VCR. Fireworks. But now, box spring and mattress tossed in the back of the truck, I was finally sealing the door for real on this unique chapter of my life.

Keep reading!

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Posted in Junk Drawer | 11 Comments »

27 and Vulnerable: A Very-Special “Lifting Fog” Episode

January 30, 2014

The_Royal_Tenenbaums_richie

DISCLAIMER: This essay is actually not about Wes Anderson movies (thank GOD!) but popular culture is always the easiest entry point to expressing actual human feelings, some of which I may dredge up below.

When I first saw The Royal Tenenbaums I was 15 and had no idea what to make of this thing I was watching. It was a comedy, maybe? Earlier that year my friends and I had seen comedies like Zoolander and Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, which we knew were comedies because they made us laugh. Tenenbaums on the other hand squeezed laughter — uncomfortable laughter — between scenes of stylized and fairly graphic attempted suicide and old men contemplating the pain they’ve wrought on their families. Like I said…what in the shit was this? People create art that can scratch multiple emotional itches? One minute I’m belly-laughing at the line “You heard me, Coltrane” and the next I’m desperately holding back tears from my  best friend, because Ben Stiller’s “I had a rough year, Dad” has just about flattened me. I think I understood then, instinctively, that this uncomfortable balance between funny and sad is what really makes me tick. BUT THESE SEESAW FEELINGS, MAN, THEY’RE TOO GODDAMN MUCH.

Keep reading!

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Posted in Bildungsroman | 3 Comments »

The gourmet cupcake trend is dying. What will replace it?

July 10, 2013

Cupcake mania first gripped the United States of America sometime in the early-to-mid 00’s, catapulted to prominence by the curly-haired likes of Carrie Bradshaw and Andy Samberg. Both of them extolled the virtues of Magnolia cupcakes, just the first of a soon-gleaming infrastructure of cupcakeries: Crumbs, Sprinkles, and so many more, each with a name somehow more precious than the last. Whatever gourmet snack trend had dominated the culture before (Ben & Jerry’s?) was crushed under the heel of Big Cupcake.

A decade later, the whole sugary firmament may be collapsing. Earlier this spring, New York-based cupcake chain Crumbs reported a major drop in share price — from a 2011 high of $13/share down to just $1.70. Magnolia now earns less than half of its profits from cupcakes. And I don’t know if you’ve been in an elementary school classroom lately, but birthdays aren’t exactly being celebrated the way they used to be. It’s all quinoa, and veggie loafs. Birthdays are terrible now!

Why this sea-change in our snacking habits? Maybe it’s the emergence of gluten as our greatest-ever nutritional enemy. Or it could just be the thing none of us want to admit: that we are just BURNT OUT on cupcakes, and ready for a new snack craze to glom onto. Not just anything will do. The cupcake resonated for meeting some very specific metrics: portability, eating efficiency, potential for quirky store name, to list a few. With that in mind, we had some ideas as to what could rise from the cupcake ashes…

Keep reading!

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Posted in "News" | 15 Comments »

True Life: I Dress Up as Cookie Monster for Tourists

April 11, 2013

cookieNEW YORK, NY – If you’ve been groped by Super Mario lately or yelled at by an anti-Semitic Elmo, chances are you know too well the spread of costumed characters in and around Times Square. Once upon a time, the area was populated by thieves, hustlers, and sexual deviants. Today it is populated by thieves, hustlers, and sexual deviants wearing knock-off Sesame Street costumes.

In the past few years their ranks have grown, unchecked by copyright infringement or local law enforcement, who mostly stay clear. But then you get the flare-ups. Most recently one of these performers, dressed as Cookie Monster, allegedly accosted a tourist and her young son after they did not tip him for the photograph they’d taken. Aside from the fact that this is just not the way a character beloved by children the world over should behave, it raises questions about freedom of speech and entrepreneurial rights. Should these seemingly deranged men (trust me, they are all men) be allowed to perform?

Keep reading!

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Posted in Absurd But True | 5 Comments »

In Russia, ambulances are taxis and opportunity is everywhere

March 27, 2013

ambulance-in-russia

MOSCOW, Russia — Let’s say you’re an entrepreneur trying to make it in Moscow. You drive the city streets everyday, motoring from one gig to another. You marvel at the congestion you see: the traffic, at a standstill. The commuters, aggravated at delays creating unwanted friction in their offices and home lives. These streets you drive are paved with frustration, yes. But maybe they’re also paved…with opportunity?

