A few weeks ago, I walked out of my office building and nearly screamed in delight to see this:

(My camera phone took pretty lousy pictures that day so I was reluctant to post them. Fortunately, I was able to find these photos at TheForce.Net. Although these weren’t taken by me, this is the actual view when you walk out of my office building.)

“Gold bikinis never go out of style”…how effing brilliant!!!

A couple of days later, I found this just one block away:

(photo from Gothamist)

Yes, that tappity-tap-tap is the sound of the geek in heels, jumping up and down in excitement. I want to take a bus from this bus stop just so I can live out the experience in its full glory.

Wait, it gets better.

A few days later, I saw ANOTHER ad on the train. I burst out laughing, forcing quite a few morning commuters to look up in surprise.

I did a bit more searching and found two more ads in this series:

(all three images from SlashFilm)

I have always been a sucker for good advertising and this is no exception. So Spike TV is airing all six Star Wars episodes. Big deal, right?

However, you have to realize that the product they are trying to sell is one of the best-known film franchises in history.

How do you sell something when the majority of your target audience has already purchased the product (or in this case, seen the movies)?

How do you kill that which has no life? (Sorry, stupid South Park analogy.)

It is precisely for this reason that I have to give Spike TV and its advertising group major props for this series of ads. They have taken a popular and revered product and re-packaged it with a fresh and comical twist. They have managed to target both Star Wars fanatics and potential new arrivals alike: the fanboys are reminded of the little things that made them fall in love with the franchise in the first place, while the newbies are drawn in with hints of sex, camaraderie, pride, and humor.

Bravo, Spike TV. Well done.

You can visit the Spike TV Star Wars homepage here.

A few days ago, LifeClever posted an articled called Portfolio Day might make you cry, but it’s worth it. I suddenly had a flashback…

As mentioned in my “About” page, I once was a very serious artist who was hell-bent on attending a good art program at one of the nation’s top art schools (RISD, Cooper Union, UCLA, Art Institute of Chicago, and MICA were my top choices). During the summer between my junior and senior years in high school, I was a regular fixture at my art studio, attending portfolio class every weekday from 12pm-3pm. I would often stay overtime to finish up and discuss my work and options with my beloved instructor.

Most art programs require 10-20 pieces demonstrating a student’s technical and creative abilities. I’m not sure about others, but my pieces often took 20+ hours from inception to completion, and I had 17 pieces in my portfolio…you do the math. I still remember the moment when my art teacher handed me the slides of my completed work and I nearly cried from joy.

I was ready to start applying to the said schools. But first, I had to go woo the top dogs at a National Portfolio Day:

National Portfolio Day is an event specifically for visual artists and designers. It is an opportunity for those who wish to pursue an education in the visual and related arts to meet with representatives from colleges accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. Representatives will be available to review your artwork, discuss their programs and answer questions about professional careers in art. High school students, parents, teachers, guidance counselors and college transfer students are encouraged to attend.

Unlike the AIGA Portfolio Day mentioned by LifeClever, National Portfolio Day is sponsored by the NPDA and is targeted for high school students and college transfer students.

National portfolio day @CCA by kenichi.tanaka at Flickr

All high school students interested in attending an art school are HIGHLY encouraged to attend a National Portfolio Day.

I talked to some older friends who gave me tips:

1. Get there early!
2. Scope out the list of schools attending beforehand and choose 3-5. You will most likely only have time to attend 3, since the lines for the more popular schools can get VERY long.
3. Bring food, drinks, and a friend or two who can keep you entertained and hold your place in line when you have to pee.
4. Never, EVER leave your portfolio unattended.

I was not able to attend the portfolio day held in NY due to scheduling reasons, so my parents and I woke up at 5am one Sunday morning to drive down to Philadelphia.

Unfortunately, Cooper Union and UCLA were not attending this particular portfolio day. So I narrowed my list down to RISD, Art Institute of Chicago, MICA, and Carnegie Mellon. My friends were correct – the lines were ridiculous! I think my parents and I waited 2-3 hours for each school.

I remember being a big miffed that RISD had only sent one associate professor and some students. Being the top art school in the nation, they were a bit snobby and frankly, treated me as if I were just a number.

I also remember how the rep for Carnegie Mellon was very patient and extremely nice…and even made me blush a few times by the comments he made on some of my pieces.

