f o u r d e a d f i s h

Blech

2006-11-09T19:22:00.000-08:00

For the last five or six days I've felt like shit—nausea, dizziness combined with achy muscles and what Evan refers to as "dragon breath." This period has coincided with switching medicines. The last medicine may have caused tachycardia. After my heart pounded, I also felt like shit, so there hasn't been much of a transition between these two problems. I suppose I just have the flu, but if I end up dying from some exotic disease, they'll probably say, " Hmmmmm. Felt like shit, breath like a dragon. Yep, shoulda' gone to the hospital." Evan drug me from bed late this afternoon and made me illustrate my woes, which at the moment include nausea. As I lay in bed wallowing in my discomfort, I thought of a scene I remembered reading in Anne of Green Gables or Little House on the Prairie where the heroine was called upon to save a cow in extreme discomfort. The cow mooed and bawled in pain and either Anne or Half Pint came to the rescue by cutting a quick hole in the cow's protruding stomach to release the pressure of the colicy gas. I have visions of a gingham dressed girl stabbing me in the stomach and instantly curing me. Evan says he's keeping all the knives out of reach until further notice. He's not sure that the cow got better. He thinks playing doctor helped Anne or Half Pint feel a lot better, but the cow probably died from infection. I have to remind him that cows only die in the real world. Oh well—burp—time for a hot shower and some mouth wash.

My Thoughts on the End of the World

2006-11-02T00:30:00.000-08:00

Well, maybe not the end of the entire world, just the world of drive-ins and hot rods. Paso Robles gets a new bank soon on the corner of 21st Street and Spring. Woo flippin hoo. Like we needed one. Down the tubes go nearly fifty years of memories and tradition. My part was the order with no tomatoes, Evan's was the one with a thin chocolate malt. He likes to drink his malts, not lick them off the spoon. Sounds easy, but try ordering one. We waited this long to say anything because we just couldn't believe it. There's no more drive-in. The last good burger in Paso Robles just bit the dust.

The Neighbor's Dog & Our Old Friend, Shadow

2006-08-11T21:15:00.000-07:00

She's barking at trucks and intruders in heaven, but she's no longer at the back door begging biscuits. We'll miss her. All dogs go to heaven. I hope she'll put in a good word for us, and recognize us when we get there. Bye, Shadow.

...and Amie on the Banjo.

2006-06-14T12:11:00.000-07:00

I was asleep the past few weeks while my body was adjusting to a new medicine. When I wasn't sleeping fourteen hours at a stretch, I was a walking zombie, barely taking in the world around me—I held on to chairs to keep my balance, processed each word said to me as though the other person was speaking a foreign language. The new pill is designed to slow down my thoughts. It has managed not only to do that, but to slow down the world as well. Monday, I was jarred awake by a banjo.

What started as light banter between two guests and myself at the front desk of the Inn ended in an impromptu lobby concert and banjo lesson. I turned out to be in the presence of Greg Deering, founder of Deering Banjos, and Todd Wright, his Director of Artists Relations & Events, two otherwise ordinary guys. Todd did most of the playing, picking four or five songs in a row, bringing smiles to passersby. Greg, the man who actually made the banjo, sat smiling across the room. Steve Martin, a banjo player in his own right, once said, "You just can't sing a depressing song when you're playing a banjo." Well, the otherwise cold and depressing lobby was filled with warmth and welcome. I grinned from ear to ear while he played. Todd said, "I'll play the first few, you play the next." I assumed he was talking to Greg. Eventually, I realized he meant me. Just as suddenly, that innocent looking five-stringed instrument turned into a mass assemblage of strings and pegs only a professional could sort out. I was scared stiff. Both Greg and Todd seemed used to this response, and calmed me down. They coaxed me out from behind the counter, put me in a chair, and then set the banjo's weight in my lap. Banjos look featherlight and seem like tambourines from a distance, but in fact they weigh a ton. I cradled this one like a baby. Todd showed me how to strum the strings this way and that. As I did so, I could feel the vibrations through my entire body. Banjos are surprisingly powerful. Todd showed me two simple chords, gave me hand signals for when to play one, and when the other. I'm now a banjo player!

I obviously don't know a damn thing about banjos, but if the people who make and sell them make a difference, then I just can't imagine owning anything but a Deering. They range in price from about $300 to $1,500, which is what the one I was holding sells for. (After that, you're talking Brazilian Rosewood, Mother of Pearl inlay, and If you have to ask, you can't afford it.)

For those of you familiar with my Steve Martin obsession, I feel obliged to say that Steve Martin is not on the list of people who officially endorse the Deering Banjo, a fact that deeply troubles me. Of course, he could own one. Come on Steve. Loosen up. Your banjo playing may be endearing, but your banjo's not a Deering. Ho boy! Can you hear the banjo in that last statement? Okay. Everybody... "Hang down your head Tom Doooooooley..."

Schwartzkatz

2006-05-24T18:19:00.000-07:00

Evan complains that I "leave shit all over the house," which I suppose is true. If I spent less time being a nut and more time focused on my art, I'd fill the house more with artistic things than the piles of thoughts and papers I currently accumulate. Things like the cat he doesn't mind. I went through a naked lady phase, there were pieces of ladies everywhere. I enjoy doing cutouts at Borders, but I think the thing that pushed me over the edge into cats and horses was cutting out breasts in the café, turning to Evan to say, "Do you like the nipples on this one?" It had a way of turning heads, and I'm not one to offend. I went through a collecting-stuff-on-the-walk phase, pocketing little gems and displaying them in every blank space throughout the house. Evan longs for the stark minimalism he sees in design magazines. Me, when I look at those same magazines, I see so much potential space to put stuff, though I have to admit, stark modern does appeal, in theory. Maybe in another lifetime.

30 Flowers, 3 Horses

2006-03-04T01:19:00.000-08:00

Some nights I'll come home from work and Evan will be sitting at the computer wanting to read something he's just written. It's as if while I'm slaving away at the Thankless Inn telling people for the umpteenth time how to light their fireplace (turn up the fucking thermostat) and explaining to them that — big surprise — sulphur water smells like... well... sulphur, and that yes, three months ago when they booked the room with their own private sulphur spa, they paid extra for that smell, Evan sits down with angels and transcribes their most eloquent thoughts. Don't get me wrong, it's not as though I believe someone as sensitive as Evan couldn't write such thoughts, it's just that it comes so easily to him. I slave over a sentence, Evan turns out perfect little pieces of prose, masterfully crafted, each word placed carefully and thoughtfully. I ask him where he gets it. He shrugs. If he told me it was from an angel, I'd find it easier to believe. Anyway, that's how I see it.

Evan has similar feelings about me and meaningless little pieces of paper. My first love, as I always say, is cutting paper. (Evan reminds me that Steve Martin came later.) A friend of ours recently celebrated her thirtieth birthday, and to commemorate that, I decided to do what I often do, a cutout. I pondered for days what would be appropriate. Evan pretty much knows to leave me alone during this stage, because I will inevitably, as he says, "pull something out of my ass" at the last moment. Evan may not work that way, but I do. So, while he loves the cutouts, he more often hates me, or my method, it's hard to tell which. He bites his tongue and reminds me from time to time that I've commited to do something. He says he feels like his whole life is going down the drain everytime he gets involved in a project with me, because I say, "Don't worry. I'll think of something." "Something," he reminds me, thinking back to that trashy novel of the 70's, "is not enough." I usually retort in a phony French accent, thinking back on that trashy French wife he had in the same era, "Ah well, you 'ave your opin yon, I 'ave mine." I decided on thirty flowers in a vase. I did all this the morning of her birthday party, all before Evan even rolled out of bed. I guess he was right, there it was, ripe for the picking.

Not long ago, I was a frequent poster on the Steve Martin message board. One of my favorites there, who went by ShellC, and who was one of the saner voices in my opinion (God knows I wasn't among them,) sent me a hard-to-come-by copy of the only Steve Martin biography to date, Steve Martin: The Magic Years. When the book arrived, I was stunned. She even had it autographed by the author before sending it to me. I gather he is an acquaintance of hers. This was all about six months ago. ShellC's "something witty," or quote under her message board screen name always fascinated me — "2 Bits, 4 Bits, 6 Bits, 3 Horses." I have absolutely no idea what it means. The cutout I made to thank her is a representation of... well, that should probably be obvious by now. Horses have always appeared in my mindless doodling, along with a lady in a mid-length skirt holding her hands behind her back — I also have absolutely no idea what that one means — so, the three somewhat abstract horses took almost no time at all once I had spent six months figuring out what to do with them.

Evan says my next investment should be a camera with a non-shake function. Both pictures are ever so slightly blurred. It's really hard closing one eye, squeezing the camera with one hand and pressing the shutter with the other. Somehow, with all that going on, my knees and shoulders feel obliged to get in on the act. God forbid I should be chewing gum at the same time. Oh well, the originals are crisp and clear. The flowers now sit on a bookshelf in San Luis Obispo, The Horses are somewhere between here and their ultimate destination. I'm tracking them on the Internet every step of the way.

Hi Midgie!

2006-02-13T18:52:00.000-08:00

Midgie is Jeff Nutter's mother, and Jeff Nutter is the Authorized Dealer of authorizeddealer.blogspot.com. Jeff was among the first readers of Evan's blog, and later, among the first to comment on mine. We teamed up to design a template for his blog that really suits him, I think. Late last year Midgie made the move to a care facility called Ashton Gables in the vicinity of Birmingham, Alabama. The effort to keep her at home with nurses and daily visits from the family finally required superhuman effort. The spirit is willing, as they say, but the flesh is weak. (Matthew 26:41) A prolonged stay at the hospital turned out to be the final straw. Anyway, I don't think they're used to the new arrangement, even after all these weeks and months. Sending cards has helped not only Midgie, but helped me get back into cutting paper again — my first love. It's one thing to have a desktop littered with old files, but something else again to have the kitchen table and surrounding area covered with tiny scraps of paper. Paper is just more REAL than computer screens.

This is a photo Evan snapped before I licked the envelope and walked down to the post office. Evan had the idea to do a pop-up card. I think his world is more three-dimensional than mine. He dummied up a card in white cover stock to demonstrate how it worked. It grew into the work you see here. (It's really a lot more impressive if you see the sign pop up as you open it.) Like Evan, I see only the mistakes and the insufficiencies. I'll have to admit, though, it came out looking really nice. We agonized over what the sign should say. We started out with: HI MIDGIE!. She's ninety-one, so we considered Midgie.....91 mi. We thought, maybe she won't get it. I did a really nice Midgie's Diner, but we each had an image of her saying, like old people have a tendency to do, "I DON'T OWN A DINER." So, after a while, HI MIDGIE! looked better and better.

Evan's tinkering with some new pop-up mechanisms. I seem to have acquired stacks and stacks of paper. X-ACTO knives, glue stick, cutting pads, steel rulers, and sketch books litter the kitchen table for days on end. We had dinner in bed the other night. Oh, sorry, that was Valentine's Day. But, I really need a paper room and work stations with big speakers. We all have our dreams, I guess.

