The Weekly Widget and Sassoon: Mancassins!

I have to write a commercial parody for my sketch class so I'm using it as an excuse to sit on my couch and watch lots of bad TV to "research."  I can't turn away from  NeNe on Real Housewives of Atlanta stoned out of her mind on pain meds recovering from a ton of plastic surgery.  HILARIOUS.  NeNe is my fave.  I mean, this is her NOT stoned on pain meds so you can only imagine the joy that is happening right now:

I watch way too much Real Housewives of anywhere.  I'd watch Real Housewives of Topeka if it was on right now.  Too bad Project Runway isn't still on Bravo.  If I were watching that I could at least pretend that I'm learning things about... patterns... and... socks.

andrea: i'm watching old epis of project runway in bed while joe mixes loudly

me: PRO RUN

  word

 andrea: proj ruuuuun

 me: why the hell did they move it off bravo??

  so sad

 andrea: have you ever seen the fashion show?

  which is bravo's desperate attempt to save themselves after selling proj run...

 me: yes

  snooorrrre

 andrea: i have NO IDEA. it has always been their best show

  yes!

  its sooooooo booooooring

  and awful

  and lame

 me: no one can compete with tim gunn and heidi

 andrea: especially not fucking isaac mizrahi

 he's such a caricature of himself its like he's probably not even gay

 me: i know!

 andrea: he probably goes home to his secret wife and kids and chops wood

and why doesn't he ever wear socks?

  what the hell dude?! socks are good

 me: he doesn't?

 andrea: he's always wearing mancassins with no socks

 me: i mean, i don't love socks, but his feet must stiiink

  MANCASSINS!

You can feel it, people feel it, rhythm rhythm

It's my four-year Alive Day today.  I'm celebrating by drinking Amstel Lights and endlessly doing the running man to this:


Go be alive!

Why can't we give love give love give love give love......

I know I'm way behind the rest of the world on finally watching this, but it made my night (or... my 2:30am):


Do you think if I donate money to the homeless he'd buy David Bowie Kermit a Thin White Duke suit and Freddy Mercury Kermit some white pants and a fake mustache??

KIDDING.  Hopefully all money is going to the homeless first... and then to the puppet wardrobe.

The Weekly Widget and Sassoon: let's get some shoes

It's weird how having less income just makes me want to spend more of it.  I could really use these boots:

And this jacket-y cape:

And this turntable:

Oh yeah, and some fancy vodka.

andrea: i have one more purchase today, my booze

 me: yeah i think i'm actually buying some today too

  i earned it this week

 andrea: i'm gonna make jalapeno lime spritzers with tequila

 me: ooooh

 andrea: I just fuckin went nuts

 me: what do you add besides the spicy tequila?

 andrea: and i still want to do mani/pedi this weekend

  and buy espadrilles

  i have problems

 me: no no, you have styel

or.. style

  i don't know what styel is

  maybe a fancy vodka

 i'm going to the bank

  i'm going to call you so we can talk about shopping

 andrea: do

  it

Oh my god, SHOES!

Yay for quitters!

This article about quitting is making me feel a little better about taking the leap from my secure-yet-boring job.  If only I knew what it is I'm supposed to be independently creating.

As a creative person, you’ve been given the ability to build things from nothing by way of hard work over long periods of time. Creation is a deeply personal and rewarding activity, which means that your Work should also be deeply personal and rewarding. If it’s not, then something is amiss.

Creation is entirely dependent on ownership.

Ownership not as a percentage of equity, but as a measure of your ability to change things for the better. To build and grow and fail and learn. This is no small thing. Creativity is the manifestation of lateral thinking, and without tangible results, it becomes stunted. We have to see the fruits of our labors, good or bad, or there’s no motivation to proceed, nothing to learn from to inform the next decision. States of approval and decisions-by-committee and constant compromises are third-party interruptions of an internal dialog that needs to come to its own conclusions.

Read the whole thing here.

(Discovered by way of Kottke.)

