For my latest dream occupation, I’m going to pick…cocktail photographer. I will have the highest of artistic standards and develop a field of study in creating stock photography of neon colored cocktails. My images will be specifically for the display of happy hour drinks on those little flip-book table stands that sit nestled in with the salt and pepper shakers at the far end of the table. Captured in bold living color will be sumptuous strawberry daiquiris, standing tall, wearing nothing but a whole strawberry crowned and cleaved on the rim of its glass. There will be glowing mint juleps with mint leaves tossed gently on white cotton and a twig for you holiday romantics. We’ll get contemplative with starker, more serious images of highballs and whiskey classics. These images will invoke overworked late nights at the firm, a fine brandy before climbing back up to Capitol Hill. I’ll make some sour with Anisette and Orange bitters over glistening cubes of sharp ice. The models will be cooperative and lovely. Their glass shapes will be at times robust and stout while others stand thin with beautifully large mouths. They will hold their alcohol well and never complain when asked to accessorize with Celery, a pink parasol, or straw.

When I get good at my job, then I will be anointed into the wine club, the most sophisticate of all forms of drink photography, and I will be able to give up on happy hour flip stands and concentrate on capturing the stoic still life of a fine chianti. My life will be one of cosmopolitan travel and high society lifestyle. I will spend months in the California Valleys and French Bordeaux selecting the right background, lighting, and glass to show off the anise or plum composites of a ’93 Citran Haut-Medoc. Ernest college kids will have my posters in their dorm room. I will look down on all my friends and bore them with wine talk and with tales of my last jaunt through the Ribera del Duero. It will be a fine and good life. It will become wiser with age and increasingly grave in manner as I am assigned to solved the most complex and weighty of the worlds problems through the raised eyebrow renaissance of my ART. My pieces will sell for heavy sums and my biographer will go to great lengths to show the sober truth of my sedate concern over the Latvian heiress when she was on the brink of an exhaustive collapse in the 30’s. Yes! It will be a righteous life. I think now I will go practice on the half rack of MGD that I have cooling in my fridge.

Kelly in a Jam

Kelly in a jam

Took the day off today to relax and start in on the Yuletide rigamarole. Kel’ and I ran around town trying to find gifts for others and ended up with wrapping paper and no gifts for anyone else but ourselves. We ran into my step father, Peter the Potter, at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts gift shop. Sure enough he and I were both looking to buy the same thing for another member of our family, which I am hoping is much more cleverly ironic than it is coincidental. But the big score of the day were these individual Charlie’s Angels cards we found at Theater Antiques, They feature Kelly mixed up in all kinds of wacky capers, solving crimes in that perfect coif that would kick Linda Carter’s golden lasso slinging, invisible jet flying ass, if she was ever to throw down. Sometimes, it’s just easy to have a name that’s not very unique [ Ed: Or at least that’s what people like John and Kelly need to keep telling themselves ]. We were way too amused. Enough so that we dropped the pretense of buying other people stuff and just concentrated on building our own Charlie’s Angels card collection – coming up with names for cards that they had failed to put into the collection in the first place. Por Ejemplo:

Kelly in a pickle.

Kelly eats a hotdish.

Kelly in a Daze.

Kelly – “Whatever! I do what I want”.

Kelly smells a rat.

Kelly! Look out behind you!

Kelly gives Bosley the evil eye.

Kelly serves for the set.

Kelly in an underground mine shaft.

All systems functioning normally

Well the mayoral work went off without a hitch. No fatal errors. Part of the gala took place outside in 16 degree weather. Amidst falling snow, the mayor was hoisted off the ground on a platform crane in the middle of the street. Looking unsteady up in his perch, he pulled a cord that unravelled a huge banner on the side of a downtown skyway. People honked and waved and snuck little sips from flasks hidden in their long coats. He came down. Speeches were made. Many spoke in hyperbole, “I used the site and it was FUN and EXCITING”. They had obviously never seen it or used it. Good stuff.

But now I have some time to get down to the real business at hand, like checking out the amazing KillaKela site from the best British beatbox around. The site has a great little app that lets you create killer KillaKela graffiti. As a promotional tool this site is tops. It’s everything I would want in a Musicians site: personal tour journal, music samples, pictures, video, tour dates, and a great bunch of links. Following one of those links I found an interview with The Diabolical Biz Markie, spouting about his collection of old Air Jordan’s (Pink and White) and other classic footwear. The Biz also talks up his new 50,000 square foot house that he is building. The entire first level of the home will be storage for his record collection. Will this become my generations “Graceland”? Only time will tell.

snow chunk

The Dance of the Snow Chunk

Big burly well defined snow fell all over the place last night. I sat nervously drinking coffee this morning trying not to think about the mayoral website that’s to be launched today and the myriad errors that could occur. What a train wreck. I never want to have to do a client on this kind of timeline again. My last frayed nerve has come completely unraveled. Time for a break and a little perspective.

Perspective came this morning as I was walking to my car and got to enjoy two cats – a big fat tabby and a small black and white kitten – perform their version of swan lake in a cloud of falling flakes. They were having a wicked good time sliding and jumping about in the fresh powder. Their snow dance was tremendously graceful and beautiful.

