Archive for March, 2011
The Wednesday Outlook – March 30, 2011
March 30, 2011Better late than never, as they say. Sometimes typing out a lot of words seems like too much of a task so I thought that this week I would collage my thoughts. Here they are in their entirety:
Simple Little Picture #3
March 29, 2011
Artist: Keith Pille (@keithpille)
City: Minneapolis
Stuff He Does: Cartoonist, museum digital collections hombre, husband to Not Shallow
What do you call this?
The Devil Went Down to Georgia
What inspired you to draw this?
My wife kicked off some kind of terrifying 70s-country craze in our house, and Charlie Daniels is just one of the rotating cast of honky-tonk outlaws taking turns controlling my brain. Better him than
Johnny Paycheck. When Johnny Paycheck takes over your brain, you just head over to the gas station and try to score some meth.
How often do you draw and/or doodle?
Every day. Obsessive art creation is one of the spiderwebs holding me back from falling into the void.
I never really meant to earn to draw. I started out as a writer, and wanted to learn to write comic books. I figured I’d need to learn how page layouts worked so that I’d know how to script a comics page, so I
messed around with stick figures and really horribly rough drawings. A week later, drawing had taken over my brain the same way honky-tonk outlaws would a few years later.
Like what you’re seeing? Check out S.L.P. #1 and #2.
Simple Little Picture #2
March 26, 2011Finally crashing ahead with my Simple Little Picture Project… if you want to read what it’s all about, check out S.L.P. #1.
Artist: Lu Lippold (@lulippold)
City: Minneapolis & Pepin, Wisconsin
Stuff She Does: Filmmaker, Director of Fellowship Programs for IFP-MN, aspiring drawer and possible restauranteur
What do you call this?
Poor, Overused Film Reel Graphic
What inspired you to draw this?
Last night I had a long conversation about drawing with my artist neighbors, Frank Gaard and Pam Gaard . You should get THEM to draw you something. Frank says one traditional way of learning to draw is by copying other drawings. Pam corroborated this. Therefore, I have begun my soon-to-be long and impressive career as a draw-er by copying a postcard that’s sitting on my desk advertising the call for entries for the 12th San Diego Asian Film Festival.
How often do you draw and/or doodle?
I intend to get or find a notebook and draw in it every day, but probably not with a mechanical pencil; that seems wasteful. Or is it? I forgot to ask Frank and Pam what people draw with. But the kind of pencils that need sharpening always need sharpening, and who ever has a pencil sharpener when they need it? Oh my God, this is getting way too complicated. No! I am determined, like Roger Ebert, to observe the world in the way that people who draw observe it! I am going to draw (i.e., copy) something every day! Please remind me with a daily email that I said I would do this. Don’t worry, I won’t send them all to you. I’ll send you one in two months and you’ll see what amazing progress I’ve made.
The Wednesday Outlook – March 23, 2011
March 23, 2011
The weather it is bad. The weather is nasty, like a crazy, nastyass honey badger. On my foray to the bus stop yesterday, I was soaked through and my umbrella threatened to turn itself inside out. Today I will be on a polar expedition. This is one of the hazards of working – you have to turn off the mind-lulling Today Show and leave the couch to venture out into weather.
What I really want to do is read all day. I have an entire stack of books waiting for me to dig in and I never seem to find the time right now. I’m working on Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Marriage of the Century. I’ve never been a Taylor fan but I find her personal life interesting and the book is making me want to watch Cleopatra from 1962. This is the movie where Liz and Richard met and began their affair. Richard was married to a kind, funny woman from Wales, where he grew up, and Liz was married to Eddie Fischer, who comes off as a simpering water boy, willing to fetch Liz’s vodka and then make sure she didn’t drink to the point of oblivion.
If I got tired of Elizabeth’s privileged life of villas and enormous jewels, I could read Just Kids by Patti Smith. I will admit that I know absolutely nothing about Patti Smith except that people revere her as some kind of punk rock goddess. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a single song of hers. Admitting this is like saying that I never brush my teeth or that I’ve never seen Star Wars. People have been raving about her memoir of her friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, so I decided that this is the point at which I jump in.
