Meet my June blog sponsors!

A little while ago, Angie of Lariats and Lavender posted a call on her blog for sponsors. I've only ever bought an ad once, on a style blog last year, and now seemed like an appropriate time to try sponsoring an ad again.

This got me thinking-- why not open up sponsorship for this little blog? Why not indeed. So, in exchange for an ad on Angie's blog, she gave me an ad of hers to post. I did the same with Jay of Down The Rabbit Hole. Sponsor swaps are fun!

Please welcome my new sponsors and enjoy this questionnaire that Angie created that I had both of my sponsors answer. I still have spots open, so if you would like to sponsor The Tsaritsa Sez please let me know! :-D

Your name/nickname:

Angie

Your blog name:

Lariats and Lavender

Your social media links:

Twitter

Facebook

Pinterest

Polyvore

Better Blogger Network

Tell us a little about you and your blog:

Hi, everyone! I'm Angie, 22 and I live in Utah with my gorgeous wife and soul mate Jen, our fur babies Wedge and Mau and our feather baby, Jango! I'm a gamer, geek and artist, as well as a crafter, shopaholic, outdoorsy nut and passionate blogger. I'm a social media butterfly and love spending time getting to know new people aka: new friends! Come say hi!

"If you could be any literary character, who would you be?"

I would be the absolutely lovely character Pam, from the Sookie Stackhouse Series. A lesbian vampire, with a killer "club" wardrobe as well as cute outfits in pastel colors? Yes, please! Plus: she lives in The South!

Your name/nickname:

Jay or Jay the Jedi

Your blog name:

Down the Rabbit Hole

Your social media links:

Twitter

Tell us a little about you and your blog:

I am a self-employed jewelry creator and freelance graphic designer. I love to watch zombie movies, listen to loud music, and eat ice cream. My blog is tough to classify, since I write about whatever I want including movie reviews, fashion, rants, product reviews, Etsy shop features, and lots of other random topics.

"If you could be any literary character, who would you be?"

If I could be any literary character, I would be Max from the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson. She is seriously tough and though she has been through a lot in her life, she keeps kicking ass and taking names. And she can fly, which is pretty cool.

Dad's groovy remix of my "Modern Day Hustla" video!

My dad sent me an email last night explaining that he was re-editing the video I made for "Modern Day Hustla," the first single from my Occupy This EP.

Here is the original video I posted the other night, for reference:



This is the email my dad sent me:

Playing with your video using different colorizing FX and filters to tell a story. Hope you don't mind; it's just an exercise.if you like I will post to You Tube later and you can see it?

Storyline:

A poor, struggling girl, in braids and tattered clothes walks the mean streets, fuming about the inequities of life's struggles.

She alternates between this poor state (b/w)

and promise of better things high above the world (glow effects)

while having her nails done by a sympathetic friend (normal lighting, no FX).

The black and white represents the recent past and present.

The glow represents the future triumph.

The normal lighting and color represents a state that is better than the harsh economic reality, but still locked in the now of the present.



Watcha Think?

dad

I probably have the most awesome dad ever. I didn't even ask him to fix the video, but he took it upon himself to add his flair. I like the ultra bright colors in the rooftop scene, very groovy.

I'm hoping I can pick up some video editing tricks from my dad when I go back to Philly to visit. I'm planning on shooting a video for the "Philly Made Me" track while I'm in town, and I want to improve my editing skills so that the next video is even more badass than the first!

Tell me what you think!

"Modern Day Hustla" video! #OccupyThisEP almost finished!

Memorial Day weekend came along and I took full advantage of the time I had to record and edit the music video for "Modern Day Hustla," the first single from my very first hip-hop EP, Occupy This.

Much love to Miss Jillian Knox for art direction, filming, and just being all-around awesome. Enjoy the video, and please let me know what you think!


Spread the love and share with your friends!





