brand new paintings!

today was such a fun day! i spent a bunch of time working on five new 3" x 3" paintings for the upcoming arthouse coop canvas project group show. the goal for the project was to create a sort of visual encyclopedia - each participating artist gets five random words to paint and that is that! here's the words i was assigned:

"carcinogen"
3" x 3" acrylic on canvas

"cotton"
3" x 3" acrylic on canvas

"equator"
3" x 3" acrylic on canvas

"larynx"
3" x 3" acrylic on canvas

"zebra"
3" x 3" acrylic on canvas

it was so nice out today i set up a folding table in the backyard and did my painting out there, and the group of three little birds that are always visiting our bird feeder kept me company all morning!

i also spent a ton of time yesterday and today working on new screenprinting screens, i'll share the finished products with ya soon! (wanna be the first kid on your block with a brand new hearts and laserbeams grocery tote? better get your ass to renegade craft fair on july 11 and 12!)

makin rosettes and say, what kind of tree is that?

ok so today i was planning on making ice cream for the first time ever! got all my supplies together to make a delicious cherry garcia style ice cream, spent a good long while cutting and pitting cherries, cooked em up in the sugar water, went to read next steps and the instructions on the ice cream maker and whaaaaaaaaaaaaa?



you have to freeze part of if first?



denied!!!



so i decided to make rosettes with josh instead! if you click on the picture, you'll go to the entire photo set on flickr...







and if you click on the below picture you can watch a video of how the batter flowers once it hits the hot oil!







once the rosettes are done you just sprinkle em with a little powdered sugar and enjoy! they're an old-timey scandinavian dessert, a little funnelcakey, a little donutty, a lot deliciousy!



also, for you sleuths and plant experts out there - we have this tree in our backyard and have no idea what it is. any thoughts? it's got serrated leaves and a pit in the middle of the small fruit.

winner! pow!

three cheers to julie, who won my copy of "into the wild"!

i'm really jazzed to go to our buddy melissa and her boy dan's wedding today; it should be a blasty!

and i have to share that josh and i saw year one last night and uh... it wasn't all that great... but it did remind me that i still haven't seen the wolverine movie and omg i need to get caught up!

still workin on gettin a few things under control here at the house, i think tomorrow's gonna be a lot of unpacking and organizing... maybe it'll be time to tackle the garage!

listen... i have to go. i have to sheepishly admit i'm all hopped up on coffee and i can't really hold down a coherent thought to write right now. BUZZZZZZZZZZ! i made the coffee quite a bit too strong this morning.

hearts and laserbeams book report: into the wild by jon krakauer

ok so this last weekend josh, brittanie and i went to minnesota for my brother justin and his girl ashley's wedding - we get to the airport and talking to my sister brittanie, she had a sexy vampire book while i had nothin' to read at all and this aggression will not stand!


while josh usually sleeps through flights or listens to tunes and movies on his ipod, i like takin those big long chunks o time as an opportunity to do some reading, cuz honestly there's just not enough time for stuff like that. so off to the airport bookstore i go - and i saw into the wild on one of the tables. i always wanted to see the movie, but never quite got around to it. and i like readin' the books before i see the movie of the book, cuz i like seeing the contrast between what i play in my head while i'm reading and then what they actually do with the film when it's brought to life. so there you go! read on to the end (or just scroll down to the bottom of this post if you're in a hurry) and find out how to get your hands on my copy of into the wild, complete with a little note from me to you and a hearts and laserbeams doodle on the inside cover!



hearts and laserbeams book report: into the wild by jon krakauer


ok lemme share with you the premise of this true story is really super appealing to me.



if you didn't know and haven't seen the movie, this book is a journalist's telling of how a kid named chris mccandless graduated from college, then gave away all his money, packed up a few possessions, and ran off to see america for 2 years. his adventure culminated in one final big hurrah when he went to alaska for a few months to live completely off the land, and he died after like 112 days or something in the alaskan wilderness.



the part i love about this idea is just picking up and going. camping, livin' off the land, gettin the hell outta southern california and seeing real places that don't kinda kill my soul. i can't wait to move to georgia someday where we're in a more rural setting and have the option to grow most of our food and fish at our own place and just be left the hell alone.



