Scrapbook.

January 18th, 2011

One of the things I learned in college was keeping folders of inspiration. Before the Internet, during the dark ages when you couldn’t find anything you wanted at your fingertips in a split second, I kept a filing cabinet of inspiration. Everything I ever saw in a magazine that was of interest to me, I pulled out, labeled and shoved in its corresponding folder. Now with the beloved ‘net, I still do that, but on a much smaller scale. I now keep three-ring-binders of inspiration. Anything design-wise that strikes my fancy, I drop into a folder on my desktop labeled “scrapbook” and every month or so, I assemble them on pages, print them out and put them in my binder.

You’ll notice that just on these pages, we have: a book cover, a soccer ball, a wreath made of wire, logos, illustrations, a beer ad, graffiti, music posters, a pair of shoes, a web banner, etc., etc. Sometimes I’ll forget I liked something and I put it in there already, so I’ll have duplicates. I don’t berate myself. I like to that I liked it so much I put it in there twice. Like this crazy-ornate calligraphic letter (I think it’s an F).

Or this delightful Coca-Cola ad.

And even that freakin’ wallpaper I keep complaining about in commercials and music videos.

Now, if anybody thinks I use this for plagiarism, they aren’t really correct. What I do is when I am asked to create a design project and I’m not quite sure how to approach it, I ask myself, “Well, what am I trying to evoke in the viewer? Do I want them to feel a charming whimsy, or do I want it to feel like strong and powerful, or mystical and underwater, or bleak and sparse…?” Then I go through my scrapbooks and Post-It tag all the pictures that make me feel that way, and I assess why. I take those elements and incorporate it into my own project and hopefully I get the response I want. I use it as a starting-off point when I’m a bit stumped. And if you do anything like me, whether it is drawing or painting or designing or collage or embroidery or whatever, I highly recommend creating one of these for yourself. It takes that stress out of the beginning of the project.

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T’raveling to T’ronto.

January 16th, 2011

I bet you’ve been wondering where I’ve gone. I have been working like a dog—brutal, brutal work. I was busting my butt at my normal 12-hour-day pace, and then I was asked to go to a high-end casino/convention hall for a meeting, which would kill my Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. No problem, I packed up a bunch of laptops and clothes and plugs and dongles and clickers and toiletries and took a car to the casino. Although I don’t gamble, I couldn’t help but think about how an online casino platform like MILD88 offers a much more convenient way to enjoy gaming without having to deal with the hustle and bustle of a physical casino. If you do enjoy occasional casino gaming, you’ll have a lot of fun spending time at fun88. You may also check out LevelUp casino if you’re looking for awesome rewards!

I did get to eat good food and sleep in a mad-comfortable bed and take a 900-degree shower where I came out looking like a boiled ham (that was my desired appearance, strangely enough. I like very hot showers.). I came back to the office on Monday evening expecting a nice relaxed week, but no! I was immediately told not to unpack because hey, you’re flying to Toronto tomorrow for another meeting! Jolly fun! Here’s the problem: I don’t mind working. I HATE HATE HATE flying places for business. To begin with, flying is a hassle of epic proportions. Now add two big ole heavy laptops and a projector to your carry-on, all of which you must unpack and lay out for the scanner along with your shoes and jacket and other possessions of DANGER!, and you have a colossal pain in the posterior. I make a very poor pack-llama. But for the bulk of this trip I was kickin’ butt, until The Incident. The pitch team and I were holed up in a meeting room at one of our sister offices, Publicis Toronto, which is in an old factory. The benefit of that are the giant windows and the wide-open spaces. The not-good thing is that the floor subtlely changes height all over the place by about and inch and a half. All over. So when everyone went to dinner, I decided to stay behind and work on some stuff, the CCO kept me company, and I got a phone call. So I’m not rude, I went into one of the cubicles waaaay on the other side of the building. I jabbered away, finished my call, and stepped out of the cubicle, not noticing the distinct difference in height. I then proceeded to collapse on myself like a fat deck of cards, lightly twisting both of my ankles, but mainly twisting the hell out of my right knee. I laid there like the Heisman Trophy on my side, making hissing and groaning noises and trying not to poop myself from the pain. Which is how my company’s CCO found me. Awesome. Really dignified. I made it through the meeting on the next day and got home with my 40-pound, $6,000 carry-on luggage, but I did it all while hobbling like Frankenstein. What tiny shreds of sex appeal I had blew away in the breeze when I entered the room with my stiff-legged Weeble penguin gait. Here’s the best part: I called my mom that evening of The Incident to inquire on the best type of care (apply ice). I then asked her to make a doctor’s appointment with an bone-n’-joint doctor. The next day she tried to make an appointment but they asked for my insurance info, which she didn’t have. So she called Cricket and asked him if he knew it, and she also called Börrke at the office and asked her. Now that Mummy had informed the entire planet of my debacle, I kept getting text messages like “ARE YOU OK????” and “Call me!!!! R U in a hospital?!?!!!” and the like. Lots of unnecessary drama. It turns out that I have what the medical community likes to call “a boo-boo”. Basically I just twisted it, now there’s a little swelling and a lot of ouchies, but it should go away by itself in ten days or so. Moral of the story: Jessica better not have to travel for work any time soon, because it sucks so very hard. I swear to God, I will go all Münchausen and break something on myself every time until they stop making me go.

