Andy Gapin

Here are a few pictures I took this week. The first few are from a trip to Crumbs on Saturday with my fiancé and the others I took last night while walking around my town. I had wanted to take a nighttime picture of the new Dunkin Donuts down the street. It’s really well lit and has a bunch of those strings of triangular flags that stores often have when they first open. There’s nothing else next to it that’s lit up at night so even though it’s on a main road with tons of other stuff around, if you’re looking at it straight on at night, it looks like a shining beacon of hope (?) with nothing else around it. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t get the shots to come out how I wanted them to. Oh well.

Oh, and rejoice because there are no pictures of cats in this bunch.

I liked this. The Crazies entertained me without dragging and without taking long to get going. While it was lacking slightly in the humor category and a little in the epic kill realm, it made up for it with tons of people being senselessly mowed down by the military, Though, that’s not really the point of the film.

The Crazies presents itself much like a zombie flick without the zombies, but focuses a lot less on the infected and more on a population’s reaction to the outbreak. Watching this film made me wonder how much of the original was an influence for M. Night Shyamalan when he made The Happening. That thought pretty much ended in me feeling like The Crazies is closer to what The Happening should have been than what that movie actually was…ignoring the face that The Happening went with suicidal over homicidal.

I’m not going to compare with the original because I don’t think there’s much of a point, but for me, The Crazies further solidifies my feelings that horror remakes are okay if done right. There have definitely been a ton of crappy ones–this film came with a trailer for the A Nightmare On Elm Street remake which looks relatively awful–but there have also been a ton of great ones as well. It comes down to being able to make a movie that differentiates enough with the original to make its existence worthwhile, but yet still remains true to the reason why the original existed.

Despite being predictable (what isn’t?), The Crazies has a lot of tension, keeps a fast pace, and gets down right terrifying at times. Check it out.

Rating: B+

I’m disappointed. Alice In Wonderland wasn’t what I wanted it to be and I think Tim Burton is to blame. I never thought I’d ever say that, I generally love Tim Burton’s work, but this didn’t do it for me. It almost felt like Burton half-assed it instead of pushing himself forward and beyond previous work. Alice in Wonderland felt less like him adapting his style to the story and more like him adapting the story to a summation of is entire cinematic career over the last twenty or so years.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate it, but I’ve been waiting for this movie for a long time and I wanted more. The visuals looked great, but they didn’t look new or original or inspiring or anything that you would expect from Tim Burton.

Both Johnny Depp and Anne Hathaway were weak as well, not terrible, but not what we’ve all come to expect. I can’t put my finger on what was off, but it wasn’t all there, even though I think Johnny Depp is the perfect casting choice for Mad Hatter. However, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen was the one strong point to this film. The tones in her voice and her facial expressions were perfect and her scenes were both interesting and funny in the exact way that I wanted the entire film to match with.

Also, Hatter’s “futterwacken” dance was just weird and didn’t feel like it belonged with the rest of the film.

Rating: C

I hate you. You are a terrible bank. My fiance and I use you for our joint account, but we are leaving you. This weekend, we will be opening a new account at a new bank and once we get everything switched over, we’re closing our account with you and we will never look back.

I wish that I could say that a slow and clumsy website–it took us days just to get both of us set up with logins that actually worked–and transfers that seem to take forever were the only reasons why I hate you, but I can’t. What put me over the edge is the fact that you call me constantly with marketing calls. Your tenacity is almost impressive, actually. This has been going on for over six months now. At least twice a week.

What really gets me about these calls is that they come from numbers all over the country. Luckily, I used my Google Voice number instead of my cell number so it is easy to block numbers, but the myriad of numbers from different area codes around the country that you use is astounding. And now the most recent area codes that you’ve moved on to are local to me. The interesting thing here is that when I block one of your phone numbers, you get a message saying that my number is not in service, but you are not deterred, you see right through this and, instead of removing the my number from your listed under the impression that the number is no longer valid, you just change the number that you call from. Very clever, Bank of America. Very clever.

When I don’t answer your calls, which is almost always the case as I don’t answer numbers I don’t know, you don’t even leave a real message. Many times, it’s just a blank two-second message. Other times, there’s the tail end of a recording. If I try to call this number back, it either beeps a few times and then hangs up on me, does not answer at all, or takes me to a voice menu that hangs up on me no matter which option I select. I don’t even get what you’re going for here. If you’re trying to market something to me, don’t you want me to be able to get back to you? This must be some trick you’ve devised that is just too complex for me to understand.