that being said, i should wanna hang out with this chris mccandless dude. but i totally don't.



number one, he died over 10 years ago and i'm sure he's pretty smelly by now.



number b, with all due respect to all the cool things he did do and see over his 2plus years of adventuring across the u.s., he really comes across as a bit of an arrogant douchebag. just the way he changes his name to alexander supertramp, for example... love the name supertramp, but if you're actually a for reals hobo, and you give yourself the name supertramp, that pretty much means you're king of the tramps and you should probably be smarter than thinking you can just prance off into the alaskan wilderness with not enough gear and not enough experience to actually make that happen successfully.



there's lots of letters and excerpts from postcards chris wrote in this book, along with highlighted passages from books that he had with him when his body was found, and all of those just kind of add to the man this kid was kinda a jerk feeling i got while reading it. ok awesome you like reading old books about nature, but don't get all i'm better than you about it and don't demand that other people live your hobo life or else they're stupid. i'm a very live and let live type, and when people shove their own beliefs or way of life down my throat it's a huge turnoff.



the end of one letter to a friend of his was written juuuust before he went up to alaska. it ended with a sentence that was something to the effect of "i now walk into the wild". and at this point, i put down my book and told brittanie and josh that this dude annoys me just as much, if not more, than emo kids.



so yeah... i don't know if we would've been friends if we met.



but his personality aside, wow. WOW. who wouldn't want to just walk away from the 9 to 5 and just drive away, and hike everywhere and canoe at the beach and just live life every day without worrying about when the next rent payment's due? i kinda can't wait to rent the movie and see how this all plays out. did they use the actual bus that supertramp was found in? that would creep my shit out.



i was totally into how well this book was written - even though i wanted to punch the hobo in the face i was still totally riveted to the story and i honestly can't say that about many nonfiction books. total page-turner. until you get to the end. then you pretty much stop turning pages.



ratings

hearts: 4 hearts - really solid good book, would definitely recommend it to my friends even though i generally hate non-fiction.

farts: 1 fart - i really spent most of that book wanting to punch the kid in the face. and also, probably he should've taken something a little stronger than a .22 into the wild for the purposes of obtaining dinner.



so on to the giveaway! What would your hobo name be if you were to pull a chris mccandless and leave town to live a hobo life on the road exploring? mine would be The Venerable Hobo McTootPants.



leave a comment tellin me your chosen hobo name, and i'll pick a name at random from all entries received before midnight friday june 19th. the winner gets my copy of this book!

hearts and laserbeams book report: born standing up by steve martin

i don't know if you know this, but there's a gem of a website out there called goldstar that sells discount tickets to all kinds of shows. you can sign up for their email newsletter and get periodic updates on what cheap tickets are available in your area, and it's awesome the stuff it has available sometimes!


their newsletter is how we came to see steve martin play the banjo.


apparently steve martin's been playing the banjo since he was like 17 - i saw a tiny clip on tv years ago of him pickin' and grinnin', and i have to tell you it was magic. so when i saw $15 tickets to see steve martin play the banjo i told josh immediately if i don't go to this show i will die.


so it turns out that this concert's a fundraiser for the los angeles public library - and i'll tell you what, there are some major differences when a concert is put on for the library. number one, before the show there's people reading. number two, the opening acts are folks in suits talking about the library.


the show itself was freaking amazing. the first chunk of it was dave barry interviewing steve martin about his banjo playing, and then the second part was steve martin playing a bunch of songs off his new cd called the crow. if you dig bluegrass music like i dig bluegrass music, even if you don't dig bluegrass music you should give it a listen cuz the shit is GOOD!! and since it was a benefit for the library when we picked up our tix at will call we were also given a free copy of his latest book, born standing up, which leads us to:



hearts and laserbeams book report: born standing up by steve martin



i have to tell you i've always been a huge steve martin fan. one of my fave movies as a kid was roxanne, the song "king tut" will stay with me forever, one of my fave books is pure drivel, and i can even forgive the movie where he's got a dozen kids or whatever it was. (cheaper by the dozen? that sounds about right.) is that gonna bias this book report?



probably.



