Scrubbles.net » Mishmash

The Plastic Conundrum

Matt — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:50:46 +0000

Could you live for a day without plastic? How about a week? Last August, Readymade magazine’s online editor Katherine Sharpe tried forgoing plastic for seven days. Here’s the conclusion of her report. It really makes you think about how much plastics invade our lives, and how one can take simple steps to eliminate the stuff in certain areas (even if you can’t totally avoid it). For example, it always makes me cringe when we put bananas in a plastic bag at the supermarket. Why bag bananas?

In the comments of that blog entry, there’s a link to the site of Chris Jordan, an artist-photographer who visualizes what we humans consume in thought provoking ways. Worth a look!

Wheels on Fire, Burning Down the Road

Matt — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:43:11 +0000

Welcome to our latest acquisition (Price Is Right voice) — a new car! This 2005 Pontiac Grand Prix was among the fleet of company cars for the place where Christopher works. When they came up for sale, we thought long and hard and decided to go for it. I loved my trusty old ’97 Geo Metro (a hand-me-down from Christopher), but it was getting to the point where it was rattling, the AC didn’t work right, etc. So it was with a heavy heart that we donated the old vehicle to a local charity for the blind. This Pontiac is nice and sturdy, bigger than what I’m usually used to but very nimble and smooth on the road. Design-wise, I had this impression that Pontiacs were the cars made for dudes who think a framed Nagel print was the height of cool. This particular model is not too bad looking, however. Stylish, even.

Those Are People Who Died, Died

Matt — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:38:02 +0000

I was in the middle of reading about the fascinating people profiled in the annual Lives They Lived issue of the New York Times Magazine when I heard shocking news about the passing of another fascinating person. One that I knew, actually: Brad Graham of Bradlands.com. It appears that he died in his sleep of natural causes on December 31st, at the young age of 41. Yeah, I don’t believe it, either.

Brad was one of the earliest bloggers I knew of, and pretty much the kingpin of the (small) community of gay bloggers around in the early ’00s. Back then it was such a thrill to be writing on the net, and having someone else noticing what you were doing was an even bigger thrill — especially when that someone was as friendly and witty as Brad. His August 3, 2001 post, using the first Scrubbles redesign to explore childhood fear of Dow Scrubbing Bubbles, was typical Brad. We weren’t close friends or anything, but his warmth and humor was something I treasured over the years (we even briefly bonded over the ’70s kiddie-com Big John, Little John on twitter last year). I’ll miss you, Brad.

MetaTalk: Remembering our friend Brad.

Viva Lost Wages

Matt — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:38:49 +0000

The Gambler Who Blew $127 Million, a Wall Street Journal article via News From Me. I just got back from a three day stay in Las Vegas (details to come later). This article makes me feel better for the piddly sum that I lost.

Scraping By

Matt — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:54:25 +0000

America without a Middle Class, a Huffington Post editorial by Elizabeth Warren. President Obama should hire Ms. Warren as some kind of Lending Industry Czar to curb the banking industry’s greedy ways. I’ve seen her on Frontline and a few other things and she presents herself as nothing less than a paragon of common sense.

Somewhere, An Eagle Is Crying

Matt — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:05:58 +0000

A museum of tacky 9/11 memorabilia from curator April Winchell. All those sparkly animated GIFs that people use to post on their MySpace pages … words fail me.

Rest Stops, R.I.P.

Matt — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:38:29 +0000

Via his Twitter feed, Tim Halbur alerted me to a cool but depressing article on that now endangered piece of roadside Americana, the rest stop. I love the uniqueness of rest stops from state to state, the wild architecture (check out the photos with the article), the local historical lore. Visiting them is one of the little pleasures of traveling by auto. What a crying shame that they’re are being replaced with pee stops at McDonalds!

True story: when I was a young tyke, my family took annual drives through Nebraska to visit the grandparents. One particular summer at our first rest stop, I came across a brochure showing modern sculptures installed at several rest stops along the state’s main highway. For the rest of the trip, my patient parents made a point to visit every stop with a sculpture we could — just to indulge their art-crazy kid. It was a memorable trip. Nebraska’s 500 Mile Sculpture Garden came about during the Bicentennial; a documentary on the project can be viewed here.

Lines Are Fun

Matt — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:35:29 +0000

Time for a vintage film that evokes memories of painstakingly laying strips of wet newspaper on a balloon in third grade art class. The virtually dialogue-free Art For Beginners: Fun With Lines ambles along like a mellow Sesame Street segment. It was produced by Coronet in 1973, with lots of cool shots in and around Chicago. Hands on your desks, students, and don’t eat the Play-Doh.

100% Cotton

Matt — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:02:30 +0000

Kirk Demarais of Secret Fun Spot takes a journey through his life in t-shirts. Astonishing!