Evan adds the following:

If you'd like to buy or make your own card and send it to Midgie, you can do so at the following address:

Mildred Nutter
c/o Ashton Gables #137
2184 Parkway Lake Drive
Birmingham, AL 35244

She won't know who you are, but if you just say you know Jeff from the Internet, it will all kind of make sense. Jeff says the cards really lift her spirits. Then she hides them and finds them all over again. Remember, you don't have to be a nice person to do something nice, but the more nice things you do, the nicer you get. If you're trying real hard to be bad, just sign it with an alias. Remember, HI MIDGIE!

Valentine's Day

2006-02-13T14:32:00.000-08:00

The celebration of Valentine's Day owes as much to Hallmark as it does to the Calendar of Saints. The Barnett tradition of presents and spaghetti dinner is as shrouded in mystery as Saint Valentine himself. It's really Linda's tradition, a Barnett through marriage, who thinks of me as a kind of miracle — I was born holding an IUD in my hand, according to her. So, the whys and wherefores of Valentine's Day tradition exist in a realm well beyond rational investigation.

In other words, if you think I'm crazy...

My cousin Angie lives in the vicinity of downtown San Luis Obispo. Since we gravitate to the same sorts of places, we tend to run into each other a bit more than might be expected. For example, her parents have a business in Paso Robles about half-a-mile from where I am typing this. I saw them about three years ago. Last month I ran into Angie three times about twenty-five miles from here. The first two times she had just come from having her nails done and was having a very careful cup of coffee at the Border's café. The third encounter was in Barnes & Noble. She had just come from having her nails done. "You must think all I do is have my nails done and hang out in bookstores," she said. The reality turns out to be that she spends most of her time playing Bingo at the Chumash Casino. Angie is easily the most vivacious person in the world. After a visit with her you feel both bubbly all over and totally exhausted. Anyway, we got to talking about one thing and another near the magazines at the top of the escalator. The subject of Valentine's Day came up, probably because they were just starting to market it back then. Angie reminisced about the time when as a young girl she stayed with us while her parents were in Vegas or somewhere on what was probably a Valentine's Day Special. She said she will never forget opening presents after dinner. (I'm not sure she remembers she had spaghetti.) "It was like Christmas all over again."

There's definitely a crazy gene in the family. Evan says it's a happy crazy. Angie got her fair share of it, so she's never dull, but my mother takes the cake. She's been shopping for Valentine's day for at least a year now. That means Christmas and Valentine's Day overlap in her world, as do birthdays, anniversaries and whatever you do, don't tell her about full moons and equinoxes. So, this year — all good things take time — we noticed that we too had accumulated a small stash of Valentine's Day goods. It was really just a matter of wrapping them up and sending them off. No, I have not started my Christmas shopping. I'll do that a day or two after Christmas like I do every year. But the thought of a large, heavily taped box set to arrive precisely on the 14th of February filled with all manner of goods red ranging from cute to disgusting, then all the way back sometimes to delicious, has at the age of thirty-one finally worn me down. I find myself saying, "At least I don't have to wear pink."

The illustration at the top of this post is the outside of the card I am sending my mother this year. She won't see it, so don't worry. The Internet is something they mention on television from time to time. Inside, the card reads, "Guess where your Valentine's Day present was on Valentine's Day. IN THE MAIL! We love you very much, Amie & Evan." We reciprocated, finally, with a package of our own. There's also a t-shirt with the same graphic on it, some chocolates, red and white candies from The Apple Farm, a sort of hourglass thing that leaves "I LOVE YOU" and a heart the other way when the red sand runs out, wrapped in handmade paper (via Judy last year) and matching jute. It's really cute. But, when the UPS man knocks tomorrow, I guarantee we'll feel cheap all over again.

There was a lot of talk about keeping Christ in Christmas this year. I doubt there will be much talk about keeping Val in Valentine's Day. If you have a sweetheart, just get her something, or him something, and I'm sure there's a little something special you can think of to go with it. Just do it. Smile and say, "Happy Valentine's Day."

Amie + Evan

Happy New Year

2006-01-27T16:07:00.000-08:00

A good friend who goes by the Internet name of kimi has become one of the moderators of a new site called Drunken Puppies. Why they named it that is a mystery to me, except that drunken puppies, if you've ever seen one, are terribly cute, and hugely funny. It's a kind of bulletin board with discussion threads. Anyway, she asked me to do a logo for the site, and this is the design I came up with. Actually, this is the t-shirt design, which is a little bit different from the banner. If you've been following this blog, you may recognize Al once again. I got him to pose on his back — not difficult — and to pretend he was a puppy. Well, I think he dreams about that a lot. The drunken part was the final touch, and I drew on my own experience for that. Kimi is also hosting Chinese New Year's celebration with her husband this Sunday, so instead of flowers we're taking... You guessed it. Custom t-shirts. Cheers!

Phase 3.2

2006-01-24T18:24:00.000-08:00

So, maybe a different slant (no pun intended) on the whole thing. Here's a version that Evan worked on with five variations based entirely on Lucida Grande. The title is 14 pt. bold. The rest of the text is 11 and 12 pt. regular. It's subtle, but it makes a difference: the caps and the numbers are 1 pt. smaller than the lowercase text. Can you see it? It's an old trick that sometimes works. The circles remind me of Gupta (Kumar Pallana) in The Terminal, juggling hoops as a kind of off the wall dinner entertainment — and not doing a terribly good job of it. If you haven't seen it, rent it. Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums would not have been the same without him. Evan remembers sitting in front of a maple cabinet TV in the 50s watching him run from plate to spinning plate, keeping them all going. The last card doesn't show it very well at this size, but it features two very different reds — brick red, and the same red as the second card. Anyway, they're a bit more conservative, perhaps a bit more businesslike.

Phase 3.1

2006-01-23T17:35:00.000-08:00

While we wait for the envelope, via email, we've been playing around a bit. These are Ev-N-Amiedoodles. What we do is to sit down at the computer together and basically argue about everything: color, stroke, concept, type font, you name it. I suppose you could call this our "creative process." Evan gets really upset, so maybe it's more than that. He says it takes me at least a day to admit that anything he's done is any good. By then, he adds, I start taking credit for it. Of course, this has nothing to do with any reality but his own. The scribbles behind The Book Juggler on three of the cards are done by a technique Evan figured out how to do back in the pre-Pentium days of CorelDraw 3. We used to hit Enter, then walk down the hallway to the kitchen for a snack. Thank God for Illustrator and late-model Macs. A couple of new ones would be nice too, but maybe they wouldn't give us enough time to argue. I think I like the first one best, or maybe the third one. Evan likes the fifth one. He says it has a graffiti look about it. We both think number seven is fun, but probably not practical. Purples and lavenders are kind of girly, but Greta's a girl, and Chris is a sensitive kind of guy, so we thought, why limit things to red and gold, even if it's our favorite red and our favorite gold? Anyway, more for your viewing pleasure.

Phase 3

2006-01-20T20:41:00.000-08:00

One step back. Three steps forward. One of these is probably the winner. At least one is a joke. Another seems like a strong second. Can you tell which is which? Oh, and in case you were wondering, a good rule of thumb in the graphics business is to give the client a choice between A and B. Never, EVER give the client seven choices.

Phase 2

2006-01-16T23:59:00.000-08:00

So, G with C writes back, "We love the gold one and the red one. How about a fusion of the two?" Like a tangelo or a Labradoodle? OK, here it is: Gold and Red Fusion 1.0 for your viewing pleasure. Kind of catchy, don't you think? Or was it the gold they liked, and the other font? Just for the record, Evan did not do the red one or the gold one.

The Book Juggler

2006-01-16T16:14:00.000-08:00

Here's a draft of six business cards for Chris and Greta's new (well, already existing) used bookstore. They just purchased it. They've made their first mortgage payment, paid their one employee his wages and asked me if I'd help them with a design. And how could I refuse? They're the absolutely best people in the world.

They haven't seen any of these yet, and they may just hate them, but I thought I would share the first batch with you. Where the hell is Willits? It's up there somewhere. The home of Seabiscuit, the racehorse and the movie. Greta has a degree in Horticulture, so we always figured they would open a nursery or something. Chris has a degree in Architecture, or maybe Art with an emphasis in Architecture. Maybe he can clear that up for us. But, they have years and years experience in the book trade. They met at Chaucer's Books in Santa Barbara when they were young and impressionable — a book person's dream story. Chris worked at Barnes & Noble while Greta went to Cal Poly, and together they've worked at a small bookstore in Willits for so long that we almost lost touch. So, I think they know a thing or two about books.

They also have odd tastes in music. Well, not so odd that I don't love everything they play, but if I didn't know any better, I'd say that owning their own place so they could select their own music during the day was a major factor in becoming business owners.

Evan did one of the designs, but I won't say which. I was thinking of doing an illustration of some sort, but a standard business card is only two by three-and-a-half inches, and needs most of it for type. Anyway, it's not a done deal yet, so who knows where it will all end up. Feel free to add your own two cents, but G and C get the final say.

Hillcrest 81

2006-01-01T15:55:00.000-08:00

The other day Evan and I found ourselves sleepy in San Luis Obispo. We were at Borders and it was cool outside so they had the heater on. You could see people drifting off quietly to sleep with books in their hands. We folded up shop, hopped in the car, lowered the windows and drove around Cal Poly for a while. The old library parking lot is now another God damned building, the old sheep field is now a fucking baseball stadium, because some major league ball player contributed two million dollars. Do you think if I became rich and famous and contributed twenty million, they'd tear them all down again, give the sheep their field and the library users their parking lot back? But I digress.

We ended up parking in a small lot near the Administration Building thinking we might walk down to the student store to restock our pens. Evan had just taken a handful of his daily pills and besides still feeling sleepy from Borders, was now feeling a tad woozy. Keep in mind, school was out of session, only a few cars were to be seen anywhere on campus. Before getting out, Evan leaned his head back and dozed. About two minutes later, Lovely Rita's twisted half-cousin, tapped on the window, gave a hand signal to roll down the window, and demanded we put money in the meter, since we had turned off the ignition. We must have been his only opportunity the entire day to demonstrate authoritarian behavior. I put two quarters in. They gave us something like 8 whopping minutes. Evan refused to roll down his window and murmured something under his breath that sounded a whole lot like... But, again, I digress.

While Evan resumed his nap, I pulled out my sketchbook, an old pen, and drew the building across the street. It's been about two years since I've sketched anything. I took an unofficial life drawing class a year ago, back when I was Mary Magdalene on different meds, and I just didn't have the patience to draw the lines. I tried willing the lines into existence, but it just didn't work. "I'm drawing a breast. Why am I doing this? What does it all mean?" was the dialogue that rushed through my confused head. Robert Densham, my instructor, was very understanding, and I owe him so much more than I have been able to give him in return. I must have been flying pretty high, because he would sometimes call during the week to make sure I was okay. I convinced myself at the time that he made those calls because that's just what he does, but the truth is, he's most unusual, and a very caring person.

