Super Bowl Predictions

+ The Super Bowl marks the end of the NFL postseason, and as such, I will shave my beloved playoff beard. I'll miss Old Scratch, but the week to cultivate my Pro Bowl 'Stache will ease that pain.

+ This year's Super Bowl logo [pictured] will go down as the worst one since last year's version. Seriously, what's with the turrible logos this decade? I never thought I'd yearn for the design aesthetics of the late 80s and early 90s, but there you have it.

+ Jennifer Hudson will stretch the anthem past two minutes, most likely breaking down in tears at some point but with the help of Jesus power and Obama strength, will recover to end with the trilliest of overwrought flourishes. "Fun" fact: Even if JHud butchers the anthem for an interminable 120 seconds, she still won't make the honor roll for the longest anthem in SB history.

+ Save to cash in on my anthem wager, I will watch a combined zero mintues of pregame and halftime festivities. Just show me the game, TV! All that other MTV'd-out, yay-America pomp is for the dishrags who "don't really get pro football" and print out scorecards to rate the commercials. These are the same people who serve veggie spring rolls and have quirky napkin rings (and for that matter, napkins) at their Super Bowl party. Spring rolls are not Super Bowl food! Super Bowl food is fatty and greasy and barbecue-y. To wit...

+ I will eat so much shitty food washed down by so many shitty beers that there's a good chance I won't have the motor skills or brain function to change the channel or stand up under my own power and will therefore end up watching the episode of The Office that NBC will air immediately after the game. Truthfully, I didn't know what show was slated to follow the game until I looked it up just now. This is different from two weeks ago during the AFC Championship Game when Jim Nantz couldn't let three plays go by without plugging The Mentalist—whatever that is—on CBS.

+ I'll get sucked into the Puppy Bowl for half of the third quarter and won't mind a bit.

+ The Pittsburgh Steelers will win, in a not-great game. It will be a little sloppy and mostly lackluster. In other words: It will be a normal Super Bowl, like 37 or so of the 42 before it. Final score: Steelers 27, Cardinals 17.

+ Regardless, Larry Fitzgerald will have another silly crazy game and the world will anoint him the Best Wide Receiver in the NFL®, like they did to Randy Moss last year. Fitzy's bananas postseason has all but assured that he won't be around in the fifth round of my '09 fantasy draft, where I plucked him (to great success) this year.

+ Sweetpea, surveying the wreckage that has become of her formally generally kempt and civil husband, will, at some point in the afternoon, Google "annulment + illinois + football" with fingers crossed.

+ Lucky for me, she will not pull the trigger and I'll have until early August to atone for my loutish behavior before the whole NFL cycle repeats itself.

This Kind Of Explains A Lot

The only backstory you need to know about this little nugget is that it gets mailed to me every month along with my 401k statement. And with each mailing, several questions arise. Questions such as: Why are you mailing me a blank sheet of paper? And, Do printed words declaring a sheet of paper blank an actual blank sheet of paper make? And lastly, Didn't I have, like, way more money than this last time?

You're Frozen When Your Heart's Not Open

This endless expanse of craggity ice and claustrophobic grey sky is a photo of Lake Michigan taken several weeks ago, before the mercury in all my cartoon thermometers shot out the bottom of the bulb, screamed down the wall, and smashed a hole clean through the floor. God bless winter in Chicago.

As Promised: My Cat!

Chairman Meow and I have a routine. It works for us. While I'm working, he sprawls out on the desk next to my computer and occasionally bats at the mouse. When I get up to make coffee, shred a paper, or peek in on SportsCenter, he hops down into my chair and immediately goes to sleep. He's basically the best Oscars seat-filler ever.

Logos Save Lives

Here's a fun game. A friend sent this to me yesterday, along with a challenge to guess, based solely on that bipmap repro, what product/service/company is being represented:
"Skateboard sold at CVS for $9.99 in 1993?" I replid. "The second best-selling pineapple malt liquor in Four Corners dollar stores? Non-sanctioned women's roller derby squad?"

Sadly, by virtue of being for girls, my roller derby theory was closest, as the logo above belongs to Zonta International, a "global organization of executives and professionals working together to advance the status of women worldwide through service and advocacy," an admirable and worthwhile endeavor if I've ever heard one, but one that isn't being served by what often amounts to the public's first impression of the organization.

No one is saying that because Zonta caters to the XX set that their logo needs to be all pink cupcakes and pegasi. And maybe in the grand scheme of battling poverty, illiteracy, AIDS, genital mutilation, and human trafficking, a really slick logo is kind of superfluous. Then again, the perfect logo could be the cornerstone of an overall rebranding, one that helps to elevate the public's awareness and perception of a given organization, which in turn brings in more donations, which allows for more aid programs, which affects greater change until all the world's problems are solved forever.

