If this keeps up I'm moving to Alaska

I'm going to have find a new route through the skyway, because the "fashion" displays at Macy's are really starting to grind my gears. First it was the docksides, and now this:


At first I thought it must be a Halloween costume, but no - it's only July. So they must really think that someone would be willing to saunter around like this. And just what is that pattern on the shorts, you ask? Why it's seagulls. How jaunty! Paired with tie and white belt, it's the perfect summer ensemble for getting punched in the cock.

Good stuff

I found the below story on McSweeney's earlier today, and I've read it 3 times now and have laughed every time. So now I'm cutting and pasting it here to save lazy Blogfoot readers the trouble of clicking on a link. It's by Pasha Malla and it's called:

COVERING TEEN WOLF: ONE COACHES GUIDE

Used to be, the key to beating Teen Wolf's Beavers was just to play them on any night there wasn't a full moon. We were unlucky one season in that we met them 28 days apart, both times in their barn, and Teen Wolf destroyed us—64 points in the first game, then a quadruple-double in the second, with 14 blocked shots and 25 steals. Our third matchup, though, we were fortunate enough to have a 76 percent waxing gibbous, so it was regular Scott Howard, who turned the ball over twice before fouling out, scoreless, in eight minutes of play. These days, however, it seems the guy can change over whenever he wants, which poses a real problem to opposing coaches. What follows is the best strategy my staff and I have come up with to limit Teen Wolf's effectiveness on the court. While admittedly far from foolproof, it will, hopefully, prove useful to your team. We're all in this together, folks.

To begin, you're going to have to resign yourself to the fact that Teen Wolf is probably going to drop at least 50 points. That might seem like a lot, but, unfortunately, it's just the way the ball bounces. As coach, you need to recognize that your job isn't to do the impossible; you're not going to stop Teen Wolf entirely, but you can try to contain him by making him play your team's style of basketball. Discipline and defensive fundamentals help: nose on the ball, feet moving, channeling him into traps—careful with those, though. Soon as Teen Wolf gets two guys on him, he tends to find the open man. He's a heads-up ballplayer with great court sense, so if you're going to bring a trapping zone against Teen Wolf, make sure you have solid weak-side rotation and your defenders are communicating.

Of course, that's only if he feels like passing. Teen Wolf gets scrappy once you put the pressure on, and he's a great ball handler with a low-to-the-ground style reminiscent of Pistol Pete or a young Isiah Thomas. Add to his skill and quickness those gigantic, hirsute paws, and you're up against one hell of a dribbler. We've tried giving Teen Wolf a step, respecting his speed, but we've found that if our guys slack off him, he'll generally hit the open jumper—or else take off from wherever he's standing on the court, sail over everyone's heads, and finish with one of those dunks where he ends up sitting on the top of the backboard, howling, feet dangling down through the hoop.

While you're welcome to try it, my feeling is that man-to-man defense simply isn't an option. Some teams like to play a box-and-one, which generally works well against most lycanthropes. With Teen Wolf, though, you have to be careful. He'll just stand baying by the sideline while the rest of the Beavers run four-on-four. Then, at a signal from Coach Finstock, Teen Wolf will come screaming down the lane, fur bristling and fangs bared, for the alley-oop. (And with him having what's rumored to be a 78-inch standing vertical leap, rest assured he's even more difficult to stop once he gets up in the air.) I've heard of coaches dealing with this by putting a sniper in the crowd with a box of silver bullets and a hunting rifle. We tried it once, back when Teen Wolf was only a freshman: the shooter missed, and when the cops showed up and cleared the gym we were forced to default.

So, I bet you're wondering, if it's impossible to cover him through conventional defenses, what can we do? Here's the key: Teen Wolf doesn't get along with his teammates. While he's certainly got the individual skills to dominate most games, I'd have to struggle to think of ever seeing a more selfish player in my 28 years of coaching. He tends to alienate his fellow Beavers by doing things like stealing the ball off them, or stealing their girlfriends, and their resentment is easy for opposing teams to exploit. Sympathy seems to work well; get your players to say stuff like, "Man, sure sucks playing with Teen Wolf," or "I'd hate to have a guy like Teen Wolf on my team," and you'll be surprised how quickly the Beavers' team defense will start to open up.

Another trick is to keep on the officials about aggressive play. Granted, most refs are pretty scared to call anything on Teen Wolf, what with the risk of being devoured in the parking lot after the game. Still, it's hard to ignore someone being gouged by lupine talons, especially if the player's entrails are exposed. Coach Finstock hates sitting Teen Wolf, but if his star picks up three fouls early, there won't be any other option. Just make sure to tell your guys to resist taunting Teen Wolf while he's on the bench; it only makes him angrier, and with that anger comes frightening strength.

