Let's Go!!

Ok.  Normally, this type of commercial would elicit a groan from me.  It's sort of like that whole creepy Burger King vibe because it's sort of stark and just there, if you know what I mean.  But there's something about this one that just cracks me up. 



I don't know if it's the decor, the wardrobe, his crazy eye, or just the overall effect.  Funny, no?

A Wayne Pate Weekend?

It could be.  I've been thinking about buying a couple of these prints for a while.  When I got my new computer last week (whoops...forgot to mention!), I thought I had transferred all of my bookmarks from the old computer.  Nope.  I had lost Wayne, and I couldn't remember his name. 

Thankfully, I ran across a link on a blog or website the other day.  Wayne Pate is an illustrator from Brooklyn who's done tons of stuff, including some national campaigns for the likes of Target.  Here are some of my favorites.

You know how I loves my stripes.  Have a great weekend!

My Always List: Burt's Bees

Ahh...lips.  I'm hooked on lip balm, and there's no telling how many I've tried over the years.  Some were cheap; others were not.  Some were too shiny; others didn't last long enough.  One even made my lips more chapped.  WTH? 

But Burt's Bees is my everyday go-to.  It's reasonably priced, goes on matte (what a concept!), and has that peppermint tingle going on.  Plus, I'm digging the brand's eco-factor.  I realize that this stuff is extremely popular, so I'm definitely not trying to reinvent the wheel.  This is just another of my staples for living.

Are you hooked on lip balm?  If so, what's your favorite?

More Crewcuts

Again with the crazy stylish kids from J.Crew.  Is there any way that we looked that cool at their age? 

I'm guessing no.

WE Love

By now you know that I tend to heart West Elm.  If I hadn't been inspired to start my Lust List with the spring preview a few months back, then this ad surely would have done the trick.

I am digging the awesome paint color and the duvet cover and that industrial looking lamp.  After getting this e-mail, I had to swing by the store today. 

And guess what.  Remember these?  They're mine.  $35, down from $89.  A steal.  I also picked up (doesn't that sound like stealing?) a cool blanket that was on sale, too.  It was a good day.

I hope that your weekend is following suit.

My Always List: Fresh Linen

Ok.  You know how much I love a good scent.  And don't shoot, but one of the best ones I know of is Fresh Linen over and Bath & Body Works.  Admittedly, walking into that store is sometimes overwhelming, but this is a little diamond in the rough.  It's been one of my favorites for about ten years, I guess.

The candle is great, and I usually burn one on Sunday nights, for some reason.  I think I'm trying to banish those end-of-weekend blues.  Plus, I tend to change my sheets on Sunday afternoon, so it all conspires to make for a, well, fresh start to the week. 

Alright.  I also bought the spray and the portable scent ring thingy, too, for my car.  It's just really clean without being too flowery or powdery.  Definitely worth a sniff or two.  (And I just realized that my little candle made an appearance on this blog a while back.)

"Wilsoooon!!"

Wilson (C+) One fairly recent comic character trope that I've noticed is what could be called the Emotionally Autistic Lout. His (it's always a he.) standard comic bit is to behave in an insensitive and socially inappropriate way around others, and in this way comedic juice is squeezed. His earliest appearance is in John Cleese's Basil Fawlty character, but he's come a cropper in the past decade. Off the top of my head, you've seen him in Steve Coogan's Alan Partridge, Sacha Baron Cohen's characters, and most notably in Ricky Gervais' leads in Gervais' T.V. series. He's a mostly British character, since their sense of social propriety is more rigid. Over on this end of the pond, you'll see him in embryonic form in Seinfeld, advancing to Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm, and the cast of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

I'm bringing him up in discussing Dan Clowes' Wilson, since Clowes' title character is an E.A.L in human form. By which I mean, he engages in the type of boorish behavior that Larry David does in Curb Your Enthusiasm, but Clowes plays it for drama, not for chuckles. The problem is, we as readers wind up writing Wilson off after about four or five pages in. So we're following the story only to see how bad Wilson's self-deception will lead him. (Turns out, it's pretty bad. He kidnaps his estranged wife and the here-to-unknown daughter she gave up for adoption after they separated. He goes to prison for six years as a result.)

Because Clowes plays the character for drama, the more well-adjusted characters in his life write him off as quickly as we do. (Meeting his daughter, post-prison, she points out that 'she doesn't want any more drama in her life'.) The only human contact he has is by childishly bullying random strangers he meets and becoming intimate with the woman who pet-sat his beloved dog. (She moves in with him as an alternative to being homeless.) If Clowes had played the character darker, he would've been moving into Ivan Brunetti territory, and Brunetti's stratagem is to distance the reader from actual suffering.

In reading interviews with Clowes, I got the impression that he was trying to use classic comic book idioms from strips like 'Peanuts' and 'Barnaby' to tell adult stories. I don't think it succeeded, entirely, partly for the reasons above, and partly for the stylistic technique he uses.
(The book consists of 77 one page black-out strips, drawn in different styles.) The whole book feels like an epilogue to a bigger story, like the epigram to a John Cheever or John Updike novel.