(This is the Follow Up to The Dream)
They are blinded, deafened, damned by their perception of an inescapable fate. And to those open enough to hear the call, misconstrue and make him wish he never woke at all.

Aspiring photographer Nadia Tahoun takes us on location to her latest shoot. Nadia pays careful attention to angles and composition as she capture’s the exciting milestone of a young child’s 1st communion.

The days flow by one by one. Strengthening the bonds, the love, and the pain. The pieces of my broken heart fall silently through the darkness, the shadow of a love unreturned.

The static number of $106.5 million can purchase almost anything – a dream house, an exotic pet or two.  Anyone will tell you – if they had $106.5 million to spend, there would be plenty of expensive items on their list.

So if I said that on May 4^th, an art buyer called into an auction and paid a record breaking $106.5 million for a 1932 Picasso painting, would you believe me?

You should, for it broke the world record for the highest price for an art work at an auction, EVER! Crazy eh?

Paying high prices for paintings isn’t a new trend in our culture.  Authentic art these days goes for plenty of high rolling dollars.  In recent years paintings went for $71.1 million for Green Car Crash by Warhol or $104.3 million for Walking Man I by Giacometti.

Picasso’s legendary painting is called – Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, an oil painting that took him less than a day to create.  It is of his mistress Marie-Therese Walter and measures five by four feet.  It shows a reclining nude figure with an image of Picasso in the background looking over her.

It formally belonged to California art patron Frances Lasker Brody, who kept it in the family since 1951.  He only paid $19,800.

At Christie’s in New York – five bidders went head to head and went over $80 million for the one painting in less than nine minutes.

The buyer who bought the Picasso piece is kept secret, a wall flower as many put it.  We all know controversy stirs when a headline making price and an anonymous rich buyer  are put together – people are naturally curious as to who the buyer was.  Could the buyer be concerned for their safety? They don’t want to brag that they can spend this much on a painting? Or perhaps they are a diehard fan and wanted the painting with no media attention to praise them.

Conor Jordan, head of impressionist and modern art for Christie’s New York, said he was “ecstatic with the results…tonight’s spectacular results showed the great confidence in the marketplace and the enthusiasm with which it welcomes top quality works,” he said.

We may not know who the buyer was, but we do know it was a perfect match. For the buyer and painter have similar attributes: both are a little bit crazy.

This is a profile of Eric Nye, a street photographer out of Los Angeles.

He’s an interesting guy. He has a certain methodology and style when it comes to his photos. He doesn’t deviate much from his formula. He also comes out with some of the most interesting photography I’ve seen.

A poem of a young girl who is losing her father to substance abuse and her plea for his return.

Burton was sitting at home watching Jeopardy when the phone rang. On the line was the director of NASA, Tony Brodie. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He was being offered a job at a top secret research facility at the North Pole. The nature of the work he would be doing was vague at best until Brodie mentioned the name of the project…Damascus. There were rumors surrounding project Damascus. Horrible rumors of mutilations, disappearances and unexplained phenomena. His initial thought was to turn him down. But then Brodie told him the names of the research team. Everyone of the twelve world renowned scientists were people he never dreamed he would have an opportunity to work with. He reluctantly agreed to take the job.

When you break up with your boyfriend, a trip to the ice cream store is essential as you begin to glue your heart back together in calories and boxes of tissues. Unless you are Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Living in any area–as a native Californian, it is “the valley”, “the 818”, “the hills”, Los Angeles, whichever name you choose–for the majority of one’s life creates a characteristic, if not occasionally stereotypical, norm. But thanks to an annual journalism trip with my newspaper class, I flew out of my comfort zone and jumped into an unfamiliar yet fantastic new environment: New York City.

Since September 11th, discrimination towards Muslims has drastically increased. The terrorist attack on the United States’ Twin Towers occurred on September 11, 2001 and, nearly nine years later, we are still seeing Muslim bigotry. It may be assumed that it is primarily Americans who are taunting Muslims since the tragedy took place in our home country; however, it seems Europeans are also participating in the bullying.