Or, I could contemplate baking. One a whim, I requested The Gourmet Cookie Book: The Single Best Recipe From Each Year 1941-2009 from the library. I can only imagine that I was feeling domestic and maybe a bit hungry at the time. It is great cookie porn – each page features a layout of recipe and then a photo of cookies against a stark black, white or red background. The cookies are arranged in geometric patterns, like this:
The thing is, our stove is on the fritz. The gas will simply shut off if not constantly monitored and the up and downs of the uneven gas flow make baking nearly impossible. The last time I made cookies they melded with the cookie sheets in such a way that removal would have required hours of chipping and soaking so I took all the cookie sheets with the hardened cookie slabs still on them and threw them away. So I guess I would have to make due with just staring at the cookie porn all day (or all the stuff in Baked Explorations, yet another baking book I got from the library for no reason). Probably after 40 minutes I’d break down and walk to Patisserie 46 on 46th & Grand. They make amazing cookies (and chocolate croissants) and all I have to do is hand over some cash to get them.
Watching: Breaking Bad Season 2, also gagging over those Chico’s commercials that air every morning about 70 times. “I’m SO Chico’s.”
Buying: Marimekko umbrellas from Finn Style. With this Swag Deal through Mpls St Paul Magazine, you can get a stylish umbrella for 50% off! Yes, that’s half-off, folks. So a $40 umbrella is only gonna cost you $20. In case you couldn’t do that math. What I did… I went to the website and when I checked out I put the promo code “SWAG” in and I got the discount. This is good through March 28th.
Anticipating: Patton Oswalt at Acme Comedy Club on Thursday night! Lucky enough to hear about this semi-secret gig before it sold out.
Update: I tromped through the snow only to get to the bus station and find out that my bus was running 20 minutes late and that Elizabeth Taylor died this morning. Huh. Can I go back to bed now? Seriously, check out Furious Love if you’re interested in getting some dish on Liz. She helped the writers with the book and ponied up some private photos or it.
Also, for the quick skinny on Liz and her husbands, check out my blog post Elizabeth Taylor: Reflections In A Violet Eye.
And, just a quick rant… if you are big enough that you take up TWO bus seats, well, I feel sort of bad for you, but really? Really? You’re going to sit there taking up two seats with your stupid Blue Tooth thingy in your ear? Grrr….. honey badger don’t like that shit.
You, Too, Can Be A Little Bit Country
March 21, 2011
Recently I put together a play list of country hits for my dad’s birthday. He’s always been a country fan and when I was growing up this embarrassed me to no end. But after seeing a commercial for a collection of Time Life “Classic Country” hits, I was inspired to go out and make him some CDs.
As I made the playlist (which grew to two CD’s worth of songs) I found myself… liking some of them quite a bit. Woah.
I find myself listening to these country hitz every couple of days (especially when I’m painting our wood trim upstairs, which I am forever painting. The wood trim. Will it ever be completely painted?) I started wondering if maybe I’m not the only one who just needs a nudge to get into some country? I know, country music is the last hipster taboo to be broken but, damn it, I’m not that cool anyway. I’m uncool and so, screw it, here are some good country songs.
Note: I purposely did NOT go to the Hank Williams well. Because that’s the well everyone goes to when they say they like classic country. Also note that, to me, “classic” means anything my dad listened to while he drove us around in his Ford pick-up or worked in the garage or in his workshop downstairs. So, yeah, there’s some Alabama.
Keep in mind that some of these are specifically aimed at a particular 68-year-old man. Case in point: Anne Murray. My dad has always had a strange infatuation with Anne Murray. As in, he thought she was hot stuff. I know, weird. He used to blast Anne on Sunday mornings when he was trying to make us get up to go to church at 8 a.m. Now my parents don’t go to church at all and I have to wonder what all those tortuous mornings of Anne were really good for.
The Krazy Kountry Hitz
Volume 1
Mountain of Love – Johnny Rivers
When Will I Be Loved – Linda Ronstadt
Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way – Waylon Jennings
Take This Job and Shove It – Johnny Paycheck
I Got Mexico – Eddy Raven
All My Exes Live In Texas – David Nall
I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool – Barbara Mandrell & George Jones
If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me – The Bellamy Brothers
It’s Only Make Believe – Conway Twitty
Mountain Music – Alabama
Six Days On The Road – Dave Dudley
I Can Help – Billy Swan
The Devil Went Down To Georgia - Charlie Daniels
Honky Tonkin’s What I Do Best – Marty Stuart & Travis Tritt
Heaven’s Just a Sin Away – The Kendalls
Love In The First Degree – Alabama
Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue – Crystal Gale
Georgia On My Mind – Willie Nelson
Lost In The Fifties Tonight – Ronnie Milsap
Theme From Dallas – Best TV Show Theme Song Ever!
