The Daily Cosmic Shoutout

It should be no surprise to regular readers of the communicatrix that I'm a big fan of things woo-woo. Of course, I'm also a product of a heap-load of book-learnin', two atheist grandparents and have spent a lot of time around skeptics, so I haven't quite drunk the Kool-Aid, at least, not full-strength. Basically, I'd characterize my relationship to the wooX2 as one of cautious optimism, much like my relationship to alcohol and my daily horoscope. Anyway, I'm knee-deep in a serious newage-y book right now, which I've blogged about here, of all places, already. It's called Creating Money; it's written by two people channeling a spirit. Yes, I know that's nuts; no, I don't care. It's a good (if snoreburgerly earnest) book, full of good, sound advice, even if it's Dr. Laura channeling Casper the Friendly Motherfucking Ghost.

There's woo-woo recipes for actually attracting money, but I'm not a chanter or a meditator. In fact, having read the bulk of the book, I'm not even sure I need to be worrying about creating money so much as I need to identify what it is that makes me think I need so much of it in the first place. I like my life; hell, I love it...all of it, my home, my crazy hodge-podge of jobs, my sister, my boyfriend, my prodigious pile of Stuff.

Hence my decision to institute in public what I've been in and out of the habit of doing in private: say thanks. Thanks for my health, my car, my amazing collection of friends. Thanks for my orangey-red toenail polish and the twenty complete and perfect digits with/upon which I apply it. Thanks for my Q-Tips. Thanks for finding them on sale. Thanks for frequent flyer miles, Sunday coupons and the 99¢ store.

You get the drill.

So starting today, every day, I'm thanking the cosmos, the Big Gal, the All-That-Is for my stuff. Sarah Ban Breathnach, who wrote a really nifty book on learning to appreciate the small stuff, suggests five items per day, and since Oprah dug on it (her favorite book of 1996!!), it must be right.

Since I want to launch this mother with a bang, I'm doing a fancy, Flickr! list to start with. I may do other groovy, list-y things like my friend, Michael Nobbs; I may have days where I can barely drag myself to the computer to type out the five things. Some of the posts may be on the snarky side; some may be revoltingly earnest. My goal is five things per day, every day, out loud & proud (except in those rare cases where I really, truly have no internet access, and then I'll take it offline).

Don't know how long it will last; long enough to seed the gratitude habit, I hope.

And with that, I thank you for playing along...

xxx c

UPDATE: Partly in reaction to current events of late and partly because I don't want weeks to pass when the only thing people see on c-trix is a thank you sign and cryptic lists full of seemingly random stuff, I've moved the DCSo to another site. Go or don't. Peace, out.

TECHNORATI TAGS: Sarah Ban Breathnach, gratitude, blessings, thanks

Hot (link) damn!

I was still feeling bad about getting fired off my first Big Fat Design Job when I clicked on my new best friend Shane Nickerson's site and saw my (temporary) place of honor. Thanks, Shane! I'm busting out a slightly modified version of one of the (rejected!) logos in your honor...of my honor.

You know. Whatever.

xxx
c

(Bi)-Weekly roundup, Part II: Hot Midsummer Links!

Okay...NO MORE TALKING ABOUT HOW HOT IT IS!!!

Instead, why not take a refreshing dip in the cool, cool Internet waters. I long to get back in and really splash around, but until then, I'll just revisit where I've been here & there over the past few weeks...

Locksmith and x-ray technician combine magical superpowers to help idiot get back in truck! (via BoingBoing)

Someone's horning in on my Searchesâ„¢ action. (And someone else is blowing up the â„¢ symbol! Boo-yah!) [via...oh, bother, I can't remember, it's too fucking, ack!]

What's cooler than Flickr? Making art from words via Flickr! Here's communicatrix! Here's Miss Colleen! Here's underpants! (Oh, come on, like you're not totally going right there right now to spell "butt." [via CoolHunting, created by the mighty Kastner, all bow down now, please]

Speaking of CoolHunting, how fucking awesome is this watch they blogged?!? Makes me wish I had fat wrists. [via...der...]

Someone finally got on it and started creating the dream photography site. Frankly, I think there should be sites like this for fine art, drama, music, etc., but I'm sure that gets the copyright freaks' undies in a collective bundle. You can access the site here, but it's really in tatters right now (note to self: upgrade your server before a major media publication runs big story on you). [via The New York Times online, where you will have to register to read the story]

You'll also have to register to read this fascinating story on the politics (and profits) of Costco vs. Walmart. But believe me, it's worth it. [via The New York Times online]

Please hurry up and make the coolest keyboard in all the land so I can buy it. Please. [once again, via CoolHunting]

Some really great advice on those who would be published authors. [via Seth Godin's blog, which I really should read more often]

The sooner kids learn the facts of life, the better. [CoolHunting, I am your bitch]

I think I'm going to have to post a separate homage to this chick, but until I do, go check out this site. Courtney Booker is one talented design monkey. She also did the design (and/or illustration) for Buddy/Buddette, one of my favorite postcards EVER. [via my frantic a.m. hunt for a headshot of Jacqueline Wright, who would be on my shit list right now if she wasn't one of the five best people I've ever seen on stage in my life and too nice to yell at]

Another well-written, accessible, thought-provoking post from Half Mad (Ex-) Spinster about preconceived notions and the conditions under which they are conceived. Nice to know that if I ever move to Ohio, there will be a kindred spirit there for me to bond with.