Finally, keep in mind that beneath all that fur, Teen Wolf is only human—or half-human, whatever—with weaknesses, just like any of us. And as a hormonally imbalanced, eternally cursed teenager, he's particularly fragile. For one thing, at just under 70 percent, Teen Wolf's free-throw shooting is comparatively weak; if you've got a kid on your team brave or crazy enough to knock Teen Wolf down with a hard foul, encourage it. Make him earn his points at the line. "Hack-a-Wolf" brought us within 10 of the Beavers during last year's playoffs—that is, until Teen Wolf dunked eight consecutive trips down the floor from the 3-point line, putting the lead out of reach.

OK, that's pretty much all I've got. As I mentioned earlier, defending Teen Wolf isn't an exact science, and you're more than welcome to alter these tactics as befits your own ball club. I hope that between us we can keep the lines of communication open and continue to share strategies that seem to work. My feeling is that there's no team that is completely unbeatable, even if their star transforms into a werewolf before every game. Oh, and if you come up with some way of preventing Teen Wolf from jumping up and catching your team's shots, I'd be particularly interested in hearing it.

Thanks, and best of luck.

You tell 'em, grandma!

So while checking the online price of the "Mad Men" Season 1 DVD set at Amazon, I decided to read some of the user reviews. I didn't have to scroll down very far before I found this rage-fueled gem, obviously submitted by a 117 year-old woman who probably hasn't had a good laugh since Uncle Miltie last wore a dress. Here is her acerbic review:


Sad to see a show that glorifies drug use!

Some interesting writing and acting ruined by use of the tobacco and alcohol drugs. Just as the movies are FINALLY starting to clean up their act with these drugs, this series comes along and almost tries to glorify them. Both drugs are weapons of mass destruction, especially tobacco. I'm sure the tobacco and alcohol pushers are happy with this series!


Jeez- heaven help this crone if she ever stumbles upon an episode of "Nip/Tuck."

But I'm glad she shined a cold revealing light on a sinister and oft-ignored blight of modern society - the alcohol pushers! They lurk on every corner, whispering to me as I walk the filth-strewn streets of this decaying metropolis. They keep trying to push their alcohol on me, but I am strong. Begone, alcohol pushers!

What the huh?

I cut through the downtown Macy's yesterday on my way to meet a buddy for lunch, and as I passed by the men's shoe department I beheld something that violently grabbed my eyeballs and started raping them. Was it?...could it be?...Ye gods, it is! A display for colored docksides / deck shoes! They're back for the attack, and they're available in green, yellow and red, so you're assured of getting a color that will offend someone.



A wave of sensations washed over me: disbelief, anger, fear, nausea...then, after I finished beating the salesman who asked if I wanted to try a pair on within an inch of his shabby life, I started to coolly access the situation. Obviously someone would want these things, or a company wouldn't have made them, and a large chain department store wouldn't have bought them. But who? And why?

Suddenly I had the answer: an asshole would want them, plain and simple. So then the ad guy in me took over, and I decided to write some taglines for the relaunch of these grosteque abortions. Blogfoot readers are encouraged to pen their own and submit them to the comments section. Here's some to get you started.

"Sperry Top Siders - It's time to be a prick again."

"Sperry Top Siders - For those who attended the fancy summer camp in 'Meatballs.'"

"Sperry Top Siders - Asshole Spoken Here."

Have fun, Blogfoot readers.

"Dynamite" magazine pulled no punches

If you grew up in the inflation-wracked, energy-crunched 1970's and bothered to attend school, you no doubt remember "Dynamite" magazine. It was sold through your school's "Weekly Reader" or Scholastic Book Club program, which was basically a pamphlet where you check off books you wanted to buy ( I bought my first Bigfoot book from the weekly reader program around 1974 or so), and a week or two later your stuff showed up. It was an exciting time.

"Dynamite" came a bit later, I think it started around 1976 or so. You could order it from weekly reader, but for some reason I felt a subscription was necessary. It was a kids magazine, so the subject matter was generally movie or TV stars kids would be interested in. "Issues of the day," I guess you could say. Like this one below:



That's right: after much wailing and teeth-gnashing amongst the editorial powers-that-be, it was finally decided that the top stars of 1978 were - Chewbacca and Shaun Cassidy. Well, they do have similar hairstyles. No doubt Lee Majors, various Sweathogs and Donnie & Marie are still demanding a recount.

