The Rumors of My Blog's Death Have Been Somewhat Exaggerated

This post is dedicated to the 44 of you out there who, for some reason, still hold hope that I will be updating my blog. More likely, it is for the 44 of you who forgot you were even still subscribed.

As the year ends, you may have noticed that I have let the blog go silent since September. What you may not have noticed is how active my Twitter feed has been since. As seems the path of many other bloggers, it is time to fully move on and lay my blog to rest, giving it the respect it deserves, while giving the full attention to the infamous 140-character updater that is lately all I have time for.

With two kids, a loving wife, a full-time job and a freelance side business, the portability and lightning-fast-ability of Twitter is perfect for those precious moments of down time, while still remaining a useful way to provide good links and the personal commentary and perspective that you 44 appear to appreciate. From a purely numbers standpoint, it seems silly to write to 44 people in blog format when 186 people want to have it in Tweets.

I'm working on a redesign of my home page right now, and it will incorporate this blog only as a sidenote to let people know what I am up to professionally, and while I will keep the old content archived for the search bots, it will not be linked from anywhere important. This should keep the people happy who, to this day, are desperately searching for images of Joey Gladstone and screencaps from old episodes of The Apprentice.

So it is with 51% reverence and 49% embarrassment that I now send this out, marking my last official post of this old blog format. It's been very fun, and thanks for taking part in whatever way and for however long, but with all due respect, it's 2010 and it's time to let go.

Social Media Sabbatical

After one week of Blogger FTP issues, one week of putting on the 2009 GDMA Degree Show at work, and another week of directing my church's family camp, I'm back to blogging. At the same time, however, I am living in constant fear of having my favourite blabbermouth, the Internet, spoil the season finales to my favourite shows.

Being so busy, the TiVo has been piling up with good television that I haven't seen. The main show I am concerned about is Lost, which has been so amazingly awesome this season I expect no less than earth-shattering revelations from the final episode. To a lesser extent, the results of Survivor, the always fun wrap-ups from 30 Rock and The Office, and the last show ever of the Prison Break series, are also something I'm looking forward to.

Thus, I have made the difficult decision to avoid all social media, including Facebook, Twitter and blogging, until my expectations have been met, my story arcs have been resolved, and my TiVo hard drive has been wiped clean.

So chatter away, Internet, but I'll be virtually plugging my ears and typing "la la la la la la" on an imaginary keyboard until then.

Blogzilla Quarterly?

With only four blog posts this year, you might think I had died and gone to blog heaven, otherwise known as the real world. However, there have been some notable events happening behind the scenes...

• Butterick finally gave in and changed the name of their magazine to Sewing Today


• Fitness World finally gave in and ended their multi-year grand opening, and the sign is now down


• Tyra Banks finally gave in and hired some graphic designers to give her latest season of America's Next Top Model the best-looking Tyra Mail yet, kerning and all


• Sean Hosein finally gave in and posted his own comment that both clears up the controversy and adds to the intrigue of the Cove Cliff Song


• The viewing public finally gave in and our fun little turkey video is only 250 views away from reaching 1000 on YouTube


• I finally gave in and started a separate blog that actually gets updated
  

I readily admit that while these exciting events have been happening, I have been completely tardy with fresh content, but you'll be happy to know thst I have been actively updating my new links blog, Nick's Quick Picks, for the whole year. It's basically a place for me to post links to other people's stuff that I find funny, interesting or otherwise noteworthy. This way, I don't have to constantly ask my friends if they have seen the latest internet sensation, I can just ask if they have seen the blog. If you already read the same things I do, it might not all be new for you, but if you're somehow starving for the latest poop from Nick, it's still a good read.

So thanks for sticking with me while I concentrate on more important things this year, such as my wife and son. While I do have some new things on the back-burner waiting to be published, I can't really promise things are going to become more regular: I am happy to announce that we have another one on the way and he is due in March.

Just in time for me to write my bi-annual blog post...

Happy New Year, everyone!

Halloween 2007: Attack of the Clones

This year for Halloween, five of us at work dressed up as clones of our boss. Partly because we know him so well, and partly because he's so predictable, we were able to almost completely match his outfit without him even knowing what we were planning.

This is his reaction upon seeing us for the first time.

Sex, Drugs and Kid-Friendly™ Rock 'n' Roll

It's hard to explain my fascination with these albums, but every time a new Kidz Bop Kids CD comes out I am right on iTunes and listening in both horror and fascination. You see, someone in the record industry thinks that kids only like to listen to other kids singing songs, or perhaps that parents don't like their kids listening to real music unless it is purified by the voices of under-10-year olds. Either way, they get innocent children to cover today's biggest hits without any concern for appropriateness and with a seemingly blatant disregard for irony. At the very best it's hilarious and at the very worst it's still hilarious.