Enter: AMBULANCE-TAXI. For just about 6,000 rubles (or $200) an hour, wealthy Russians looking to sidestep the misery of their daily commute can hail a cab of a very different make and, aided by the handy siren system and normal citizens’ reaction to what they perceive as an emergency, get to work on time. And in style!

One of these vehicles, spotted by law enforcement on a recent patrol, was described as having an interior “fitted out like a high-class limousine.” Imagine the care that went into that job! First the ambulance had to be bought, probably from a friend of your cousin. Then retrofitted with plush leather and bulk variety packs of Fritos chips. Top it off with a classy website (I couldn’t find one) and you’ve got an operation of stealth and refinement to put the KGB to shame.

You never escape the question “what would you do if you had unlimited money?” As a kid, the answer’s easy: a pool made of ice cream, maybe a 300″ TV that plays only episodes of Spongebob. Later, more altruistic, you imagine buying every family in the world their own water filtration system. But then you get to be asshole-rich, actually achieving some modified version of unlimited money. And you use it to fool Russia’s lower classes into thinking you’re being hospitalized while you get to work quicker than usual.

Don’t ever change, Russia. You’re the beating heart of my idealized comedy world.

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Posted in "News", Absurd But True | 339 Comments »

Parsing the lyrics to new Vampire Weekend single “Step”

March 19, 2013

Yesterday post-colonialist indie darlings Vampire Weekend released two songs off their upcoming album, ‘Modern Vampires of the City’:

  • Lead single “Diane Young,” in which Ezra Koenig laments the loss of an arsonist girlfriend
  • “Step,” a low-key paean to international studies classes.

The web is ABUZZ with people wondering what it all means. Could “Step” be a hidden tribute to the ABC show ‘Step by Step’, which dealt with familial discord in the same uptempo, driving fashion as sophomore effort ‘Contra’? Do the pitch-shifting “babys” on “Diane Young” suggest surprise parenthood for lead singer Ezra Koenig, and if so who is the mother? Mindy Kaling?

Obviously we’ve all got a ton of questions. But you know what? Lifting Fog has ANSWERS.

Keep reading!

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Posted in Music | 91 Comments »

“New York Biotopes” and the Overcrowded Sea of Visual Effects Reels

March 18, 2013

What you just watched, if — I mean, you watched it, right? What kind of weirdo reads video analysis on a blog without having watched the video itself? Holy cow, we need to at least respect some ground rules here.

“New York Biotopes” was created as a thesis project by German graphic design student Lena (no relation to Dunham) Steinkuhler. In her words, she wanted to explore the “assimilation of structures and forms…biotopes shaped by the existing living environment but also [shaping] the newly developed living environment by their presence.” It all sounds unbelievably German.

Keep reading!

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Posted in Editors' Picks | 4 Comments »

The One Where We Say “Oh Hey, How You Doin’?”

March 18, 2013

RiseofDarthVaderTrust me, I know.

Nearly a year ago Steve and I promised that setting fire to the rain Lifting Fog meant we’d never return to look at the ash heap, let alone try and build something new overtop. But you’re an adult now who’s seen the world bleakly naked — you should know that promises are shallow. And reboots? They are all the rage! Welcome, one and all, to Lifting Fog 2.0*.

*which for continuity’s sake will look exactly like the retroactively named Lifting Fog 1.0

Our “retirement” last spring was premature (unlike so many of the other affectations here, which are committed precisely on time). I mean, you convince yourself that saying something out loud makes it true. “Seriously dude, I’m over that chick.” “I’ve tamed my alcoholism.” And so on. But it’s rarely if ever the case. You don’t control when you’re done with something; something controls when it’s done with you.

Or, more briefly: Lifting Fog is an addiction from which I’m not sure I will ever truly recover.

Keep reading!

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Posted in Junk Drawer | 3 Comments »

The One Where We Say Goodbye

April 20, 2012

Well, here we are. Four years, 300+ posts, and shockingly few personal changes later we’ve arrived at the end of the line. It’s not that there’s nothing more to say — in the realm of personal blogging there is always more to say — but that, for two 25-year-old guys with non-childish aspirations…it’s time to put away childish things. (Writing about real-life Hamburglars could not fit this any more perfectly.) Near the end of The Return of the King, Gandalf tells Pippin of a “far, green country” that lay beyond death. In no so many ways that’s where DJ Steve and I are headed — outside our digital comfort zone toward a world that’s terrifying and beautiful and unavoidable and here it is and OH SHIT WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO NEXT.

Keep reading (for the last time)!

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Posted in Bildungsroman | 6 Comments »

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