Burning Man 2012 Recap #3.

September 7th, 2012

Art! Let’s look at some art. There was so, so very much of it. Art is incredibly subjective, so I will talk about it, but please remember it is only my point of view that I can see from. You may appreciate things differently. It’s okay. Please don’t yell at me.

My feelings on modern art have been shared on this blog before, and while I was talking to Snorth’s husband Speeb (who is so much more tolerant of modern art than I am) I said, all angry-like and crotchety and loud, “Art is fat nekkid ladies, landscapes, bowls of fruit or flowers, or Jesus. THAT’S IT.”* I think that pretty much sums up my feelings. If I cannot immediately tell it is art, then it’s not art. It’s a pile of crap with a name placard next to it. Moving on.

I made a concerted effort to see as much of the creative things one could see at Burning Man. It’s difficult because we were on foot the entire time and there are miles and miles and miles of roads to cover with a great deal of sculptural elements out on the open, but a lot of good stuff tucked away in the corners. The first morning I woke up (after sleeping in the car all crunched up like one of those Aztec mummies) stretched out, exited the vehicle and immediately started hissing at the sun. Conveniently, Cricket had brought an old bedsheet which I decided to wear the entire time I was at there. It was pathetic. I looked like I was rockin’ the lamest ghost costume ever, especially since the sheet had wee yellow flowers all over it. I take that back. I probably looked more like a homeless person who had lost her shopping cart filled with bags of cans and carpet scraps. It didn’t help that I was surrounded by thousands of pretty young things wearing no more than a g-string and a hat, and then there was me, The Moaning Potato in my sheet and my Chico’s pants and my orthopedic footwear. Whatever. Here’s a picture.

So Cricket and I headed down to Center Camp (look at map in previous post). Center Camp is BIG.

It’s a giant tent filled with all kinds of things. On one side is the coffee and ice sales, and then there are galleries scattered around, with old couches and pillows in between, and people are doing all kinds of stuff. Some are conducting little seminars on a small stage. Others are shmoozing. Some are napping. A bunch of girls were doing topless “airplanes” – you know, that thing you do with little kids, where you lie on your back with your feet straight up in the air and they pretend to fly. A man walked by playing “Careless Whisper” on a saxophone.

There was a great deal of art in there. Some of it was fantastic. Like Botticelli’s Venus made out of chicken wire.

The metal polygons were cool too.

And oh good, a painting of penises. I was worried I wouldn’t see phallus-related artwork on this trip. Thankfully there was no menses-related artwork that I could see.

Outside is something called The Gate. I thought it was a great structure and I was snapping photos from every angle. A guy came up to me and said, “Have you seen it at night? You should.” And sure enough, he was right. All I’m going to say for now is OMG RAINBOWS COLORS WHEEE.

Continuing on our art journey: after sharing a bag of Pirate Booty for breakfast (we only brought dry foods like chips and granola bars because there are no trashcans or sinks) Cricket and I headed out to the open area where the Man is.

There’s all this really cool artwork all over, and weaving in between all of them are artcars and people on bicycles. It’s utterly surreal. I tried to follow some semblance of a structure (“We’ll start over here and work our way around to here”) but we just ended up wandering around from interesting thing to interesting thing. We saw the giant Anubis:

And the geodesic onion domes:

And the egg:

And this tree:

And these two fantastic characters:

And the white spiral bone-lookin’ sculpture.

There was also the fish. Fish are a big thing at Burning Man. I saw a ton of fish represented. I think I might have actually seen four different anglerfish-themed artcars. A lot of sea creatures, a lot of reptiles/dragons, a lot of seafaring vessels.

But the piece I thought was the most striking was the lighthouse. The lighthouse was wooden, and spiral, and the driftwood at the bottom continued the spiral in the most beautiful manner. It also had Tiffany-style stained-glass windows. And it was sitting right in the middle of the desert. So stunning.

After investigating a hefty chunk of the art, we made our way to the Man himself.

It’s standing on top of a four-story building that you can go into. The building itself is neat to look at, but in the center was a really cool sculpture, I think it was called The Hive. It was built completely without nails or screws.

