Sketchblog Stretchblog
So I haven’t really been posting much and have gotten on a bit of a working spree and I really want to join the blogosphere again. To start, if you’re in New York at all, you should go to one of Bard College’s Senior Screenings. Okay, okay, maybe only if you’re in the area. But regardless, I’ve been playing (working?) a lot with Illustrator recently, and it’s been great.
I’m also in a Drawing class and I think I should post some work here – I’ve been debating on whether to open a separate sketch blog but why not just everyone share their stuff here, right?
So I’ll be posting some work I’ve done in that class VERY SOON.
(I’m also partially writing this so I’ll have incentive to FINISH some of said work… oy…)
Weekly dose of eye candy
So there are so many things dashing up into my delicious account that I’m afraid I’ll forget all of it, so I think I’ll share some of that here. Inspired by Swiss Miss’ quote:
“Distractivity is what you’re doing when
you get distracted from what you should be
doing. It’s generally what you want to do,
often what you need to do, and arguably,
what you’ll do best.”
MEG HUNT : ILLUSTRATION
She’s wonderful. Reminds me of the wood cut quality of Ghost Shrimp / Dan Smith. Beautiful and colorful and alive and modern. via Swiss Miss.
DO YOU EAT CRAP?
via Shape + Colour.
via Swiss Miss.
Beautiful delicious drinks, all the time.
SPIKE JONZE : I’M HERE
Spike Jonze came to Bard last Wednesday for a Q&A. They also screened his new short.
DIRTY PROJECTORS : STILLNESS IS THE MOVE
A great little pop ditty and handmaid’s tale execution. And llamas. via Shape + Colour.
All Too Frequent Flying
1 — Flights seem a lot shorter when your seat can turn into a bed.
2 — Airplane blankets really cannot warm you enough when
you’re sleeping on the floor of the airport.3 — When you’re in business class, suddenly everyone wants
to serve you mojitos and extra desserts.
So you’ve probably already guessed that I like the rest of New York was stranded last week at the mercy of a Grinch blizzard.
After sitting on the tarmac for 4 hours my apologetic British Airways captain canceled our JFK – Heathrow flight at 3:30 am.
Because by the time they’d scraped off the ice, sprayed anti-freeze on the wings, cleared the path with tractors, and slowly inched out to the runway, the surface of the plane had already frozen over making it dangerous (forget illegal) to fly.
Filing back out into Terminal 7 with hundreds of other disgruntled & crusty-eyed passengers we were further informed that – because British Airways holds no apparent powers over weather – they would not be providing us hotel accommodations for the night – or any guarantee that we would be able to rebook a flight by Christmas.
Also, there are no vehicles going in or out of JFK.
Essentially it was like a middle school lock-in except no one had sleeping bags,
Cheetos, glow-in-the-dark paint, or any hope of getting home by Christmas.
Yet there was much middle school aged angst spat at the gate attendants.
There was nothing then to be done but to find a patch of floor that satisfied a mathematical equation involving the variables of carpeting, relative seclusion, and proximity from snorers / pervasive smooth Christmas intercom music.
Here we slept from 4 am to 6:45 am, waiting for the 1-800 number everyone stranded would call when the lines opened at 7 am in hopes of vocally elbowing their way onto a not-already-packed Christmas plane. Somehow, magically, after less than 10 minutes of Brazillian Christmas blues hold music, a sympathetic British woman answered my call and booked us two seats to Shanghai on the 22nd – landing on the morning of the 24th, just in time for Christmas.
There was one problem, she said.
“You’re going to fly Business Class.”
What a bummer.
En lieu of our bags still being trapped at the airport, I spent the next few days bumming around Union Square. My sister spent them on battling her suffocating tonsils, doses of steroids, and blood tests that confirmed her case of mononucleosis and explained her debilitating narcolepsy.
Too bad that in rationing orange juice at JFK I’d already shared a bottle with her.
The flight to London a few days later cheered us up though, especially after a jaunt on a Queens subway. In fact, we even had enough time to stuff ourselves full of Sun Chips and Oreos at the British Airways Galleries Lounge.
I quickly took advantage of the open bar.
Our plane itself was ridiculous. 
We were scared at the gate because no one was there.
We checked our tickets – surely this was the right place?
