design-newyork.com

Addendum to a previous post.

December 2nd, 2007

Remember in an earlier post when I spoke about my feelings on being called an artist, how I didn’t like it? And then I tried to explain why I didn’t like the term, and I sucked at explaining it? Remember that? Well, I was looking through a book the other day (great book if you like posters, “Goines Posters”, about the graphic artist David Lance Goines) and Mr. Goines makes a great statement to why he doesn’t want to be called a fine artist.

There is no indication of actual talent and skill when a person calls himself a “fine artist.” I, for example, shun the word like the plague. I call myself a “printer”, a “graphic designer”, or a “graphic artist.” If you call yourself an artist, who’s to say if you are one or not? It’s a word nearly without meaning. If I call myself a plumber, or an electrician, or a printer, it can be determined with absolute certainty in about two minutes whether I am what I say or not. These are actual skills that take years to acquire, and there is no trickery or “eye of the beholder” stuff about it. That I am a journeyman printer is not a matter of opinion, nor is it subject to fashion or whim. The same is true of my status as a graphic artist. A commercial artist is a class of skilled laborer. Generally speaking, the commercial artist has a whole lot of other people’s money, hopes, dreams and aspirations riding on his efforts, and can under no circumstances produce any “art for art’s sake” or he will quickly find himself out on the street, where he can produce all the fine art he wants.

So, yeah, what he said.

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

I bet you thought I didn’t make art no more! But you was wrong!

December 2nd, 2007

See? See? I’m still making jewelry. There it is. Gaze at it.

I will tell you, though, if the directions on the polymer clay say, “Hey, don’t spray this stuff with spray paint or Crystal Clear or nail polish because it will stay sticky forever,” LISTEN. Otherwise you have to spend four hours gently scraping each and every piece to remove the sticky undried substance and you’ll have to throw away half your pieces anyway. Not fun. But I bounced back (I’m a bouncer!) and made a festive array of new pieces using a different sealing technique which works and hooray, now I have that nice big pile of jewelry done. Going up in the store shortly.

So, pertaining to my apartment-buying, I went to Ikea last weekend for the first time. WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME OF THIS EXQUISITE PLACE? I actively don’t like shopping, but I was happy there and shopped with a smile on my face. I bought a whole dinner set and some succulents and cactii and glasses, oh, so terrific. They have toys and one of their toys is a stuffed pillbug. How marvelous (or marve-louse, if you’d prefer. Har har! Bug humor! Never gets old.)

Now, until I saw this picture I didn’t know its mouth unzips and you can store things in him. This pillbug just gets better the more you know about him. Also, you can get a fountain drink for a dollar. A dollar! And the fountain drink cup is a decent size! You can’t get anything, anywhere for a dollar. I just pottered around looking at light fixtures drinking lingonberry juice for five hours. I highly recommend the experience.

Posted in My Art/Design/Business, Stuff | No Comments »

Bundt Jell-O and Fugu.

November 27th, 2007

It was a lovely Thanksgiving. My momma made a typical authentic Thanksgiving meal with green bean casserole (wheee! French’s Onions! I love it!). And she also got creative and made a Jell-O strawberry mousse in a bundt pan, AND she got it out all in one piece. Impressive. I took a photo:

It was delicious too. Go Momma.

So everyone knows the Japanese are the masters of cute, right? They made this, and this, and also this. So walking past a restaurant naming Asuza, I noticed something interesting. First of all, they sell fugu. Fugu is a Japanese pufferfish. So what, you say? Oh, there’s more. Fugu pufferfish have poisonous toxins in their ovaries and livers and skin, so if they’re prepared incorrectly, you DIE. Like DEAD. From a food item you chose to eat. And a couple Japanese people die every year from improperly prepared fugu. I guess if you are a restaurant and you pay top dollar for killer pufferfish, you use all the (nonpoisonous) parts of the pufferfish. So I photographed the menu with an all-fugu all-the-time menu.

