Slowing down your computers…one image at a time. I was planning on saving this post until next year, but it’s been 3 months since the last collection! I didn’t think it would be fair. Also, I’m pretty sure that these pictures sum up my last fall quarter perfectly. Enjoy!
Sometimes, I get asked by my friends why I have a blog. If you say that you have a blog out loud, it can kind of sound silly. I’ve thought about my usual responses and I have narrowed it down to three – I typically respond with two out of the three.
1) For others: Everyday, I would read the news for hours, but I never had anyone to share it with. I started the blog because I wanted my friends to know what I was actually talking about for once instead of hearing me and then changing the subject because they couldn’t relate. Sometimes the content is stuff you will only find online and not in every day conversations or class.
2) For selfish reasons/myself: I wanted to have a blog so that I could look back on my year and remember the news of 2009. Initially, this was the number one reason. I never intended to share this blog with anyone and it was originally supposed to just be a yearly project.
In all honesty, it allows me the chance to unwind. There is nothing better than making my one concern be that I am behind on news for just a portion of the day. My life – our lives – are so chaotic. I like that I can keep this separate from my life. It’s not some hidden secret, but this isn’t my whole life. This isn’t my career nor would I ever want it to be.
*****
I had a fantastic heart-to-heart the other night with my friend Bree. I mentioned to her that sometimes in life I feel like I am missing out on key experiences. I watch movies and I get these ideas that I am supposed to follow a standard – that these experiences are supposed to be milestones. Many of my “A Collection Part…” posts resemble images of things I have wanted or want in life. They may be little moments, feelings, emotions, travels, etc. I then said that some of these images pertain to various stages in life – different ages. What am I supposed to do when that age has passed?
I left our talk with that idea still lingering and wondering if we will ever fully be satisfied with not having these experiences – because I like to think that I’m not the only one that feels this way. As I was doing my news reading for that night, I stumbled upon a video called Words directed by Daniel Mercadante and Will Hoffman. The short film is a compilation of life sequences that connect each shot together. There is no normal reaction to watching it. There are always going to be things that I will never experience. It’s inevitable. There are, however, moments in my life that I have lived that no one will ever have. There is no standard when it comes to living your life and movies, society, even short films like this one sometimes give you the impression that your life needs to be this way or else you’re doing something wrong. It’s one of those things like “DUH!” but it is normal to have these types of notions and I don’t find it necessarily naive of me to have believed in such a thing.
What kind of experiences do I mean? These are just four that I randomly picked out near the top of my folder.
- I take things for granted.
You should also check out their new video Re: WORDS, which follows the same direction as the video above, but pulled from YouTube clips.
Do you remember this picture? I once used it to introduce one of my “Collection” series and it has remained a favorite ever since. I recently discovered that this was not just a one time photo that happened to be spectacular. In fact, there were many photos. Jason Lee is known as a wedding photographer, but he also has a blog site that features photo shoots of his daughters. Be careful because you might just pass out from all of the adorableness you are about to view. Kristen and Kayla are too precious.
Check out all of their adventures here!
For this series, I was trying to capture the theme of September and going back to school. One of my good friends once told me that these were her favorite posts. She told me that she thinks that every picture I include has some kind of a purpose and she’s always trying to figure out why I chose it. I can’t exactly explain the reasoning behind it, but something will have caused me to linger on it for more than a few seconds. Something will make me do a double take. I think the theme for this collection is isolation and inclusion.
It’s time to transition out of August and into the fall that is September. Back to school – back to reality – back to dreams. I am so much happier w/ this collection post than the last one. These photographs are not as sarcastic as the last, but instead beautiful, inspiring, and more genuine.
I’m about to slow down your computer maybe, maybe a lot, maybe a little. If I get a thank you after then it will be worth it I think.
I first came across Alex Day’s YouTube account, Nerimon, one day when I was searching for things to compile together into A Collection post. I thought about including his video, but then realized it was too good and too funny to be thrown into a mix. It needed its own post. What caught my attention was Alex’s narration of the Twilight series. He’s only reached Chapter 5-6 so far, but already I feel like he is giving me a better rendition than the book itself.
I had so much fun writing up this interview for him! So I hope you all enjoy it :)
Q: Alex, how old are you and where are you from?
Alex: HI Katie! I’m 20 and I’m from a little town called Hornchurch in the UK. (I now have more subscribers than the entire population of Hornchurch, which is weird.)
Q: Where did the term Nerimon come from and what does it mean?
A: Oh, this story will make me look so cool – I used to be into Digimon when I was way younger, and to that end wrote fan fiction in which I had my own Digimon who was called Nerimon. And because Nerimon was a word I made up myself, it was never taken as a username, so I just kept it as my online moniker long after I stopped caring about the show. (It was good though.)
Q: #16 – Most Subscribed (All Time) – United Kingdom
#4 – Most Subscribed (All Time) – Musicians – United Kingdom
#15 – Most Subscribed (All Time) – Partners – United Kingdom
So YouTube thinks you’re pretty popular. How do you feel about these rankings? Is it pretty surreal or just kinda no big deal?