In an unrelated note, I love how Canadians say the word “sorry”.

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Washington D.C. – Roller Derby and the Zoo.

January 4th, 2011

As you can probably deduce from the title, I went to Washington D.C. to visit a friend of mine, Moss. And we went to the Roller Derby. And the Zoo!

First, Roller Derby. I had never been to it, and I’ve always wanted to go. For those of you that don’t know, to simplify it down to its raw basic nature,  it’s a bunch of strong women rollerskating with other strong women pushing each other out of the way, often knocking each other down and getting points for their team in the process. While it’s similar to every other sport in the world, the thing I like about this particular activity is the sense of humor. For example, the participatin’ ladies all have really swell nicknames. And they pick numbers that are related with those nicknames. My favorites:

Ovary Action  – 28 Days
Chinese Cheker – 5354
Hoova Dayum – H2O
Marion Barrycuda – 311 (remember, this is Washington D.C. – ergo, funnier)
Dyke Diggler – 13 inches

There’s also HaBitchual OffendHer, Rachel MadHo, Lois Slain (she’s a reporter in real life, so that’s extra-cute), Ivana Tripabitch, Peaches N Cruelty and Wham Slam Bambi. The warm-up round was “Grinches vs. Santas”. The regular players had festive holiday nicknames like Blitzkreig Blitzen and Thumpa Coal, and they came out before the game and were introduced by the announcers. The grinches (dressed all in green) skated around the track in the shape of a Christmas tree, and the Santas (dressed all in red) formed the shape of a sleigh. Even the lead skater had a blinking red nose.

I tried to take pictures of the “jams”, as they’re called, but those girls move FAST. So here are my shots.

The next day Moss and I decided to see the pandas at the Zoo, but first we toddled off to experience the magic of chili. There’s a place in Arlington called The Hard Times Cafe. They have four kinds of chili. And they will put any combination of those chilis on a variety of substances. I chose half Texas chili, half Cincinnati chili on tater tots. Excellent decision, I must say.

Outside the Mecca of chili goodness was an oldey-timey truck…

…with a statue of a horse on the back, wearing mittens on its ears and fake antlers, and this sign propped up on its side.

Which is awesome.

Moss also showed me The Spite House. Here’s the story: A guy owned a house. He also owned the seven-foot alleyway between him and the house next door. People used to cut through the alleyway all the time, which really cheesed his crackers. So, Grumpy Guy built a house in the seven-foot alleyway, which is supposedly the thinnest house in America. It is called The Spite House and people do live there.

