Ragtag grab-bag
If you loved Worst. Sex. Ever. or if you’re just beside yourself because you missed it, rejoice! The fine folks that cooked up W.S.E. (with a teeny bit of help from me) are launching a brand new series of blogger readings/performances called The WYSIWYG Talent Show. (You can read Chris’ description until the whole website’s ready.) Yay! First show is on St. Patrick’s Day, and more details will be along soon.
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So Worst. Sex. Ever. was a total hit last night. Way more, I think, than anyone involved thought it would possibly be. Chris was worried that she might not scrape together enough in ticket sales to pay for the lighting guy, but that fear evaporated when we realized that people were lining up outside the door to get in. I think about 40 people had to be turned away, even after peope were let in to just sit on the floor of the space. The crowd was totally into it, and the brave souls who read their sorry tales totally rocked the mic.
I can not stress this enough: the readers were great, and kept us all in stitches, occasionally having us squirm in emotional or physical sympathy. Yes, it is funny because it’s true.
It was also good to see some props given to the kind of bloggers that I’ve been trying to keep up with over the years: not ranty political bloggers or hand-wringing teenagers, but really smart and funny people who love to write and spin a good yarn, and who gravitated to the web as a way to tell stories or vent a little in an easy, no-fuss kind of way.
The whole event really made me think about how much I’ve neglected UltraSparky for a while now, or at least not used it the same way as I once did. that’s all fine and good, because the space is mine to do with as I please, but I guess the point is that I’ve gotten lazy about doing anything with it that I’d like to do.
I started blogging as a way to work on my writing, and it energized me and helped me in ways I wouldn’t have guessed. After a couple of years, though, when I found myself in that spot where I was writing out of a certain desperatin to get a grip on my very troubled head and heart, the notion of maintaining this site for pleasure fell by the wayside. When I got my self back together and got back on track with one extraordinarily special individual who gives me a natural sounding board for my daily musings and whatnot, this site became an occasional chore or memo board.
As Charlie and I kept saying last night, we still have plenty of stories left to tell (and plenty of stories left to experience) but maybe we just need to remind ourselves once in a while that there’s some payoff of some kind or another in making the effort to tell them now and again.
I treated myself to a second viewing of Les Triplettes de Belleville the other night. (I went with Jenny Lee, the comic-book editor and all around sass queen who I have such a nonsexual/friendy crush on its almost embarrassing, but that’s another entry altogether.) The movie is an even richer pleasure the second time around, when you already know the story and can just enjoy the details and the tone and the animation that much more.
Just like the first time, though, I left the movie feeling profoundly sad. Madame Souza and Champion’s pet Bruno is such perfectly observed distillation of a typical family dog that he provokes the most awful pangs for Andy, who shared (and somewhere, must still share) Bruno’s barks, wheezes, and simple devotion to the prospect of snacks.
Ah, my dear, excitable, beloved, irritating, comforting Andy, who I still miss a little every day (and who I tend to miss even more whenever I have to interact with the cats, who I just haven’t been able to warm up to), even though I know we found a much, much better home for him than the one we were able to offer. Andy was a handful, but I loved him like crazy, even when he was jumping up on my tender parts or whining to go outside when it was rainy and cold. He was funny, cuddly, sweet, and my pal. I had the time and opportunity to develop with Andy what I never got the chance to with Buster, the dog Mark got back in the Bushwick days, who I really love, but was never really mine to bond with.
Sadly, the same reasons it was hard for us to take care of Andy properly are the same reasons it would hard for us to get a dog again. With the prospect of me leaving town for most of two years, it would be an even worse idea. Still, I find myself thinking about it regularly. Not with any intention, but just a certain longing for that li’l doggy vibe that I loved about Andy, Buster, and Bear. I don’t want to rag on the cats too much (well, I do, but I won’t out of deference to the other member of the household who’s quite fond of them), but they just don’t provide the same warm, fuzzy happiness.
You know you want it. More importantly, you know how crappy it is when you don’t get it. Wallow in the schadenfreude over at P.S. 122 before Valentine’s Day comes crashing down on you. Hear some of your favorite blog-types recount their stories (and possibly songs) of their Worst. Sex. Ever.
This 1950 ad for the Rosicrucians (who I do not endorse in any way) serves as a very convenient shorthand for all the content you do not see on UltraSparky these days.
I’ll confess once and for all, to all my friends, loved ones, and fans out there: I took last year off. What started as a post-meltdown instinct for self-preservation slowly became a conscious policy of getting my personal crap in better shape once and for all. I siezed the inertia that came along with cozy domesticity and began turning down invitations, paring down my possessions, avoiding freelance work, eating in, and staying at home. Basically, I chose tranquility (a certain go-go New York tranquility, mind you) over distraction and obligation, the two monkeys usually found on my back.
