Michael was a delightful man – Southern, charming, tan, tall. I became smitten. So afterwards he stuck around and was signing all kinds of things and I got in line. When I got to the front of the line he reached out to sign something and I said, “No no, we’re gonna hug now,” and I did. Michael was okay with it. Kind of.

I love to hug people, but I know many people hate it, so in order to make it less traumatizing I usually announce it. It doesn’t seem to help. Saying, “I’M GOING TO HUG YOU NOW,” and then wrapping your arms around people doesn’t put them at ease for some reason. Are you familiar with the comic strip Get Fuzzy? There’s a character that I identify with greatly.

I have accrued a plethora of charts that I must share with you. And please try to imagine me hugging you while you look at these.

1. I have a bacterial infection in my head. Specifically in my sinuses and my left ear. The post-nasal drip is causing my throat to feel like it’s ON FIRE all the time for the last four days and my sinuses are filled with cement. Sometimes, when I blow my nose, horrible things come out, things that make me make this face.

Except imagine this cat has hands, and in his hands is a tissue filled with atrocities. It’s all not okay. The worst part is the ear thing. Because my ear parts are all swole up and twisted, sounds aren’t boppin’ around in there like they should. In my left ear I hear everything in stereo, like everyone has a back-up singer who’s saying the exact same thing at the same time they’re saying it, but (and I am not making this up in the least) the back-up voice is tinny-sounding and slightly out of key, like a poorly-tuned jangly piano in a saloon in the Wild West. You might think this is awesome, but you would be wrong. One grows weary of everything sounding terrible. I stopped listening to music after everything started sounding like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpFQLw5_N2o

However, I bit the bullet and hauled my disgusting self to the doctor where he gave me a prescription for ten days of antibiotics. They’re working (music sounds like music again and my throat is not quite as on fire as it was) but I still sound like one of Marge Simpson’s sisters.

2. I went with Snorth and her husband Speeb to the Museum of Natural History to see the “Creatures of Light” exhibition. It’s supposed to be an awesome exhibition about animals/rocks/plants with bioluminescence. So I, like a fool, assumed there would be all kinds of jellies and mushrooms and fireflies and whatnot, and you know what I saw? Helpful diagrams. Little models. At the end there were, like, ten fish hanging out in a tank with wee glowy spots on their cheekbones that you could barely see. I was furious because I have been through this before. A few years ago, there was an exhibition on poisonous dart frogs at AMNH and I was so excited because I was gonna see a million killer frogs, oh boy! Guess what? Helpful diagrams. Little models. Four frogs at the end. You would think I would have learned from my previous experience, but clearly I did not. Seriously, AMNH, how much money does it cost to grow a couple of glow-y shrooms in some mulch? THEY SELL BAGS OF GLOW-IN-THE-DARK MUSHROOM MIX IN THE GIFT SHOP, FOR EFF’S SAKE. Come on. I have friends who have fish tanks, they would lend you one and you could put wee jellies in them with a black light on top. It would cost $1,000 tops. Stop having weak exhibitions.

3. I went to the Macy’s Flower Show across the street. I’ve blogged about it here and here. This year due to repairs being done in the bag/makeup/accessories department the flower show was in an enormous tent on Broadway right in front. So I lined up and went in the text and it was lamey-lame-lame. The theme was “Brasil!”, but it pretty much resembled a very nice garden center with Brazilian music playing in the background. They had a couple cool plants, like mini-pineapples, but I felt it was yet another opportunity missed for awesomeness.

4. Enough with the Adele already. Enough.

One of the only things making me happy right now is this:

http://iheartmomonga.tumblr.com/

1. I was checking out on Amazon the other day and there was this:

For some reason I felt a bit violated. Hey Amazon, I don’t know what you think of my prudent caves but I would appreciate you keeping your thoughts to yourself thankssomuch.

2. There’s a wonderful website called KnockingOff.com, with pictures of – you guessed it – knockoffs. Here are a few of my favorites.

And this one is my favorite, specifically because a friend of mine, JR, went to Taiwan in 1998 or 1999 and when he returned he regaled me with tales of Engrish littering the streets. One was adidas, but spelled with an lower-case L instead of an I. To this day I still call it adldas. The other was the brand Puma, but with the letters rearranged to spell Pmua. I also still call them Pmua. And lo, a photo of it, bringing back warm college memories:

PMUA!!