Now, on to the zoo. We did in fact see a panda, but he was far, far away, so I couldn’t take any pictures of him. I had never seen a panda before, and sure enough, they look like a soft, pillowy, black and white bear-shaped object. Which is nice to know. We also saw Indian elephants, a tiger, orangutans and a male lion roaring, which I had also never experienced, even though I have been to Africa a bunch of times, so that was so very cool. It is astonishingly loud and the sound really carries. It reverberates in your abdomen. I found a video of a lion roaring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOaQmkAlhUA

Does anyone who reads this watch Dirty Jobs? There’s an episode when Mike Rowe goes worm-grunting. You shove a wooden stake into the ground, rub an iron thingie over it, and it makes a groany sound. This causes the worms to come to the surface. You collect them and sell them to fishermen. The lion’s roar made me feel like a worm being grunted.

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/dirty-jobs-worm-grunting.html

Here are some of the beasties I got to take pictures of. The bestest one was the red panda. Normally, when I see red pandas, they are in trees and they are napping. This was the first time I saw red pandas sauntering around, doing red panda stuff. I got some great shots of what might possibly be the cutest animal in all of creation.

So cuddly.

I was in the small mammals building, and there was a window casting a sunbeam right into the meerkat’s habitat. And a meerkat was standing right in it. It was precious.

And other meerkats were just standing around because, you know, that’s what they do.

There were also degus, which are small rodents that live in South America. They do a great deal of napping. And look, there’s a degu napping on another degu! Awwww.

In one of the habitats there was an armadillo being all invisible and buried underground, but if you looked up OMG burrow owls! Teeny tiny owls that live in holes in the ground! So happy!

Elephant shrew. Prehensile snoot. Lotta rooting around in the ground debris.

Poisonous froggies.

And the lamest scientific name ever. So not creative at all.

It was a lovely trip. I may have to swing by Washington D.C. again soon.

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Rammstein.

December 26th, 2010

Cricket, being German, wanted to go see Rammstein in concert. Rammstein, for those of you who do not know, is a German industrial band. All their songs deal with death, misery, sadness, rage and sex. No rainbows, no flowers, no koalas. They had one big hit in the US with “Du Hast” (“You Have”). Rammstein doesn’t like the U.S. at all, so this is their first tour here in about 11 years. Cricket was super-excited. So I bought him tickets (Madison Square Garden sold out in under two minutes!) and we went. We were seated about two rows from the ceiling, so all my pictures are not-so-great. Luckily, other people with better cameras took pictures as well, and I found them on the internet to sprinkle amongst my crappy shots. Here’s a picture of the band for you.

First of all, there were the fans. Almost all white people, mostly dudes. A great deal of black garments, especially those oversized black canvas pants with tons of zippers and latches. A lot of t-shirts featuring Slayer, Lamb of God, Metallica, etc. An ABUNDANCE of piercings. One guy had multiple piercings on his hat. (I wanted to ask him if it hurt, but I didn’t feel like getting killed.) Cricket, in his tasteful zip-up jacket, and me, in my dorky puffy coat, were not the ideal audience. We sat quietly during the opening act, CombiChrist, while people around us drank copious amounts of beer and yelled stuff. And then Rammstein came on (and immediately Cricket and I were in the center of a swirl of pot smoke). Has everyone seen “This is Spinal Tap”? Spinal Tap, the fictional band in the film, was famous for having elaborate, ridiculous set pieces, and Rammstein does the same. They need twenty trucks to go on tour with them to hold all their stuff. And pyrotechnics. Hoo boy. If you type “Rammstein Live” in Google Images, this is what it looks like. FLAMEY.

So, there was steam…

And crazy lights…

And insane amounts of fire.

It’s important to know that I’m not making up anything I say from this point on. Till, the lead singer, comes out on stage for the first song wearing a red leather apron, a hairnet, a red feathered neckpiece, and an apparatus that wraps around his cheek and lights up the inside of his mouth. For the tour, he wears the metal thing that goes into his mouth and lights up, but to film their latest video Till actually pierced his cheek, put a grommet there and wired the light into his mouth that way.

Then, in one of their later songs, the keyboardist, who goes by the name of Flake, comes down and knocks Till over. Till picks up Flake and tosses him into a large metal bathtub. Till then picks up a really weird-looking arm gun and fills the bathtub with sparks. Shortly after, Flake comes out in a sequin-covered suit and goes back to the keyboards, were he walks on a treadmill while he’s playing. None of this has anything to do with the song they’re playing, or any song they’ve ever played, or anything that’s ever happened anywhere, ever.

