I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

It’s Toy Fair week here in Manhattan and here’s my rallying cry for someone to pick up the mantle of producting Mad Men plastic crap. It’s a no-brainer, really, the hipster designers touting the show the loudest are the ones most likely to have 10 billion Kid Robot toys in their cubicles.

Minifigs, I believe, are technically the little people from Lego, but there’s a whole genre of blocky tiny toys (like Kubricks, Minimates, etc. ) many with a huge customizing communities. I don’t have the means or the wherewithal to make these a physical reality so I’m throwing it to those with the can-do know-how.

• I’d also add that if these were blind-boxed, the ultra-rare “mystery figure” would be Dale (not pictured).

I got a FedEx notice last week that someone was trying to deliver something, which is always a pain. They never buzz and they say you’re not home and then you have to go to the fucking tunnel to their depressing offices to try and get stuff. I’d move to a doorman building just for this alone. I usually tell them to deliver it to the ice cream store downstairs but it was closed all last week for mysterious reasons.

Anyway, that’s my issue. On Friday they just left it in the lobby so I got it. Here’s what it looks like in my living room.

And who’s it from? Cor Blimey!

I blurred his address/number and my address/number, but you can probably make mine out on that first one. I live up six exhausting flights of stairs, so I doubt anyone would have a burning-enough-desire to climb those to kill/stalk me, even considering how shoddily I treat people as a general rule.

On to the contents!

Inside was…

A DVD of Season 1 (which I didn’t have before. I have screeners.)
A Soundtrack CD
A nice note from Matt Weiner on snazzy stationary

A Mad Men cigarette case (thumbprinty)
A Mad Men coffee/whiskey mug
A Mad Men floaty pen (amazing!)

The floaty pen proved impossible to photograph well, but it’s the silhouette man from the opening credits "falling" against the billboard backdrop.

The Official Mad Men Calendar (though, mine’s better)

and it was all inside this cotton messenger bag

I wasn’t expecting anything, but now I have tons and tons of stuff! Thanks, Mad Men. Thanks, Matt Weiner—you’re a class act!

Guess what? It’s almost St. Valentine’s Day, the most holy day of the liturgical calendar!

If you have a special lady friend, and don’t know what to get her to manifest in material form your swirling and ill-defined emotions for her, why not get her THIS!

If you don’t have a special lady friend and keep striking out on your internet blind dates. Like things are going really well, and you’ve been emailing for three weeks and think you’ve finally found someone you’re on the same wavelength with so you decide to pony-up and meet in person for the first time. You meet at some dive bar and you decide to get a bite to eat and then back for more drinks until it’s getting pretty late and she needs to go back to Brooklyn because the L’s gonna be all fucked up so you invite her to your place, but she says no, she really ought to get going and then she won’t respond to your follow up email the next day even though she expressly said “We should do it again sometime”... you probably need to fix up your place anyway. So get something nice to hang on your wall, like THIS!

Or maybe you’re a weird fat dude with a beard and no chin who just likes to wank to cartoons of hot chicks… THIS!

Two interesting things I got in the mail this week:

One is the amazing, hand-crafted Don Draper bobblehead generously gifted to me by bobble-auteur “Mister Frothee” (he also works in the medium of “bath puppets” to show his range).

Bobble-Don is standing atop one of the “cast-and-crew” editions of the 2009 Mad Men Illustrated Calendar that showrunner Matt Weiner commissioned. (It’s been two months now, so I figure I can go public with it now. I was under a gag-order until Xmas) It’s larger than the Zazzle calendars (has no wire or hole), has some different art and includes Jan 2010.

Of interest to the Mad Men fans who read this blog who are probably not graphic designers themselves and may have missed it—This is a slideshow from the 1962 Art Directors and Designers Association of New Orleans (later to become a branch of the AIGA).

“Originally put together of one hundred 35mm slides and two reel to reel tapes”

Art Directors and Designers Association of New Orleans 1962 Slideshow Presentation from AIGA New Orleans on Vimeo.

via Typophile (where further discussion/background on the slideshow can be found)

download it (and see it full sized) ...here

Buy it here

(see the Season I Joan Doll here in case you missed it.)

If you had thought about buying any of my Mad Men prints and didn’t get around to it, put a fire under your ass. I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty positive that stuff’s all coming down in the very near future.

Zazzle took down my calendar for “using copyrighted images,” which is technically false. I could argue against it pretty easily, but who buys a 2009 calendar in 2009? So, I let it be.

Don’t cry for me, I’ve got a big fish in the fryer right now. Zazzle’s usefulness has run its course. I might have some exciting news in the next couple weeks.

Holy cow! I just sold my 200th calendar (and my 50th Joan paper doll set, mostly to Jezebel readers).

In thanks, here’s the cover of the calendar to download as a desktop wallpaper without all the irritating text

Twelve crazy months of Mad Men shenanigans illustrated by me, featuring scenes from both seasons.

40% Off Calendars
Enter the coupon code CALENDARSAVE during checkout to receive 40% off calendars through November 27, 2008 .

Buy this now on zazzle.com

Get a paper doll while you’re at it. I can’t believe no one’s bought one.

Doing this calendar probably took a year off my life.

So, a lot of people who read this but don’t know me in real life won’t know this, so a bit of background: New SNL featured player Bobby Moynihan is a UCB guy originally, as am I and as is Rich Sommer (in so much as we studied comedy there, performed there and know each other from there).

Bobby was in a duo (and later trio) called Buffoons which had a long running show which Rich Sommer would admit himself was a major fan of. Kind of obsessed with it, even. He was at every show, according to Bobby (who is a notorious exaggerator). It was a fucking hilarious show, but it was scripted—it was pretty much the same every week.

When the word came down that Jon Hamm was hosting SNL a couple months ago, before sketch one was on paper, and I was talking to Bobby about that he immediately said “I want to play Rich.”

He said after the show that he had a minor panic a minute before the sketch went up—“I need a wedding ring!”—and he ran around backstage trying to borrow one. He got one in time and ultimately, he admitted, it’s probably not even going to be visible on screen.

It could have been even more meta meta meta if very pregnant Amy Poehler (UCB founder) had played pregnant-but-denying-it Peggy Olson, but she went and had the baby right before the show. Nice job ruining everyone’s fun, Amy Poehler and Baby Archibald.