Is This Offensive?

I just want to know if this cartoon is offensive or not. Please vote and let me know. I am doing an assessment of the pc climate.

What does a Chinese artist do when his butt itches?

MOGmobile: It's Time To Start Conceiving

I am more than fortunate, I'm fivetunate. What a gig! I am fired up and ready to get into the MOGmobile. I enlisted the help of Twin Barrels Burning superstars, Eric Black, Derrick Benson and David Lewin to brainstorm with me the other evening. And what a storm it was. We came up with a whopper.

whop·per (hwŏp'ər, wŏp'-) n. Slang

1. Something exceptionally big or remarkable

   2.A gross untruth.

I need MOG to give me the thumbs up before I show anything here but

lemme tell you this: The safety is off!

I can show you this: (hint hint, can you guess what the MOGmobile is going to look like?)

felt soup

Have you ever felt, like... a bowl of soup? My daughter felted a bowl of soup the other day. Actually, I think she had further plans but was struck very suddenly with apendicitis and we had to whisk her off to the hospital! She is fine, everything is fine, just a scary 24 hrs or so. This was what she was working on before she felt sick. I didn't know what to do with it so I put it in the fridge. Baby chopsticks and all. It looks kind of yummy and healthy to me. I would eat soup that looked like that. I have eaten soup that looks worse.

Portland Slide

Here are some images of a slide in a park here in Portland. I love this thing. Everything that is wrong is what I love about it. The textures created by the years of use and lousy maintenance make this thing a masterpiece. How many kids have been bonked and bruised? How many dads have had to climb up and rescue their over ambitious kid, stuck at the top? I know at least one and he is me.

Someone poured some green house paint down the slide and the thick worn texture of the frozen stream caught my attention. It reminded me of carved acanthus leaves and whatnot found on 18th Century antiques. Not just the shape but the distress and the patina.

I don't really like the patina on this chair leg, I think it is bunk. Not the greatest example.

This looks nicer to me

So I started looking closely at this slide and was amazed to find such a rich agglomeration of textures and color. The layers of degradation competing with mildly effective coats of paint and moss and dirt and stickers give the structure a life story that I can't help but consider. That could be my problem but this kind of stuff keeps me from ever getting bored.

Scary music by Action Daddy

It is an aesthetic that I love. Back at Carlton House Restoration, we spent hundreds of hours applying hundreds of years of history to furniture pieces that had been "inappropriately" handled. As a matter of fact, in the early 80's there was a movement to make old furniture look as if it had just come out of the shop. So they would dip and strip all the life out of these things to make them look brand new. Then when that craze ended, we would get them and beat them up again to make them look like they were old, again. This costs thousands of dollars to do well. Crazy.

Here is an antique joke that my old boss and good friend Kenny made up and tried to tell a couple of movers as they brought in some important piece of furniture:

"Hey, how do you restore an American antique?"

Two Ways To Prepare Crow

I'll tell ya, it's a hustle out there in the design fields. I have been very busy chasing a few leads on some really fun work which means I have been writing proposals like a goon.

I tend to start a proposal by opening a previous one and looking there to see if there is anything I can salvage and use in the new one. I think I am going to alter this method after what happened yesterday. I had been working and reworking a proposal for a company called MOG. It is an amazing music sharing website. (You should definitely check it out. I am rocking out to it right now as a matter of fact.) They want me to design and fabricate an insane marketing mobile. They are going to have a couple of ladies drive it around the country to campuses and festivals to get the word out about MOG.com. We are talking about a mix between a Burning Man art car and the Oscar Mayer Weiner car. Sounds good right? Here are a couple of graphics they gave to me for inspiration and a car that I find inspirational.


This is MOG's fuzzy friend. The psychodelic earphone on top is MOG's "dot head ear vomit" graphic.



This is a car from a series of fat art cars by Austrian artist Erwin Wurm

I was also working on an RFP (request for proposal) for some mobile task carts for the new Fort Vancouver Regional Library. Can you see where this is headed? I was pressed for time as I had just been informed about the opportunity and the due date for submissions was yesterday at 4:00. So I ran into the library leading with my little packet that contained 4 hard copies and one cd with a .pdf of the proposal on it. It was 3:45 when I finally wiped the sweat off my face.

I left with a nagging feeling that I might have dotted my 't's and crossed my eyes. Something felt thing wrong. That is why I didn't look, much like when I have a gaping wound. Things are only as bad as you think they are.

Last night I sent a copy of a few proposals I have done to my pal Christopher in Baltimore. He wanted to see what one looked like.

Quick but significant sidebar: Christopher and I are old buddies. He is an artist/ballroom dancer/chimney sweep/firefighter/tattooless tattooist. We have always had a lot of fun communicating. We actually thought that our sarcastic banter about the artist/designer struggle might warrant a blog of its own. So we have an indulgent blog together: panspeter.blogspot.com. I don't think it is ready for people to see yet so no matter what! Don't look at it! You will be sorry if you do. You might be better off trying to stuff as many grapes in your mouth as you can.

So I sent Ruppert a few proposals including the MOGmobile one and the library mobile task cart one. In the morning I woke to an email he sent me that goes as follows:

I think you may have blended the two projects in your library proposal.
You mention " the most rad, eyepopping, funky ass, vehicle anybody has ever seen" along with "a low maintenance, highly functional, public use, mobile task station" in one sentence.
I'm trying to picture the expression on Miss Crabapple's face as she tries to visualize this in the children's section.

While I was pillaging the carcass of the MOGmobile proposal I somehow managed to leave the first half of a sentence from the aforementioned and tied it in with the new proposal. The actual sentence was a brutal run-on that was so perfectly out of context it was ridiculous. What are you gunna do, right?

I managed to worm my way back to the library and replace all four cover letters and the cd with new and improved ones. Nobody saw. Phew!

So just now, as I was recounting this blunder the land line rang and the lcd read "Aquent". I have been researching different phone options as my contract is about up, so I have been up to my eyeballs in wireless plans and such. So when I saw Aquent my first thought was that it was a telemarketer. I never answer those calls but for some reason I did today. The poor guy on the line was actually representing a creative talent agency and he had gig for me. I treated him with respect but I was very blunt. He asked if there was a better time for him to call and I said I would prefer it if he would never call again and said goodbye. As soon as I put the phone down I felt that feeling again. I quickly googled Aquent and the fog arose. AAHHHHGGG!!! I had to call right back and explain myself. What a day.