For a limited time, you can listen to the full length Kidz Bop 12 over at AOL's Free CD Listening Party, or you can cringe along with the previews at the iTunes Music Store in both Canada and the USA.

On this particular album, keep an ear out for the kidz hey-heying over the questionable lyrics of Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend", imagine a kidz-only music video for Justin Timberlake's "What Goes Around...Comes Around", hope that the kidz are literally singing about an "Umbrella" by Rihanna, and marvel at the kidz's grizzled, world-weary performance of Chris Daughtry's "It's Not Over".

While you're there, make sure to check out their extensive back catalogue of one-hit-wonders, awkward hip-hop, squeeky-clean indie rock, songs by bands and artists you once respected, and innumerable lyrics that no child should be forced to sing, or, for that matter, listen to.

Butting Out

It's a year later and the buttstorm has finally come to a bitter end.



One year ago, the original post ignited controversy and most assuredly sent a flurry of memos directly to the higher-ups at the McCall Pattern Company.

In an apparent act of rebuttal, they then changed their masthead to avoid further conflict. Instead, they enacted some sort of strict policy where models had to be either photographed off-centre with lots of awkward white space or leaning forward to make way for the looming logo. Either way, it only lasted for two issues.

Now, with the design possibilities being pushed to their limits, and the increasing pressure of the media, it seems their only recourse was to banish the once proud name of their founder, Ebenezer Butterick, to a place in the subheading and settle on the new, obvious, and much less comical, Sewing Today.

No ifs, ands or butts.

The End of the Roll

As it has been a year since I started this blog, and almost as long since I last posted something, I thought I should end 2006 with something profound, meaningful and hopefully, a little inspiring.



Look what I found! It's a toilet paper holder with a radio built in! To me, nothing says good times like the fuzzy sound of the 'ol AM radio while you wipe your bum.

Special thanks to my wife's grandmother for keeping this inspiring relic up on the wall in her guest bathroom.

Happy New Year everybody!

What a Turkey

Here's a little something for our American friends. It's been a couple of years since we made it, but thanks to people searching for "Thanksgiving" and "Turkey" and the word "Gobble", it's now blowing up on YouTube.



UPDATE: To cash in on the phenomenon, Graham has posted his sequel to the video here. Keep an eye out for the "L.A." KFC, where they appear to feature the very Canadian "Toonie Tuesdays".

The Monkey That Stole The Show

One of the best things about being a Dad is getting to legitimately continue Trick-Or-Treating, especially with such an agreeable and excited sidekick. However, after all the admirers and cameras we experienced today, it became readily apparent that Curious George is the star and the man with the yellow hat is merely the accessory. Not that I have any hard feelings about being his prop, because in the end, I get to eat all his candy. Happy Halloween!

Poop Face

Did you know that, scientifically speaking, birds pee and poo at the same time? I do. That's because I got to study it in intimate detail all the way home from work.



That's right, driving along on the Vespa this crisp autumnal afternoon when SMACK, it hit me right between the eyes. If there was ever a winning argument for wearing a full-face helmet, this is it.

Also, the trajectory was so steep and the impact so great that it ricocheted on to my pants. Hey bird, maybe you want to slow down on the berries...

When Good Slogans Go Bad

When my son goes to sleep, my wife and I will sometimes turn on the closed captioning on the TV so we can keep the volume low but still follow any hushed dialogue.

Last night we were watching the season premiere of ER, and at the end of a particularly intense show, we got treated to an advertisement, a not-so-uncommon feature of captioned shows. However, the slogan displayed was disturbingly descriptive of the plot. Needless to say, if you haven't watched the episode yet, spoilers ahead.



"Every day, someone somewhere makes a bold move. There's a car company like that."

Yikes. Thanks very much for the sponsorship Ford, but accompanied by those images, I'm sure that's not quite the image you want to portray of your company.

"Every day, someone somewhere shoots their neglecting, abusive, murdering, kidnapping, escaped convict, ex-husband when he's in a drunken sleep. There's a car company like that."

( gunshots )

Fight! Fight! Fight!

As it is the only fight I have ever taken part in, tell everyone to meet behind the high school down on the field and gather round in a circle to watch me take on my own brother in a Lightboxing match at Veer. Pass it on.

For more dysfunctional fun, here's something you won't see anywhere else: my deleted scene. Before I scrapped it and arrived at my final concept, I was going for more of a complicated narrative using a liberal amount of Photoshop's Perspective Transform and telling an undoubtedly darker tale.