Linked here previously, but it bears repeating: The Glen Mullaly Super-Terrific Licensed Television and Motion Picture Shirts & T-Shirts of the 1970s Razzle Dazzle Retrospective Spectacular Pt.1! .

Fish Pedicure?

Matt — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:26:51 +0000

The New York Times compiles the Buzzwords of 2008. From a designer’s standpoint, they did a great job with the type treatment (by Jessica Hische).

Also (sorta) via the NYT: method lust, a weblog devoted to Method cleaning products.

New Day

Matt — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:30:19 +0000

Wow, history in the making. Arianna Huffington’s election postmortem sums up how I feel right now. Elated, relieved, full of pride yet cautiously optimistic. Watching Obama’s victory speech last night was a truly moving experience. Very inclusive, but what impressed me most was his acknowledgment that it takes work — on everyone’s part — to have effective and long lasting change for the better. As it ended, I heard Christopher say with a choke in his voice that Michelle will make a great First Lady. He had tears in his eyes. That made up for the small disappointments on the Arizona side that our electoral college unsurprisingly picked McCain (albeit by a smallish margin), and the discriminatory Prop 102 passed.

So now what? I think I’m just gonna relax and follow some of Slate’s suggestions on how to kill time now that the election’s over.

Friday Miscellany

Matt — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:55:44 +0000

Kind of a dull week, huh? I uploaded the Viewmaster pics and created a new Two Bunnies and a Duck solely for the one person who was looking forward to it. And designed lots of manga comics for Viz. That’s about it. We’re getting ready to go on a trip to an undisclosed locale this weekend. This meant boarding our cat Eero, who responds to unfamiliar situations by burrowing under towels and shirts in her pet taxi. She’s a feisty kitty, always nipping at us and running around the house excitedly — but on the other hand she’s also a skittish thing who jumps at the slightest noise. I hope she’s okay. (p.s. Weekly Mishmash might now show up ’til later.)

I just stumbled across Cranky Lesbian today and feel like I have a blogging kindred spirit. Apparently Ms. Cranky and myself have 22 books in common in our LibraryThing libraries, which is the third highest out of everybody on that site. Yeah, those 22 books are soooo gay …

What else … how about some more Motown funkiness with Martha Reeves and the Vandellas performing “Bless You” on Soul Train? The ebullient, Jackson 5-esque “Bless You” marks the trio’s final hit single before the ladies hung up their wigs up for good in 1972. I love the energy of the Vandellas (l-r: the gorgeous Sandra Tilley and Martha’s sister Lois), along with their stylin’ afros. But what was Martha thinking with that huge hair? Dig:

The Naugahyde Nauga

Matt — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:37:26 +0000

A short history of the Nauga, the Naugahyde Council’s very ’60s mascot (via Coudal). Really interesting and unusual ad campaign, and 40 years on the company still uses the character (!). The Nauga used to look like something from Yellow Submarine to me, but now I see it has more of an Uglydolls appearance that seems ahead of its time.

Rant City

Matt — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:13:04 +0000

Glenn Erickson goes after several of my pet peeves in one story with When DVD Menus Attack! It’s all covered here: forced previews, anti-piracy warnings, spoilers, and unnecessarily complication designs. I especially hate sitting through the ubiquitous FBI warning screen designed by some government lackey who just opened Photoshop for the first time.

Another worthwhile read can be found in Mark Morford’s column entitled Evil: It’s the New Good! One of his targets is the annoying commercial/propaganda put out by the corn lobby to make high fructose corn syrup look harmless. Well, it may be harmless in small quantities but the food industry puts it in everything. Corn was never meant to be processed into a noxious goo that imitates the taste of other foods. Blecch.

Boom Pop, Cool Beans!

Matt — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:09:55 +0000

Jeff Pepper of the wonderful 2719 Hyperion has started a new weblog to explore his interest in vintage pop culture of the non-Disney variety. Boom Pop! adheres closely to the 2719 Hyperion formula, which in this case is a good thing. It’s only ten days old and I already have it in my Bloglines feeds. Keep up the good work, Jeff!