Pure German Stainless Steele.
I’ve been around this weekend. Friends folded into Family, family fixed us up with food, Jessica kissed Stein and my flat tire was resurrected to Die Another Day. It was a good vacation to get some needed things done in a murky cloud of way-to-much overtime and episodic television. Luckily, amidst everything, I had my rock, – The Miracle Blade knife system. For good or ill, this infomercial keeps me grounded. It’s my guardian angel, following me from department store, to the mechanics waiting room, to friends homes, and to the local pub. Everywhere I go there is that slick cuttin’ god-damn-son-of-bitch carving up tomatoes, beverage cans, and (gasp!) his own damn cutting board. It’s like traveling with a good friend – an old friend. The Miracle Blade brings peace during uncertain times. I find myself ordering copious quantities from the T.V. and asking for more sets for Christmas. Fool heartedly, I thought the days of the miracle blade were over and had been laughed off the small screen years and years ago but it looks like they are back and here to comfort my passage as I toast my way into 2003. On a similar thought path, that horrible teenage freak, who gleefully peddles worthless consumerism on small children in all those holiday Wall Mart ads needs to meet an untimely and tragic death. I can not have him ruining my television experience for the next month. Seriously, I would like to punch him.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I am very thankful right now for:

Red Hook Blond Ale

South Park

Ernest Hemigway’s Islands In The Stream

Jimmy Carter

Cardboard

Good stories told by family and friends

Assorted peanuts (salted)

Snail Mail (except bills)

Cuba

People who don’t talk during movies.

Suede

Leftovers

Oldsmobiles

Raging at the spectacle of a chewed-up dupe
At the stroke of six AM a drooling red-eyed beast arises and lifts himself gently from his tender slumber pocket. Having bathed himself of the impurities of the last 24 hours, he flips open the black plastic racket machine and tries to focus himself on another hundred hours of work. These are the holidays. There is a lot of work to be done. Pilling it on, I accepted a last minute gig from the mayors office of Saint Paul to construct them a site by next Wednesday. My closest advisors have told me that this was an unwise decision. To make matters worse, and completely impossible, the mayor has decided that he personally will launch this site. At a press conference Wednesday he will symbolically ‘cut the ribbon’ by using the functionality of the site in front of a large crowd of reporters that will watch his every move on a large LCD screen. Ah…the nightmares…nightmares I tell you. I awake in cold ugly sweats picturing the whole thing exploding; there are surrealist droopy 404 errors streaming everywhere like acid rain; the mayor looks sinister as he is howling obscenities at his unpopular staff; I am receiving an email with the subject: “You Will Never Work in This Town Again”. I am preparing for the worst. I must get back to work.

The Real Iron Chef
Saturday night was a celebration for Joy’s birthday. We gathered at Ichiban’s Japanese Steak House. Joy drank booze out of a ceramic Budda with a straw in his belly. The food was damn good. My belly was full of shrimp. In between sips of Jameson’s whisky, I took a few pictures of our meals being prepared (warning: do not look at these if your hungry).

A Romance in Lower Mathematics
It’s days like today that I am so happy to have cable. 99% of the time I spin through the channels and find very little that grips my attention for more than a few fleeting moments. But Saturday mornings I can always rely on the Cartoon Network and old Looney Tunes episodes to amuse and delight while I coerce the coffee machine to pump out its warm black love. Today things went to a new level. Sandwiched between some classic Bugs Bunny and another short featuring those two aristocratic yet devilishly brilliant chipmunks, who, I think may be lovers as well, was the most amazing piece of minimalist animation I have seen in many moons. It was Chuck Jones’ “The Dot and The Line”. This synopsis form geocities tells all:

“A straight line is in love with a dot; however, the dot finds the line too plain, unimaginative, and rigid. She would rather spend her time with an undisciplined squiggle who is much more fun. The dejected line later realizes that he doesn’t have to be unbending. With a little concentration, he forms angles and various shapes. They are two-dimensional at first, but after much practice, he can form many-sided solids, and even curved figures. When the line demonstrates his abilities to the dot, she realizes that true beauty comes from discipline and that the squiggle is not for her.”

The animated cartoon is an interpretation of the book, The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics. There are a few of Chuck Jones’ animation cells for this film that are for sale online too. Alone, they are brilliant examples of artistic discipline. I want them all!!

Quality Control
Uffda. Late night barnstorming with the troops over on the North Side. I fell in love all over again with my dear old friend from the left coast – Olympia Beer in the can. It has been too long. Where have you been olde thymer? For good or ill, the reunion was intense and we threw caution to the wind and got down to business fast. Something about the gargantuan work load right now demands that my precious off hours are spent in the most entertaining and debauched positions approachable.

I had to get out of the apartment too because things were getting heavy with the neighbors. The caretaker of my building finally had it out with the ruffian British Soccer Jew. Angry people. He gave her a weeks notice that he had to get out of the country, and she lost it, “I work two jobs. How am I supposed to find time to rent this place?” Everybody swearing up and down the hallways for like 15 minutes. Small humans. Hell. I’m glad he’s gone.

Complementing the Olympians, I made this sweet vegan chili recipe to feed the troops. Yum. And now I am searching for medicines for my morning condition. I see a new product called The Chaser, which promises “freedom from hangovers” or for those who prefer their poison form the vine, there is: “New Chaser for Wine Headaches”. Ahhh modern medicine – what a thing, eh? Currently, I’m experimenting with Bextra. A pill for arthritis pain that I have dubbed the “hangover eraser”. But as happy as I am that I’m not totally dented from last nights drunk, there’s just something off balance in the world when you can take your night to the brink of alcoholic wonder and wake up the next morning feeling okaydokee. The hangover is the great equalizer and punisher – the sweet server of justice, that, if left impotent to rendered her judgment, will surely lead to a world of chaos and drinking with pure impunity.