"Dynamite" also gave megastars like the Captain & Tenille and Shields & Yarnell (mimes who somehow had their own TV show) valuable exposure to that critical 8-10 year-old demographic and their disposable incomes of .75 cents a week in allowance. But "Dynamite" was more than just fluffy entertainment news. They would eagerly tackle the tough issues of the day in order to supply answers to questions that were prompting schoolyard fights all across this great land of ours. To wit:



I think time has answered this question appropriately enough, no? I mean, come on - The 1978 "Sgt. Pepper" movie had George Burns in it. The "Sgt. Pepper" album? No George Burns. A clear win for the Bee Gees.

I also like that when deciding to sink it's teeth into the musical debate of the ages, they chose to go with a "Mad" magazine-style illustration for the cover in order to convey the gravity of the issue at hand. Exactly how "The Washington Post" would do it, I imagine.

Eventually (within one year) my interest on this dopey magazine waned, but not before I received not one but two cool King Kong posters that were included with issues. One was the 1976 remake poster (which came in an issue with King Kong holding "Laverne & Shirley" in his hand), and the other was a kick-ass 3-D poster of the old Kong on the Empire State Building, which hung in my room for several years. I still have the issue with the remake poster, but alas, not the cool 3D one.

**Short intermission while I go try and find a google image of said 3-D King Kong poster***

No dice. I remember seeing it on ebay about 5 years ago (and getting outbid on it), but now I can't seem to find an image of it. Nostalgia, thou art a harsh mistress.

Somehow I don't think this quote will show up on the movie poster or DVD packaging

From Harry at Ain't It Cool News comes this critical bon mot regarding Mike Myer's newest vehicle "The Love Guru":

"If shit got 'The Love Guru' on it, shit would wipe it off."

Hmmm - I'm guessing he didn't like it very much.

Great scene

Here's a fine bit of late 60's cinema, courtesy of Director George Roy Hill - a tense-yet-funny scene from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."



Recognize the big, knife-wielding guy? Why it's none other than Ted Cassidy, who played "Lurch" on "The Addams Family." I stumbled upon this because my wife sent me an article about Lou Ferrigno that mentioned Ted Cassidy doing the 'voice' of the Hulk (more of a growl, really) on "The Incredible Hulk" TV show, as well as the narration during the opening credits that had that speedy piano chord behind it ("Dr. David Banner: physician; scientist. Searching for a way to tap into the hidden strengths that all humans have. Then an accidental overdose of gamma radiation alters his body chemistry. And now when David Banner grows angry or outraged, a startling metamorphosis occurs...."). As you can see from this clip, Ted definitely had some acting chops. He really played the scene nicely.

Another thing I really like about this clip is that Cassidy did the classic George Kennedy technique of slowly taking off his shirt while still talking, thus striking fear into the heart of your opponent. It's a simple formula: If you take your shirt off while talking, you mean business.

A lot of people angrily tear their shirts off these days, which is both obvious and lame (I blame 80's-era Hulk Hogan for this). Plus, you ruin your shirt. Slowly and calmly unbuttoning it is the way to go. It displays a calm and confidence that is guaranteed to make the other guy wet his pants. Try it at your next big meeting, and watch clients fall in line.

Oh yeah - here's a nice still shot of Newman's kick to Cassidy's groin. Should make a nice wallpaper for your laptop:

Kinski, round 3

Here's a couple more pics showing the inclusion of green in dear old Klaus' face. At this point I have also colored in the eyes. Color tip: eyes are not white, they are basically a lighter hue of the subject's skin color. In most cases teeth would be treated basically the same. White is a color that doesn't really exist in nature, and using it out the tube is too glaring, and using it to lighten other colors results in weak, foggy hues, in my opinion.


A close-up of Mr. Kinski's penetrating, red-rimmed gaze. Note the blues, greens and oranges.

So at this point I have invested about 10 hours into the project, and would estimate that the painting is about 25% done. Now that I have all my values established via these glazed layers, I will begin to apply thicker layers of paint, blending some areas and keeping others sharply defined, and hopefully giving everything more volume and luminosity. For some reason I keep playing the same CD over and over when I work on this, which is "Saturnalia" by The Gutter Twins (an utterly fantastic record, btw). I start the CD and basically paint until it's over. Once it ends, I clean my brushes and rejoin the surface world (I work in a basement studio).

OK, that's enough painting for the time being. I won't post shots of this again until it's noticeably further along. Next up : thrill to pictures from the Blogfoot "High & Low of Wisconsin Architecture" tour, where we visited the strange and eerie House on the Rock as well as Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin estate in one dizzying, rain-soaked weekend.