Weekly Mishmash: July 20-26

Matt — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:01:34 +0000

Today I want to give a shout out and a happy birthday to Christopher, the youngest 49 year-old I’ve ever known. Briefly incapacitated by a bug, the mishmash pickin’s are on the slim side this week. Here we go …
The Black Book (1949). Loquacious one Vince Keenan raved about this gothic thriller on his blog, so I recorded the recent TCM showing and gave it a looksie last Monday in between some nasty dry heaves. Originally titled Reign of Terror, this is a nifty example of applying noir atmosphere to a historical subject — in this case, events leading up to the French Revolution. While it certainly looks like a low budget film and takes a while to get moving, director Anthony Mann does wonders with the material and created some truly suspenseful scenes bathed in gorgeous shadows. An edgy and effective Robert Cummings (whom I normally can’t stand) heads up the eccentric and well-chosen cast. This is one of those weird public domain films which only shows up in muddy looking prints; Criterion really oughta look into doing a sparkling DVD reissue.
Memories of Murder (2003). A grisly and overlong film based on the real-life case of the first documented serial killer in Korea. The intriguing story could have made for a good, tense 90 minute film, but at two-plus hours it felt stretched to the limit. Seeing the brutality of the Korean police was an eye-opener, but the fact that every single character had a short fuse got annoying very quickly. I enjoyed the pudgy lead actor, and some genuinely creepy moments come through, but overall this was a disappointment.
Quinceñara (2006). Despite having zero interest in the blossoming ceremonial rituals of latino teen girls, I put this on the Netflix queue due to the great reviews it got. What a nice surprise it turned out to be. The quinceñara (a fancy party given for hispanic girls when they turn 15) forms the bookends for this story of a girl who finds herself pregnant and outcast by her preacher dad. Desperate, she turns to her eccentric great uncle and cousin and the three form their own offbeat familia. This was a charmingly scripted, perceptive film which paints a vivid portrait of a changing subculture in Los Angeles’ Echo Park. I especially liked the subplot with the cousin and his covert fascination with the gay yuppie couple who purchased the home they’re renting from. How often does a film deal realistically with latino life, much less gay latino life?
WALL•E (2008). What does it take to get two confirmed homebodies out to the cinema? One word: Pixar. We finally saw this on Friday, and I concur with all the critics who have been slobbering over themselves. It’s a beautiful and unique achievement that stands among Toy Story and The Incredibles in the Pixar pantheon. Only debit: once Wall-E and Eve leave earth and enter the space station, a bit of specialness is lost.

Unidentified Persons Bureau

Matt — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:20:35 +0000

Locally speaking, last week’s Phoenix New Times had an interesting story on the Maricopa County Medical Examiners Office and one woman’s efforts to get an unidentified body database going on the county’s website. Apparently Maricopa is one of the few counties in the U.S. to have one of these features online, and it has resulted in many solved missing person cases.

It’s Called Poetic Justice

Matt — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:50:57 +0000

Futility Vehicle — faced with escalating gas prices, a New York Times blogger wonders why she bought a huge SUV in the first place. This is funny and sad, but mostly sad. It’s a bit nice that this lady is seeing outside her myopic little suburban bubble and finally understanding the greater consequences of the choices she makes. But it also underscores that just as people choose to own SUVs for primarily selfish reasons (I want to protect my family), they’re wanting to dump the vehicles for equally selfish reasons (I can’t pay through the nose for gas). And this woman represents millions of disillusioned drivers (sigh). At least I take comfort that she’s getting blasted in the comments by lots and lots of sane and reasonable people.

Chalk Full of Extras

Matt — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:56:49 +0000

Attention aspiring writers — Christopher has a good post illustrating why spell checker is not enough. I actually got this promo email from MGM Home Video a few weeks ago and had to laugh. Shame on the spaced out, Starbucks-fetching office intern who made that mistake.

Give a Hoot, Read a Book

Matt — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 01:31:17 +0000

Entertainment Weekly continues their hallowed tradition of opening multiple cans of worms with its New Classics issue, subtitled “The 1000 Best Movies, TV Shows, Albums, Books & More of the Last 25 Years.” Equal parts cool and infuriating, EW has taken the “list” concept to its logical conclusion and made up an issue consisting entirely of lists. The movies list is overall pretty good, only hitting the overrated and/or inexplicably popular movies at around #25 (Shrek). The TV list is overrun with lots of superpopular shows that I never “got,” but they’re forgiven since they put The Simpsons on top where it rightfully belongs. Several classic albums appear on the music list, although to be honest music is such a subjective thing that they could’ve had 100 different fans picking 10,000 different albums and they would all have some validity. So, EW, your shit still stinks. Don’t even get me started on the bizarre randomness that is the 50 Pop Culture Moments That Rocked Fashion.

What really got me inspired here is their books list, specifically the top 50. This one seemed a lot more thoughtful than the others, and it covers a wide range of stuff. I’m sure there are a few overrated choices there, too, but what struck me personally is that I’ve only read two books in the entire top 50! Those two (technically three) would be Art Spiegelman’s Maus/Maus 2 (#7) and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (#16). If I had an endless bank of time, I’d love to read the other 48. Unlike the other lists, most of them actually appear worth looking into. Another time consuming project I’ve been investigating is to check out various novels that have appeared on the year-end best seller lists from throughout the 20th century. Further tempting is the fact that many of those earlier bestsellers are available as free downloads at Project Gutenberg. Unlike EW, apparently, I have a burning desire to know what rocked the average American reader in, say, the year 1902.