June 19, 2009

Why even bother, we’re all doomed!!

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It’s The End of The World As We Know It
Sob! I don’t know why I should even bother with this bi-weekly update, as I’ve just seen the news that Earth is doomed! Doomed, I say!! It seems that when measured against the grand scheme of things in terms of galactic timing, our demise is just around the corner.

In case you missed it, there was an article released the other day that indicated that there’s a very real possibility that Earth and Venus – yes, the same planet where women come from (note: this is NOT a bad driving joke) – are going to fly into each other in ONLY 3.5 billion years. If there wasn’t enough out there for us to be concerned about, it seems now there’s a newly identified force known as orbital chaos that, quote, may cause our Solar System to go haywire, leading to possible collision between Earth and Venus ... or even Mars.

The article goes on to say that it’s good news – GOOD NEWS – that the likelihood of such a smash-up is ONLY about one-in-2500. Ha! Get out your old notes from, say, four or five years ago and check the odds-makers’ input about an African-American becoming President and THEN see how you feel! I bet you lottery winners are also feeling just a tad uneasy as well, no? And if that isn’t enough, we also expect now our own Sun to only last another five billion years, after which, it will likely expand into a red giant, engulfing Earth and its other inner planets – Mercury (where puppies and some forms of frogs come from), Venus and Mars – in the process.

Well, as long as we are still alive, I’m glad to see that there seems to be a thriving business for artists depicting the end of our home-world, as we found all kinds of renditions of same. Oh, and if you’re the impatient type, then please check out this article titled ‘Top 10 Ways To Destroy Earth.’ However, I would point out though that in college, my friends and I tried three of these without – obviously – much success.

Then Again, Maybe We Deserve It
I know what everyone tells me and I can see it every day in the banner above my desk: ‘Don’t Let the Little Things Bother You’. But quite frankly having a planet smash into us isn’t such a bad thing if these types of things are allowed to continue:

First, there’s the now famous story about the Belgian girl who ‘accidentally’ had 56 – not 36, not 46, but 56!!! – stars tattooed on her face while she supposedly SLEPT through the procedure (here’s one of about 3.5 billion links to choose from in this case). Now the closest I can come to that from experience is having a mole burned off my face, but I can tell you, sleeping was not something that I was in danger of (passing out from screaming, yes, but sleeping? Nuh-uh). But apparently this young lady – pictured here – is suing the tattooist for a ‘mistake’ (well, duh) as she insists she only asked to have him tattoo 3 stars on her face (oh and that’s better how please?). She claims the tattoo dude made the mistake because he couldn’t speak EITHER French or English good enough to understand her (wouldn’t that be a sure warning sign NOT to go through with it? Hello?). On the other hand, the defense attorney for said inker claims she’s only reacting this way because of the outrage of her father and the fact that her boyfriend promptly dumped her. Gosh, I just can’t figure out those reactions AT ALL!

And if that wasn’t enough, even President Obama is finding himself sucked into the black hole of ridiculousness. It seems that ‘He-That-Many-Think-Can-Walk-On-Water’ swatted and mercilessly killed a fly the other night during an interview. He even toned in with a Clint Eastwood like catch-phrase of ‘That was pretty impressive, wasn't it? I got the sucker.’ (not as smooth as ‘Go Ahead – Make My Day’ but still the whole ‘President Can Kill With His Bare Hands’ says it all to me ...)

Well, it doesn’t end there. Now our dear friends at PETA – that is the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (again, students, that last word is pronounced ANN-EE-MULLS!!) have decided to put out a PROTEST STATEMENT against President O’s heartless and cruel actions. Even though a PETA spokes-weirdo said that even though they were pleased with Obama's voting record in the Senate on behalf of animal rights and noted that he has been outspoken against animal abuses, they added that ‘swatting a fly on TV indicates he's not perfect and we're happy to say that we wish he hadn't.’ (The Republicans have apparently refrained from chiming in as after all, killing small creatures is one of their main party platforms)[just kidding]{kind of}

Okay, so now I’m thinking of painting the roof of my house with a sign that says ‘large comets and/or wayward planets, strike here, please.’

This Is Just Really Funny
I thought some of you – especially those that have some teaching or other lecturing services under your belts – would like this blog article : Which Student are You?

Chuck Dillon from the Hussian School of Art in Philadelphia has put together about 20 different types of art students from his 10 years experience. Apparently stuff like this has been done before, but what the heck, this is still gold.

I picked out my favorite two shown here (just click on them to get the full sized graphics) including the one I think I would wish to be like and the one I probably would be like, if I had gone to art and/or design school. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which is which.

Yes, I Relate to Pictures of Small Things
This is just a shout out to my main micronaut, Martin Oeggerli, who not only delivers delectable details of tiny things on his web-site, www.micronaut.ch, but has also started delivering even more goodies via his own blog. Martin joins the growing number of artists and more who are getting their messages and works out there by as many media as they can (but if he starts ‘Tweeting’, I’m going to cancel his Fresh Ziggy subscription).