There’s fugu appetizers, fugu broth, fugu sashimi, grilled fugu – even sake infused with fugu. Okay, you know what, that’s too much damn fugu. But this is not why intrigued me about this restaurant. See, Japanese restaurants like to have plastic models of some of their more popular dishes in the windows of their establishment. But Asuza has very limited window space, so they made MINIATURE models of all their dishes. See?

Is that not precious? Everytime I think the Japanese can’t top themselves in the adorable-ness, they make whatever it is smaller. And rounder. And add sparkles to it. Brilliant, I tell you.

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The apartment I’m buying.

November 20th, 2007

Since it’s occupying all my time, I figured I’d share the whole-apartment-buying thing. It helps to know whence I came to appreciate why buying the apartment I’m buying is so nifty. This is my present apartment on 57th and 10th in Manhattan. I found some great deals and unique listings on Shoppok, which made the search process much easier and more enjoyable. If you’re planning to renovate the property you just bought, you may need to work on its exterior features like the roofing as well as siding. Contact this siding contractor in kansas city for professional services. Gleason Home Improvements is a siding contractor High Point, NC. You may also seek professional house painting services in Dublin to give your home a fresh look.

This is the view of my apartment from the hallway.

You see those windows in the first picture? This is me standing at the windows photographing the front door. Install one of these flyscreens seymour to prevent insects from entering your apartment.

This is a close-up of the kitchen you see in the second picture. From left on the bottom: refrigerator (no freezer), teeny-tiny sink, and teeny tiny stove with oven that I have never opened.

This is the view from my bed. There is my beloved glass teat, the television. And also there is my formidable collection of art, graphic design and beading magazines.

This is my giant closet. Seriously, it’s like the closet from “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe”. It goes back four feet. All my earthly possessions live in it. Sometimes it is tidy and clean. More often it is not. This is a picture of “not”.

This is my bathroom. My bathroom rocks. It is nicely sized and has all new fixtures and tiles. There’s an industrial toilet (no tank) so when you flush it, it sucks the first two layers of skin off your ass. The shower gets nice and hot quickly and nothing leaks.

Now, I’m sure you’re asking yourself, “That’s nice, but what about the other rooms?” There are no other rooms. My apartment, in its entirety, is 11 by 19 feet. I cannot have a full-sized bed because then I could not walk around. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love this apartment. This apartment has served my needs admirably for two years. It is close to my job. It is close to Lincoln Center and the theater district. It is close to a delightful myriad of restaurants. It is close to the subway. There is a concierge. There is laundry in the basement and I don’t have to drag my dirty clothes around the streets of Manhattan to a laundromat. The apartment doesn’t take more than three hours to clean top-to-bottom. But it is expensive ($1400 a month) and I simply cannot afford Manhattan anymore. So I am buying an apartment in White Plains, NY. If you have an apartment that you want to rent out, you may seek the services of letting agents. You may contact experts like Joe Martin-Bindley if you have questions about the benefits of letting agents for property owners. Contact conveyancing solicitors if you decide to invest in a new apartment or single family home. You may also check out these Gator Rated homes for sale. They will prepare all the necessary documents for your real estate transaction. Live in no key money apartments tokyo hassle-free. In addition, you may read all about quiet enjoyment clause if you decide to rent out your real estate properties.

Here is a floorplan of my new apartment:

