Call Me Rebekka

"I yam what I yam, and that's all what I yam." - Popeye

I spend a lot of time being me. Which is weird, because I don't always totally love me, so you'd think I'd be someone else some of the time. I pick up mannerisms belonging to others - if they set them down, and they look shiny, I'll pick 'em up and try 'em on for a bit - but I've yet to commit to full-on personality theft. Mostly because I never remember the props and fake mustaches and phony accents that come along with being someone else.

But I realized there's a person I'd very much LIKE to be - and until today, I didn't realize her name was Rebekka. (Mind you, this is a real person, not a, "I've decided to name this personality Rebekka. She loves cats and pistachio ice cream," scenario.) Rebekka Seale writes a blog called Dear Friend, which I happened on today. And I realized, as many activities I might have in common with this girl, SHE is the person I sometimes wish I were. The sweet, sourdough-baking, wool-hat-knitting, brown-paper-and-twine-sandwich-wrapping, dreamy-watercolor-illustrating poet-type, who writes romantic things like, "Here's wishing you all sweetness in the world this month: Blazing fires on frigid nights, and shimmery snow if your winter has been anything but. May your hands be kept warm by steaming cocoa, may you be intoxicated by the perfume of flowers, and may you lavish love on all those dear to you."

I swear, if I ever said anything like that to anyone they would look at me like I had three heads and probably ask if I were drunk. Which, yes, I would probably have to be to even attempt it. And even then it would probably come out more like, "Here's wishing you cheese sandwich! ... Er... flugelhorn..."

I posted this mostly as a kudos to Rebekka Seale, whose blog made me take a break from the silliness and sarcasm and sloppy awkwardness that pervades most of my waking hours, and made me dream of a person I'll never be, but would very much like to be. A person whose blog looks like a really glamorous Pinterest board.

Hibernating

It's January. And it's what I'm doing. Seems like I've spent every night for the past... uhhh... (what year is this again?) ... let's say, past few nights, curled under a blanket on the couch, laptop in hand, catching up on pretty much every TV show I can stomach. Throw in a few movies from Tim The Pirate King's collection, and it's safe to say I've become a genuine sofa tuber.

It's not great.

It's not that there are a ton of other things I should be doing, just a ton of other things I could be doing. That I'm not.

Yaaaay, laziness.

So, while I summon the energy to lift my head three inches off the arm of this couch to scowl and shake my fist at winter, I give you Brief and Terrible Reviews of Ten Things I've Recently Watched.

1. Community














Vast and wide is my love for Joel McHale. His Han Solo-esque, kind-of-a-jerkwad sex appeal aside, however, Community is quite possibly the greatest show on television. You should probably watch it immediately before it goes the way of Arrested Development and I weep openly.

2. Parks and Recreation








I'm mostly happy this show came along right as The Office was starting to suck. Totally funny. Totally watchable. Not always an Amy Poehler fan, but she's pretty much adorable. (Plus Adam Scott! *Please see "Party Down" below...)

3. "Being Elmo"










Watched this because it got great reviews, and it didn't disappoint. While Elmo happens to be the one Muppet that makes me want to poke babies in the eye with a stick, Kevin Clash is so infectiously humble and sweet that even I started to get on board with the Elmo thing. It's hard not to root for someone who achieved their childhood dreams in a perfect, totally cheeseball way.

4. American Horror Story










Spoiler Alert: Sylar from Heroes is a gay ghost.


5. "Cars 2"














AKA, "The Pixar Film That Never Should Have Been Made." I kind of hated the first one - and it took me THREE TRIES to finally sit through the second one. As it was, I gave up halfway through and starting writing this blog post. Sooooo... There's that.


6. "The Future"









It had all the right components - it was an indie flick about 30-somethings, written, directed and starred in by the quirky, pseudo-mysterious Miranda July. Basically a recipe for success as far as I'm concerned - but the fact was, it depressed the hell out of me. I can't even tell you if it's a good movie, because I've already committed suicide. I might've liked it. We'll never know. Because I'm dead now. And spoiler alert: SO IS THE CAT.

7. Bob's Burgers










I think it helps that I'm a big fan of Eugene Mirman (and really any comedian with a ridiculous vocal inflection), but the character development on this show is ridiculously good. Give it at least three episodes before you decide how you feel about it. I miss this show already. It's time for a new season.