Here’s some video I took.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6FyD5KWbAU&

In addition to being a delicious break from the sun, you could walk up a level or two and see the playa from above. I got a great shot of a viking ship crossing the dust.

And then I looked down… at the group of naked men collecting together for the Critical Dicks March. Wow. You think you’re ready, but when you’re actually there and presented with thirty different guys, all different bodies, all different manpart-styles, it throws you a bit. I blurred out faces in case some of them are, like, lawyers back in the non-Playa world. Enjoy.

Go to Google and type in “Critical Dicks”, then hit “Images”. Visualize that coming towards you, all that jingly-jangly… It changes you.

Tomorrow we’ll delve into some of the night-time fabulosity. Many blurry pictures, but trust me, it’s worth it.

 

*That’s not really true. I like things other than that. But there’s a kernel of truth. I don’t go to MoMA or The Guggenheim or The Whitney, ever. I go to The Met and The Museum of Art and Design.

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Burning Man 2012 Recap #2.

September 7th, 2012

I don’t think a lot of people know what Burning Man actually is. I certainly didn’t until I got out there. I had a vague idea, but no real grasp. Someone told me it was a music festival. Another person told me it was a mega hippie commune. A lot of people just think it’s about the drugs and the sex and the fire. Those are all kind of true, a bit, but here’s the best description of what it is: a pop-up, counter-culture, leave-no-trace, full-scale, fully functional city based on the concept of gifting as opposed to the exchange of money for goods and services. I’ll break that down for you.

A pop-up, (it only lasts for a week)

counter-culture, (lots of artists, hippies, nudists)

leave-no-trace, (no trash cans anywhere – if you brought it in, you took it out and you attempt to leave the desert in as pristine a condition as you found it)

full-scale, (58,000 people attended)

fully functional city (there were clearly marked streets and streetlights, there were toilets, there was an ambulance and fire department, there were policemen, there was an airport, etc.)

based on the concept of gifting as opposed to the exchange of money for goods and services (except for the Center Camp, where you could purchase ice and coffee, no money is allowed to be used – only gifting, and mostly people would be charitable and just do things for nothing in return)

Here’s a map of Black Rock City, as it is called, with some landmarks pointed out for you. This shape, called The Playa, is based on a clock. The spoke-streets are named after times, and the concentric circle-streets are letters of the alphabet, making it quite easy to navigate this rather large city. I stayed at 5:15 and J, for example.

Cricket and I, being from the East Coast, did not bring bikes with us, nor did we purchase super-cheap ones at the local Wal-Mart like many of the backpacking foreigners. We walked everywhere. We walked a lot, like six miles a day, which doesn’t sound like that much except you forget that you are in the desert and a fiery ball in the sky spends its entire day trying to burn you without any respite. In lieu of roasting your flesh directly, the flamey ball makes the temperature close to 100 degrees, and then there’s the dust. Oh dear Lord, the dust. I was in the elevator at work yesterday and someone had tracked a bit of mud into the elevator. The mud had dried to a light color and puffed around a little, so when I got into the elevator and looked down, I shrieked, like, “Dust! Are you following me?! Be gone with you!” I have post-traumatic dust disorder. Here’s the deal: the dust is dry and extremely powdery and light… and caustic. So when the wind blows, and sometimes the wind blows hard, this powdery nightmare gets all up in your face and your camera/car/electronic thing and ruins everything. Cricket and I had to take Claritin the whole time to keep from having violent sneezing fits. Here is a picture of Cricket and me hangin’ out in the tent. He looks moderately okay, I look like I lost a loved one recently. What is wrong with my face – my nose is sunburned, my eyes are all jacked up from the dust and my expression conveys that it’s 96 degrees and there’s nowhere to hide from the heat. It’s a real evocative expression.