My overall impression of National Portfolio Day was a bit overwhelming. I had never quite realized how popular and competitive the art world is…and I was discouraged by the blasé response I’d gotten from some of my top choice schools.

However, the experience was not without benefits because few weeks later, I received a letter from Carnegie Mellon. I had made such a great impression on Portfolio Day that if I could provide an official transcript confirming a GPA of 3.0 or higher, I would be admitted with no questions. No essay on my application or anything like that! They even offered a very handsome scholarship.

In the end, I was accepted to some of the top art programs in the country…but I decided to go another direction. This decision will be the topic of a future post.

At a recent girls night out, a few of my friends started gabbing about bras and how we all must get fitted for one. Eh? Didn’t we all go through this during puberty?

My friends then went on to explain that most women are wearing the wrong bra size and only a fitting by a professional can provide the, ahem, full support that you need.

“Listen to Oprah!” they preached. (Sadly, I don’t watch Oprah…but my friends are die-hard fans.)

According to them, Oprah had done a bra intervention where she revealed that as much as 85% of American women are wearing the wrong bra size.

My friends went on to explain that personalized fittings at shops such as Intimacy and Town Shop had been lifesavers. “Upscale departments stores will also suffice,” they continued.

I had written about my disdain for bra-shopping. However, I was intrigued and decided to stop by Saks after work one day.

Almost immediately I was approached by a tall blonde woman with an indistinguishable European accent. To be frank, it was a bit intimidating and I wanted to dip my toe in the water before plunging straight into the mysterious world of bras.

However, I proceeded to turn into a blubbery mess. It was that damn European accent, I swear.

I grabbed a random bra within my reach and stuttered, “Um, I’d like to try on this bra…”

“Yezz, yezz. Goode choyz. Wot eez your size?”

When I told her, she blantantly took a good look at my chest and frowned.

“No! Wee go to dressing roome…now!”

She marched me into the dressing room and ordered me to strip. One part of me wanted to crawl to a corner, curl into a fetal position and sob uncontrollably for the way she made me feel. Another part told me that this woman wasn’t to be messed with and I should follow her orders (luckily, this part won).

I timidly stripped and stood there topless while she surveyed my boobs. She whipped out a measuring tape and started to measure what felt like every inch of my womanhood.

“I woz correcte. Yoo were wearing wrong bra size.”

She then flew out of the room, leaving me in my still topless, utterly confused state, and returned just moments later with a pile of bras in her arms.

And you know what? They did fit a lot better, and my boobs LOOKED a great deal better in them.

“And deez won…DEEZ won will make some man salivate…no?”

She had strapped me into some tight lacy number that pushed my boobs up to my chins. No. So her judgment wasn’t 100% accurate.

I only purchased one thing from Saks that day because…well, being Saks, the majority of bras were pretty expensive (I even saw one marked for $375! For a BRA!!!). And I’m not too keen on wearing undergarments that are worth more than my entire outfit combined.

However, I now know my true bra size and I am very happy about that.

…I kinda miss my dominatrix salesperson.

A couple of weekends ago, 14 friends and I gathered to try our hand at Murder at the Met scavenger hunt, hosted by Watson Adventures.

For those who are not familiar with Watson Adventures, they stage scavenger hunts in cities across the U.S. Some of the NYC hunts include The Gangsters’ New York, The Ghosts of Greenwich Village, and The Wax Attacks (held at Madame Tussauds). Most of the hunts are targeted for adults (meaning the questions can be tricky/complex…not adult-themed, you sicko) but they hold family-friendly hunts as well.

I just HAD to try the Murder at the Met because, well, the Met is probably my favorite place in the city. One of my most memorable experiences was a summer internship at the Met, and although I’m a bit rusty now, I used to know the entire 5-blocks-sized building like the back of my hand.

We arrived to find that our Watson Adventures rep had already divided us into teams of four (and one group of three). Here’s my fabulous team before we set off:

(All the pictures came out pretty badly because there is no flash photography allowed in the museum.)

Each team was given a yellow sheet of paper with a list of twenty-something questions. The yellow sheets were identical, but each team was instructed to start at different numbers. We were then given the background story:

A murdered curator has left behind a cryptic trail of clues connected with secrets in works of art. As your team gathers answers about the art, you begin to piece together a sordid tale about greed, lust, pride, revenge and treachery, all revolving around the museum’s planned multi-million dollar purchase of a Rembrandt. The murder victim knew too much—and now it’s your turn to learn what he knew and discover what drove one of four suspects to commit murder. To find out, you’ll have to crack a secret code left in the victim’s appointment calendar. Can you figure out who dunnit?