I call that a bargain

I don't know how many of you watched the first two episodes of the new Discovery Channel series about NASA called "When We Left Earth" last night, but it was straight-up awesome. Tons of great archival footage and commentary from titans of the field like Gene Krantz and assorted astronauts who were right in the thick of things. The series continues next Sunday and is essential viewing, in our humble opinion.

On a related note, I was ordering the DVD of said episodes of the Discovery Channel website, and I noticed they had a link to Amazon.com for a fantastic item I already have called "America in Space: NASA's First 50 Years," a giant picture book whose title should pretty much explain itself to all but the densest among you. What raised my eyebrows is that this huge $50 book is currently a mere $10 at Amazon! Yowsa, wotta deal! I don't want to shill for a corporation, but that's just too darned cheap not to spread the word about. I'm assuming it's due to the Discovery Series, but who knows why, and who knows how long it will last. Check it out.

Dude named "Uncle" who recently commented, please contact me

I was moderating my comments this morning (all 2 of them - boy, you people are an opinionated lot. Real firecrackers, you are.), and I found this one, which almost made me spit out my coffee:

"I worked odd jobs at JCPenney (late 70's at "Apache Plaza" in St. Anthony, MN) and one of the oddest was wearing the Super Dennis robot costume around the store. "Super Denims" were JCPenney kids jeans."

Alright - a local boy! This comment was left in the last day or so, but was in response to some older posts regarding me trying to figure out if there really was a Robot used to advertise a line of children's jeans in the 70's or if I imagined the whole thing while in the throes of a chickenpox-related fever dream. Actually I know it existed, but I have been unable to find any proof on this worthless thing called the web that's supposed to be such a resource. If you're unfamilar with this story, previous posts are here and here.

Uncle, whoever you are, your blogger profile is disabled, so contact me so we can discuss further. And please tell me you have a photo of yourself in said robot costume. Blogfoot would pay handsomely (say, $5 or so - I'm the J. Jonah Jamenson of the internet!) for the rights to publish such a photo. Just leave a comment for this post with your email, and I'll email you and delete the comment.

Quick Kinski update

I added a darker brown to the deepest folds of his face, and mixed some blue with a darker red to make a new background - deeper and less 'orangey' - which gives him a lot more dimension.
And menace. Always looking to up the menace factor with this one.

Since this pic was shot, I also started glazing in shades of green into his facial shadows (cheekbones, above the eyes), and it's working pretty well. I'm starting to think this piece could turn out decent.

More next week once I throw some more hours at it.

How charming

So I was sitting in the lobby of a large downtown office building at lunchtime today waiting for a conference call to start regarding a shady business deal I'm cooking up, and while waiting for the phone to ring,
I wiled away the minutes gazing out onto the bustling pedestrian thoroughfare known as Nicollet Mall, when a cute little boy wandered into view. He had nice features, had a neat little outfit on, etc (you notice these things more when you have a kid yourself).



Then his mom entered the frame, and gave him a beverage to drink from. Well that's nice - a picturesque little snapshot of parenthood, thought I. Except for one little detail, that is. A detail I sadly wasn't quick enough to capture with my cellphone camera.

The mom was wearing a large belt buckle that read "Kiss My Ass."

Now, I don't want to throw stones here - but when my kid was born,
I took stock of my life and decided that maybe it was time to retire things like my "Kiss My Ass" belt buckle, which is why mine now resides in a box in the basement, waiting for the day when we have a rummage sale and someone can pay a quarter for the privilege of letting strangers that happen to look at their waistline know that make no mistake, theirs is an ass that should be kissed.

A Mona Lisa for our troubled times

Below is the oil painting of German actor/madman Klaus Kinski that I began last weekend. So far the likeness is there, but I want to exaggerate the planes of his face more and get his eyes to the point where his stare unnerves the viewer.




Right now it has just one layer of paint on the canvas, just figuring out my colors and values. I don't like to use "tube colors", rather I like to place mixed colors in layers of glazes next to each other so that the eye is tricked (which is really the root of what painting is - after all, you're trying to represent something dimensional on a flat surface). For example, people think a tux is black, but I'm doing it dark cobalt blue. The red background helps makes it appear black. The same with his skin - I won't use a flesh color, rather I'll use yellows and oranges, and rely on the intense red and blues to make it appear more 'fleshy' to the eye (flesh isn't really flesh color anyways - everyone's is obviously different). So basically what I have going here is a "triadic color scheme." That said, the red background might change to a grayish-green to make the yellows & oranges of his skin pop more. But maybe not.