So, with pen in hand and notebook open to a blank page, I sketched what I saw, which was the building across the street.

It's a rusty sketch. The chimney looks pregnant and the walls are definitely not up to code, but it's the gist of "Hillcrest 81" and the beautiful, greening mountains behind. Today they would be glistening in rain. When I scanned this page into the computer, I was shocked to see how irregular it was, which is really what I sat down to write about. In the notebook, the irregularities seem organic and, well, sketchbook-like. The expectations one brings to a sketchbook are completely different from those that accrue to the flat rectangular computer screen. I click a button and draw squares, rectangles, triangles, even faultless circles. But, in the sketchbook, my rollerball rolls this way and that until I'm mostly satisfied. These thoughts are not new or original, but they are nonetheless true and timely. The stuff that fills rainy afternoons.

He peppers his intellectual pursuitswith the occasional novel

2005-12-14T13:05:00.000-08:00

Evan just finished what he calls a "most delightful novel" by Penelope Lively, The Photograph. In the above photograph Evan was reading a book on why religion matters, definitely weightier, but one topic of the many Evan pursues with the diligence of a possessed Grad student. I say he was reading because right before the photo was snapped, Mr. Red Vest decided to serenade us at Linnaea's piano. As it turned out, it wasn't such a bad thing being treated to an atonal rhapsody right in the middle of our study session. I suppose we needed the break. It generated this lovely photo.

I asked Evan about The Photograph and he refused to tell me anything. He said it was a book about obsession. "But, that's all I'm going to tell you." I noticed in the three days he read it our lotto dreams switched from Hawaii to London, the setting of the book. Evan tells me it might be complicated living in England. They place a great importance on class structure. Something, I guess, I don't fully understand. I always assumed that if we won the lottery we'd instantly become classy. Not everyone goes out and buys Escalades with spinning wheels. Evan and I have dreams of minimalist rooms with shelving systems to accommodate all the books, books we never have a place for. I think we could get used to living in London.

Right now I'm reading Gates of Eden by Ethan Coen. It's a book of short stories Evan found at Phoenix Books. I'm about 20 pages into the first story and the protagonist has had the shit beat out of him four times already. Maybe when Evan asks me about the book I'll just say, "Very Coenesque." Evan is now reading about King Arthur. Richard Cavendish's book. He says it's amazingly well done. I think he might start reading an anthology of spiritual writing next. We picked up two volumes on the same trip to Phoenix. Next on my list is a book about obsession. It's set in England, but that's all I know. Maybe I can get Evan to write a blog review of the book, then I'll know more about it. Or maybe I should stop obsessing about knowing more about it and just move it to my side of the bed.

Conversational attempt at Borders

2005-12-01T11:32:00.000-08:00

They have pots of tea large enough for two to share now at the Seattle's Best café inside Borders. Thankfully, they have not learned how much tea is needed for a single pot. The nice, porcelain tea pot can be refilled at least twice before the leaves give out. I approach the counter, teapot in hand. The heavy-lidded girl behind the counter asks, "Would you like more hot water for that?" "Yeah," I say. She grabs the pot. "I mean yes. You know, I need to stop saying "yeah" and start saying "yes" instead. It's so much more civilized." No response. "Have you ever had a word you said over and over and tried to break yourself from the habit of saying it?" The girl plunks down the steaming pot in front of me and says, almost staring through me, "Yeah."

Recollections and Tribute

2005-07-28T13:31:00.000-07:00

Chris Gibson was found dead in a creek last night in Cayucos (July 27, 2005) from causes yet to be determined. The news was referred to me by email two or three hours ago.

I first met Chris Gibson at Barnes & Noble, not long after I started work there in the summer of 1996 as a bookseller. I got to know him a lot better after I moved to the café. I didn't think he liked me very much at first, perhaps he thought I was part of the "management elite." It was odd, really, before I knew his last name I was taking Piglet home to dogsit while Chris tried to figure out what to do with his life. He was eternally figuring things out. In the time I knew him, he hatched twenty plans or more that were going to give him the freedom to do what he wanted. I last saw him in front of Uptown Espresso smoking a cigarette at one of the tables. We smiled and waved. He wasn't there when I got up to leave.

"Gibby." That's what Leah called him. Leah was the most easygoing café worker of all time, in my opinion. She got married to a wonderful guy and moved to San Diego. Chris would chime back with his unforgettable, somewhat toothless grin, "Yes, snooky?" He fixed up an old bike for her in exchange for the leftover food we stuck in clean paper bags each evening next to the trash dump behind the store. Otherwise, he lived on chocolate bars and cigarettes. He always asked for a Venti decaf for the price of a refill. He never missed an opportunity to press his luck. He could eat chocolate all day, but for some reason, the caffeine in the coffee tampered with his system. I gave him all I could. His demeanor was infectious. His stories were worth every penny of the twenties he "borrowed" from me. I took it as a personal slight the day I heard he was no longer welcome in the store. (It was a long and greatly exaggerated story.) He played a major role in the daily workings of Barnes & Noble as far as I was concerned. As annoying as he sometimes was, he broke up the monotony of people wanting drinks they couldn't pronounce, or books they couldn't remember, with his recycled jokes and philosophical disquisitions. He sometimes educated us, if he was in the mood to do so. He was smarmy and bright, a contradiction that towered over the customers, appearing and disappearing at will. I think he knew far more about things than he ever let on.

When I was at the height (or depth) of my psychotic break, Chris sat down with me in front of the Wells Fargo Bank on Marsh Street around midnight one troubling night and wrote the passage pictured above in my tiny Moleskin Journal. I was "seeing signs" everywhere—more than I could handle—and I asked him what gematria meant. He explained it to me very slowly, very carefully, and wrote his phone number at the top of the page, telling me to call if I felt like talking. The pipes have something to do with how Bach secretly signed many of his works. He absent-mindedly sketched out the picture of the pipes from memory as we talked. It is a sample of the kinds of things he carried around in his head. I never called, though time after time there was no one in the world I wanted more to talk with than Chris Gibson. In his calm, baritone voice, he assured me that in the end, everything was going to work out. His words helped me get through some extremely dark times. A few days after the Wells Fargo incident, we stood in the rain and watched the Mardi Gras Parade together, collecting necklaces and hoping for flashes of white titties. Half way through, he decided to go in. I think it was just too wet for him. I bought coffee for me and a decaf Venti for him. At the time I thought I was Mary Magdalene or Jesus Christ. Obviously, I had not yet worked out all the details. Chris treated me with appropriate respect, but added, "Look Amie, if you're the next Jesus, won't a lot of people want to kill you?" I looked him in the eyes and said, "Isn't that why you're here, to protect me?" He laughed and said, "C'mon Mary, let's get some more coffee." I blessed him that afternoon with a hot, full-priced cinnamon scone.

He also knew that I was hellbent on meeting Steve Martin at the time, and maybe just a little bit even as I write this. He told me about the time he saw Steve in front of the Old Country Deli, back when they were filming My Blue Heaven. He said he was wearing a fancy sweater, and that his silver hair shone in the sunlight. He also said he suspected the guy was an asshole, and that if I had to meet someone, I'd be better off meeting Jack La Lane. Jack La Lane, by the way, is a famous body builder, now in his nineties, who lives just down the road in Morro Bay. Chris had a way of putting his own spin on things.

On Jameson's last day at work—he's now attending The New England Conservatory of Music—Chris walked up to him with a small stack of books in his outstretched arms. "These," he emphatically pointed out, "are absolutely necessary for any budding intellectual's library." Jameson didn't quite know what to say or do. After a pause, he said, "I really don't have the money to buy a lot of books right now." "Just walk out the store with them," he prompted. "Nobody will notice." Several more times during the night he came up to him with more and more books. Wittgenstein, History, Music... Jameson stacked the books one pile at a time in the back room. By the end of his shift, the tower of absolutely necessary reading was over four feet tall. "Just take them," he repeated. "Nobody will notice." When Chris saw the hesitation on Jameson's part, he said more sternly, "These books will change your life. Just do it."

For the record, Jameson did not take the books. I imagine, however, that he now wishes he had taken the time to write down the titles.

Today, my mind is filled with memories of Chris Gibson. I don't see signs quite like I used to. Looking at the pages from my Moleskin, however, I can't help but notice that his fours look a lot like the alchemical symbol for Jupiter and tin... I don't think we all realize just yet how much we are going to miss him.

FEDERAL CHEESE

2005-07-17T11:46:00.000-07:00

Bill Eseltine was my first real friend in San Luis Obispo. My first actual friend was James, who sat down beside me that first summer on a park bench in the middle of Cal Poly where I was lost and lonely and about to cry. He still calls from time to time, and we still have lunch every so often. Bill and I were both new at Barnes & Noble, though I had worked part of the summer already. We shared the same things, as it turned out, from ogling the girls in the café to playing Neil Young while driving over the grade to get home. (By then we both lived in the Atascadero area.) The incident that sealed our friendship occurred during "recovery." We were both shelving the same book — Hook 'em Snotty — in the children's section, and we started laughing . It was the funniest, most absurd title either of us had ever seen. We were both a little tired, perhaps, after a long night at work, and giddy from the goings-on of the new school year, but there it was. Hook 'em Snotty was the bond that united us. I've made a lot of friends since then, and maybe an enemy or two, but I'd have to say with apologies to all the others that Bill has decidedly been my best friend. He helped me when I was crazy and he stood by me when I was sane. He married another good friend, Ginger Feretto, and moved off to Seattle. I wondered if I'd ever see him again. Then, in what seemed like no time at all, they moved back again. On October 3rd, the day before my birthday, they're packing everything they own into a U-Haul truck and moving to... That's right, Seattle! Ah, well. I guess I'm on my own again.

FEDERAL CHEESE is a reference to the cheese give-away during the Reagan Era. There was a huge surplus of dairy products back then. My grandfather got boxes of cheese, as I recall. The whole thing struck Bill as funny for some reason. He graduated in History, or Political Science, or something like that, so there's a portion of his humor that slips by me every so often. He also likes to think up names for bands, a trait shared by a mutual friend, Justin Cooley. Coming up with FEDERAL CHEESE for the name of his blog was probably the result of that past-time. If it wasn't a band, then it had to be a blog.

Bill wanted to do everything on the blog himself. We offered to give him the Evan & Amie Treatment about seven or eight months ago in front of Linnaea's Coffee House. He said, "No, no, I've got some ideas of my own." In the meantime, his site slowly disintegrated. On the way to see Built To Spill last week, he said "How come you never made me a blog?" I kept the part about Linnaea's to myself, went home, and quietly made him a blog. It's a really nice one too. I described the choice of colors as being manly, a comment that pleased him no end. I imagine the pleasure came from an experience I overheard the previous morning while I was at the store helping get ready for the Harry Potter bash. A gay café worker, not one that Bill had been ogling, said, "Boy, I'd like to see you in your birthday suit." It was like fingernails down a chalkboard, but Bill being the eternally nice guy that he is, just smiled and said, "Uh, NO." Anyway, masculine colors.