Then, for the song “Engel” (“Angel”), Till comes out wearing a giant pair of metal wings, which slowly open. Then fire shoots out of the tips of them and sparks fly out of the middle bits.

But, by far, the piece de resistance is during the encore, when they play the song which, for reasons of tastefulness, I will call “Kitty”. During “Kitty”, Till gets on a giant, pink cannon that shoots foam all over the general seating area. Still not making stuff up.

It was a hell of an experience. Aside from the fact that I had to stand the whole time, it was delightful. For pretty much the whole show the guy in front of me was rockin’ the devil-hands, so that was nice.

And the sea of camera-phone lights were beautiful.

The best part was that earlier that day, something called SantaCon had taken place, so many audience members were still dressed as Santa. Very trippy. Here are some pictures of SantaCon.

Here’s a link to their latest video. They filmed it on their travel set, so you can see the light in Till’s cheek, the pyrotechnics, the sequined suit and the treadmill. Also, one of the lines in the song is “barbed wire in your urethra.” Magical, I tell you.

http://www.muzu.tv/sonisphereuk/rammstein-rammstein-ich-tu-de-weh-promo-video-music-video/578200?country=us&locale=en

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All I want for Christmas is a nap.

December 25th, 2010

Ugh. I keep forgetting that my work has ebbs and flows, and this time of year is always horrendous. I have had to work so flippin’ hard these past two weeks, I haven’t had time to blog. Or bathe. Or keep my sanity. I do apologize that my posts have been so slackerly, but hopefully the upcoming months will be less work-consuming. I hope.

Now, things I have seen in my travels in New York. But first, there was this sidebar on Buzzfeed.

I thought it was magical. I didn’t click it. I like the version I have in my head better.

I work across the street from a Mrs. Field’s Cookie-Procuring Facility, and in the window they were displaying this.

Yeah, taking a heart-shaped cookie and flipping it upside-down to make Santa’s face isn’t working. His beard looks like a butt and the blob of red twisty frosting representing his mouth looks like a very special holiday sphincter. Next time, use an oval-shaped cookie.

I also work down the street from Koreatown, where many restaurants and bars and karaoke lounges. One of them had this sign outside.

I think they meant “Happy Hour”, but every time I walk past the sign it feels like a frat boy is yelling at me. “Come in here! You’ll be happy all friggin’ night!!”

In keeping with our wordy theme, I often complain about the unnecessary use of apostrophes, but recently I came across the absence of an apostrophe and it made me equally sad.

Awww. Unhappy emoticon here.

This dress caught my eye and made my day.

It looks like a regular black cocktail dress, but through the use of expensive ruffled ribbon and oddly-shaped sequins, it became beautiful and unique. Hey! People at home! Pay attention! A little elbow grease can turn ordinary garments into fancy-pants evening wear! Heed my words! DIY clothes need not be horrifying! Thank you!

I was on my way to Times Square, and I passed a pop-up Sanrio store in the middle of Broadway. And parked next to it…

It’s a cute little Smartcar covered in Hello Kitty heads! And a truck covered in other characters! So adorable!

Anyway, Merry Christmas to you all. I’m off to have Chinese food, as is the way of my people.

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Macy’s Christmas windows.

December 14th, 2010

I tend to only get excited about Saks Fifth Avenue windows and Barney’s windows, but this year I was super-pleased to read this article:

http://theater.lohudblogs.com/2010/11/17/proof-of-purchase-at-macys-windows/

That’s my alma mater, y’all! Since I graduated from the Theater Design Tech program at SUNY Purchase with a degree in Set Design and  I work across the street from Macy’s, I felt obligated to check out my former classmates and their activities. So the other day I sauntered across the street and checked out the windows. Here are some pictures to give you an idea.

