Remains Of The Day Lunchbox
Obsessed with trivia as I am, I like to think that I have a keen eye for certain off-hand references in films. Christopher Guest's 1996 mockumentary Waiting for Guffman has two little background details that I find very amusing, for no reason in particular. I think it is the fact that just as there are no extra words in a poem, there are no extra set pieces on a film. So the decision to insert these aspects was a conscious choice on behalf of Guest (or whoever does his sets.)
The first is an OK Soda machine in the school gym the cast is using for rehearsal. OK Soda was Coca Cola's abortive early-90s attempt to capture the hearts of Generation X and engineered by the same brilliant minds responsible for the New Coke fiasco. OK Soda attempted to play to their disaffection with an disaffected but anti-bleak ad campaign (“OK Soda does not subscribe to any religion, or endorse any political party, or do anything other than feel OK.”) and featured a self-consciously minimalist design; it resembled a cross between pop art and the Brand-X “BEER” cans in Repo Man.
The second is the copy of Waiting for Godot, in reference to the film's title, under Corky's drink on the lefthand side. Incidentally, the only reason I recognized it is because it is the same printing as the one I found in my grandmother's house when I was fifteen. I've yet to see that cover appear anywhere else but that bookshelf and this film.
Oh, and the post title comes from one of my favorite visual gags of all time:
Devourer of Paints
Suburban L.A. was not the most exciting of places to live without a job or a car. One spring day, I decided to develop a hobby. Down I went, hoofing it through three parking lots, to the local Wal-Mart. I picked up some undershirts, fabric paint and printing paper which had glue on the back, like a post-it note. Utilizing my awesome Photoshop skills and my girlfriend's pen-knife, I made some t-shirts. As far as original designs go, this was my crowning achievement. I did not use a pre-made stencil, although I'll admit that Jack Kirby's art takes to stenciling better than most:
Unfortunately, I only later realized that undershirts show off pit stains like they're proud of it. Gross. I still have the stencil, however and here's the PSD in case anyone wants to make a Galactus shirt of their own. There's two layers, each to be printed on a separate sheet to form the head. The text was just a standard stencil font.
Okay, now here is how you make it. It requires:
- Sticker paper
- A small paint roller
- Fabric paint
- A pen knife
- A t-shirt
- A smooth, thick surface that can be slipped inside the t-shirt - I've found that hardcover textbooks are perfect for this.
- Print each layer of the PSD on a separate page of sticker paper.
- Make the stencil by cutting the dark sections out of the sticker paper with the pen knife.
- Slip a surface inside the shirt so that it splays out. (I've found hardcover textbooks are perfect for this.)
- Align and apply the two halves of the stencil to the shirt.
- Paint over the stencil with the roller until you can no longer see the color of the t-shirt beneath the paint.
- Carefully peel off the stencil.
- Let dry overnight. Do not remove surface inside t-shirt until dry.
Au Français
Valerie (MySpace) is a French synth-pop/new-wave-revivalist collective. I don't have much information on them as 95% of their written communiques to the outside world are in French and I don't really care enough to translate invitations to parties halfway across the world. One of their better known artists is Anoraak, and he has released the entirety of his album Nightdrive With You here. His - and by extension Valerie's - music is at once simple and nostalgic, with the occasional hilariously misstep (seriously, dude? "I had sex with another girl"? That's not a song lyric.)
What I really wanted to write about was their album cover design, which, due to my previously professed 80s futurism fetish, hits all the right notes. I love everything about it: the neon coloring on dark backgrounds, the style-over-substance sexuality and especially the technological imagery reduced ad absurdum to afunctional gadgetry:
...and here's my favorite Valerie track: Anoraak's remix of College's "Teenage Color."
Picked the Daises Fine
So, it's a new year. 2010. Officially the Future. We celebrated just as I described previously; although, unfortunately, our brains and bodies are far too battered by age to have actually made it til sunrise. I'm slowly beginning to consider this a positive. The nights we partied past dawn were also the nights we'd arise, in zombie-like drunken hazes, and found it necessary to roll a perimeter of bodies onto their sides or stomachs to prevent the dreaded Teenage Jimi Hendrix.
I'd love to say that 2010 is a new direction for Come On, Let's Go, but considering the umbilical stump has barely fallen off the thing, I don't find it necessary. However, if you, dear reader, have any suggestions, drop a comment. It doesn't matter what the suggestion is about, but I'd love to hear it.
Anyhow, my personal philosophy maintains that the year is to be started in a useless (and painful) daze, with only one potential direction to go: up. So here's a linkdump.
- Nintendo8 lets you play NES games online. No need to install or download anything – it all runs right in your browser (assuming you Java stuff is up to date.) If you haven't played Nintendo games since your childhood, have a peek at how obscenely fucking hard these things were. Seriously.
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and Terminus are two great webcomics. They're both written by individuals with a yen for science, science fiction and irony as black as the hearts of their readers. The former is free-form while the latter is single-panel style (you know, like The Family Circus. Yes. That's right. Terminus is exactly like The Family Circus.) I doubt I should even be making this point, but there's plenty of sex and violence in both. There are no overarching plots, no character development, just good old-fashioned laffs.
- Browser Pong will be exactly what it sounds like when you see it. Beforehand, it is not what you think it is. Disable popups.
- Vintage Ad Browser, on the other hand, is exactly what is sounds like through-and-through. Which is fantastic. Make sure to check out the random function.
Finally, remember: if you have a free moment, make sure to...
via Vintage Ad Browser
No User Serviceable Parts Inside
The Association of Equipment Manufacturers has been ever so kind as to provide us with a database of abstractly horrible things happening to abstract people.
Pacific Novelty Shadow Puppet Theater Presents:
Worker's Comp. - A Retrospective and Revue
Warning: Flash origin story in progress.
Make sure crack pipe is properly oriented before use.
To prevent serious injury, Tetris should only be played with digital controls.
The goggles! They ... work quite well, actually.
Before using bidet, make sure to remove lid.
Warning: HADOKEN!
By law, all desegregated work sites must be designated as such.
Caution: Ridiculing the crucified may result in unexpected lightning strikes.
Unattended microphone stands left at 4 Freedoms Plaza will be violated.
Caution: Your boss is too stupid for cliched executive gifts. Get him the Hickory Farms sampler instead.
Caution: Ultimate Nullifier does not contain user serviceable parts.
Space between gears has rendered them useless. Feel free to reach in and get that wrench you dropped. C'mon. Don't be a pussy.
Caution: Superman ricochet zone.
Warning: Darkness screaming as much in pain as in relief.
Awesome: This gravity bong works great.
All craps tables come with accessibility features for the disabled.
Danger: Retreat to safe distance after Yar has fired the Swirl.
Soylent Veal harvest area.
Snakes respect Black Vulcan.
Where's the fucking money, Lebowski?
(This originally appeared as a guest post on November 5th, 2008, on the fantastic blog Pacific Novelties)
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