Archive for October, 2009

A Where The Wild Things Are Review.

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Yeah, so I saw the movie. Alas, it was meh. I realize the book only has ten sentences, does the movie only get ten sentences too? Here’s a personal thing: I actively dislike movies with copious amounts of poignant staring. You know, the actors just looking, attempting to evoke emotion while gazing at someone or something for what seems like hours. WTWTA was chock-full of that. This would have probably made an excellent short film, like thirty minutes long. I wanted to smack Max as well, he was such an ideal candidate for Aderall or Ritalin. I mean, if I bit my mother because she was on a date, my mom would have pulled a Boo Radley and locked me in the basement until all my melanin went away and I relied on sonar to get around. The monsters were amusing to me because they were Jewish New York monsters. Really. Two of them were named Judith and Ira, and they were all neurotic and emotional. It was like watching my family (except with less hair! Ha ha! I have a furry family! Eastern European heritage can be sucky. But I digress.). In the book, they really don’t talk and kind of just express emotions through yelling and running and gnashing teeth, where as in the movie, it’s like a damn group therapy session. James Gandolfini is a terrific voice actor, so that was great, and there were these two side characters named Bob and Terry that were amusing, but other than that, it felt like kind of a slog. I think if I had rented it, I would have turned it off partway through.

Pretty pretty cupcakes.

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

But first, spam! Spam that has been sent to my comments, as you know, periodically tries to mask its intent in order for me to approve it and allow it on through. It has tried complete gibberish, and unintentionally poetic phrases, and false inducing of pity, and random collections of proverbs. Now the new tack, which I happen to like very much, is to tell me a charming childhood joke, like one you might find in Highlights magazine.

jokey-spam

This cracks me up, because now I want to tell people jokes and then yell a medication’s name after the punchline. “What do cats put in their drinks? Mice cubes. LEVITRA!!”

Now, on to cupcakes. I went to a lovely party on Saturday night for a girl I went to college with, her 30th birthday party. Lini, the birthday girl, is bringing back the 1950s house arts in a big way. She made a German chocolate cake with what I referred to as “aggressive frosting.” You know how most people attempt to make frosting as smooth and uniform as possible? Not Lini. Lini put smashed pecans and coconut shreds in it so it looked like it was furry and alive. It reminded me of that monster book from Harry Potter, like if I got to close to the cake teeth would just SPRING OUT from nowhere and there would be snarling and gnashing and whatnot. I swear it heard it growling. But it was delish, so whatever. Anyway, Lini and I were talking about how much we love cake decorating shows because, hey, they’re decorating something. And then you get to eat it! And in addition to the German chocolate cake, we had cupcakes, which inspired me to share some really gorgeous cupcake designs with y’all.

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And my personal favorite, because it reminds me of my childhood:

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Wedding in Lake George.

Monday, October 19th, 2009

My co-worker C. got married, and I got invited to her wedding in Lake George Village. Lake George, for those of you who don’t know, is in the upper part of New York State, approximately 90 miles from Montreal. On one of the banks is Lake George Village. It was quite the summer resort town back in the 1950s and 1960s, and a great deal of the buildings are still left over from then.

This is the lake from our hotel room. The area is heavily peppered with hotels and motels, apparently the population goes from about 1,000 to 15,000 in the summer. Ergo, many hotels.

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And the stores/restaurants/amusements are charming and quaint and delightful. I took some pictures of the more dated and adorable elements.

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You can’t really appreciate it because I was zipping past it in a car, but off to the left of that shot is a wax museum. You can see a bit of it.

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And this is supposedly the oldest minigolf course in… someplace, maybe the Adirondacks, maybe New York, something like that.

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And I couldn’t get a shot of it, but there is a Tiki Resort right near the minigolf course.

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The town just screams, “No one puts Baby in a corner!”

So, the wedding. It was lovely, except for some poor teenage boy who had to read a passage from the Song of Songs that was clearly written with a woman’s voice, so Poor Teenage Boy had to read this whole passage:

Listen! My lover!
Look! Here he comes,
leaping across the mountains,
bounding over the hills.

My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag.
Look! There he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattice.

My lover spoke and said to me,
“Arise, my darling,
my beautiful one, and come with me.”

Okay, first of all, if I was a socially awkward male heterosexual teenager, this would be torture for me. Second, every time he said, “lover,” how was I not supposed to think of that Saturday Night Live skit? I mean, really. Then the next kid got up for a reading and said it was St. Paul speaking to the Phillipinos. I found that endlessly amusing as well.

The rest of the wedding went smashingly, C. looked gorgeous, and everyone went outside and posed for photos while actively freezing to death.