3. If you are unfamiliar with InBread Cats, you should familiarize yourself, because it is delightful.

4. In keeping with the cat theme, I really enjoy this Gatonovela.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXCSvq1htfg&

2. Have you guys heard of the website FourFour? It’s a blog I’ve been reading for a few years, written by a guy named Rich. He is most famous for his America’s Next Top Model reviews, his music reviews, his deep love of all things tacky and campy, and Winston. Winston is Rich’s cat. He is a smoosh-faced gray-colored little fella, and he is weird. Perhaps a bit simple. But, asides from looking perpetually grumpled and have a fierce need to protect the banana bowl in Rich’s kitchen, he is quite amenable to getting costumes put on him, so Rich dresses him every Halloween. And I look forward to it every Halloween because it is glorious. Here’s Winston as a baby.

Here’s Winston being Winston.

Here is Winston in various costumes for various holidays.

And here is what I consider to be possibly the greatest photo of anything ever. It’s Winston as the giant worm from Dune.

THE BEST PHOTO EVER. Every time I see it I laugh until I tinkle a little bit.

He has his own Twitter thingie, so you can follow him @winstonbananas.

3. Recently we had a pitch where we were appealing to a young-adult clothing manufacturer and I made our typical response to questions (normally a book) as an iPad app, which was daunting but really fun. I got complete free reign on how to design it, and I really think it turned out great. Here are a bunch of pages. I blurred out stuff that I don’t think should be circulating on the internet, please don’t be thinking there’s just smudgy info on pages.

“The ammonia that got released when they cleaned the poop mountain…killed him.”

Oh my God, Jan, NO, that’s not why the cat died. The jostling of Poop Mountain didn’t cause the cat to get a rattle in his throat and then bite it in the middle of the road. Your perpetually gross house for the last five years killed him. Maybe the stove completely covered in cat dingleberries finished him off, it would certainly finish me off. You know, my parents, being perpetually optimistic, wanted me to consider becoming a therapist when I was younger and I was like, No. I have no compassion. If I was in a situation like this with Jan I would be all screamy in her face about the nasty-ass living conditions she was rockin’.

2. I finished Battlestar Galactica today! What a weird ending. It’s about a war and the race of humans getting decimated, so it’s not really upbeat, but around the middle of Season 3 it gets REALLY dark. Like, everybody dies. It reminded me of Les Miserables the musical. That’s my go-to for depressing, everyone-dies media. Practically all the characters in that damn show kick the bucket and they make you watch each and every one. We got one with consumption, a bunch of people getting shot with muskets, one throwing himself off a bridge, anything you want. There’s a whole song devoted to stealing trinkets off bodies littering the battlefield, for God’s sake. It’s a grim show. Here’s a picture of the closing number.

Battlestar Galactica reminded me of that. There’s getting shot, shooting oneself, dying of cancer, explosions, poisoning, getting sucked into outer space (which apparently will kill you), and general ennui and tears and excessive drinking and lashing out from just about everyone. Then, you get to the last episode and poof! semi-happiness. It was a bit of a shock to the system. I can understand why people didn’t care for the end (see here and here). Here’s a bit of a spoiler, so head’s up: If you tidily wrap up a four-season show and all its convoluted loose ends with the concept “Because God says so,” you suck. Did we learn nothing from Lost, people*?

3. I listen to the podcast The Nerdist and they mentioned the show Damages and how good it is, so I started watching it. I’ve only seen the pilot but woo boy, is that good television. First of all, Glenn Close is the bomb, that goes without saying. I’ve loved her since Dangerous Liaisons. And the writing is nice and tense. It’s like Law and Order with balls. It’s streaming on Netflix, so get on that.

* I didn’t watch Lost, but I do work with many people who did and when the show ended with everyone in the cast going to heaven or whatever, I had to listen to so, so very much bitching the next day at the office. Angry, angry viewers.

2. Eels! Specifically moray eels. They give me the heebie-jeebies because their mouths extend too far back, or maybe their eyes are too far forward and close to their nose, one of the two. I was watching a special on them recently and thought they had reached maximum creepitude but I was incorrect. Scientists were wondering how the moray eel pulled its food into its mouth and throat, and through careful scientific study it was discovered that the eels have a second set of jaws that pop out, grab the food and drag it inside which, I don’t know about you, is one of the most horrifying things I have ever heard. Want to see some video of it? Think carefully before you answer that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv2DkzOPBXw

Guhhhhhhhhh.

3. In honor of ten years of dating, I forced Cricket to express his love for me through a sparkly object I can wear on my hand. I love this ring. It’s big, it’s old, the stone is an antique cut, it’s platinum, and it’s got rubies (my birthstone) all around the edge set in gold. The first few weeks I had it I couldn’t stop looking at it, so my co-workers nicknamed me Gollum. And when we moved to our new offices this last week, A small Gollum figurine managed to make its way onto my desk. I took a picture of my ring with Gollum holding it. It just seemed right.

