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[Fashion Opinion]
What to wear in spring? Floral!
Party Dresses – Floral
By Krystal Classy
classygirl.ca
Floral is a huge trend this spring but do not fall into the grandmother trap! We all imagine the ugly floral patterns on our grandmother’s curtains or their incredibly tacky ankle length skirts. Always remember that dressing like an elderly woman is not trendy or sexy. Ever. Ever.
It is key to identify the difference between grandma floral and trendy floral. Do not be scared.
Grandma floral is repetitive, uniform and symmetrical patterns of flowers. Usually they are a very basic color scheme of 3 or less colors.
A trendy floral pattern is an abstract pattern with mismatched flowers or a variety of shapes, sizes and colors. The more random the pattern the better!
The cut and the fit of the garment is essential to keep it young and hip. A shorter skirt is always hot as is a form fitting outfit.
This party dress is a blue/green floral pattern printed on a beige jersey sundress. The embroidered cowl neckline ads a pretty touch and the teal heels and golden intricate earrings transforms this floral outfit into the trendiest of trendy!
Vincent Dominion
cut-and-paste paper non-Photoshop collages
According to his publicity, Vincent uses no Photoshop while making these pictures, only scissors and glue. ~Ed.
“Fruit of the Original Sin”
“The Disease and its Causes”
“Umbilicus”
[Let's get happy!]
‘Buy farmland and gold,’ advises Dr Doom
“The next war will be a dirty war…”
[From business.timesonline.co.uk.]
The world’s most powerful investors have been advised to buy farmland, stock up on gold and prepare for a “dirty war” by Marc Faber, the notoriously bearish market pundit, who predicted the 1987 stock market crash.
The bleak warning of social and financial meltdown, delivered today in Tokyo at a gathering of 700 pension and sovereign wealth fund managers.
Dr Faber, who advised his audience to pull out of American stocks one week before the 1987 crash and was among a handful who predicted the more recent financial crisis, vies with the Nouriel Roubini, the economist, as a rival claimant for the nickname Dr Doom.
Speaking today, Dr Faber said that investors, who control billions of dollars of assets, should start considering the effects of more disruptive events than mere market volatility.
“The next war will be a dirty war,” he told fund managers: “What are you going to do when your mobile phone gets shut down or the internet stops working or the city water supplies get poisoned?”
His investment advice, which was the first keynote speech of CLSA’s annual investment forum in Tokyo, included a suggestion that fund managers buy houses in the countryside because it was more likely that violence, biological attack and other acts of a “dirty war” would happen in cities.
He also said that they should consider holding part of their wealth in the form of precious metals “because they can be carried”.
One London-based hedge fund manager described Mr Faber’s address as “excellent, chilling stuff: good at putting you off lunch, but not something I can tell clients asking me about quarterly returns at the end of March”.
Dr Faber did offer a few more traditional investment tips, although their theme fitted his general mode of pessimism.
In Asia, particularly, he said, stock pickers should play on future food and water shortages by buying into companies with exposure to agriculture and water treatment technologies.
One of Dr Faber’s darker scenarios involves growing military tension between China and the United States over access to limited oil resources.
Today the US has a considerable advantage over China because it has free access to oceans on both coasts, and has potential energy suppliers to the north and south in Canada and Mexico.
It also commands an 11-strong fleet of aircraft carriers that could, if necessary, secure supply routes in a conflict situation.
China and emerging Asia, meanwhile, face the uncertainty of supplies that must travel from the Middle East through winding sea lanes and the Malacca bottleneck.
American military presence in Central Asia, Dr Faber said, may add to the level of concern in Beijing.
“When I tell people to prepare themselves for a dirty war, they ask me: “America against whom?” I tell them that for sure they will find someone.”
At the heart of Dr Faber’s argument is a fundamentally gloomy view on the US economy and its capacity to service a growing mountain of debt.
His belief, fund managers were told, is that the US is going to go bankrupt.
Under President Obama, he said, the country’s annual fiscal deficit will not drop below $1 trillion and could rise beyond that figure.
Arch bears have predicted that US debt repayments could hit 35 per cent of tax revenues within ten years.
Dr Faber believes that the ratio could easily hit 50 per cent in the same time frame.
 Aloha
Home Acres
Polyvinyl Records, 2010
Reviewed by Kent Manthie
Well this is a nice surprise. Aloha has finally come into their own, so to speak. Home Acres is the third CD I’ve reviewed, which is when I got hip to the band. On previous CDs, Aloha seemed to be searching for a niche, a subgenre they could settle into and call their own. On Light Works, for instance, they have a great cross-section of indie delights, a scattered but cohesive formula for great music.
Home Acres is actually their 6th full length CD and 7th album, if you count their first release, the Nonbelievers EP. All I can really talk about is the last few CDs, their newest one, Home Acres, Light Works and Some Echoes, all of which are fine, fine albums. The former two are a bit flowery and poppish (better than foppish!), with jingle-jangle rhythms and spacey atmospherics that make for great stoner music. Although, I’m not sure that’s what main man Tony Cavallario had in mind, but then again, that’s how life, in general is: when you’re striving on purpose to make something sound or look or feel like a certain je ne sais quois it almost never happens – at least not at first try; if you are perfectionistically, anally intent on capturing whatever spirit you’re after you can try a zillion takes until you find it. But in the end it isn’t going to be that satisfying. Just like what Krishnamurti said about meditation, “Any form of conscious meditation is not the real thing: it can never be. Deliberate attempt to meditate is not meditation. It must happen; it cannot be invited. Meditation is not the play of the mind nor of desire and pleasure. All attempt to meditate is the very denial of it. Only be aware of what you are thinking and doing and nothing else.” I quote all that because that passage, from Krishnamurti’s Journal (J. Krishnamurti, Harper Collins San Francisco, 1982) is a very apt analogy when it comes to making the best music that you can come up with. Writing or almost any other art form is the same way – it must come to you through a sub- or un-conscious (despite what Sartre says about the unconscious) method.
