First of all, thanks to all who tried the challenge. Whether you spent hours and hours trying to improve your sketching or simply made a few attempts, I’m sure we’d all love to see what you got. Post in the comments.
I watched about 20 YouTube sketching tutorials and tried to follow what they were saying. But, I didn’t know what they were saying. Blending stump? Cast vs occlusion shadow? Values? Contour shading? I went down rabbit hole after rabbit hole trying to figure stuff out. I was Alice if she had nuts and hit them on every protruding root.
Can you really learn how to be good at sketching in a month? Not when the extent of your artistic talent is drawing dicks on your older sister’s Brownie troupe group photo. I did learn some things that couldn’t possibly be useful in any other aspect of life:
1. There are shadows everywhere. There are shadows inside shadows and the shapes they make are just as real as the objects and light creating them.
2. Contrast is how you make things pop. If you don’t go bold in order to find the edges of possibility, you won’t be able to create subtleties.
3. Sometimes you gotta draw a line no matter how shaky your hand is and live with it. The next time you’ll be more careful with your construction lines.
4. Relax. Stress can cause of spaz hand. It may take a while to discover a method to relax that works for you. Keep trying because eventually you’ll be able to slip into that frame of mind easily.
5. People have interesting faces. If you think a person is ugly, try drawing his or her face. You’ll find at least one point that is intriguing if not beautiful.
My final work sketches. Not going to quit my day job.
I didn’t have the numbers for one side of the colon. But based on the proliferation of newsgroups, online critique groups, publishing forums in 2008, and the number of such denizens all trying to get published, I could guess. And it was huge.
Then there was me. 1 : x6214
Mormons aren’t a cult. I know because I’m a Mormon and I was in a cult. The cult had me far more brainwashed than Mormonism ever did or ever will.
Maybe it’s just me, but I see a lot of green in that cover.
I was 15 when I first found out how to go about querying and creating proposals. I even did that a couple of times for Reader’s Digest. I was rejected. It hurt, not because I was rejected, but because I was running out of time. A favorite author’s bio said she was 18 when she first published a book, which she wrote “on a whim”. If I hadn’t done it by 18, well … (Narrator: That was a lie. She was 25.)
I was eating Harlequin Presents romances for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I knew the formula. I knew the most popular tropes. I had plenty of ideas. I didn’t have such words in my vocabulary as “formula” and “trope.” It was a gut feeling, the natural rhythm of the way a good story is paced.
You can blame her for my May-December fetish.
I never did get a Harlequin Presents romance written. By the time I could actually write a book, I liked Harlequin Superromances better and I trained myself to write within that word count (90,000 to 120,000). It felt more complete than the 55,000 words of Presents. Well, of course it would. It was double.
So here’s what happened:
In 1989, I wrote my under-the-bed novel. The apprentice novel. The horrible one. The one you never want to see the light of day. It’s still out there floating around, I think.
In 1990, I wrote my next novel. It was marginally better.
In 1991, I wrote my third. It was good. I sent it to a publisher that had launched the careers of a bunch of NYT bestsellers. I got The Call. You know, the one where the editor calls you and congratulates you. Then … nothing. The publisher went out of business. Why? The parent company had bought it for a tax write-off and it made money. So bye bye Kismet. Yes, that was the publisher’s name. Kismet.
If you are a good writer, you WILL get published. Don’t give up.
In 1993, I wrote my fourth. It was really good. I sent it to Harlequin and got The Call. Sorta. The editor said, “I love this book. However, I bought one fairly similar last month that is not as good as yours, but I can’t break that contract and I can’t sell this to my editorial board. Send me something else. NAO.” I gave a brief rundown of book #3 and she passed.
That really is Win 3.x green rivets background.
So I got an agent with book 4. That relationship ended in disaster after she read book 2 and told me to get a therapist. (Narrator: That book was revamped a few times, published, and remains the fan favorite.)
In 1993, I started writing my pirate novel. I knew what I wanted to do. I also knew I didn’t have the chops to do it, so I fiddled with it for years.
If you are a good writer, you WILL get published. Don’t give up.
In 1993, I wrote book 5. It also got me The Call. An editor at Harlequin called me up on a Saturday morning and said, “I want to read the rest of this book. Overnight it.” She called me Tuesday evening and said, “I love this book—except the ending.” Me, having been trained to be a good, dutiful, well-behaved author, said, “I’ll rewrite it!” She sighed and said, “No, that would ruin the book. It has the ending it needs. I just can’t sell it.”
If you are a good writer, you WILL get published. Don’t give up.
In 1995, I was a senior in college in the creative writing program. My professor was the faculty supervisor of the uni’s lit rag. After my first assignment, he told me I had an A in the class and I could just skip the rest of the semester because he couldn’t teach me anything. But he would count it a personal favor if I stayed and did the assignments because he loved my work. That class was 8:00 a.m. after I’d spent the night working a graveyard shift at a gas station. You better believe I went to class.
I wrote a story. He was disappointed in me for giving it a “romance novel ending,” but otherwise he loved it. My senior advisor for my capstone project happened to be a Latin teacher (no idea why) who was absolutely fascinated by my creative process. She said, “I don’t care what you do, just tell me why and how you do it.” Okay, so I expanded on my story that had caught my attention.