It was the right thing to do, despite the periodic guilt and hand-wringing about whether or not I was actually making people feel neglected. I shaped up my ship in a lot of ways: saved a ton of money and paid off a significant chunk of debt, sorted out my goals about work and school, learned a little more about finding the sensible middle ground between loving someone a whole lot and losing yourself in someone else, and shed a lot of neurotic habits. I wish I could get my HMO to pay me back for that kind of therapy.
You may not have seen much of the evidence, but I’ve really become more introspective and relaxed. (And in those many, many moments when relaxation doesn’t really come, I at least manage to substitute it with focus.) For the most part, though, the blog hasn’t been the place to work it out, like it was during the meltdown. Slow and steady progress, it seems, doesn’t quite need the same kind of feedback and hand-holding.
But enough touchy-feely nonsense. Basically, it’s two-thousand-goddamn-four and I’m calling off the moratorium on interacting with the world at large. I’ll warn you all now, though, I’m not going to try and convince myself that I have the time or the energy to be the man about town I once strived to be. I’ve got a husband to look after, work to do, and sleep to get. But I miss a lot of people a lot, and I hope no one took my prolonged hiatus too personally. I’m officially making an effort again.
You know, as long as I can do it before bedtime, and without spending too much. I still have to keep my nose to the grindstone, after all.
If you check out the January/February issue of (the not great but not completely terrible) Step Inside Design magazine, you’ll find a short article about typographic tattoos featuring such luminaries as me (with the most ink, in journalism terms) and Dan’l (who inspired the author when she spotted his “happy” tattoo on the bus one day). It’s a nice little article, but now I find myself reflexively cringing at the thought of being part of a burgeoning trend.
I wish there more photos included with the article, because some of the other tattoos described sound truly exquisite. The last time I talked to the writer she was contemplating a book on the subject, so maybe I’ll get to see some of them eventually. If that happens, though, I’m going to have to make damn sure that I can offer something better than a low-res JPG for them to use. Not only does my picture in the article show all the signs of being blown up from a smaller version, but it still manages to show all the freckles and acne scars on my back. I’d hang my head in shame, but that would only draw attention to my back.
Here’s a brief excerpt:
“What’s new here is the graphic sophistication and awareness of tattoo design: Both the tattooed and those tattooing them are responding to trends in a visually driven culture. Patrons of tattoo parlors, especially in urban areas, often come in with predesigned messages, printed out from the fonts on their computers. And the younger, hipper tattoo artists are often design school grads, with a broad knowledge of typographic choices.”
I’ve been getting the itch to add another tattooed letter to my set, too. Although I have a loose waiting list of candidates, I keep waiting for serendipity to drop something truly outstanding in my lap. So here’s what I’m thinking: why don’t some of you send in suggestions? Maybe a little collaboration is order this time around/
Send me a picture of a letter you like. Here are some guidelines to keep in mind:
Sunday night’s Kiki & Herb Christmas show was, as always, a tremendous spiritual and emotional cartharsis. I cheered and hollered, I laughed, and I shared the experience with many old pals, reinforcing my recent vow to ease out of my year-plus period of hermitage.
The evening was not just a catharsis of the soul, however. Before, during, and after the show I suffered through a process of crampy, gooey, physical cleansing before the following day’s appointment to have a tube-with-a-camera sent up my butt for a look at my innards. While maintaining a brave and cheerful face all night, I secretly cursed the state of modern medical science for its failure to think of a better way to get me ready for my close-up.
After a rough night’s sleep and a few more hours by the toilet the next morning, I was clean as a whistle and off to St. Vincent’s for my intimate encounter in the endoscopy unit. As usual, I charmed the nurses with my bon mots and good cheer, having learned long ago that in both medical procedures and anal sex, the more relaxed you are the better things will go. In the end (every pun intended), nothing looked out of whack in my colon. Although I was awfully glad to discover that I was not riddled with cancer or anything, I’m still frustrated about the ongoing trouble that’s been dogging me for months now.
So far, my crack team of medical experts has ruled out ulcers, polyps, and pregancy (although the ultrasound did turn up a little lesion on my liver that is apparently not cause for the kind of concern that a word like “lesion” would suggest). Maybe it’s a reaction to some of my medicines or maybe I’ve developed a food allergy or something, but there doesn’t seem to be much else to do about it right now except tough things out and looking out for suspicious dietary culprits.