A: I find that the more ‘success’ I get, the more I realize how little all of it matters. I’ve been to YouTube gatherings where – no joke – people have been shaking in tears because they actually can’t contain how excited they are to meet me. I’m not telling you this because I’m bragging, I’m telling you because the moment I leave that place to get food or go to the loo or go home, I’m just me again, and nobody else cares. That’s the point – you’re only as ‘famous’ as the number of people who know your name. It’s all relative.
Q: Why do people think you’re so funny, do you think?
A: Haha – I think the main thing is that I can find humor in things that other people just overlook. A newspaper article, a letter, an old item from my childhood … I’m generally a really positive person who just enjoys life and finds fun in most things.
Q: You have about 77,773 subscribers. Are you surprised, shocked, excited by this number? I mean over 77,000 people in this world follow your life on YouTube. Sometimes when I post on my blog, I worry about security and if my writing is too personal, do you ever feel that way or not?
Note: Alex now has 85,806 subscribers
A: Just before midnight on Christmas Eve, I went over the 80,000 mark, which is amazing. I’m actually incapable of imagining that many people all together with me standing in front of them, making jokes about Twilight. A few hundred would be enough, so this is just crazy. I always idly thought “I could get loads of subscribers!” because I knew that I’d be exposed to a lot of people and it was possible, but I never really expected or even believed it would happen. In terms of honesty, I’ve always been a very open person because I believe that the biggest problem in the world is miscommunication, and transparency is a good remedy to that, so I’ve been happy sharing my life with people. It’s come with its flaws though; I no longer talk about my romantic life on YouTube because people tend to go Brangelina and take sides if anything goes wrong, and in reality they (of course) don’t know the whole situation before involving themselves with their judgments. (Not that I’m bitter – it’s just a learning curve.)
Q: You’re just 20 years old. What is a typical day in a life for Alex Day?
A: Every night I set my alarm for around 7:30 and every morning I find myself unable to get up till about 9, silently cursing myself for sleeping in yet again. I’ll debate getting food, but end up reading Lost on-set reports and Dollhouse speculation forums for a couple hours. If it’s been a few days since my last YouTube video, I’ll start thinking of what one I wanna do next, which would require either psyching myself up to get through another godawful chapter of Stephanie Meyer fiction or putting some other plan in place (I have a folder with draft video ideas waiting to be filmed). And at some point I’ll pick up my guitar and warble my way through a cover of Paparazzi by Lady GaGa (which I’m sure thrills the neighbours more and more every time they hear it). I don’t have a job, I should point out, because there are enough kind people buying my album that I can literally just fill up the time, day after day, until the sweet release of death.
Q: In three words describe what Trock is?
A: Time Lord Rock.
Q: Okay, just kidding, tell us what it really means!
A: :D It’s music about Doctor Who. I was hoping to start a similar movement to the popular wizard rock fandom, but the only band who’s released anything is my band, Chameleon Circuit.
Q: Which one comes first – vlogging or your music? The hard hitting question…
A: If I had to just pick one, then it’d be music, because I can’t do vlogging as a career. But they both feed very well into each other; people who like my comedy videos will wanna support me, so they’ll check out my music and hopefully like what they hear enough to buy it (you can hear the whole CD for free on my website). And I can film music videos for uploading, so they’re nicely married to each other.
Q: I’ve heard that you’ve been to Seattle (my hometown) before. What was your favorite part about it? Would you come back?
A: I lived in Seattle for two months in the summer, and it was a joyful experience overall. I love the character of the city – all cities have their own identity, but Seattle seemed to have more personality, with little quirks like the troll and the Space Needle. The Space Needle is great because I love retro-future stuff; the idea that people are always trying to predict what the future will look like, and it always looks like the future if the future were 1950, or whatever year it was. Futuristic predictions are complete products of their time, and the inevitably of that is quite beautiful, in my opinion :) EMP was cool too.
Q: What would you say is the biggest difference between people in London and Seattle?
A: Everyone’s so very very green in Seattle. London’s a lot more like New York, very gritty and grey, Seattle’s very environmentally conscious and that’s nice. And the PEOPLE are so nice, too. Londoners keep very much to themselves. Seattle people are nearly always happy to chat to strangers, and it just makes for a happier place.
Q: Name one place you want to visit, but haven’t yet and why? Why do you want to visit this place and why haven’t you visited it yet?
A: I’m going to LA in the summer, and I’m excited about that cos I think that’s a place I should go to. I want to visit Tokyo for the same reason. The only reason I haven’t gone yet is because I usually travel for the people, not the place; I stayed in Seattle because my girlfriend at the time lives in Seattle.
Q: I stumbled upon your YouTube channel when I discovered your Twilight chapter readings. Tell me what you REALLY think about Twilight so far.
