left brain

Wii

Motorola Q

My next new phone... the Motorola Q cell using some shitty Microsoft idea yet is as flat as a Razor and as high tech as well a Treo or Blackberry.  Text, Email, Surfing the Web (I need my porn at all times), some calender ideas, and god knows what else.. And it is coming to (wait for it, wait for it) VERIZON !!!!  Thankgod!  So, yah.. unless the Rokr or Slvr gets to Verizon first, I am buying this puppy.

hehe.

WiFi Umbrella

Engadget.

We're often at a loss as to why the citizens of earth deem it necessary to partake in these "outdoors" of which they speak, but if such an action must be done, might we recommend a WiFi umbrella to help combat the elements? The premise is pretty simple, the umbrella handle has an LED that glows based on the likelihood of precipitation, so instead of taking the 30 seconds necessary to look up the weather on the Internet, or sticking your head out of a window, you can just glance at your umbrella on the way out. Sounds a lot like Ambient's Weather Forecasting Umbrella, but beyond looking just plain snazzier, this version pulls all its information off of your Internet via WiFi. It really sounds like quite the functional use of usually superfluous technology, even if it is just a clever ploy to draw us outside for our demise. No word on price or availability.

GOD is Brasilian

Celebrating the World Cup, early

but also BRASILIAN STYLE.   see where my allegiances lay?  ;)

New Barney's in Boston

Not sure what happened to my invite but it sounds thrilling nonetheless.  A Barney's in Boston.  Enough said.

Bostonians who receive an invitation to the Barneys New York private party, heralding the posh store's arrival at Copley Place, will encounter a scene of Bacchanalian proportions. The entertainment for the invitation-only festivities is rumored to be a veteran, chart-topping musical act, while Barneys's foppish creative director, Simon Doonan, best known for his outrageous window displays and equally outrageous one-liners, is promising a sumptuously decadent gala for well-heeled attendees. The normally chatty Doonan is unusually tight-lipped about the details of the event.  ''I just came from a 10-hour planning meeting," Doonan says with an exaggerated sigh. ''They'd have my guts for garters if I spilled any details."

The opulence of the pre-opening gala will be restricted to A-list party celebrities, blue-blooded locals, and hip jeunesse doree. But when the two-floor, 45,000-square-foot store officially opens to the public on March 10 in the space that once held Copley's movie theaters, there will be a number of celebrity amenities available to anyone who shops in the store, even those who fail to score the coveted golden ticket to the pre-opening soiree.  An in-store concierge, similar to those found in fine hotels, will be at the disposal of shoppers to help recommend restaurants or secure event tickets. Currently, only Barneys's Madison Avenue location offers concierge service. The centerpiece of the women's shoe department will be a fireplace, strategically placed to ensure that customer's toes do not grow chilly while changing their shoes. In the cosmetics department, shoppers can sniff Frederic Malle perfumes in one of two smelling columns, futuristic, phone-booth-like structures designed specifically for inhaling fragrances without environmental impurities interfering.  If it sounds extravagant that Barneys is opening its first large-scale store in 12 years with so many highfalutin comforts, consider its incoming competition. High-end shoe czar Jimmy Choo, whose designs are the Holy Grail of footwear, is finally opening his first Boston store this spring, while Italian clothier Valentino, which has boutiques around the world, is talking about a Newbury Street location.

Vitamin C underwear?

Yah, so that is the one of the new ideas from hot underwear and bathing suit maker Aussiebum.  It just so happens I am about to wear one of their "bathing suits" in Rio, my first time in anything less than surf shorts but I figured I should fit in.  Anyways, Aussiebum Essence underwear is specially created using organic substances micro-encapsulated within the fabric and released over a period of time.  Essence is the first underwear with Vitamine C, absorbed through the skin to give your whole body an overall feeling of well-being, and has already sold more than 25,000 pairs in the first month of premiering them. 

They also have a special pair of briefs for the summer (theirs not mine) since you will see in the next post what I am experiencing up here in Boston.  The special briefs are lemon and well.. look a little bit like the boy has had some fun with watersports.  lol.  sorry, but I couldn't resist :P

Abercrombie on Fifth

I recently talked about how the AF on Fifth Avenue has a nearly naked boy standing outside.  How hot he was and how ridiculous a ploy it is to sell clothing.  This article is from the NYTIMES:  (you need their upgraded access to read it and I can't find the link anymore).  This is the full article which I am sure is shitty to do but oh well. 

NEVER has a store that sells bluejeans and T-shirts more closely resembled a hookup joint.

The four-story Abercrombie & Fitch flagship on Fifth Avenue is a sprawling nightclub of a place with muscled young men standing guard at the front entrance, their smiles entreating passers-by to look. At their backs, the front windows are mysteriously shuttered. Inside, the lighting is a moody chiaroscuro, and the music thumps at such high volume that you have to shout to be heard. A central staircase with subtly lit frosted glass-block flooring is a dramatic sculptural counterpoint to the darkness.  On a weekend afternoon, knots of conspiratorial-looking teenagers huddled out front, blowing on their cupped hands, talking on cellphones, casting eager gazes at one another from beneath eyelids at studied half-mast. In the store, which opened last month, hotties circulate the catwalklike floors, touching up their lip gloss, gossiping with one another. Only the fact that they occasionally lean over to fluff at a sweater, their hair fanning silkily across their shoulders, would lend you an inkling that they are actually employees.