Back to the music – Home Acres really blew me away when I first listened to it – I had actually just finished listening to Tarkus by E.L.P. when I switched over to Home Acres on my MP3 player and the percussion, rhythm, keyboards, guitars all seemed to coalesce together in a way that wasn’t superfluous and actually turned out to be the perfect follow-up to my listening to Tarkus that particular day. Now, of course, that kind of perfect juxtaposition could probably never happen again between those two albums, but that essence, that perfect balance that took place there was like Krishnamurti’s pontification about meditiation: that you can’t just go looking for it or sit in a lotus position and expect it to come, it has to arrive on its own, when you’re mind and body are ready for it.
Besides Tony Cavallario on vocals and guitars, the current line up also includes: TJ Lipple, who dabbles on the Mellotron, marimba and percussion, Matthew Gengler, who plays bass and our friend Cale Parks – the Cale Parks that’s made some cool solo records and who also plays in the incredibly awesome Joan of Arc, more of a collective than just a band. Parks plays drums and piano in Aloha.
I can’t really pick any one or two cuts that I think are above the others, since the whole album is a real treat. This time around Aloha has a edgier, louder beat, less ethereality and more of a driven, up-tempo kind of vibe going, but I will say that the song that starts off Home Acres, “Building a Fire” is the perfect way to start off a record – it’s catchy, it has a softness that is building up to something grand, which will make itself evident on the next cut, “Moonless March” a song with a kickin’ rhythmic percussive quality and that fuzzy bass as well as a carousel-like (Ray Manzarek, anyone?) keyboard sound to it. But one other good thing about the first couple tracks is that it isn’t that breathtaking that it drains away the effectiveness of the rest of the album. In looking for other cuts to make mention of, I would posit: “White Wind”, “Blackout” and “I’m In Trouble” as being worth mentioning. “Ruins” has a great effectiveness in closing off the album; just one more instance of the high quality of not only the songs but the continuity that ensues in the way they are laid out.
After all these CDs and the busy-ness of members with other projects, Aloha has managed to stay afloat lo these many years, probably due to the perseverance of Tony Cavallario, who writes the bulk of the songs. But it’s the whole that make up the greatness of the band, a team effort, if you will. With that I’m going to let you go listen to it and let it blow your mind. - KM
Will Academy Award nominees include San Diego’s Destin Cretton?
By Scott Marks
emulsioncompulsion.com
When the Motion Picture Academy announces its nominees on Feb. 2, don’t be surprised if San Diego’s “Sundance Kid,” Destin Cretton, turns out to be an Oscar contender. The 31-year-old director of the dramatic short “Short Term 12″ could soon go down in history as South Park’s only Academy Award-winning resident.
So far, his film has racked up seven awards at festivals across the country.
“Boston was our first audience award, so it’s nice to know that normal people like the film, too,” Cretton joked about winning the Audience Choice Award for Best Short Film at Boston’s 2009 Independent Film Festival.
In addition, “Short Term 12″ took home another audience award at the Gen Art Chicago Film Festival, special mention at both Aspen and Chicago, a Jury Prize at CineVegas and Best in Show at Seattle and Sundance.
Why did it take a year for the Academy to catch on?
According to Cretton (and the Academy’s bylaws), in order to qualify to submit to the Academy Awards, “you have to win one of their qualifying festivals. Sundance and the jury prize at Seattle International Film Festival qualified us to win,” Cretton explained. “That’s how they narrow down the number of short films that they allow to be submitted.”
“Short Term 12″ is a knockout: a semi-autobiographical tale of a supervisor at a residential facility housing 15 kids who have suffered from child abuse and neglect. Destin was fortunate enough to get actor Brad Henke (”SherryBaby,” “Choke,’ “World Trade Center”) to star as Denim, the leader of a staff that is only slightly less pressured than air traffic controllers.
Many of the kids are just one step away from “juvy.” In just under 22 minutes, his camera pinpoints crucial details, befitting a far more experienced director, and skillfully tells us everything we need to know about these characters.
He did that before with his feature documentary “Drakmar: A Vassal’s Journey” (2006), made in San Diego with then-partner Lowell Frank. Lauded by local critics, the story of a fiercely committed boy hobbyist went on to HBO after director Bennett Miller (”Capote,” “The Cruise”) came to San Diego for an award and was given a copy of the film by Cretton. (Fortunately, Cretton had brought a screener with him.)
Writing and directing movies wasn’t even a blip on Cretton’s radar when he was picking pineapples near his hometown of Haiku, Hawaii. Soon after Cretton graduated from high school, he moved to Ocean Beach and attended Point Loma Nazarene University, where in 2001 he received a B.A. in communication.
 Destin Cretton [Scott Marks is a film critic for National Public Radio in San Diego. His website and blog is at emulsioncompulsion.com. ~RR
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