Finally, great mapping fun, find who's hot or not in your own backyard!!! [via Kovixen, who has a really great blog of her own, in case you were interested]

Later, dudes!

xxx
c

(Bi)-Weekly roundup, Part I: Trippy Midsummer Fun!

It's been a wild and woolly week here at the c-trix ranch. Actually, not woolly at all: with L.A.'s delightful summer temperatures back in action (and an additional, fragrant 15-20º here in the Easy-Bake Ovenâ„¢), I endeavor to wear as little wool as possible. Actually, I try to wear as little as possible, period, right now, I'm blogging naked in between two box fans; how's that for a sweaty mental picture?

Well, I'm a sweaty mental, that's for sure. Yesterday, I took a for-reals graphic design job that fell in my lap. I (correctly, as it turns out) suspected I was woefully underqualified from a technical aspect, but after a day spent cooking next to the G5 chez moi, the promise of 10 hours in air-conditioning trumped even my colossal fears. That and free lunch. I've pretty much burned through the contents of both my own and The BF's fridges, and have zero energy for grocery shopping these days.

But I digress. (Are you happy now?) What I mean to say by all this blathering is that I've not had much time for surfing. Yesterday, for example, I spent 10 hours hunched in front of a 12" PowerBook trying to discreetly search Illustrator help for how to make horsey, 3-D type (on purpose, for the gig) and not notice how cute the guy at the next workstation was (The BF is out of town and I'm goin' CRAZY, I tell you...CRAZY!!!!). Between that, a clutch of fruitless errands post-work and the nascent cold brought on by blazing-heat-to-frozen-interior temperatures, I don't have the time or the interest level necessary to do any serious surfin'. So this special, two-part edition of Weekly Roundupâ„¢ will have fresher news than links, but hey, at least the news here doesn't involve car bombs, rucksack bombs or Republican hubris.

In this edition, the newsy items of note:

Not only did my idols, The 2 Blowhards, do me the extraordinary honor of adding me to their blogroll, Michael Blowhard included me in a flattering post about bloggers that Hollywood would do well to pay attention to. After many years of practice I am quite comfortable with toiling away in obscurity as far as Tinsel Town in concerned, but I am rather panicked (albeit flattered) by the responsibilty inherent in being linked from the main page of the greatest culture blog on the Internet. So Michael B., thank you for sending my hit rate soaring into the double digits and my anxiety level into the stratosphere. I will wear something sheer and gauzy with well-placed embroidery tonight in your honor, and in person should we ever meet.

This is turning out to be The Summer Colleen Interfaced with Big, Hollywood Directors As They Slummed in Commercials. I posted elsewhere about my shoot with the lovely Joel Schumacher (and my run-in with Errol Morris, who, for the record, was not so lovely); a coupla weeks ago I shot a little spot with the charming (and prolific) Rob Cohen, who has a little picture called Stealth you can see next week. In fact, please do, and on opening weekend.  I've got to ride someone's coattails to fame and glory, goddammit.

After sending off a picture for my column to a faceless email account, I received some actual correspondence from Andrew Reid, the very nice man behind the Agony Aunts, a.k.a. my advice pimp. He thanked me for the avatar (ooo...fancy!) and mentioned he'd made some tweaks to the site, including a ranking of Agony Aunts by user ratings in addition to number of posts, basically a quality rating to augment the quantity one. Unbelievably, but officially, yours truly is actually one of the more popular Agony Aunts! Of course, just like Britney, Jen and Karl, now that I am on top, the public will be chomping at the bit to tear me down. But yes, I am enjoying my fifteen minutes.

If only I could enjoy it in air-conditioning...

xxx
c

The doctor is way, way out there

It's time to spill the beans. Time to 'splain, as Ricky would to Lucy, where he's been until 3 in the morning (metaphorically speaking, of course, the last time I was up at 3am I was being HIGHLY paid for the anomaly by a major U.S. manufacturer of packaged goods).

I've been out...with other people.

It started innocently enough. A random stumble onto a page somewhere or another led me to the British nexus of Dear Abby wannabes (called "agony aunts" on that side of the pond, wot wot). After a few minutes of sniffing around at the fiery train wrecks in plain view, I fell down the rabbit hole. So many lost little lambies, so few grizzled shepherdesses to lead them. Plus I get to say things like "on holiday" in place of "on vacation" and use the word "besotted" a lot. Plus-plus I get to exercise my Lucy Van Pelt muscles, which always feels good.