It so happened that I was in Shakespeare 480 class or whatever really high number and we were studying Hamlet. I decided that somehow my religious allegory for the atonement (with a romance-novel ending) and Hamlet should go together like bread and butter. It didn’t. I couldn’t make that plot work.
Oh, bullshit. Good generals know when to retreat.
If you are a good writer, you WILL get published. Don’t give up.
So I was bored at my graveyard job and in class and wrote book 6. That one got me a literary agent who loved it, but could not sell it, either.
If you are a good writer, you WILL get published. Don’t give up.
Let us stop a moment and draw the obvious conclusion.
It was about now I started messing with making my own galleys of book 6. I was never going to self-publish, oh NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Only bad writers self-published. It was the kiss of death. Even if you really were good, a publisher would never publish someone who had published himself. Still … that galley looked awfully pretty. I hesitantly called up a printer as if I were calling up a gigolo to take my virginity for me, knowing I was going to go to hell for it when I died, and said,
“Yeah, um … how … much … would this cost?”
“Twenty grand.”
“Bye.”
So even my attempt at committing the ultimate sin was unavailable to me.
I gave up. I had enough near-misses to let me know I wasn’t a bad writer, but clearly not good enough and I obviously didn’t know how to hit the Harlequin bullseye after all.
No, I didn’t give up trying to get published. I gave up writing altogether.
Fast forward to 2004. I’ve gotten married. I’ve had a baby. I’ve gotten a work-at-home profession as a medical transcriptionist and was doing okay. I’ve got no creative outlet. I refuse to write and only occasionally fiddled with my pirate novel, and once in a while, I tried to make that Hamlet-atonement plot that wouldn’t work, work.
I wasn’t entirely stupid. I still had them on floppies.
My husband had read one of my books and liked it. He had urged me to query it again. I had. I had gotten swiftly and roundly rejected. Apparently, it hadn’t stood the test of time. In anger, I had burned all my manuscripts in the barbecue grill.
I’ve still got no creative outlet except … counted cross stitch. I love it. (Narrator: Loved. She killed that by making it into a business.) There were lots of things I wanted to stitch, so I learned how to convert them into patterns. I then went online and found out people who were “superstars” in the cross stitch pattern world had started out doing their own and just pitched them to shops and then got picked up by distributors. Self-publishing your patterns was the mark of a professional. So I did that. Turns out, what I like and what a lot of other people like aren’t the same, and the few who did like my patterns weren’t enough to pay the bills.
All those bubbles in my head…
That fizzled after a few years of tinkering with it. I was okay with that. I’d had another baby. I was working my ass off at medical transcription because I had moved into a house that we should never have bought and had started having expensive problems. (Narrator: Two weeks after moving in, the back patio sliding door fell out. Just … fell out. That was a very cold winter.)
Fast forward to 2007.
One night, after having invoiced my contractor for my medical transcription work (it was a lot of money), I was very depressed. Not even my newly-doubled-dose of antidepressants was helping. (Narrator: Sometimes you don’t have depression. Sometimes your life just sucks.) As one gets older, one should be making more money for less effort. Otherwise, you’re not life-ing right. I sent my bill and sat there in the dark and looked at my computer. I opened up book 6 and I read my own work for the first time in years.
It was like somebody else had written it, and it was good. Like, really good. I went to bed even more depressed and discouraged and asking, “Why did I give up on myself?”
I woke up the next morning with the solution to my now-decade-old plot problem and I got to writing.
Gather round children. I’ll tell you a story from back at the turn o the century. I happened upon this while I was searching through old belongings, a tale I had done forgot I told…
I turned fiddy this month and was thinking about things that I’ve always avoided because I sucked at them. Sketching is a huge weak point, so I decided to try and improve as much as I can over a month. I’m not going to classes or anything. I’m just going to watch YouTube videos and visit other websites to see what tips I can add to my arsenal. Why not join me? Saying you can’t because you are terrible is not much of an excuse given it’s not about how good you are. It’s about what you can pick up in your free time over a month.
Guidelines:
Choose a pic or something real that you can sketch again in a month.
Spend no more than 45 minutes sketching it as well as you can.
Use online or other resources to improve.
Do the same sketching again in a month. (30 days as of this posting)
The only thing I ask is that you post your first attempt in the comments here. Even if the thread is dead and you’re a couple days or weeks late, plop it in the comments. When the month is up, we’ll do another write up and have you post your pictures in the comments. Even better, if you can send your pics to TPTB before the posting, we can put your pics up top for all to see without clicking.
Here are some of my attempts for the first sketch. Hope I get better, cuz ugh…. A mouth, nose and eye.
The movie Labyrinth (1986) is a tale of an adolescent girl’s quest/hero’s journey/sexual awakening. It’s a fantasy that features muppets good and slightly evil and everything in between. It also features David Bowie in very tight tights with his cod on obvious display. You can’t miss it—and that’s the point.
But why is it the point?