Hey, it could happen.

I read an article on Designer Observer recently about the many ways design can thrive during a recession. One of those ways was the phenomenon of out-of-work designers with nothing to do but monitor the tanking of their retirement accounts turning their attention to the non-profit sector and throwing a few altruistic hours the way of an organization that needs but maybe can't budget for a revamped website, some polishing to their newsletters, or even, you know, a new logo. (Just not this one. This one is spoken for. Find your own selfless act.)

A Snowflake Fell And It Felt Like A Panther Swipe

It's not quite the blizzard Amy Freeze and Co. were promising but there is a bunch of snow and single digit temps settling over Chicago this morning. Score another one for freelancers, very few of whom will be grumbling about their hypothermic commutes to work this week.

Let's all listen to Glasvegas:
A Snowflake Fell (And It Felt Like A Kiss)
Glasvegas

Tiger > Leopard

Call me late to the game, but I just came across these QuickLook plug-ins that have made Leopard, for me, much less of a lame duck update. The plug-ins for viewing AI files and folders in QL are particularly helpful.

Seriously, aside from the stellarness (of the idea) of Time Machine, what is the big plus to upgrading to Leopard? Similarly, is the jump to CS4 from CS3 worth plunking down its Voyager Spacecraft-like sticker price?

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

Can anybody tell me what’s going to happen to the documentary genre when all the profileable musicians, poets, painters, and writers in the world aren’t junkies and drunks and cheddarheaded retards anymore but instead get their jollies shopping at Whole Foods and going to spin class three times a week?

You laugh, but it’s happening. Ten years ago it wasn’t an art party unless everyone was coked out of their minds and someone was sucking dick next to the keg. Now I can’t excuse myself for an after-dinner cigarette without feeling like the entire table blames me for the ozone, oil dependency, and the decimation of family farms. Well, I’ve fucking had it. I’m going to need artists to throttle down their non-violent war to reverse the institutionalization of gender roles in America one of their perfectly enlightened boutique babies at a time and get back to, like, taking dumps on hookers and shit, mkay?

I Like The Printed Blog. I Especially Liked It Back When I First Saw It. When It Was Called A Newspaper.

Just caught wind of a new venture launching in Chicago and San Francisco. Something called the Printed Blog. [TPB has, in a delicious paradox, a non-printed blog to explain the Printed Blog. No word yet if those posts will make the hard copy version.]

Hmmm, stories and information, culled from several sources and writers, printed daily and distributed to the public... Printed Blog, "Hollywood Minute" is on line one for you.

Except for any VCs who threw money at TPB, the real losers here are the poor wretches whose job it is to lay out this inevitable clusterfuck. Something tells me there's a fresh design school grad holed up in an office downtown updating the LOLcats column for the sixty-third straight hour who is seriously reconsidering his dad's offer to send him to mortician's school.

Pickpocket Part Two

An addendum to my earlier Pickpocket post: this poster for the movie I found online.

Just look at that thing! How gorgeous is that? I've heard writers talk of sentences or paragraphs they've read that they wish they'd written themselves. That awestruck admiration is how I feel looking at this poster. It is perfection, pure and simple, and pretty fucking depressing at the same time.

2009 marks ten years exactly that I've been calling myself a designer and at no point in the last decade have I created anything so apt as this. Knowing that this is out in the world, I feel like I need to go out and buy a hamster and a cage and line the cage with my portfolio for the hamster to cover with his little poo eggs just to feel like my work isn't a total waste.

Conversely, say I did design a visual that so flawlessly and effortlessly captured the essence of its subject... What then? I might as well retire my chunky black glasses and take up professional rock climbing or bass fishing or bassoon playing, because nothing I could ever do graphic design-wise—even if I worked another 99 years—would top such splendor.

The MBD Endorsement: Spellchecking

"Did you spellcheck your resume?"
"Doy. I'm not a moron"
"Really?"
"Yes. Like, four times."
"Really? Because that's not how you spell that."
"Dammit."
"Or that."
"DAMMIT!"

Pickpocket

As far as French New Wave films go, Pickpocket won't make my Mt. Rushmore but this sequence is the balls:


Did you know you can rent movies from the library now? Only they don't call it "renting." They call it "lending," because you don't have to pay jack to take the movie for a week. Nothing! It's a service I've vowed to take greater advantage of from now on and encourage you to do the same.