Round 1

Enough strategizing about how to write about these killer blowouts.
The point is Food + Family + Booze + Dance = Yay.

I had to make the file size smaller in order to upload these photos. Feel free to ask if you would like the original photo.

J+B:



Hey Sista's


Finally after a combined 4 hour and 3 day travel delay the Dunn's made it!




I haven't quite figured out the best way for night/dancing shots. I think I have the shutter speed and ISO settings down but its hard to focus. Hopefully I will figure it out soon.

L+C:



Christy took us to this awesome creekside BBQ/Pub place for some post wedding Tri-tip





I cant wait till either my sister brother or I get married, there would be an epic dance-off between Team Steve-0 and Danny Mac versus the Patton Ladies. On second thought it could get pretty ugly.

Bi-coastal Rave

Consider this the "cocktail hour" post of the wedding issue. The Santa Ynez valley and Shelter Island couldn't be more far apart. Both incredible places for incredibly unique throwdowns.
After a week of detox its hard to put these moments in the past, but I couldn't be happier for my family.

Jen and Bobby are a big basket full of bright ideas



Lauren + Clark with no sweat pulled off the wickedest party

Actually everything about both of them was perfect. Well except for one thing... stupid American Airlines, who tried to put a buzzkill on my sister and cousin's party wheels. If airlines were smart at all they would have sponsored these weddings, considering how fun they were and all the brilliant execution that went into them.

Wedding Blitz

Welcome to the Chocolate Covered Bacon Wedding Issue!



Weddings are fun, cousins are awesome. A cousins wedding is probably the wildest, craziest, best thing in the world.
We traveled to two corners of the great USA in the past six weeks to revel in matrimony, and celebrate new cousins.

Much more to come on the tale of these two epic bacchanalia.

Graphic Overload

I have been brainwashed by architecture. Everything we see is designed. Fonts, lineweights, and swatches program every billboard, packaging label, Espn score chart, and hot dog vendor.
As a designer we wanna be the best, if not then really really good when it comes to graphics and artistic expression. Personally, I often feel overwhelmed and nauseous. Cheese and rice, I even wonder what the spacing ratio is on the Helvetica bold label for the MTA Subway signs. Thanks architecture.



I mean how can I not get jealous of say this guy... heywookchan.com Hey's a good guy and student at WashU. He does everything. I claim music is a passion of mine, he makes it.

Also, I recently found the blog notcot.org via Jordys links. Its the conglomerate Meccah of cool stuff from the internets. If I didn't value my personal time I would probably go through every single one of those pages, picking things out saying "ooh cool Modern Minimalist" or "that's a nice color set I could use." How did I get this way?
Where does this get us? Maybe this is teaching me to not care so much about graphic stuff... (Which I should be doing in the first place.)



Simplifying things, I really enjoy just making stuff, like crafting furniture or as categorized 'Industrial design.' I take great comfort in the physical construction and the process of making. My friend Jono said to me once "drawing by hand is great because you are always working with the final output." Which I found quite, well relaxing really. Its less stressful when you have part of the end product right in front of you.
I have a number of ideas for building/making things, mostly keeping in the same spirit as my trusty (although could be more functional) Muffler Lamp.

In this wake of a graphic overload, its healthy to focus on design that has more depth than my 1/4-inch thick laptop screen.

King Chimes

Its easy to start to feel old when someone younger than you produces incredible work.

I guess architecture requires maturity as opposed to naivety considering the "work" involved is realized in something way more complex that of a canvas or mp3 or film. A building has a lot of consequences, its beauty isn't in its temporariness.

With that being my academic approach, architects are also artists and its impossible to not appreciate other realms of artistic expression. Russ Chimes has been a favorite of mine for the past year or so and his latest electro addition is no disappointment. Its a new EP and film featuring an incredibly talented and young (-er than me) director named Saman Keshavarz (samankeshavarz.blogspot.com.) I was inspired to write a dissertation on "The Glorified Idealization of the American Landscape built by European Social Constructs." But we'll see how far I get.

http://www.russchimes.com/



Part 1: Never Look Back is the first in a 3-part series from Russ' forthcoming EP. Each tune and respective music video release simultaneously. The next one should be posted this week. The trailer is awesome as well.

The Ocean

The famed 'Lido Torpedo' strategizing

Preferably colder is more refreshing. Jump in and swim real hard, get close to the bottom and try to not move at all, while hoping no waves break close above up on the surface. Listen for silence without even the ringing in the ears. Waiting for that moment of just complete nothingness before the air in your body pulls you up to the surface.

That's the greatest feeling on earth. Floating in free space while concentrating on silence is ultimate relaxation therapy. You're trying to clear your mind with no distractions, while your body is suspended in neither tension nor compression.

Our bodies are 70% water, similar to the earths surface. I'm sure there is some research or writing on the therapeutic power of the ocean. Real estate values obviously benefit from the oceans proximity. But for me its just something I can't live without.

Smallest World

After spending an entire semester "mapping the world" talking about connectivity and globalization with a professor from Holland but was more present in Holland than the US via his iPhone, we believe the world is shrinking.

Except when you visit a place as remote as Shelter Island, you begin to appreciate how big the world is. Shelter Island is a quiet harbor island between the two forks out on Long Island. Its about a hundred miles east of New York City and is only accessible by ferry. The residents never built a bridge because they don't want the congestion and development that goes on out east, just south of Shelter Island in the Hampton's. So it is a very quaint relaxing landscape, not to say that quaint and relaxing doesn't also attract the high-end real estate market.

When I was biking around after a day at the beach I spotted a sign for an Open House/exhibition featuring paintings from a contemporary artist and a house designed by contemporary architects for sale. My sense of schmoozing curiosity couldn't say no, so I biked around the bend and after ladies entered in with sun dresses I followed with bathing trunks and wet hair (both equally appropriate for the Island.) The house was very sleek and contemporary. And after meeting one of the polite hosts we started a quick conversation. She said "have we met, you look familiar?" As often as I hear that in elevators and bars and respond in disappointment, I had never been more certain, there was no way I was in someone's memory all the way out here on Shelter Island.
Continuing conversation, she mentioned she received her MArch from Columbia and when I discovered she was Korean I started explaining my semester in Seoul... till she cut me off "You were on that tour of the Urban Hive and Boutique Monaco in Gangnam." [Seoul] Where to I responded perplexed "Uhh, yeah... and you were also."


House on Shelter Island for sale by architects Morris + Sato (Corcoran)

7,000 miles away... Urban Hive and Boutique Monaco