4 posts tagged “custom”

There has been a lot of news about Miley Cyrus aka Hannah Montana - with her purportedly billion-dollar worth of franchise and now her transition from tween-queen to the ranks of Mickey Mouse graduates like the Olsen twins and La Loha. This time around, it’s about the flesh-baring photo shoot with world-renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz.

Not too many people make the right choices, but I think Miley Cyrus did. How can you go wrong working with Annie Leibovitz? Her substantial work and profile of business clients says it all.  If you want to break away from the bopping-kid crowd as your target market, how else would you have it? A summer-thriller film?

Annie Leibovitz is an icon herself. The legendary shutterbug who captured John Lennon and Yoko Ono for an album cover before he was killed hours later has also captured the smiles of Angelina Jolie, the controversial and then pregnant Demi Moore, Queen Elizabeth and of course, Susan Sontag. If I could instantly whip up a portfolio of her works right here, right now either online or custom brochure printing, you’d know just who Annie Leibovitz is.  

And now, publicity statements are flying off from all across directions. It’s quite insulting to Annie Leibovitz if you ask me, with all these negative feedbacks that they spun off from the picture and the shoot just to make it all the more bigger, controversial, and talked about. It’s just the hypocrisy which I can’t stand. Now, everybody is speculating online or on print, from tabloids to blogs and more.

Miley Cyrus is saying sorry to her fans. Her parents are now saying “shame on you”. I say what gives?! Wasn’t this all set-up like an initiation that Miley Cyrus has indeed made it? No one else would have captured a much better picture, a picture that will be remembered years from now - all with the great eye and aesthetic taste of an Annie Leibovitz.

Interpret the photograph anyway you want it. In the end, you’ll see what it truly reveals – like the saying truth is beauty, beauty is truth - that is all ye need to know.

So I say brava! While the mouseketeer graduates are crashing their cars, guzzling their booze, and checking in rehabs, yours is a road way safer than the others and more tasteful.

Summer has always meant a get-away for most people. It is the time to unwind, stretch those long legs out unto a comfortable lounge chair and take a well-deserved rest with a cocktail in hand.

Yes, summer is definitely here. But with the gas price hiking up, who can really afford to drive all the way to their yearly destinations and retreats? I’ve been wondering about this for a time. If I only have the weekend to spare and a little bit of money to spend, how exactly can I go to a vacation?

I keep picturing other people who go through all their ceremonies before launching themselves off to a good vacation. Women go to parlors and have their nails done, their foot pampered, and their highlights re-done. They go to shopping malls and buy new swimsuits for the beach or winter jacket if they’re going up the alps. The men go on oiling and polishing their gears, cleaning out their tackle boxes, and maybe polishing their own car.

While all the travel and custom size brochures are all enticing, I need a vacation that is well within my means – without driving off to far destinations, without flying out to another coast, and without renting hotel rooms or a private cabin.

As some people suggested, vacation is not about going to truly foreign or exotic places. It is about discovery. And so, while people go off to Hawaii or Paris for a vacation, I venture into my own local town and create my own pocket vacations. Here’s how I did it, all in a day.

1.    Eat at an exotic restaurant
Vacation is about renewing the senses, so I found myself and my stomach to a place offering foreign cuisine. It’s best if you come to a place frequented by a lot of people, and it does not matter if it is Korean, Indian, Haitian etcetera. The trick is to order the most popular food or what else everybody is eating. And if you want to be a daredevil of some sorts, try something on the menu that scares you the most.

2.    Take a camera with you
Keep moving and shoot from all angles. I constantly took pictures of the places I’ve been to, no matter how familiar. Consider it as a form of documentary on how I spent my day. While I may not have pictures of exotic places, at least I can preserve a memory of my one-day vacation within my own town which in 5 or 10 years time may never look the same again.
 
3.    Go to the market
Not too many people enjoy shopping or doing the grocery, but an outdoor or Sunday market is truly something different. I went to an outdoor market and sampled new things and even bought things that simply intrigued me. This is one way of indulging myself and my curiosity. I tried a new cheese, looked for hot and fresh baked bread, and bought a pound of ground beef (I thought it’d be great to make my own hamburgers tonight). You’ll never know what will surprise you this way.

4.    Cook for yourself
Not too many people would recommend that you cook for yourself for it is a lonely thought. But then again, it is a reward that I can treat myself to and so I did. I cooked burgers outside that night and while I wait, I simply enjoyed a sweet, cold bottle of beer while listening to the Beach Boys, blasting out from my stereo.
 

She is the King’s daughter. And many would have wanted to be her or at least be related to the King in the same degree.

In this generation, perhaps only a few would genuinely understand such greatness. When I was a child, I was always excited to hear and dance to the King’s billboard charting songs. Yes, it seemed I had Billy Eliot’s spirit in me at that time.

But back to Lisa Marie. Couldn’t life have been perfect for her? We all recognize that life may be hard for her because of the big shoes she needs to fill in. The expectations are high. The paparazzi are always there following her every move. If the press were to squeeze anymore out of her, they might just jump into the band wagon, get custom brochure printing, and launch a media frenzy.

Through the years, I guess my fascination didn’t end when the King rocked and rolled his way to heaven. I never lost interest on Lisa Marie Presley. She as lively and as colorful as life itself. It just so happens that the life that she has chosen was not the kind I imagined it will be for her. This princess is not the princess you’d imagine to settle down quietly like Snow White. (If Snow White ever did)

She had only announced that she is pregnant. This is her first with her present husband Michael Lockwood.  The announcement came with such bitterness. She did it on her personal blog. She expressed her frustration about how the media is treating her. She’s upset about how the tabloids are putting out just about any stories, even if they’re bordering on slander, about her life or how they predict her life to be. Tabloids were to squeeze anything more out of her, they’d profit just by making brochures and custom brochure printing.

No woman deserves that. No rock and roll royalty deserves the way they’re treating Lisa Marie.

She may change husbands the way she colors her hair, so what? She had two children from her first marriage with Danny Keough in 1988. They got divorced in 1994, and then she married, incredulously, the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. This relationship seems to say one music royalty deserves another, but then again, it didn’t quite turn out that way.  The affair lasted for 21 months.

She then became engaged to John Oszajca, a rocker, in 2000. In 2002, she tied the knot with Hollywood actor Nicolas Cage. After three months, the latter filed for divorce.

And now, the baby belongs to her fourth and present husband, Michael Lockwood. He was Lisa Marie’s music producer and also her guitarist. They got married in Japan in 2006. I just really hope that this baby will bring peace to Lisa’s life. May this be a start of her finally stepping up and filling her princess shoes to live happily ever after.

Dream a little dream. But if you dare to dream, why not dream up big ones right?

I have come to a certain point in life where the days are long and boring. I assume everyone have had these kinds of days. The hours drag on to days, days into uneventful weeks and weeks into unmemorable months.

If you were to ask, was it because of a broken heart? Certainly not. Was it because of work? No, wrong again. Was it because of health? Still the answer is no.

In the arts, there is this theory called creative tension. It is the gap that is present between our reality, the now or the present and our vision. It this momentary lapse or rest if your prefer it where it seems things that have going for sometimes ceased or lost direction. It seems that the Emerald City is a far vision as we trudge upon our own Yellow Brick Road.

Am I the Scarecrow? Am I the Tin Man? Am I the Cowardly Lion? Am I Wendy? To what end and purpose an I walking this Yellow Brick for? The Emerald City seems to be a mirage in the desert at this point.

But we must always dare to dream. Dream a little dream or dream up big ones. I guess that it is only way we learn to find ourselves and reinvent ourselves. We learn to refocus our energy and motivate ourselves.

It can be quite hard to do, if you think you have grown tired and weary, if you feel jaded and worn out. It is so easy to feel dissatisfied and disenchanted with life.

Still, what else is there to do? Start dreaming. Start dreaming small or large. Start dreaming up that diamond ring you want to personally pick out and give to you beau. Start envisioning that getaway that you always wanted to have – think of Maldives and the perfect white beaches, think of Africa and wild surrounding you, and think of Italy and that ride to countryside.

Dream perhaps of changing careers, a violinist or cello player for an orchestra, a road manager for a rock band, or a food critic touring the best restaurants all over the world. Dream of painting your own portrait you’ll be leaving behind or thousand prints of you that you’ll share to the world. Wholesale custom printing and a thousand and one print you’ll be throwing up into the air atop your apartment building.

Let your portrait, your digital artwork, your message rain down on the people below like confetti. Share your thoughts. Share your dreams. Share a little passion. Live a little drama. Live life one moment at a time.

Write a song you’ll never hear played. Study pottery without being a potter. Cook for no one but yourself. Dance like they are only playing for you. Be your own audience. Just be.