Even though I was going for a creepy and uncomfortable look, the story I was trying to tell was a little out there. Basically, we see a happy family, in better days, now broken up by a new man in the house and a suggestion of Dad's head mounted above the fireplace. It's no Punch and Judy masterpiece, and my reasons for abandoning this project were threefold:

I didn't really like it.

My wife really didn't like it at all.

My very un-dysfunctional parents might have been sad.

With that said, I'm happy with the outcome, and regardless of his Lightboxing skills, we should all read my brother's new comic series and see if we aren't transported back to our high school days as well.

And yes, I did mean to spell it like that. It's dysfunctional!

Nature With Nick

Part of a series of informative nature segments I produced while at a kids camp this summer. You can view the rest of the films, along with the whole camp video, on my motion page. Yup.

Butterick's Rebuttal

After the hard-hitting journalism of the critically-acclaimed Butterick post was picked up by international media outlets, it seems that the brouhaha about the inappropriate-logo-placement-of-the-year got back to Butterick design headquarters, and appears to have made a difference.


After over two years of full-size, left-to-right logo placement, Butterick has wiped their masthead clean, as it were, and have thus eliminated any chance of weird words in their title. No more Butt. No Buttock. Not a chance of Buick. Never a But Rick. Nary a Buttcrack. Absolutely no more Buttsteak for anyone.

And yet, as we celebrate this triumph of the common bloggers and their tireless clicking and linking, we also remember those that have been left behind in the aftermath of the magazine kicking butt. One last time, I present to you, the Ladies of Butt Magazine.

Fruhling's Parade of Champions

Holiday weekends mean holiday parades. As we've just finished both the Canada Day and the American Independence Day holiday weekend, I would like to compare and contrast some parade observations from both countries. If that sounds boring, please enjoy clicking on the funny pictures instead.

While visiting the small town of Ketchikan, Alaska, my wife and I had the opportunity to witness a true Fourth of July parade. Locals showed a sense of national pride that clearly rivals any amount of maple leaf face-painting we could come up with, and while we may wear our Canadian patriotism on our sleeves, they wear their American patriotism on their sleeves, hats, jackets, pants, shoes, earrings, handbags and doo-rags.



On the other hand, this holiday weekend I had the opportunity to experience my son's first parade here in Steveston, British Columbia. He loved the marching bands the most because they were loud and shiny. He also learned to wave a flag like a champ, and yes, those are bag pipes and Mounties in the background, because we're Canadian, after all.


Of course, both parades had the requisite Shriners. While we had dudes from the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine on mini-bikes, they had Freemasons in fezzes on All Terrain Vehicles.



While Alaska had a simple salmon strolling the streets, in BC we've apparently got these wild salmon that are too hardcore to walk, need to be contained by black nets, and have formed some sort of unintelligible punk rock group.



Meanwhile, both events had their share of celebrity attendance. Alaska welcomed Smokey the Bear, what looked like Geoffrey from Toys"R"Us, and some guy in a Donald Duck costume who's daughter appears to be demanding money so she can go do something potentially more exciting.


Not to be outdone, Steveston invited the famous Mr. Peanut, Edward Scissorhands' younger and more casually-dressed sister or cousin or something, and the famous eighties child safety icon, ASTAR from Planet Danger (who can put his arm back on while you can't).


And what parade would be complete without providing the children with fun giveaways, like this colouring book for example. While probably useful to know about in a dangerous situation, just think about the hours of fun any child would have using their crayons to carefully shade in Daddy's motionless body.

Finally, the Americans rolled out the big guns with a float brought to you by the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart. Note the prominent placement of the "United We Stand" text beneath the company's name, while the sheer magnitude and geographical accuracy of the globe really just speaks for itself.



In the end, the Canadians really had only one chance to top it off and come through with a parade homerun. So what did we do? I think every true Canuck knows the answer to that question: we sent out the guy with a skeleton on a motorcycle.

Botticelli Beach Ball Bingo

We recently upgraded to the new Adobe Creative Suite at work, and while I am loving all the new features, I must admit that I am going to miss doing this:



Playing with the spinning beach ball of death while waiting for Adobe programs to load had become a favourite pastime of mine, especially when Adobe used to provide such easy targets along with their incredibly long load times.



Photoshop was never as funny, but it still worked on the same premise. And in Illustrator, once the S.P.O.D. had stopped, who could resist this classic move:



Now that we're using CS2, however, this is the closest I have come to doing something interesting while I wait:



So the good times with load times may be over, but at least I can rest assured in the fact that I can't be the only one who has ever done this...

Clients Just Don't Understand

For the most part, this ad makes sense: if you switch to TD Canada Trust, you can get iPods. To give another designer credit, they came up with a clean ad where the message is simple and the layout effective, while getting the point across even if the viewer doesn't read all the rest of the copy. However, when design is considered, it can be all in the details.