OK, I'm starting to veer into Bob Ross territory - no need to give the plebian hordes too much of a peek behind the curtain. Stay tuned for further Kinski portrait updates, and watch Klaus grow more sinister and saturated with each passing week.

This guy isn't really Chevy Chase, and you're not.

Here's a picture of a Chevy Chase impersonator taken at a recent convention of similar sad people who make their living pretending to be famous people at corporate gatherings, gas station openings, bar mitzvahs, what have you.

What I like about this guy is that he left nothing to chance communicating the whole "Chevy Chase thing," regardless of what era of Chase you are familiar with. Early on in the process he donned the Lakers jersey from "Fletch" and thought, "Hmmm- this is pretty solid, but older Chase fans might not get this." So he cleverly affixed a "President Ford" pin to his lapel, and presto! - those who chuckled at Chevy's antics on "Saturday Night Live" in the 70's were magically pacified. I can't pinpoint the exact year in which the real Chase stuck a pencil in his ear, but really - does a humorous move such as this ever grow stale? I think not.

Happy Birthday, Dracula!

Venerable British actor Christopher Lee turns 86 today. He's cool.

Things I did over the last 10 days insead of blogging

I started and halfway completed a large backyard landscaping project. Tore out some vile buck thorn trees, replaced them with arborvidaes, dug holes with a pickax, etc.

I drove to Nebraska with the wife and boy to visit relatives for a couple of days.

I skillfully ducked jury duty.

I read.

I worked on an oil painting of Klaus Kinski.

I worked on a King Kong model.

Things I didn't do? I didn't blog, check email much or think about advertising.

I tell ya, that last one was especially sweet.

The Garden Yeti is here

I came home the other night to find a large box that looked like it might contain a small dishwasher or a dorm-room mini-fridge sitting on my front steps. A closer examination of said box revealed the following:


Outstanding - my Garden Yeti had arrived. I always liked this item and had blogged about it previously, but was hesitant to pony up the $100. But then I figured that I had to do my part to stimulate the economy, so what the hey. Anyway, this thing is big (over 28" high) and very cool. How big and how cool? Here are some pics.


The Garden Yeti is about as tall as a sitting, panting 75-lb dog.



The Garden Yeti is taller than a 4.2 month-old baby that is being stretched.



The Garden Yeti is very well made. Lots of detail, sturdy, etc.



The Garden Yeti stalks the bucolic, mid-century hamlet of Saint Anthony Village.

Is your yard lacking that certain panache'? Then be original and think of something else to put in your yard. But if you want to lazily copy me, you can order yours here.

"It used to be a gentleman's business. Now it's a horse orgy!"

So sayeth an aging copywriter about the changing face of advertising circa 1961 in Chip Kidd's fine new novel "The Learners." A sequel to Kidd's first book "The Cheese Monkey's", this tale finds the protagonist 'Happy' graduated from college and pursuing a position at the small Connecticut advertising agency that a design teacher he admired once worked at.



If you didn't know, Mr. Kidd is a much-sought-after (and understandably so) designer of book covers. His wide-range of work is impressive in that he has no discernible style, other than the fact that his covers are always well thought out conceptually and extremely well-executed. He doesn't force his personality on the work, nor does he always use one style of font, or always use illustration, or a rigid grid approach, or what have you. He designs something appropriate for the project at hand, which needs to be different from the solution that came before. Seemingly simple, but a task many designers utterly fail at. I guess a "style" is fine, but at some point there must be an acceptance that you are in service of the project and not the other way around.

Anyway, as highly as I think of Kidd's design sensibilities, I was admittedly a tad suspicious when I heard he was coming out with a novel back in 2002. But as it turns out, "The Cheese Monkeys" was an entertaining book with a particular kind of energy and wit that I enjoyed. The fact I went to art school (with all the good and bad that such an endeavor entails) and that the book was about the same thing no doubt helped, but the book was still rich enough in detail and characterization that anyone would most likely find it entertaining.

So I was interested in this sequel, and found it to be pretty darned good. The book was by turns humorous, dark, slight and deep, and successfully tied together a lot of themes such as:

The struggle of giving a shit and having taste when plying one's trade.

How the thumb of authority can change one's behavior in unexpected ways.

What is the proper way to advertise shoes or potato chips?

The death of the illustrator and the ascendancy of photography.

The emerging roles of metaphor, wit and irony in the changing face of communication.

It's also very-well designed, and laid out in a way that helps subtly communicate the book's themes without being overwhelming. I should also mention that, generally speaking, it's pretty funny. It's good stuff. Check it out.