I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

I bought a new computer today… a second-hand PowerBook G4. My desktop is only a year older than the used guy, but I’ve never had a laptop before and it seems like a useful thing to have. I want to install Tiger on it (and on my desktop) at some point; it’s running Panther right now (though the previous owner wiped it completely before I took it over, I put Panther on it to test it out.

I made a few changes to the website as well… first in like, forever. I started work on a My Wife, The Ghost mini-page and finally am announcing the August Portrait Project (despite the fact only 4 people contributed thus far). Made new icons for the Projects page.

I called Jesse and asked for more ToyBiz work. He sent over two GhostRider characters they need control art for (the front, back and side diagrams for action figures). It’s awesome pay, but these characters are MacFarlaned-out… baroque with details… buckles, snaps, bones, flames, costume gee-gaws.

I was trying to calculate how long I could live on my savings and commissions if I decided to leave my job—two incidents this week pushed me further into the “what the fuck am I doing working at this place” camp. I’m reluctant to get too far into it since the first month I was working there, a programmer got fired for shit they wrote in their blog. That was more propriatary industry secret leak type content, but more than being fired I want to avoid a “lecture” from either of my bosses.

My Wife, The Ghost got voted back… hanging by a thread. I don’t think it went over at the screening very well and was fully confident we were going to get cancelled and became despondant.

While waiting for the results, Kirk and I watched an episode of The Bob Newhart Show, which I got on DVD. I’ve started renting sitcoms from Netflix as research for our projects.

I got the first season of Bewitched earlier, and was taken aback by a.) what an asshole Darrin started out as—why would you marry such an emotionless self-absorbed prick much less give up awesome magic powers for him—and b.) how fucking hilarious Endora was—she was really nasty in these early ones, shades of Patsy and Edina.

The creepiest episode was one where Darrin’s bosses force him to have this party (meaning Sam does all the work) for 50 people or whatever, including their client who’s a womanizing drunk (which they have a good laugh about). At the party, the dirtbag makes all these really unsavory comments about Sam in front of the boss and then in front of Darrin and they brush it off. Then he corners Sam and grabs her and starts forcing himself on her and she turns him into a dog. Which, granted, wasn’t the most obvious thing to do, but I assume she panicked.

Anyway, she tells Darrin and he flips out (he’s very wooden and angry in the early episodes) and she says “he was attacking me” and he says something along the lines “you should have taken it like any good wife would have.” Now, this would have been the point where she unleashes some Avada Kadavra on him or at the very least, flown out the window or something (she goes back to Mother in another episode for a lesser offense). But instead she makes him sleep on the couch. Lame.

He redeems himself by punching out the guy after he plays grabass with Sam (in his office) by punching the guy in the face. (Just like My Wife, The Ghost episode 3) He quits his job and goes home but for some reason the client, appriciating his moxie, signs with their Ad Agency anyway pointing out “some of my best friends have punched me in the face.” Dude, you have a problem.

This episode also contains an unsettling reference to body shaving.

The Bob Newhart Show I had never seen before (though I’m familiar with his other show) but I saw a biography on Bob Newhart and thought I should check it out. 70s sitcoms always seem weird and claustrophobia-inducing to me… too much rust and brown and orange and wood-paneling. Every scene looks like a basement. They all seem very flat and play-like to me, even revolutionary stuff like All in The Family.

The episode we watched was pretty stock sitcom crap and the online reviews said it took a couple seasons to pick up. But it had a couple of funny elements to it… completely bizarre editing. As soon as the punchline at the end of the scene came… the actors’ mouth is still open… it would just FREEZE, play a blast of the theme song and cut. The theme song was very jarring and not what I expected. The big yellow Cooper Blac-esque all-caps titles . The mundane credit sequence that was like Taxionfoot. So wonderful. I also never noticed that both Bob and Marcia Wallace had lisps.

I will work my way through the rest of the episodes on this disk and then I’ll wait for season 4 or 5 to come on DVD before I try it again. In the mean time, I’ll be seriously rocking out to my new summer jam

Are you over 80 years old and senile? Then perhaps you already shop at the Vermont Country Store . If not, prepared to be dazzled.

The web presence doesn’t really do justice to the catalog, which I picked up at my parents’ place this weekend, which seems more like a dumpster-diver showing off his haul. It was the highlight of the weekend, second only to seeing a squadron of tourists riding flag-print Segways outside the National Gallery.

The concept is basically “Why don’t they make anymore.” So this catalog digs up a moldering crate of Kraft Seven Seas Green Goddess dressing in some burned out attic and sells it to the public at $8 a bottle.