I can see it all too clearly: the creative team gets the brief, flesh out some concepts and agree on an idea, get some designers working on it, go through some revisions, feel they've solved the design problem and communicated what the client wants, package it up and present it to the client, who in turn generally likes it...but has one dumb suggestion. Having no idea exactly who the client might be in this case, we can assume it was probably either an older, silver-haired, business-in-the-blood, slightly out-of-touch banker, or a team of older, silver-haired, business-in-the-blood, slightly out-of-touch bankers.

They ask, "Now what are these fandangled thingies we're giving away now? Is that one of those Blackberries I keep hearing about?" The creative team explains, "It's an iPod, sir. They're very popular these days, kind of like a modern-day walkman." The client realizes, "Oh, it plays music? How is anyone supposed to know that?"

I can only imagine how the conversation progressed, how the client demanded that their personal design nugget be added to the composition, and how the beleaguered creative team finally complied and trudged back to their computers to make one of those make-the-client-happy changes that renders the project banished from the portfolio and in the end, looking like this:



Music notes? Seriously, to the 5 people who have never heard of an iPod and can't read those menu selections that say "Music" and "Shuffle Songs" and didn't notice that headphone cord coming out the bottom and have never seen anyone walking down the street with one and have not consumed any sort of news media for the past few years, we needed to have music notes? Did anyone assume that an iPod was giving people an inner-ear massage or something?

I find it very hard to believe that someone on the design side of things came up with this little bit of flair for the ad, and that it wasn't the unreasonable demand of someone involved in the approval process. Besides, if you really wanted to put those in, atleast have the sounds coming from the headphones...everyone knows that music doesn't literally emerge from the iPod.

Clients just don't understand.

Kern Like A Canadian

After the previously discussed 6 seasons of horrible kerning on the America's Next Top Model "Tyra Mail", I am proud to announce that the recently debuted first episode of Canada's Next Top Model remedies the problem with our very own "Tricia Mail".

Based on the supermodel host of the show, Tricia Helfer, we appear to have done away with snail mail altogether, and instead get extraneous animated-mail-opening graphics á la You've Got Mail. In fact, the Canadian graphic designers in charge of this one seem to have eliminated all chance of bad kerning by tightening it up to the point where both words touch each other. The Americans are going to really have to step it up for Tyra's next season...

More like Canada's Next Typographical Triumph.

Takes the Cake

The last thing I thought I would be posting about again was cakes. However, with the success of the my previous creations came another gig, this time for a 9-year-old girl's spa-themed birthday party.


This is what is known as a "piñata cake", which involved having a speckled, M&M-covered, angel food cake underneath a hard chocolate shell. To go with the theme, the shell became a mud mask of sorts, complete with cucumber eye coverings (watermelon candy), a breathing hole for the mouth (toasted marshmallow teeth with licorice lips), luxurious, spa-treated hair (gummy worms), and a candy necklace (candy necklace).

I had pretty much assumed that they would "eat it up", as it were, but it was quite another thing to witness these innocent little girls crack open the face with a big hammer and cut it to pieces using a large knife, all the while violently screaming "HIT IT IN THE FOREHEAD!" and "STAB IT IN THE NOSE!"

However, if that sounds like fun to you, and as it is starting to become an unstoppable trend, please feel free to email me to have your own memorable custom birthday cake made and delivered to your party anywhere in the lower mainland of Vancouver, BC. My wife makes the really good actual cake part of the cake, and I'm really good at buying candy, so its a melt-in-your-mouth match made in heaven. And before anyone asks, no, we won't make erotic cakes...

Hamburger Hamlet

In this climactic scene, Wendy, shaken by the departure of her boyfriend Ronald and the death of her father Arby, commits suicide. Meanwhile Ronald, as encouraged by the ghost of the murdered Burger King, avenges his own father by killing both Wendy's brother Jack and his uncle Long John Silver, while in turn being fatally wounded by Jack in the process.

The Dairy Queen, accidentally drinking a poison which was originally intended for her own son's demise, perishes as well. In the end, most of the subjects of White Castle lay slain, including Ronald's school friends, Denny and Baskin Robbins, who are executed as spies.

We are left with only Ronald's dearest friend, Little Caesar, to relate the story and relive the memory of his time in the graveyard, where the tragic hero Ronald famously pondered life over the skull of poor Carl's Jr.

Let Them Eat Cakes

Both my brother and sister recently celebrated their birthdays, and I made them fancy cakes.

My bro Spence got a video iPod for his birthday, so he got these three iPod cakes:

That's the show Lost playing on the left one, the Gorillaz album playing in the middle, and the U2 Original of the Species video on the last. The likeness of Bono is particularly striking...