I love the portrait, which is not actually Bill. I know who it is because Bill told me, and I'm not telling. Can you guess? It's a remarkable likeness.

Please check out the new site. It's free, it's high in calories, it's FEDERAL CHEESE.

The possible benefits of old age

2005-07-05T21:15:00.000-07:00

Evan's always talking to me about getting old. I guess that's because he is getting old, in body, though not in spirit. Mention the word "Depends," and he cringes. He says, "Some day I might be tugging on your sleeve asking for a diaper change." "We'll face that when the time comes," I say. I have to constantly reassure him that he's doing just fine. What he lacks in firmness and stamina... (Just kidding.) I mean, what he lacks in taut skin and dark brown hair, he more than makes up for in wisdom and experience. Evan has excellent hearing, though he can't tell the difference between Cat Power and Cat Stevens, he can still tell the difference between vocal and instrumental. When the fireworks went off on the 4th, he just sat there at the computer with Al at his side, working on a friend's website. It's not that he didn't hear what was going on outside, though it did worry me for a moment, it's just that his enthusiasm for pyrotechnics has waned as the prospect of diapers slowly approaches. I had to drag him outside to watch. Al thought, "Oh great, we're going for a walk!" In years past, Al shook us to sleep, cowering between us on the bed at what must have seemed the beginning of the end of the world to him. This year it was just another night, except for the flashing colors in the sky. I guess there are lots and lots of things that flash brightly without being threatening. Al's getting old. In human years, he's 90, but he's holding up really well. The best we can figure is that he's learned to read lips. It's also just possible that he no longer has to hear, that he quietly wills us to do what he wants. Was it my idea to get a biscuit, or his? Was it really time for a walk? Did I decide to get up, or did he just want my warm spot on the chair? So, while Evan has gained wisdom and understanding, Al may have gained mystical/magical powers. He might also be channeling Steve Martin. But that, I suppose, is another story.

4th of July Magic

2005-07-01T19:27:00.000-07:00

As I type this, The Beach (100.5 FM in the north county, "Playing all the hits from A to Z this holiday weekend") is playing "Amie" by the Pure Prairie League, my one and only favorite country song. "Amie, whacha gonna do..." Last year this time when I was a bit crazy and the medicine hadn't quite kicked in, I came into the house from a trip to the grocery store, wide-eyed and frenzied, saying, "Evan, it's weird. I was listening to the radio and all the songs are about magic. I swear." Evan gave me one of those looks that I've come to recognize, and I told him, "I'm NOT CRAZY! Listen for yourself!" And, sure enough, the next song was something like "Magical Mystery Tour." By then, I was more than a bit agitated. "You see, these things REALLY HAPPEN!" The song after that had something to do with magic. Then, the DJ came on saying what a great holiday weekend it was, and how glad he was to be at The Beach, 100.5 FM in the north county, playing all the hits from A to Z. The next song started with M, but was not about magic . It suddenly dawned on me. Alphabetical. They got to "magic" just as I hopped into the car, and didn't finish until I had done the shopping and returned home to Evan. "Okay," I said, "maybe there's an explanation for this, but I SWEAR the rest of it really happened."

Happy 4th of July Weekend. If you're in San Luis Obispo County, they're up to "Angie" by the Stones.

Catching up

2005-06-26T00:50:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to catch up for 15 years. This year, I'm finally half way there. I turned 30 in October, Evan turns 60 today. This isn't mathematically correct, but at least the numbers are simple. Here's a quick drawing I made of him just after midnight. He kept saying over my shoulder, "Give me more gray hair, I'm 60, not 16." I guess I see the Evan inside, the Evan who refers to Taco Bell as "A Mexican Restaurant," the one who expects me to compliment him from the other room for extra loud farts, the one who interrupts my diatribes by reaching out and pinching my nipples. In short, the 16-year-old boy trapped in a 60-year-old body. On his own blog — his birthday post Sixty is really worth reading — he says that he doesn't feel 60. I can testify unhesitatingly that he doesn't act 60 either. In fact, the more relaxed he is, the more childishly he behaves. Except for music. Evan was born a codgy old man when it comes to music. I think he's finally coming to terms with the Beatles, but he insists that if it weren't for the Beatles, there wouldn't be any music today, by which he probably means modern rock. Don't ask him about Built To Spill, Cat Power, Modest Mouse, Morrissey, The Pixies, Calexico, T. Rex, or even Cat Stevens, The Velvet Underground, The Rolling Stones or The Moody Blues, because they are ALL derivative of the Beatles. Fortunately, we have Mozart, Sibelius, Debussy and Grieg in common. This music "calms the savage beast" and gets us through dinner. But I can still see Evan silently picking Abbey Road out of the overture to The Marriage of Figaro. Apparently, Mozart also came just after the Beatles. But music is the exception. Evan's eyes and ears are always open to new designs, new trends, new ways of looking at things. If I'm hard to live with, then he's hard to keep up with. I love you Evan. Happy Birthday.

Paso kids raise the bar

2005-06-22T13:10:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows what hopscotch is. It's a game played on a series of boxes drawn on the ground looking something like a Cross of Lorraine (i.e. a vertical line with two cross bars near the top.) If memory serves, the normal game has eleven or twelve boxes. Some neighbor children just around the corner were not constrained by such inhibiting conventions. They composed a hopscotch court that starts out near the front of their house, bends around the corner, and continues right down the sidewalk to square seventy-two. The energy to play such a game would exhaust any small town. That these overly energetic children found the wherewithal even to create the seventy-two square structure is, if anything ever was, a testament to youth. I was taking Al for a walk last night and saw the white chalk lines and numbers in the moonlight. It took me a moment to figure out what it was. I hope my laughter didn't wake them.

The other day I found myself at the market listening in on a conversation between an apparent ten-year-old and his mother. I was waiting to buy some chicken at $1.79/lb. (Skinless breast—what a deal!) and she was selecting what looked like twenty pounds of hamburger. The kid stood up straight and approached his mother saying, "The last time we were at the store you said next time we're at the store I can buy chalk." There was a pause as the mother conjured up her memory of this event. She replied something like (her back was to me), "Well, I said we would buy chalk if it wasn't cheap chalk." The son shuffled around a bit, stood up straight again and said, "Yeah, well, this store has REAL chalk, I found it." The mother busied herself with the mound of hamburger the butcher was piling on the counter, straightened herself up and said, "No."

The rest of the story I have to imagine. Evan suggests the following:

It goes on years and years with tiny resentments piling one on top of the other until the little boy, who is now a grown man, lashes out against his girlfriend or wife for saying no. And she says, "What is it with you!?" All because of a crummy little box of chalk. Buy him the chalk you moron!

I'm guessing the difference between real chalk and cheap chalk has something to do with big, thick pieces suitable for grinding into sidewalks and small fine sticks that are used on chalkboards. (I secretly make a note to buy my children chalk if they ever ask for it, and acrylic paints, linoleum print blocks, and all the black crayons they want.) The chicken, by the way, turned out to be really good, sauced with Trader Joe's Roasted Red Pepper Marinara.

When I was a kid chalk always disappointed me. It came in packages of pastel and white. What I really wanted was blood red and lapis lazuli, and — do they even make it? — black. My dad would have been delighted to scrub those colors off the sidewalk — he thought I should stick to chalk on paper. As I set out to conquer my concrete canvas, something about his body language communicated here we go again. To this day, i madonnari festivals make me tense.

I'm not sure where chalk comes from. China was always good enough for me. But, really, are there chalk mines? I read somewhere that elementary schools are switching to dry erase boards because the chalk dust irritates children with asthma. Can you imagine elementary school without chalk? Can you imagine the neighborhood kids making a seventy-two square hopscotch court with their dad's dry erase markers?

Hmmmmm.

Little sprout

2005-06-20T19:45:00.000-07:00

Five days ago I planted a package of wildflower seeds in the nine flowerpots and galvanized cans we have outside our kitchen window. Here is our first sprout. Normally I go to the nursery and buy a selection of greenhouse annuals. This year I thought I'd try something different. I filled all nine with the seeds from one packet bought from a sad little cardboard display in a dark corner of Albertsons Grocery store. I felt like I was saving them. Evan says this is something like planting weeds. But at least they're flowering weeds and not the same weeds we pull out of the garden.

Every morning and at two hour intervals until sunset, I gently mist the pots with water so as not to disturb the little seeds while keeping them moist at this delicate time of their germination. I know, I know, one rain turns the whole hillside green, but they're my pots and I'll do what I want. Yesterday, I even whispered to the pots nine different times, "I love you." This morning there was a sprout.

Two nights ago there was a commotion outside our window. It seems a robber, or a "perp" as they say on television, was evading the police on foot and used our driveway to make his escape, or else to hide in. There were cop cars on Third and Fourth streets with their lights flashing and the officers were using bullhorns to communicate. This went on for about half-an-hour, sometime in the middle of the night. My first thought was to have Evan go out and save my pots. I didn't want the robber to disturb the delicate little seedlings. Evan's first thought was, "You moron! He might be hiding right next to them! What am I supposed to do? Ask him to help me carry them in?" Well, yeah.

As an afterthought, two years ago, something similar happened, except this time the guy launched a stolen car off a twenty foot embankment, and managed to free himself from the wreckage before taking virtually the same path as the guy the other night. Something like four days later there was a 7.2 earthquake. You do the math. Those of you who really know me will remember that the earthquake helped highlight the first BIG signs of my budding psychotic break. So, while my first thoughts were of the seeds, my second thought was...

Tulip Redux

2005-06-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

My first job was at the Pali, a greasy roadside café that was located three doors down from my house. I was 13 when I started and in three years I worked my way up from dishwasher to back-up waitress. The work was fun — I learned a great deal about life in that cafe — but when I finally got my driver's license, I was rearing to get out of there, eager to work anywhere that didn't send me home at the end of the day smelling like french fries. Evan didn't have to look up, he could smell me when I walked into the little market to cash in my tips.

My dad gave me a lead on a job at a technical bookstore in Irvine. I knew next to nothing about technical books, but I jumped at the chance to work in a clean, intellectual environment. Evan celebrated the occasion of my new employment by buying me a "technical" looking Swatch watch. He also insisted that I actually iron my shirt so I looked presentable on my first day at work. I showed up on time that day, new watch, crisp blouse, and fell right in to the ebb and flow of the book business, but not without ever so slightly reinventing myself, so to speak.

Tulip is a friend we met through a string of blog connections involving at least three other people. We "ambushed" her blog design a few months ago and gave her what amounted to a very pink site. At the time of her original blog, she worked as a photo developer in a large grocery store. She has since gone on to teach pre-school children. She asked us if we could help her redesign her image. She was in the process of reinventing herself. She had a new job and a new outlook on life. We had some ideas we were tossing around for new blogs, and the timing was right, so we were happy to help out.