On the positive side of all this, months of gastric distress have done wonders for my figure! I can fit into the snappier items in my wardrobe again, which will save me a costly winter shopping spree to accomodate what was quickly becoming a very fat chassis.
Yesterday was a stunningly awful day that came hot on the heels of a week that wasn’t awful but has been remarkably stressful. Yesterday was a combination of nagging stomach issues, stupid AT&T problems (FIVE hours on hold!), the ceiling at work springing a leak over my computer, (ruining a really cute outfit), and on and on and on. Mentally, I’m finished for the week and just waiting to crawl back out of the snowstorm we’re expecting. It’s a real pain in the ass to deal with work when in my head I’ve already retreated into a ball huddled beneath a blanket.
Which, by the way, was how I spent most of the Thanksgiving weekend, thanks to the aforementioned nagging stomach issues. I was starting to suspect that the new medicine might be a big part of the problem, so I was really primed to be inundated by all the somber World AIDS Day programming that Tivo kept serving up. If I haven’t been cramping, writing essays, or working this week, there’s a good chance I was weepy and feeling sorry for myself.
And I can’t even eat ice cream to soothe the angst. Bleah.
Working draft #2:
I have always done my best work when I have been able to understand a problem or a task by engaging myself with the ideas underlying it, tinkering and exploring possibilities. The scope of a issue, the plastic qualities of a particular material, the aesthetic sensibilities of a client or an audience, intriguing subject matter investigation of any or all of things is crucial to my ability to enjoy and succeed at what I do. This principle that has guided me through my career so far, informing my decisions to accept or discard various challenges on the basis of their ability to nurture my desire to learn as I work.
As an art student at Boston University, I learned not to produce artwork, but to think of its practice as a way to explore anatomy, history, perception, composition, and the pleasures of various media. Eventually, the study of graphic design led me to typographic expression and a practice of problem-solving that left room to draw upon the full range of talents at my disposal. Studying design in the early 90s also exposed me to digital technology at a time when I would be able to explore it as my profession was fundamentally altered by it.
Shortly after graduation, I took a job as a typesetter with the university, viewing it as an apprentice-ship in the finer points of typography and printing. (Fortunately, it also gave me a way to take more classes without the burden of tuition.) The digital aspects of that job also began my career in publishing technology, which has competed with graphic design as my primary focus ever since. When working as a designer neglected to feed my curiosity and desire to learn continuously, then working in technology gave me opportunities to explore other ideas altogether.
To me, the connections between the two fields were obvious: both addressed the need for clarity, communication, and ways to address current goals while planning for those that may develop in the future. Craftsmanship, investigation, and originality are intrinsic to both. Inventive solutions to many design problems often depend on the use of technology, and vice versa. In the workplace, though, organizations are often structured in ways that encourage discrete rather than cross-disciplinary activity, despite the limitations of doing so.
Tired of ricocheting between disciplines to feed my expansive curiosity, I began working toward a master’s degree in communication design at Pratt Institute. Before my first year in the program was complete, I realized that the experiment was a dismal failure. Rather than a source of guidance and criticism an environment that would allow me to develop the connections I saw between graphic design and the systems that support it, and how each could enhance the other the program proved to be more appropriate for students looking to perfect particular professional skills. Facing conflicting demands of work and school, I chose to abandon basic courses that repeated the lessons of my undergraduate studies in favor of the few classes that let me grapple with complex design problems. When I withdrew from the program, those incomplete courses became failures that contrasted my success in the upper-level courses. I returned to full-time work and the ongoing conflict between its opportunities and its restrictions.
As a designer, I have been able to indulge my interests in typography, tactility, and sequences of reading. As a technologist, I have been able to indulge my interests in logic, workflow, and systems that can accommodate new developments. Personal work has let me indulge my interests in art, writing, history, and politics. Usually, what I lack is the luxury of exploring how all these fit together: How do you shape the experience of a reader or user? How do different media enhance or distort the information they convey? How can the richness of information in structural markup be expressed in print? How much of an author can a knowledgeable designer prove to be?
I have come to think of design as a means of conceiving and building the vocabulary, syntax, and cadence of unique dialects needed to express complex ideas in comprehensible ways. Doing those things well relies on the ability to grasp those complex ideas in the first place. Given the opportunity to study in the [name removed to increase the suspense] program, with its emphasis on process, investigation, conceptual development, and learning that goes beyond design itself, I hope to develop a methodology for achieving and encouraging real understanding as a fundamental aspect of practice not a luxury to enjoy when time, money, or business objectives permit, but an inherent strength.
Working on my essay. Finishing up my slides. Freaking out. Loving it.