pass me a cigarette, this fresh air is killing me

while looking for vintage voiceover samples for a project i'm working on, we came across these wonderful examples of fine and honest 1950s advertising.





silly surgeon general... don't you know that cigarettes are as cool and as a clean as a breath of fresh air?... i mean, who needs real fresh air, when the finest leaf tobacco makes your mouth feel clean and your throat feel so refreshed? what more could a young girl swinging happily from a tree ask for?

who needs hair gel?

amid all the hype and hoopla of both the democratic and republican national conventions... THIS was by far my favorite 15 seconds! :)

mmmm... florence.

i know these stories are a little late... but now that i have watched our videos (finally!), i'm feeling compelled to share.

so... one of the last places burton and i went to on our europe trip was florence, italy. we were only there for a couple of days, but it ended up being one of our favorite parts of the trip. primarily because of stuff like you'll see in the pictures and video below.

the first night we were there, we decided to wander the streets. our first moment of overwhelming awe came as we turned a corner (i love how everything is like that in florence... you turn a corner and VOILA!) and saw the duomo for the first time. the colors of this cathedral were seriously some of the most amazing things i've ever seen in my life. pictures just don't do it justice.

then we bought gelato... real italian gelato. which was pretty much a life changing moment for me. i don't have pictures of this earth shattering occasion in my life, but it was an epiphany moment. and trust me... there's nothing like it here. anywhere. we've looked. not even in little italy. the good stuff that will change you forever requires a plane ticket.

and you can't go to florence and not fall in love with this bridge. this bridge!! amazing. just LOOK at it!! oh man, now i'm homesick for my holiday...

and then there was the moment we've captured on video (below). we came around this corner (see... another corner) and heard her... natalia lopushanskaya. what we heard before we turned the corner sounded like a concert. we thought for sure we were going to see something "grand" as we neared the courtyard. but then we saw her... in her jeans and a t-shirt. standing in a dark archway to take advantage of the acoustics. and i've never heard anything like it in my life. even now, watching the video, it gives me chills. i was stopped dead in my tracks. so... here's a little piece of italy to share with you.

oh to be in greece again...

so... it's been about 8 months since burton and i went to europe. and it's been about 2 years since we got our video camera. and it's been about 4 days since i received a firewire cable for my birthday so i could finally download video from our camera. and so this is it... my first real video post.

i chose this segment of video from our trip (sorry there's no ACTUAL pictures of greece) because i have to comment on how weird it is to see yourself and hear yourself in videos. we've all done it. we remember hearing ourselves on the answering machine for the first time and thinking "is that really me? is that really what i sound like?!" and this (above) is one of the first videos i've seen of myself as an adult just telling a story. so... that's me, huh? that's really the facial expressions and hand gesters i make? who knew my eyebrows were so animated? and note to self: don't pull out the video camera with no make-up on.

but seriously... aren't burton and i funny? haha. and it's said "Ah-Gee-Nah"... don't ask me what i was smoking...

p.s. i need a mac. "windows movie maker" is stupid.

(UPDATE: i decided to add pictures of the things mentioned in the video, since "windows movie maker" sucks and i can't figure out how to add them to the movie... if that's even an option with this stupid program)

ferry to aegina island.

place where we ate lunch at the bottom of the island.

out of gas. and lost.

burton in the mediterranean sea. (clothes on)