If you look carefully, you will see that my present apartment can fit in its entirety into my master bedroom. This apartment, aside from being mighty big (1200 sq. ft.), comes with a dishwasher, two ovens, a concierge, a garage parking spot (no chiselling the icy crust of winter off my windshield and cursing) and windows. Lots and lots of windows. See that edge-of-wall at the bottom of the floorplan, underneath the names of the rooms and their sizes? That’s all windows. In my present apartment, I look out on an airshaft. It’s always dim, even in the middle of summer. Now I’m going to have my favorite kind of houseplants, cactii and succulents (need lots of sun, not much water). There are setbacks, of course. Not being in Manhattan is a big one. I will miss that greatly. But White Plains is a fairly big city, and I am eight-tenths of a mile from the center of town which contains: A 15-movie multiplex, Barnes & Noble, Target, P.F. Chang’s, Hot Topic and Torrid (long live mall goth!), a creperie, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Store, Beadworks, Sephora, Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, Filene’s Basement and a whole lot more. I can walk to those. And I can walk to the train station (also eight-tenths of a mile). If I drive, hell, I can do anything. There’s a huge Asian community living near me so all around me are cool Asian grocery stores (Japanese? Okay. Korean? You got it. Chinese? Not a problem. AWESOME.) And there’s an art-supply store and a 24-hour CVS a little over a mile from my apartment (also AWESOME – Maalox at two in the morning is important, trust me). And a million billion other things all around me. I just have to get used to it not being smooshed right up against me, Manhattan-style. And if I hate and I can’t stand it (“It’s so peaceful and soothing out here! Ahhhhh! And what’s with all these goddamned trees?!??”), I can always sell it and move back into a prison cell in Manhattan.

Posted in Apartment, New York, The Telly | No Comments »

My spam and my hair. But not spam in my hair.

November 20th, 2007

1. I get quite a lot of spam comments on this site. Ummm, I think they’re trying to hawk medicine, maybe? I don’t know. It’s either written by someone from a foreign land (like Neptune) and they went through the New York Times and picked bits of sentences they thought were pretty, or perhaps some people were playing a game of Madlibs while on Xtasy. I actually took time out of my busy schedule to try and read this, and then I was like “whatever” and deleted it. But it bothers me still. A little. Not much.

2. My hair. I have had the same haircut since I was eleven which is: some semblance of “long”, one-length hair tied back in a ponytail. That’s it. The “long” part has varied over time (down to the small of my back, brushing my shoulders, etc.) but it has always been one length tied back in a ponytail. Then last year I thought, “Bangs! Bangs will add excitement to my mundane existence! Wheee!” Then I did requisite research in Us Weekly and People magazine and found a style of bang I liked, tootled off to the hair-hacker and got me some bangage. My hair wants to curl up and frizz, so on mornings when I don’t give a rat’s patoot about dealing with hair I put on a headband, but when I feel like attempting prettiness, I try to wrestle my bangs into prettitude using water and straighteners and wax and slime and bee armpits and whatever other hair products I’m told will fix this. Those who are looking for a hair loss solution may try Batana products. To keep your dreadlocks clean and moisturized, make sure to use hair oil for dreads.

If I don’t use much goonk, it does this little peppy flip at the end, so I look like a Farrah Fawcett rollerderby Xanadu wannabe, and if I use heaps of goonk, I look like something between a drowned cat and Adolf Hitler. The next person who gives me helpful hints on my appearance will receive a detailed description of “that time I thought it would be a good idea to get bangs” plus a kick in the shins to punctuate the tale.

P.S. Another reason I got bangs is that I have a big ole pale forehead (it’s so big, it’s a fivehead! Har har har!). Cricket likes to say it’s a “billboard they can read in Zimbabwe”. I grew weary of the giant white expanse so I thought instead of getting a tattoo on there (I was thinking M•O•M and an anchor), bangs would be the way to go. So technically they are serving their purpose, but they’re doing it so… not fashionably.

* Really. I’m not making that up.

Posted in Stuff, Teh Intarwebz | 1 Comment »

The Chocolate Show.

November 16th, 2007

There was the chocolate show in New York this past weekend, and you can bet if they’re handing out chocolate, I’m going. So (surprise!), I went. It was a hefty and daunting entrance fee ($28) but I’m still glad I went. And now, a recap.First of all, I got out at 18th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, which was one block over from the chocolate show. So I walked that one block and I was SO HAPPY. One that one block was a used-book store, a used CD-and-DVD shop, a printing shop (with a giant purple printing press!), several interior design shops with vases and furniture and other goodies, a children’s-book store and Cupcake Cafe. I don’t particularly care for the Cupcake Cafe’s cupcakes (too rich and sweet) but the way they decorate them is stunning. Here is an example I found online.