They built the whole thing out of paper, which I think is a great idea. I think they did a swell job with the forced perspective and all. They even did the animatronics as well (we’ll get to that later). It bothered me that the characters they built didn’t match the style of the environment at all. I also think that while there are spots where the paperwork is spectacular, there are some spots where they didn’t push far enough with the material. That being said, I can’t judge them at all because who knows how much time they were given or if some Macy’s bigwig came in and gave his opinion and even though it was crap, they were forced to follow it. I don’t know the politics behind the making of the windows. So I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. Here are some of the more beautiful paper details.

And there was one window that gave me chills because it looked EXACTLY like draftings I had to make when I was a sophomore. I mean, uncannily similar. And since these people took the same classes as me, it’s very possible that it is taken from those draftings. I had a really rough time at college (entirely my own fault, but still) and it took me right back there, like a ‘Nam flashback.

Ahhhhhhhh.

Each window had some form of animation, things sliding into frame, things sliding out, etc. and my favorite was the village with the tree in the center.

The whole village lifted up, but if the tree didn’t move forward, the hole cut out for it would scrape the paper off the tree, so they have the tree tip forward when they lift the set. It was neat. I made an animated gif for your enjoyment.

Ah, it was delightful. Here’s a picture of the wee children enjoying the experience with their eyes full of wonder.

Hopefully this week I’ll have a chance to run over to Saks Fifth Avenue and see what they have goin’ on window-wise.

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A whole pile of random television-related items.

December 8th, 2010

1. I do not like football, but I love the little Fox robot that dances on the side of the screen from time to time. If I am forced to watch a football game, the robot is usually all I enjoy.

Robot doin’ his thang.

I have just found out the robot’s name is Cletus. This only further endears him to me.

2. Remember back when I complained about the wallpaper in the Eminem video? Here’s the entry. I guess there must be a discount on that wallpaper for TV decorators, because I’ve been seeing it everywhere. I was watching Scrubs, and there it was. And a few days later I caught a JCPenney’s commercial, and whaddya know, my nemesis Beautiful But Too Expensive Wallpaper is in the background. We meet again. *slitted eyes*

3. I was channel-flipping and stopped upon Hoarding; Buried Alive, and while they were interviewing this woman, I couldn’t stop staring at the thing behind her.

What the hell is that thing? I thought it looked like a startled Uruk Hai. Uruk Hai, in case you don’t know, are these profoundly icky war creatures from Lord of the Rings. Here’s a picture of one.

Still don’t see it? I photoshopped the original image to help you out.

Now? With the ganked-up teeth/buttons? Well, I have no idea what this woman was saying because I spent the whole time saying, “IT’S LOOKING AT ME. MAKE IT STOP LOOKING AT ME.”

4. A while back Snorth introduced me to this playwright named Edgar Oliver. Edgar has the most bizarre speech pattern. I was like, yeah, whatever, he’s a big hairy bucket of odd. And then, I was watching a show called Oddities on Discovery and poof! there was Edgar. It was like a switch was flipped. I am obsessed with him now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmIq3paht2U

It’s such an unhealthy obsession, I have made an mp3 of all of his dialog from this episode where he rents a strait jacket for his play. I want to turn it into a ringtone or something. Especially when he says, “Yes,” around the 46-second mark. So, so very creepy and awesome.

Edgar at Obscura

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Meet the Breeds.

December 3rd, 2010

Back a few months ago, before work took over my life, I went to an event called Meet the Breeds in the Javitz Center in New York. It was supposed to have 140 breeds of dogs and 60 breeds of cats. Alas, that was not true: they had closer to 50 breeds of dogs and 25 breeds of cats. AND they didn’t have my favorite breed of dog, which is the Borzoi or Russian Wolfhound. Also, it’s only the second year they have done this, so it was quite chaotic. But I got to meet a whole bunch of doggie breeds I previously didn’t know, and that was exciting. Here’s a brief and extremely late recap.

As I came in, I was greeted by cat agility, which caused me to giggle. Note how well it is going. The cat is just looking at the hurdle. It ain’t jumpin’ for anything. This could take days.