Of course, I'm not always the oldest, bossiest chick on the block (although I'm generally the sassiest...ha!). In my newest part-time blogging gig, demographically speaking I am but a wee slip of a girl. I have no idea whether the peeps reading the Third Age blog will find anything I have to blab about interesting or informatinve; I have been told by our fearless leader, the lovely Jory Des Jardins (who is even younger than I am, fer cryin' out loud) that my job is to provide local color, or basically, sass it up without "shorting out the system," as Jory puts it.

All I can say is thank GOD everything really is relative; until I hit senior year, there will always be people older than me, and that's how I like it, brother. Oh, and thank you Jory, both for the vote of confidence and for giving me something to do to occupy my idle hours. If I had to re-iron my dust ruffle one more time, I swear I'd scream...

xxx c

Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone

It's that time of the year again, those balmy, mid-summer days when the urge to stretch out in the sun with a good book, a cold drink and several hours with which to enjoy them overtakes me. Fortunately, I'm good at beating urges like that down with a stick. Tomorrow, for example, The Boyfriend and I are hopping in the car and heading out to Las Vegas for the week, not to par-tay, but to shoot a bunch of stuff for his reel. (Work is the new leisure!)

I may set up an entry or two to post while I'm gone so you all can get your c-trix fix, but then again, I may not! So why not use this little break to catch up on some of the many lovely sites I've collected for your reading pleasure? There are plenty of them all up & down the sides of this website (whose non-design is starting to bug me), and don't forget, I'm a delicious junkie, too!

But we know you like the FRESH HOT LINKS, so here's a batch, straight from the Firefox bookmarks holder-thingy:

Everyone else has been reading him for centuries, but I've just discovered the always-prolific, sporadically hilarious Tony Pierce. He yaks on too much about hot chicks (snore...) for my taste, but I am a straight girl and perhaps if you are not, you might dig it. But his post about jury duty is one for the ages. It's almost got me excited about showing up for mine in July...not.

I loooooove the Blowhards, and especially Michael Blowhard, with whom I have struck up a little eCorrespondence. He posts all kinds of interesting, thought-provoking thangs, but I especially loved this little essay-thoughtstarter on the proliferation of choice in our consumer culture. Great comments section, too: 2Blowhards really pulls in the smart cookies.

Random surfing turned up this Hints from (Doctor) Heloise-type site which should forever lay to rest the notion that doctors are any fun at all.

Design Observer, which I found via the aforementioned Blowhards, also has tasty, thought-provoking essays. They featured a fantastic piece about the authenticity of "faux" a while back, and the archives are chock-a-block with good, tasty reading. (You could spend a day, and quite a bit of dough, clicking around on their links, too.) But the greatest thing about DO is that they have a goddam sense of humor, which is (sadly) rare among designers and other arty types, who generally tend to take themselves a tad seriously (or "a tad bit seriously," for those of you in Oklahoma). This, for example, may be the best post title ever.

Speaking of regular reads, Cool Hunting has some of the most consistently...well, cool stuff of any site I have in my RSS. Lately, for example, they had a groovy, make-your-own-name-from-Flickr-photos post and a table I really, really, really like. A lot.

Finally, while listening to the re-broadcast of This American Life yesterday, I heard the most hilarious bit of live performance it's been my pleasure to encounter in some damned time. The "artist" was reading from her diary, the very worst, very most humiliating parts of her TEENAGE diary, aloud at a little show called "Mortified" that goes up now & then in NYC and here in L.A. (Archived version of the show is at the TAL website and is called "My Experimental Phase", you can skip to the last 10 or so minutes, if you like.) Mortified has a website I haven't had time to vet just yet, but it promises lots of excerpts from the diaries of peoples too shy to get up onstage. I, on the other hand, not only am NOT too shy, but have been dreaming of some useful purpose for the 10 years of shite piled up in a dusty corner of my Billy bookcase, and plan to root through them just as soon as I'm back from losing my shirt taking pictures.

You think I'm pathetic & truthful now, people? You have no idea...

xxx c

Weekly roundup

The communicatrix has been busy losing focus applying her multiple skills in other needed arenas lately, the details and location of which she may share with you soon in an upcoming missive.

In the meantime, enjoy yourself trotting around to the places I've already seen. Take a snap or two! Send one back to the c-trix! Let her know how you've enjoyed the scenery! And share those hotspots you've been to yourself that you think she might enjoy! The communicatrix is heavily into enjoying herself.