The design I sketched out on paper incorporated a few things both Evan and I wanted to try out some day. We wanted to do something unconventional. Evan wanted to use horizontal lists for links and archives, and I wanted the posts to be in individual fields of color surrounded by sketchy outlines. The original colors (not the ones we ended up with) were from a 300 thread count Egyptian cotton duvet we found on Moco Loco one morning. The whimsical scripty font (Wendy Medium) on top was perfect for Tulip, who it seemed to us was looking for something with a certain lightness to go with her new self-image. Designing the blog on Illustrator took all of ten minutes. I start with an 800 by 600 pixel work space, building it like it was a flier, or a thank you card or something, then add the titles and transfer everything to Photoshop for cleaning up ad cutting. Writing the code, however, took forever.

The design was simple enough, but Evan had a terrible time getting all the lines to line up in all the different browsers, and in PC and Mac. He wrote and rewrote and rewrote the code, each time coming up with a new problem. Strangely enough, the browser that gave him the most trouble this time was not the dreaded Internet Explorer, but rather Firefox. It just didn't like the way he was going about things. He finally had a coding epiphany one afternoon while we were sitting in the park. He came up with a way for all the browsers to accept the design, something like Russian dolls with a little twist at the end. That's how he describes it.

The end result is a clean, tidy, whimsical design that speaks perfectly of the new Tulip. Check out the new design at Slowly Losing It. Compare with the old site at Photo Girl Seeks Sanity while it's still up.

This is a test for something else

2005-06-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

A degree in Graphic Design,and not one class in pinstriping!

2005-05-30T23:08:00.000-07:00

This weekend, Evan and I walked down to the West Coast Kustom Car Show at the Park in Paso Robles. We went to Cruise Night the night before, and trust me, a car sitting in the park and the same car revving it's engine on Spring Street is a totally different experience. This is the local event I most look forward to, mainly because of the artistry involved in producing such beautiful cars. No detail is overlooked. How often do you find yourself saying, "Look at the fender on that Honda!" or "Check out the dashboard on that Camry!" Or how often do five or six colors blend into one automobile? I'd trade Evan for any one of the cars we saw this weekend.

Above is a pinstriper busy at work right in the middle of the melee in the park. There were thousands of people there and I was transfixed by the focus and efficiency of this outwardly ordinary man laying down lines like that's just what people do. His canvas was a gazillion dollar paintjob on an equally expensive Cadillac. He worked with no templates, no guides, no reference materials of any kind. We watched him do the right fin in what seemed like two or three minutes, then an exactly reversed copy on the left fin. And these weren't just stripes, they were delicate, interlocking designs. When we came back later, he had gone over the whole design with a contrasting color. The car was seemingly perfect to begin with, and obviously finished when he walked away. We knew someone in Silverado who worked with VonDutch in his youth. You'll notice there's always a bottle of something in the background of all the photos of VonDutch. The guy we knew said it wasn't true they drank that much. They only drank until their hands stopped shaking. This guy was drinking water from a Culligan bottle, or at least it looked like water. Pinstriping is different than flames. It's more feminine and delicate. It's also slowly becoming passé. A lot of the hotter, newer cars are going for the one color look, or the almost invisible flame look. There's also a trend towards matte finishes, which really appeals to me, but the body has to be especially straight.

To get a feel for some of these trends, check out Evan's blog. He posted a selection of almost thirty photographs taken in and around the park. Narrowing it down to thirty was a real chore. We worked on the selection together.

Pulsus vestri nose

2005-05-24T22:40:00.000-07:00

The chair I'm sitting in right now

2005-05-14T23:29:00.000-07:00

Realization

2005-05-14T00:28:00.000-07:00

It looks like a mullet

2005-05-12T22:44:00.000-07:00

Making soup

2005-05-11T12:30:00.000-07:00

Soup is serious business in our house. Evan wasn’t all that impressed that I was hovering around him with the camera, as you can gauge by his expression, attempting to capture the magic of his soup-making moments. There’s nothing in the world that makes Evan happier than a bowl of freshly made vegetable soup. I went through a phase a few years ago of making chicken tortilla soup. It turned into the only thing I knew how to make, so every time it was my turn to cook, we had tortilla soup. It reached the point where Evan said, “If I never see another bowl of soup...” So, it’s a while since we’ve been in soup-making mode.

This latest period of soup-making was triggered by a visit to the Farmer’s Market in San Luis Obispo. It was the cabbages that did it. I asked Evan what you can do with cabbage besides boil it with corned beef and he said something like, “Well you don’t put it in tortilla soup, that’s for sure.” So we bought the staples for vegetable soup: a couple of nice leeks, too many carrots, a big cauliflower, parsley, a big celery, a 5 lb. bag of potatoes, and the big, beautiful cabbage that started the whole thing off. Later we picked up some stewed tomatoes, tomato paste, garlic and Extra Spicy Mrs. Dash.

Now you can’t just throw everything into a pot and expect it to turn into soup, but it’s almost that easy, it’s not rocket science. It does, however, take some patience. There’s washing, and chopping, and sautéing, and simmering, and stirring, and tasting, and seasoning, and stirring, and waiting, and tasting, and so on. All the recipes that I ever read say that soup can be ready in 45 minutes. Evan’s soup takes two hours minimum. If the vegetables aren’t starting to fall apart, the soup’s not ready. I think I forgot peas and corn. Don’t tell the vendors at the Farmer’s Market that I buy those frozen at Albertson’s.

You can’t pin Evan down to a recipe for vegetable soup, first, because he doesn’t use a recipe, but more importantly, because he never makes the same soup twice. It’s like the zen of soup. While I’m on the subject of Evan, did you notice the towel over his left shoulder? If there’s a towel on his left shoulder, it means he’s cooking. He can’t even cook a bowl of oatmeal without a towel over his shoulder. Sometimes I’ll wake up in the morning, wander sleepy-eyed into the kitchen to find Evan making breakfast and be greeted with a morning hug. It’s only after I begin to wake up that I realize my face is buried in our kitchen towel.

Sometimes he uses fresh tomatoes. Sometimes we’ve had broccoli and squash added. If he doesn’t use leeks, he usually adds a turnip chopped up fine. He doesn’t always use potatoes. And sometimes, for reasons I don’t fully understand, he uses less tomato paste. But, it’s always Evan’s vegetable soup. One more crucial thing I’ve learned. A pot of soup takes one and a half pots, because no matter how big the pot is, and this is the biggest one we’ve ever had, the pot’s always full before all the ingredients are added. That’s where the other half pot comes in. When I took this picture, we hadn’t even added the potatoes or cauliflower yet. It’s a kind of alchemy in a way. By the time we were done, I was able to pour the half pot into the full pot and it all fit. The vegetables give up their liquid as they cook down, and the steam evaporates off the excess liquid, making the house smell soupy and warm, and eventually, it’s just what you set off to make: a pot of soup. Evan’s not sure where he learned how to do this. He worked in restaurants for many years, but he never made soup. He went to soup restaurants, like Follow Your Heart in the west valley, but they never gave classes in soup making. His mother always followed the recipe, give or take, so he must’ve learned how to do it by thinking about what would taste good with soft bread and butter. After we’ve had it for a couple of days, we strain the liquid off and serve the vegetables over a bowl of white rice. The simplest things turn out to be an adventure if you let them. It's a quarter to one. Guess what’s for lunch?

One live fish on a bike

2005-05-06T21:45:00.000-07:00

What's funnier than a bear playing a harmonica?

2005-05-06T20:37:00.000-07:00

Viva La Library Scanner

2005-05-06T20:08:00.000-07:00

I trotted down to the library this afternoon and used their scanner. I picked this sketch from a journal to test with because I always liked this couple's legs. It's a rudimentary sketch, but appealing for some reason. Thanks to Photoshop, I added a filter and got rid of the dog in the background playing the trombone. Maybe I'll work on him next.

Viva La Photoshop

2005-05-05T23:53:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been watching Evan perfect his photos with Photoshop. He does it with such ease and flair. Even though I'm officially a graphic designer, I've always had a fear of Photoshop. It just isn't as intuitive to me as vector graphic programs such as Illustrator and Freehand. So tonight I started tinkering around with it and I came up with this rabbit. I took a simple illustration I did in Illustrator and added a filter to it in Photoshop. It was relatively painless and rather fun to see a straight line drawing turn into a sort of collage with more depth. It reminds me of something you'd see in the LA Times Book Review on Sunday.

Anyway, one more minute of Cinco de Mayo. Happy 050505 everyone. I think I'll go sit in bed with Ev and listen to the rain sprinkle outside.

God can take me now

2005-04-22T13:20:00.000-07:00

I just bit through the most perfect tasting strawberry ever.

Tin heart

2005-04-21T18:08:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the strangest things impress me. I remember a coworker describing his recent bowel movement as "dropping the kids off at the pool." Generally, I'm not one for potty humor, but that little quip impressed me. Every once in a while, I'll drag myself out of bed early Tuesday morning, step into my slippers, walk outside and watch the garbage truck, with its robotic arms, pick up our trash cans and neatly dispose of our waste. It all happens so fast, so efficiently. It's impressive. The other day Al and I took a walk at Laguna Lake. To avoid stepping in a mud puddle, I walked carefully over a strategically placed board. Al watched me putting one foot in front of the other across the puddle, then did the same exact thing. (Though, on the way back to the car, he was distracted by some dogs playing nearby, and just slogged right through the mud.) Again, an impressive show of ingenuity on his part. Well, half a display. The above photo shows a tin heart I nailed to the wall near the back door to cover a hole to the outside that mice had been using. I impressed myself with the way I aesthetically solved that little problem. But, I was far more impressed by the mouse who ran to the heart, stopped, raised up on his hind legs, rotated the heart on it's hinge and zipped through the hole. He (or she) did it with the ease of somebody exiting a little door. I watched the little shit do it with my own eyes. It was irritating, to say the least, but thoroughly impressive.

Elaborate fits seek sanity

2005-04-15T17:14:00.000-07:00

Yikes. I'm behind in my posting responsibilities! True, I've spent a large portion of my time walking the dog and crushing crusty mud with my feet, but I still shouldn't have left all the promoting of recent projects (blogjects?) to Evan. We were quite busy the last couple of weeks. Most recently, my close friend Stacie entered the blogger world with elaborate lies. On a recent slumber party at her house (we didn't really slumber much, I think we went to sleep around 6:30 in the morning) I told Stacie, "Once you hit twenty posts, I'll make you a template." Well, she's not at twenty yet, but the one's she's posted so far are extremely entertaining, and once I left her house, I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like. The creative process is interesting. Once you put your idea down on paper, there's no stopping the snowball from racing downhill toward Evan's magical touch. Let's face it, a great illustration is not a template. It takes a brainiac to add all the href's and div clearer's in order to make the template work. But ask him to draw one bird...HA!