Right. Because you are not in a nightclub. You are here to shop.

This is what Abercrombie does with distinction: the most efficient way to move tons of jeans and T-shirts is not to sparkle with antiseptic, anodyne cleanliness like Gap, but to sell these relatively generic pieces of clothing using the sexual ideology of the new millennium, an era informed by readily available pornography, the strip-club aesthetic and a post-AIDS abandon. The nightclub setting and the racy marketing campaigns make the clothes more appealing to the kids. And tick off the parents. Which, in turn, makes the clothes even more appealing to the kids.

For all the hype surrounding Abercrombie, the clothes are, well, just clothes. Upon entry, you find a row of glass cases displaying denim jeans. This is the denim ''bar,'' a term increasingly employed by public relations people to connect the act of shopping to the act of ingesting food or drink, to subtly convince shoppers that buying clothes is an intimate activity providing either nourishment or intoxicating pleasure. And the jeans are fine, priced from $69.50 to $198 for the Ezra Fitch premium styles.

For women the preppy Ezra Fitch collection includes tailored shirts, embroidered with a tiny moose on the front, and saucier camisoles, like a strapless beaded one with an Empire waist for $128. In gray or white, it was actually elegant. I would skip the holiday T-shirts with phrases that are as corny as lines from the 1970's show ''Love, American Style,'' like ''Santa loves a hot cookie,'' ''Never a silent night'' and, my personal favorite, ''Is that a candy cane in your pants?''

Men's clothes are simple: polos, fleece items, jeans, khakis, sweaters, overcoats. I liked the cable-knit sweaters in lamb's wool, nylon and cashmere, many of them bearing the embroidered moose.  On the walls of the store a three-story mural depicts a kind of adolescent sexual Guernica: young male athletes in all manner of gymnastic contortion, mostly stripped to the waist, their torsos striated with muscle, their pants packed with cartoonishly provocative, eye-popping bulges of which even Porfirio Rubirosa would have been skeptical.

New Kicks

I walked around in crap Puma's all weekend in NYC and I have to say that not only do my fucking legs ache but my feet feel like I put them through a meat grinder.  So, note to my old self, Puma's are good for less than 3 hours otherwise you need better technology that costs some ridiculous amount of money.  Like, when did sneakers turn out to be more than 100 bucks?  I remember the days .... haha.  Thankfully, I think I am worth it, and even the debt if need be.  I also figured I need new gym sneaks.  It's also called depressed shopping though I am sorta out of it, haha.  Some stats though that I think are hot:

Boasting No Foam, Just Air, the Air Max 360 is the only shoe to feature 360 degrees of air.  The original concept of Nike Air was invented back in 1979 by NASA scientist, Frank Rudy, who claimed to Nike that he could offer cushioning that will never go away in a shoe.  When the first Air Max trainer launched in 1987, it was a revolution. For the first time, runners could see as well as feel the benefits of Nike Air cushioning.  Over the years, Nike has refined their technology and improved performance by removing more and more foam, so improving the runner's performance, and getting closer to the promise. cushioning, providing the athlete with the greatest ride ever.

Macbook review

Since I can't wait, I have to read reviews and drool over pictures.  I just can't wait.
A hands-on look at the new MacBook Pro - Computerworld.

I can tell you this laptop is fast. Really fast. I am hesitant to say it’s exponentially faster than the G4 version, but subjectively this baby cooks. Universal binary programs like Safari and Apple’s iLife suite -- which have been rewritten by Apple to take advantage of the new dual core 1.83GHz Intel processor inside -- launched in 1 or 2 icon bounces. And using the Microsoft Office suite -- which hasn’t yet been rewritten -- was seamless using Rosetta.

For those of you who may not have been following Apple’s transition to Intel, Rosetta is emulation software built into the latest version of Mac OS X 10.4 and designed to allow programs written for the G4 processor to run without a hitch on Intel. It works. I did not feel like I was using a translation/emulation environment at all, something that’s going to be important in the months ahead as Apple moves more of its hardware to Intel and software developers follow with recoded apps. Although older versions of Mac programs will work on the Intel hardware, they will likely run slower than on a native G3 or G4 chip.

Apple wants to make this transition as seamless and transparent as possible, and if my short time using Rosetta is any benchmark, I’d say they’re off to a good start.

The built-in Web cam -- think of it as a smaller iSight camera -- is clearer and offers higher resolution video than was previously available on the G4 PowerBook. And when using iChat A/V, you can now act as the host for a four-way video session -- largely because of the Core Duo chip speed. That’s noteworthy because four-way video is processor-intensive and thus, was previously available only on Apple’s G5 computers.

The LCD screen, which offers a 1440-by-900 pixel resolution, is much brighter than those on earlier Apple laptops; In fact, there was no discernible difference between the screen brightness on the MacBook Pro and a 20” iMac Core Duo sitting next to it. Anyone who’s seen how bright those iMac screens are will appreciate how good-looking this laptop screen is. No doubt the inclusion of a new video card, the ATI Mobility Radeon X1600, helps. The ATI card offers 256MB of video RAM on the top-end Macbook Pro, half that amount on the entry-level version.