Okay. You don’t just put that sign in the water fountain, right? This implies that one, or possibly more than one, persons or peoples have attempted to cleanse their yewling felines in the water fountain. Right? I won’t lie, it made me want to wash a cat right then and there. Just grab any random one hanging around and SOAK IT ON UP, YEAH, SOGGY CAT TIME! Cats don’t like that though, so I didn’t. But I thought about it.

Two, I’ve been meaning to talk about this pumpkin festival I went to back in October. It was called the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze and there were a whole lotta pumpkins (not surprisingly). It covered the grounds of a fancy country home on the banks of the Hudson River. Seriously, illuminated pumpkins everywhere. My college classmate Jay Woods did the lighting design, so mad props to him – some of the pumpkins had candles in them, but many of the pumpkins had electrical lights because, hey, keeping 4,000+ candles lit is a hellish task meant for no man. It was indeed great, mainly because it felt like something one would go to in ye olden tymes. “Oh yes, Edward, let us venture into the countryside via carriage to look at the carved pumpkins strewn all over the estate. They have been lit with candles, it’s all very festive. We’ll drink mulled wine and then die of typhoid, etc.” Here’s the entrance.

I think there were professional carvers working for a month beforehand, but to create the full effect of OMGGOURDSALLOVER they had girl scouts and various other children’s groups carve other pumpkins that were on the lawn as you walked up. It was impressive to say the least.

There was an abstract snake shape over the entire left section that was guarded by ghosts.

The jack o’lanterns weren’t all on the ground. Whoever designed this came up with some really cool ways to use the pumpkins to their full potential. Like the corn and sunflower stalks.

And the beehive.

And the spiderweb.

And King Kong on top of a side building.

And these warrior-type figures. I don’t know if they symbolized anything, but they were neat nonetheless.

I had a couple favorite things. One was the sheep skeletons.

Another was the dinosaurs. Specifically the baby hatching out of the egg. I took a picture with flash and one without to show the full awesomeness of the egg idea. I suspect after seeing this you will make one for your front porch next year.

But my favorite thing was the intricately carved pumpkins, most likely using drills with different-sized drill bits as an integral part of the carving. They remind me of those Ukrainian painted eggs.

I recommend that if you’re in the New York area around Halloween next year, you give this a look-see.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/fjelstud/the-most-awesomely-inexplicable-nativity-scenes

And it reminds me of when I lived in Harrison. I lived in a predominately Italian-American neighborhood where the gardens were impeccably manicured and the properties were always tidy. Except for two houses: the one I lived in and the one at the end of the street. Ours was fine, the hedges weren’t clipped perfectly and there was a saint without a head hiding behind the stoop, but the house down the street…yikes. A mentally-ill fortyish man and his elderly mother lived there. The man was prone to wandering the streets talking loudly to himself, and I saw the old woman very infrequently. However, they did have a nativity scene outside their house. For me, it was the nativity scene of nightmares. I guess the woman had lost the donkey or the cow and had decided to replace it with a large plastic light-up goose, so looming over the Baby Jesus was this enormous Japanese Godzilla film extra of a goose that glowed in the most unholy way. Also, one of the stray cats that hung around this old lady’s house liked to stretch out and nap in the cradle, basically smothering Baby Jesus to death while the nuclear goose looked on. Let me tell you, coming home late at night all alone and seeing that at the end of the block was akin to turning a corner and seeing those freaky-freak twins from The Shining. I have attempted to make an artistic rendering of what it was like:

2. Also pertaining to my work, I made a logo for a yogurt shop, and they asked for a repeating band they could put around the store as a chair rail, on the napkins, on the website, etc. So I designed one and it’s very cheerful. I’m posting this primarily because people are always saying, “Why is everything you design with the creepy forests and the monsters and the like? Don’t you ever want to draw a golden retriever puppy gamboling in a field of daisies?” Hey, people who say that, check it out. Happy happy yogurt in cups. Not even remotely macabre.*

3. There’s this artist named Adam, I think his last name is Ellis, and he has a delightful blog called Books of Adam which has caused me to snork my beverage more than once. He does portraits of people for about twenty-five dollars a pop, and they are really, really special. Here are some of my favorite of his blog entries:

http://www.booksofadam.com/2011/04/last-best-place.html

http://www.booksofadam.com/2011/03/more-stupid-cat.html

http://www.booksofadam.com/2011/02/mahalo-come-again.html

http://www.booksofadam.com/2010/11/poor-stupid-cat.html

http://www.booksofadam.com/2010/10/there-are-no-facts-only-interpretations.html

And here are some of my favorites of his portrait drawings.

*If someone wants to pay me to make something with a puppy romping in a field I will more than happily draw it for them. I love puppies. However, if I ain’t makin’ paper I will draw what I want, and that’s insects and deep sea fish and skulls. So shush already.