Before I left New York, I conveniently forgot how much I truly hate being in the outdoors. That does not mean I hate nature, far from it. I donate a big ole chunk of my income to various environmental organizations. I love nature, I just don’t want to be out there, with the stupid chafey elements, and gnats. Oh, and bees, don’t forget bees! You know what my four elements are? The beautifully alliterate group of Air Conditioning, Carbs, Cable and Klonopin. That’s what I need to survive. I do not need the extreme environment of the desert. Cricket and I had planned to stay for three nights and three days, but we busted out of there the morning of Day Three which was a-okay by me. Granted, we missed the Burning of The Man, but we saw the burning of thirty-four other pieces of art so I feel like I got the sense of it. Also, super-bonus, it took us between 10 and 15 minutes to get to the highway. After the Man burns, so many people leave at the same time that that same drive takes EIGHT HOURS. EIGHT. SOMETIMES TEN. We ended up going up to Lake Tahoe for a day which was lovely, but we’ll get to that in a later blog entry.

Back to Burning Man: The gifting thing takes some getting used to. We arrived just as the sun was setting, so we quickly set up camp and started ambling around trying to get a sense of the place. As we walked down one of the roads, someone came up to us and said, “I make chili-pepper-infused vodka. Would you like to try some?” My initial reaction was to yell, “Stranger danger!” and blow a rape whistle, but this is a different world, a friendlier world. So we wandered over to this makeshift bar where the nice man gave Cricket the aforementioned vodka and I tried his homemade chocolate liqueur. And after saying thank you, we continued on our journey. That’s how things work out there. People either have a skill or a food or something and the act of sharing it with others is all the payment they require. When you first arrive, you’re given a book of the various things or activities offered at various camps. Here’s a sample:

Tissue and a Plan
Lost? Confused? Runny nose? We are dedicated to making sure no burner wanders the playa without a clear plan and a clean tissue. Available all week. Tissue and a Plan – 7:30 and Columbine.

Miso Soup
Our goal for our Miso Soup Camp is to prevent electrolyte imbalance for Burners. We must eat salty food on the playa. Please bring your own cup. Miso Soup – Dandelion and 5:45

It’s Not Sleazy Being Green
Got nothing green going? Come ogle our Gray-B-Gon Evapotron! Learn to turn gray water into vapor and minimal waste. Get pumped to reproduce your own! Cartoon Commune – 7:30 Portal.

BRC Perimeter Run
Wanna run in the middle of nowhere? Meet on the north side of the Man at 7:00 a.m. for a group run along the BRC perimeter fence.

Recitation of the Lotus Sutra
Chanting of the Nam Myoho Renge Kyo and Lotus Sutra. Join us to learn about practicing Buddhism and reveal your enlightened nature. All welcomed. Buddhacamp@TheLotusDome – Foxglove and 4:15

BYOC Hydration Station
Is your bottle/cup empty? Come fill it and hydrate from our booze-free jugs of tasty and varied beverages and sit awhile. Until supplies last. WhoofARTed? – Begonia and 9:15

In addition, in the book I found all these other things:

a confessional, singing telegrams (staffed by thousands of volunteers), a mini-film festival, welding and repair services, a dojo, a radio station, a bowling alley, a library, knot-tying classes, a wedding chapel, a gym, dance classes, an open stage, a karaoke club, foot massages, a skateboard park, woodburning (like the boy scouts do, with the patterns and whatnot), a clothing boutique, a daycamp for kids, figure-drawing classes, an ear/nose/throat clinic, hat and costume decoration and repair, giant Jenga, giant Twister, speed-dating, circus-arts classes, LED repair, AA meetings, glass-blowing, solar battery-recharging station, a barber shop, a marching band march-off, body-painting, improv class, drum circles, a family portrait studio, roller derby, pickling classes, and bronze bell-casting.

And, of course, I found quite a few things that were what I would consider very bad gifts. These people would not be getting a thank-you card. No sir.

Fire Baseball
Baseball is so much more exciting with fire! We have mitts and leather gloves to share, but bring your own if you can, and wear fire-safe clothing! !Zoom! – Esplanade and 7:15

Dr. Scrote’s Circumcision Wagon and Calamari Hut
Dr. Scrote, certified medical technician, offers fun and fast service, along with fresh ‘n’ tasty calamari rings. Hither and Yon – See Playa for Directory*

Sriracha Spa
Invigorate your senses with Sriracha facials and massages while immersed in a kaleidoscope light show. Kaleidospice – Located within The Hive