Meanwhile, my sis Jenna had a pirate birthday party. Did I mention she was turning 22? Anyway, a pirate themed birthday obviously deserves a pirate ship cake:

Overall, the cake was tasty, but it was details like the Pull-and-Peel rails, the Loonie dubloons, the Reisen cannons and the chocolate-covered espresso bean cannonballs that really made it yaarrrrd to resist.

What did they think of their personalized cakes? I think the photos speak for themselves...



Actually, the photos only say one thing really: dorks.

Trump Gets Fired Up About Design

On this past week's episode of The Apprentice, the teams got to work with a real live Graphic Designer to design a brochure. Mr. Trump seems to work with a designer himself when putting together these project briefs.

Here is what it sounds like when Donald Trump says the illustrious phrase, graphic designer.

Feel free to put that into iTunes and randomly spice up any playlist with the inspirational tones of the Donald's voice.

So the underdog team, Gold Rush, was paired up with a graphic design dude from bsquared design & printing. How do we know the name of the company? Their name and logo was featured in the background of no less than 5 different shots:


I always get the feeling that when these companies find out they are going to be featured on the Apprentice, they run out to Kinko's and get a bunch of giant logos printed out and tape them to the wall. Not many offices have the name of the business behind every employee at all times, as if they were going to turn around only to be assured that they were still working at the same place.

Anyway, the guy at bsquared was working away on a Macintosh running OS X, showing off his copy of the Adobe Creative Suite, and using a shiny new white Apple keyboard and mouse while viewing it all on a nice flatscreen LCD monitor. Very hip, very modern, somewhat nerdy, but a typical designer none the less.



Meanwhile, over on the winning yet dysfunctional team Synergy, we have no idea who they are working with as their design company seems almost embarrassed to show their name (and as we realize later, for good reason). All we know about this mystery business is that they:

1. Use a HP laptop to browse the team's photos on.

2. Work on an older G4 tower sitting on top of the boardroom table.
   

3. Have the world's deepest CRT monitor taking up any remaining room.

4. Store a huge photocopier/paper shredder/ice chest thing under the table.

5. Utilize the slightly older and slightly less cool black & clear Apple keyboard & mouse from way back in the nineteen-nineties.

6. Are running Mac OS 9 and what seems to be some old version of Quark or PageMaker and an ancient version of Photoshop.

7. Help produce the losing brochure.

However, in the background of this one shot, eagle-eyed viewers will discover that this is in fact the very same company. What is still unclear is why this poor designer got stuck with the inferior computer, inferior software, inferior operating system, inferior monitor, inferior keyboard, inferior boardroom table, and ultimately, inferior team.

To give both designers credit, however, they were forced to put something together by a committee of potentially inexperienced people, which is bad enough already without the committee standing right behind you while you work. To top things off there is the small fact that millions of people all over the world will see your work and judge both you and your employer by how well you perform on a one-day, in-and-out, quickie project.

Graphic Design Lesson A: Get the latest hardware and software, and you will win. Always.

Graphic Design Lesson B: Touch a designer's computer screen, and you will lose. Always.

(Half) Truth in Advertising

Alright, just driving along, nice day. Hey look, Fitness World is having its Grand Opening, that's interesting. I'd thought that they would have updated their logo and chose some more current graphics for the exterior, but I'll investigate further.

Okay, looks good. They really went all out with the retro signage, but I guess that's the look they're going for. That girl is probably wondering what I'm taking a picture of. I'll keep moving along.

And here's the pitch: they're now enrolling low-cost memberships. That's fine, maybe I'll stop in and check it out. That action-packed illustration really makes stretching look exciting. Wait a second, what's this...

Grand RE Opening?! What the heck does that mean? Why is such an important piece of a word hidden away like that? Who designed this and just what are they trying to hide? When will they take down this tacky and misleading sign?

Cut to at least 3 years later, and this sign is still front and center on the local Fitness World. When I first saw this advertisement I thought it was crazy, but to my additional amazement it remains unchanged year after year: it's like they are in a constant state of cautiously optimistic reinvention. You could argue that everyday is another opportunity to re-open the place, but I wonder, is it really that grand?