Except, of course, when she's beating herself up for her lack of productivity, something Merlin Mann addresses in a great post this week about shaking yourself out of a rut. He also points to an Open Loops post with lots more tips, but truthfully, they got a wee bit too Tony Robbins for me. [via 43 Folders, the productivity pr0n freak's best friend]

Unintentionally (we can only hope) hilarious translated subtitles on bootleg copies of the new Star Wars dreck. [via BoingBoing]

Speaking of BoingBoing, i liked this inventive use for dollar-store army men enough to try and get it out to a wider audience, but they didn't like it enough to post it. Oh, well, the crafters will have to drum up their own P.R. [via the craftster blog, which I'm adding to my list of feeds even though the craftiest I get is gluing magnets to the backs of my remotes so they're always there on my file cab.]

More genius advice served up with wit and élan from the rabbit, a.k.a. Heather Havrilesky. [via Rabbit Blog]

Jennifer Ogren is my kind of designer: one who came to it later, after doing something really useful first like getting a B.A. in Sociology. She's got some nice samples up on her site, like the poster, right. She's also got some honest-to-jeezus art for sale tonight here in L.A. at C-Note, an art show by project:, whose stated goal is to "(bring) together the best elements of art, music, technology and culture to form a constantly evolving experience." So there. Entry fee is ten bucks and the lure is aforementioned fusion of goodies, along with art for a hundred bucks a throw. Groovy stuff from Luke Chueh as well, although not the glorious "Polishing My Grill" (below, right); it's sold, and probably for a lot more than a c-note. [via Daily Candy]

And speaking of affordable art, may I recommend my new favorite artist, Ferris Plock? He has an embarrassment of arty riches up on his site, but I flipped for his "Robbers" series, enough so that I have an inquiry out on "Robber(s) C" (tippy-top, left). If I hadn't gotten the mother of all moving violations tickets this week, I'd have bids out on several pieces from this series, the style of which calls to mind the delightfully demented drawings of my old friend, Tim Souers (who has a couple of little somethings up on Sally Horchow's site), and not a little Edward Gorey. So little money, so much art to acquire... [via Flavorpill]

xxx
c

TECHNORATI TAGS: Tim Souers, Luke Chueh, Ferris Plock, Jennifer Ogren, Sally Horchow 

Who needs Jambi when you've got...THE AMAZING FACE ANALYZER?!?

Using only the professionally-taken photograph to the left, THE AMAZING FACE ANALYZER divined the following about the communicatrix...including that she is female:

Intelligence: 6.7  (Very Intelligent)
Risk: 2.7  (Very Low Risk)
Ambition: 6.7  (High Ambition)
Gay Factor: 1.4  (Very Low Gay Factor)
Honor: 4.2  (Average Honor)
Politeness: 5.7  (Average Politeness)
Income: 6.6   ($50,000 - $100,000)
Sociability: 4.0  (Low Sociability)
Promiscuity: 2.5  (Very Unpromiscuous)

Like the modest but apparently uptight genius who turned me on to THE AMAZING FACE ANALYZER (or ANALYSER, in the U.K.), I am a "Beta Academic" best suited to a number of careers which don't interest me in the least.

Of course when I saw that my celebrity face "match" was Anna Kournikova, I began thinking, "Hey! Maybe there's something to this here AMAZING FACE ANALYZER!" ...until I saw that it had also made out a tiny, dark-haired, Asian girl with a 1.0-gay-factor (that's lower that my incredibly low gay factor, folks!) as a dead ringer for... Ellen DeGeneres!

As an aside, I find it pretty hilarious that my own gay factor was so low, since I'm about as gay as May can get without actually batting for the other team.

And as for my lack of promiscuity, I think my sordid past (not to mention a goodly chunk of the L.A. phone book) might refute that notion, but hey, they are grading on a curve, here...

xxx
c

NOTE: For the heck of it, I also submitted my "badass business woman" and "quirky character gal" headshots (posted here) to see what the results might be. Dorothy Parker's observation notwithstanding, apparently all you have to do is throw on a pair of glasses and unbutton your shirt to have your income level plummet and drive your promiscuity quotient up a few notches. Oh, and did you know I was 98% Korean/Japanese and 2% Chinese? Me, neither!!!

And quirky character gal? She doesn't register at all, even as female. No wonder my commercial career is in the shitter...

TECHNORATI TAGS: face analyzer, quizzes. tests

Where do the funny people go?

There are many lovely things about L.A.: the weather; the proximity to desert, mountains and breathtaking coastline; the nutty people who tend to congregate out here. Oh, wait, that one works both ways. One of the other great/not-so-great things about L.A. is the highly transient nature of the place. The good news is there's a constant influx of cool, interesting people coming to town, infusing life and energy into the scene.

The bad news is that no sooner do you make a friend, or worse, hook up with a compatible writing partner, than they turn around and ditch you for some burg with shittier climes and killer real estate prices.

