Mental bits and pieces.

August 25th, 2008

Thank God the Olympics are over. At last, I can get to sleep before 1:00 in the morning. It sure was fascinating and engrossing. I got sucked in like a dust bunny to a Dyson, I tells ya. Now I can return to my normal schedule of obsessively watching Forensic Files as I fall asleep. I am lulled into dreamland by “…and this thread from John’s blue sweater found in the vehicle led investigators to conclude he was Debbie’s killer…” Ah, unsolved murders are so soothing.

Okay, returning briefly to The Batman Movie of Recent Recentness, something occurred to me. If you live in Gotham, and the bridges and ferries are blowing up regularly, and people are getting held hostage left and right, and people are shooting each other in the street, MAYBE YOU SHOULD MOVE. I’m just saying. I was watching a program on the Son of Sam (while waiting for Forensic Files to come on). He killed six people. Just six – and all of New York flipped the freak out. People wouldn’t go out at night, women dyed their hair blond (SOS tended to kill brunettes), there were 300 cops on the case, etc. The Joker kills, I don’t know, like, 100 people in this movie, and not one “Moving” sign in the whole film. Not one character says, “Hey, screw this whole thing, let’s go to Montana. I’ll homeschool the kids, we’ll grow some vegetables and milk some goats. Enough of this already.” My empathy well for the inhabitants of Gotham is pretty much dry.

So I gave my mom the purse tonight and she looooved it, which was great. I’m so pleased that she was so pleased. Hooray on that front. I must now paint a onesie for my co-worker. She’s having a little girl and I’m making her a black onesie with a skull and crossbones on it. Because that’s the kind of people we are. And little pirate girls are so precious! I’ll keep you posted on that.

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How you like me now? Huh? (pounds chest)

August 20th, 2008

My mom likes the designs I paint on my purses, but she actively dislikes messenger bags. So for her birthday (August 24th) I went out and got a nice black Nine West bag and just painted the BEJESUS out of it. Momma is from Africa originally, so I put a protea on it. A protea is a big scary African flower that looks like it could be Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. Momma also likes the mourning doves that hang out near our house and coo and eat birdseed and are just generally precious, so I put two on there for her. And voila!

protea-purse.jpg

Would you like to see a detail? I bet you would.

protea-purse-detail.jpg

I shall give Mom the bag this weekend, I will report back on her reaction (hopefully glee, fingers crossed).

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Olympics.

August 15th, 2008

I’ve been watching the Olympics almost every night for the last week, and gosh darnit, it’s exciting. Right now I’m watching a bunch of pudgy Belgians give the Americans a real run for their money in women’s beach volleyball. Go Belgians with the poochy bellies and thighs like Clydesdales! I think the best moment so far is the woman from America, the swimmer in the relay, who’s 41 and just had a kid and then kicked copious amounts of ass and broke the world record and got us the silver medal. What’s that, agist Olympic pig-dogs? I spit on you.

I am amused by the quantity of Coca-Cola and McDonald’s commercials. I find it funny that the world’s most important sports event is sponsored by sugar water and deep fried mechanically separated chicken. Oh, and I just saw a commercial for Budweiser, proud sponsor of the American team. Please add “caloric alcoholic beverage that many of the athletes are too young to drink” to that list. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some gravy fries, I’m not pure of heart. It’s just, it’s a major athletic event. It seems contradictory. I wouldn’t want to be an author going on a book tour sponsored by Kingsford Charcoal, perfect for all your paper-burning needs.

These athletes are freaky, by the way. One of the lady gymnasts performed extremely well on the uneven bars, did one of those hard landings, and we the viewers find out later that she had a broken bone in her foot the whole time. Dear God, I get a hangnail and I consider taking a sick day. She had a broken foot-bone and she’s flinging herself off of high things to slam down on that foot with all her weight… see what I mean? Freaky.

