Dean D'Agati (dotcom)

Above is Taylor Slingerland’s Color Slideshow Project for Photography at CCHS, and when I saw it, not only was I amazed (clearly I’m a sucker for photography), but I knew immediately that Taylor had to be this month’s awesome person.

(Yeah, I’m turning Awesome People into a monthly thing. Sling gets February.)

When Pichardo, the CTV officers and I were choosing people to enter CTV in 2008, Pichardo raved about this kid Taylor Slingerland in his TV1 class. We watched his music video project and my first response was “I don’t want this annoying sophomore in CTV.”

It took until I graduated, but that “annoying sophomore” eventually became one of my best friends.

His photography and film skills are ridiculous and I want him to come to NYU. While he did actually apply here, he also applied to 983 other schools and claims he probably won’t be coming to New York. I’m keeping my hopes up though because A.Katz and I really want him around.

For more Slingerland Photography, check out his Flickr here.

If you’re also a sucker for photography like me, check out the Color Slideshow Projects of Julie Weintraub (here) and Jon Cohen (here) because they are both awesome, as well.

One last thing is that Taylor hates nicknames, so I say we all post some creative nicknames in the comments and I’ll have a poll for the best one next week. Just for you Sling ;)

dean Text, Videos awesome people, cchs, ctv, film, Friend's Blogs & Sites, nicknames, photography, sling, talent, taylor

Three years ago, my little sister was having a birthday party (or something, whatever) at my house. My sister and I don’t share friends, in fact, I’ve been known to bring some people over from her side to mine (hi Noa!) so obviously, I was hiding out in my room during this party, talking to my friend Jordan about it on the phone. Suddenly Jordan got distracted and handed the phone over to her friend saying “Here, talk to Maxie.”

I hate when people do that.
I had no idea who this “Maxie” was and why I was forced to have a conversation with her.
I guess you could say that was “meant to be,” however, because if that wouldn’t have happened, I never would have met one of the greatest people in the world and my number 4 AWESOME PERSON — Maxie Shepard.

Let’s face it, I’m a horribly awkward person. I don’t know how to talk to people I don’t know. I’m like Michael Cera but not funny. Maxie, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. She’s the kind of person that can go up to a stranger (or in this case talk on to the phone to a stranger) and in five minutes become best friends with them.

Maxie was in 8th grade at the time. I was in 11th. But over the years of her being in middle school with me in high school, then us both being in high school, then me being in college with her in high school, we’ve managed to keep in touch and become even better friends who send awesome things to each other via old school mail:

…and TrippingFest for iPhone:

She even brought me soup when I was sick this week (and lemon juice packets? lol). And if it wasn’t for Maxie, I never would have met Awesome Person #1 (aka Alex).

Although she does have a couple of flaws (she has this inexplicable obsession with Texas, I mean come on), if anybody deserves to be on this AWESOME PEOPLE blog, it’s her.

dean Pictures, Text awesome people, awkward, cooper city, mail, maxie

If you ask her parents, they’ll probably tell you that this girl’s name is “Jody Steel” but as of February 8, 2008 she goes exclusively by Brody (watch this video to see why). But we aren’t here to discuss legalities like her name, we’re here to discuss how awesome Brody actually is, which is why she is the next deandagati.com AWESOME PERSON.

I really like to highlight creative people on this AWESOME PEOPLE thing (Alex with her photography and David with his… on the spot music creation lol). Sure, there are hundreds of nice people out there, but that doesn’t give me much to talk about. Plus, nobody likes to read words anyway. What’s a blog post without pictures!? Either way, creativity is an attribute that my BFFAGHJKFGHL, Brody, (I don’t know what any of the letters mean after ‘BFF’) doesn’t lack. Take the graffiti above for example… Reasons why it’s awesome:
1. It features deandagati.com.
2. It features me and Brody.
3. It’s not stick figures like it would have been if I made it.

But, no children, Brody isn’t just good with a mouse. In fact, her best stuff is legit art…

And she even makes custom shoes / bags/ shirts / skateboards / anything you could ever imagine…

Check out more Brody Customs on Facebook here.

& Click read more for some more awesome graffitis that Brody made for me.

Read more…

dean Pictures, Text art, awesome people, blog, brody, graffiti

For the first AWESOME PEOPLE post, I wrote about Alex Levinson, an artsy, creative, beautiful girl. So for this post, I wanted to go with the complete opposite of that: a bland, unoriginal, unattractive guy. AKA, David Nathanson (far right on our Christian Hits album cover).

Okay, okay. That stuff may not exactly be true. Here’s why:

BLAND? If David was bland, I don’t think he’d be my go to guy for corny jokes. Here are some David Nathanson classics:
-What do you get when you mix a shark and a snowman? Frostbite!
-What did the ocean say to the sand? Nothing it just waved!
-What’s half of a tuba? A one-ba!
Harharharrr

UNORIGINAL? If David was unoriginal, would he have made me this incredible ukulele song last year? In fact, would he play the ukulele at all?

UNATTRACTIVE? Now, I don’t necessary find myself attracted to people who… yah know… are the same gender as me, but if I did, this guy would be a fox. Just ask his ex-girlfriends ;)

David’s coming to New York in December and we’re going to go see Jon Stewart live. It’s pretty awesome, just like he’s pretty awesome. I’m looking forward to it. Go read David’s LiveJournal.

dean Pictures, Text, Videos awesome people, corny, daily show, david, jokes, jon stewart, ukulele

I’m starting this new thing on my blog called “Awesome People.”

Every once in a while I’ll put up a post about somebody who I think does something particularly awesome or makes something particularly awesome or just flat out is awesome.

For the first post, I’m talking about Alex Levinson who took the picture above and is probably getting a little creeped out by the amount of times I tell her how much I love her photography. But I mean, it’s so legit, how could anyone not love it?! The picture above is currently the wallpaper on my Mac and you can click “READ MORE” below to check out a couple other Alex pics that I really like. If you’re friends with her, check out her Facebook albums, hurrrrrr.

Read more…

dean Pictures, Text alex, awesome people, photography

If you haven’t noticed, deandagati.com has been offline for the past week or so.
Why?
For my Expanding Cinema class, our mid-term is basically to do anything we want as long as it relates to new media (awesome, right?). So I decided that for my project, I’d update my website with new video pages and a new design. I thought it’d be an easy A. It turns out, it was insanely difficult and made me 100% sure that I never want to be a professional web designer.

NEVER THE LESS…
deandagati.com is now the place to go not only to read about my boring everyday life, but now you can watch videos… lots of videos… and let’s face it, video > reading.

Check out the new “WATCH” section by clicking on “ctv” “nyu” or “originals” along the top of the page and let me know what you think!

Cool new stuff is coming to the blog too, like a new recurring blog post called “AWESOME PEOPLE.”
Stay tuned.

PS. My latest NYU project has been posted on the new “nyu” page!

dean Pictures, Text awesome people, blog, ctv, film, nyc, nyu, tisch, vengeance, video