The other day, the wife of one of my old writing partners (I've got many) sent out a group email to their far-flung friends sharing my old writing partner's observations on a photo session that was probably pretty nasty in and of itself, but hilarious in hindsight. The occasion was one of Ye Olde Faux Photo Ops (oh god, am I glad I never had a family) where everyone dresses up in Ye Olde Phony Costumes and poses sternfacedly for Ye Olde Time posterity.

Rick's take on the proceedings, as relayed in an email to his friend, David, and forwarded by his wife, Sharon, was, as usual, hilarious:

RICK (to David): .... Oh, and don't think for a second that that coat didn't smell like the pissy sweat of every white trash chain smoker in Massachusetts...

The coat was on me for about 30 seconds when I politely asked the teenage girl who worked there...

RICK: How often do you, um, wash these?

Teenage girl: I don't wash them.

RICK: Does somebody else? And if so, how often does that person wash these? Better, yet. Does he ever wash these?

Teenage Girl: The manage-ah washed them last year.

RICK: This year?

Teenage Girl: We just stah-ted this year.

RICK: You just started this year? Right. So, this probably hasn't been washed since mid-last season?

Teenage Girl: Yeah.

RICK: Sha, can you hurry up in the dressing room, please?!?

Sha: Hold on. I want to look perfect.

RICK: Yeah. Why don't you hurry up?

Then my wife proceeds to want every angle and prop. Shayna is even commenting on the STANK of the costume and wants it the fuck OFF. Sha is like...

Sha: Oh. Let's all hold guns in the next one.

RICK: Sha, it's hot in this thing, it fucking stinks and it's starting to soak into my skin.

Sha: Oh, let's all hold liquor bottles, too. Even Shay.

Shayna: Mommy, I want to take this off. It's stinky.

Sha: One more pose.

RICK: Sha, she's done and I'm done.

Rick spent the rest of the day scratching the itchy stink off of his arms.

RIDE ON, UNION SOLDIERS!!!!!

Rick always, but ALWAYS made me laugh, when we wrote, when we were supposed to be writing but didn't write, when I got my sorry ass booted from the Sunday Company and thought my life was over. I hadn't found my voice yet when we were working together and Rick definitely had, but he was cool about that, too, and always encouraged my ideas and goofy tangetial wanderings.

We thought that we'd keep writing via phone and IRC but of course, we didn't. Life intervened. 3000 miles intervened (Rick's family was in Boston, so he and Sharon returned there to put down roots and spawn and such).

But I saved all of our old emails and writings and sometimes, when I'm glum and need help snapping out of it, I'll pull up some hilarious exchange and laugh till I cry.

Rick, he really should be writing still.

And Colleen, you really should be telling Rick this. On the telephone.

xxx c

Weekly roundup

Okay, so I completely fell off the face of the earth this week. And I don't have highly advanced piano skills to show for it and my kitchen floor still looks like the site of a three-week dust-bunny-and-honey humpfest and I sure as hell didn't have a lot of %#@*(& auditions. Oh, and a shoot for Monday fell apart (actually, exploded in my face), I saw no movies and most of my time seems to have been spent waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, visions of my future, penniless life pushing a shopping cart around the sun-baked streets of downtown Los Angeles swirling in my head until break of day.

On the upside, L.A. Jan booked a choice role on a big movie via a HUGE casting director (he's repped by ICM, for chrissakes) who is now head over heels in love with her (as well he should be) so I'm pretty sure I can ride her coattails to glory sometime soon.

In other events, I whipped together a choice new flyer for a little show going to Edinburgh with nothing but spit and good will, let go of five pairs of pants that fit me 10 pounds ago (netting a little cash into the bargain) and kicked some acting ass in my first scene back in acting class after a year's absence. So, in the words of the inimitiable Carl Spackler, I got that goin' for me...which is nice.

But boyoboyo, has the wide, wide world of web been hoppin' this week! Lotsa good reading, peeps...if you can't make it out to the parade this weekend, I've got you covered...

Fat: The Final Frontier. Michael Blowhard initiates another fascinating dialogue on 2 Blowhards, a site I always wonder why I don't visit more often until I realize the Blowhards stubbornly resist creating an RSS feed. Damn your Luddite eyes!

Nifty punctuation hack (for persnickety punctuators like the communicatrix) from famous screenwriter John August, who is truly the poster child for smart, accomplished people selflessly giving back to the community.

This handy-dandy site on cracking the Priceline.com code makes my frugal, deal-hunting heart beat wildly with joy. [via Women's Wall St. newsletter]

Seth Godin knows that small is the new big.

Kozy & Dan do some nice illustration. Mmm-hmm. [via Cool Hunting]

Sean Bonner, in addition to being an incredibly accomplished overachiever, is also frequently hilarious.

