Dirt Nap

I had to call my health care provider this morning to update some information and was put on hold.

Their "on hold" song choice was "You Can't always Get What You Want" by the Rolling Stones, which is not a bad song, but it was the song played during the opening FUNERAL scene in "The Big Chill."

I really don't want to be thinking about funerals and death while on hold with my doctor. I'm in perfect health, although it still mildly creeped me out.

New Year's Eve in Suburbia

Threw a New Year's Eve party again this year. The good thing about throwing parties is that at the end of the night, you're already home!

Harris and his beverage...


Something must have been funny to the left...


Chris, on his way to get another drink...


Dolemite, wearing his party sweater...


Myk, passed out...

what?

On friday I took my Father to get a tattoo, which came out really well. It's beautiful. But this isn't about the tattoo, it's about the loons that wander in and out of the shop all day. The shop is in an odd little part of town and there are always guys with varying degrees of sketchiness roaming around.

I'm sitting there chatting with Paul and then I notice some guy shuffling around.
His shirt read "WILL WORK FOR RABIES."

I don't have any idea what that means.

Meat!

I love these paintings....




visit http://www.mikegeno.com to see more. He paints other things too, but these meat portraits are really really neat.

Really good movie, really bad poster...

"No Country for Old Men" was a really really good movie. I've mentioned before that I love a good movie poster. Too bad the poster for this fantastic movie is so horrid....

It's so obvious. See, it's a chase/pursuit film. The poster stinks. There's no need for the looming face of "Anton Chigurh" to appear anywhere on the poster. We get it. That guy is chasing that other guy. Jesus. I think it would be more powerful if he wasn't revealed until you saw the movie. When "Seven" first came out in theaters, no one revealed the killer in any ad or review prior to the movie's release and it was a really neat element to the film. "Anton Chigurh" is such a powerful and creepy character that it would have been great to bring that little element of surprise to him as well.

Here, I fixed it...


You still get the idea that it's a pursuit film, but the "so-obvious-it's-not-at-all-symbolic" element is removed.

Why so serious?

I love this one-sheet for "The Dark Knight."


It's so creepy and stark. The design of everything related to this movie is fantastic. I love a good movie poster.

Did I mention how excited I am for this movie? Geek!

The Winter is winning...

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Wipe-Out!

Yesterday I had my first Three Stooges moment of this year's ice and snow season.

It happened as I was getting out of my car at the supermarket. I opened the door and stepped out. My feet instantly went out from under me like those fawns that are first learning how to walk. My knees went smashing into the icy cement, and now my kneecaps look like two shiny purple plums. Also, for some reason I tried to break my fall with the TOP of my left hand. I ended up splitting my knuckle open on the ground. AH!

The funny thing is, I was going to the supermarket to pick up some rock salt for my own icy driveway.

As I was checking out, I asked the cashier if she had any papertowels or something so I could clean up my knuckle a bit. She asked what happened and I told her. The manager was called over and craziness enveloped me... "Where did it happen? Did you hurt your neck? Don't Sue. Are you sure you're ok? Please don't sue. Show me where in the parking lot you were. Don't sue. Please don't sue."

Obviously, I'm not suing. The thought never even entered my mind. I simply wanted to clean up my hand so I didn't bleed all over my steering wheel!

Snow me.

Yesterday was the first substantial snowfall of the Winter. When I got home from work I had to shovel my driveway before I could park. Normally when it snows, I try and gun it up and over the snowbank into my driveway. There was just too much snow for that to work. I tried anyway, but stopped once I smelled the burning rubber of my tires spinning pointlessly in the snow.

The sidewalk in front of my house is home to a fire hydrant, so the first thing I do when shoveling is dig out around the hydrant and make a path from it to the street. Safety first!

Anyway, I'm digging around out there and my jerk neighbor comes outside and starts up his snowblower. He then notices me shoveling, stops his snowblower and goes back inside. What the hell. I didn't ask him to snowblow my sidewalk or anything, and I don't expect him to. Is he really that spineless that he feels guilty for not offering help and therefore has to hide inside his damn house until I'm out of site?

All my other neighbors were helping each other dig cars out, salting sidewalks, taking turns sledding down the street and generally having a good time, despite the winter mess. It was great.

I finished shoveling and went inside my house. As soon as my front door slammed shut, that tool came back outside, started up his snowblower and started his driveway.

What a jerk.

POW! KA-BANG!

I'm so geekishly excited for this movie. I love the darkness of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies. Much much better than the cartoony nosedive the other Batman movies took.

Also, the viral marketing campaign for this movie is insane... clown cakes with cell phones in them, Gotham newspapers handed out in airports, skywriters, odd phone calls, not to mention several websites for Gotham City businesses.

Books and more books...