Volume 2:
East Bound and Down – Jerry Reed
Southern Nights – Glen Campbell
Tulsa Time – Don Williams
High On A Mountain Top – Loretta Lynn
I Ain’t Never – Mel Tillis
We’ve Got Tonight – Kenny Rogers
A Place To Fall Apart – Janie Frickie & Merle Haggard
You and I – Crystal Gayle & Eddie Rabbit
Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man – Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty
King Of The Road – Roger Miller
You Don’t Know Me – Mickey Gilley
I Wouldn’t Have Missed It For The World – Ronnie Milsap
Forever and Ever, Amen – Randy Travis
Could I Have This Dance – Anne Murray
Back In The Saddle Again – Moe Bandy
Darlin’ Companion – Johnny Cash
Here You Come Again – Dolly Parton
Always On My Mind – Willie Nelson
How To Be The New Girl
March 20, 2011
I’ve been “the new girl” at work more times than I care to remember and I can tell you that the first day, really the first week, of a job never gets any easier. I did it once again this week. Things will go wrong. There will be situations out of your control that you just have to do your best to get through. You’ll think you are prepared for a new job and then find out that you are woefully unprepared.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you are lucky.
The following may not make going into a new job any easier for anyone strapping into the new job roller coaster, but I thought I’d share some of my tips for how to be the new girl, gal, lady, woman at work anyway, if for no other reason than to let you know you’re not alone.
1. You will never have the right thing to wear on that first day or for that entire first week.
You think you do. Because you have an entire closet of clothes from your past job(s), right? Also, you wear clothes everyday. However, what you did not anticipate is this: you became very lax in the dressing department at your old job. Or, if there was a period of time during which you were at home, hanging out in your jammies and trying to get a new job, you got way too used to wearing, well, jammies and then that same pair of jeans day in and day out even though they had some spilled chili/yogurt/peanut butter on them.
So then you get the new job and it’s time to get into something other than those jeans that basically formed themselves into a perfect bucket for your ass and you freak out. You gained weight during your time not working. Of course you did! Who loses weight when they’re watching daytime TV? Your old clothes suck. You can’t wear jeans and a t-shirt to your new job, dressing it up with a cardigan or jacket, because you have no idea what the culture is like there and it would be suicide to show up under-dressed. It would say, “I don’t care. Where’s the closest Starbucks, when is lunch and when am I getting a raise.”
Solution: Always wear black pants. You can wear the same pair of black pants that entire first week and no one will probably notice. This is because you’re so new no one knows your entire wardrobe yet. Besides, maybe you are the woman with 10 pairs of black pants. How do they know? Also, black pants are innocuous enough that people will be confused. “Did she wear those yesterday? I don’t remember. I remember that she had on a white shirt and a cardigan but what were the pants like…?”
Then rush to shop on the weekend. Or not. Those black pants are probably forming into a nice bucket shape for your ass…
Show me more… »
Simple Little Picture #1
March 15, 2011
As a way of introduction to Simple Little Picture, I will share my new view of drawing. Drawing (and doodling) is probably one of the best things anyone can do. You can do it on whatever scale you like – doodle on a Post-It or make a big drawing you can frame and hang on your wall.
When I was a kid, I loved to draw. It was just like talking or dancing – something I did without thinking about it. Here are some of my kid doodles I found recently – a president, vice president and a generic “Mad Guy.” Although this was drawn during the Reagan administration, my prez and VP look like they belong more to the time of Woodrow Wilson.
It wasn’t until junior high that I started to judge my drawing and compare it to other people’s and find it a bit lacking. By high school, although I took an art course every semester, I felt as if I “didn’t have what it takes” to be an artist and therefore drawing was a waste of my time.
And now, in my late 30s, I see how stupid this is. Drawing has nothing to do with “being” anything. Drawing is a unique way to process the world. Getting involved in a sketch or doodle draws you in, calms you down and speaks to the side of your brain that is not so literal.
So, since the beginning of January, I’ve been drawing more in a daily journal and also making little collages. For me, it’s much more comfortable than strictly writing. My journals tend to drift into a laundry list of the day’s maladies and complaints. Going back to reread a journal of mine can often put me in a depression coma. But drawings are always fun to go back and look at – even if I’ve drawn a murderous clown. That has a lot more value to me than, “I feel fat today. The cat puked on the rug. We owe money on our taxes.”
I’ve put a couple of my funny drawings on NotShallow and I’m going to put up more. Listen, I know nothing about perspective. My people usually look like stiff scarecrows. My favorite thing to do, actually, is to just look at a photo or object and draw it. I can get very absorbed in this and, when it’s finished, I feel better about everything.
I’m not the only one to feel this way. Recently, Roger Ebert put this post about drawing on his blog. Maybe you would feel better, too, if you picked up a pen, pencil or crayon. You never have to show anyone. Or maybe you should.