i get really nostalgic when i see steve martin movies, like kinda fuzzy-hearted and if it's a really good one like my blue heaven or planes, trains and automobiles, i may even get a tiny bit weepy. i heart steve martin because he has always just felt really genuine and real to me, like he's not playing a bit. like if you met him in real life, he'd be exactly the way he is on stage, in movies, whatever. i am convinced if josh and i met steve martin in real life, not in any kind of fan/celebrity sort of way, we'd be friends.



this genuine realness totally comes through in born standing up. it's a memoir about steve martin's time doing standup comedy, from the time he was working at disneyland starting to figure out what he wanted to do with his life, through his development as a standup comedian, including lots of chunks about his family and how that helped shape his future.



while it exposes the painful parts of his past, it doesn't exploit it. he lays it out for you without throwing anyone under the bus and i really respect that. it's not a tell-all, it's a tell-some.



and the way steve martin writes is the way he talks. so as you're reading the book, it's not really like you're reading at all. it's like he's sitting right there in the lunchroom with you just chatting with you about his life and his comedy while you eat your stouffers macaroni and beef microwavey lunch goodness.



i remember i saw steve martin on the jon stewart show a while back, and he was asked at what point did he know he was big. he tells this story about how at one show, at the end of the show, he took the entire audience outside and there was an empty swimming pool there. so he told everyone to get in the pool. and then he swam over them, crowd surfing style, doing the crawl. and the excitement he gets on his face when he's telling this story - you can see it when you're reading about it in the book; you can totally tell this is one of his favorite memories.



the end of the book came full circle - it started with him giving some background on how his family started him down this road, and it closes with thoughts on making peace with his past. and it kinda made me tear up quite a lot, guys. good good stuff.



anyways, i can't give away my copy of this book because i loved it too much and i'll probably read it again soon, but stay tuned - i'll be doing a giveaway of another good book i read recently, into the wild, soon soon soon! in case you didn't guess, here's how born standing up rates:



ratings

hearts: 5 hearts - you're gonna be hard-pressed to get me to say anything bad about steve martin, sorry charlie! (except uh... please no more cheaper by the dozen sequels)

farts: 0 farts - yeah sorry see above... except for cheaper by the dozen you got nothin' on this guy the end!

my long beach tech support heroes...

ok so about a week ago, mysteriousness was afoot on my laptop. i'm not sure what the eff happened with my norton antivirus, but all of a sudden it started freaking out and repeatedly asking me to activate my account (which i've had for at least 2 years). so i got online with norton tech support and through the wonders of remote desktop magic or voodoo or something they were able to uninstall and reinstall my copy of norton antivirus.

so it seemed like things were awesome. and then my laptop decided it wanted an immediate divorce from the internet. no trial separation, just straight get the fuck out my house. as someone who does quite a lot of freelancing over the internets, it was like putting me in stephen king's misery house and hobbling the shit outta my operation... the process became do work on my computer that has all my files, save the stuff to show the clients onto a usb flash drive, take that to the huzz's computer, email the files that way, and if a client sent something to me reverse the process.

basically i was about to jump outta the window. or worse have my wallet raped by the best buy geek squad.

so today i did some searching on craigslist trying to see if there was someone that looked reputable enough to trust the goods with. and while i did see a couple of ads that could possibly be legit people that don't wanna steal from me... i still couldn't get behind the idea of handing my laptop over to a stranger for at least a day, expecting to get it back with no hassles (if i could get it back at all!)

i decided that for once i should have some standards, look for ratings, reviews, whatever. and that is how i found quickfix. they were the only guys i saw on google maps that had 11 ratings that all seemed pretty positive, so i gave em a call. (while crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.)

and without bringing my computer in or charging me, they tried a bunch of things with me over the phone to try and get this thing to work. and when none of that did and we had thoroughly discussed how my computer got to the point, they said ok i think you're gonna need to bring it in.

and as i drove to 3397 east 19th street in signal hill, i racked my brain as to how long i could possibly work without my computer. and what dollar amount was i willing to spend to get this issue fixed?