The lady let us in and when we saw the plane we understood.
There were no people because the plane only seated 8 rows.
I then proceeded to consume a champagne cocktail, swab some complimentary lavender night cream under my eyes, and listen to the dulcet tones of the purser describe in what was barely a whisper that tonight’s Sleeper Service Club World flight would be serving a night cap and one of the crew would be meeting with us individually to scribe our menu decisions for this and for our breakfast options.
The tomato mozzarella panini with wild berry trifle was almost sexual.
I didn’t bother with breakfast. My seat-turned-flying-bed was too comfortable.
Too bad we had to dash out of London City Airport before we could take advantage of our complimentary facials and finagle our way through the early morning London Underground maze to Heathrow on the other side.
Now that we were pros at Business Class, our next flight seemed unremarkable and passed just as quickly.
And how good it is to be home.
* * * * *
Except the next day we flew out to Phuket, Thailand,
and I’m currently enjoying a penthouse villa with a
pool on the roof, and that’s pretty good too.
How to celebrate a nuclear bomb
WITH A SWEET ASS CAKE, OF COURSE.
Studying for my History of Decorative Arts final I remembered this slide from one of the lectures. The caption according to LIFE’s Terribly Beauty : Atomic Bomb Test slide show -
U.S. Navy Vice Admiral William H. P. Blandy, his wife, and Rear Admiral Frank J. Lowry cut a cake made in the shape of a mushroom cloud at a reception for Operation Crossroads, November 6, 1946.
More from LIFE’s online slide show:
a haunting house lit up from atomic glare test dummies dressed in 50′s housewife garb waiting for the blast.
Cussing Fantastic
I was ambivalent about Fantastic Mr. Fox – Wes Anderson, a star cast, a classic children’s book, beautiful stop-motion (remember Corpse Bride?)
After squeezing into a Black Friday theater on Cape Cod this last week among a horde of moviegoers including tweenage Twilight fans, Fantastic Mr. Fox was a delightful surprise. It was like chocolate éclair after chocolate éclair of off-beat visual fantasy and dry wit.
Let’s count on our fingers:
1) FANTASTICALLY ANIMATED The movie was a visual feast. I just downloaded the HD trailer and pausing at any part is like stopping to look at a beautiful illustration. Most of all I think their palette was just spot on: rabid oranges, deep navies, glittering silver. In one shot a giant yellow moon looms two-dimensionally in the corner of a deep night sky like a hunk of cheese. The paper grass sways in the wind. The foxes’ furs bristle when they talk. A chemistry experiment gone awry exudes a mushroom cloud of cotton balls. The feel of this world is crafty and home-spun, made of cloth instead of the clay and wax of Tim Burton’s animated “epics”. In fact, the same crew that made the blip of the Corpse Bride also animated Fantastic Mr. Fox. Here’s some behind the scenes mystery magic.
2) FANTASTICALLY WITTY There is so much cussing in this film. Really. Perhaps the most cunning way they made this film adult is to shoot the adult humor right over the kiddies’ heads. Every curse word you could name is replaced with “cuss” so you get wonderful tid bits of furry woodland creatures uttering, “what the cuss?”, “cuss you,” “holy cuss!”, and “this place is a complete cluster cuss.” A rarity, the joke only gets better with repetition. Of course, our dearest foxes also drink and smoke copiously (many of their missions are based solely around acquiring hard cider), weapons are wielded, and there’s even a beatnik sewer rat on an acid trip (voiced by Willem Dafoe, who else?)
3) FANTASTICALLY “DIFFERENT” Ash, the angsty, preteen, approval-seeking son of Mr. Fox voiced by Jason Schwartzman wears a towel as a cape and a gym sock as a bandit mask. The badger lawyer dresses like a snappy Mad Men exec. They wear corduroy jackets and ride around on a vintage motorbike complete with sidecar. After civilly reading the morning paper (in which Mr. Fox tends a column), they snarl and ravage the French toast into their mouths, chunks flying left and right.
INTERESTING FACTLETTES:
Wes Anderson directed the animation crew by acting out the scenes and sending videos of them via iPhone. The recording of the actors was done outside instead of in a studio: in a forest, a stable, an attic, even underground. The soundtrack is awesome.