I went up and down the rows, dogs first, then cats, and I came to the realization that both dog and cat owners are equally insane. They owners were allowed to decorate their display space any way they wanted, and some people went as far as they could go. In the Saluki booth, they had an entire Saharan tent, with leather poofs to sit on and carpets and everything. I imagine if they could bring in a camel, they would have. The owners often dressed up as well. We’ll get to that.

I went late in the day, so many beasties were starting to get tired. Like this itty-bitty teeny tiny Chihuahua. It must be hard holding up that giant bulbous forehead.

One of the breeds I was introduced to was the Cirneco d’Etna. Etna is an active volcano in Sicily (when I went to Sicily, Etna was oozing black goop and ash, very thrilling).

Here is a picture of the Cirneco d’Etna. I don’t know if you can tell from the picture, but his owner is eating a sandwich, and the dog is very interested in the sandwich. I think he is willing the sandwich to float over to him. COME TO ME, he is saying. I MUST EAT YOU.

Another new dog I was introduced to was the Portuguese Podengo Pequeno. I love that name. Alliteration makes me happy, and this name has it in spades.

And there it is, the Portuguese Podengo Pequeno. It was a long day, and the doggie was tired. I might recommend to the owners next year not to match everything to the color of the dog. You don’t want to camouflage your beast, you want it to pop. Perhaps next year, a deep blue-green petrol color garment and pillow. Just a suggestion.

The third breed I was introduced to was the Xolointzcuintli (pronounced sho-lo-intz-queent-lee), the hairless Mexican dog.

“Hairless” is a bit inaccurate, because the dog (which is really sweet, by the way) has a tuft of white hair on the top of its head.

Now, concerning the dressing up: People wanted you to be excited about their breed, so often they would dress up to something pertaining to their breed. For example, there is the Corgi. The Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II, loves corgis. So, if you look in the background, you will notice a woman dressed as the Queen in front of a fake castle.

And there is a breed of cat called the Ragdoll. So this owner dressed as, well, you know.

Where I draw the line is dressing up your beast. There’s some breed of cat that is related to the Wild West or cowboys in some way, and this is what the breed aficionados decided to do to them.

Okay, I don’t know much about alotta things, but one thing I do know – you do not put a tiny cowboy hat with an elastic head-holder-thing on a cat AND a kerchief AND then perch it on a saddle for long periods of time. If you do that and the cat scratches all the skin off the soles of your feet while you are sleeping, then the cat is completely justified. In fact, I would suggest we give the cat an award for showing self-restraint and only flaying your feet and not all the way up to your knee. Good kitty.

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Happy Fangsgiving!

November 27th, 2010

Happy post-Thanksgiving, y’all! I haven’t written anything for a while due to a combination of nothing interesting happening to me and being worked to the bone, but I’ve had a few days off and I have recuperated, and I also went to see the Thanksgiving Day Parade again from my office, which I will delve into momentarily. But first, I hosted the festive feasting at my apartment this year, and I cooked everything myself for the first time. I’ve never had that much raw dead poultry in my personal space before, I wasn’t really prepared for the sheer ookiness of the whole thing. I got parts-of-bird instead of one giant turkey because most of my family likes dark meat, so I was marinating the many legs and thighs and the one breast in a variety of vessels in my fridge overnight. I would forget they were there, and I would stumble into the kitchen for a drink in the middle of the night, open the refrigerator door and – AAAHHHHHH! Corpses! Corpses littering my – and then I would remember, that’s right, I put them there. This happened at least three times. Then I had to rub the skin with butter, really massage it in there, which caused me to have a total Silence of the Lambs moment, and the worst part of the directions was “put the remaining butter in the chest cavity.” Dear God, cooking can be so gross. But dinner went smashingly, except that I couldn’t find all of my grandmother’s fancy cutlery and that caused a few small problems. Have you ever watched people eat jello mold with herring forks? It does not go well. It looks like they are all unwillingly participating in an obstacle for a Nickelodeon game show. But the next morning I got to go with my father and see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade from my office, and that was delightful. I’ve covered it before, and everyone has seen it live on TV, so I’m going to only talk about specific bits that were of importance to me. Many of the pictures are mine, and the rest are taken by my beautiful co-worker Lor who was stationed on the ground and often had a better view.