People who are vintage fans for the era they didn’t live in are salivating over Knoll egg chairs and original New Look dresses. The people who were there just want their Lollipop panties and Tangee color-change lipstick back.

When I sold lingere at the Hecht’s department store the summer after Senior year, the bane of our existence (aside from the constant defecation in the dressing rooms) were the grouchy seniors who bought the Lollipop panties that we stocked for some reason. They are the very definition of granny-panties… giant billowy cotton briefs sold 3 to a pack. Grouchy seniors always only wanted one pair, so they’d rip open the packages and try and buy one.

I’m going out of town this weekend; back to Washington now that my parents have moved down there full time (instead of commuting between there and Washington).

I’m upholding my recently broken record of getting the hell out of Dodge before the marathon starts. I’ve been talking to other veteran NY improvisers and I’m not alone in finding the pressure of the event a little taxing—late night shows in weird venues, hot BO-and-mold scented back rooms, socializing with drunken strangers—I’m too much of an old person to get into it. I usually fall asleep by 10 PM on Friday most weeks. (This is due to some sort of energy sapping insect or fungus parasite yet detected, I theorize) I don’t think I really enjoy the festival/convention model in any activity… consentrated fun crammed into one continuous weekend… less so in my home city.

I didn’t plan my trip very well. The train is more expensive than I anticipated and I don’t really have any plans once I get there. I looked up a college friend (also known for her old lady schedule) who moved down to study the Cold War at GW. We may meet up for tea or museum-going or doily knitting or something similarly old ladyish.

I panic-bought a couple books at the closest Barnes and Noble for the trip. I burned through that Harry Potter book pretty quickly and Harpo Speaks right before it. I don’t read novels really regularly, but when I do I finish them really quickly. I mean to read more, really. I bought a P.G. Wodehouse novel I haven’t read yet, I think, and a particularly creepy “How to Write Shoujo” Japanese book.

I have a lifelong passion for “how to draw” books. I always seek them out. The boom in manga interest has generated a lot more of them, usually with a sexed-up philosophy (all Japanese how-to-draw books devote inordinate pages to how to draw underpants, bras, shower scenes, general tits and ass tutorials). I was very tempted by a tutorial book on writing sex games (Amuse yourself reading the plot and character summaries of existing
Dating Sims and count the number of times a variation on the explanatory phrase “she’s older, but has huge breasts” is used) that outlined the 6 times of girls that appear in them. Six kinds are all you need and your set.

I’m trying to jump start my interest in writing more Girl Crush stuff.

You too can talk like a gypsy

Romany Word List

Plastic Food.

I just closed the book on the 650-odd pages of Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince. My enthusiasm for this cultural phenomenon has decreased considerably since I did the last book in 12 hours. This one I took two days on, but I saw three movies and went to work in that time too.

I waited to finish Harpo Speaks before I started it. I think I liked it more. Maybe if Harry Potter spent more time on the touring Vaudeville circuit and hanging out with Alexander Woolcott he’d win me over.

It has been brought to my attention that I am seriously difficient in updates.

I’m still relatively bogged down, trying to strike a balance between doing relatively nothing at my 9-6 (what happened to 9-5?) job and being too tired, worn out, and angry at night to complete any of my pile of graphic obligations, two of which have particularly demanding and indecisive clients attached to them.

We wrapped “My Wife, The Ghost” episode 4 yesterday. A 102 pilot completely shot by the 10th of the month? Insanity. We should get a prize for that.

On Saturday night I went and saw The Unlovables at the Knitting Factory. I went with Seth since he’s having Hallie play his show tonight at UCB. I didn’t know any of the other bands so I took off after their set, got some really unimpressive Vietnamese food before heading home to work. Now here, on Monday, I find that the work I did that night all has to be redone anyway because the clients didn’t like it.

My parents are moving all their stuff out of the apartment this Wednesday, after which time my mom will be a full-time Virginia resident again. They wanted me to take this furniture and stuff back to my place, so Sunday morning I carried two boxes, a desk, and a stool up to my place. Then we went over to the location and shot the Interrogation scene for six hours. I burned my finger when lighting a match and it really hurt. Then we carried all the equipment back to my place and ate.

I tried to watch “Bell Book and Candle,” which is shudderingly dull and lame, but got tired. I fell asleep before the penultimate episode of “Sakura” my evening Japanese soap opera. Next week it’s all over!

Dull, eh? I bet you wish I hadn’t bothered to post, huh? Serves you right, friends.