Fitness World: more like "Fit-this Word in between these two giant words and make it really small so that you have to be standing underneath the sign to read it and we can keep it up for years on end without anyone really noticing."

the Complete History of Cool Guys Who Have Worn Detroit Red Wings Jerseys

Cove Cliff: the Ballad of Sean Hosein

There is a man named Sean Hosein who works behind the scenes in the music industry, penning hits, mixing tracks and generally manning the ones and twos. His illustrious career includes a string of notable compositions, and he has written music for and worked with artists like 98 Degrees, Jessica Simpson, Color Me Badd, Stacie Orrico, All for One, M2M, The Corrs, Kelly Rowland, Amy Grant, and everyone's favourite actual-one-hit-wonder-boy-band-from-a-reality-show, O-Town. I also have it on good authority that he wrote the commercial jingle for the United Buy & Sell Furniture Warehouse, which any person on the Canadian westcoast or the Pacific Northwest could sing for you without hesitation.

However, there is one group he worked with that is strangely absent from his musical resumé, a group that I have a very close connection to, and a group that he would maybe rather forget.

Sean Hosein wrote the theme song for my elementary school.

My early alma mater, Cove Cliff Elementary, apparently needed a song for the children and faculty to rally around and proudly sing together, and the principal at the time, Lois Hosein, chose her son to get it done.

It was a stirring ballad, a powerful anthem, and a moving tribute to a school. It was also recorded by a local chanteuse and put onto two tapes, one vocal and one instrumental. Legend has it that when the music teacher was fired from her job, she took the instrumental version along with her. Thus, we now have all too clear memories of awkward children, standing in an assembly, singing along with a pre-recorded and overdone vocal performance.

The one benefit to this repetitive and educationally enforced singing was that I still know the song, word for word and off by heart, to this very day. So without further adieu, I present to you, the aptly titled "Cove Cliff Song".

There's a place, that I keep in my heart,
For things that are special to me.
There's a voice, when we all sing along,
A voice that will carry to the top of the trees.

We are sharing, with each other.
We are learning that we all can belong.
We will care for, one another.
Together we're going to be the best we can be.

Oh Cove Cliff.
Cove Cliff.
We'll sing to the mountains,
And out to the sea.
Oh Cove Cliff.
Cove Cliff.
Together the best we can be.

There's a place, that I keep in my heart,
For things that are special to me.

For things that are special,
To me.

You can check out more of Sean's work at his company's website, and if anyone can get me a copy of the actual song, I will personally mail them a cheque for five dollars.

T yra Mail

After 6 seasons of America's Next Top Model, am I the only one still annoyed at the lack of kerning in the Tyra Mail? Or am I the only graphic designerd who still watches America's Next Top Model?

I could maybe understand if they had quickly typed this out for the first season (or cycle, as it were), but it's been 3 years now and it consistently gets camera time. You could load the entire cast into their stretch SUV and drive right between that T and Y.

More like America's Next Typographical Mistake.

Clint Eastwood in the Bathroom

Every time I use the bathroom at work, he is there. He escaped from Alcatraz, crossed the Bridges of Madison County, and now Dirty Harry is on the floor of Opacity's washroom.

It's a true crime that no one else knows about it here at the office, but I'm sure that if a rookie like me told the guys in absolute power, then a joke like that would go unforgiven for years. Maybe I should remove the tile myself and sell it on eBay for a million dollar, baby.

If you're standing up and in the line of fire, his face is not visible, but when you sit down it's pretty hard for him to rawhide from view. Tell me you can't miss that familiar face in this full view from the perspective of someone sitting on the toilet. If not, he's even harder to mystic river in this close up.

After over 3 years of working here, you might say that he "makes my day" every day. You might also say midnight in the garden of good and evil.

Or space cowboys.

Archie McPhee and YOU

Without exaggeration, Archie McPhee is the greatest store in the entire world. They sell all sorts of stuff, including the Tiny Fez seen here on my creepy baby doll that kinda resembles Andy Richter.

In my daily life, I don't know how I could get by without spending some time with my Jesus Action Figure, or sitting down on the couch and watching some good Dogs on Television, or even having a lively conversation with my pair of Fighting Nuns, which upon further investigation are actually old Margaret Thatcher dolls dressed in habits. However, the point remains that I am not only the president of the Loving Archie McPhee fan club, I'm also a toy-carrying member.

Coincidentally, the company has announced a contest where anyone who blogs about them will be entered to win a $100 gift certificate to their store. If I win, I promise that any one of my readers who writes in the comments of this post will get up to $5 to spend on whatever the heck they want, until I run out of money and providing that either they live in the Greater Vancouver area and I can drop it off at their home, or that they don't mind paying the shipping themselves. Although I actually love the store and would post about them anyway, I want to make sure that if I'm going to run a big 'ol ad for them that you, the reader, profits as well. It's just a token of my appreciation for reading over 8 wonderfully wordy and highly irreverent posts so far.

So what will it be, the classic Rubber Chicken or some neato Nerd Glasses? Perhaps you've always wanted a pair of Windup Hopping Lederhosen, or after looking at this 2-for-1 deal you could use an Internet Urinal? Trust me, any store that has categories like Hula, Cowboy, Unicorns & Ninjas, Office Supplies, and Bacon/Meat is worth your time.