These folks are way too cool for any fucking school I've ever been to. [via Boing Boing]

Finally, the ultimate electronic tribute in this, the age of ironic clothing: the t-shirt obit site. RIP, ETHS Wildkits tee... [via Que Sera, Sera, home of some fine, read-worthy writing, via Dooce, the queen-mama-blogger of us all]

Enjoy your weekend, peeeeeeple!

xxx
c

Weekly roundup

Another busy week here at Rancho Communicatrix, but I still managed to squeeze in a little pointless surfing. Enjoy!

I saw Wendy Wahman's illustration in this Sunday's LA Times Book Section and felt compelled to look her up. Award-winning sample above left; many more pretty pictures to see here.

Regular Salon columnist Heather Havrilesky gives good advice column, among other things. And this week, she got busy while I got lazy. A veritable mother lode of good new posts up on rabbitblog; this rambling discourse on discovering one's true self (in the guise of a reply to a highly scrambled individual's plea for help) is my fave.

My favorite fug-leaks detail the subtly horrific malcostumings of the horrifically smug. And yes, I know this makes me a small and petty asshat, but that Marisa, she's always rubbed me the wrong way. And now, her fugly, too-tight prom dress is doing the same to her. (Insert Nelson Muntz laugh here.) [via go fug yourself]

Possibly the greatest t-shirt ever. [via Cool Hunting]

Who doesn't like a nice photobooth strip? [via BoingBoing]

I have a new favorite cocktail lounge and it's called the Buggy Whip. Read my post on blogging.la for more hot, faux-Tudor action.

And finally, after his hilarious post on blastocysts and the inanity of the Religious Wrong, I have a total liberal schoolgirl crush on The Rude Pundit. Sigh...dreamy... [via Eschaton, which I really should read more often]

xxx
c

Weekly roundup

My breadcrumb trail this week:

Why-didn't-I-think-of-that? Flickr knockoff tags, freaky-cool Japanimated snack food spots and astounding Rubik's Cube art. [All via BoingBoing.]

Author of the best list ever, writer of Onion headlines and a published New Yorker cartoonist? I hate you, Sam Means... [via McSweeney's]

"Pardon me, young man, but I speak jive." [via Urban Sherpa]

Cool gear, cool delivery system. [via Cool Hunting]

Finally, in my search for info on vlogging, I fell way, way down the Xiaxiu rabbit hole. Girlfriend (who does not vlog) is chatty as a magpie (well, she's 20) and way too fond of pink for my tastes but she's cheeky and brave and marches to her own damned band, which more than makes up for the pink-and-chatty thing.

xxx
c

Weekly roundup

Here are this week's happy landings. Enjoy!

Rachel Salomon makes pretty pictures. (Via Mike Diehl, who's designed more cool covers than you can shake a stick at.)

Stealth art is everywhere. (Via Josh Rubin's Cool Hunting.)

What Would Yoda Do? (From Giant Mag, via BoingBoing.)

The amazing Grant Barrett introduced me to fifi. (via BoingBoing).

And, just for the helluvit, a big, fat, Mac shout-out to metafilter.

xxx
c

Surfs up!

Catch a wave, kids!

The best secrets are the ones that get told (see left). (Via Old Hag, from accomodatingly.)

Seven deadly taters. (Via BoingBoing.)

Get your art on. (Evelyn Rodriguez on her always stimulating Crossroads Dispatches.)

Your rut get out of. (Via 43 Folders.)

He loooooves to rent guns!

See, I knew I found valuable life skills during my incarceration at the agency. (DesignObserver; also via kottke.org).

xxx
c

Image via PostSecret, posting fresh truths every Sunday.

The greatest smile on earth

I swore I wouldn't wear one of those bracelets, especially after they started to proliferate. But after seeing the show-and-tell at last night's Smile Train benefit at the Beverly Hills Hotel, I had to at least pop it on for the picture.

I'm veeeery skeptical about who I give my money to these days. And as a rule, in addition to low operational overhead, I steer clear of the biggies and look for charities who help people help themselves: Habitat for Humanity, Planned Parenthood, etc.

The Smile Train is one of those organizations. They provide free cleft palate surgery to underprivileged kids around the world, they train local doctors to do it for the greatest cost-effectiveness and community self-sustainedness (like that's a word) possible AND they pay all admin costs out of their own pockets.

I won't re-blog what I've already posted on b.la, go there to read the scoop (Jane Kaczmarek! Colleen's self-loathing! Random Alex Trebek slam!) in toto.

Or hell, just go here and give your money.

Now.

Seriously.

xxx
c

Best of the flyer table, II

Much as the Avid changed editing both for better and for much, much worse (back in my ad days, we called it "the version machine"), desktop publishing has forever altered the messy terrain that is the 99-seat theater's lobby flyer table. Why use a boring old photo when you can add FIVE FILTERS in Photoshop...for FREE? Why use one or two fonts to tell your story when you can get all the fonts you want on the web...for FREE?!?

