Paint your own Picasso.

Keeping busy. I recently did some more design work for my good friend Shawn. He made a short film that... well, you must watch it. I created the DVD package. Check it out:


Front...


...and back, with spine.

The film features Lily Verlaine, a local burlesque star performing her act, inspired by the paintings of Picasso. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend some time with the lovely Lily at Seattle's Bumbershoot festival, where the film was screened. She was delightful. At the screening, a pair of older British women sat behind us and after the film, one murmured to the other, in her adorable old woman British accent, "Well, I hope I don't get into that kind of trouble when I sit on cushions." Yes, I know that there are actually no cushions involved.

If you're not offended by beautiful artistic nekkidness, watch the film:

Woman Sitting On Cushions from Shawn Telford on Vimeo.

Naughty Fruits and Yummy Vegetables

Poor neglected blog! Spring has stepped into Seattle and with it fun, adventure and more fun and adventure. Along the way, certain blogs get shoved aside and not given the respect they deserve. Will you forgive me, dear red-headed step-blog?

So what's been going on? Beth and I are still absolutely thrilled with the Seattle weather. This morning felt like a winter day - cool and crisp, overcast with wet roads and muddy berms testifying to last night's rains. (In this neighborhood you have to be careful crossing the berms because of occasional poo - but not dog poo. Yep, humanure. It's rare, but...yeah.) Now it's breezy and partly cloudy - oh and now it's both sunny and raining. Everything, everywhere is green. Monday I went for run on my usual route and then I repeated the route this morning to find that many of the trees have now grown enough to force me to duck my head beneath their heavy boughs.

A few weeks back we checked out our first roller derby bout at Key Arena. The bout consisted of two matches - one between the Sockit Wenches and the Derby Liberation Front and the other between Grave Danger and the Throttle Rockets. The gals have fantastic names such as "Sarah Problem?" and "Jalapeno Business." The first match was a blowout but the second was a nail-biter, right up until the final seconds. After the bout we met some friends at the Streamline Tavern (with the awesome beer can art by Mary), where Shawn was recounting the bout to another friend, going on about how the Derby Liberation Front were absolutely creamed. To our surprise, this tavern happened to be the hangout of said roller derby team - they're big, tough girls who don't much like being put in a negative light, especially in their home bar. A loud "Gulp" from Shawn and a round of drinks later and we were all friends.

We then made our way from the tavern to the Seattle Erotic Art Festival. Though the art was on display during the day, we attended the festival on Saturday night for full erotic immersion. On the stage was a mesmerizing show, including beautiful burlesque acts - both men and women - and some "aerialista" performance - think Cirque du Soliel meets burlesque. These performances were well-polished and impressive. A favorite was Miss Dirty Martini and her Garden of Eden act, which involved much peeling off of leaves and a finale with a magically-appearing apple (where exactly had she been hiding that fruit?). The crowd gasped and hooted and hollered. Much of the art on display was extremely well done and all of it was fascinating to peruse - never pornographic, but always suggestive or provocative. Some pieces really grabbed at our wallets, but we're not quite to a place where we can afford such luxuries - perhaps next year.

We spent another weekend down in Tacoma where we attended a wedding. As usual, the wedding was such a great opportunity to meet interesting people and to reconnect with old friends. It's always a bit sad when such weekends finally come to an end. Congratulations, Dan and Jen!

Each spring, the Seattle Yacht Club holds "opening day," which doesn't mark any particular "opening" but it's a day for boat enthusiasts to literally parade their monster yachts before the city. It's also a chance for rich old white people to wear fun sailor costumes. The parade is held just a few blocks away from our house, so we walked down to check it out, only to realize that our timing was wrong. But we caught the very end:



Float plane bringing up the rear


Fire boat hosing down the rear - click on the image to get a better view of the floating houses there across the water. Pretty cool spot eh? Again, we walked here from our house.


Police boat giving the parade's rear-end a proper final cleansing

In font-nerd news, I'm wrapping up a typography course at the School of Visual Concepts (a big reason why the blog has been neglected). I'm wrapping up my final project this week and will post about that and the class as a whole then.

We continue to receive our produce box from Full Circle Farm and we're still figuring out how to make sure we eat all them veggies before they go bad (so many carrots!). Here's a colorful solution form a few nights ago: Russet and purple potatoes with carrots - all from the farm box - along with fresh oregano from our herb pot and some salt, pepper & olive oil. Pretty!



What else? So much! We spent a few weeks trying out a different happy hour each Friday. We're taking a break until Beth is done with finals, but will post our reviews here once we start up again. We've been out to new restaurants, out to see bands (Mr. Gnome!), out to the U-District Street Fair, generally out and about. We're healthy and happy and keeping busy.

Mountain...City...Art

Is it global warming? Or perhaps a pack of lies spun by these northwestern mossbacks to keep southerners away? Either way, the reports of miserable Seattle winters have so far been false. In fact, the weather is exciting in that it changes from day to day. Some wind, some snow, some rain and them BAM! A sunny day. A morning walk revealed Mt. Rainier looming above and beyond the metropolis. Photos from my walk follow: (click a photo for a larger version)


(above & below) Mountain and city juxtaposed.





(above & below) Some hazy Cascades off to the east.





It's neat to see how folks adapt to the dense living situation, though this rig would seem to require a bit of parental supervision.



Beautiful Thai Restaurant down the street a ways. Don't know yet if the food matches the facade



Entrance to a chiropractor's office.


Despite the fact that you have to be a little more careful with your cash and drugs, we're enjoying the overall city-ness of this place. Art and music and good food all around. Last week we went to a show that was performance as much as it was music. The band wore red shrouds (Beth says they were graduation robes, but "shrouds" sounds much better) and big floppy yellow hats with black netting hanging over their faces. Two percussionists backed up synthesizer, bass and guitars. The music was deep and droning and the vocalist finally emerged, crawling onto the stage in a furry white costume and orange masquerade-style mask with a long pointed nose. Again,we differ on the description. I say he was dressed as a snowy owlet while Beth says baby penguin. I'm sure he would tell you he can't be classified. He was more of a vocalist than a singer, using his voice to wail and chant in a very beautiful way, often sounding very Indian. Wonderfully weird.

More photos:


This entire graffiti scene has a snow/skiing theme. By his choice of sweater, I assume that the green monster is sponsored by Rainier Beer.



Painting on the side of a brake shop.



Hand-illustrated show flyer. Love it! Especially in that it is also hand-cut. Notice that $2 Rainier is listed on their happy hour sign. Yup.



This is a fixture at the playground near our house. From the street it looked like the structure was just falling apart. It took close investigation to realize what was going on.



More outdoor art, this mural on the side of a brewpub & cafe. We had lunch here once, including a grilled sandwich that included tuna salad, sauteed mushrooms and avocado. Yes, it was good.
Stay back! Those bunnies on the lower left aren't very friendly looking up close. On the giraffe's chest is a marquee to promote the specials...


...and up close you can see that the marquee has been cleverly altered. Or did that G just fall down on its own?

Super Bowl came and we ate and ate. Fired up the grill and made my someday-famous "Your mama's so hot chicken" to wrap up a whirlwind weekend of friends and food and football. So now its February. We're moved in and settled in. I suppose I should get myself a job. Do they still have those in this economic climate?