So hooray and yay for Michael Phelps, you’re clearly part eel and we’re all very proud of you and your size-fourteen feet. May you grow gills and disappear under the water to marry Ariel and live on the ocean floor with dancing singing crabs for all eternity. It is your destiny. Good luck on your twelfth (!) gold medal tonight and may all your full-body shaving not be in vain.

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Batman! Batman Batman Batman!

August 11th, 2008

Ugh, what a week. It was one of those weeks, the ones where the work just keeps on a’comin’. You think you’re done, and you’re wrong, oh so wrong. One of the things I had to do for one of the projects was get screengrabs of all the times the Nancy Botwin character drinks a coffee beverage on the hit show Weeds. What I learned was that that woman drinks an insane amount of fluid. Every time we see her, she’s either drinking coffee, or soda, or wine. I’ve renamed the show Pees.

So I finally saw The Dark Knight. Do you know why the word “dark” is in the title? Because it’s the darkest movie ever. Not plot-wise, no, more like someone forgot to turn on the lights. There’s Batman and he’s wearing all black, and he’s fighting some bad guy in an abandoned warehouse with one scrawny little bulb and the camera keeps changing position… I tell you, more often than not I had no damn idea what was going on. I told Cricket afterwards I wish everyone in the film wore those orange jackets deer hunters wear with their names written on them in big black letters so I could keep track. BATMAN. MOBSTER #1. MOBSTER #2. That kind of thing. Here are a few things that stuck out for me in the movie, and don’t worry, they won’t ruin the film for you.

1. Is the mayor wearing black eyeliner on his lower lids? God, that’s distracting, especially in Imax. I’m supposed to be taking him all seriously, and I can think is, “Aww, emo mayor.”

2. Does Batman need to speak in that ridiculous gravelly voice when he’s Batman? Stop that.

3. Is his name “Batman” or “The Batman”? Because there’s a whole chunk in there where they call him “The Batman” and it sounds odd.

4. That magic trick The Joker does in the meeting with the mob? Best magic trick EVAR. After The Joker did it, a smattering of applause broke out in the Imax theater I was in. That’s how good it was.

If you haven’t seen it yet, go see it, it’s very good. But remember, it’s 2 1/2 hours long and very plot-heavy, so don’t be thinking you can take a tinkle or get popcorn in the middle, because you’ll miss the thread and then you’ll be very confused for the rest of it. And trust me, you don’t want to miss a moment of Heath Ledger’s performance. He’s just terrific.

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I made some headers. I like them. I will now share them with you.

July 30th, 2008

Publicis wants a header for some internal communication thing and they told me to design something, whatever I want, and see what happens. I think the two designs I came up with are pretty rad. I’m awful proud (puffs chest). In case you care, I used Illustrator for everything except the word “news”. I used CorelDraw for that. I find their 3-D capabilities far better than Illustrator. I know no one agrees with me, but whatever, it works better for me and there you go.

pubnews.jpg

pubnews2.jpg

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Apartment and two things I saw walking around New York.

July 29th, 2008

This is what my apartment looked liken when I moved in. Boxy. Very very boxy.

apartment.jpg

Well, now I’m down to three boxes. Three boxes, people! The finish line approacheth! Soon I will have pictures of the niceness with the wall hangings and whatnot.

I walk past a deli on my way to work that has a poster on the door. I noticed it the other day. Look.

angelsoup.jpg

I realize that it’s supposed to be that the soup is so good, the design of angels on the bowl cannot resist and one of the angels is partaking via a straw. What I was convinced I saw the first six or so times I walked past it was that the angel was vomiting into the soup, and since the soup was made with angel vomit, it was heavenly, sort of. I’m not making this up. I swear that is what I thought. “Tomato Basil, now with transcendental emesis!” So not right.

I see this every day on my way into my building. I’ll keep this short: I hate it. I hate it a LOT.

sharkweek.jpg

The pointy teeth in many rows, the red shiny gums, the psycho expression, the water running off him that looks like sweat… this is the makings of nightmares.

sharkweek2.jpg

See what I mean? Thankfully it’s Shark Week right now, so hopefully the sign will be replaced soon. Really soon. Like tomorrow, that would be nice.