What a marvelous block o’ Manhattan. I must investigate it more when I have the time. On to the chocolate show. It was packed. I must have touched and been touched by a hundred people. But, whatever, chocolate.

As you come in you see these chocolate sculptures. Do you see that egg-shaped chocolate with white chocolate decoration? I couldn’t help thinking it looked like Homer Simpson when he says, “Mmmmmm, doughnuts,” and drools.

See? See what I mean? And now I’ve ruined that sculpture for you forever. You can thank me later.

Bloomsberry & Co. had one of the best booths. As you can see, they designed it to look like a living room. I didn’t taste their chocolates, but I can say their boxes were brilliant. Whoever is their designer needs a big smootch for the boxes. Here were some of my favorites:

Bloomsberry & Co. Check them out if you have the chance.

There was a lot of chocolates that looked like this. So pretty you almost don’t want to eat them. Almost.

Look! Little chocolate animals! So cute!

This was a Japanese booth called Mary’s, based in Tokyo. They made the most insane green tea confections. Funny story, sort of: The very nice Japanese man gave this small child a sample of the green tea niblet. Now, I don’t know if you know this, but green tea can be kind of bitter. And this niblet had green tea powder all over the outside. So the child did precisely what you would expect her to do – put the niblet in her mouth, make a face like someone gave her earwax to eat, then stuck her tongue out and let the green tea niblet fall to the floor. I could have told Japanese Confection-Making Guy that that was a bad idea, but I guess in Japan they’re used to the flavor of green tea. Hey, more niblets for me!

Then they had an area with the chocolate fashion show. This I don’t get. You want to cover yourself with a food item that melts with your body tempurature and is oily, stain-y and sticky? And at no point do you eat it? I iz confoozed. Also, the fashions were bah-heinous. I mean, super-ugly. Here are some samples of clothes I would not wear if given to me as a gift with a check for a large amount of money tucked into the sleeve.

Arr, that be some craptacular garb these mannquins be sportin’. I don’t think I’ll go again next year (did I mention the $28 entrance fee?) but it’s worth checking out once.

Posted in New York, Tasty 'n' Delicious | 1 Comment »

In case you’ve been wondering…

November 15th, 2007

… I have not forgotten to post artwork I’ve been working on. I’m just in the middle of trying to buy an apartment and it takes up all your time. Not some, not a little, ALL. ALL your time. So I haven’t had much of a chance to really bang out anything in the last two weeks. Oh, but just you wait, I’ll be posting arty-goodness before you know it.

Posted in Apartment, My Art/Design/Business | No Comments »

Frog’s wedding.

November 15th, 2007

I got a phone call in Mid-October. “Hey!” said my super-longtime friend Frog (we’ve been friends since she was eleven and I was twelve). “I’m getting married to Tex!” I was delighted. And then she sprang an interesting tidbit.
“Would you like to be my bridesmaid?” She said.
“Sure!” I said.
“Good, the wedding is in three weeks.” Frog said.
“…” I said.

But luckily she wasn’t doing that whole crazy matching bridesmaid dress thing, and I was actually the only bridesmaid in the whole wedding party, so no biggie. She gave me some color options and all went well. It was a delightful wedding. Call Cynthia Lissau, M.S., LPC, LMFT for marriage counseling Roanoke.

If you and your partner are navigating through challenges or simply seeking to strengthen your bond, consider exploring couples counseling Seattle for support and guidance.

Awww. Look at Frog in that picture. Doesn’t she look beautiful? I’m the purple creature with the sunflower bouquet. While this is a lovely wedding moment, I included it especially because of the groom’s hair. Yeah, that looooooong brown tail hanging out of the back of his head? That’s his hair. He can floss his butt with that thing.