THE SETUP:
Jareth the Goblin King and his co-star. No, not the muppet.
Our intrepid heroine, Sarah, is a girl whose mother ran out on the family to become an actress and from what tidbits one can glean, a relatively successful stage actress. Sarah is not resentful. In fact, she finds this wistfully romantic. Sarah has a baby brother by her not-very-new stepmother, whose treatment of Sarah is (per Sarah’s point of view) borderline abusive because she asks Sarah to babysit while Dad and she go out on a date. The viewer doesn’t get much but that the stepmother would not ask Sarah to babysit if she had a date or parties to go to and that she is frustrated that Sarah doesn’t want friends nor does she want to date or go out. Sarah just wants to live in her own fantasy world alone, cosplaying and dreaming about her mother’s glamorous life, which distresses the stepmother to no end.
Stepmom: She treats me like the wicked stepmother in a fairy story no matter what I do.
We get the point: Sarah’s living in her head in the starring role of Cinderella and loving every second of her victimhood. But she’s a teenager whose mother ran out on her, so that is to be expected.
So Dad and Wicked Stepmother leave and there’s poor Sarah wandering around the house in a romantic and fanciful poet’s shirt and vest, in the dark while it’s storming outside, bemoaning her fate and talking to the baby rather hatefully, yet handling him gently.
Sarah: I wish the Goblin King would come take you away.
And … cue baby vanishing. An owl thumps at the window and (because she is very smart), she opens it.
Then there stands a man, a tall man with freakish hair in RenFest garb. He’s the personification of desire, and Sarah is breathless with fear and attraction. He is Jareth the Goblin King, and she knows this instantly. She begs for her brother back. He plays with his balls to demonstrate his magic while giving her a challenge/quest/dare. If she can complete the labyrinth that surrounds the Goblin City in 13 hours, he’ll give her her baby brother back, but if she doesn’t, he will turn the baby into a goblin forever.
And off she goes on her quest like a good little hero/ine on his/her journey, encountering all sorts of obstacles along the way, the main one being her hubris that she can defeat the Goblin King
“Don’t go that way … If she’d’a gone that way, she’d’a gone straight to the castle.”
On the surface, the movie is a morality tale and is very explicit about it: Don’t take anything for granted and stop it with the hubris. A teenage girl watching this movie will get that. She will be breathless at the idea of Jareth the Goblin King taking an interest in a lowly teenage girl, but she won’t parse that. Why do that when she has a powerful, magical man’s attention and his lust (which is in plain sight), tempting her to the pleasures of hedonism? And he blatantly uses his cod to tempt her with his presence, his devotion to her, his love and desire for her as a woman.
Jareth: I ask for so little. Just let me rule you and you can have everything you want. … Fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave.
THE DECONSTRUCTION:
The story is a constant struggle between Sarah’s sense of adult responsibility, her burgeoning womanhood/sexuality, and her girlish dreams, desires, and fantasies.
The struggle comes down to two pivotal moments in the movie:
She falls in the darkness, eventually winding up on her own bed, which is frilly. Was it a dream? Was it real? Her bedroom is full of stuffed animals (that look remarkably like her muppet friends), RenFest clothing, a shelf full of elaborately bound fairy tales, a vanity on which there’s makeup and knickknacks. Every single thing in her room is a three-dimensional representation of everything going on in the fantasy. Most importantly (which you will miss in a blink), there is a newspaper clipping of a review of her mother’s play. It’s a picture of her mother standing with her costar, who happens to look exactly like Jareth the Goblin King.
The Goblin King is in the details.
She sits confused at her vanity while a character shoves all her old comforts at her and reminds her of how nice it is to be in her comfy warm and welcoming and fantastical bedroom, tempting her to stay a little girl. She’s painfully disoriented, but it’s her own room, her childhood in 108 square feet, her shelter from the world of adulthood, adult decisions, adult problems.
On the edge of her mind, though, is a purpose, a purpose she doesn’t remember until she sees one of her fairy tales and remembers. On she forges. You know she successfully retrieves her baby brother because that’s how the quest works. Humans like that.
In the last scene, she’s back in her house, the baby’s in the crib asleep, she goes to her room and starts putting away her childish things, Dad and Stepmom come home. The stuffed animals come to life and regretfully must leave, but they reassure her that should she ever need them …
They don’t finish the thought, but she dances with them while an owl (femininity, fertility, darkness) sits on a tree limb outside her window and watches them before flying away.
For now, she is firmly on the edge of girlhood and womanhood, having rejected both—for the time being—but knowing that it’s inevitable and she will leave her friends behind.
THE CIRCUMSTANCE:
I was not aware of this movie when it was released in June of 1986. My parents had bought a house on the opposite corner of the metro area from where I grew up and I was busy moving us. I and our trusty 1.5-ton passenger van moved that house almost all by ourselves. I was also getting ready to go to BYU. I would stay in the new house for a grand 2.5 weeks before I left for another adventure.
I was leaving my frilly childhood bedroom and stuffed animals behind and in a month, I would be dropped off at a dorm 1200 miles away from home watching my parents drive away and going back to my dorm room alone. But what was home? A new bedroom in a new house in a suburban neighborhood like the one I’d always fantasized about? Naw. “Home” was no more home than the dorm room was. My home was gone forever and we all know you can’t go home again.