A: Haha, you ask this like you’re expecting me to say “Well I do kind of secretly like it but don’t tell anyone”, right? There’s no hidden agenda, I promise you. The book is awful. I have to force myself to get through each chapter. Every time I finish filming a Twilight video, I turn the camera off thinking “That was awful, this won’t be funny”, and only when I watch it back during editing do I start to see that it wasn’t as bad as it felt.
Q: You’re going to continue reading chapters right?
A: Yes, I am – I started this because I genuinely feel like I’m providing a public service. There are so many people who make fun of Twilight that don’t even know the story of what happens in the book – including myself – so I feel like this way, they’ll be able to understand the story in all its stupidity, but without having to go through the mental turmoil of slogging through it themselves. (I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating but YOU TRY READING IT.)
Q: Have you seen the movies?
A: I saw the first one only because I wanted to sleep with the girl I saw it with. I went into the film fully aware that it’d be really terrible, and it still bothers me now when I look at the Twilight box office sales that a few pounds of that used to be mine. I have no interest in seeing the second one or any of the others.
Lulzzzzzz!!
Q: If you ever came face-to-face with Robert Pattinson, what would you say to him?
A: I’d love to hang out with Robert Pattinson! I’m as much a fan boy of him as any other Twilight hardcore, I actually think he’s awesome. I’d probably just shake his hand and say “Dude you’re so cool” and then hide away somewhere and cry at my own pathetic life.
Q: As of right now, what is your number one ambition? Is it to become King of YouTube or something else?
A: Hahahaha – ‘King of YouTube‘ isn’t a title they give out, to my knowledge, but if they did it would SO be my answer. My main ambition right now is to bring exposure to my music; to keep planning and releasing good music videos and spreading the word about me so that I can continue living in the way that I do.
Q: I like your style sir! Where do you shop at?
A: Thank you! <3 Almost everything I wear is from Topman, because they do smaller sizes than other shops and I’m quite a thin guy. The smaller stuff suits me better
Q: What’s your New Year’s resolution?
A: Oooh, you know, I haven’t actually thought about it yet. I don’t know. In 2004, my resolution was to be more confident, which worked out very well. In 2006 it was to start using weights – that got old near the start of February. I don’t know if I’ve made any resolutions since then. Anything I say will instantly feel like a chore, and will put me off doing it. So let’s say – to be in YouTube’s Most Subscribed list by the end of the year. Tough works, I need over double the subscribers I have now, but it’ll motivate me to keep making great videos and earning those extra viewers.
Q: If you could have anyone guest spot on your show, who would it be?
A: Ha, my ‘show’. I guess it’s just me in my house so I don’t think of it that way. Well if I could have ANYONE on my show, then … I dunno, I’d have to find a good use for the person so they weren’t just there for the sake of it. I think I’ll have Robert Pattinson just walk in at the end of one of my Twilight videos, saying “Hey, you!” and having a go at me.
Q: Can that person be me someday? :) hahah
A: Aww, you charmer <3 Well, the question you’re really asking here is “am I better than Robert Pattinson?” and Katie, you know that’s gonna be tough for me to answer :p
Q: Where can we expect to see you next Alex?
A: There’s a wonderfully creepy subtext to that question. I go shopping in Hornchurch most days, so if you’re really committed … apart from that, I’m gonna do more gigs in the New Year, including (hopefully) a US tour in the summer, and of course I’ll be uploading videos every week or so.
hahah I always ask that question last and he’s probably the only person to ever call that a little creepy!
To listen to Alex’s music click here
To watch his YouTube channel click here
It is a tedious and challenging task having to go through all of your posts in one year to weed out your favorites. Something… I don’t really want to ever do it again. BUT it’s important that I share with you my favorite 20. Over the course of this year, some posts have made it to the top [or the front page of WordPress] that I really don’t think are all that deserving of that title. I like all my posts of course, but there are some that I believe, have a larger message. There are some that I put a lot of time into working on that receive no attention at all. Yet, the whole world cares more about Dora the Explorer, Megan Fox, and the new Tinkerbell. So I’m allowing you all to see my favorite posts again resurfaced! These are for the most part in no order – I don’t have time to truly give them a number ranking.
20. New Directions
Why: If you don’t know where to look, you will never find it. Believe it or not, men care about their appearances just as much as women. Maybe they won’t admit, but that’s okay. I’m not asking you to. I wanted to highlight some well made websites and blogs for men that focus on dress and lifestyle. It’s okay to want to look good. :)
Why: One of my best friends Jeanette reminded me this past summer that it is always important to explore where you are from. I’ve lived in and around Seattle my entire life and I can safely say that no experience is the same. People from Seattle don’t know this, but there is so much more than downtown and the Space Needle and Seattle Center. There are various neighborhoods – each a part of the city, but with its own individual personality. That day, we explored three prominent locations in the Seattle area: Pike Place Market, Gasworks, and the Fremont Troll.