The wedding took place at a mill in Pennsylvania (note mill-wheel in background). Actually, it took place in the heart of mushroom-growing country. This had me concerned. You know what mushrooms grow in? No, not poo, that would be too easy. They grow in compost, which is hot bacterial poo. And it smells mighty ripe. And this was an outdoor wedding. However, I was assured that mushroom season was over and indeed, the wedding smelled terrific.

The bride sported white combat boots. The piece of blue mylar was the “something blue” that brides are required to have. It’s some kind of joke between Frog and Tex. I was too lazy to find out what that joke is.

Dy, my favorite guest. All the guests pretty much looked normal and boring, and then there was Dy. He was wearing a suit that was half-black and half-white and he had spiked his mohawk with a considerable amount of hair-glorp. The best part was the koala doll attached to the top of one of his mohawk points.

You know, sometimes after a rousing round of dancing, one needs a Mountain Dew…

… and some smoky treats. Nothin’ prettier then a bride hittin’ the cancer sticks, I’ve always said that.

Okay, this was awesome. It was a Halloween/autumnal-themed wedding, and the cakes were Carvel cakes! With ice cream and Oreo crunchies inside! I’ve never been to a wedding with that before.

Important note: When stuffing ice cream cake into your bride’s face, make sure none of the chilly ice cream falls into her cleavage, because then she makes this face, and later on she kills you and feeds you to the cats. Just so you know.

Also, she wangs the cake into your mouth so you have white icing all over your mustache and you look like you just walked out of the bathroom in Studio54 with a mirror and a razor blade.

It was an excellent wedding. Lots of love and family and friends. All weddings should be like this.

Posted in Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious | No Comments »

A horribly delayed “The Police” Concert entry.

November 8th, 2007

This week has be cah-ray-zee. I’m trying to buy an apartment (we will discuss this later when I actually have more information on it). And I’m trying to make product for my online store. And I’m trying to build my online store on the computer (soooo much more complicated then I anticipated, must leave lots of time for that). And I’m trying to move out of my beloved tiny Manhattan apartment. And I’m trying to do all these thing RIGHT NOW, which means I am running out of time for things like blogging and breathing and bathing. But enough with the complaining. The Police! I saw them at Madison Square Garden! And it was neat! I will give you a succinct review right now: Their music continues to be awesome, but because they are old (by punk standards), they don’t have the fire that is required to really bang that music out. I must say, though, that all three of them are consummate musicians and while I originally came to see Sting, the real star of the show was Stewart Copeland (the drummer). He was working the kettle drums and these wee chimes that go tingy tingy and a gigantic gong. He was spectacular. And the guitarist Andy Summer was also amazing, but he has the personality of wet dead fish, so however good he is, he is still difficult to watch. It was Halloween and it was no shocker he was dressed at Charlie Chaplin. Now he can use his costume as an excuse to not talk or really move around. Good choice. Sting was dressed at a harlequin with a yellow and black diamond pattern and a festive glittery codpiece, lest we forget his tantric eight-hour love-making sessions. Stewart was dressed as a zombie with an Egyptian headdress (a cobra I think) but since he kind of resembles a zombie to begin with, not much of a stretch there for him. And now the pictures.

On every seat in the whole freakin’ arena (30,000 seats) they put masks on each armrest. Because it is Halloween. Isn’t that nice?

Close-up of the mask. You can’t appreciate it in the photo, but it’s a sparkly holographic mask. Oooooooh.

They has some of the best lighting design for this show. They had lights all around the edge of the oval stage and then lights that moved up and down behind them. And, AND, they had the required screens so people in the nosebleed section could see Sting’s face. Underneath that they had another screeny thing that projected patterns. It this particular picture you can see the 80’s style lighting they chose to open with.

In this picture you can truly appreciate how dead Stewart Copeland looks. He’s on the screen on the left.

And then they had lights! Lights all over the audience! Whee! Lots of lights! Can’t remember what song this was for, but it worked with the big white lights flashing all over the arena.

And then they sang “Roxanne.” The lighting designer heard the phrase, “You don’t have to put on the red light” and all he heard was RED LIGHTS! LOTS OF RED LIGHTS! The photo above is only the beginning.