At this point, you might be wondering how I actually know that it’s you calling me since you don’t leave me messages and I don’t usually answer. Well, I have answered a few times. Each time, I am first taken to a recording and then I eventually get connected to a kind representative from your company that asks to speak with me. Once I tell her that she is speaking with the person she’s looking for, me, she starts an extremely long speech about whatever it is that you’re trying sell me. Seriously, I don’t even know. She kept going for so long that I couldn’t pay attention anymore. She wouldn’t stop either. It was a waste of time for all parties involved. And each time, at the end of the speech, I kindly said that I was not interested and would like to be removed from the calling list. I also stated that the number being called is a cell phone. This is only kind of a lie, as my Google Voice number only forwards to my cell. Every time, the representative tells me that she will have my number removed, but that it could take 30 days. First of all, I know that it doesn’t really take 30 days to remove a number from a calling list. It takes a couple clicks in a computer that’s that. Second of all, I was never removed from any list. This has been going on for well over six months and I still get calls.

What will it take, Bank of America?! Honestly, leave me alone. It is these calls that are driving me away from your bank. I will never do business with you again and I will also share this story with anyone that will listen. I wish that I had listened to the others that have hated on you for all kinds of other reasons.

Screw you.

Last night’s The Playlist was one of those ones that I wish I could have every week. Everything just fell right into place, the music flowed perfectly from one song to another and there was so much music I wanted to play that I could have filled two hours without even trying. When there’s that much music to work with, it’s so easy to get by without any filler songs and I think that really comes across over the air. It also allows you to do things like starting and ending a set with songs by artists linked by Jenny Lewis–Jason Boesel and The Watson Twins. I got one request that I had no problem playing, World/Inferno Friendship Society fit in so perfectly. I also was able to pull off playing two local bands, Screaming Females and Home Blitz.

But besides the music, I also felt like my mic breaks were coming even more naturally than normal. There was no struggling to find something to say or rambling messes that I didn’t know how to get out of. So, it was a fun show all around and I got to snap a few pictures while I was in the studio.

Here’s the playlist, Facebookers, click on over to the original…

I’ve only had my digital SLR, a Canon T1i, for about two months, but I decided that it would be worth it to pick up a second lens. Most of my picture taking so far has been at home and the lighting here is awful. I just can’t get enough light for anything without pumping the ISO up to 800 or 1600 or using impossibly slow shutter speeds. My cat has been my most frequent subject so a faster shutter speed is necessary. I’ve also been photographing a lot of food while fiance cooks dinner and whipping out a tripod for that is too much of a pain in the ass and just results in the food getting cold while I set everything up. So I decided a faster lens would be worth it for me even though I’m only a couple months into this brand new hobby of mine.

I went with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, it’s a very cheap lens–I got it for under $100 with free shipping. I was skeptical of getting such a cheap lens after all that I’ve been reading about photography and equipment (let’s just say it’s been a lot), but all the reviews for it seemed very consistent. It’s cheap looking and feeling and the focusing is loud and slow. These reviews were spot on. This thing is entirely plastic, except for the glass, of course, and feels super cheap. Focusing seems to take ages even just compared to the kit lens I have (Canon EF-S 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 IS) and it’s very loud. When I got home and saw the package on the step, I ran inside, opened it up, and popped it on right away. I opened the aperture up all the way and when I went to snap my first shot, I nearly jumped when I heard it focus.

But at the other end of the spectrum, all of the reviews also mentioned that for the money, it takes great pictures. And despite all of the complaints, it was mentioned in a few articles I read about photographing bands–something I’d like to do occasionally–so I figured it’d be worth a try. So far, I have to agree, the shots come out pretty nice. In addition to the ability to use faster shutter speeds and a lower ISO thanks to the wider aperture, I was also excited about being able to play more with shorter depths of fields. I’ve read a lot about being careful with small depths of field because you can end up with part of a face in focus and part of it out of focus. I couldn’t even imagine this until I got this lens, it just wasn’t possible with f/3.5. But I quickly found out that f/1.8 is wide enough to do this. I snapped a couple pictures of my cat while she was laying on my bed and her nose was perfectly focused, yet her eyes were blurry. It was kind of neat, but obviously not what I was going for. So while I’m having fun playing around with this, it’s definitely just an additional thing to be careful of. Though, with the DOF just right, everything looks so much better and your eyes instantly go right to the subject with no distractions.

One additional thing to note about this lens though, is that 50mm is a bit longer than I would have liked for a prime. I didn’t think it would be too bad, but I’m finding that I have to take 2-5 steps back instead of getting really up close and personal with the subject. For some shots, like with the cat, this is actually kind of nice because I don’t grab her attention away from what she’s doing as much. For other things, like dinner, it’s difficult to get everything in the frame. I don’t think 50mm would be too bad on a full-frame SLR, but on a sub-frame with a crop factor of 1.6, the lens behaves more like it’s 80mm (see, I’ve been reading up a lot!). Oh well, I’ll probably appreciate this more when I’m photographing bands.

Here are a bunch of shots I’ve taken with the lens so far. Again, there’s a lot of my cat, I swear I’m not a crazy cat lady, or even a lady at all, but I didn’t like many of the ones I took of anything not cat.

Sometimes, you just have appreciate the little things. For example, on the way to work the morning, I was behind a Honda Accord that had a Superman logo in place of the Honda emblem. This totally made my day and I’m okay with that.