Green to Blue: A Modest View of a Serious Problem

Green to Blue is an animated short, which was named to the Top-Ten Shortlist of Friends of the Earth’s 2008 one-minute film competition. Green to Blue is a stop-motion animation that was made to promote global warming awareness. Elizabeth Klein, the film’s creator, explained that, “I made this stop motion to promote global warming awareness. Sometimes the simplest messages are the most powerful, so I’ve tried to present a child-like view of a serious problem.”

Green to Blue: A Modest View of a Serious Problem

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Disappearing Storefronts: The Edifice Complex and the City’s Changing Face

New York’s neighborhood storefronts have long had the city’s history carved into their unusual, distinct facades. Each of these little stores is as unique as the neighborhood residents that they serve and are run by shopkeepers committed to providing a special service. Many of these shops have long served as essential parts of their communities, vital to the residents who depend on them for a multitude of everyday needs. But the storefront shops are quickly disappearing, as their neighborhoods are transformed by both rapid gentrification and quickly escalating rents in the real estate market.

The dwindling number of these commercial relics in the city’s rapidly changing streets range from tiny, humble “mom and pop” neighborhood stores tucked away on narrow side streets to well-known institutions on historic streets. The photographs of the city’s disappearing storefronts shown here provide a view of the rapid social and economic changes that are threatening the life of unique enterprises that have long made the city’s neighborhoods distinctive.

From photographs and text by James and Karla Murray.

Disappearing Storefronts: The Edifice Complex and the City’s Changing Face

(Please Click on the Image Above to View Photo-Gallery)

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Krazy Cupcake Dayze: Everything from Epicurean Blather to Fancy Cupcake Explowgions

Krazy Cupcake Dayze: Epicurean Blather, Cake Waltzing and Cupcake Explowgions

Nowadays, writers have been talking about cupcake-lovers as a foodie-cult, about how some kind of cupcake-craze has swept across most parts of the nation. In The Atlantic, Corby Kummer has written that even in the too-too au courant New York City, cloyingly cute little cupcake shops may seem like they’re passé, but they still continue to thrive there. Moreover, new ones seem to be opening across the land by the month, even though they’re often disappointing and downright silly. Nevertheless, according to Corby Kummer, the craze is worth keeping, if only, like the opera audiences at La Scala, to keep applauding until the performers finally do better.

In keeping with these Crazy Cupcake Dayze, I’ve put together this little article composed of three takes showing different viewpoints about this “fairycake” fad: the first is about faux haute-cuisine blather; the next is a frivolous illustration of silly cupcake capers; and finally, the morbid voice of cupcake-doom, which visually pronounces that the cupcake “plague” is a downright horrible, stinking calamity. The three different takes on our krazy cupcake dayze are entitled, respectively: Frosting on the Cake; Silly Kultured Kupcakes: Doing a Ditzy Dancing Waltz Thingee; and Demise of The Very Fancy Cupcake Kids: Huge Explowgions!

In The Frosting on the Cupcake, Atlantic Magazine’s Corby Kummer holds forth at length on the cupcake craze and demonstrates how one should properly perform a gastronomically correct cupcake taste test. Silly Kultured Kupcakes: Doing a Ditzy Dancing Waltz Thingee is a stop-motion animation created by a fellow who ruined a batch of cupcakes. Rather than throwing them out, he made the dilapidated cupcakes repent by doing a bit of dancing (waltzing, to be specific). Now, most of us would sigh and just toss the ruined batch of forlorn cupcakes out, but these little cupcakes got a second chance, even if only just long enough to perform their schmaltzy-waltz for this short-animation. No doubt, someone out there is asking, “What’s next, krumping cupcakes?“

The last piece is the voice of cupcake-doomsday, Demise of The Very Fancy Cupcake Kids: Huge Explowgions! Specifically, it’s the visually macabre account of a legend about how some fancy, luscious cupcake kids were living the carefree good life, famously enjoying their little tasty selves in what was left of a still dangerous part of earth, most of which already had been destroyed by years of awful war. But, according to legend, a big worrisome question still remained about these fancy little treats: Would they be able to survive? Or have cupcakes always just been too delicately fancy and sshhtuupid?

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Epicurean Blather: The Frosting on the Cupcake

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Silly Kultured Kupcakes: Doing a Ditzy Dancing Waltz Thingee

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Demise of The Very Fancy Cupcake Kids: Huge Explowgions!

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The Horrible Obsession: Today’s Recession for Men

OHMIGOD, what the hell, Jesus Christ, the entire world economy is collapsing all around us at this very moment. And the financial crumbling is worse than it’s ever, ever been. Housing, banks, Wall Street, huge industries….everything is falling down worser than the old Humpty Dumpty story. Everything’s being torn into a shattered heap. Yep, it surely is.

And what about all the poor men peoples who are caught up in this nightmare…lost their jobs, losing their homes, pensions suddenly vanished into thin air, savings just disappeared, cars been repossessed. Here our men folks are sposed to stand up so tall through sweaty toil and the worst of troubles, trying to be strong like the Rocks of Gibralter. But they’ve got feelings too, you know, and now they’re just suffering like they’re all bent down, tired and weakened-out by all this stuff. This financial collapse has turned into a bunch of horrendous nightmares for our country’s men folks. Even stolen away their menliness, ’cause now all they have left to do is think and think about this downright Horrible, Stinky Obsession, this Recession for Men calamity. And the short little video below really shows just what I mean about this Recession for Men thingee!

The Horrible Obsession: Today’s Recession for Men

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