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We all shuttled to a lovely castle on the side of a mountain, where there was dancing and consuming of food and beverage until late into the night.

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The best part of dinner was that it was a buffet, so there weren’t herds of waiters tromping around with large trays of food, passive-aggressively deciding when dancing was to cease (“Well, you can keep dancing, but you’re food will get cold. I’m just sayin’…”). You could get what you wanted when you wanted. And they also brought out The Meat.

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It took two people to carry it out. It reminded me of those ribs that Fred Flintstone gets and they put it in his car and his car tips over. It was enormous. Really.

Here are children in awe of The Meat. Or perhaps they got sucked into it’s gravitational pull. Can’t be sure.

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And then the wedding ended and we went back to the hotel for the afterparty. Here is the beautiful blushing bride playing beer pong with one of the groomsmen, Ham.

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It was a lovely wedding experience all around. I went to bed about 1:30 a.m. because I am weak and frail, but from what I understand, the revelry didn’t end until way after the sun came up.

Addendum: Apparently, at 3:00 a.m., C.’s 80-year-old grandma played beer pong as well… with scotch. Gramma is hard-core.

More linky-links.

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

http://www.regretsy.com/
It’s all about bad crafts. For sale. On Etsy. And lemme tell you, there are some REALLY bad crafts out there. Whatever appalling thing you can think of? Worse than that.

http://thatwillbuffout.com/
It’s pictures of cars that be eight kinds of broke. It’s the titles that kill me, though. This one is a favorite:

buffout

http://www.womenwithmustaches.com
I think that’s fairly self-explanatory. The lack of Frida Kahlo as the mascot is saddening, though. She was the queen of lady ‘staches.

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I iz a cartographer now.

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

My co-worker Lorn just bought a house and she needed some of those “We’ve Moved!” cards to send out, so I offered to make some for her. I took her old address (in Astoria, Queens) and her new address (in Port Washington, Long Island) and made a map. I also found a picture of her new house and put that precisely where her new house is. I then watercolor-painted the water and the house. It turned out great, except…

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What the hell was I thinking with the calligraphy? She didn’t move from The Shire to Mordor, why did I decide to write like that? It appears to be a mystery that will never be answered. So, no biggie, I wrote the words in a slightly less Tolkien-esque style and photoshopped them in, and the card turned out swell. Lorn loved them.

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Meet Eva Funderburgh’s Brother, Dan Funderburgh.

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Remember how I was all excited about Eva Funderburgh? Well, her brother is a graphic designer and he created one of my favorite wallpaper designs! It’s the one with the pigeons and the fire hydrant and the parking meters and the rats. What a cool family. I want to be adopted bt the Funderburghs. Brother Dan’s work:

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And look! He collaborated with his sister. She made beasties, he painted them. How marvelous.

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The Super-Secret Thing – Part II. Plus, Eva Funderburgh.

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

First, an addition to the drawings I did for the meeting – an LG TV and Vicks VapoRub.

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No rulers! Woogly lines! FLAWS! No, I must stay calm and keep breathing. Wooooooooo.

On a different note, I am completely in love with Eva Funderburgh’s work. It’s charming and spooky and the glazes are amazing… I feel like going to Seattle to see her and her work. And go to these two stores, Fancy and Schmancy:

http://fancyschmancypants.com/

But mainly to see Eva’s work in person. Take a look for yourself.

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Her website has pieces for sale, so go and buy a beastie for your home. http://evafunderburgh.com/

The Super-Secret Thing: REVEALED!

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

It’s not really that exciting to anyone but me, sorry. We had a huge annual meeting here at Publicis, and they wanted lots of creativity and illustration, so they asked me to draw everything that was in the meeting: icons and headers and pictures, oh my! So for the last six days I have been drawing. Here’s a selection of the more interesting things I drewed.

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I’ve drawn maps and flags and logos and awards and and cartoon talking bubbles and a potato – for your information, it is very difficult to draw a potato. They isn’t anything inherently potato-ish about a potato. It could be a cloud, or a rock, or an abstract lumpy thing. I put three eyes on it, I hope that helped. It’s in the middle all the way to the right if you’re looking for it. I’ve drawn over 100 things. And it was really hard for me too, because they wanted the drawings to look loose and hand-done, and if you know anything about me I like everything to be perfect and tidy. There were flaws. FLAWS, you hear me? I mean, they wanted those flaws there, but still, FLAWS! I had to control my natural spazoid tendencies. But the presentation looks absolutely awesome, so it was totally worth it. I am going to bed now.

P.S. Also the Statue of Liberty and Mr. Potato Head.