Where I continue to invade the privacy of people who used to work for me (and other worthy types)
Mme70 (02:03:03) :
Oh. My. God. I’m telling EVERYbody how you are my hero!
We complimented Samer on his rock-solid blog post about his 10-minute cake recipe experiments (featured on tastespotting.com, mind you!)
And then he goes and writes this:
"Do do do, da da da. That is all I have to say to you."
We admit -- we've been very remiss. Maybe we were wrong to outsource our newsroom to Bangalore but with the extra coin we were able to rent this clown BoBo and really underestimated the creepiness.
Samer's excellent adventure was noted if not well recorded, an oversight we hope to rectify somewhat by advising our readers to check out, at the very least, his China collection.
Once you visit, of course, we predict you won't want to leave.
Samer tweets that he is through IAD security and has had a hearty breakfast "but I'll probably regret the mountain of cheese and bacon once airborne." So might you seat mates, mate.
The Boy Wonder will arrive in Tokyo tomorrow afternoon after a flight scheduled to take about 14 hours. His big regret seems to be that he won't be able to drink a caipirinha "for a good long time. My guess is I won't even be at a bar that has cachaça until at least Germany."
We'll be tracking his flight in real time at flightstats.com.
We're happy for the lad to have this dream assignment (engineer at the Bejing Olympics) and for his dexterity in creating a travel itinerary around it. But I have a dilemma. Who am I going to ask random questions at strange hours about astronomy, mechanical engineering, Apple shortcuts, unix programming and cookery? Well, as least I have a reliable source for that last one a much more manageable three time zones away.
That meat blog thing was sort of OK, I guess, but we asked for it (two years ago) and now we have it:
Samer is blogging for real again.
The reason? Boy Wonder is about to embark on a trip of 23,501 miles that begins with one step. Work beckons him to the Beijing Olympic Games and he's making about 47 pre-, post and side trips.
The itinerary:
And Samer has procured exactly what a young, single man passing through so many port of call needs ....
A telephoto lens. What did you think?
Wondering what the comments would be like if Samer had switched captions on these two recent shots.
We've been lazy. Busy. No, lazy.
But we couldn't let this one get by us, even through we've missed about 18 other DCIst "Photo of the Day" pix by the boy wonder.
Proof that Samer and I are not the same people.
Well, not really, I guess.
And then, there is the masthead picture. Oh, Jeez.
We've been lobbying for some time for Samer to start blogging again. Yeah, sure, the picture thing is OK, I guess, but anybody can take nice pictures (or act).
Well, our prayers have been answered. And it is a classic case of be careful what you wish for.
Samer is blogging not about Apple, not about GPS, not about the situation in the Middle East, not about Iceland, not about beer.
Samer is blogging about meat.
Not that he isn't a world authority, mind you. It's just that nearly half of the peeps population doesn't even eat meat, so it's kind of a throw down.
And, since the other twin peep is an established food writer -- it's kind of a throw down.
We might just start blogging about redheads. So there.
Photo by Samer Farha
Samer's DCIst opening reception looked like a blast -- sorry we missed it, but peepsNet had famNet obligations.
Show goes through March 15, so there is plenty of time. I'm getting a personal tour by the artist next week, which was my secret agenda. We do find that being in closed quarters with the rabble that shows up for gallery openings to be a bore. We don't wait on lines, either. Just so you know.
The entire collection is here -- though oddly enough, there are no shots of the boy wonder.
Samer's featured at the DCist show again this year, so save the date (March 7, opening reception, 7-9 pm).
Even better, Samer's entry is featured on the show's official poster.
Samer has once again been selected as a finalist in the annual DCIst Exposed photo contest, for obvious reasons (see above).
Cause for celebration, indeed. By outsourcing, shedding non-essential staff and deciding not to cover either the US election or the Bejing Olympics peepsNet has saved enough to buy Samer a beer. And we totally would except we have a strict professional code of conduct which believe me doesn't permit that sort of thing at all.
But catch us at the opening reception on March 7 at Civilian Art Projects in Penn Quarter. We'll be live blogging and maybe we can free up one of our Davos stringers.
Amazing. I used that line in an entirely different context with Nancy just tonight ...
Anyway -- getting a picture published every day or so on DCist isn't uncommon anymore for the boy wonder -- oh no.
Perhaps Samer has become distraught with the deafening inattention peepsNet has given him, what with all those snaps that get picked up by the hip DC site making the phenomenon of his pictures getting picked up by the hip DC site decidedly un-newsworthy, by definition.
So he's kicked it up a notch. Here is the official tweet, timing in at 2014 ET:
A twofer on DCist, today: Photo of the Day (http://xrl.us/bbjkd) and About Tonight (http://xrl.us/bbjkh).One's at the top, the other at the bottom.
Rich comes up for air long enough to tell peepsNet that he has carved out a comfortable freelancer's existence and that Maureen is working on a book that is just about ready to be pitched.
He is shooting up a storm for a wide variety of clients, our man in Portland (Ore.) reports, including Reuters and Bloomberg. Apologies to Rich if this is the first time these competing agencies have learned of his mercenary lack of fealty. You have to say "off the record" right off the bat.
Rich says his description of Maureen's book doesn't do it justice. But his take -- that it is "sort of a yogic philosophical look at nostalgia and how we remember those events from our youth and what they mean" -- sounds plenty fascinating to me, so the truth can only be better.
We remind Maureen that peepsNet employs an ombudsman, who would love to hear from her. Or we can sort this out at the Politics & Prose reading.
Here is the money quote from his despatch:
"our cat is freaking nuts! she's 18 y-o and after she eats, she stands in the bedroom howling at unseen entities. just being a cat..."Wrong. This is what Samer does every time he drinks.
Not much to see there yet, but since peepsNet was given a preview of Samer's portfolio we can say with great authority, though not for the record, that there are many more great shots to come at FarhaFoto (wonder why he didn't go with PharhaPhoto, which would have been really Phat).
Bookmark the page, but even better: Subscribe here.
On a housekeeping note: We are, of course, too lazy to check the archives and see if we have used this headline before, although we are almost certain we have. Can you plagiarize yourself?
More DCist love for Samer.
When we saw this, we were immediately struck by how this image evoked HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey," even down to the colors and brightness. Amazing. But we were not alone -- a previous commenter on this picture at flickr made the same observation, first.
This is a great example of how the eye and brain of a true photographer work. Here is something that tens of thousands of people see every day, but this capture seems unique -- special.
On the other hand, maybe nobody has taken this before because there is never nobody in the shot. There is always some poor soul struggling to get one of these machines to do what it is told, fighting to prevail.
Hmmm ... perhaps they are HAL.
A view of HAL 9000's Brain Room in the Discovery.
Not my call, Samer, but I would thank mom, keep up with Helen and watch my back with that Nicole chick.