Morning Coffee Enema
Enemas have been used for health and pleasure for thousands of years. Join us for our world-famous coffee & conversation Black Rock style. Since 2004. 9:00 and Iris – see Playa for Directory

Here’s the full list online if you wish to look at all of them.
http://playaevents.burningman.com/2012/playa_events/1/

Since Cricket and I are in a committed relationship we did not investigate any of the polyamory events, nor did I go to the women’s circle jerk (bring your own toy!) although, I won’t lie, I was tempted to saunter by and peek in because, hey, when are you going to see something like that again (“Do all those nice ladies have epilepsy?”) But I did not. Nor did Cricket or I partake in any fun substances of any kind because that really isn’t our bag. I came to see all the artwork and Cricket came to protect his investment (me). While it is near impossible to see every piece of art on display, I would say we did one hell of a job.

On the first night we headed down to the Man because it’s right in the center and I got to see a variety of the camps as I walked by.

As you can see, lights are incredibly important. There are lights on everything – you, your bike, your hat, your car, your tent, etc. It makes it look incredibly other-worldy, like a Bedouin Las Vegas. It’s really hard to take night-time photos because it’s extremely dim, so I apologize now for all the blurry shots forthcoming. It’s the best I can do.

If you watch the first 1:45 of this video, it gives you a much better sense of The Playa at night. Fascinating.

http://vimeo.com/33579217

Tomorrow we’ll delve into some of the creative night pieces I got to see.

 

*Please, please be a joke or an art piece. Please.

Posted in Burning Man, Nature, Random Art Bloggery, Tasty 'n' Delicious, Travels - I Has Them | No Comments »

Burning Man 2012 recap #1.

September 5th, 2012

I have returned! I did not get hopped up on the drugs, or infected with a “social disease”, and I only got a wee rash on the sides of my knees! Good stuff. It was a really interesting trip. Funny story: I did not wear my costume once. Not once. The weather was so sucky and dusty I didn’t have the opportunity. And I blogged about this costume for months! I wasn’t sad or anything, I know I’m going to get a chance to use it at Halloween and The Mermaid Parade and when I attend weddings of people I want to make uncomfortable.

About two weeks before I left, I contacted my friend B. who is a computer wiz and he made me a thing with a little computer Arduino brain and strips of LEDs that go frrrrrip, frrrrrip, frrrrrip in a similar manner to a jelly. Here’s a video that shows what I’m referring to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMghL4MedV4&

Now, these jellies in the preceeding video are fairly small and the LEDs I was using are fairly large, so I had B. do a couple of changes. First of all, its just one color (sort of a sky blue). I didn’t want it to be all different rainbow colors because that made my brain hurt. Also, I had him slow it waaaay down (again, brain hurt avoidance). Since my clear plastic umbrella had eight sections, B. made eight strips that extended further than the bottom of the brolly and curled under a bit, increasing its jelly-like qualities. The LEDs are so bright that I bought white duct tape and taped over the strips onto the plastic umbrella and the lights shone right through (bam!). The I spray-painted some vague blotches (also light blue) to make the umbrella translucent versus transparent, and then I sewed some tulle all pleated-like and had them dangle down from the middle. Cricket carried my umbrella around Burning Man and no joke, we probably got close to one hundred compliments on it. People were chasing us down on bicycles to say how awesome it was. First of all, in the darkest dark, when Cricket walked by it looked like this:

And as the sun was setting we were standing watching people play dodgeball (more on that in a later post) and I realized you could really appreciate all the elements on the jelly-brella.

Wildly popular. Tomorrow I will delve into the other-worldliness that was Burning Man. Be ready for a lot of pictures and a bunch of videos.

Posted in Burning Man, Travels - I Has Them | 3 Comments »

Burning Man costume, part DONE.

August 29th, 2012

I am DONE. Finished. I made it. I made my deadline. I know making the costume and setting a deadline is completely arbitrary and totally fabricated, but I like setting goals for myself and then achieving them. The Moomins came over and helped me pack, and bonus, everything except the umbrella fits in the suitcase. And in six hours I crawl out of my bed in the dark and board a plane to Reno, where Cricket and I will pick up our rented mom-van and trek out into the dusty wilderness to experience unbridled creativity (I hope).