8. "50/50"











A fine, mostly unmemorable movie. The fact is, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is always going to be good. And Seth Rogen is always going to be sort of ok. And, together? They were nice. A glowing, unremarkable review if ever there was one.

9. Party Down











Two seasons and it was cancelled. And it was the GREATEST UNEXAGGERATED CRIME KNOWN TO HUMANITY. I just watched this whole series again, and remembered, with great sadness, that there would be no more episodes. Adam Scott, however, is now on Parks and Recreation, so I take some solace in that... But, truly... Truly... This was a great piece of television. Watch it now. In remembrance of me. (Or them. Or something. Maybe a caterer you met once.)

10. Dog: stealing and eating two pieces of fried chicken, throwing them up, and eating them again











Yeah. It was this dog. My dog. And it was, quite possibly, the most horrifying thing I've ever seen.

Except maybe "Cars 2"...

"It's not a parade anymore..."

This was the sentiment expressed to us by a clearly over-it police officer following the Grand Illumination Parade in downtown Norfolk last night, as we were steering our float back to our building. While it echoed much of what I was already musing over, in actuality he was commanding us to turn off the music we still had blaring through the speakers. "Turn that off... It's not a parade anymore."

I have a love/hate relationship with this parade - I adore the work, and the opportunity to get out from behind my desk. I love the problem solving aspects of creating giant pieces and getting them to do what you want them to. And that great feeling when it actually works. I love creating. I love the freedom of it. I would do this kind of stuff all the time and leave the graphic work in the dust if it made any sense to do full time. I love that every now and then you'll hear an old lady in the crowd say, "Now THAT'S a beautiful float," and it seems worth it.

I hate having to depend on other people to make it work, but I LOVE the people that I have. There are a handful I trust to show up when they say they will, do the work they promise to do, and generally not despise me for my nit-picky ways. But, eventually I expect to wear those people thin, and have to replace them with less reliable folks. (And when I say "a handful" I probably mean 2 or 3 tops - they're REALLY hard to come by.)

I hate knowing that no matter what I create for this thing, we will never, EVER win - I just can't cater my taste to the over-cluttered, super-shiny, gaudy cluster that I know the judges love. It's really ok by me if we never win (it matters way more to me that I like the final product), but I hate having to tell people we didn't. I can't manage everyone else's expectations, and I get the vague impression that people don't understand why we keep putting so much work into it it if we never win.

I hate that for every thank you from a kid whose hand you put a candy cane into, you get an equal number of parents screaming at you that they have TWO kids, and need TWO candy canes!!! Even though, at that point, you're twenty feet away, because the parade moves so quickly, and there are 20 billion people on the route. There's some math there that will never balance out.

This year was particularly weird for me because my boss somehow checked out of the whole process. I tried to express my disappointment about this to a friend who really didn't want to listen and I probably should've let it go then, but it's still bothering me. I never signed up to take the whole thing on myself - sure, I'll put in the huge amount of extra hours to make the float happen, but I never wanted to be responsible for organizing the whole event. I don't need the added complications of making sure everyone knows where they're going, and gets there on time, and that all the marketing materials are in order, making sure we get shots to send to the show, and instructing the actors to wave enthusiastically, and realizing at the END of the parade that 2000 promotional candy canes doesn't even put a dent in the number of people at this thing, and we should reevaluate that for next year. She came down once in the process to look at the thing when it was half-finished, and told me to make sure I wrote Star Awards (our internal company award system) for everyone who helped me on it, and was never seen again. I don't want to write Star Awards. I've personally thanked everyone, many times over - if we have to go through bureaucratic process, I'd prefer that didn't fall to me. I'm a designer. I just want to design the thing, let the organize-y people organize and let the leadership lead. And though I'd prepared myself for the moment when she wouldn't show up - she has a new baby and I sympathize - I was still surprised when she didn't.

But on more positive notes, everything went off as hitchless-ly as possible. We made it to and from the parade in one piece (ALWAYS the biggest concern for me), the costumes looked great, and everyone had a good time. And now it's over. As an overwrought cop once said, "It's not a parade anymore."

Design Booze

I'm a sucker for packaging design. I don't always care what the product is or what it does - if it has beautiful packaging, I'm pretty easily inclined to buy it anyway. Or at least spend a good deal of time contemplating it before convincing myself I don't really need a $300 silver-plated panini maker, just because I liked the label.