In fact, why worry about creating your own image at all, just lift some JPEG off the web, rez it up and call it a day? (Okay, okay, I'll admit it, I've been I'm guilty of this one.)

The striking, solo image, simple, evocative, and laid out with taste and restraint, is getting harder and harder to find. Which is why, I guess, when I do find one, it's so striking.

The Center Theater Group's gorgeous flyer for Electricidad reminds me of the excellent images created by legendary illustrator/designer, Paul Davis. (Good WNYC interview with Davis here, where he also laments the piss-poor state of theater graphics.) John M. Valadez did the extraordinary illustration, and the designer knew enough to let it speak for itself. Great concept, beautiful execution.

Similarly, I really liked the piece for Ken Roht's Echo's Hammer, now playing at the Boston Court in Pasadena. At first I was miffed when I saw the flyer on the table: Ken is a good friend of mine, and for years, has come to me when he needs a flyer designed. In fact, in addition to being directly responsible for my pursuit of acting as art, it was Ken who got me started on the road to print design, some seven-odd years ago. (And I've heard similar stories of artistic awakening at the hand of Ken Roht from a number of people. I guess that kind of faith is to be expected from a choreographer who hires non-singing non-dancers to populate his kick-ass musicals, but still, it never ceases to amaze me.)

The illustration for Echo's Hammer by Iona Egg is simple and beautiful, and the piece itself was beautifully produced (crappy Internet rendering does it no justice, believe me). The nature of Ken's shows is very much the whole being greater than the sum of its already excellent parts; what I like about the illustration the designer chose for the show is that it isn't just a Photoshop collage of all the representative facets of the show, the art couple, the regular couple, the gigantic sculpture that's built over the course of the play, but one, simple, elegant image.

Sometimes, though, it's hard to find that image. Really, really hard. I don't usually throw down my own work as a good example of anything (except maybe the extraordinary open-mindedness of my clients), but I'm actually proud of my recent design for The Blacks and thought it might be interesting to examine why.

Typically, I'm under the gun with my designs for the Evidence Room. There are a few reasons for that: we usually choose our plays one at a time, which doesn't leave much time to let the ideas bubble up slowly from my deep, messy consciousness; also, I'm spread way too thin and free work (alas) usually ends up taking a way-back seat to commercial work and paid design work.

But we knew we were doing this production of the famous Jean Genet play last year; indeed, I'd been a part of two readings of The Blacks for director Lee Richardson starting two-and-a-half years ago (if the Crohn's wasn't a part of my life, I might even be in this particular show, but alas, the physical demands of this kind of ensemble work are too great for me nowadays). So obviously, I'd had Blacks on the brain for awhile.

Still, the image eluded me. It's a big, sprawling play with big, sprawling themes, including racism and class-ism, which make me distinctly uncomfortable (which, in turn, is exactly why we should be doing this play). But the tenor of the play is pretty gonzo: Jean Genet subtitled it "A Clown Show," after all, and rightly so.

I kept having this vague idea of an all-type treatment, but I wasn't completely sure whether it was because the idea of pickanninny art (that's "Black Americana" to you, boss) made my whitey-white skin crawl or because it was the right tool for the job. But other ideas started floating in, vaudeville and placard, specifically, and the capper came when my usual cohort in design crime at the theater also tossed out the idea of an all-type treatment. And when I mentioned the turn-of-the-century poster idea and he actually had a book in his possession with samples of just such a thing, well, it was Kismet.

Or The Blacks.

Which you should come to see, by the way. Because in the same way that true daring in design is often using less instead of more, addressing a simple, scary idea in theater can make for some gripping fucking drama.

xxx c

THE BLACKS opens May 21 at the Evidence Room 2220 Beverly Blvd (at Alvarado) Los Angeles, CA 90057 Tickets on sale now: (213) 381-7118 evidenceroom.com

Think globally, meme locally

I'm a little behind on my blog reading or I'd have already known that Google Maps (still in beta, but beddy, beddy cool) added Keyhole technology (which, apparently, they've bought, like everything else) with the what's-in-it-for-me result that you can now SATELLITE MAP your house! I know this because I did, in fact, satellite-map my current pad, but there are too many distinguishing landmarks to post it publicly and I'm not going to make the stalking any easier for you guys. Plus, when it comes to current affairs, anyway, I prefer to remain a Woman Of Mystery.

However, I see no problem with taking you all on a trip down memory lane. So trek on over to Flickr and check my memory map of Near North side of Chicago, bumps and all.