I've known Melissa for what seems like an eternity. I watched blossom from a lanky, precocious teenager to a worldly, smartypants student at Berkeley. She's a vegan these days, among other things, but, I have to tell you, my fondest memories of Melissa are sitting in the backroom of Barnes & Noble sharing huge hunks of peppered beef jerky. Mmmmmmmmmmmm. Mel's knitting me a beanie, or maybe crocheting—Evan rolls his eyes when I ask him if there's a difference. We watched Girl with a Pearl Earring last night—you can skip this one. In the future, I hope to be known as The Girl with the Grey & Black Striped Beanie. I don't understand everything Melissa writes about. I was just a graphic arts student at Cal Poly. But, Melissa seems to know what she's talking about. She's very proud to be taking a class from Professor Nader, which is like taking a class from David Hockney on my side of the spectrum. She wanted to be a sexy witch, so I gave her the first pair of boobs of any of my cartoon characters. Evan said, "Wow, I like that." Please check it out. It's called Melissa's Fits.

This is a beautiful picture of a tulip that Evan took to be the basis of Photo Girl Seeks Sanity, written by someone named Tulip, at least that's her blogger name. It's really a stunning photograph, I think. My role was fairly minimal in this one. I would sit back, reading my book, occasionally peeking up to see Evan struggling with the font, the color, or the proportions, then quietly add my two cents. When it was all done, Evan had the mistaken notion that he had done it all himself. Evan was more comfortable about the pink than I was, but we tailored it to the user who seemed to like pink. It worked out nicely that Evan found a beautiful pink tulip at the nursery.

Evan still likes his blog template the best. I still think this template is the best of all. Melissa wrote to say that she likes hers the best. Stacie was positive that hers was our best effort. Jeff Nutter assured us that his was too much like him to be true. Hey Paul thinks that all of them are great, though he likes his the best. And Tulip was tickled pink. So, what I'm trying to say is that you know you've done the right thing when each template fits the person it's designed for. Advertisers learned many years ago that people give very unreliable reports about their likes and dislikes. Everyone says they love the History Channel. But if you call them on the telephone, a Fox sitcom is generally playing in the background. So, we practice what I call "ambush design." We don't ask questions until the site is done. We make modifications around what we've decided. In other words, we trust out gut instincts over what people tell us. Of course, they get the final say—we always respect their wishes—but we let the creative process go first. We tend to hold our breath a lot after submitting the designs. But, if they all think theirs is the best, we must be doing something right.

All these sites are available on my links bar to the right. I hope you'll add them to your daily viewing. Boy, do I have a sudden hankering for jerky.

Basically a good bad little kid

2005-03-25T17:46:00.000-08:00

Today as I was making the bed, I had the vivid recollection of a time when I was about eight years old. Evan says I have the rare ability to tell myself jokes. I laughed out loud, then had to explain. We lived in an almost rural area, not far from where I am today, where I frequently entertained myself by riding my bike down steep hills fast enough to scare myself, by exploring the shrubby terrain around our house, pretending to find hidden treasure—I think I had to hide the treasure first, then go looking for it—and by building forts out of scrap materials from a local construction site. Later on, when I understood more about laws and things, I realized they could have prosecuted me for much of the stuff I took. At any rate, I basically acted like a little out-of-control animal, when I was on my own. Things were a lot different without parents or teachers. So, this particular summer I remember sitting in the back seat of the car, and my dad standing in front of me with the back door open. He had an odd look on his face. We were in the driveway about to go out to dinner. I had been especially wild the preceding days. I read his expression and looked down at myself. I was in shorts. Both knees were skinned to the point where I wondered if the skin would ever grow back. I had scratches up and down both legs and arms. As I thought of it, I realized that I had poison oak across half my face, and part way down my neck, flared up, no doubt, from scratching at it. I either had lice or gum in my hair—these memories sometimes run together—and I can’t say for sure at this point when the last time was that I had actually taken a bath. He stood there with that look on his face and said, “You look like shit.” Ah, memory.

Our favorite Smucker's salesman

2005-03-25T17:45:00.000-08:00

Just kidding. He doesn't sell Smuckers. He is, however, a top-notch meat products salesman. At least that's what we understand he does. We just thought he'd look pretty good in a green checkered shirt. If you didn't read Evan's post this morning, then you probably don't know that we teamed up to redesign Jeff's site. We've only seen one photograph of him, but Jeff assures us that it looks "too much like him." Also, Jeff seems to think I did the whole thing, so if you go there and leave a comment, don't tell him any different. Evan does the code, I just draw the pictures, though I am learning some CSS through osmosis. I love that now I understand what Evan's talking about when he screams from the other room, "It's that damned div clearer thing again!" I actually helped him troubleshoot a problem on Jeff's site this time, the night when we finally declared it done. I leaned over to Evan and said, "Do the div clearer thing on the middle graphic and see what happens." I felt like a CSS hero for about a half hour, or one of those people who walks up with a quarter and wins the jackpot on a slot machine. Anyway, check out his site, it's called Authorized Dealer. And don't just look at it, read it. He's a very amusing writer with a captivating, odd style that may be southern, but then again, may be just Jeff Nutter. My favorite post is about his cat Gracie Nutter. Don't ask me why.

Not to leave anyone out...

2005-03-25T17:44:00.000-08:00

I just realized that Evan wrote a nice send-up for a wonderful site, known as Hey Paul, but I completely forgot to do it on my site, afterall, I'm the one who made him ten inches taller and twenty pounds lighter. I also gave him that almost-ready-for-the-Nobel-prize look. While I was making him, I was chatting with Andrew Alexander, who doesn't have a blog yet, though he has lots to say and I can't wait for him to get started, and he coached me on Paul's arms. On the first draft he said something like, "So, did he have polio as a child?" God I hate brutal honesty. Then I noticed that he looked a little like Toulouse-Lautrec with his feet protruding somewhere around the bottom of his labcoat. Don't even get me started on the labcoat. Anyway, some designs just happen, others evolve sort of like slow chemical reactions. Ahhhh chemisrty. Paul is a grad student at Penn State with only a few months left to go. I keep calling him Paul, but I think his name actually John. Since he's a "Jr.," my best guess is that his dad got the John and he got what is probably his middle, Paul. Sometimes I get real confused and just call him the Pope. Talk about brutal honesty, if you're not up for the truth, stay away from his site. He's a mean Libertarian and it just galls me how often I agree with him. He skates a fine line between telling it like it is and just plain ol' being an asshole. But I love him. I told him today in an email that if Chemistry doesn't work out for him, he could always be Andy Rooney's replacement. Check out his site.

Oatmail

2005-03-22T20:48:00.000-08:00

Today as I was making oatmeal raisin cookies (a great rainy day activity,) I noticed on the back of the oatmeal package a possible typo. I decided to alert the Quaker Oats company of my find and in so doing, was thanked with the above stamp. It made my day.

Slipping

2005-03-19T10:03:00.000-08:00

It seems like the title of this one might also describe my recent cartooning, but that wasn't the intention. Things have been a bit crazy around here. Between designing blogs, trying to get them to actually work, and the meltdown and reconstruction of our computer, I've had to put my little strips on the backburner. I finished this one over a five day period—it usually takes me about five hours. I'd like to take a second to thank JUSTIN COOLEY a thousand times over for running up here on a second's notice to get our computer into tip top shape again. He did the same thing about a month ago. Then we found out the optical drive was malfunctioning. The Mac Superstore replaced it. Then, back he came again. He sure is smart about computers. I offered to fix him pancakes to thank him, but he declined, perhaps because it was ten o'clock at night. (It was all we had.) Anyway, I'll return the favor somehow, someday. Until then, THANKS JUT!!

The rest of the strip may be seen at amienence grise.

Angels

2005-03-01T00:19:00.000-08:00

My new strip on amienence grise has something to do with angels. It's a fascinating topic that many people dismiss as mere fiction. Evan came home with a very interesting and unusual book transcribed from the Hungarian original about a small group of women before the war who had, or seem to have had, an encounter with an angel. He found it at Phoenix Books on a break from Jury Duty last week. The title is Talking With Angels published by Daimon Verlag. I latched on to it at once, and now he'll just have to wait to read it.

I'm a bit puzzled by it, so far. For one thing, I think I might have asked different questions. Maybe it's just because they lived so far from the desert...

Template Makeover

2005-02-26T20:01:00.000-08:00

You might have noticed that Evan and I have been involved in template makeovers lately. We had the devastating experience of putting up a non-functional template for someone to evaluate. It looked great on the Mac. It hardly worked at all in Windows. She's a PC person, so, what she saw made us look incompetant. Template making has been a real experience for us. I think it's safe to say that we argue each and every point. Evan has learned how to give in, and do it his own way later, I have learned that the louder I disagree, and the more cutting my remarks, the more likely Evan will finally go along with me. In the end I'm always right, but the creative process is a give and take.

This strip would not have existed had it not been for the kind intervention of Justin Cooley. Justin spent his day off this week wiping our hard drive "so clean you could eat off it," then filling it back up with tasty, and nutritious, software. We owe him so much more than lunch.

Check out the full strip here at amienence grise.

As an afterthought, I can't help but notice, and those who know me are perhaps painfully aware, that my alter-ego weighs about 70 lbs. She doesn't have very many outfits, but they all fit perfectly. I really ought to drink more water and do some sit-ups every morning.

A little nip and some tuck

2005-02-21T23:00:00.000-08:00

Well, for the past month Evan's been learning CSS and I've been drawing cartoons and watching the first three seasons of Seinfeld. Finally, we put all our talent together and came up with these snappy little site designs. Both amienence grise and fourdeadfish have new looks starting today. We may tinker with them a little more, but basically they're finished. Hope you like them.

Olives

2005-02-20T01:15:00.000-08:00

Bill complained the other day that I haven't illustrated him yet. Well, I'm behind in a lot of things. Then, he said some wonderful things about me yesterday on his blog. So, I guess the way to get things done is to be very nice to me. He might have preferred a few more facial features, and maybe a pair of narrow glasses, but I'm confident that anyone who knows Bill will recognize him immediately. This is also the first strip to contain a classical reference. My favorite cell is the jar of olives with the fork. My mouth is watering. Care for an olive?

Smoking

2005-02-18T00:30:00.000-08:00

Evan tells me that watching James Bond (the real one) light his cigarette with a gold lighter, while he stared suavely into the camera made cigarettes look positively delicious. He didn't know about the toupee until many years later. Vodka martinis are still good, even a snort from the freezer every once in a while. But things are seldom what they seem, with the possible exception, he says, of the Bond girls. Anyway, it's funny how we end up craving things. Memory and imagination are often times far more appealing than reality.

See Amie's version at amienence grise.

Hello friends!

2005-02-15T20:06:00.000-08:00

There's a new installment of the adventures of Amie on amienence grise today. I'd like to thank everyone for the constructive and kind comments regarding the artwork, especially Daniel Hoffman, whose enthusiasm is unmatched. I'm not sure where all this is going, but I sure feel good doing it. At least I'm not a hooker hopped up on crack, though I'm sure parts of that would feel good too. Still, I think I'll stick with cartooning.

What if?

2005-02-12T20:48:00.000-08:00

The last entry was Amie at the laundromat. This entry is Amie in fantasyland. It's amazing how much of my life fits neatly into seven little cells. Check out the rest at amienence grise.