So without further adieu, and slightly shamelessly, I present to you:

CANstruction: Ladies & Gentlemen...

Sunday! Sunday! SUNDAY! And also the rest of this week! Come on down to Vancouver's Canada Place to experience MONSTER MADNESS as you witness a MONSTER TRUCK ON A MISSION TO CRUSH HUNGER! Custom built with over 7200 CANS OF POWER and more than 2000 POUNDS OF TORQUE, it's a gut-twisting, heart-pumping, BATTLE ROYALE where only one CANstruction competitor will emerge with HONOURABLE MENTION! Hurry and see it BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE! Or click on the pictures to see them BIGGER AND BETTER THAN EVER! You pay for the whole seat, but you'll only use THE EDGE!

CANstruction Vancouver: CAN We Do It Again?

The annual CANstruction Vancouver event is on, and this year Team Richmond is back at it again and bigger than ever. Since I've been on the team, we've built a giant British Columbia Spirit Bear primarily out of tuna cans, and a 10-foot, free-standing, 50th anniversary-celebrating Gumby & Pokey made out of gum-beans and pork-ey. A bunch of teams from all over Vancouver compete, and after being displayed downtown at Canada Place for the week, all the food eventually goes to the food bank. So if you are looking for a neat event and live in the Greater Vancouver area, come on down with a food donation and you'll get in for free.

As for what we'll be building, I'm not at liberty to say, but a recent Personal Project I did might give you a clue.

We "Lost" the Font

The show Lost has a great opening sequence where the title comes drifting out of foggy blackness, spinning slightly as it moves towards the viewer before blurring and fading away as mysteriously as it came. It does an awesome job of setting the tone for the rest of the show without cheezy credits, a theme by the Rembrandts, or shots of people doing something unconvincingly and turning towards the camera and smiling.

However, at the height of each week's inevitable cliffhanger, this logo here inexplicably appears with a final BOOM, and suddenly it is all over. After a "you-have-to-watch-the-rest-of-the-show-now" C.S.I. style start, that moody 3D spinning opening, 44 minutes of uninterruptedted mystery, flashbacks, and pretty people trying to figure out their collective destiny, we get blown away by an ugly font.

I'm not kidding, whenever I'm caught up in a good episode – BOOM – I jump up out of my seat. From those weird letterforms to the slight slant of a semi-serif in the "S" and from the badly-rendered Photoshop bevel & emboss effect to the fact that they just could have used the same cool font from the start, it gets me every time.

We've discovered what was in the hatch, we've met many of "the others", we've even kind of seen what the monster looks like; now I think it's time we figured out the mystery of the ugly font from the ending of Lost!

the Tommy Page Page

The guys lost the final round of the Battle of the Sexes competition on local radio station Z95.3, and because we were only down by one point, the only person to really blame is me.

However, while listening to the station at work, we were wondering who this artist Tomi Swick was, and all I could think of was the guy who sang a love song to Stephanie Tanner on Full House, when really he had just changed the words of the song from "Jennifer" to "Stephanie" (it has the same amount of syllables, you see).

After some very basic Googling, it became clear that Tommy Page was who I was thinking of, and he was actually a real singer. Not only that, he reached every major milestone that a late-eighties early-nineties pop star could ever want, including the guest spot on Full House: he opened for the New Kids on the Block's Step by Step tour, was interviewed by both Regis and Kathie Lee, featured on the covers of the country's finest teen magazines, got a song on the Dick Tracy soundtrack, had both a Christmas single and a duet with pop legend Tiffany, worked with Micheal Bolton, and was big in Japan. He also apparently jumped on the flashy flash-intro bandwagon of the year 2000, which is still visible on his official website.

I salute you, TP. Your legacy will always live on in our hearts and minds...
Tommy Page: The guy who sang a song to Stephanie while spending the day with DJ and sweet-talking Michelle and dating Jennifer and hanging out with Uncle Jesse and being friends with Danny and making Kimmy Gibbler swoon, who was also a respected musician.

Mastheads and Model Heads

So I was in a fabric store purchasing some sort of unit of fabric for a dress for my mother, as a favour.

I was waiting at the checkout line trying to look like I knew what I was doing there, when I looked at the one magazine that was on sale, as one often does when stuck in a checkout line.

Now being a guy who doesn't often frequent fabric stores to purchase units of fabric for dresses for my mother, as a favour, I had never seen this particular magazine, and so was quite surprised to see the word "Butt" in giant pink type across the top of it.

It took me a second to figure out what the actual name of the magazine was really supposed to be, until I saw that their website was www.butterick.com.

