I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

My problem with blogs is that they’re too wordy… gab gab gab, I get it, you know how to type. Jesus Christ. I like to look at pictures… that’s why I like the internet. It’s a buffet of wonderment to a functional illiterate like me.

Finally I found a blog worth reading, with lots of pictures from old art, history, and science books without any bothersome words to muck it up:

BibliOdyssey

This is a pretty gender-neutral blog, I think. I’m not a girlie person in 90% of areas in my life, but the following blog is tremendously girlie. I’d make the link text into a puffed pink glitter sticker if I could:

Dress A Day

You’ve been warned.

I spent a full day working on this card—

I like it for 3 reasons and dislike it for 5, but I’m not going to get into that.

Then I made another version to use in the program—

It was originally going to be like a call-out diagram like they have in encyclopedias and Penn & Teller’s How to Play With Your Food, which a caption explaining what each of the things was (or maybe the titles of the sketches each of these things appear in), but I didn’t feel like drawing all the other stuff.

It has the added “activity page” quality of allowing you to draw new faces on Hines & DeCoster and give them new names… they’re all blank and ready for crayons.

The Self Image Film (If Mirrors Could Talk)

For the very advanced student:
The ABCs of Sex Ed for Trainables

Will Hines just asked me, “For fun, take this moment and imagine if the world, right now, were exactly as you’d like. Your life, that is—if your life were going exactly according to your wildest dreams.”

It made me think of a Dan Clowes strip in Eightball (which might have been “My Suicide” but I’m not sure), which is typically pessimistic. I think the take on it was “our pathetic imaginations seem so limited trying to imagine ‘the best”—it’s all cartoonish and shallow group sex and Richie Rich piles of money. Lame.

Despite being made of forboding and unhappiness, I made an honest brainstorming attempt and here’s my cartoonish and shallow take on it:

I think I’d like to be making films or working on a TV show or something with people I like, doing a comedy show that we are proud of and is popular enough (not too popular, though… that leads to crash-and-burn Hollywood endings and Chevy Chasism)

I’d have a nice apartment by myself in Manhattan (where I live now) or a nice part of Brooklyn close to a decent subway line (no fucking JMZ). Bigger. Own not rent. On a lower floor… less walking up.

My neighbors are interesting and friendly…like, eccentric old museum curators or scientists or salt-of-the-earth NY Jewish stereotypes who are concerned about my well being, but aren’t all up in my business. Maybe one is a doctor incase someone tries to commit suicide (not me, since my life is aces) in my apartment as in the movie The Apartment. None of these neighbors rehearses their drag cabaret act at 4 AM as my current downstairs neighbor does.

I don’t want to say “I want to be a trillionaire and take a bath in gold coins” because I think that would be a.) boring and b.) too guilt-making because, if I was a trillionaire, I’d feel obliged to like, do a lot of charity events and give my money away, which would be a lot of work. Or else I’d have to trust someone else to run my foundation and then I’d worry that they were being dishonest, with the temptation of my millions (it’s my ideal life, but people are still human).

Plus, I don’t like shopping or anything, so I’d never really buy anything with it. Money also makes people go insane. In this fantasy word, I’d travel a lot, but I’d somehow have my own plane because flying commercially is bullshit. Now more than ever. Fucking delays and missed connections and fucking awful cramped seats. That would be my most luxuriant, impossible indulgence. I would have a relatively normal life and go to work everyday, but also my own private Concorde to fly on whenever I wanted to.

And also a time machine.

I’ve been working days the last three weeks, and by virtue of forgetting my login anywhere I haven’t already saved the password I can’t update my blog there. So, the audience benefits of not having to read repetitive gripes about the bullshit of the fast-track world of pharmaceutical advertising, or “pharma” as the go-getters call it or maybe “phad” as no actual person would ever call it.

I managed to squeeze out this chunk of genius while I was “on the clock.” So, like, you’re welcome.

Much as the “swoosh” was to the late 90s and the “glassy reflection” was to 2 years ago, here’s the latest done-to-death graphic conceit, the speech bubble.

Bubble Logo Insanity

My favorite candy of the moment is Cadbury Buttons. I left a package of them near my computer and they all melted into one conglommerated button.

I had been hearing about Brad Neely’s “Wizard People, Dear Readers” for years but I decided to hunker down and listen to the entire audio track. It’s meant to be played along with with the video, but I’m just rocking it audio-book style.

I usually prefer to hearing people summarize movies than actually watching them… that’s what Wizard People is, pretty much. A fun drunk dude half-remembering what happened in Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone... with swears.

Happy August!

I’m back working days at the ad agency, and managed to get mostly done with this CD cover—

—title treatment (as well as back cover) are in progress.

On Monday, Mitch and I went to Mood Fabrics so he spend his Stan-money on new fabric to cover his speakers with.

That night I had a dream where I had to counsel Tim Gunn through a personal crisis (he had adopted a child and was having doubts about it). There was also a giant hairbrush lying in the street in that dream.