It's nearly here: Fall in New York. At least, it better be almost here because I may melt before it fully arrives. Each day when I enter the subway station practically holding my breath because the heavy heat takes it away anyway, I think to myself, Fall will be here at some point. There will be a day when you will not have to shower three times.

Anyway, besides the weather adjusting itself back to normalcy, September in New York is basically the fashion world's birthday. That's right, kiddos! It's Fashion Week and Fashion's Night Out. So in honor of the upcoming celebrations, behold the trends I'd like to see officially banished by the sartorial royalty.

1. Cut-off shirts
I understand the heat. I really do. I've survived summers in Missouri and now a summer in New York in the very same humidity, pollution and heat that you're experiencing. The difference though, is that I've managed to keep my clothes from looking like I attacked them with a scissors in a heat-induced rage. Pull it together, hipsters. It's time for you to latch on to a new, more flattering trend.

2. In the very same PBR-filled vein, high-waisted denim shorts. Don't get me started. The look so cute and sophomoric from the front (on some, but certainly not all), and then said hipster turns around and every onlooker is privy to a dose of a twenty-something bottom in diapers. Saggy, ill-fitting acid-washed diapers. 

3. Bodycon.
I admit, I've owned not one but TWO pieces that would fall into this category. Originally made popular by Herve Leger and Balmain a couple years ago, this trend has been mass-produced and massively abused. At the height of the style's popularity, it was great to feel slimmer and edgy, but I've since decided I was missing out on one very crucial activity: breathing.
 
So, below I give you images of each of these offending styles only perpetuated here as an educational tool.
Picture
Curtain-bangs here is smirking because she can feel the breeze. Through her belly button.
Picture
Don't be fooled. She's wondering when was the last time she changed her DIAPER.
Picture
Rachel has been breathing again since early 2009 and can attest to its greatness.
 
Picture
I've just now finished Chris Cleave's "Little Bee", a book about a young and very emotionally-mature Nigerian refugee's life after fleeing her home country. Cleave, a journalist for the UK's Guardian, writes beautifully from Little Bee's perspective as she experiences Western culture in light of all that's been stripped from her.

Concerning Western culture, Little Bee constantly asks herself, "but how will I explain this to the girls back home?" for customs as plain (or as strange) as wood flooring. Little Bee's life becomes heartbreakingly tied to Sarah Summers, a British magazine editor, and together the two navigate through the labyrinth of grief and survival, both emotional and physical.

Cleave's social commentary is expertly woven into the narrative without entering the discrediting territory of hyperbole, or nagging. He found a way to reveal the ugliness of humanity in a way that is maddeningly relatable: everyone possesses a streak of selfishness that makes itself plain at some point the world's only linear path, aging. Even Little Bee isn't innocent of selfishness, and the only character fighting human ugliness throughout the entire novel is Batman, Sarah's 4-year-old son, who has taken the name (and cape and mask) to fight the world's "baddies." Charlie, his birth name, contrasts Little Bee's similarly fluid identity and again, Cleave gives the reader a meal of self-perception and ideology to chew on.

As is usual for me for when I like a book, the binding has now been perversely stretched and folded, and not many pages have been dog-earred. To my friends who find dog-earring defacement: congratulations on your ability to keep track of bookmarks. Now leave me to my reading.
 
Picture
You, faithful luckies, are looking at my new apartment building in New York's Upper East Side neighborhood. We're surrounded by a few bakeries, restaurants, a great place for margaritas (hey, Dad!), and a school. There's a library two blocks away, the train is down the street and around the corner, and Central Park is at the end of the block.

"How exciting!" you say.
I know! We're the lucky ones.
"So, it looks like I'll have a place to stay when I come visit in the city," you say.
Surely. As long as you don't mind sleeping on an air mattress that is crammed between the kitchen sink and our couch.

(Silence)

And so begins the adventure in the best (tiniest) apartment we could find on Manhattan.
 
Picture
During Newsy's class component, we were lucky to have Bryan Rahn speak to us about optimizing Newsy's content for search and our own. During the lecture, I asked how to optimize my portfolio site because it was ranking low on the organic search results (mostly because I'd commented on many articles on popular news sites). Bryan gave me a few pointers in class and then followed up with an email offering more help.

Bryan personally went into my site and made some changes only the most observant (or SEO-conscious) readers would have noticed. First, he updated what appears on top of the browser "Claire Hanan: Journalist, Mizzou alum, etc.." He also put my name more prominently on the site where Google's crawlers would read it as text as opposed to an image, which only registers the fact that i'ts an image, not the text within it. One of the best ways to optimize any site for search is to increase the amount to which it's linked from other sites. Bryan kindly linked to mine from his site, as Emily Shannon has done as well. My Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts all help with this, too.

So, thanks to Bryan's help, my site is currently first when "claire hanan" is searched, and second when searched without quotation marks. Thanks again, Bryan!

Check out Bryan's site here.
 
An update of what I've recently finished or am currently reading:
(click on pictures to begin slideshow)

1. The Thieves of Manhattan, Adam Langer
    A story about life inside New York's book publishing world. It's not exquisitely written, but the plot is interesting enough (on this I may be biased because it's an industry in which I'm seeking employment).

