Hoops and shadows

The weekend began nicely enough on Friday night with food, drink, and conversation with Christopher (and random run-ins with war protests, Critical Mass and a roving group of my co-workers)

Saturday was yardwork, some art, some writing and then off to Obi to meet Steve and Sara. After good sushi and bad jokes, we strolled to see the history of the Portland Seamen’s Bethel Building played out in twelve minutes in lights and shadows. Then off to Dante’s where, on the way, we were confronted with a walk signal that gave you a 20 second count down when the flashing red hand. Helpful and ominous, all at the same time.

The warm up act was Rubber Chicken Lollipop, an eclectic grouping of musicians and instruments—including a hybrid of a violin and a trumpet that sounded like a rich harmonica. They did a wonderfully sinister rendition of “Teddy Bear Picnic”.

Then came the sleazy carnival cabaret of Circus Contraption. I was surprised by how acrobatics usually performed many feet up come across as even more impressive done with a hoop or rope only six feet off the ground—and ten feet away from your table.

I was also impressed how they all could perform, juggle and sing in the smoky den that is Dante’s. Many good shows come to Dante’s, but sometimes I don’t have the energy or power to brave the smoke. I was struggling with it that night and had just blown my nose in a napkin when the MC, in a blood-splattered patriotic butcher’s outfit, started strolling towards me menacingly. He was in the midst of singing about the joys of dancing, dangling corpses. We engaged in a meaningful staring contest as he rolled up his sleeves and Steve laughed his delightfully loopy laugh. Then I endured his savage caress over my head before he took the napkin I had demurely folded in my lap, used it to cover my eyes and “snapped” my neck. I was very grateful my grandfather taught me how to use a handkerchief: that you should continuously fold it in.

But having my neck snapped didn’t even compare to my car attacking me the next day as I helped Kevin and Jenn move. The hydraulics are shot in the hatch of my hatchback—that and chance conspired to give me a blow to the back and then to the head. I don’t know if was upset with me over the repairs not being done yet or what. (It’s in the hands of God and insurance agencies, little car.)

Funny thing, is that Steve was there, too. And it seems to me that many of my latest bodily injuries seem to occur when he was around. Though I did sprain my ankle while I was by myself, making a drop off at FedEx. But, that office is very close to Mercury Studios. Hmmm…

You know, it just occurred to me that I sprained my left ankle at the beginning of summer and my right ankle at the end. Hope this isn’t some new weird ritual that I am going to go through every year.

Plums wait for no woman.

Halves, jam, conserves, preserves, and sweet and sour sauce, not to mention a couple of pies. And there are at least a few bags worth of usable plums on that tree if I desire (and I do, somewhat). With this burst of domestic activity, forcing me to take over my man’s kitchen, something had to give. This journal, basically.

It wasn’t going to be the writing and prep for Chapter 2 for Dicebox. Actually, standing at the sink, peeling many pounds of plums gave me a good amount of time to ruminate over story and dialogue. Not with a peeler, God no! Brooks plums are small affairs. Throw them in boiling water for 45 seconds and while the skins don’t exactly slide off, they are still fairly easy to remove.

And obviously it wasn’t the new index page for Dicebox—where I basically got my symbolic yayas out (since I will never do that tarot deck). And, delightfully, creating and composing the art for that page was absolutely enjoyable for me beginning to end.

I am not a subscriber to the “don’t do what’s not fun” philosophy. I expect that at some point, I will have to tackle something I don’t enjoy at all in order to get the effect I want or need.

For example, figuring out the perspective and logic of the large building at the beginning of Scene 4, Chapter 1. I did that the old-fashioned way, with the aid of David Chelsea’s superb Perspective! for Comic Book Artists, which allowed me to understand the whys and wherefores of convincing perspective enough to both do it precisely and how to cheat effectively.

So I was surprised when doing the Dicebox redesign, with all the finicky composing and color experiments, I didn’t hit a spot that I felt I had to soldier through. The only hiccup was that I felt I had to redraw the cat, as my first one looked like an evil chiropractor had gotten its hands on her.