Needless to say, as soon as I got home I went to their website and found that this was not the first time they had placed a model in a bad position on the cover: just check out this gem here. Even if you could excuse the word "Butt" because it looks like there could be more to it underneath, on this cover one could easily assume that the name of the publication was indeed, "Buttock".

Graphic Design Lesson: Location, location, location.

Screeched

1. To cry out in a high-pitched, strident voice.
2. To make a sound suggestive of a screech: Tires screeched on the wet pavement.

"Screeched" is also apparently the longest one-syllable word in the English language.

Coincidentally, the iTunes Music Store just got screeched: Apple has added the first season of Saved by the Bell to their downloadable TV Show offerings (not that us Canadians can get any Bayside on our side of the border just yet).

I could definitely spend the full 10 minutes it would take to watch the 30 second previews of each episode, but was shocked to hear a crazy over-the-top version of the theme song in episode 20. Not that the original was mellow or anything, it's just that after watching thousands of SBTB episodes growing up, it actually hurt my ears to hear a different rendition.

Life Lessons I Learned From Radio

This guy gave me a call this morning. I was just heading out to work when the phone rang, and it was Drew Savage, a popular radio host from the local station Z95.3. It seems my casual entry into the Battle of the Sexes contest had become an oddly surreal event and I was now a contestant. Being on the radio is weird: you realize people all across the city are listening to what you are saying at that exact moment, you don't hear the sound effects and music everyone else does, and talking to these radio personalities on the phone is like talking to your radio but the people respond.

Anyway, here's how the battle went down:

In short, I learned two things today:

1. Never promise what you can't deliver.

2. Adding salt to water increases the time it takes the water to boil.

On top of all that, I was late for work. I had originally thought that this would be okay as I imagined bringing in trays of lattes, mochas and caramel apple ciders with bags of chocolate croissants for everyone, but in the end, I was late, had no food, and a loser.

Thank you Drew Savage.

Obligatory First Post Ever

So it's time for my first official post, and why not start with the "four things" quiz that has been conquering the blogosphere. However, what's even lamer than a chain letter amongst weblogs is the fact that nobody actually sent this to me, I'm just doing it myself in response to no one. That's even lamer than the word "blogosphere".

Four jobs you've had in your life:
1. Pizza Delivery Guy for the Raven
2. Administrative Assistant (but back then they were called man secretaries)
3. Graphic Communications & Print for Opacity Design
4. Dad

Four movies you could watch over and over:
1. The Incredibles
2. Back to the Future
3. Garden State
4. Rejected

Four places you've lived:
1. North Vancouver, BC (my childhood home)
2. Thetis Island, BC (at Pioneer Pacific Camp)
3. Richmond, BC (at my in-laws)
4. Richmond, BC (at our house)

Four TV shows you love to watch:
1. The Office
2. Saturday Night Live
3. Smallville (I know...)
4. Full House

Four places you've been on vacation:
1. Westcoast (WA, OR, NV, CA)
2. Eastcoast (ONT, QUE, NS, NB, PEI, NFLD & VT, NY)
3. Europe (France, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Italy)
4. Prairies (Alberta & Saskatchewan)

Four web sites you visit daily:
1. The Hunger Site
2. MacRumors
3. Relevant Magazine
4. Google (do I really need the link?)

Four of your favorite foods:
1. Pizza
2. Hot Dog/Chips/Slurpee deal at 7-11
3. My wife's Tortellini Mushroom Soup
4. My Potstickers

Four places you'd rather be:
1. In bed
2. At Disneyland
3. In Hawaii
4. At home

Four albums you can't live without:
1. Revenge of the OC Supertones by the OC Supertones
2. Are You a Dreamer by Denison Witmer
3. Lost at Sea by Craig's Brother
4. Ultra-Lounge Leopard or Tiki Samplers

Four magazines you read:
1. Time
2. Relevant
3. MacAddict
4. Real Simple (the wife's, but if it's in the bathroom I can't help it)

Four cars you've owned:
1. 1981 Volvo Stationwagon (didn't actually own it)
2. 2000 Volkswagen Golf
3. 2004 Piaggio Vespa (not actually a car)
4. Various Micro Machines

Caricatures

The fun thing about doing caricatures is that everyone thinks they're really great:

"Aw man, that looks just like him!"
"Check out the hair! That's perfect!"
"Dude, you are so good at that! How do you do it so well?!"

Until you do a caricature of them, even though everyone else still thinks that it's great:
"Aw man, I don't look like that."
"Okay, but my hair does not really do that."
"Its fine, it's just not one of your best. Maybe if you just fixed my hair a little..."

This is A Test, This is Only a Test