turns out neither of those extremes happened. i walked in, they were super helpful, fixed it on the spot in the span of about 15 minutes, and charged me 25 bucks. TWENTYFIVE BUCKS. and they also threw in some pointers about things i could do to make my computer run a little better, AND installed avira virus protection freeware after making sure all the little nasty bits of norton antivirus that had kinda put me in this position were gone.

long story short, I HEART QUICKFIX. and i wholeheartedly recommend em, and if my computer effs up again that's where i'll go. the end!

hearts and laserbeams book report: the jungle by upton sinclair

ok so i figured i'd do another high school reading list selection this time, and i went to the barnes and noble classics section at uh... my local barnes and noble to see if anything caught my eye and dragged me fifteen feet. ended up walkin out with the jungle - wasn't sure i'd wanna read it, cuz from what i knew about it, there's some pretty graphic nasty talk about how our meat used to be handled back in the day. but then i read how this book was a milestone in american history, and that because of this book the pure food and drug act was passed. so i thought i'd give it a go - make sure you read to the end to see how to get my copy of the jungle and the cliff notes for it for free so you can read it for yourself!



hearts and laserbeams book report: the jungle by upton sinclair



dude did you ever see the snl skits about debbie downer? like there's a big group of happy people hanging out and they're talking about cool stuff and then debbie downer pipes up with some shit like "I'll tell you what the Pilgrims did bring: smallpox."



seriously, that's what this whole book is. it's a big fat huge debbie downer. it pretty much made me wanna kill myself in a lot of parts. (not really. but it DID make me want to drink)



so basically the jungle is not all about the meatpacking industry - that's a tiny part of it that really only takes up a couple chapters of the 400 pages. the overall story is there's this poor lithuanian family who comes to america in the early 1900s to make a better life for themselves.



and they get crapped on over and over and over and over and over. by the end of the book, a couple of em are dead, one of em's run off and abandoned the family, the kids are all effed up, one of the family's a morphine-addicted ho, the list goes ON AND ON.



you just keep reading about how crappy everything is, how everything's a swindle, everyone's out to rip everyone else off, everything's a lie,and holy crap guys this book was super depressing. cuz we are jerks!!!



and then i got to the last few chapters of the book and had lots and lots and lots of problems finishing the book because it was all politics. you know how i am about politics - SNORE!!! i honestly couldn't really tell you much about it except for the fact that the main dude jurgis finds out about socialism and it solves all his problems the end!



say it with me now - WHAAAAAAAAAAAA???



so as i'm reading the cliff notes on this thing, it turns out the jungle is only partly about the meat-packing district and all the bad tuberculosis infested meat being churned out back in the day. the entire book is about how capitalism stinks, and how it fucks up everyone that isn't top dog and how it's all corrupt, and how awesome socialism is.



and upton sinclair was a socialist! and he ran for governor in california as a socialist a couple of times!



WHAT THE EFF!!! how come i never heard about this part of the book? (if i'd have known it was all about politics i would've just rolled over and taken a nap instead) apparently when the book came out mr sinclair the social socialist was pretty upset because the whole socialist slant of the book was lost in the OMG WHAT THE EFF ARE THEY DOING OVER THERE IN THE MEATPACKING PLANTS!!!



so basically, here's the book in one sentence: the jungle isn't so much about bad meat as it is about bad politics. it's pretty riveting though, and until i got to the last 3 chapters that were all about socialism it was pretty much a page turner!



ratings:

hearts: 3 hearts - this wasn't my favorite book to read, it was pretty depressing and the last 3 chapters could be lovingly called "boring as all hell"

farts: 2 farts - it was actually pretty good, didn't so much like reading about diseased meat and REALLY didn't like reading about politics.



and there you have it! wanna check out the jungle for yourself? i'm givin away my copy along with the cliff notes to the first person to comment about this blog post! be quick, though - i post my blog on 5 different sites so the first one from any of them wins!

winner winner chicken dinner!

thanks to the awesomeness of random.org, the winners for the screenprinted tee and greeting card giveaway have been picked!

congrats to kb of kokoleo for winning an awesome tee, and to dao for winning a greeting card!

there's gonna be lots more giveaways in the coming weeks so stay tuned! (i may have a quickie one coming up later today even for you book lovers out there!)