Linked Pin: The Social Network of Not-So-Solitude

 Ice Cream Dream Charm Necklace

Cute Pursuit Charm Necklace 

 Fruit Frenzy Charm Necklace

Leopard cami: Worthington, JCPenney

Polka dot top: Wet Seal

Rainbow stripe top: Alloy

They say that people get married to have someone witness their lives.  (Also so that they'll have someone to nuke them Cup o' Noodles when they're sick.  Because technology can't do that yet, unless you're geeky and/or rich enough to own a robo-chef.)  But sometimes, I think, that's why people blog, too.  Even married people.  It's like saying, hey, I'm out here, having these thoughts as I make jewelry/bake cupcakes/paint landscapes/write music or whatever else kind of creative thing it is that people do.  Kind of like keeping a somewhat censored and very public diary without the unicorn cover and lock.  

Blogging is a form of storytelling, a kind of letter from and to yourself -- and everyone else -- that reminds us that even when engaged in the seclusion of artistic pursuits, we are intertwined and connected.  And I've always loved storytelling.  Because there's no wrong way to do it.  Sure, you can hone your craft or take a class, but at the end of the day, your story is your account of what happened, and no one can tell it but you.  

That said, this week I made some simple charm necklaces.  I used to think that it wasn't really art unless I'd suffered a little.  You know, spent hours teasing intricate designs from felt, using just enough glue so that everything would stick together, but not so much that it would seep through and make it all (symbolically) fall apart.  But lately I've taken a simpler view.  There's nothing lesser about attaching charms to a chain, not if you think the result is beautiful.  And creating beauty is what art is about.

Just this morning, the husband and I split a kiwi.  He said that kiwis are very seedy and hairy, and I said, yes, like a weird little man.  

And now I'm repeating it here.

If that's not the nexus between inner and outer thoughts and marriage and blogging, then I don't know what is.

P. S. Kevin Kiwi says hi.

Snow Falling on South Jersey: Entertainment Blitz Blizzard

Fantastic Flora and Fauna Necklace

Top: Wet Seal

Skirt (a dress!): Macy's

Shoes: Christian Siriano for Payless

Bag: Nine West, Marshalls

Belt: Marshalls

It's been snowing a lot in my neck of the woods.  Which I hate.  Because snow is cold and dangerous and prevents me from wearing my very best outfits.  Still, if you don't have to be out in it, it does have its charms -- e.g. curling up with a good book, Pinterest page, or premium cable binge-a-thon.  So, I took full advantage, traveling to sunny California to catch up on Silicon Valley.  Also, I made this very tropical Fantastic Flora and Fauna Necklace.  You know.  To remind me that Memorial Day is slumbering somewhere beneath the permafrost.

So, "Silicon Valley."  This is a show that I shouldn't even like, but love.  As an artsy-craftsy girly girl who thinks "dress" when she hears the word "code," it seems unlikely that I'd be interested in the trials and tribulations of a boy's club of wisecracking technies.  Then again, "Silicon Valley" is really about a bunch of underdogs doing their thing, which is something I'm always on board with.  Also, I really dig wisecracks.  

I can't help but root for Richard (Thomas Middleditch).  As the head of the pack, he's a beta alpha dog if ever there was one, the ultimate David to Corporate America's Goliath.  He's brilliant and painfully awkward and never stops trying to get his brilliance out there.  He's like an artist that no one understands but who knows he's got something special.  Of course, there's a part of me that sometimes thinks, wait a minute, though, he's not an artist.  He's an engineer promoting a product that's supposed to make people's lives easier.  But most people aren't as smart as he is.  So why doesn't he just add the Word-Help-Paperclip-clone Pipey (yes, as in Pied) thing to the software to walk people through it?  Sorry, Richie, but remember, this is the technically-challenged part of me ranting.  The trailblazing creator part still thinks you're badass.  Anyway, you do adopt Pipey.  And win over your biggest regular person user critic, Bernice.  So, well done.  But all of that, like everything else in this show, becomes moot because of some crazy plot shift that I no longer remember.  It's this chaos -- and Pied Piper's deus ex machina ability to rise above it -- that makes Silicon Valley such a great dramedy.

That said, if Richard has the goods, then Big Head (Josh Brener) has the life I'd most want.  Because no matter what troubles assail him (and there are many), his response is always, "whatevs."  In this way, he is high-strung Richard's foil.  He never lets his circumstances cloud his outlook, or a quest for power hamper his happiness.  When he discovers that he's a guest lecturer instead of a grad student at Stanford, he copes by showing vaguely computer sciencey movies, starting with The Social Network and ending with the sophisticated cyber stylings of You've Got Mail.  He's content to be the easygoing court jester, guzzling his ever-present Big Gulp the way most Pacific Northwesterners suck down Starbucks.

