For the glory of the state!

It is done! We're ready to go to print with our new shirt designs. We'll have 7 and then two typeface designs. It took me a little while to really associate a slogan that had an authoritarian slant while corresponding to the design itself. Hopefully these shirts will find their audience. I guess that's where clever marketing plans come into play. Anyway feast your eyes on a sneak peek at the designs to come:

An Unexpected Treat

Last night was something of an unexpected treat. I actually had dueling plans for the day which originally called for either cleaning up the screen printing studio and prepping screens or working on my film project with my buddy Oliver. Neither plan came to fruition so I opted to clean our house. I used liberal amounts of Kaboom! on everything. It's purple and has a pleasing bouquet, if a tad fruity. It seems to work fairly well on most surfaces but I got a little cocky and tried to use it to clean a mirror. OK, that was a fail! I had to redo the mirror with a proper glass cleaner..... Holy shit! I am I really positing a household cleaner review? No, I hadn't planned to until I sat down to write. What I really wanted to do was to give a brief description of how non eventful my Sunday was shaping up to be. However, I really wasn't too worried because I knew an episode of the Mighty Boosh was coming on at 1 am so it was all going to be good. But, what I had forgotten is that Steph's online friend Tiffany Star's, who as it happens to turn out is actually our real life neighbor so to speak, art show at Candy Bar which is a very cool little dessert/ wine bar in the Western Addition area of town. We went to be nice and friendly but it ended up being a very random night of fun. Firstly, her art was pretty cool, very girlie but with a kind of dare I say it an aesthetic Tim Burton might well be proud of. Secondly, Can Bar turned out to be a pretty awesome place to hang out. We had initially thought it was the same place we'd been to before in the T.L. which we came to discover is named Sugar. We really didn't care for Sugar because when you bill yourself as a Dessert Bar you should serve deserts past 10. WTF Sugar? Anyway we discovered that it was not in fact the same place and that we were in new territory. We started with drinks, I had a delicious Michelada, which is basically Beer plus salt, lime juice and Tabasco. It was awesome! Steph had a Strawberry infused beverage that was built from ginger ale, prosecco and a fresh strawberry. We followed that up with a dessert which turned out to be grand. It was called a fudgecicle and it consisted of a liquid fudge that had been flash frozen (in liquid nitrogen presumably) into the shape of a fudgecicle. It had a firm, frozen shell but was liquid inside. Nice touch. It was topped with a cannelle of vanilla bean ice cream and lying in a drizzle of some very flavorful caramel. The best part though was the candied corn nuts. That's right I said corn nuts. It brought a savory edge to the dish and worked really well with the other flavors. Nice!

Another nice part of the evening was that our host, Tiffany and her B/F turned out to be very cool peeps. We sometimes see them when we're walking our dogs and we say hello and all, but Steph and I are kind of aloof at times and most definitely in your face chatty peeps. We ended up talking to them for a good part of the night and as we were leaving they invited us to a late dinner with them at the Bagdad Cafe. As for the Bagdad(sic) Cafe I will say this. I have never been, there are just so many restaurants to go to in San Francisco that it gets hard to try new places as much as you'd like. But, this place is pretty sweet! It's open 24 hours for starters. What blew my mind was the menu. Keep in mind that I had planned on rounding out the evening with a Curry Bun at home, but I opened the menu and they had a "Manwich!" A Fucking Manwich! I haven't eaten a sloppy joe since I was about 6 so I said fuck it, it's a Manwich night. It was pretty good and we'll for sure go back for some late night post '84 rendezvous in the future.

We're serious about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Steph and I went to the Yeahs (the other two yeahs are becoming terribly monotonous to type) show last night at the fabulous Fox theater in Oakland. It ended up being a great show. Karen O was fun to watch especially when Steph noted that she was a little reminiscent of Molly Shannon's Mary Katherine Gallagher character in her quirky stage moves. Karen O is a "superstar!" Not only were Karen O's dance moves up for scrutiny but the audience as well. Steph and I are brutal dance judges and let me tell you, the girl in the striped pants was just bizarre. As for the show I have but this to say, and it's really an open note to all bands: Enough with the ridiculously predictable encores! Seriously just tell us you require a minute to gather your thoughts or else just play straight til the end. Also on a side note I loathe public restrooms but Fox theater I would make a pee in your bathroom again anytime! In fact I may go to shows there just to use their nice bathroom. Also before hand we stopped off at a little french restaurant called Spencer's that operates out of a truck on Folsom st. We had frog legs and a halibut bisque. It was tasty! I have uploaded a terrible photo from the night. I couldn't get a better one at the time so we gave up.


Wherever you go, there you are

Chinese Dessert Spots

Steph and I like checking out the various Chinese dessert diners around the city and on down the peninsula, and there are tons of them but we really only go to a few of them. We go for the Milk Tea and Egg Puffs and stay for the noodles. Tonight was no different. Except maybe for the peach buns, which don't actually have peaches in them. Oh they look like peaches, but they don't taste like peaches at all.

T.B.A.

I figured I'd take a moment to remind myself what's to come as far as what we're working on. Andy and I have been working on a series of shirts based on one of his pieces.

1. The original piece is as best can be described, a deranged food pyramid. We're doing a series of 7 shirts based on that. Each shirt will have a piece of the pyramid and the 7th will be the full version of the pyramid, in gold. Our idea is to have the series be branded as a "collectable" series. We want to market them using a blind box approach, meaning you won't know which shirt you'll get. Thus you can trade them etc. We plan on making the gold pyramid be somewhat more limited. Each will include a handmade label across the base of the shirt featuring either the boys or girls logos. and a screen printed "tag" instead of the traditional sewn in tags. Also we're going to do a set of branded typeface T's. One great thing about Andy is he comes up with his own fonts.

2. Our inspiration. We both are really kind of interested in dystopian imagery, film, and literature. Books such as 1984, Animal Farm, and films such as Blade Runner and Brazil and I am especially interested in Communist propaganda. Now take that and mix it with the fact that I love food and Andy likes drawing food items in such a way that even makes ice cream seem unpalatable. I also really want to incorporate a story line into a series of shirts so that each shirt is like an illustrated and wearable page from a book. So we'll be incorporating some messaging on this series. It's not quite that grand vision but hey we can always do that later on.

3. Packaging, Branding. To me packaging is very important and I love the opportunity that it gives to make an item stand out. What I don't like about it is all the waste that's created. As for branding, I really like details like hang tags, but again same problem. Too much waste. Instead of plastic bags for packaging I think I want to use handmade canvas bags. I envision them being "sewn to order." As for the tags I want to make them so that they double as book marks or something.

Future plans. OK so let's say business is booming and peeps like our stuff. What's next? Good question. I think then I'd like to have vintage dresses and coats deconstructed and remade and screen print on them and add details etc. I know not ground breaking, but I'm not a fashion designer. Also I think it would be cool to make blazers and cardigans with perp school style embroidered logos. I'd festoon them with pin back buttons too.

4. The Goods. The following are not in any kind of order. I just want to show what's up (please note these aren't necessarily the final versions of anything. These are just drafts.

My Calling

Apparently I am working on a new series of photographs entitled "The empyrean pleasures of napping with Bibi." Steph is my muse and Bibi provides the serotonin drip through an eager R.S.V.P of the ocular nerve . My medium is camera phone.





Update: It seems I've been got!

Spice Odyssey: Exploring the Burning Tongues of Saturn.: Thai Lays are Hot n Spicy

Spice Odyssey: Exploring the Burning Tongues of Saturn.: Thai Lays are Hot n Spicy