The movie didn’t come to the BYU on-campus theater until late spring or early fall semester 1987. I don’t remember. I went with this gorgeous, funny, hyperactive Korean dude I was majorly crushing on. He couldn’t keep his leg still, bouncing it all the way through.
But the movie worked its spell no matter how irritated and distracted I was.
THE BREAKDOWN:
Fast forward 20 years. I found the online romance novel scene. Self-proclaimed feminists and budding SWJs were out pounding the internet pavement preaching the gospel of the Feminist Agenda of Romance Novels. Why? Because they liked them, they felt guilty about liking them with some of their problematic themes, and wanted mainstream feminism to stop sneering at what they liked. It was simultaneous defiance and begging for approval.
They didn’t get it. I was a romance-novel veteran and they hated the early ones where the heroine was brave and gutsy and involved herself in all sorts of feats of derring-do. They were bad. “This isn’t your mother’s rapetastic romance novel,” they would screech, not actually knowing what they were talking about. The romance novels of yesteryear had kick-ass heroines and more explicit sex than the namby-pamby stuff of the aughts.
A major participant in Romancelandia was a women’s studies professor. Her husband was Jewish. She was Catholic, but converted to marry him. He got a job at some rinky-dink college and she was a spousal hire (“You don’t get me if you don’t hire my wife”). Instant tenure. Hot stuff in her field (ORLY).
She had heard much wistful sighing over Labyrinth in Romancelandia so she sat down with her two tween sons and watched it. Like a good feminist and women’s studies professor, she broke it down to three things: David Bowie’s cod, phallic imagery everywhere, men (Henson and Lucas) telling such a stupid tale to fulfill their own perverse desires for a young girl. She thought it was hilarious and ridiculous, a sausagefest (with one sausage).
She, whose respected romance novel blog* with thrice-weekly posts would routinely get close to a hundred comments (impressive even in those days, for a one-chick blog), garnered a few vague “Oh, that’s an interesting take” type comments.
It sat there. For a week. Getting nothing more. She let it sit for a few more days. Nothing.
Finally, I said, “I really don’t understand how you missed the entire point of the movie.” And went on to summarize the above but far more briefly and only so I wouldn’t come off as totally unhinged with rage at her stupidity.
Because I was.
How in the world does a feminist women’s study professor—who “loves” romance novels (but only the politically virtuous ones) (zzzzzzz) and screams to her disdainful colleagues how empowering and feminist they are—miss this?
I stopped just shy of telling her she was a stupid traditional housewife who converted to a man’s religion to marry him, followed him to his profession, got a job on his coattails, and promptly had two children. Betty Friedan would be ashamed. There was nothing “feminist” about her, and then she missed this.
She gave me a polite, “That’s an interesting take,” but the floodgates opened. And the comments section exploded with other gently made points about Labyrinth’s importance to both feminism and the hero’s journey and the fact that a girl was on the hero’s journey (quite groundbreaking for 1986) and a girl’s sexual awakening—and that Jim Henson and George Lucas knew more about it than any other filmmakers at the time (and maybe still) and portrayed it accurately. Details and symbolism got pulled out left and right.
Dr. Hot Stuff: “Well, maybe I should watch it again.”
Ya think?
She lost a lot of credibility in Romancelandia that day, credibility that was, inexplicably, very important to her.
It’s your ol’ buddy, Sir Digby, once again. If you remember Part 1, I was about to have a delicious lunch, when I realized I still had a t-shirt with a certain grinning politician that needed to be introduced to the world at large. As I was working on getting the finishing touches of my last article complete, I had a lot on my mind: Where would I go to showcase Gropin’ Joe? How would my first article be received, and, when? Did I just sleep funny, or is that a more serious pain?
Well, my article went up, and I was very happy with the reception (TYVM). I was actually doing work-related training on the day it posted, so, I wasn’t on my regular night shift. I’m not much of a sunlight person, so, I was a bit out of sorts that day, but, very glad it went up in the evening time. I found out that participating in comments about your own article is…strange. Even more so when there are Dem presidential debates going on. Ultimately, it was all good. Although, I will say, some of you seemed like you were hoping I got my ass kicked. In a purple H&H shirt. E tu, glibe?
As it turns out, my schedule that week allowed me to take care of some business that I was not only dreading, but, that I knew would take forty forevers. You guessed it: I had to renew my driver license. If you recall, in my first article, I made a side joke about not going to the DMV in the H&H shirt. Doing so never really crossed my mind, even though I knew I had to do the renewal dance.
I wanted a pic of carousel from Logan’s Run.
Much like Carousel, I wasn’t sure that I would come out of my trip to the DMV office alive. OK; that’s, maybe, a little heavy-handed. However, my previous experiences cause me to view a trip there like I would a trip to the unemployment office—the dregs of humanity, along with some unfortunate souls (like me) having to wade through the dark sea of government bureaucracy. I’ve spoken of my love for my Texas on several occasions. I also warn that, as much of a reputation that the state has earned for possibly being “Wild West” in our collective outlook, we actually do love us some government. More than we should and, more than you might think, if you’ve never been here. Almost 50 years of this, and I continue to be amazed and bothered by it. Technically, I’m a government employee, too, so I see it from inside and out. It’s just that I’m trained to move a little faster in completing my tasks.