So, maybe he's on to something.  Because anyone who can make a sno-cone-like drink from snow can't be all that bad.  

Movie Moment: (Surfing) The Social Network

When I first heard about the movie The Social Network, I was interested. I hadn't known that a Harvard undergrad was the mastermind behind Facebook, or that he hatched the whole thing while I myself was in college. I wanted to know what kind of person this guy was, and why he was motivated to create such a Web site. Which is a little curious in and of itself seeing as I'm not the biggest Facebook fan (despite the fact that I'm on it). So, this afternoon, my mother, sister, and I went to see The Social Network. The theater was packed with people of all ages, which surprised me (somehow I expected to see mainly twentysomethings).

I should begin by saying that the entire story is told as a fragmented flashback. That is, in the beginning we find out that Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) is being sued by his best friend and a couple of big man on campus types for creating Facebook. The back story begins with Mark and his girlfriend hanging out in a classically dark and depressing looking college town bar. Mark is telling his girlfriend how badly he wants to be accepted into the Phoenix or the Porcellian, two exclusive intellectual Harvard social clubs. He drones on incessantly in a voice not unlike a robot's, ignoring his girlfriend's attempts to guide his monologue into a conversation. The scene clearly establishes Mark as an intellectually superior but socially inept computer nerd who seems to have no feelings (as opposed to the more common stock character of the sensitive, lovable nerd). Predictably, his girlfriend dumps him, and he retreats to his room to get drunk and spill his post-breakup vitriol into his blog. Spurred further by alcohol and bitterness, he goes on to hack into Harvard's server data to create an online game in which guys can rate girls' hotness factors (a pursuit slightly less demeaning than comparing girls to farm animals, which was the game he initially devised). The Web site is a huge success, gaining unheard of hits overnight. The next day Mark is approached by a pair of trust fund case twins (the aforesaid big men on campus) who want him to develop their pet project, an unsophisticated social networking Web site called Harvard Connect. Mark agrees, then avoids them for the next month or so to develop his own Web site: The Facebook (an endeavor which does not involve using Harvard Connect code). The brainchild is Mark's, but the start-up money and financial savvy belong to his best (and only) friend, Eduardo. The way Mark sees it, people are even more interested in finding out stuff about people they know than they are in finding out stuff about celebrities. More particularly, guys want to know if certain girls have boyfriends without having to make fools of themselves, and The Facebook facilitates garnering such information. Apparently, Mark's one of those geniuses who knows how to capitalize on what people want despite being the world's worst people person. Meanwhile, Eduardo has been invited to pledge the hallowed Phoenix club, a fact that exacerbates Mark's sour grapes, causing him to quip, "You'll never get in." (In this, Mark turns out to be wrong.)

What happens next is kind of anticlimactic. As The Facebook (the "the" isn't dropped until later) gains popularity, Mark and Eduardo begin to argue about the direction of the project. Eduardo wants to host ads to generate revenue, but Mark doesn't, reasoning that doing so too soon would compromise the integrity of the site. Then Napster creator Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake -- who else?) gets involved, and things begin to escalate before the inevitable plummet. Interestingly, Mark isn't in Facebook to make money. He's more invested in hosting a party that everyone wants to go to, with certain hopefuls being "shut out" via rejected friend requests (similar to the way in which he was shut out from those exclusive clubs, although he never puts this into words). To be sure, Sean agrees that launching ads before it's time is like throwing the coolest party of the year and then sending everyone home at 11:00. In one of the movie's most compelling lines, Mark says to Eduardo, "You want to shut the party down!" (Just for the record, I think the most compelling line is uttered by Eduardo as he heads out to the Facebook offices by Mark's invitation. It went something like this: "I didn't know if I'd been invited to the meeting or the party, so I dressed for both." Random, I know, but it seemed markedly funny to me in a deadpan way set against the movie's otherwise humorless backdrop.)

As a thinker and fellow creative type, I respected Mark's vision and his commitment to his project. He'd dreamed up something big, and in his own weird way, he was true to it. But he wasn't a very nice guy, and on more human grounds I didn't like him at all. Not the way he trashed his ex-girlfriend online or the way he took $19K of his best friend's money for start-up fees and then cheated him out of his shares (on the very night when poor hapless Eduardo was wondering if he'd been invited to California to crunch numbers or party down). Movies in which you can't root for the main character are always difficult to enjoy, and The Social Network was no exception. It was informative and engaging in an academic sort of way. But it was in no way the kind of stirring human drama I'd anticipated. I'd been ready for Internet-bred social upheaval (in "You wrote what about me on Facebook?!" fashion) and a classic little guy against big, bad corporate (or in this case, academic) America tale. What I got was a dry documentary headlined by a misanthrope in a hoodie.