hmm

So I'm on the work laptop at the sound mix in New York and I apparently was signed into blogspot? Whoops. Can't even think of when I would've signed into on here before. Weird.

Anyway, I haven't posted since like June. I have a new computer and I need to make my scanner work with it. And I need to draw some shit. In the meantime, though, some soapbox blogging.

I was in Job Lots a couple weeks ago on a lunch break, picking up some batteries. I'm in line behind this grandmotherly looking woman who's got three bags of fancy holiday nuts and that's it. Maybe she lives off fancy holiday nuts- I don't know -but it seems like that's a luxury item, right? Or a gift, maybe, but it's mid-November at this point, so I'm pretty sure she was just like, "I want some nuts to eat," and went to Job Lots and got herself some. Which is fine. The cashier asks her if she'd like to donate $1 to the community kitchen and the woman says no, and then asks to make sure that the cashier didn't over charge her for her fancy holiday nuts.

Now, people who say no to that shit are a huge problem to me. I understand that not everyone honestly has a dollar to spare all the time, and that's cool. If you're here with your last $20 trying to buy bread and milk and socks or something, keep your $1. If you're here treating yourself to snack foods, kick in a buck so someone can have a meal.

I'm getting a little high and mighty here. Stay with me.

I worked at Brooks during 9/11. We had a "donate a dollar" at the register type of fund to benefit victims and families, etc. Who could possibly say they don't have a dollar for that? Answer: most assholes. I got a lot "oh, I gave over at Ames," which was right next door. I don't care if you gave at Ames. First off, $2 isn't going to kill you, and don't try to alleviate your guilt by telling me that you were a good person at the store next door, so you don't have to be now.

Which brings me to New York. This place sucks. There's just...swanky shit and people everywhere and just total glut and every meal I'm served is enough for two and it just gets tossed. We get a tray of breakfast food at the sound mix every day and I'm sure tons of it goes in the trash. We get cookies at 3pm (those get eaten, though). We honestly haven't seen a lot of homeless people- probably because we're 'removed' from that. Last night taking the train, though, Erik and I shelled out a few bucks. Right at the bottom of the stairs into the subway, there was this sort of older fellow with markers who was drawing things that looked like Indian catchers and he had a sign out saying he was a vet. We each gave him a buck in his little dish and he bantered with us a bit. We saw another guy, who wasn't homeless because he had a keyboard and was selling CDs, but he was awesome. He was playing music I can't describe, and he was ancient and seemed Italian, maybe.
What set him above the rest, though, was that he had some dancing dolls in his act. Fiddle and sax players up on his keyboard, and a Britney-like dancing doll on the ground in front of his set-up. It was so charming and awesome and just put a smile on your face. Erik and I talked about him all the way to the hotel on the train, compared pictures, talked about how hungry we were and how we couldn't wait for our dinner at the Mexican place.

And this is where I get super preachy on your ass.

As we're coming out of the stairs, there is a guy. In shorts. So skinny. A foot or two away from him, he's got his trash bag, which has holes in it and has obviously seen better days, and he's just...he's not even begging, really. He seems beyond begging. He's just standing there, looking at all of us, and Erik and I walked by him. My wallet's all the way in my purse, you see, and hard to get to. But poor Erik- he gets through the door that you can't get back through when I say, "hey, wait," and decide to go back. Erik catches himself, too, and says, "yeah, I almost did...I don't know why I didn't..." and gives me a buck to go give to the guy. I look in my wallet and all I have left is a five. I go over and give him the money, which feels weird because he doesn't have a hat out or anything...he's not quite asking for it. But this guy is homeless. Like...not an act. Not a "career choice" (God, I hate that mentality- that every beggar you see just choses to take your money and not work). Anyway, he says, "God bless you," and doesn't even see the five until I've gone through that exit and he waves excitedly at me.

So I'm not trying to brag and be all "I gave him my last $5" here. Because if I'd had a one and a five, I probably would've given him the one. I kind of think that makes me a shithead, maybe. I just...don't get how this happens. And I don't get why the phrase "spread the wealth around" makes some people so angry and defensive. I know if I lived in New York, I couldn't be giving my money away all day every day and stuff. And I know I can afford to do that a lot more than some other people. But I was just reading about how food stamps aren't going as far these days and how more people are signing up for them. And it just makes me sad. And I don't know what to do about it.

And this is why I have a drawing blog instead of a writing blog.

Happy TG, folks (and by folks I mean Tim and Matt, because you're the only ones reading this). :)

I'm in pictures.

I watched "Helvetica" last night and they interviewed the guy that created this font (Georgia), which is one of my favorites. Pretty cool.

Okay, this is how my exciting worldwind life in the film business goes. I spend my day turning this:




















into this:

one of the many people I wish I could draw like...

is this guy. Jason Sho Green. I forget how I found him, and I've honestly seen plenty of drawings here and there that look like that style, but I'm sticking with this guy, anyway. Just from his blog it seems like he can do tons of styles and uses tons of mediums. I caught the last few minutes of 60 Minutes a while ago and heard Andy Rooney barking about modern art. His main thesis was that Picasso earned the right to paint crazy shit because before that, he proved he could do the more classic stuff. While I mostly disagreed with the other stuff he was saying, that sort of made sense. Style should be something you develop, not something you use because you can't really draw to begin with.

Anyway, I'm certainly not comparing this dude to Picasso, but he's more than capable of some really classically beautiful drawings and paintings. I just like the simpler line art stuff better.

And here's some crap that I did. Green, I've noticed, tends to do some lines around the eyes, even on young people. I think when I drew this (was a while ago), I was of trying to ape that.

Also, holy crap, who wants to go to this thing?

more things.

So I colored that drawing of the footless lady but I haven't scanned it yet. And I'm trying to get ready for Bethany's and my house warming party, so I'm probably not gonna scan it right now. In fact, I scanned several old things a few days ago with the idea that having Luke around all this week (yay!) might make me think I have better things to do than scan drawings. Here's an old thing now!

Truth be told, it's not a super awesome drawing. I drew it in a bar called Gatsby's in NYC when Tim, Keith, Dan and I were there for MoCCA. And obviously it's just ball point pen- nothing fancy. And I even did a crappy job scanning it (see the spiral rings to the left?). But I did draw it while I was under the influence of some stuff, and while that really didn't alter the subject matter, it did make me a little less nervous about screwing up, and made me worry less about spatial relations, too. Which was all kind of cool. I <3 the beard man. Also, it was a huge, horrible heat wave while we were in New York, but I drew everyone dressed for winter anyway. Guess it was wishful thinking.

Time to get gussied up.

things!

The panel at left: by lately, I mean twice. I originally was like, "I'm gonna do a comic about this," but I couldn't think of much to do in three panels, so I just left it at one. That's Bethany, Stefan, me and Tim. Obviously. Heh. Anyway, there are two (at least?) karaoke programs on the local public access- Keene Idol, of course, and Mr. and Mrs. Karaoke, which is apparently local karaoke (the one we saw was in Bellows Falls- I wonder if they go all around) just...at a bar...hosted by this husband and wife. That program is way better. I'm way more invested in a biker named King Willy singing "Layla" and an old lady singing "Hurt So Good" than a bunch of rehearsed locals getting judged by the guy from Ted's Shoe and Sport.

Honestly, most of the text I write here is just to fill up space because I like how pictures look with words around them.

Today at work we heard about the Emmy nominations and The War got six, which is neat. Erik and Ryan, the sound editors that I am assisting, got nominated for best sound editing (for a non-fiction blahblahblah) Emmy. Which is kind of cool. Ryan's thirty-one. That's ridiculous.

The girl at right I drew tonight (free hand) while watching Project Runway and Kathy Griffin on Bravo with Bethany. The gross leg-tail is not some clever artistic idea, but just me not making her the right size to fit on the page with feet. I think I'll probably color it and rescan it at some point, but I thought I'd just put it up this way first. I totally want glasses like that (with the thick rim at the top and nothing below. I didn't do it quite right in the drawing because I didn't want to fuck up her eyes). And a dress like that. I basically want to look like that, except with feet. Ew.

Bed time.

Saturday Fright Special design

This is going back a little ways, but this is the original 'art' for the Saturday Fright Special t-shirt design (see finished product/buy one here). The completed design you see on the November Fire site was shaded and enhanced and fancified by others. Still, reasonably proud of it. As you can see here...
Eventually we'll do a proper modeling picture (this one was taken by Craig on any old day- completely random that I happened to be wearing my SFS shirt) at some point- with me wearing the shirt, and with other, more modely types wearing the shirt. Rick, of SFS fame, says the more people we get shots of wearing it, the better. I encourage everyone to buy one. It will make me feel cool.
Anyway...

A newish thing.

Drew this Friday night, colored it last night. I watched a couple Monkees episodes with Mark and Rick on Friday night- including the fabled (in my head) chain-breaking episode. We talked a little bit about how ahead of its time the show was, particularly in editing. The Monkees, while something I got into a little on my own as a kid, became a Thing with Jon and I, so it was nice to talk about them with other people. Again, this comic was drawn free-hand, so there's a lot of stuff I'm not fond of. Like...all of panel two. It also bears mentioning that honestly, most of the guys I've dated have had blue eyes. It's just kind of worked out that way...but there's been quite a few of the Davy Jones variety, too. Or variations thereupon...
Had another nice weekend with Luke. Went down to Somerville on Saturday afternoon and we went to the Museum of Science for nearly four hours. Bought tickets to a show at the planetarium there, but we missed it. It was just fun wandering around with him, though. He knows a lot about science stuff- it's cool. The next day, we took a bus into Cambridge, I think, and I did some shopping at this place called Hootenanny that I could blow my entire paycheck at if that were the kind of choice I were programmed to make (I'm not...but I did spend about $120 there), then to Newbury Comics. We tried to use this crappy photo booth that was super broken. There were a couple girls ahead of us that apparently put in their money and gave up and walked off. We got in and got our picture done, but we couldn't zoom out (hence the cropped edges) or choose our border (hence the pyramids instead of us driving a big red car like I wanted). But it was free. And just nice to have.

woo!

Had pilates class tonight. Feeling sore and achy in that good way that work-outy people are always talking about. Even after one class, I swear to God I noticed a difference in my abs. It's weird to me that I'm trying to be a healthy person now.

Help for the washer/dryer should come tomorrow. Then I can do laundry finally. What a relief that will be.

A couple more old drawings. New forthcoming, I swear.

These are two characters for this sort of future-space thing I'd had planned out that I completely abandoned, as I so often do...

more.

This was from hourly comics day, which I never finished. Got another page drawn, but not inked. Whoops.

Today is the day of too much information.

On the way to pick up my car that cost me $1200 today, my coworker Dave (the giver of rides) said to me, "so, you stickin' around Florentine, Meag?" He apparently heard from Paul (supervising editor) today that we've got projects lined up back to back until 2013 and that Dave is basically employed until then. And the rest of us? Maybe. I said that yeah, I would like to stay, but certain things make me want to leave. And I've wanted to tell him for so long, and I'm not sure why, but I told Dave that I was seeing **** last summer. He politely and quietly said that he had known that because Dan told him, and we talked about it for a bit (the whole ride was maybe only ten minutes), and he assured me that there was never any outward indication of fallout or anything, which was great to hear. So it was a weird relief to know that Dave knew. I don't know- I think he's my favorite coworker, overall, and I just feel good knowing he knows.

And then I wrote a $1200 check for my piece of shit car.

But I was heading home to change real quick and then go to Springfield to hang out with high school BFFs, Jenn and Kevin. But instead, my stomach decided it would be a good idea to make me violently ill for no apparent reason. We're talking puking in the bathroom trash because I'm already on the toilet kind of ill. So that sucks. But appears to be passing. In the meantime, here's a drawing I started ages ago, in Stefan's bedroom when he, DMan and I were soaking up the AC, but only finished last night.

Drawings. Right.

The whole idea of getting something drawn every day is pretty overwhelming. I have no idea how Timmy does it, because I definitely can't. Maybe I'll do it in spurts. Right now, I sorta half have a back log of stuff, so I'll try to make it last at least a little while.

Also, I'll probably write some shit about my life on here, but feel free to ignore it.

Finally moved into the new place with Bethany entirely. Mostly, everything is great. We're having some trouble with our stackable washer/dryer unit, but that's pretty much our biggest problem, I think. I even like my tiny, tiny bedroom. It's like, "oh, all my favorite things are within five feet of me at all times." Pretty cool.

Work has been a mess. Had a talk with my therapist today about how and why I'm sabotaging myself and how to stop. Ugh. For those of you who don't know (and...care, for some reason), I got a promotion at work and am now an assistant sound editor. And, you know, still doing all the footage stuff I was doing before. It's a lot of stuff, but I could totally do it if I wasn't distracting myself and being a kind of lazy worker all the time. At first, I figured I was just overwhelmed by the whole thing, and spending too much time thinking about all the stuff I wanted to do at home (cleaning up the new place and setting up and everything) and wanting to cut out early. All that's done now, and I'm still kind of being a crap employee. So I gotta turn that around if I want a good reference from this place. Plus, I'd hate to leave Florentine knowing that I just kind of went out with a whimper. I like ProTools a lot, and sound editing (I'm mostly doing prep for dialog editing at this point, but it's a kind of detail work that I totally relish) is really, really fun. It would be great to be able to look for a picture or sound editing gig after I'm done here. Above is a screen cap from a ProTools session. I'm hunting for roomtone for Sam Waterston's voice over reading. Clearly, I want to see my waveforms in the EXTREME.

So yeah. That's life, I guess. Everything other than work and my washer/dryer is really, really good. Things are going well with the new roommate. I miss the old ones, of course, but I think the new arrangement is better for me in a lot of ways. I want to get a lot more drawing and writing and reading and movie watching done this year than I did last year. I got my old bicycle from my mother today and will hopefully start riding that soon. Am casually taking pilates and yoga classes in town. Have an amazing, amazing boyfriend. And amazing, amazing friends. Soon will be working on an awesome movie that my friend Tom wrote. The whole cast and crew is comprised of people I adore, so I'm pretty psyched about the whole endeavor. And the script is just fun on a bun. I should be a little more hesitant to be all "yippee! life rules!" because I wrote in a journal last summer that the upcoming year was going to best of my life. And it was actually pretty crappy. I've certainly had worse, but that last one wasn't really a winner. Some of it was stuff with Jon, of course. A lot of it was several months of emotional rollercoastering with a man way, way, waaaaaay too old for me. But most of it was just me. And I'm fixing a lot of that stuff, I think. I don't mean to get all touchy-feely or whatever, or even "look how awesome". Just...shit was bad and now it's good, and some of that is because I decided to make some changes. And that's nice. It's helpful to have such awesome and inspiring friends, though. I have to thank Tim (well, really Tom because Tom introduced me to Tim, and knows all these people, too) for A) being awesome himself, and B) introducing me to a lot of new awesome friends. I realized last year that every single one of Tim's friends that I met was awesome. And that the people in your life should, for the most part, be people that make you happy. I feel like knowing a bunch of people in their thirties is almost cheating- getting to see how grown-ups handle things and stuff. Pretty awesome.

Drawings. Yes. Ahem.



























So after I got back from MoCCA, I was all, "I'ma draw every day!" and I totally haven't. But this was a free-hand get-it-done comic I did pretty soon after getting back.
More another time.

Hello, friends. After a few months of swearing off livejournal and blogs in general, I've decided to do it again. But with a few changes to help my sanity. I'm making changes in lots of other areas to help my sanity, too, but most of them don't relate to you.

Anyway, I'd been avoiding actually posting on here for... some... reason... so I thought I'd bite the bullet and just do it. The above picture, by the way, is my favorite fortune cookie fortune ever. Andy, pictured at left, at the very same meal, if memory serves me correctly, got the 2nd best fortune cookie fortune ever. If you can't read it, it says, "God will give you everything that you want." Some might say that's better than an unsubstantiated promise of living on the moon in next century, but I like the hope that mine entails - and that they think I'll be alive in next century. It's also the only fortune cookie fortune I've ever gotten that included a "maybe". Just in case I wanted to hold them accountable later or something.

Anyway, it's past midnight and I should go to bed. This is my new blog. I swear I will post drawings here and not pictures of fortune cookie fortunes.

--M