I will now try to build you a picture of all this (without my own photos). Driver license offices in Texas—technically, Texas Department of Public Safety-Driver License Division—are at least as much a pain as whatever your state has. There has always been a wait for customers, if you had to go in to one of the offices.
Might as well be.
Even with online renewals, it’s a crap-fest, since DPS requires that you come in on every other renewal. Renewed online last go-round? Congrats! You get to climb on the hamster wheel! I think renewing your Texas CHL is less a pain in the ass, even when you have to re-qualify. At least then, you can pretend the target is IN NO WAY a bureaucrat, or, a state employee…::ahem::
At some point, the powers that be decided that they would give “mega centers” a shot. Essentially, a really big driver license office, based in larger metropolitan areas. I happen to be less than six miles from one of these beasts, so, it was the obvious choice. I had to research online to see where, exactly, it’s located, as I have been by the supposed area many times, and never saw the building. Big mistake. Just look at the Yelp pictures for this very location:
What the hell was I getting myself into? No—what the hell was I being forced into by the State of Texas? It turns out that, at these mega centers, you can get in line online. According to my supervisor, it has to be done right at opening, regardless of where you are. Of course, when I get online at 7:01 in the a.m., the appointment time wasn’t until almost 2:30. But, I needed to stay up for about 24 hours this particular day, so, why not??
As fate would have it, I was there less than 30 minutes. This includes registering as “arrived” at a computer kiosk, sitting for less than 10 minutes, then, getting ushered with a couple of other people to start a new line away from the others. I was actually sitting down with a clerk in less than 15 minutes. “What? My application? Ack!” I had forgotten to fill one out (FML). The clerk gave me a sort-of sideways glance (was it because of Gropin’ Joe’s visage?), and, with that, handed me a blank form (Go Joe!). I even had my official Texas Driver License picture taken in “the shirt”, and was on my way soon after.
Huh…that was really a big nothing-burger. I think I’m beginning to see a trend with my wearing of these shirts: Other than quick glances at the design, no one was saying squat.
Not the author’s actual eyebrows.
I was going to have to come up with another outing with Gropin’ Joe to complete the experiment, and, I came up with what I figured would be the crowning jewel of this thought experiment. Thing is, I’ve started having monthly dinner-and-coffee meet-ups with a life-long friend/former LE co-worker who has a very libertarian disposition. He tends to joke around with wait staff, especially staff of the female variety, which might be just the ticket for an H&H merchandise discussion. On a side note, I would like to get him posting here; I think he would fit right in with the gliberati, even if he is Tulpa.
The meet-up Saturday rolled around, and we got started a couple of hours earlier than usual. I explained the social experiment aspect of my attire, and what I would be watching for while we were out. He was on-board with my quasi-plan, and, after discussing possibly playing some pool, we decided that the standard places were a fine choice after all, and we headed out for delicious Tex-Mex. But, wouldn’t you know it–our normal Mexican food hang-out was packed, so, we settled on some Mongolian stir-fry.
Tasty Mongolian stir-fry
I hadn’t been to Genghis in a while, and this place always seems to be re-inventing some portion of itself. The hostess was a real pistol, and was willing to joke with my friend, as he started his banter. This would end up being the most promising point in the night for an interaction over my apparel. And, by that, I mean, I am almost positive that she saw my shirt, and was sharing in my friend’s humor a bit. Beyond that? Nada. The meal was good, but, my friend was so exhausted from his week’s work that he didn’t even want to eat. It was also busy enough that we weren’t going to delve too deeply into our usual conversations in the restaurant, so I finished up my bowl, and we headed off to the coffee house.
Home of the bottomless, er…endless coffee cup.
Presuming you don’t know, Café Brazil is a coffee house/diner with (wait for it…) a Brazilian flair. Their food has always been middlin’ to excellent, but, we just come for the endless coffee cups. They usually set out three or so of their blends, their unleaded counterparts, and dairy-based additives. My friend, being a smoker, prefers to sit outside on what passes for their patio. I’m OK with this, even if it is a Texas Summer, although I was a bit worried about our earlier starting time this evening.
It had actually cooled down quite a bit by the time we arrived and took our seats. I mean, it doesn’t really “cool down” in a North Texas Summer, but, this was tolerable. We had our usual discussion about family, work, and just how effed up people are vis-à-vis government power, especially in the realm of law enforcement. Of course, talk like that is inherently boring, and in no way should there be any website that deals in such what builds and strengthens friendships, and I highly recommend that you try it sometime!
Well, the foot traffic was rather light that evening. One of the better things about sitting outside is to see the parade of people without being so close that you inherently get pulled in to any stranger drama, or, having them drawn into yours. This particular location just happens to be a couple of miles from Southern Methodist University. For those in the know, or, who’ve ever been around an American university in a Southern state*, you can probably envision the types that make their way into said coffee-diner. Depending on particulars, my friend has been known to engage with some of these strangers. However, the combination of multiple factors, not the least of which was the dearth of interesting candidates, meant that no friendly banter would be forthcoming this night.