2. Based Upon Availability, Alix Strauss
    This novel follows the lives of eight women who are all somehow connected by the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan. The book has it moments as far as literary fiction is concerned, but it's at least a beach read in which you might find yourself happily lost. Also, if someone wants my copy it's up for grabs -- and it's signed! 

3. Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
    I'd like to write a separate post on this because it has nearly become an all-time favorite (those spots are currently held by Steinbeck's East of Eden, Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, and Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away), but if you haven't read it, you must. Contrary to popular superficial perception, the book uses Philippe Petit's 1974 tightrope walk across the Twin Towers as an example of an event and the degrees of meaning it can have for every witness and penumbral characters. The writing in the first chapter is absolutely incredible and void of cliches, setting the tone for the rest of the novel, which unfolds the story of intertwining lives all affected to some degree by each other and the events of that muggy August day.

4. A Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
    Prepare your tissue box. This is my first time reading Didion and neither her writing nor her narrative style have failed to meet my expectations. The memoir follows the year after her husband's death as she takes herself through the steps of grieving. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

5. The Great Lover, Jill Dawson
    I've just started this and I'm told the author is a hit in the UK. More tk.

What do you think, friends? Have you read any of these? Let me know!
 
Picture
I bought this book for three reasons:

1. To better understand the results of this year's World Cup.
2. If we've never met, I like economics.
3. Because the jacket design matches the colors of my blog.

Just kidding about #3, but I will admit that I'm prone to judging teams by their uniforms' styles and colors. Like the Netherlands.

Back to the book. It was an informative and understandable way to digest and make sense of the statistics swirling around the sport. It explained game theory concepts in a matter of pages that had at one time taken me much longer to comprehend. It's writing was succinct, yet the tone was in the voice of your favorite super fan who happens to love sports betting and is incredibly bright.

One commenter, Benjamin, on goodreads.com said it best: "Think of this book less as an illustration of how soccer works, and more as an introduction to what economists actually do, using soccer as a good illustration."

So, now that the next World Cup isn't until 2014, you have plenty of time to read the book -- and to jump on a team's bandwagon so you can create your own statistically-rich arguments!
 
(click photos to start slideshow)

Emily, Nicole, and Ashley.

All three are friends of mine who have trampled down the doors of the digital world, merely by doing something they love. It just so happens that they're all doing it incredibly well.

Emily, as the faithful know, was my editor at Mizzou's Greek Chronicle. Upon graduation, she took her talents to Minneapolis where she now works in marketing. Her site, Pretty and Poor, is a rolling commentary on her favorite steals, heels, and the occasional "all my single ladies" piece. The site is fun, cleanly designed and effective. She gets readers, guest bloggers, and advertising dollars. The site and its corresponding Twitter feed are definitely a testament to her marketing skills.

Entreprenurialism runs in the family, as Ashley and Nicole have successfully branded themselves around their interests. Nicole's site, Ms. Career Girl, is a place for career-minded women who want to get more out of their jobs, both current and future. Her advice is practical and unintimidating, and as my college roommates can attest, it's effective. The MsCareerGirl Facebook fan page has nearly 700 fans, and her Twitter feed has over 5,000 followers. Nicole, who works in Chicago's banking industry, is surely a valuable source for young women trying to grasp branding.

Ashley, Nicole's younger sister (and one of my college roommates), has turned her passion for makeup into a branding success story. While it's little known outside the YouTubeosphere,  makeup review videos are supremely popular. Sometimes called "product hauls," these videos feature a young woman demonstrating how to apply makeup products and then providing honest criticism. Marketing. Gold.

Ashley's videos fall into this category, though she differentiates herself by offering critiques that are blunt, honest, and and terrifically refreshing. It also helps that she can apply makeup as well as any M.A.C. makeup artist out there, too. This week, her YouTube subscription channel reached over 550 subscribers, and her Twitter account is gaining speed.

Ultimately, these women recognize what it takes to successfully market themselves and their interests: dedication, interaction, and originality. I look to them when I'm writing to you, dear readers, so check out their stuff and let them (and me*) know what you think.

*You've all seemed to have forgotten that this blog has a comments section. Don't be a lurker. Join the fun.
 
Picture
For the final three weeks of the program, the students have been charged with the task of creating a book imprint. My group, composed of different students than the Shut-Eye team, came up with a food culture imprint called Port Press. Above is our amazing logo. It should be real because it's just THAT good. Our art director, Katelyn, says she doesn't know InDesign very well, but I think otherwise.

Our lead title, Tap Craft: A Brewer's Tale , is about Tod Mott, the father of one of our group members. Based on his life, the book is a witty memoir of Tod's travels to Germany to find the purity in craft brewing that has been lost by corporate brewers' mantra of quantity over quality. Check out Tod and his brewery below.
 
Hi, faithful lovelies.

As some of you  may know, my phone was stolen about a month ago and since then strange things have happened. For instance, odd emails from my Gmail account labeled as "sent from my iPhone," have been sent to a couple of people as if I've written them (like absolutely obscure job applications). These emails, however, make no sense.

If you've received of one of these seemingly random messages, please let me know. I'd like to let AT&T solve the problem with as much information as possible.
 
Milwaukee has some wonderful monthly pubs and I can't wait to join the local publishing industry upon my return home. More tk.