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“I Wish I Was Taller”

Using a gift certificate from my sister, I wanted to take advantage of the Chapters and Indigo 30% Boxing Day sale to finally get my hands on The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker (before the sale ended today).

No location had it, and those that did had the mangled, man-handled display copies with ripped dustjackets and covered in fingerprints.  But finally today at lunch I found a fresh, shrink-wrapped copy at the wonderful World’s Biggest Bookstore.  It’s still owned by Chapters and Indigo, but it somehow feels less evil because there isn’t a Starbucks in it… nor are there any greeting cards, teddybears, scented candles, picture frames, salad dressings, or inspirational wall-hangings bombarding the customers at the entrance, making you question whether you actually stepped into a book store.

With my gift certificate and the discount, I managed to turn the $75 pricetag into a $25 one.  And with 68,647 cartoons in the set, that’s $0.000364 per cartoon!

The book itself is gigantic and, with the pair of CD-ROMs that is included, will take me ages to get through.  But the search options by artist and keyword are fantastic—I was able to find one of my favourites, the above cartoon from 1928 by Carl Rose, in an instant.

This is going to be fun.

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iGeek

Just the other day I was wishing I could play some old school Tetris on my iPod.  Last night my prayers were answered!  Unfortunately, it means I am now officially a geek because the solution was to install Linux on my iPod!

Unfortunately, when booted into Linux, the iPod can’t play music and play Tetris at the same time, but hey—I’m playing Tetris on an iPod!  The download also includes a file browser, the ability to record audio (3rd generation pods only), and other games like Pong and Minesweeper.

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Aught Five

The dawn of 2005 is upon us.  I’m a little late formulating my year-end best-of lists (after all, isn’t that just what you need?  Another random bunch of lists of someone else’s opinions?) but I’ll be posting it in the next few days.

There will be no new year’s resolutions this year, as I never keep them anyway.  But expect an updated site design in the coming months (no e.t.a., as I really should finish the handful of site designs I’ve already promised to various friends) and more illustrations. 

And if you’ve been following my movieblog, CinemaToast, you’ll have noticed it’s been a while since I’ve posted any reviews.  It’s not that I haven’t been seeing movies—I’ve just been too busy to write anything about them.  So I’ve decided to put the whole thing on hold.  I started the thing as a way for me to keep track, for myself, of what I’ve been watching, but I quickly found that for every moment I spent writing reviews, finding links, and formatting graphics for each movie, that was time I could be spending on this site, and on my illustrations.  So no more CinemaToast for a while—I spend too much time consuming media as it is, instead of creating my own, that I really don’t need to spend extra time writing about consuming media (unless it’s on this site, of course!).

So hello 2005! As for 2004, we had a good run, but it’s time we parted ways.  It’s not me; it’s you.  Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.

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In Space No One Can Hear You Wassail

In the holiday rush I plum forgot to link to my other holiday e-card I did for work.  This one was for Space, and very fun to draw; check it out.

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‘Twas the Night Before the Night Before Christmas

I think this Christmas has been the busiest I’ve ever had.  I finally now have a chance now to breathe (and blog) before heading home for the holidays.

Thanks to the weather and a lack of transportation I’m stuck in Toronto until tomorrow when I’ll finally be heading to my parents’ house in Kitchener.  I hate taking the bus to my hometown, especially close to the holidays, so luckily my dad offered to pay for me to take the train.  This is great, but unfortunately, the train doesn’t have a baggage car (wtf?), and I’m only allowed two pieces of carry-on, so I actually have to leave some of my family’s gifts behind (sorry, Katie!).

But having the extra time here to myself has turned out well.  I’m able to put the finishing touches on all my gifts and not feel rushed about it.

Plus, aside from the slush and puddles, it’s actually quite beautiful around my neighbourhood.  The combination of snow and freezing rain has coated everything in a sparkling white shell.  I felt like a kid again stepping on the covered ground, believing for just a split second that the frozen snow would support my weight, before giving in to the most satisfying crunch.

And now that I have the evening to myself, I’m going to go grab a very, very large hot chocolate in a few minutes and wander over to the Bloor Cinema for a screening of It’s a Wonderful Life .  I haven’t seen it in its entirety for several years, and it will be nice to cozy it up in my coat and scarf and see it on the big screen.

“Merry Christmas, you old building and loan!”

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It’s a Brilliant Sound

Every year I make a year-end mix.  Here’s this year’s cover.

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Logo Power

The Floating Logos project is a series of photographs of corporate signage digitally edited so the company logos seem to float in the sky like ominous all-seeing sentinels.  It’s pretty creepy.

It’s the work of Matt Siber, who also brings us The Untitled Project, a similar visual critique of our branded world.

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From Penguins to Kitties

The replacement for my poor penguins is finally finished and online.  You can watch it here. It’s not my concept, and I felt rushed doing it, so I’m not particularly overjoyed with it, but I suppose it still turned out well.

I’d still rather have my penguins!

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Jack Ziegler

Patricia talks about her favourite New Yorker cartoonist, Bruce Eric Kaplan, this week.  BEK is great, but my favourite remains Jack Ziegler.

I discovered Jack Ziegler when I was about 11 years old.  On one of my regular visits to the library, when I would scour the 741.5’s of the Dewey decimal system for pearls, I found Hamburger Madness, Jack’s first collection of cartoons, now long out of print.

In it I found a new world of bizarre and surreal cartoons.  I laughed a lot, most times not even knowing why.  But after all, what was an 11-year old doing falling in love with a New Yorker cartoonist?  Shouldn’t I have been reading Garfield or something?

What immediately appealed to me were the cartoons that were beautiful, surreal Klibanesque moments:

Having grown up a little, I now recognize the true gems of Jack Ziegler’s work—the over-emotional dramatization of the banal:

Even back then a lover of type, I stole a typesetting joke of his in grade 6 and placed it on the last page of a school project:

A NOTE ON THE TYPE
This book was set on the linotype
in Parbleau, a recutting made directly
from type cast from matrices made
bjy the Fjenjjmjn, Rjjj Parjjjj.
Thj jjjj jj jj jjceljjjj jjjjle
jjjj vort vort vort votvort.
Eunice, if you are reading this, I
love you.  Hugs and kisses from
Lance at the Book Bindery,
Woonsocket, R.I.

I wonder what my teacher thought…

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I’m a Bit of a Whizz on This Thing

This is possibly the coolest homemade computer I’ve ever seen.  The ElectriClerk is a custom-built Mac designed to look like the consoles in one of my favourite movies—Brazil.

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Now Without Creases!

As if I needed another reason to spend money on myself this holiday season, McSweeney’s is now offering unfolded prints of the dust jacket of issue 13, their comics issue, designed (and signed!) by Chris Ware.

Needless to say, I just placed my order.  (via Foreword)

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Back to the Drawing Board…

The following storyboard was for an online holiday card at work here, but was completely rejected.  So now I can share it here instead, as I start from scratch…

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Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!

Well, I guess it’s officially winter now. Here’s the view from my desk at work:

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Greatest Spam Subject Header Ever

Low prices for brand name quality hooves

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Bloggers in the Flesh

Last night was Brett’s annual holiday party.  I finally got to meet the man himself, and several other Toronto bloggers to whose URLs I can now attach faces.

In addition to having already met Armchair, James, and Brent, I also got to meet Eva, Christie, Liz, Paul, Rannie, and the infamous Joey.

I also got to speak very briefly to Alan Zweig, the director of my favourite Canadian documentary, Vinyl!

Adina, where were you?

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