*What’s that? “That image would apply to just about any American university, Sir Digby”, you say? Meh…I don’t get out much.
As you might have guessed, it wasn’t long after this rather humid evening that I received my oh-so-precious license. Since I went into the endeavor with a purpose other than staying ‘street-legal’, I have to say that I’m rather happy with the final product:
The Gropin’ Joe shirt: Immortalized for 5-10 years
OK—only the collar is visible. She’s not Ansel Adams, so I’m not going to down her for that. It was, overall, not a bad experience; much better than the visions that played in my imagination prior to the appointment. I got my permission from my benevolent overlords to convey myself on the motorways, and it only cost me $25. Woo. Hoo.
So; there you have it. The shirts got some quick glances, but generated no conversations. I’m not the most approachable person; I’m no Mr. Suave, to be sure. I did, however, have a pretty wide swath of potential victims, er… takers in my travels, and I would think that I would have had at least just one person express curiosity. But, noooooo! Not these unsophisticated yokels! And, let me assure you: I bathed prior to each outing, so it wasn’t my natural funk driving the masses away. Nor was it the shirts themselves: They are definitely high-quality products, and you, too, can pick up a couple over at www.redbubble.com/people/cprm/. If you’re looking for a comfy, snazzy shirt that supports a fellow glib, and a minimum amount of interactions with strangers is your preference, I highly recommend. My shirts are currently hanging up; freshly laundered, and waiting for their turn in the rotation. If I manage to generate any conversations with either of them, I’m sure I’ll let you all know.
Maybe I’ll take Crusty Juggler with me on the next outing…
This entire time I thought this scene was from American Graffiti. Totally wrong, and it took me a bit of searching to figure out it is actually from The Warriors. Perhaps it would help if I watched either movie.
Then I find out American Graffiti is a George Lucas film? That can’t be right either, he hasn’t tried to ruin it by remaking it…
This is my review of Lic Beer Project SAMO IPA (H/T: Iobot)
You can probably deduce where I am going to go from looking at the can. Graffiti is a word derived from the plural Italian word graffito, which means “to scratch.” This makes perfect sense because even if this site wants to credit a bunch of handprints in Argentina for being first, the word itself was coined from evidence of vandalism carved into Greco-Roman monuments. One of the earliest examples is from a walkway in the city of Ephesus, giving directions to the city’s largest brothel…
Nowadays it is thought of as part of urban blight in some circles, but in others it has become an art form unto itself:
…the modern form of street art and graffiti writing was undoubtedly born during themed to late 1960’s. Darryl McCray, better known as Cornbread, is the man who is often credited with being the first graffiti writer, tagging his name all over North Philadelphia. The story goes that he started graffiti writing because of a girl he had a crush on, Cynthia Custuss, which led to him writing ‘Cornbread Loves Cynthia’ all over the area, then continuing with his own tag. Cool Earl was best friend to Cornbread and also became known for his tagging exploits, the pair gaining media attention. Another Philadelphia tagger, Top Cat 126, moved to New York in 1967 and helped to spark the graffiti trend there. Watch Cornbread and Taki 183 in action in this MOCA 2011 video.
[…]
The world of street art and graffiti has changed dramatically since the days of Cornbread, who incidentally, now works with The Mural Arts Program that helps to prevent illegal tagging, with the two movements becoming accepted in the wider art market. Edward Seymour could have had no idea just how much his paint in a spray can invention would change the face of our urban landscapes It is the ultimate guide to the world’s most remarkable pieces of graffiti and street art. This book is the definitive survey of the international movement, focusing on the world’s most influential urban artists and artworks. Since the lives and works of urban artists are inextricably linked to specific locations and places, this beautifully illustrated volume features specially commissioned “city artworks” that provide an intimate understanding of these metropolitan landscapes. Organized geographically by country and city, more than 100 of today’s most important artists—including Espo in New York, Shepard Fairey in Los Angeles, Os Gêmeos in Brazil, and Anthony Lister in Australia—are profiled alongside key examples of their work.
It is a sentiment I am inclined to believe, given what might have been running through the artist’s mind while this was painted on the Belfast “Peace Wall”. I pondered whether Swiss Servator’s series on the Catalan Separatist movement was the main driver; I pondered it enough to take a photo while at a red light on my way out of Belfast. While some look at it as the harbinger for urban decay and avoid such neighborhoods at all costs, it seems that it only harms the owner of the structure–assuming he or she has a problem with graffiti. A problem easily solved by setting up a couple cameras, or at the very least a big dog wandering around.
I will admit this wasn’t too bad for an IPA. It has a blend of four hops, which are common by themselves but not always together. It is unfiltered and has plenty of body. It results in something pleasant in texture, bitter upfront, and fruity in the back. Overall, its a solid build and I can dig it. Lic Beer Project SAMO IPA: 3.5/5
I want a report on your initial excursions wearing the shirts. That could be a nice article.