Thanks to the ever-wonderful Jason Kottke for pointing out both this righteous new technology and Matt Haughey's groundbreaking (hahaha) memory map.

xxx
c

TECHNORATI TAGS: Flickr, memorymaps, Chicago, maps

Hideously cool

I've been meaning to blog this since I drank the Kool-Aid, but duty in the form of taxes intervened for a bit. Now that I've got the beast fed and watered for another 12 months, I'm free to quit my procrastinating and hip y'all to a few good places to do some of your own. Josh Rubin's Cool Hunting is...well, the coolest. The coolest t-shirts, the coolest sneakers, the coolest design-y treats anywhere, and dude always seems to get there first. As one of the chronically unhip, I have no idea how the other half, okay, the other 0.00001% manages, but I grateful for the kindnessess they bestow on their dorky brethren. I spent half of Friday not doing my taxes to the kick-ass stream on Destined Collective as I debated how I would look with gold-flecked eyes and whether or not I needed the Freitag PowerBook sleeve in fume-stained white or yellow. Caveat surfer...

If you're not up for an extended trip down the rabbit hole (and beware, it be long, twisty and deep, yar), stick to the hot, fugly action over at Go Fug Yourself! It's fun and funny but like Peeps, you can really only take so much at one sitting. Unless we're talking vintage Peeps that you've slit the cellophane on and forgotten as they've ripened to perfect, crunchy hardness.

Mmmm...peeps...

xxx c

TV is my friend

I don't have a copy of Harriet the Spy handy, but to wildly paraphrase Ole Golly, TV is the perfect thing to do while you're doing something else. Since the "else" right now is tax prep and other boring-ish stuff, a little crappy TV really hits the spot.

I'm getting a little weary of the actual "American Idol" contestants (yaaaawn) but the freakish antics of Randy, Paula, Simon and teeny-tiny Ryan Seacrest are proving most entertaining. Even more (and definitely more intentionally) hilarious is the blow-by-blow recap on television without pity. As I told The Boyfriend, I don't know whether to kiss or curse you for sending me the link; just see if you can stop reading last week's 20pp treatise. G'wan...first taste is free.

xxx c

P.S. The fiery trainwreck a.k.a. "Chasing Farrah" on tonight (Nick/10PT). I cannot WAIT to do my taxes...

Getting my house in order

For someone who likes organizing, I'm not a particularly organized person. Oh, sure, I like the fou-fou labeling and 43 Folders and fetish trips to Office Depot aspects of it, but all of that is window dressing belying my real status as Queen of Mt. Perilous, that towering stack of unknown "to-be-handled" paper that I never, ever seem to be able to reverse-traverse my way to the bottom of.

I paid Asshole Tax last month, though, in triplicate (dinged thrice for automatic transfer of funds to cover payments out of checking) which so disgusted me, I made an appointment with my tax preparer for this coming Monday, which for me is the economic equivalent of throwing a party to make oneself clean the house. I have a high tolerance for nagging guilt (half-Jewish + raised Catholic = guilt bonanza) but an extremely low tolerance for wasting money. In fact, the only time I can take it is when I'm really sick, really tired, or on vacation. And, if the pricing on Tylenol in Las Vegas hotel gift shops is any indication, I am not alone in this.

But something has got to give. Despite my well-nurtured (but probably innate) bent for overachievement, I cannot, it is clear, do it all. And I'm of the belief that one can really only commit to three projects really well at any given time. Why three, I don't know. But I've tried four, and I think it goes without saying that I've tried five to fifty-six, and really, three is the limit. Whether or not you have any kind of a life worth living outside of your to-do list, which, God willin' and the creek don't rise, I'll continue to enjoy.

So I'm starting right now. Instead of going to 43 Things and doing it, I'm going to out myself here. My three things. Bam, bam, bam: laserlike focus, until they're done (or done enough) or i've decided they're done (as opposed to defaulting into discarding them). Previously, my Three Things have included such super-fun tasks as...

1. Write screenplay.
2. Find attorney.
3. Get rid of horrible rash on face.

or...

1. Get well.
2. Put on weight.
3. Get off of medication.

But I have never, to my knowledge, made "Get house in order" one of the three things. So here we (gulp) go:

1. Finish pilot presentation for "#1 & #2".
2. Achieve reasonable proficiency on piano and guitar.
3. Get house in order.

I realize that #3, the thing that's kicking "Blog every day" off of the list, is kind of a gigantic, squishy catch-all, especially when compared to (hey!) #1 & #2. I suppose it's just such an intensely personal batch of items that I'm a little uncomfortable sharing it with all 47 of you. But Mt. Perilous is first, to be immediately (and I mean IMMEDIATELY) followed by tax prep. After that, I'll see what I feel is appropriate for public consumption. Who knows? Maybe I'll end up making my whole process public, like Evelyn is so bravely doing.

But what I am definitely doing is giving myself permission to be less than perfect here. As communicatrix, the Blog, serves communicatrix, the Vastly Flawed Human Being, I'll employ it, in service of this task, or as occasional diversion. Just maybe not as often. And maybe not as deeply.

Or who knows? Maybe it'll be deeper and richer and better than ever.

Let's see where the journey takes us.

xxx c