Because they’ve changed the parade route, they performances no longer happen right in front of my building, but around the corner, so the only way I could see the dance routines was to watch the reflection in the mirrored building across the street. If you look above the Foot Locker sign, you’ll see the reflection.

Pokemon went by and he had a really great preceding float. I believe all of the balloons had little floats before them or following them. I thought this one was shnazzy.

My favorite float was the Jimmy Dean Breakfast Food Items float. While I actively dislike his breakfast food items, specifically his sausage, I am enamored of the commercials and this float. Damn you, Jimmy Dean, and your sub-par product! You taunt me with rainbows and solar systems! You are like the Lisa Frank of pork sausage!

There were two castle-type floats that caught my eye. One was the Office Max float. Why they picked a Foster’s Home of Imaginary Friends-type house as their float, I do not know, but I thought it was great. Then there was the pink castle. Now, I am a female, I have always been (despite some rumors to the contrary) and I like girly things just fine. But this pink castle, it was just so, PINK. I was overwhelmed, like I had been slapped in the face with a uterus. Filled with glitter.

There were two costumes/floats I desperately want to be on or in some year. One was at the base of the Murakami balloons. Here are the Murakami balloons.

And here is the costume.

Maybe they’ll let me borrow the headdress part and I can wear on the weekends while I run my errands. I think that would be super.

The other thing I wanted to be a part of is the small following float of Spongebob Squarepants. There was a very nice mermaid riding a lobster.

I MUST RIDE THE LOBSTER. I would wave so hard, my arms would fall off. Mayor Bloomberg, let me ride the lobster please!

This girl had a hell of a job, walking in front of the Big Apple float with Kanye West on it. I wonder if people threw stuff at her.

And here’s Kanye.

Following the Big Apple/Kanye float was a herd of people dressed like cops and robbers because…crime in New York is up? Or down? Maybe Riker’s Island paid for the float? I don’t know.

The other bizarre combination was a Statue of Liberty float (okay) covered with the little minions from Despicable Me (huh?). My father has not seen the film and insisted they were salt shakers. What was neat about them is they were all little people in there, but I don’t think there was any way for them to see out, so the ones on the float were fine, but the ones wandering around the street waving each got their own handler who would hold their hand and gently steer them around.

There were two balloons I had never seen which looked like the die (dii?) from Dungeons and Dragons. They weren’t really near anything else recognizable, so I wonder why they were there.

I was really excited about this float: you all know that I painted a piece based on the story of the world being on the back of a tortoise, and then there was this! And I was there with my dad, who told me the story! I felt like singing “Circle of Life” from The Lion King.

I also loved the Ukrainian ball balloons.

And that’s about it. I’ve spent the rest of the weekend so far working on my own artwork, so hopefully soon I’ll have a cool post about that. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a healthy and happy Thanksgiving weekend.

Addendum: The person in front of the Murakami float was, in fact, Takashi Murakami. So the chances of me getting to wear that costume are slim to none. Someday, though, I would like to be as happy as he is in the second picture. So. Happy.

(These two photos of Takashi Murakami are from slamxhype.com.)

Posted in Apartment, New York, Random Art Bloggery, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious | No Comments »

Doily pattern of death, Part 2.

November 18th, 2010

I showed my co-worker my design and he said he found the leafy parts distracting, so I deleted them and whaddya know, it’s better. Now it looks like this:

I need to keep remembering that white space is not the devil. I know nature abhors a vacuum (and so do I – my dust bunnies are now dust rhinos! booyah!), but there can be empty space in my work and the earth will not collapse into itself. All kinds of pleased with myself, I immediately started to work on a second complicated doily. And after investing six hours in that one, I realized it was waaaay way too complicated.

SO MANY SQUIGGLES. And the lines are too thin. So, sadly, I broke it all apart and culled the ornateness down. After another four hours of fussin’, I got it down to this:

Good. Better. Less stuff all over the place.

I found a place that would cut out my stencil for me. Expect to see exciting things pertaining to this in the near future.

Posted in My Art/Design/Business | 1 Comment »

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