My first music video! It's a little choppy, but I think it's fine for a first effort. I was thinking about handing over the raw footage and what I've already accomplished in iMovie to someone who knows what they're doing, to polish the video and really make it shine, but I'm okay with it as it stands.

A few things I want to note:

- I wanted to take my jacket off casually and throw it off camera, but because we were filming on Jillian's roof, and it was a windy day, it caught a gust and flew over to Jillian's neighbor's fire escape. We retrieved it after shooting on Jill's roof, by knocking on the neighbor's door and asking politely.





- Our nail polish scene was incredibly backlit, but Jillian did her damndest to make the kitchen bright enough for shooting. After messing around with various lamps and light sources, she got it to work. Major props to Jillian for everything.





- I've edited videos before-- I even directed and edited a movie in high-school, called Brick-- but it's been a while. It was about a brick and the people who interacted with it, and it was made four years before that neo-noir Joseph Gordon-Levitt vehicle came out. Anyway, this was my first music video (with lip-syncing) to edit. It was challenging at times, but I had fun playing around with it and was able to get it done in an afternoon.

Check out behind the scenes photos:




Props: cookies and nail polish


The scene


Saki, one half of our audience (the other half was Molly, Jillian's puppy)

As far as the EP goes, I'm making progress and will have something to give out for free very soon.

Please stay tuned!

"There's always work at the post office..." [please ignore the stench of death]

A typical United States Postal Service mailbox in Foster City. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You ever see that movie, Hollywood Shuffle? It's a great movie that analyzes and satirizes the stereotypes of black characters in film and television history, and it's very funny-- I recommend it highly if you haven't seen it.

The film revolves around Bobby, a struggling actor who keeps getting stuck with roles that reflect a negative stereotype of the African-American community.

He fantasizes about getting the kind of fully-developed parts he really wants, where he can show off his acting chops without subjecting himself to what is basically minstrelsy, and despite the fact that his family thinks he could do better, they support his dreams.

Bobby's grandmother reminds him, as he's preparing to audition for the part of a jive-talking street thug: "There's always work at the post office," which, when the movie was made in 1987, was true.

It's not so true today.

With more and more people choosing email over snail mail, the United States Postal Service isn't generating the type of funds it needs to operate and pay its employees.

If the USPS continues to lose revenue at the rate that it has been going, they're probably going to have to lay off a bunch of employees and the time it takes for mail to arrive will increase, and the hours the Post Offices are open will decrease.

A lot of people will say: who cares? I do all of my billing online, so this will not affect me.

I do all of my billing online, too, but the office I work in does not. We receive all of our important invoices and other materials through the mail. If service slows, it will slow us down.

On a personal level, I use snail mail all the time. I mail out zines and letters and postcards to friends on a regular basis, and I end up at the post office pretty frequently. Aside from the long lines around Christmas (because who loves waiting in line? no one), I have never had an unpleasant experience at a Post Office.

The one I used to go to in Philly, on Fourth street, was awesome. The lady who worked the desk had photos of Prince all over the place and always had good music playing. People love to complain about service in the Post Office, but I learned a while ago that a little bit of courtesy and common decency go a long way.

Anyway, the USPS has been running ads recently encouraging people to switch their billing methods to regular mail, because a letter has never been hacked. It's true, but I'm not sure if that is a convincing enough argument to get Americans to send more mail. What do you think?




“We’re not trying to be luddites here, we’re not trying to say technology is bad, but the predictions of how fast customers would leave us were overstated,” said Joyce Carrier [what a perfect name for a postal employee!], USPS’s manager of advertising and media planning. “The switch has been much slower than originally anticipated.”

I am somewhat of a Luddite (I guess it comes with being a contrarian), and it does sadden me to think that post offices are going the way of appliance repair shops, paper books, and home telephones-- they exist, they're just not in high demand and thus harder to find.

Conan pokes some fun at the Postal Service and their new "funny" ads here in this hilarious spoof. Check it out: