Scratchboard Illustrations - Michael Halbert

Enamored of illustrator Michael Halbert's incredible scratchboard images, I imagined them adorning this homespun little newsletter I put together at my work. It's call Produce Notes, and it gives information to our customers, who are mostly markets and restaurants, about what's in season this week, what's ending, what's coming next week, etc. Our Produce Notes has a long history, and has been done by various creators over the years, each person making their own changes to the design, the writing style, etc. It's fun looking at the big binders which hold all the old copies. I've done exactly one issue of the Notes so far. I intend for my contributions to include wonderful paper in a palette that makes sense, a layout that's pretty, clean and super readable, and beautiful, legally-acquired art. In pursuit of the beautiful, legally-acquired art, I telephoned Michael Halbert. And hey, if you call him, he answers the phone!

He's out of our league, and I quickly learned that the cost of the license to use one of his drawings is beyond my budget, but you can't blame a budding graphic designer for trying, now can you?

(Umm... image of peach and raspberries by Michael Halbert, obviously. Go to his site and see the rest!)

Josef Frank

... some of the crazy-cool, modern things designed by architect/designer Josef Frank, who said, "The home does not have to be planned out in detail, just put
together by pieces its inhabitants love." It is true, isn't it? I'm super happy in my apartment, which is decorated with a combination of midcentury modern art that was done by my photographer grandfather's artist friends, a white 1960's style sofa and chair, inexpensive mirrors, framed pieces of paper that I like for the moment (I may tire of them in a few days), Marimekko fabric wall hangings that remind me of my early childhood in the '70's, and a dining table that's more French country looking than modern. I don't think you can decorate or dress all in one style or time period; it's too confining. A person should go for what she/he loves and trust that it'll all look great together.

Orfeo Quagliata

These beautiful, space-age objects are handmade glass rings made by designer Orfeo Quagliata, who was raised in a San Francisco art commune and now works in Mexico City. They're amazing, and amazingly, they come in sizes; my ring size is 5 1/2, so whenever I see pretty, fun things like this, like big plastic rings, the Dior lipgloss rings, etc., they nearly always come in only one size, and are too large for any of my fingers. While one of Quagliata's banded glass vases will set you back $600, these modern baubles are so affordable (some of these are under $30, others are around $65) you could buy a shimmering, light-catching double-handful of them! They're candy for grown ups.

Sigg Swiss-made Water Bottles

I try to drink a lot of water, for the simple reason that a massage therapist who used to come 'round my workplace (my previous workplace, not my current one) gasped in horror when she felt my back, claimed I had the second-tightest muscles of anyone in the company, and warned me that I needed to regularly stretch, r-e-l-a-x, get set up more ergonomically at my desk, and drink more water. It kind of scared me, since I figure she feels a lot of back muscles, and if mine shocked her, it must be bad. I try to drink a lot of water now. (I still work on a laptop at work at a desk that doesn't adjust, and I'm not particularly relaxed, but...)

I recently upgraded from a plastic water bottle (I had one of those special ones that say they don't leach plastic into your water) to one of these Sigg Swiss water bottles. They're made of aluminum and supposedly don't absorb any taste or odor, even if you have juice or tea in the bottle. They're nearly unbreakable. The bottles come in a lot of fun colors, sizes and designs. There are really sweet ones for kids. The one I got is this black one with white lace and a stag on it - the design is called "Swiss Tradition." Our part time receptionist at work really liked mine, and she drinks water out of a really huge glass bottle that she likes, so I went back today and bought her this white Sigg bottle with a modern-arty purple and lavender design on it; the style is called "Delight".

More Big Eyes: Fawn Gehweiler

While we're on the subject, I also like the ultrabright palette, gothic creepiness, and yodel-y, dark cuteness of Fawn Gehweiler's drawings and paintings.... Check them out - they are fun.

Artist Scott Musgrove

Check out the surreal, playful creatures by artist Scott Musgrove. I'm fascinated with big eye art, both from the 1960's and modern!

Blood Orange Brownies

My three favorite sweet things are creme brulée, gingery things like gingerbread, gingersnaps, etc., and brownies. And last night I tasted the best brownie I've ever tasted in my life. DD and I and another couple went to this Slow Food event, where vendors in the Ferry Building were serving tiny tastes of the various foods they make and sell. Stonehouse Olive Oil featured a Blood Orange Brownie made with their blood orange olive oil. It was so delicious; chewy, not-too-sweet, and slightly blood orangey. My friend surprised me with a bottle of the blood orange olive oil, and Stonehouse gave out the recipe, which looks surprisingly easy.

Blood Orange Brownies

1/4 cup butter
2 squares unsweetened chocolate
1/4 cup Stonehouse Blood Orange Olive Oil
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt

Melt butter and chocolate together in a large saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in remaining ingredients.

Pour into and 8 inch square pan greased with olive oil. Bake at 350 degrees F. for 25 to 30 minutes. Cool and cut into squares.

I've Never Wanted a Bowl So Badly

I have a lot of fruits and vegetables, and this is a beautiful bowl. I WANT IT!

"Node Bowl" by CAKE, at designpublic.com

Barbie by Tarina Tarantino, Barbie Loves MAC

Several months ago, costume jewelry designer Tarina Tarantino launches her retro-Barbie line. I'm not a big fan of Barbie; I had several Barbie dolls when I was a little girl, all in various stages of undress and dirtiness, most of them with cropped hair. A game I particularly enjoyed was bending Barbie's leg to an odd angle, pretending she had a compund fracture, wrapping the leg in toilet paper and Scotch tape, and building a wheelchair chaise for her out of my Legos. Sometimes I had a whole lineup of my broken legged Barbie patients lined up beside me in their Lego wheelchairs while I watched afternoon TV shows.

But Barbie is back. She's been around, but she's really back - she's aimed at people my age this time. At $200 + a necklace, Tarina Tarantino's baubles are not priced for children. Further, I received a Barbie Loves MAC (cosmetics) promo packet in the mail today - shaped like a black MAC powder compact bearing a pink Barbie silhouette, much like the second necklace. MAC has a whole line of Barbie cosmetics coming out any day now. One lipstick is called Real Doll: I rolled my eyes.
The theme is playful, sexy, naughty. Sexy little girl... Lolita... blah blah. Women are dolls, dolls are women, blow up dolls, Realdoll, porn, Barbie... you get the idea and the associations.

Tarina Tarantino's Barbie collection is a bit more interesting in that she uses Barbie images from several eras. The seventies-looking Barbie is my favorite. I like Tarina Tarantino's stuff a lot - but none of the Barbie items are on my wishlist.

Chinese New Year Is Coming and Dammit, I AM CHINESE

My co-worker asked me how long I'm going to continue working on Sundays. Till March, I told her, but I have Chinese New Year off.
"Why do you have Chinese New Year off?" she asked. "You're not Chinese."

"I AM Chinese," I corrected her.

"'Yamamoto' is NOT Chinese," she informed me. (Because I don't know that my own last name is Japanese?)

"Okay," I replied patiently, "Well, I have a MOTHER, and she happens to be Chinese."

For God's sake, people! This is the United States, and here people of different ethnicities do occasionally have sex and make mixed-ethnicity babies. I happen to be one. My sister happens to be another. We're Chinese AND Japanese and we're not putting up with anyone's bullshit anymore! Besides, aren't white people in America always on and on about "I'm one-eighth Irish, one eighth English and one-sixteenth French and one thirty-second Cherokee"? Well?

Paloma Picasso's Sugar Stacks

Nothing induces my gag reflex faster than a preppy milquetoast bore sporting a "Return to Tiffany" sterling silver necklace. (Okay, I had one, too, and I grew tired of it seven years ago.) I'm not interested in sterling silver.

I am HIGHLY INTERESTED in these Paloma Picasso-designed Tiffany Sugar Stacks, as they're called. I like the name; it's fun and playful instead of uptight. I like that the stones are semi-precious - amethyst, citrine, quartz and chalcedony, and I LOVE the smooth square cabochon type cut and polish. You can buy these rings individually, and they're meant to be worn as a stack.
There are two orange ones (orange chalcedony and citrine) and a yellow (lemon quartz) that would be awesome together!
If you can afford them, you should get them. :)

So, The Queen Mary 2 Sailed By...

I've been working six days a week at work. Five days a week I do my regular job, and on Sundays I function as a salesperson, keying in produce orders as restaurants and markets read off what they want. I've been doing this since mid-December and it's going to continue till mid-March. It sounded like a good idea at the time: my boss (she's very nice and I like her a lot) was going in for brain surgery, yes, BRAIN SURGERY, and needed Sunday coverage, and plus I figured I could use the extra money; maybe actually not live paycheck to paycheck, maybe actually save a little bit of a money cushion. Now I just wish it would stop... I see why people don't work six days... it's crazy-making.

DD came to pick me up, and then traffic started getting crazy as we got within about a mile of our home. And then traffic just STOPPED completely. What the hell? I wondered. DD informed me that the Queen Mary 2 was passing underneath the Golden Gate Bridge with four inches of clearance. He said this in all seriousness. I was barely even skeptical; I asked what happens if the water level is a little high? "That's why they're doing it at 3:30," DD told me. "It's low tide."
"Are that many people interested in watching the Queen Mary go by?" I asked. "Why is traffic dead stopped? Maybe Gavin Newsom is trying to jump off the bridge. Are you sure it's not four FEET of clearance?"

Just goes to show how totally ditzy we both can be. I called the police dispatch when I got home (oh, we parked our car and walked about 1/2 mile home past all the angry, pissed off people in their cars) and they told me that indeed, everyone was looking at the Queen Mary 2.