I'm especially guilty of this practice in liquor stores. Or, most recently, the craft brew section of Total Wine, where I left with a $10 six-pack of 400 Pound Monkey, because the illustration was so freaking delightful.

(As it turns out, it's a light little IPA that's not so bad either.)

And while I've considered stocking an entire bar out of booze with packaging I love, some of it is really pricey. (Not to mention, I'm sure some of it tastes like complete swill.) So here, in no particular order, are a few other beverages I've loved solely for their design.

Frisky Midget

Not ALL my great loves are based in illustration, but this one? Absolutely. (Plus nesting dolls always intrigue me. They're so quirky.)

(P.S. I don't actually drink wine. It's a love that was never meant to be.)

Frozen Ghost Vodka

Gorgeous and totally gives me the creeps. Well done, Frozen Ghost.


1800® Tequila Essential Artists

All of the bottles in this series are very cool, but it was the Gary Baseman one that sold me the hardest. I love tequila, I love mermaids - and amazingly, NEITHER of those things were even the reason. It's the mexican wrestler. I just... I just... love him.


Rush River Beer

Every now and then you see something with really simple design and great typography that is just bare enough to stand out from everything around it. I guarantee there's probably not a glossy finish in their entire product line, and it makes me want to snuggle them.


Grimm Brothers Brewhouse

Yes, it's totally about the illustrations. BUT, everything about the Grimm Brothers brand is working for me. Look at that logo! GAH! I can't even deal.

Kraken Rum

Without a doubt, Kraken has got to be some of the BEST packaging design ever put out into the world. So much so, I'm not even taken by sticker shock at their $1000 custom wallpaper. In fact, I kinda like it. And throw in that lamp for good measure, because that octopus really speaks to me.


I've been thinking I might like to design someone's craft brew, based solely on my love o' booze art. So if anyone makes a crappy beer that needs to be salvaged by some awesome artwork, give a girl a heads up. There might be a trade agreement to be had.

A redesigned blog for a redesigned brain.

I took a very lengthy ten minutes to change my header design this evening. It's pretty fantastic, isn't it? One might think I do this sort of thing for a living. And therefore stop caring about it the instant I get home...

But, I've finally relieved the pressure that blog header was putting on me. The pressure to have an identity. To know what I'm doing. To have a purpose in writing. I never had those things to begin with - I'm not sure why I thought that would change over time.

I may update more often now. Or I may not. But, the open space to write is promising. My social networking efforts are often unpleasantly stalked, putting a significant hitch in my desire to speak openly. And there's no good way around that, other than to shut up entirely. But writing is cathartic... and, mostly, for me, when it's being read. Preferably, by people who won't bring it up in conversation and make me talk about it, when all I was really looking to do was sort something out aloud.

It's been a strange week. Hell, it's been a strange last few years. Emotionally draining, and the recovery time never what it should be. Sometimes it seems that I never "get over" anything anymore. It's a terribly taxing way to live.

So, new header. Same brain. Let's see how it goes.

A Tribute to a Very, Very Good Car

Hello. My name is Michelle. And I'm a raging anthropomorphic. (Ok, so that wasn't the correct usage of that word at all. But it was the only way I could make it sound like "alcoholic". I was trying to do something there. Allow me a little literary license for once in your life, would you? [Oooh, hey! Alliteration! Fancy! I should do this more often!])

Ok. Where was that going, anyway...? The car. My Alero. Not my first car, mind you - that would be a hand-me-down Plymouth Voyager minivan, courtesy of my adoring parents. Of course, little did they know that one fateful day I would launch that van over a cliff into an icy lake on Christmas Eve. But, that's really not what we're talking about...

The Alero was the first car I, myself, purchased - a doozy of a vehicle, what with it's four doors and steering wheel. AND the rear spoiler, which, to this day, I still maintain made the car go faster.

Just LOOK at that spoiler!!! Even parked, it's practically a blur!

Of course, this vehicle, too, became subject to the harrowing hazards of the road - frankly, I blame Virginia. I don't think it actually matters where you're from, you can always say, "At least people knew how to drive in (insert your hometown here)!" (They don't.) But, I mean, seriously - at least people knew how to drive in upstate New York! (They don't.) Regardless, only a few months into my Virginia residentdom, a crazed woman on the highway gave me this:

To be fair, someone else hit me in that exact spot AGAIN this year... A terrifying double denting!