You could have pictures of the shirts, and such. It’s time you Contributed, boy!
– CPRM
As you probably know by now, CPRM has a The Hat and The Hair merch store on CafePress, and, after heeding my advice, has opened one on Redbubble, too. I’ve been buying crap stuff from Redbubble over the last several months, and really like the scope/variety and quality of what they offer. It also helps that Redbubble is always having some kind of sale/online coupon (hint, hint). So, when his store went up, of course I was gonna buy something. And, that something was t-shirts.
I decided on the classic H&H design, as well as a Gropin’ Joe 2020 shirt. Redbubble has a lot of different styles of shirts for men/unisex, women, and kids. I always go with their ‘classic’ t-shirt, which is made using Gildan tees—medium weight with easy-to-remove tags. I can’t speak as to what the other styles use. Maybe you should go check them out and see what they offer.
The shirt color selection was the most difficult part of this process. I usually eschew lighter colors in t-shirts. However, the designs require a lighter background in order to see everything clearly—to really make ‘em pop! On top of this, I try to have some variety in my t-shirt collection, which I usually accomplish with t-shirts of various (dark) colors. Purple seemed to preview the H&H design well on the site, so, purple it was. I broke with my usual habit, and chose light blue for the Gropin’ Joe shirt. It just seemed so…correct. After a few button pushes, they were paid for, and all I had to do was wait for them to arrive.
In a mere eight days, it was mail call. Here’s the star of our show:
The Namesake
Here’s Joe—with a smile that just takes hold of you:
That smile….
An interesting fact about Redbubble’s shirts: They stink. I mean, the chemical smell is pretty strong. It’s a glue-like smell that’s from the manufacturing process. They even come with these little notes, attached by miniature clothes pins, that I could have sworn talked about the smell. I must be remembering something from an earlier order. Anyway, here are a couple of pics of those tags:
I thought it told you the shirts stink. Guess I was wrong.They sure know how to promote themselves.
They put these on each and every t-shirt in an order. Why? Make-ready work, I guess. In any event, it doesn’t seem very eco-friendly to me. I note this because Redbubble is an Aussie company, whose State-side presence is an office in San Francisco. They also include at least one company sticker in each order, although they sometimes put in several.
Zombie Pandas?A smattering of stickers
They are a quasi-nice little ‘extra’, and, I admit I look forward to seeing which ones I get. They seem to have a rather limited pool of designs from which they pick, so, the experience can be kind of ‘meh’. I have to admit that I’m not keen on “zombie pandas”; cute, or, gruesome, but not both. If I had my druthers, I would go with the quasi-The Quiet Earth design. They probably know this, and are just screwing with me. Now that the shirts have arrived, though, they need to be washed, air-dried, then put through a few “fluff” cycles (I am not a Philistine!), which will take the better part of a day.
Though all of this, CPRM’s words kept sounding in my brain: “It’s time you Contributed, boy!” Do a write-up of buying and wearing t-shirts. Not exactly Hunter S. Thompson territory, but I’d give it a shot. That led me to the question: Just where would I carry out this task? CPRM suggested that I go to a Starbucks –he’s such a kidder! If I did that, I probably wouldn’t stick around after getting my order, considering I even managed to find something worth giving them money. No, this was going to have to be somewhere where I would conceivably spend time productively, while surrounded by other humans, which also ruled out the DMV.
A fancy Target, apparently.
I figured that I might as well get some regular retail shopping done, and, this just happened to be the location of previous unexpected interactions with strangers (no changing rooms were involved, dammit). I considered the fact that it has a Starbuck’s inside only slightly ironic. “Slightly”, because it is a Target in Plano, Texas: an area where people seem to crave burnt, over-priced coffee. I’d have to swing a really big “dead cat” to find suitable alternatives, and, yes-I’m excluding McCafé.
The first associate that said “Hi” to me did seem to take a quick scan of my shirt, but nothing came of it. That would describe just about every interaction I had that day. Moms with their kids; busy clerks merchandising whatever section they happened to be in; wanderers like me. Some eye contact, and, maybe a quick scan of the shirt, but, no reactions. I shopped for about an hour and a half. Actually, it was mostly just wandering around and seeing if I could find anything worthwhile. I actually had a mission of sorts, that I will get to in the next section. While I probably missed out on a greater opportunity for chat by going to a self-checkout line, I did end up getting assistance from the poor guy who has to fix screw-ups (I scanned the wrong barcode on a sale item). Nada from him, too. Paid, and out the door, it was time for a quick stop at the booze shop.
Just use your imagination, people!