Addendum: July 30th – This morning they had replaced the Shark Week poster with a Mythbusters poster! Now, the Mythbusters poster has Jaime and Adam’s decapitated heads in jars like specimens, but it’s still a big improvement over Toothy McRedGums. I am happy.

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Excellent animation.

July 25th, 2008

B. sent me this, and I think it’s really terrific. It keeps your interest the entire time.
An animated version of an interview with John Lennon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmR0V6s3NKk

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Reviews of Penelope and Hellboy II.

July 25th, 2008

1. Penelope. It’s a teeny little film with Christina Ricci, Reese Witherspoon and James McAvoy (who, even though he looks like he needs a good shampooin’, is still super-yummy). There’s a curse on her family, she’s born with a pig snout instead of a nose, only a blue blood male who marries her can break the curse, etc. I don’t understand why it wasn’t a bigger hit. It’s cute and sweet and while it’s a fairy tale it doesn’t feel childish or simple. The only thing that irks me is that everyone is like, “She’s a hideous monster! She’s a pigface! The horror!” People flinging themselves through plate glass windows, for God’s sake. And she looks like this:

penelope.jpg

I think she looks kinda sweet. It really hurts one’s self-esteem when someone who looks like Christina Ricci (hot) with a pig snout (cute) is treated like a leper whose critical parts have fallen off. It made me not want to go outside for fear people would hurl themselves in front of buses. But other than that, good film, you should rent it.

2. Hellboy II. Yeah, there’s a plot. It’s not good. And the dialogue, that’s not good either. But the costumes and special effects are phenomenal. Guillermo del Toro is very similiar to Julie Taymor (the woman who came up with the costumes and sets for Lion King on Broadway). I recommended afterwards that one should rent Hellboy II, turn the volume off and play Nine Inch Nail’s “The Downward Spiral” while watching the film. That would be perfect. One thing I thought was a bad design decision was this: there are elves, and when they die, they turn into stone sculptures. The problem is the stone sculptures are cream/yellow-colored, so they look identical to a butter sculpture of Garth Brooks from the Iowa State Fair. So one of them dies and we the audience are supposed to be moved, and I’m sitting there trying not to think about smearing these elves on toast. But the troll market sequence is gorgeously designed and very textural and visually stimulating, so that’s terrific.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t see Batman, it’s because it was sold out until 1:00 a.m. and the lines were out the door. The IMAX is sold out for another two weeks, so eventually I’ll get around to seeing the damn thing. Then I’ll comment on whether it is worth all the hoopla.

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The Happening, Back to School, and Nudibranches, oh my!

July 18th, 2008

1. I saw The Happening, the new M. Night Shamalamadingdong film. (Side note: who here cannot stop thinking of “The Bloodening”, the fictional Simpsons horror film, every time they hear that title? Just me? Okay.) For anyone living without the benefit of the internet, newspapers, television or semaphore, The Happening is what happens when plants have had enough of humans and their crappy destructive ways. They release a pollen/spore/icky airborne that causes people to kill themselves (in super-creative ways, a guy runs over his own head with a combine). I know I’m supposed to be rooting for the humans, but I was, well, not. If I was a plant, I would be testy about humans as well. While this was not M. Night’s best film, he sure does know how to increase tension with creaking branches and rustling leaves. I came home and said to my houseplants, “If you don’t start nuthin’, there won’t be nuthin’, k?” Gotta keep an eye on those houseplants.

2. I was at Target the other day and they were all kinds of hawking back-to-school supplies. I realized at that moment how blissful it was to not care about going back to school. I went to school for seventeen years of my life (kindergarten, 1 through 6, middle school, high school, college) and I do not miss it one bit. If I want to read the collected works of Bloom County and Foxtrot all summer, I can. I don’t gotta write no paper at the end either. Oh, and when I was a kid my mom would make me go to summer camp, so I would have to get up early every day anyway. Now, I get paid to do that. Oh yeah. Being an adult rocks.