Okay, some CSS coding issues arose in the test phase. and fixing that til it worked universally in Opera, Explorer, Mozilla and Netscape on the Mac and PC was a bear. And color adjustments—I’d just like to quote some artist’s site that I stumbled across a bit ago: “This website is best viewed on my monitor.” Now, PCs do by and large have darker video display than Macs, but I go that one brighter by having a gorgeous, crisp Trinitron monitor which shows much subtlety in detail and color variation.

Still, I felt very justified in my monitor choice when I observed a product shoot at the esteemed Marcus Swanson’s studio when I saw that the three monitor set-up (!) that they had was composed entirely of Trinitron monitors. And, oh, digital photography has come a long way, my friends.

I do hope to become a little more regular with my journal entries.

But, if you want a real blog, then might I suggest Dean Allen’s Textism for the snarky observation of an ex-patrioy Canadian designer in France—please, look at his “Annotated Maunifesto” and “Twenty Faces” essays if you are a designer with any pretensions of knowing type and current design culture. Both are inspirational in entirely different
ways.

For another choice, for comments, essays and debates on feminism, lefty Green politics and cartooning, try Barry Deutsch’s Alas,
a Blog. And his weekly political cartoon, of course.

I sign off now, at 11pm, exhausted from spending the morning finally achieving a clean and organized basement ( only took four attempts over a year and a half), relaxed from socializing with my next door neighbors over wine and strawberry ice cream, my husband in bed, a big yellow school bus, devoid of passengers, between me and my across-the-street neighbor’s house (blasting girl-sung dance music) and relieved that Becca and I have decided to first try to make wine out of pears—as I am very tired of plums.

( I also hear motocycles, a train and happy crowds at the Mt. Tabor Theater)

Happy equinox one and all.

Transparent Work

I’ve actually been quite productive the past week— reading, research,and writing as well as the line art for the new Dicebox index page and some design work. Not that I have anything I can actually show anyone.

In fact, the only proof I have for being productive at all are the mason jars of canned plums and plum conserve. About 20 jars so far and I’m still not resolved that I won’t be able to use or give away all the fruit on my tree— I haven’t harvested a tenth of it yet. Not even using several pounds
to make wine will help much. If that indeed is the fruit wine my friend Becca and I decide to try our first time out.

I have to say I found buying wine making supplies much more satisfying than canning supplies. I think it helped that we bought the wine equipment at an enthusiast store staffed with people who do their own home brewing as opposed to the staff in various kitchen and supermarkets who were vaguely aware that people did indeed can food. Well, okay, then there is the mad scientist aspect of the hydrometer, air trap and carboy that one uses for wine making.

But canning itself has been satisfying, in a labor intensive, this is my first time kinda way. I was actually pleased when to jars came out incorrectly as it gave me new confidence that I had processed the rest correctly. Though I won’t know how truly successful I was until three months later, when I go open the odd jar of conserves.

At least there have been no exploding jars so far.

September 5th 2002

Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning

Having given myself a small window of freedom, and bursting to the brim with all the things I want to do, naturally the first thing I did was totally clean and reorganize my studio.

Not a bad thing really—beyond finding certain items lodged under furniture and rediscovering certain books (and weeding out other books to sell to Powell’s) I had a chance to go through old sketch books (painful) and notebooks (illegible). I was pleased to find and remember some pretty good ideas I once had, now destined to be processed in the creative mill for use in something else.

Of course, there’s still all the various drawers in in studio to go through—which’ll be a perfect excuse to rent a slew of movies to entertain myself as I do so, guilt free.

I’ve also been clearing out old obligations and commitments that people have let me slide on in my pursuit to finish Chapter 1.

And the website–I’m attempting to locate and correct all glitches and navigation problems. And then there’s the updating and checking of the links page, etcetera and so on.

And then, of course, there’s Kip’s and my flat, the yard and the plum tree—which I’ve finally positively identified as a Brooks. Which, as the variety was discovered in Lafayette, Oregon and introduced in 1946, is a pretty safe bet for most plum trees found in the backyards of Portland. Very tasty.