A little bit too close to home

You guys...

I just had the best grilled cheese sandwich in the whole wide world.

And also, I'm drunk.

I call shenanigans

You know how I just went on that whole rant about 'trusting the system'?

Nevermind.

I just checked my e-mail a second ago to find out I didn't get a scholarship for this semester.

Even after I told them I haven't been to a doctor or dentist in five years, don't have health insurance and have had a missing filling since August.

But, aaaayyyy...whaddya gonna do?

Spoiler Alert!

Originally I thought this would be a great name for a band that created lyrics/song titles based around endings to good movies, books, etc. (for example: ‘Dumbledore Dies’), but today, ‘spoiler alert!’ means this:

I’m about to spill my beans.

Its that time of year again where second-year students at Adcenter get together to argue about Sixty, the annual AdCenter publication sent to over 8,000 agencies at the end of the year.

And every year this is what happens:

We argue about how it should look
We argue about what content should/shouldn’t be in it
Most important, we argue about whether or not it should have a theme.

And although there wasn’t a theme for Sixty last year, I’m noticing one forming already this year.

Politics.

Students talking trash about professors and peers. Professors favoring students. Art directors and Copywriters with hidden agendas. Lately, it seems the only dependable thing at the Adcenter is the vending machine.

And it stopped taking dollar bills last week.

However, as pessimistic as I sometimes am about this school and the industry I am voluntarily about to enter, the more I think about it, the more I think I am just idealistic.

That’s why I propose one of the themes of this year’s annual should be this:


TRUST


As in:

Trust in the system
Trust that the instructors were hired for a good reason
Trust that everyone got into Adcenter for a good reason
Trust that everyone will find a job upon leaving
Trust that the agency that hires you and its clients will trust you enough to do good work
Trust that they will tell you when you don’t
Trust that people who work the hardest and smartest will be rewarded
Trust that people who don’t work will be found out
Trust the criticism of those you respect/admire most
But trust your gut instincts
Trust that good ideas can’t be forced
And when they don’t come, trust it’s not the end of the world
Trust that everyone has their own set of strengths and weaknesses
And that someone else’s strength doesn’t make you weak
Trust that your closest friends and family will forgive you when you are distracted or forget to return a call
And trust that they will listen when you call home whining about work
Last but not least, trust that we can/will create a great Sixty if left to our own devices and with a little bit of guidance.

I don’t really expect this to be the theme, but I figured if we’re going to just turn into jaded advertising asshole/client burn-outs in 20 years anyway, might as well give this whole ‘trust’ thing a shot.

Otherwise, we could always just go with the theme of high school yearbook.

Yah, that would kick-ass.

Jefferson Davis was a Warlock

Yesterday afternoon I found myself walking down Monument Avenue looking at statues of confederate heroes when I was reminded of a conversation I had with my friends Mike and Jenny last summer in Chicago. When walking home from North Ave. beach, we passed a statue of a general on a horse with one hoof raised and got into a discussion about the relationship between the horse and it's rider in sculpture/art.

I think it went a little something like this:

(Horse vs. Rider)

four feet grounded = rider died of natural causes
one hoof up = rider died of war-related injury after battle
two hooves up = rider died in battle
horn on forehead = rider was a warlock/witch

Since that conversation, every time I see a statue of a war horse, I'm tempted to craft a false unicorn horn and place it on it's forehead.

My question for you:

Would this qualify as street art?

Hi E.B

Hi E.B,

I know I mentioned in our meeting tonight that I'd rather be writing a blog, so I figured I'd better just in case you see this.

Good night.

Heal me Donny Osmand

This is a myspace note I received last spring from a ABC casting director named 'Douglas':

I don't want to talk about it.

Dr. Zombie

I apologize for the multiple postings - I only have about three, four ideas max and will most likely forget that I even have a blog in about a week.

So I had this idea a few years back for this Zombie advice column.

It might be called something like "Ask a Zombie", "Dr. Zombie" or "Excessively Savage Love" and would feature questions from zombies, or the living with zombie-related problems.

Here are a few possible questions that could get it started....

"I had a love affair with a zombie, and now I am pregnant with a bi-racial zombie love child. The problem is, my zombie lover's parents were raised with traditional values, what do I do?"

Or

"For as long as I've been doing thrillers, I've always been typecast as the "hot" zombie. How do I convince producers that I don't just love brains, but that there are also brains behind my beauty?

Or best yet

"What is the best way to quickly prepare quiche to serve a growing hoard of Zombies?"

Of course the "advice" would always be something like...uhhhhhhhhhhhh,
braaaaaaainnnnnss.....uhhhhhhhhhh. But sometimes, on the rare occasion that a living
human writes in, they would be instructed to contact the HR department of the Zombie headquarters and bring lots of brains.....errr.....friends.

If anyone has any leads about a zombie newspaper/magazine, hit me up.

That is all.

The cartoon

Here is a comic strip I did for another Creative Thinking assignment:

"tell an embarrassing story about yourself"

If I had more energy, I would make this into a whole series. But then I'd have to kill myself.
I imagine the main character to be somewhat of a younger, sadder, lonelier and more desperate/socially awkward version of Cathy.

Except funny.

The origins of 'bad at life'

-

"Write an article about yourself...."


This assignment was given to me at the beginning of last year for a creative thinking class at VCU Adcenter. After a week of weighing my options, it came down to the night before the assignment was due and I still had nothing.

As I often do when I am desperate for inspiration, I resorted to sifting through my belongings I've kept in a shoebox under my bed since I moved away to college. However, after hours of sifting through my old letters, pictures and bills, I started to notice a disturbing trend.

I was alone, sitting on the bedroom floor of my tiny loft apartment at 3am, with an un-started article due in 6 hours and a life's worth of failures and shortcomings scattered around me, when my inspiration hit:

I am bad at life.

I awoke at 6am the next morning, wrote an mock news interview about my being 'bad at life' - including testimonials from old managers, ex-lovers and current schoolmates - and taped the article to the top of an old cigar box. In the box I enclosed prime pieces of evidence I had found the night before, along with their respective stories. This is just a sampling:

This was a note left on my windshield in Minneapolis a few years ago. It reads:

"Asshole, you are parked 10 inches from my car! how do you expect me to get in? I have back problems and even if I didn't it would be hard to climb over the middle! What goes around, comes around..."

This is a picture I found of my best friend from high school, Tara.

I have absolutely no idea what she is up to these days.

And this is my cousin and her old fiance of three years, What's His Name

Here are some letters, postcards and/or envelopes I wrote to the following people:

My big sister
My little brother
My dad
My aunt and uncle
Grandma
My two favorite college professors
My german foreign exchange student


Then postage went up.

This is an old phone bill from Aug 13 to Sep 12, 2005.
Highlighted are all the Sundays I forgot to call home.

Thats all of them

In the year 2006:

Number of weddings attended: 6
Number of weddings I was a bridesmaid: 2
Number of bachelorette parties attended: 1
Number of R.S.V.Ps: 0

I own these movies

Although this was my most ill-planned assignment of the year, I got my first A.

Sigh.