Now don’t get me wrong, I still take classes periodically in various programs so I can be a better designer. But it immediately causes me to make more money, which I can then spend on books which contain pictures of Opus the penguin wearing a sun hat. Kids? Stay in school. So that you can earn a decent living so you can buy a computer and only read blogs if you want to.

3. Every time I think I’m a crazy wacky artist coming up with crazy wacky ideas, something comes and knocks me off my crazy wacky pedestal. National Geographic ran an article on nudibranchs. What’s a nudibranch, you ask? Here’s a description:

A nudibranch is a member of one suborder of soft-bodied, shell-less marine opisthobranch gastropod mollusks, which are noted for their often extraordinary colors and striking forms. The suborder Nudibranchia is the largest suborder of heterobranchs, with more than 3,000 described species. The word “nudibranch” comes from the Latin nudus, naked, and the Greek brankhia, gills. Nudibranchs are often casually called “sea slugs”, a non-scientific term which has led some people to assume that every sea slug is a nudibranch. However, while it is true that nudibranchs are very numerous in terms of species, and are often very attractive, there are numerous other kinds of sea slugs belonging to several taxonomic groups that are not very closely related to nudibranchs. A fair number of these other sea slugs are colorful and thus are even more easily confused with nudibranchs.

Nudibranchs that are toxic often have rather festive coloring and horns and feathery things and a variety of other components to convince you that they taste like reheated poop and may also kill you. Here are a few of my favorites from the NatGeo article:

nudibranch1.jpg

I don’t care how creative you think you are, you cannot top this. I will never make anything that interesting or fascinating to look at. And I’m alright with that. And you should be too. Let’s all hug.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., Nature, Stuff | 1 Comment »

A post all about my new apartment. This will be interesting to no one but me.

July 16th, 2008

As with all things, there are pluses and minuses to everything. I am close enough that I can walk to the station, but then I have to walk to the station. The train is express and comes through White Plains every ten minutes during rush hour, but because it’s always packed by the time it gets to White Plains, I have to stand the whole way in. However, my apartment is big and the shower is nice and hot and the air conditioning is nice and cold, so I can’t complain. Regular ac maintenance is crucial for prolonging the life of your cooling system and ensuring peak efficiency. Scheduling routine check-ups helps prevent unexpected breakdowns, improves performance, and can lower energy costs. Keep your air conditioner running smoothly with professional maintenance from experienced technicians. Here’s a super-cool story: my mom has an extremely rich friend who was moving out of her big ole Connecticut home to a swanky apartment in Manhattan. She told my mom she was getting rid of some “rubbish”. My mom, understanding that this woman’s and a normal human’s concept of rubbish are very different, asked if we could see said rubbish before she got rid of it. Looking for a moving company Greensboro contact City Transfer and Storage. Long story short, I now own one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-KV-32FS100-WEGA-silver/dp/B00006LHGV

And another TV just like it, except a bit smaller. Free. Nice rarely-used televisions. Rubbish. Since the big one says SONY on the bottom, I call the TV Sonya. I will paint an “A” on it soon. And, as anyone who appreciates “Little Shop of Horrors”, I’m naming the other TV… Sonya II.

Now I’m in the midst of putting things where they belong. I spend a couple hundred dollars at The Container Store buying stacking metal drawers and wall racks and all sorts of organizational tools. I realized I’m becoming THAT PERSON. You know how you laughed at Grandma with the plastic on the furniture? I used to laugh too. This last week, I actually considered covering my bedroom furniture like this bedroom furniture in Surfside Beach, SC in plastic. My mom had to slap some sense into me. This morning I was late for work because I had to lower the blinds in all my rooms so the furniture and rugs wouldn’t bleach from the sun. THAT PERSON. I have placemats and coasters. I don’t even know myself anymore. Perhaps I will leave a bowl of water and a scrub brush near the door so visitors can not only remove their shoes, but scour the soles of their feet as well. Oh dear God, I need help.

Posted in Apartment, The Telly | 1 Comment »

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