This weekend I went to the New England Mobile Book Fair with Myk and Allison. I hadn't been there before, and it was overwhelming. The place is huge and choking with books. A lot of the shelves have books BEHIND other books. Everything is discounted, which is great for cheapskates like myself. They have current titles there as well as lots of great out of print stuff. I saw a neat Robert Crumb collection sitting in the stacks, but I didn't adopt it because I already had a half dozen books in my arms.

It's not really all that organized, which means you have to hunt around to find things, but that just makes it all the more interesting. I could have spent several hours there, but forced myself to leave lest I bought too much.

I really can't express how amazing this place is. It really just needs to be visited to understand.

Hatch Show Print

Last night I saw Jim Sherraden speak about the history of Hatch Show Print. I've been a fan of the work they do over there in Nashville since college, so it was fantastic to finally meet the man who helped bring Hatch Show Print back to life.

I really really think that what Jim is doing is important, not only for design, but history in general. He's not allowing any new typefaces to be brought into the shop. So, jobs that are printed there now use the same type blocks that were used back in the early 1900s. Those letter sets in the trays have so much history behind them...posters for political campaigns, traveling variety shows, pharmacy ads, posters for musical acts coming to town...it's amazing.

After the lecture, there are print re-strikes for sale. I am the proud owner of these two prints...


Great, two more prints to add to my pile of things I need to have framed!

Here's a nice video about Hatch Show Print, snatched from youtube...


Here is a short little Video of Jim working in the shop. Again snagged this off youtube...

Extra! Extra!

An article was recently published about Bag Lunch. Visit the Bag Lunch Press blog to read it...
http://baglunchpress.blogspot.com

65 years ago today...

November 28, 1942 was the day of the Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston.


I've never seen this sidewalk plaque located on Piedmont, but I'm going to make a point of hunting it down next time I'm in the general area...


A good book regarding this tragedy is "Fire in the Grove: The Cocoanut Grove Tragedy and it's Aftermath," by John C. Esposito. Uh, It might be the ONLY book about Cocoanut Grove, but it's quite good none-the-less.

The bastard in the basement.

I love owning my house but, there is one aspect of home-owning that I hate. I hate dealing with my heating system. I have a boiler in my basement that is at least 75 years old. It's the bane of my existence during cold weather.

I'm constantly running down to the basement to check on it, swearing under my breath as I approach the monster. I'm constantly touching radiators to make sure they are warm. I question the reading on my thermostat. The father in "The Christmas Story's" battle with his boiler is no longer funny to me. Now I relate and sympathize. AHHH!

Also, the bastard in my basement is covered in a thick layer of asbestos, so removing it in order to replace it will be an expensive hassle.

Luckily, my friend is dating a swell guy who deals with this crap for a living, so he fixes and tunes up everything for me for free. Otherwise, I'd already be out several hundred dollars this year. (Actually not free, I pay him in dinners.)

I'm going to switch to natural gas in the next few years, and I hope the damn boiler lasts until then.

Damn it.

Sack o' fun

I wish they still made this product. It's so weird...

I can actually hear you now.

Went to a show this weekend, which is nothing of note because I go to a lot of shows. But this was different... I could hear the vocals! It was amazing!

Normally at shows, the drums get mic-ed and end up too high in the mix, thus drowning out everything else that's on stage. It's maddening.

Jim Heath wrote an article called "How Sound Men are Ruining Rock 'n Roll", about the drum problem at shows, it's quite good and explains the drum problem better than I can...
http://www.reverendhortonheat.com/rev_updates/07_01_19.php

The sound guys at Toad's Place this weekend did a really great job. It was one of the best shows I've ever been to, in terms of sound quality. I feel like I should send them a muffin basket or something... it was that impressive.

(Oddly, this show I went to this weekend with the fantastic sound quality, was Jim's band, The Reverend Horton Heat.)

It's a White Oleander

On Saturday, I took my sister to get a tattoo from "my" tattoo artist...

Oil oil everywhere, and not a drop to spare.

I filled up my heating oil tank for the first time this year. Heating oil is so expensive that I nearly vomited when I opened the bill.
Last year I made it through the entire Winter on a little over one tank, and I'm hoping to do that again this year.

Heating oil burns about one gallon an hour, which adds up to about $3.17 an hour right now. The small space heater that heats up my living room quite nicely runs at about 13 cents an hour. Soooo, I'll be keeping my boiler temperature quite low and running the space heater a bit more. What can I say? I'm cheap!

So if you plan on stopping by for a visit, bring a sweater! And a hat! A scarf would probably be a good idea as well!

cherry!

I normally don't post too much bag lunch related stuff on this blog, but this is worth mentioning...

Bag Lunch has donated some limited edition balms to help a great gal out with her medical bills. Visit the link below to buy one...

http://cherrybrat.livejournal.com/231554.html

Go buy one! Medical bills are expensive!