TURN ON THE RED LIGHTS! TURN ON THE GODDAMNED RED LIGHTS, ROXANNE!

Then Sting took off his harlequin mask and sang “Every Breath You Take” which is my favorite song from the 80’s and one of my favorite songs of all time. And it was LAME. You need a certain sexy psycho stalker vibe going on when you sing that song, and Sting is old and has like ten kids and he’s over the stalker crazy thing, so he sang the song like a stinkin’ lullaby. I was sad. And that was the end of the concert. I would say it was good and I would recommend that you go because the three of them are amazing musicians, but don’t expect the same fire and vigor that they had in their heyday. But worth going to.

Posted in New York, Stuff | No Comments »

Four totally unrelated items.

October 31st, 2007

1. I was driving this weekend to Expo, the Home Depot design center (fancy tiles, rugs, curtains, etc.) and I drove past Walter’s in Larchmont, NY. It is a Chinese-style building from 1919 that sells… hot dogs. And all the wealthy locals drive up in their Lexii and line up for the hot dogs. Cricket and I just had to try it out. Because I avoid meat (I’m not a die-hard vegetarian, but I make an effort) Cricket got a hot dog and I got potato puffs (fried mashed potatoes, like little croquettes). And we got sweet spuds to share (tempura-battered sweet potato sticks). I can only comment on the tuber-foods, but the potato puffs were excellent and the sweet spuds were delicious, melt-in-your-mouth good. I don’t know if I would drive all the way to Larchmont just to relive the experience, but if I passed by there and I was hungry, I might partake in the deliciousness once again. Now, photos.

2. Not like anyone doesn’t know this, but there are crazy people in New York. Lots of them. And many of them have so very much to share. They desperately want to tell you about how the aliens planted a probe and now they know the truth about 9/11 and Iran because they can hear the government’s thoughts. One lady handed me a piece of paper with tiny tiny writing on it about… something, her mother being raped in the seventies and pictures of her mother’s driver’s license, I couldn’t figure it out. There’s another guy who hangs out in Midtown with big placards, maybe seven of them, just COVERED in text about how he invented the cooling thing in the refrigerator and how the patent was stolen from him and how he is owed 25 billion dollars. Well, in my neighborhood, I have my local crazy. He posts collages of stuff with his comments written on them. I don’t know if this makes me a bad person, but all I can think of when I see them is, “He may be kookoobee, but he’s got lovely penmanship.”

3. There’s this poster you see around town for a food thing. It’s a woman, all seductive-like, posing with a crawfish on her shoulder. Here’s the problem: the crawfish has little eyeflaps, like little eyelids, that curve down in the center and make him look really really angry. So the picture is of woman cooing to this furious crawfish.
“I think you’re handsome.”
“I AM FILLED WITH RAGE!”
“Your claws are sooo sexy.”
“IT IS LIKE A FIRE THAT CONSUMES ME!!!”
I think perhaps they should have picked a different food item to rest on her shoulder. Prawns look pretty benign, although a little surprised (“HUH?!??”). Here is a picture of the ad.

And here is a close-up of Livid Crawfish.

It probably doesn’t help that he looks like a demonic alien to begin with.

4. Update on the hideous rat ornament: It now has a bandanna and dreadlocks. I don’t think it’s helping.

Now it’s just a rastafarian nightmare. I can’t wait for Halloween to be over.

P.S. Tonight I’m seeing The Police in concert at Madison Square Garden. Oh, this is so exciting!

Posted in Advertising, New York, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious | 1 Comment »

design-newyork.com

Addendum to a previous post.

I bet you thought I didn’t make art no more! But you was wrong!

Bundt Jell-O and Fugu.

The apartment I’m buying.

My spam and my hair. But not spam in my hair.

The Chocolate Show.

In case you’ve been wondering…

Frog’s wedding.

A horribly delayed “The Police” Concert entry.

Four totally unrelated items.

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