I plan to take as many pictures as my 32 gig camera card will hold, so I anticipate many a tale upon my return. See y’all on Tuesday.

And here’s some reading about some other people who also spent a whole lot of time and money on fantastic creations:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/27/burning-man-2012_n_1834494.html

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Burning Man costume part 11 (just kill me now).

August 20th, 2012

So close to the finish line. Must hold on…

I am so tired of this. I mean, I love it and I’m going to wear it every day for the rest of forever, but I don’t want to work on it anymore. Thankfully, I am almost finished and Burning Man is in a little over a week, so then I’m good. Done. No more fussery. I must say, it looks amazing. I know it is gauche to compliment your own work, but it’s fantastic, so there you are. Check it out. Here it is from the left with the crab attached.

And here it is from the right.

I made that ropey thing as additional ocean detritus. It has transparent circle things and dangly gold beads and sparkly blue and lavender plastic beads (because The Moomins said I lacked blue and purple in that quandrant). It adds a nice bit of texture. And it sparkles but my camera is emo and won’t show sparkliness. I’ve complained about this before. I’m not going to get a rage-headache talking about it again.

Here is the costume from the back.

I took the pinbacks off of the seastars because they looked stupid and stuck out too far and sewed them directly onto the jacket, which looked awesome. I also sewed all of those little cuppy things onto various places all over. Here’s a close-up of those.

They’re generic ocean things. You want them to be seaweed? Then they’re seaweed. You want them to be coral? Okay. How about ginormous plankton? Fine by me.

Now, some of you may call me crazy, but hear me out. I was struggling with the corset and I decided to kill the corset, cut the scales off of it, and attach the scales to a tank top instead. It solves a bunch of problems. I cannot put the corset without assistance, it mashed my skirt in a weird way and stuck out oddly on top due to my lack of boobage, I can’t really sit down when I’m wearing it, etc. The tank top solves all those problems. I can now put on the whole costume by myself, it’s not crushing my midsection or my skirt or protruding like a giant colander where my chest should be. The only problem now is that my belly sticks out, so I’ll have to put on my Spanx – no biggie. That’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. So I bought a tank top and painted it bronze and peacock green.

Then I sadly cut the scales off my corset and spent a good chunk of the weekend sewing the scales onto this new garment. It looks great and it is not cumbersome to wear. Hoo-ray.

Posted in Burning Man, My Art/Design/Business, Nature | 2 Comments »

Bokeh. It’s a real word that I did not make up.

August 16th, 2012

Do you know what a bokeh is? It is not a I Can Haz Cheezburger-type animal (like a kitteh or puppeh or bunneh). Here’s the definition from Wikipedia:

In photography, bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image. Bokeh has been defined as “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light”. However, differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause some lens designs to blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce blurring that is unpleasant or distracting—”good” and “bad” bokeh, respectively. Bokeh occurs for parts of the scene that lie outside the depth of field. If you have photos you would like to edit, you may use AI Clothes Remover and other AI software to achieve the effects that you want.

The term comes from the Japanese word boke, which means “blur” or “haze”, or boke-aji, the “blur quality”. The Japanese term boke is also used in the sense of a mental haze or senility. The term bokashi is related, meaning intentional blurring or gradation.

Here’s a great example of bokeh:

But what I didn’t realize is by putting a thingie with a shape cut out of it over your lens you can control the shapes of the bokeh circles.

You could have butterflies or hearts or snowflakes, any shape you could think of.

But today I saw the best thing using a bokeh ever. Check this out.

Isn’t that the greatest?!! You could make a movie where some kind of mystical creatures are flying and all you have to do is cut a bokeh out of cardboard (there are many tutorials online) and choreograph your friends to wave lights around. So awesome!

Posted in Random Art Bloggery, Teh Intarwebz | 1 Comment »

Teevee.