I didn’t even think of taking a picture of the store. Mostly because, I was on a mission to get the FIL a belated Father’s Day gift. It seems Amazon just up and lost track of it sometime over the holiday weekend, and, we didn’t find out until this particular day. As it was, we were headed up to see my In-laws the day after all of this, so, we would just take him some hooch. He is fond of a certain blackberry Merlot that I had introduced him to some years back, and I needed to stop at the only store I could find that carried it. It was a last-minute addition to my excursion, and it only barely registered with me that I might have an opportunity for explaining this cartoon president on my shirt. I needed help finding this back-water gem, and the clerk that drew the short straw with me was very helpful. I didn’t sense much interest in him, until just as we were parting company. I saw that he gave the shirt a scan (Hey! My eyes are up here!), when I thought I caught just the barest hint of a question forming about it. I guess he thought better about getting wrapped up in a conversation about a funny YouTube animated series. Your loss, Mr. alcohol-finder-helper-guy. A quick monetary exchange at the register—I couldn’t sense any curiosity in the cashier—and I was off to…
It’s some kind of thumb, I think.
I had to buy rice. It was as thrilling and lively as that sounds. Most of the shoppers were older folk. A couple of moms with kids. It was a big goose egg. Even the checkout clerk managed to avoid eye contact. So much for customer service, I guess. I went with Success Boil-in-bag rice, and, some Tony Chachere’s Chicken flavored rice, if you’re curious. Of course, I remembered to take a picture here, where there was no place that allowed for an unobstructed shot. After almost burning out my retinas in the noon sun, I was ready for my last stop.
Not just a partial Costco, you see.
While I had hoped that the Mecca of warehouse-club consumerism would be more fertile ground, I had become sort of pessimistic. The greeter/card-checker was pleasant enough, and, he did seem to look directly at the shirt for a good second. We exchanged “hellos”, and in I went. Damn; I thought he might jump. OK, I had my shopping list, and figured that I would take a sort of ‘hover/saunter’ approach. I would take my time making picks, in order to give others a chance to get a good look at the shirt. I would consider the area to be conservative, and, it wouldn’t be out of line to find some people that got a chuckle out of the design. Pork chops: check. Cherries and blueberries: check. USDA Prime tenderloin cuts: you better believe that’s a check. I was in my grocery element, trying to not be too obvious in flaunting my wardrobe choice. As it turns out, I wasn’t too obvious. At all. Even when I picked up a Costco rotisserie chicken, the guys in the back barely took notice of me. And, it was a glorious chicken, indeed.
Golden Brown Perfection
C’mon—the butcher/meat counter guys should be a prime demographic for a curious chuckle at the expense of The Hat and The Hair. Really? Did I need to wave them down? Tom Thumb meat counter dudes were always talkative; maybe Costco thought their people didn’t need to go that route when it came to cutting up meat for their customers? After what seemed like a Target amount of time wandering the store, I was ready to check out. They had self-checkout lines, which was new to me. Probably another poor choice on my part if I wanted human interaction, but I was curious to see if these were a good idea for Costco (they were/are). I had also come to not expect much conversation from these employees, due to the need to keep the lines moving. They had a screw-up fixer who hovered around the kiosks to watch for whatever evil might crop up in a Costco checkout line. He did a quick sweep by me, with some kind of greeting. I was actually concentrating on the process, as I didn’t bring my bags inside with me, and I was trying to calculate if I had enough room on the pressurized counter. It was awkward unloading a cart, just to load it back up the same way, but I got through the ordeal unscathed. On the way out, while passing the food court seating, I realized I was being stared at by a young guy who was aaalmost in the right league for the half-ugly blonde sitting next to him.
You eye-ballin’ me, son? ‘Cause I’ll whoop you like Patton for a-
Oh, right; the t-shirt! Actually, he was giving me a sort of half-sneer that could have either been aimed at me, or, the shirt. Maybe both; I’m sure I presented some sort of challenge to his sexual primacy, wearing this funky fresh example of CPRM’s cleverness. In hindsight, I really shouldn’t blame the guy. Hell, if I had to do it over again, I would have let him know that he could get his own H&H swag at www.redbubble.com/people/cprm It might actually make a man out of him.
And, that was that. I was finished with my excursion and needed to get home so I could unpack. It was pretty much a goose egg for me in this experiment. I just needed to record my observations and thoughts on the day. I arrived just before a shipment of some of the finest coffee around was delivered, which picked up my spirits immensely. I think the postal delivery lady scanned the shirt, but I can’t be sure—she was already smiling when we exchanged pleasantries. It was about this time that CPRM’s words crept up on me again: “wearing the shirts.” Right! I have a Gropin’ Joe t-shirt that the world hasn’t seen. Damn… Well, I’ll have to worry about that later.
Right now, I have a lunch date with a Costco rotisserie chicken.
I got the trees, can you tell? it was so much fun placing them and trying to randomize them, it just got nicer and nicer.
But then I noticed the trees were a little too green, so I got some Hauser Dark Green and dry brushed the trees a bit.
The Germans achieved a total surprise attack on the morning of 16 December 1944, due to a combination of Allied overconfidence, preoccupation with Allied offensive plans, and poor aerial reconnaissance. American forces bore the brunt of the attack and incurred their highest casualties of any operation during the war. The battle also severely depleted Germany’s armored forces, and they were largely unable to replace them.
The U.S. forces however, got lost, ran out of gas, mostly due to Monty’s adventures in Belgium, and someone back home forgot that Europe has winters, and men get cold.
Nowadays it is thought of as part of urban blight in some circles, but in others it has become an art 