A hit-and-run several years later that nearly ended in a high speed chase down the back streets of the worst part of town, with me in hot pursuit of the offending crackheads left me with this:

I'm sad because crackheads jacked my license plate.

Why I never got any of these things fixed speaks more to the costly, sinister nature of car repair, and is, in part, why I so greatly admired this car. While I continued to neglect it, it began it's slow retaliation with laudable passive aggression. First, the dashboard vinyl peeled up. Then the fan stopped working on it's lower settings. The blinkers began functioning intermittently, and often only after rapidly pounding the 4-way button. The radio dial fell off. The driver's side window stopped opening. The passenger's side window stopped opening. The driver's side window started opening again. The driver's side window stopped closing. Eventually the motor would grind to a halt, and the entire pane of glass would drop out of it's track. Duct tape became a standard issue accessory.

I'm classy!

With eleven years under it's belt, the final act of abdication seemed to come when the tiny, ere unnoticed button holding up the seat belt simply fell off. As if to say, "I can take no more," my brave little toaster began it's sluggish decent into retirement, with no less than four not-entirely-detrimental emergency lights blinking sadly at me from the dash.

I have since purchased a new car. It's fabulous and shiny and new and everything you could ever possibly want in a car. But what it doesn't have yet is the history - the memories, the time spent, the sheer weight of garbage I pulled out of the Alero before trading it in. And that, is the real reason I write this. Because, apparently, to know me is to have looked at the contents of my car.

BEHOLD!!!!!!!!
Um, wow. Just... wow.

Shocking. Truly shocking. While the car was pretty messy, I'll admit, I had no idea the sheer volume of things that were living in my vehicle. I won't bore you with a detailed list, but allow me to reveal some of the more, shall we say interesting bits...

You never know when you might need a disguise. Or, um, multiple disguises...

High school tassel '99, TCC tassel '04, ODU tassel '08 - nearly my entire life's education.

"WAMP" license plate. Not mine. Not anyone's. Where did this come from? And why do I have it?!

6' roll of white canvas. And a wiffle bat. And a bag of plastic forks... Ah, the things I might have MacGyvered.

FIFTY-NINE City of Norfolk parking garage passes

And, finally, the item I found most terrifying of all...

The tiny plastic toy chest I was given to put my teeth into after they were broken off in a trap-door accident during a rehearsal for "Evil Dead: The Musical". Open. Empty. Which, if you haven't pieced together the horrors, means somewhere, there were teeth in my car. Real, broken human teeth. From my broken, human head. I shudder to think of this Blair Witch turn of events. For this reason alone I may have had to trade in the car.

I loved that car. Right to the end. It's beyond nice to have new - I never knew how warm my butt could be until someone heated the seat - but there is so much affection for the old. I'll miss you, dear friend! I hope they send you to a farm upstate where you can sip motor oil on a rickity front porch and shake your tires at birds that try to poop on you. You've more than paid your dues - I hope you have a lovely retirement!

Good work, old friend! RIP

Robo-Love

So, seriously... How much do I suck at having a blog? Happy to say it's been almost exactly a year with no posts. Congratulations, blog-o-sphere! You win!

I did realize there are a number of cute things (courtesy of StumbleUpon) that I run into every day that I could post here, if only for my own reference, so that's-a-whatta-I'm-a-gonna-do. Yes. That's right. A year with no posts, then a horrible impersonation of that Italian guy from the Simpsons. "Italy! She's-a shaped like a boot! Who knew?!"

With any luck, you won't hear from me again until 2011.

I've been having a love fest with cute robots lately. I want this one on a t-shirt. Which may be difficult to put on over my adorable cardboard robot costume...


This guy makes me pretty ridiculously happy as well. Ummmm, I kinda wanna hug him a bit.

This was my desktop wallpaper for weeks. (It changes pretty frequently.) Hooray, singing, dancing, purple robot! I'm sorry you had to be replaced.

And finally, the adorable robot that started it all: Tweenbot.


Definitely a project worth checking out. (There's a great video that will restore your faith in humanity.) If I saw this little robo-guy stuck on the side of the road, I'd be the first one nudging him back on his path. Go, lil' robot, go!!!

Yes. Well. Pretty sure that's all I've got for now. And possibly ever. Hm. I will try harder. Ok, that's not true. But, I will definitely try harder to try harder. Soooo, there's that...