August 15th, 2012

The Olympics have ended. Sigh. I really liked coming home and not having to think about what to watch – just turn on NBC until I go to sleep and watch awesome people do awesome things. Now I have to make an attempt to find things that interest me. I guess I’m back to watching people killing people and having forensics solve the murder (“When Natalie moved to this sleepy little town, she never suspected that blah blah found strangled in her kitchen and police suspected mumbleblah hair samples.”) One of the other things I love about the Olympics is the opening ceremony. Not the actual weird creative part, where giant puppet Voldemort fought one hundred Mary Poppins in a children’s hospital which was supposed to represent British literature and the excellent health care system they have there (I did not make one word of that up). No, it’s the part where all the countries walk in. The official languages of the Olympics are English and French, so they announce the names of the countries as they enter the arena in both those languages. I love accents and hearing other languages so very much. I have no idea why. My guess is it’s because it’s like seeing your own language through different eyes. You say all these words all the time, after a while it doesn’t matter, but hearing someone who is foreign to the tongue is like opening a window in your house you’ve never noticed. I never stop enjoying the French pronunciations of country names. I specifically wait for two countries because it sounds like this:

“CHINA! SHEEN!”

and

“JAMAICA! JAH-MAH-YEEK!”‘

So I watch the opening ceremonies specifically for that. I considered tuning in to the closing ceremony but I was working late so when I got home I caught a little bit of Fatboy Slim rocking the turntables inside of a giant light-up octopus, decided I was too tired to go on this British acid trip and turned it off.

Now that I’m back on regular television for the next two years I’m excited that Hoarders is coming back. I thought after watching Hoarders for the last few seasons I would be somewhat immune to the weirdness reality TV sometimes brings to my attention. I was wrong. Did any of you watch The Soup on August 8? The Soup is a recap show of all the more interesting things the television has granted us, and one of the things they covered was a show called Small Town Security. I could not get over how profoundly bizarre this clip was. Click on the August 8th Condensed Soup clip and fast-forward to 1:09 to see what I’m talking about.

http://www.thesouptv.com/clips

WHAT. THE. WHAT. Why is that guy dressed as a game show host from the 70s? What’s up with the guy in the fishing hat? Why doesn’t the woman’s face change at all when she laughs? Aren’t you supposed to smile when you laugh? The chihuahua is humping? The sheriff tinkles herself? I… I don’t understand. It’s like a bad dream. Not a nightmare, but a dream where you wake up and you’re out-of-sorts for the rest of the day, like you’re suddenly left-handed and nothing feels right. Oh television, please never fail to surprise me.

 

Posted in Stuff, The Telly | No Comments »

Random stuff n’ things.

August 9th, 2012

1. I am so sick of sewing. I’ve been sewing this damned costume since November and I am totally running out of steam. I didn’t graduate with a degree in Costume Arts for a reason! Luckily, Burning Man is at the end of this month so that will be the end of that. I miss drawing stuff. I haven’t been able to draw anything since I started this project. It will be nice to get back to that. I want to make a portrait of a jumping spider and I have a co-worker with a cool last name that sounds like a dinosaur, so I want to make a drawing of her as a dinosaur. Being my friend has its benefits (like dinosaur drawings of yourself).

2. The security guard at my job told me that if you mix Cherry Pepsi with the new Marshmallow Smirnoff Vodka, it makes a drink that tastes exactly like birthday cake. If I drank soda or vodka, that would be useful to me, but I do not. However, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t share that vital information with you. Also, the IT guy says if you put a small amount of good-quality balsamic vinegar into Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, it tastes delicious, but more importantly, the drink has a sassy name (The Hipster Douche). What I have learned from this: the people I work with drink weird things.

3. I’m watching the Olympics like a crazy person. Cricket finds it endlessly amusing that I, the least sports-oriented human being ever, am obsessed with an entirely sports-related thing, but I think I figured out why I like it so much. I like to watch people who are the best at something do that thing. Everyone there works very, very hard and is very, very good at this thing, and I like to see them do that thing even if that thing is, in my opinion, kind of stupid (“I’m going to jump over this stick better than anyone’s ever jumped over this stick before!”).

4. In a related Olympics note, did you know that the divers who are jumping from a great height hit the water with their hands flat against the water, as opposed to pointing them as you would expect? That’s so their hands punch a hole for their bodies to go through which minimizes splash. Huh. Good to know.