See http://www.oeggerli.blogspot.com/ for more! You’ll be very glad that you did, noting we’ve also either got to get one of those hoodies, or even better, make one of our own! Oh and by the way, these are NOT grapes (want to know more? Well, check out the blog! Man, you’d think some of you have 56 stars tattooed on your faces or something...)

It Was Nice To Finally 'Meet' You
As the title of this section says, it was indeed nice to finally meet the Raw-Edges team of Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay face-to-face at the recent ‘Design Miami (Basel) Show’ in the cool confines of the show that featured the so-called Designers of the Future.

I have to admit though it felt just like stopping by to say hello to old friends, as the 3 of us had after all spent a lot of time ‘together’ during our previous interview process (see here and/or there). But it was indeed very cool to see them and their wild ‘mountain’ instalment shown here, as well as to get to meet others who participated – including fellow Platform 10 alum and studio-space-sharer Peter Marigold (aaagh, I can’t get the palindromes out of my mind)[more later] and the very interesting and somewhat tall Tomáš Gabzdil Libertiny. How I missed though getting a picture of Yael and her wildly colorful socks, I’ll never know...

But all kidding aside, everybody had some cool stuff to display and just between you and me:
(a) I wouldn’t call them ‘Designers of the Future’ but instead ‘Designers of NOW’ and
(b) the rest of the show left me desperately wanting a LOT more (I had one gallery owner tell me ‘well, FURNITURE is what design is all about’ ... silly me...).

So their section was definitely my highlight for my shorter-than-expected visit (leave it to me to go to something as ‘safe’ as an art show and nearly break an ankle). But like I said, more later on this from ‘The Maestro’ at http://www.xymara.com/ and hopefully also here at Ziggy Nixon.

It’s Gotta Be The Pants
While we’re shouting out and about, we say ‘merci/thank you/danke’ and more who shared not only their interest but also found the humor and total fun present in Scott ‘Woody’ Woodworth and Loudmouth Golf’s offers to the fashion world that we reported on last time.

They continue to receive tons of funny and interesting press and we’re really please that things are working out all around. We’ve seen about 30 new pictures on line since our own research was completed, including another snazzy Sports Illustrated photo featuring golf pro John Daly.

But for some odd reason, all I can think about is that this would have been a great way to get all those slow- and non-moving stocks of weird dyes we had laying around moving out to the market! You know, those vibrant oranges, melted candy magentas or oil-slick purples that seemed to hang around the warehouses for years and years...

This Week Features the Motions, Musings and More of Julien Vallée
Wow, this week’s webisode was fun to put together, and not just because it’s our first foray into the world of video linkage.

Julien Vallée as you’ll see in a moment is a VERY TALENTED young designer from Montréal who has experience in more aspects of design than we’ll list here (again). Check out Julien’s sagely input and also the collected photos and videos. Enjoy... eh?

And if you don’t well all we can say is ‘What a bunch of hosers...’ (too dated? Sorry...) I know, I know: stop picking on Canadians, you may need them one day for asylum or cheap medicines or something...

Blog Header: Back in Black for the First Time
This week’s blog header may not be a Louvre worthy masterpiece (no comment) but it was a heck of a lot of fun to put together.

For this week’s exercise, I got the idea to start off with a black screen instead of with a white background. On top of this, I had been spending some time recently also looking at the works of Tim Burton – a very big influence on so many including the fellow who is releasing the movie Coraline in the next days (here at least) – so I had a lot of wacko ideas floating in the few cells of brain matter left to my usage.

Obviously then shapes and forms were added in white, including some other tricks to get some off-focus echo effects and more. It actually came out a lot better than I expected and it was really quite liberating in terms of expression! And for the oddest reason, this was almost a ‘single sitting’ piece of work because I found working in this way just somehow let me run with it. My bio-rhythms for creativity really seemed to be working well! Something to definitely explore in more detail in the coming months!





In addition, if you look closely this week’s art features some ‘typographical experimentation’ I was doodling around with, kind of harkening back to 7th grade social studies when we all drew what our future rock band names were going to be. Again, I think this came out kind of cool and I’m thinking of using some of the details for a business card I want to make. But somehow with stuff like this, I’m always scared that someone will write back and say, ‘Way to go nimrod, that’s the official font from Herr Schlappenstrudel of Schlappenstrudel Design’ or something to that effect. Oh well, is there anything original anymore when you think about it?


Okay faithful followers (and the rest of you tied up in the cellar of course), we’ll wrap up the Freshness for this week and let you get on with your lives... as short as they may be. Wait, what’s that large spot up in the sky... aaaahhh, run, it’s Venus... splat!!!! Sorry, false alarm... but I’m definitely going to put a dent in the liquor cabinet in the coming weeks, be a shame really to let it go to waste...

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