So what Simple Little Picture is about is a series of drawings and doodles done by people who are not artists by trade. They are everyday people willing to make something and share it with us. My only thing when I ask people to do this is not overthink it. I’m not looking for a Toulouse-Lautrec dancer or anything. That’s the point.
Stop thinking. Rest. Relax in the lines.
And with that, here is the first Simple Little Picture:
Artist: Jill Johansen (@jillyj73)
City: St. Paul
What do you call this?
Lazy Science Thursday
What, if anything, does that mean?
I don’t know. It means that perhaps drawing with a continuous line is lazy. And I drew it on a Thursday.
What one word would you use to describe your drawing?
Simple.
How often do you draw?
I doodle every day. More concentrated drawing happens not as frequently as I would like or as it should. Not sure why, really.
NotShallow.org Enhances User Experience With Version 2.0
March 14, 2011The Wednesday Outlook – March 9, 2011
March 9, 2011
Hello!
It’s snowing. I do not approve of this snow situation.
What have I been up to lately? Well, I’m excited to say that I’ve been masterminding a redesign of Not Shallow. Within a week I should have the new site up and I’m going to have ALL NEW CONTENT as well. It will be Not Shallow 2.0, “the upgrade you never knew you wanted but now desperately crave.” I’ve been working on it this week and let’s just say that it involves a drawing of a prawn.
Like the rest of America, I’ve been watching the Charlie Sheen implosion with great interest. Yes, I’ve been treating it as if I bought a ticket to see the sideshow. Each morning I eagerly tune in to the morning news to see what fascinating videos/podcasts/interviews he crafted overnight.
Now there is a movement to stop gaping at Sheen. Craig Ferguson and the ladies on The View both said in recent broadcasts that this is certainly not a sideshow, it is a person with a major illness and we should not be watching from the bleachers. To a large extent, I agree with them, if for no other reason than there are kids involved. Kids who have a dad who went down into the well and doesn’t seem to be planning to resurface anytime soon and a mom who is doing daytime rehab.
But it pains me to agree with the ladies on The View.
And it seems impossible, this being America, for us to just ignore Sheen, what with the machete waving and “tiger blood” drinking (probably some kind of acai berry drink spiked with vodka). But I think the comedian Marc Maron has it exactly right when he said on a recent WTF podcast that Charlie Sheen is like Icarus – he’s in a manic state now and feels invincible but he’s going to fly too close to the sun and those wings are going to burn off. I mean, you can smell singed feathers, can’t you?
Show me more… »
The Wednesday Outlook – March 2, 2011
March 2, 2011
This morning as I walked Freja the wind stung my eyes and face, making it difficult to breathe. And I remembered that last year, on St. Patrick’s Day, there was no snow left on the ground.
Wah?
There was nothing to do to raise my spirits but go thrifting, so I headed over to Arc’s Value Village in Richfield. Pretty much anyone who’s anyone in the world of thrifting goes to Arc, not that we have any idea who each other are. Oh, sure, sometimes you’ll see the signs. Today, for example, there were quite a few just-passed-middle-aged men scoping out the women’s jewelry. These are guys who sell stuff on eBay for a living. And when I tried to muscle my way in to see the goods, I sure got an earful from two guys talkin’ shop.
Gruff Guy: Things aren’t what they used to be. I started this, what, 15 years ago? Oh, the pickings were good.
Guy With Strange Hair: Yeah, I’ve been in it for 8 but I’ve seen a steady decline. There’s no more good stuff.
Gruff Guy: It’s the economy! Everyone is selling stuff now to make money! They’re ruining it! They need to go back to work.
[Let me interject what I'm thinking here. Number one, I'm trying to imagine all the thrifting riches from 15 years ago when people looked down on it. Number two, I'm getting kind of annoyed because it's not that easy for people to just "go back to work," and, in a capitalist system, competition is part of the downer, boys.]
Guy With Strange Hair: I used to go to the Goodwill over on (mumble mumble) and I had so much stuff in my cart that I wanted that I could barely afford it all.
Gruff Guy: Everyone’s looking for my stuff. Old women are looking for my stuff. I can’t find golf clubs now to save my life. Old people. Young people. Short people. Tall people.
Guy With Strange Hair: The only way to sell something now is if you have the only one of it available in the country at that time. I had that last year…
Gruff Guy: You had that? With what?
Guy With Strange Hair: That leather jacket I had. I had the only one available and I sold it for $800…
Gruff Guy: So the only way to make money is to… it’s through scarcity.
Guy With Strange Hair: Yeah, that’s about it.
Show me more… »
