I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

New NEW Episode of Cakey

I am applying for an art job at Google. I saw the listing and having a steady job with make my mother worry less. I got an email back of their “basic skills test”—

There are 3 parts to this test:

1. Develop an original, fun animal character illustration. – the animal should be a cat – the pose should be comical – free-hand illustration encouraged (instead of vector-based source file) – realism is preferred (but stylizing is okay) (??) – it should be full-color – image size should be: 1600 pixels x 1200 pixels – file format should be: TIFF

2. Develop 2 original icons that convey the concept of ‘Fast Download’ – File format: GIF – Sizes: 128×128, 32×32 and 16×16

3. Recreate the attached illustration in vector format
(a vector-drawn pad and paper, converted to .JPG that I have to redraw back as a vector)

My cynical nature’s first instinct was “they’re having me do spec work for free… then they will steal it.” I suppose I will watermark it, but is that going to insult them? (and how do you watermark a 16×16 icon?)

I’ve read way too many stories like this in illustrator’s and artist’s blogs. TRUST NO ONE!

This has already been written about many, many places but if you haven’t seen it—
Green Porno

Worth it just to hear Isabella Rossallini’s prononciation of “anus.”

Almost eight years ago (eep!) I was in a show called Feature Feature at the UCB Theatre. I will gladly chew the ear off of anyone who wants to know more about it, but for the purposes of this unnecessarily long buildup to a marginally related art file, I’ll describe it as a show in which a set cast of 9 played multiple character roles every week in an improvised genre movie.

Even though I was an Adobe Illustrator novice, I drew retro Shag-inspired/ripoff cartoon portraits of the entire cast for our very-circa-’98 website and then, playing to the strength of vector drawing, basically used them like Colorforms to do depictions of each show we did. I’d put new hair on them, or attach heads to animal bodies, and so on. I did a dozen of them, I think, and now don’t even know where the files are (it was 4 computers ago) and featurefeature.com is long dead and URL-poached.

So, last year I did a Mad Men Christmas card the same way (though hopefully with seven-years-more sophistication and less rip-off-iness) so I have “colorforms” of all the main characters of the show. In a bout of insomnia and inspired by seeing Remy Auberjonois in The Country Girl, I pasted up a disturbing scene from the pilot of Mad Men...probably the first time a gyno exam has been depicted in cutesy retro cartoon form… that kind of stuff didn’t make it into too many ads in Ladies Home Journal.

(click to see in large and lovely detail)

Permanent Midnight, currently viewable on hulu stars Ben Stiller as a scenery-chewing heroin addict/comedy writer. I watched this the other day and AV commented that in ten years, it could enjoy the camp status of a Road House.

It’s a total hambone over-the-top example of the 90s “heroin chic” movie… the music cues, Stiller’s “heroin face,” repeated sex montages, the non-linear storyline, and not just jump cuts but “jump dissolves”. Also, everyone and their sister plays a bit part in it—Owen Wilson, Fred Willard, Janeane Garafalo, Andy Dick, Liz Torres, Sandra Oh (for one line). It’s almost a dramatic “Reality Bites.”

Then, reading the credits we found out it came out in 1998, which is inexcusable. We were convinced by cliches that it must have come out before Trainspotting (96), Bottle Rocket (96), and maybe even The Ben Stiller Show (90).

By the end, AV dropped the Road House comparison, because unlike that genius film which shifts into insanity overdrive in the last act, Permanent Midnight down-shifts into boringness after a promising showing out of the gate.

There’s a week-old meme moving around artists’ blogs to draw yourself as a teenager (and usually contrast with now, but I haven’t gotten around to that bit). I have never participated in a meme before and I have absolutely no fond memories of this era, but I have taken a stab at it.

This is freshman year of high school; my main memory of this era is of my hair being huge and shedding like a Persian cat. And my repulsive school uniform was a magnet for it.

I drew this oddly… on paper first and then traced and colored with a mouse. Also, it much more resembles my drawing method when I was teenaged, so there’s some “synergy.”

(See other people’s take on it here, but be prepared to be bummed out when about half of the participants “looking back” are barely 20somethings and their “teen years” are when you graduated college)

Insuring the Aging American Population is priority ONE!

I don’t think I even saw this when it first aired in 1995, but it’d genius. Everything Sam Waterson does is absolute golden magic. (I am 99% posting this for Sarah Wilkes, but everyone else will enjoy it, too.)

Mitch and I were at one point talking about making Mister Glasses into a purely educational show that defined architectual terms and told people who Philip Johnson was. Actually, I was talking about this and he was ignoring me, but he liked the idea of 50s clipart style bumpers. So I made some.

I remember maybe 15 years ago every jackass loved putting dumb 50s “retro” clipart on everything “ironically.” (Me too. I loved it. I had a big CD of clipart.)

Last night, Silvija and I went to see “The Country Girl” on Broadway. Who’s in “The Country Girl” on Broadway. Three Extraordinary Stars, that’s who!

(Just kidding. I am not an Extraordinary Star. Peter Gallagher is the third Extraordinary Star and is off camera. He was in The Hudsucker Proxy. He sang a Dean Martin song in the Christmas Party Scene.)

These are Broadway shows I’ve seen with Silvija:

In The Heights
High Fidelity the Musical
Spring Awakening
LoveMusik
There might be more of them. I can’t remember now.

The Country Girl was written by Clifford Odets. He also wrote an Elvis Movie. The play is a scootch on the boring side and a lot of the actors seemed kind of stiff. All of the non-MorganFreeman/PeterGallagher/FrancesMcDormand actors looked vaguely the same… like they all were related to each other and in some cases, seemed to be the same person. The show edited scenes by having the curtain sweep in from the left and then keep going and going and going until it swept off stage and then miraculously the set had changed. The curtain was my favorite part. I wish they could have done it vertically as well, but that would have been an engineering impossibility.

René “Odo, Guy from Benson” Auberjonois’ son was in this… Remy. He also played the gynocologist in the pilot of Mad Men and looks a bit like Josh Perillo. I looked him up online afterward and he went to Wesleyan Univerity. The guy who made In The Heights also went to Wesleyan (possibly at the same time as me, though I didn’t know him). I went to Wesleyan… kinda.

As Silvija and I left the theatre we passed A Chorus Line, now starring Mario Lopez. At that moment, Mario Lopez himself was leaving the stage door and was being mobbed… MOBBED!... by dumpy-looking screaming teenage girls. We walked back by The Country Girl’s door and Peter Gallagher had just come out and was being slightly-mobbed by a more sedate group of well-wishers. In the background, Remy Auberjonois and the guy who played the stage manager walked by unnoticed. Well, except for Silvija noticing them and pointing them out.