The Weekly Widget and Sassoon: dreams and cocaine and egg sandwiches

I just started reading Carl Jung's Man and His Symbols and it's set me off on a kick of trying to dig into my subconscious.  I know, it sounds pretentious, but I had originally bought the book for some religion or sociology class in college and randomly rediscovered it a few days ago.  It's actually fairly easy to read and digest and I'm getting that nerdy rush of excitement that I haven't felt in awhile - LEARNING! (Excuse me while I push my glasses further up my nose and use my inhaler.)

Mr. Jung is teaching me that the symbols planted in our unconscious can arise in many forms other than dream forms, but I think dreams are still great examples of the crazy shit going on in my head.  This one is almost as good as Andrea's:

andrea: oh the day

  i just want to eat an egg sandwich and bake a bread

me: i am actually feeling an urge to write and paint and such, which i haven't felt for a long time

 i had an epic dream last night that i lived in an apartment building that was attached to a bar

  which was awesome until the landlord/bar owner made us sell cocaine from the bar in order to keep our apartments

  i was bad at it and someone tried to give me a ladle instead of money

 andrea: its like an episode of an hbo show

  i almost typed "hobo show"

 me: and i was all "hey! no! you owe me $40!"

  it was cheap coke

 andrea: that's right you big coke dealer, you GET your money

 me: i was bad at it

Maybe it's time to get back in the habit of writing down my dreams every morning.  If anything, it will help me rule out some bad career choices.

I still need a good DJ name

I've been looking for a way to share music on this blog through some way other than embedding YouTube videos.  Ideally, I want to share entire mixes, but I'm old and bumbling when it comes to these things so I haven't quite figured out how to upload my sweet collections and then pack them into a neato zip file for you fine people to download.

Until I school myself, I'm going to play around with 8tracks.  I discovered it through Style Rookie (man, she's been all over my laptop this week) and it seems pretty easy to build a mix and embed it here.  The database of music selections is a little scattered and you can't download anything, but at least you can listen to my hot tunes while you drink whiskey or refinish your cabinets or color-code your Excel file or whatever.

I got lazy for my first mix and followed the suggestion of the site by making an 8tracks "debut" mix, with these very specific eight tracks:

1. A song from 2010 I love
2. A song everyone on 8tracks should hear
3. A song that reminds me of high school
4. A song from the year I was born
5. A song from a band I LOVE
6. A song I can sing along to
7. A song about my city / state
8. A top 40 song I hate to admit I like

Artwork is the 1st result of this image search: my first pet's name (Eponine) + the street I grew up on (Mountain View Road)

That's not to say I didn't spend some intense brain time on these because I sure did.  Painstaking.

Enjoy.  Better mixes soon to come...

Maybe I CAN draw

I recently unearthed an old flash drive and found a couple gems that I can't resist shoving in your faces.

A long long time ago (late summer 2007, perhaps?), I had to go to an all-day payroll system training with my boss.  It was the kind of corporate drudgery that I hope I never again have to go through for any job.  I eventually took over the task of processing the weekly payroll, but it's amazing that I learned anything that day.  Not only did we have a nice beer lunch, but I spent most of the training session making Microsoft Paint drawings:

The first one especially is a nerdy, inside joke to other ADP PayExpert users, but hopefully you can at least appreciate my fine art skills.

Tavi is officially invited to my nerd party

Not long after I confessed my dreams of hosting a hip library party, I discovered by way of Style Rookie that this zine did a feature where a bunch of fashion bloggers dressed up as literary characters.

If these supercool, stylish people are dressing up, a library party can't be that nerdy of an idea, can it?

And on a side note: can it still be called a "zine" if it's well-designed, mass-produced, and costs $10?  I thought zines were what my punk rock friends in high school made when they stole Sharpies and hijacked the photocopier during art class. 

The Weekly Widget and Sassoon: deal with it

I'm fighting a cold and bitter that I still have to go into CAP21 tomorrow.  Someday I'll post about the actual fun stuff that Andrea and I did this weekend, but right now it's grouchy time only.

me: dang theatre people  andrea: ugh. i have no patience left