Sixth Street Laundromat

2005-02-11T00:45:00.000-08:00

Last week I picked up a beautiful hardback copy of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. If you've never seen McSweeney's, then nothing I could say here would possibly explain it to you. This special comics issue is edited by Chris Ware. If you've never seen the works of Chris Ware, then trust me, nothing I could say here would possibly explain it to you. Evan calls them comics. I consider them more like an alternate state of being. My favorite comics are the one's where nothing seems to happen, I'm not sure why. This morning it occurred to me that I could do some of this stuff myself. Late this afternoon I grabbed a sketchpad and started working out cells and storylines. I haven't reached the point of writing about nothing, yet. Last week, something nice happened to me at the Laundromat. Laundromats are places where almost nothing happens. Perhaps, I have found my calling. The rest of the story can be found at amienence grise. Let me know what you think. I hope you enjoy it.

Christmas t-shirts

2004-12-27T14:06:00.000-08:00

This Christmas we made custom t-shirts for our close friends. Last year we made custom underwear for some of them so they'd know what day it was on their vacation. I'm a granny underwear person, she's a cute little thong person, so her messages had to be a lot shorter than usual. But that, as they say, is another story. Each of the shirts has a design directly related to the person it was intended for. Jim, for example, works for Meridian winery as a lab chemist. Someday, when he gets done with the wine program at Cal Poly, he's going to make his own wine. His last name is Shumate. One of the women at Meridian calls him Shu-Shu, which is a play on the French word "chouchou," which means sweetheart. So I made up two pretend wine labels for two absolutely delicious wines—merlot on a dark red t-shirt, and chardonnay on a pale yellow t-shirt with just a hint of oak.

Jim's wife-to-be, Lisa, is reinventing herself. This year she enrolled in cosmetology school to become an esthetician. Estheticians do make-up and facial peels and all kinds of complicated things. Her maiden name is Villegas. Evan looked up the Spanish words for esthetician, cosmetologist, beautician, and every other word he could think of in a huge Spanish Dictionary, and came up with "La esteticista." We were having coffee at Border's Bookstore, sketching out different designs, and Evan suddenly realized that Lisa's name was buried in La esteticista. Can you see it?

Our friend Fed likes to wear black pants and black shirts together, so we got him a big, gray hooded , zip-up sweatshirt for Christmas this year. We wanted to put something really outlandish on it, like on of those French postcards from the turn of the century, but we were afraid he might wear it to work at the State Hospital, where he is a psychiatrist. So Fed got the nice, but conservative one with his last name on it. Evan and I did this one together in CorelDraw.

Our friend Sue is studying acupuncture at a school of Chinese medicine in Santa Barbara. She hopes to become a specialist in small animal acupuncture. Her design was every cat's dream: sticking pins in a dog.

Our friend Judy, Fed's wife, confided in me at a Christmas concert we all attended earlier this month that she always dreamed of playing the trombone. Judy has more cats than you can count, with names like Vivaldi, Midori and Steinbeck, which covers Music, Liqueurs, and Literature. If a cat came to her door with a trombone, I guarantee it would have a new home.

It's been an interesting year. Thank God for good friends. If you're not on the list above, I'm sorry. I'll start earlier next year.

Baldie

2004-12-07T22:02:00.000-08:00

I'm a big fan of this bald little character. I find myself doodling and drawing him over and over again. I decided to make up a logo for him.

Blackbird seed

2004-12-06T22:07:00.000-08:00

I drew this bird the other night while we were having coffee at the bookstore and decided it was strong enough to be a logo. It seems that lately birds are a popular subject for illustration, I opted for the simple blackbird. As for blackbird seed, Evan points out there is no such thing as "blackbird seed," which makes my idea of having a business named that all that more appealing. He suggested "Avian Design Group" and the rest of the logo just fell into place. I wonder what blackbirds do eat?

2004-11-19T21:45:00.000-08:00

Parking meter

2004-11-15T18:08:00.000-08:00

New Moon on Wednesday

2004-11-10T20:29:00.000-08:00

I was listening to Duran Duran's "New Moon on Monday," when I realized there's a new moon this Wednesday. Yikes! Today is Wednesday. Evan says to add "Yikes! Friday the 13th is on Saturday this month"—for everyone old enough to remember the comic strip Pogo. (Not me.)

iPod Steve

2004-11-07T22:58:00.000-08:00

A double fixation of mine: iPods and Steve Martin. I don't have either. I gave up on Steve, but I'm still holding out for an iPod. (Just kidding Steve, really.)

Candy Sale

2004-11-01T21:49:00.000-08:00

Halloween candy was 50% off at Target today. Last night we had to rush out to buy candy, then rush home before it was too late for the little goblins and princesses, or Shreks and Brittanies, or whatever kids nowadays feel obliged to dress up as. I was an M&M one year, a mouse, a hobo, Spiderman, and a cowboy with six-shooters, which was probably my favorite. One year, when I was old enough to do my own costume, I went as Death from the Amadeus costume ball. I think this one freaked out all the non-Mozart lovers a bit, like a sign that I was starting to get into drugs or something. The truth was that I would hide in the closet with a candle and a feather from Caspar the family cockatoo pretending to write symphonies. Anyway, we filled a bowl with our stash of miniature candy bars, lit candles for the pumpkin (see below), and waited. We waited and nibbled. Waited and nibbled some more. Before long, we had each stuffed so many wrappers in secret little places that we were starting to bulge and crinkle as we moved about. It was a long and fruitless wait. No cute little toddlers with beaming parents, no obnoxious teenagers wanting handfuls of treats. No Brittanies. No Shreks. And, suddenly, we realized, no candy. "Quick," I said, "blow out the candles." Then, huddled together in our dark, depressing little Halloween home, it came to each of us at almost the same moment: Candy is 50% off tomorrow at Target.

What time is it?

2004-10-30T22:47:00.000-07:00

If you're wondering what a wristwatch has to do with Halloween, then it's a good thing you stopped by today, because otherwise you'd be in mortal danger of showing up to work an hour early. They used to say: "Don't tell Amie about the time change. It's the one day of the year she's not late." Well, that's an exaggeration, of course, but the truth is that until I'm just a little late there's no pressure to be on time—a little paradox I've come to love and live by. Still, walking in fifty minutes early to a room full of smirking faces is something that sticks with you forever and ever. Spring forward, Fall back. Set your clocks back an hour. You've got till next summer to think about it. Is it more sleep makes the light longer? Longer days make the time earlier? I'll be damned if any of it makes the least bit of sense to me. Just set your clocks back and be glad you stopped by to see what Amie was up to. Oh, and you're welcome.

Michael Degnan

2004-10-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

I asked Michael the other night, we were iChatting, if he enjoyed his new Power Book, and without hesitation he responded: "Why, yes, I have it on my lap right now." He has a dry sense of humor that is also dark and often sarcastic. He is witty, yet seldom trivial. If anything, he projects a quiet sensitivity and reserve. In my opinion, he's a wonderful collagist. He has a degree in Film. His taste in music is ecclectic. He has jet black hair, great taste in clothes, and hates driving cars.

I met Michael at Barnes & Noble bookstore in San Luis Obispo. It was 1996 and we were both filled with optimism and pride at having been hired to work part-time in the most happening place in town. That should tell you something about San Luis Obispo. As the years went by we came to loath the place. Well, loath might be a bit strong, but we did discover that the same things and people irritated us in the same ways. Of course, we made some lasting friends there, and paid some bills, so it couldn't have been as bad as all that. Still, when something really negative boils up inside, I can count on Degnan to know what I'm talking about.

Michael is a perfect gentleman. When I visited him in San Francisco, he took me in, showed me the city - not the tourist parts, but the real city - the subways, the trains, the parks, the library, the CSSF campus, the seedy taco joints filled with flamboyant people, the corner markets, and the best morning bagels. He showed me how to live life slowly. Every hour-and-a-half, no matter where we were, we stopped for a smoke break, and a chance to people-watch. Smoking, as practiced by Michael, is a stationary, ontological event, a chance to see how far you've gotten in the last hour-and-a-half.

I have never been so well cared for as on that brief visit to San Francisco. Even though little more than a floor was provided to sleep on, I felt completely at home. He was constantly checking to see that I was OK. Was I comfortable? Did I have enough toothpaste? Was I getting enough out of my San Francisco experience? Yes, yes, yes, Michael. And that about sums it up.

Over the hill

2004-10-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

Today, is Jim Shumate's fortieth birthday, and this afternoon is his fortieth birthday party, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to make him a birthday cake. Jim, along with his wife-to-be Lisa, is our neighbor, our landlord and our friend. He's an all-around special person. Like many of us, he's lived several lives. Not so many years ago, he moved to Paso Robles to pursue a career in winemaking, where he started at the bottom of the barrel, so to speak. As I write, he is anxiously awaiting acceptance into the new Winemaking program at Cal Poly. I mean, come on. Slam dunk! A far cry from rolling his pants up and stomping grapes, Jim now works in the Chemistry Lab at Meridian Winery doing things no one really understands. In addition to working about eight days-a-week, through earthquakes and Crush, he's finished two years at Cuesta College with flying colors. My boyfriend Evan says: "The sky's the limit for anyone who gets an A in Chemistry." We hear a lot about wine snobs these days. Well, Jim loves ice-cold beer, Guinness on tap if you've got it, Metallica, the Lakers, the rowdy Raiders, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Nathan's hotdogs. Smart, happy, and not pretentious in the least.

So, what do you get a guy like this for his birthday? Now that schools out he'll have more time to.... (...hint... hint...)

You know, the more I think about it, the less I'm sure that pink and blue is the right birthday cake for Jim. Maybe it should be something more manly:

Or something a bit more rough and tumble. (Jim came very close to painting his house black and silver last football season!)

Or, how about, a Metallica cake. Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim. Deep down inside this quiet, outwardly conservative, forty-year-old member of the community is a heavy-duty, hard rock concert maniac.

Oh well, any way you slice it, it's all good, it's all Jim.

Happy Fortieth Birthday.

I was frog-brained all day

2004-10-18T20:15:00.000-07:00

I raked the wet leaves this morning. Piles of them. Suddenly, it was autumn with a vengeance. I was careful not to kill unnecessarily any insects hiding among the leaves. Back and forth I trudged in my new hiking shoes (see below) feeling cleaner and neater and wiser and far more organized. When I finished the yard, I came into the kitchen for a drink and a snack, and as I petted the dog and told him how proud I was of myself, I noticed, among other things, a crushed Jerusalem Cricket, or Potato Bug, if you prefer, directly under my desk. If you've ever had to remove a potato bug from the house, you know that they come in two sizes: large, and enormous. This was the biggest damn potato bug you have ever seen with all its parts splayed out across the floor. As I stood there, a dim memory came back to me of something crunching beneath my foot as I turned off the computer and wandered sleepily to bed last night. I would have been completely grossed out if I had realized what in my half conscious state I had done. I got the broom and dustpan to sweep him up and noticed clumps of dirt everywhere in the kitchen. You know those knobby little things on the bottom of hiking shoes? It turns out their real function is to collect mud and leaves from the garden. By the time I figured this out, I was already tiring of the splendors of autumn. The frog that was stuck in my brain all day found his way to a beach towel on a strip of white tropical sand. You've heard of indian summer. Well, this is my frog summer illustration. Have you noticed how dark it's getting?