After additional instructions to meet at the Temple of Dendur in exactly two and a half hours, with warnings of “we’ll be watching you!” and “no cell phones allowed!”, we set off.

The rep had explained that The Murder at the Met was their most challenging hunt, and that was one of the reasons it had attracted me in the first place. I admit it – some of the questions were difficult, and running through the museum while dodging tourists and tour groups was tiring.

However, I knew my team would do well from the start. How could we not, with me on the team?

We finished spectacularly with an hour to spare. Immediately my teammates demanded alcohol (okay, I wanted a drink too). I led them to the Petrie Court Cafe and Wine Bar, but it was closed for a private function. The travesty!

We then heaved and puffed our way up to the Balcony Bar, which has two entrances, very far from each other. After waiting on line for what seemed like an eternity at one entrance, the maitre’d informed us that there were no seats available on that side – would we like to try the other?

!!!

We practically ran to the other entrance, joking that trying to get a drink was the real scavenger hunt. After waiting on line behind some R-tards who couldn’t decide where they wanted to sit, the maitre’d finally approached us and we screamed, “Just sit us near the bar!”

Our hard-earned sangrias and mojitos:

Another team pic:

Feeling refreshed and our alcoholic urges somewhat fulfilled, we sauntered to the Temple of Dendur, where one by one, all the teams converged.

Needless to say, my team won, with a perfect score.

One last shot of the entire group:

Everyone agreed that the scavenger hunt was fun and very entertaining…we all want to do more hunts! I highly recommend Watson Adventures, and I’ll certainly be doing more hunts in the future.

(I have been posting more book reviews lately for a good reason: I will be moving soon and am currently going through my mountains of books in an effort to divide them into “keep” and “donate” piles. Obviously, there are certain titles that hold dear places in my heart, and I cannot help but re-read them and share them with you.)

In light of Easter, I decided to write about a popular piece of Christian literature: Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus.

I first discovered the field of Christian apologetics, which, according to this Wikipedia article, is “the field of study concerned with the systematic defense of Christianity,” in my early teenage years and it has always been a topic which interested me. So much so, in fact, that I even considered entering seminary to delve even deeper into the world of proving the merits and facts behind Christianity through history, science, and philosophy.

While there are tons of literature out there in the world of Christian apologetics, The Case for Christ is one of the most popular, mainstream books on the topic and it’s a book I have read over and over again.

The basis for the book is simple. Lee Strobel, a former journalist for the Chicago Tribune, interviews a dozen experts to determine if there’s credible evidence of Christ’s existence and divinity.

Each of the fourteen chapters attempts to answer a different question. Some examples of the questions include:

Do the Biographies of Jesus Stand Up to Scrutiny?

Is the Jesus of History the Same As the Jesus of Faith?

Was Jesus Crazy When He Claimed to Be the Son of God?

Did Jesus – and Jesus Alone – Match the Identity of the Messiah?

Was Jesus’ Death a Sham and His Resurrection a Hoax?

Are There Any Supporting Facts That Point to the Resurrection?

I have to admit that I love this stuff. My insides boil with excitement and my fingers cannot turn the pages fast enough as I read all the evidence presented in this book.

For example, did you know that no other document from antiquity can compare to the New Testament in terms of the sheer number of existing documents? There are more than 5,000 New Testament manuscripts are in existence today…compare that to the runner-up, which is The Iliad, at 650.

My only problem with this book is that all the experts interviewed for this book, while experts and leaders in their respective fields, seem pre-disposed to offer supporting evidence for Christ. Though a former investigative journalist with a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School, Strobel fails to produce any critics of Christian apologetics. How about a debate between both sides of the argument?

All in all, Stobel manages to take some thick, sometimes tedious information and presents it in an entertaining and fast-paced manner. This is a great book for someone like myself who is a practicing Christian and would like to find additional sources of confirmation. Or if you’re still on the fence and having some doubts. However, I’m not sure that this book would convince someone who does not believe, especially in this day and age when information is so readily available at your fingertips.

Strobel has written a counterpart this this book, called The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity. I have this book as well and although it is a good read, it just isn’t as compelling as The Case for Christ. The reason is obvious: it is a lot more difficult to prove faith than the existence and attributes of a person.