I looked it up online and found that there's actually 233 feet of clearance between the ship and the bridge, not, FOUR INCHES, or four feet.
Even as I write this, I can see traffic crawling by. I was thinking about pouring beer into little tiny cups and selling it to the drivers for $5 a mini-cup. Hell, five dollars a SIP. I also told DD I should cook a frozen pizza, cut it into twenty tiny slices and sell each one for twenty dollars.... it's 5:15 and I am sure people are hungry!

Dark Chocolate Dipped Altoids

DD and I went for a rather long exercise walk today; maybe 4 miles. I was a bit cranky toward the last 1/4 of the walk because I was getting cold. We stopped at a drugstore for a bottle of drinking water, and saw the Dark Chocolate Dipped Altoids. I'd never tried them before today, and I love the chocolate brown packaging, the light brown paper inside, and the mints are yummy. They're like teeny tiny Junior Mints. They have that same weird shiny coating. DD doesn't eat any beef or pork (or things derived from them) and Altoids contain gelatin so ha ha, they're all mine. I got chocolate peppermint and would like to try the chocolate ginger ones when I see them.

The Swopper Chair

Maybe I should have gotten the Swopper ergonomic work stool or chair instead of the yoga ball chair.

Yoga Ball Chair

When I first started working at my current workplace I inherited a broken chair. I told my boss the chair was broken and she told me I could go over to Relax the Back and pick out any chair. She gave me a rough guideline of $1,000, but said it was okay to go over if the most comfortable chair was more expensive. The generosity of this offer pretty much blew my mind. I like expensive things, but I'm pretty careful when other people are paying, so I chose this $100 yoga ball chair from Gaiam. It's basically just a yoga ball sitting in a plastic frame. Although it has a back, you're not meant to lean against the back. The whole point is you use your own body (your muscles) to hold yourself nice and straight on the ball. The fact that it's round and bouncy makes your body adjust itself slightly constantly, which keeps you feeling fresh and alive, instead of stiff, sore and fatigued.
I liked sitting on the ball chair, but I didn't like the cheapie wheels, or casters, or the cheapie frame. The chair doesn't roll very well, and also, if you're wearing certain fabrics, the texture of the ball will kind of grab the seat of your pants and pull them up your ass. I would love to see someone design a better yoga ball chair frame.
The ball chair is a great conversation piece. Everyone who visits our office wants to talk about it, ask about it, and sit on it.
Everyone either loves it or hates it. To me, it's better than a regular office chair, even the fancy Herman Miller ones. But the things I dislike about it, I REALLY dislike about it.

Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot? Newsom, Rippey-Tourk, Tourk?

One more thing - if Newsom and Guinevere, I mean Ruby Rippey-Tourk had just confessed their desire to have sex with each other to Alex Tourk they might have all ended up in a California King-sized bed together, like King Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot! And honesty and adult communication would rule the land of San Francisco.

The End...

Minor Scandal in San Francisco...

Top: San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom
Middle: Ruby Rippey-Tourk, substance abusing wife (in recovery) of Newsom's re-election campaign manager. Former appointments secretary to Newsom.
Bottom: EX-re-election campaign manager Alex Tourk, who resigned after wife told him she and Newsom shagged each other a year and a half ago. He stepped down yesterday, and Newsom made his heartfelt apologies to Tourk and to the "people of San Francisco" today.

That's it!

Does anyone care about Gavin Newsom's peckerheaded affair? I don't. It's a big snore; it's a pale, cheap imitation of Bill - Monica - Hillary. When the little mayoral race in San Francisco happened, everyone who was green, anti-war and progressive voted for candidate Matt Gonzalez anyway. The only time I ever think about Newsom is when my friend Heather declares that he's so hot she can't stand it. At those times, I stare at photos of him and try very hard to understand her taste in men. Since I so rarely see her, that's not very often. But today I was standing outside waiting for my teacher to come downstairs to let me into her building, by a couple of newspaper dispensers, and there he was, splashed all over the cover of the SF Chronicle as if it were a tabloid - which it is.

The part that disturbs me is his laziness and lack of creativity in finding a sex partner. It's downright disappointing.
I might think he looks as exciting as Wonder Bread, but there are any number of women in SF who not only would do him - they'd be quiet about it if he asked them to. Hey, Heather is one of them. (Okay, so she'd only tell fifty close friends.)
He could have smart women, successful women, super hot women, super hot guys, and any combination thereof.
But, no! He goes for literally the nearest person he possibly could. They chose each other by proximity. Like turning and shaking hands with your neighbor in mass! Peace be with you!

As for her - she's an addict, so we'll let her off the hook. She needs to wean off the drugs and the boring politicians.
Creative types are so much sexier!!! I just feel sorry for her. AND for her poor, overtweezed eyebrows.

Extra, Extra! Read All About it!