I'm mad, and I'm not going to take it anymore!

2004-10-17T19:05:00.000-07:00

Amie makes headlines at computarmachine. To see the real thing, click the pissy little picture.

Rasta rag doll monkey

2004-10-17T16:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the first rain since anyone could remember. We drove home from San Luis Obispo in an unexpected, absolute downpour. When we got Al, the family dog, moved from the car back into the house, he paced back and forth nervously in the kitchen. Al is so old that it passed through both our minds that maybe he had forgotten about rain. If a towel slides off a doorknob, or a pillow falls silently from the edge of the bed, he quietly leaves the room. He does it just slowly enough not to call attention to himself. But off he goes. We wonder how much he worries about demons and house devils. Sometimes a seedpod falls from the tree outside the back door with a hollow thunk on the roof, and we find him next to us in bed. So, thinking he forgot about rain is not so unreasonable as it might sound. Al got through the 4th of July this year with flying colors. Our theory on that is that he no longer hears the fireworks. Pillows he seems to hear, but not fireworks.

Anyway, we were moving things in from the car when Al bolted through the door into the rain. A few moments later, in he came with his Rasta rag doll monkey. Out the door again, and a few moments later he came back with an old rawhide bone. Back again with a blue ball. Then, a stuffed fish. The place was littered with every toy he could save from certain destruction.

This is an illustration of the soaking lump at the foot of our bed this morning.

The perfect lamp

2004-10-15T01:24:00.000-07:00

I never gave lamps much thought until I had to buy one. My friend Evan found a wrought iron table base about twelve years ago that had once had a marble top. The top had cracked and was on its way to the dump. Replacing it was just too complicated. It's the old story: One man's junk is another man's treasure. He used his connections to find a cabinet-maker with a few scraps of this and that, and all of a sudden I had a custom, one-of-a-kind desk. The only thing it lacked was a lamp. When you start looking around you realize: My God, the world is filled to the brim with ugly lamps.

Enter IKEA... a little world of its own. I never thought there could be so many choices. I needed one lamp, but here were hundreds, and I wanted them all. Paper lamps, plastic lamps, table lamps, floor lamps, sconces, halogen lamps, neon lamps, lamps with big bulbs and lamps with little bulbs, lamps that hung from the ceiling, swivel lamps that stuck out from the wall, lamps with clamps on them, track lamps, and yes, even desk lamps. All this in one tiny corner of IKEA. If it weren't for the arrows on the floor, who knows how long it would take to find your way out? Anyway, I found the perfect lamp for the perfect desk and when it finally broke I replaced it with this one. Target has about ten lamps. Fortunately they're all pretty nice. I bought this one at Target.

New shoes

2004-10-12T21:12:00.000-07:00

I'll never forget the story Emily told me about the day Michael Degnan got a new pair of shoes. He was happy as a clam walking out of Copeland's with his new shoes on, swinging his bag and whistlin' a tune, just loving life in his new shoes when a car drove by and some young punk leaned his head out the window and maliciously drew his finger slowly across his neck, saying, "Aaaaiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee!!!" Poor Michael. For the rest of his life he would remember this moment and the forboding threat it represented. Should he just write it off as a prank? Should he be afraid of the outward happiness a new pair of shoes had brought him? Had he done something very, very wrong, but forgotten what it was? God, how he began to hate those shoes, how they began to tighten around his feet, and lead him down a path he had never thought to travel.

Anyway, last night we went to Target to get Evan some Cal Trans orange t-shirts that he likes to walk the dog in and they were all out so I got a new pair of shoes. Hey, $19.99, plus, they're made in China, so you know they have to be good, and just look at them. So far no one has threatened me, but Evan is miffed about the t-shirts.

The local laundromat

2004-10-11T16:23:00.000-07:00

If you ever find yourself in Paso Robles with a bag full of dirty laundry, then stop by the Sixth Street Laundromat, where you'll find the biggest washers in the county, the cleanest counters in the state, and the best signs in the world. Owner and operator Craig Nelson, has been exchanging quarters for washes, rinses and spins for over ten years now and he claims that business has never been better. Is it because the wind kicks up more dirt than it used to? Perhaps it's because people have grown to appreciate an environment that is fresh and clean and generally Tide-scented. Craig has recently expanded his business to accommodate new stainless steel triple-load washers and dryers. He asked me during the expansion to make some signs for him, and now the whole place is a Craig/Amie masterpiece. He's done the walls in orange and lime green and scattered signs like the ones above and below in prominent, tasteful places to give the whole place a happy, friendly atmosphere. There's also a fulltime person on duty for Fluff & Fold, and to say, "Hi" when you come through the door. You know, I never expected to sing the praises of a Laundromat. Hey, has anyone seen a gray sock?

Pancake breakfast

2004-10-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

You won't hear more laughter, more happy conversation, or feel better vibes than you will at the monthly Grange pancake breakfast. You won't find better pancakes either. The Grange motto is, "Growing for the Future in California," and that doesn't mean just crops. It means people too. According to the paper placemat, the Grange offers, among other things: Recognition and educational programs for all ages. A forum for members to express their talents in sewing, music, public speaking, art, crafts, leadership development, and family health. According to Evan, the cutest 4-Hers in the world served breakfast. It was their contribution. In return, they get to hold their meetings in the Grange Hall. Imagine that! They earn the privilege to hold their meetings there. If you had to sum it up in one word, it would be values. These aren't people holding the party line. These are the people who taught that line in the first place. Real Republicans. And that's coming from a diehard liberal!

El Paso de Robles Grange No. 555
Pancake Breakfast
Second Sunday of the Month
627 Creston Road
Paso Robles, CA
7:30-11:00 AM
Adults $4.00 Under 12 $2.00

Cumulous clouds

2004-10-09T22:36:00.000-07:00

Stunning cumulous clouds tonight just before sunset made the whole day worthwhile.

My friend Justin

2004-10-08T22:28:00.000-07:00

This is my friend Justin Cooley. He just finished law school and is studying for the Bar Exam come February. He is downright intelligent with interests that are extremely diverse and frequently unexpected. He spends as much time cataloguing his music by degree of social dissidence as he does examining torts and God knows what else they study at Law School. So if you need to know the second track of Pavement's third album, Justin's your man. He's fluent in both English and Geek, and can explain computer problems with such facility that you wonder if he has ended up in the right field. Maybe computer law? Speaking of right field, Justin has a love for baseball, particularly the Dodgers. He finds time to maintain computarmachine, a weblog which may someday include the above illustration, and which every day is somewhere just beyond my cognitive comfort zone. Macaroni and cheese means a lot to Justin. Perhaps we should just let it go at that. Justin has been a good and loyal friend to me. When I was crazy, he pretended not to notice. When I was depressed, he kept me amused. And when I have ever needed to know anything specific, just out of intellectual range, there was Justin with the answer. He's also a handsome subject for illustration.

Things that go crunch in the night

2004-10-07T13:13:00.000-07:00

For some reason, the dogs of our neighborhood find that our water tastes better than their own. Perhaps it's the little tinge of green moss around the edge of the bowl. Frequently we hear the slow, even, lappings of Shadow, the next-door neighbors' black Labrador as she takes her fill. Guinness, a dog named after his dark ale and brown foam appearance, lives on the other side of us and drinks at a much faster pace, almost as if he's typing a letter on a manual typewriter. Then there's our dog, Al, who drinks three laps at a time. Lap, lap, lap, pause, lap, lap, lap, pause, stopping, perhaps, to appreciate the taste and aroma that flows from our new, non-potable garden hose. So we know who's in the yard by the distinctive sound of their lappings. The smaller, more delicate laps come from the neighborhood cats. In a certain way, I feel honored that these animals prefer the taste of our water. I'm always careful to keep it fresh. I suppose I get a wee little St Francis of Assisi feeling out of it. The birds don't land on my shoulder yet, nor do they hesitate to shit on my car, but it's probably just their way of saying thank you.

We've grown accustomed also to the sound of crunching dog food in the kitchen. It's a relaxing, homey sound that far from disturbing us in the night, helps us to sleep more soundly. What we are not used to is the sound of one mini crunch nugget being thoughtfully crunched on. That miniscule sound woke both of us up in the middle of the night. At first, we didn't know what we were listening for. Something was wrong. It wasn't that something was eating dog food, it was that something was eating it one tiny morsel at a time. It scared the shit out of both of us. If something had been wolfing down huge mouthfuls at a time, it would just be some neighbor dog that had found it's way into our kitchen and was helping itself, but this sound was entirely foreign. It was miniscule, exact, purposeful, devious. We each peeked, in near total darkness, through the kitchen passageway, and saw, or did we only imagine, an enormous gray cat sauntering out the kitchen door. "Who the hell was that?" we asked. And what was it doing in our kitchen? Al, the twelve-year-old family watchdog, snored on, upside down on his pillow, dreaming of mice and squirrels and walks, and, perhaps, even cats.

Some thoughts on spiders

2004-10-05T22:17:00.000-07:00

Spiders might be fitting and fun when it comes to Halloween, but when it comes to bedtime, it's a whole different story. Last night my arachnophobic bedmate, Evan, made me kill a Black Widow spider. I'm not lamenting the fact because I love the morbid nature of Black Widows, the way they suck the life out of their bedmates just after courtship, (getting nervous Evan?), I just don't like to kill bugs. Before you start buzzing or crawling with etymological ire, I know that a spider is not properly speaking a bug. But where I come from spiders are both spiders and bugs and bugs can just as easily be spiders if you don't have time to count their legs. Then, where I come from, if you're working on the truck in the garage and no one is looking, then it's okay to pee in the sink, which, now that I think about it is something I should probably bring up with my therapist this week. Anyway, the truth of the matter is that Black Widow spiders, big, juicy, black widow spiders are in a category of their own. I imagine they have their own little agendas and aspirations and I hate to interfere with that. If it were up to me, all the bugs of the world would simply be relocated instead of exterminated, but the cup and a slip of paper method can only get you so far when you're talking about a bug that can take your life. So it's death for the Black Widow, and good riddance.

On a happier note, if you happen to be browsing at the ladies magazines that litter the checkout stands at the grocery store, then you might be thrilled to find in one of them (I seriously just ran to the store to find which one and had no luck) a scary little garnish for deviled eggs that converts chopped black olives into spider legs. Throw a pimento on there and you've got yourself an edible Black Widow, which sounds completely disgusting to me.

Hello World

2004-10-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I've just taken a shower. I have that squeeky-clean feeling, ready to conquer the world. Thanks for reading my initial post. I'm finding out how to do this as fast as I can. Check back.