5. Movies I Have Seen Lately:

Black Swan. What the hell was that? No, seriously. That chick needed a sandwich and a anti-anxiety drug regimen STAT. Also, fun fact, almost that entire movie was filmed at my college, SUNY Purchase, in the theaters and the cement tunnels that connect them. When she’s in the dressing rooms and the utterly depressing cement tunnels? I lived in there like a star-nosed mole rat for four years. Four years, people! Two fun stories about my college-theater experience there. One winter day I went into the tunnels and before the sun had risen. I came out later after the sun had gone down. People talked about the day and I had no knowledge of this “day” everyone had spoken about. The tunnels are like a casino. There’s no windows. Time becomes a foreign concept. The other story is when we all went into the theater before the sun had risen and we came out around 2:00 in the afternoon when the sun was a-shinin’. We reacted like vampires (hissing, covering our faces) and someone said, “The gods are angry, they have set the moon on fire!” To this day, I use that phrase. Use it yourself, it’s very handy.

Cedar Rapids. I really liked this movie. It’s a small-budget film, and it has a sweet small-budget vibe. I did not care for The Hangover and I don’t watch The Office, so this was my first real exposure to Ed Helms and I loved him. He’s a great actor and apparently a great banjo player, so that’s nice.

Bridesmaids. I truly, truly hate bodily function jokes in movies, so that one scene was rough for me. A lot of pooping, a lot of barfing.  But other than that, I liked it a great deal. I have always loved Kristen Wiig, and not just because she has two “i”s in her name. She is a hoot. The airplane scene hit home for me. I have also taken medication to fly, and it has also worked out not-so-well for me. I wasn’t escorted off the plane in Wyoming or anything, but I probably made some enemies for life. It also looked like the actors were having a great time, which is always a pleasure to see.

Posted in Advertising, Burning Man, Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., My Art/Design/Business, Tasty 'n' Delicious, The Telly | 2 Comments »

Mad crazy charts, yo.

August 3rd, 2012

I have a lot of them. It has been a good summer for charts. The fields have been fertile, the rain gentle. We shall feed well this winter (on infographics).

 

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Burning Man Costume, Part 10 (getting there…)

August 2nd, 2012

Alrighty. I accomplished a whole bunch of things. I trimmed the collar off my jacket, I attached all kinds of sea festoonery to my hat, and I glued my barnacles to my shoulders. The jacket now looks like this:

Do you see that blue stuff? That is a dustmop that I dyed and cut up. In real life they look like this:

Now I’m going to cut the sleeve-windows out. I’ve been postponing that because it’s scary and I’m a crap seamstress, but I have less than a month (eeep!) so things have got to get done.

Oh, and I can’t take a picture of the barnacles with camera flash because I covered them with teeny tiny clear glass beads that are really similar to whatever they put on street signs to make them reflect light at night. Therefore, when I take a photo with flash, it is blinding.

I’ve also been working on a lobster-inspired facepiece. I bought a pair of sunglasses and cut out the top part and took out the lenses. I looked like demented member of LMFAO.

I then made Cricket drive me to three, that’s right, three pet stores to find just the right cat toys to make antennae. It’s got coat hangers and plastic crystals and ribbons and big beads for eyes, all kinds of stuff. I’m almost done with it and after doing tons of research and basically taking it apart and rebuilding it (thanks, Mom) it now looks like… a Chinese dragon. Okay. That’s fine. I will wear a deranged Chinese dragon facepiece. I don’t care. It’s still awesome even if it doesn’t resemble a lobster in the slightest. After I attach the antennae I’ll take a picture and then all y’all will know the magic of my dragon-face.

Addendum: I now have pictures of the facepiece. They, not surprisingly, suck. When I’m all done and finished with this costume, I swear I’m going to a professional studio and getting professional photos. Where you can see the sparkly.

Without flash:

With flash (I left the red-eye in, I think it adds charm):

And up close, where you can appreciate that the red beads and crystals are free-hanging and can swing. I still need to paint the white coat-hanger part blue, but other than that, DONE. Check that off the list.

I have come to grips with the fact that I will most likely look like an idiot. I do not care. I am the ocean floor and I am going to own it.

Posted in Burning Man, My Art/Design/Business, Nature | 1 Comment »

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