I’m stopping in here very briefly to offer up this image, one of my favorites on all of the internet:

This is very accurate for me today (replace Research Paper with Wordrpress Widgets), but I am pulling through!

I want to share that dinosaur’s birthday cake SO BAD.

A news item blasted round the twitters and tumblrs notified me that my favorite show was going to be off the mid-season schedule and while this didn’t mean cancellation it also didn’t mean anything good.  Sure, I’ve had favorite shows get cancelled and subsequently had my heart harden, which made it harder to accept watching new shows everyone else loves until they’re a few years into their run or completely over just so I don’t risk getting really into something that’s just going to be callously ripped away from me and burned off at odd times in the middle of summer when nobody really watches tv anyway.

Despite all this, I fell head over heels for Community immediately.

For me. the first episode of Community was appointment television. I’d long held a crush on Joel McHale and it grew with every episode of The Soup and every appearance he made on a morning radio show I listened to at work (though the new, fitter, tanner, Seacrest-ier McHale is less my thing, go figure).  My crush reached its peak when he hosted the Northwest Regional Emmys and not only announced awards that went to my class but also lightly ragged on a television package that caused a quite bit of grief amongst us.   Naturally, a sitcom starring Joel McHale rocketed to the top of my “must watch” list and even better the show was set in community college and was created by Dan Harmon, the guy behind Channel 101 (Yacht Rock and House of Cosbys came from there!). Community seemed like it was carefully designed for me and, well, me.

I was not disappointed.  Community won me quickly with plot lines and characters that were clever, hilarious and winning in a way that didn’t feel saccharine, a quality I feel in a lot of media people describe as ‘winning’ that instantly turns me off (i.e. Juno, Glee, Little Miss Sunshine).  The early episodes had their growing pains, but they were still very funny and underneath all the jokes about insane Chinese-American Spanish teachers, a lovely little comedy about forging a family was born.

The show is not just called Community because of the type of college our main cast are enrolled in, it is also a reference to the nature of human relationships and how we form our own communities once we’re out on our own.  Sure you’ll always have your family (for better or worse!), the community you’re born into, but the “community” of Community is about the one you create. The characters on Community may be thrown into crazy “TV-only” scenarios (KFC Space Shuttle Simulators, for example) but at the end of an episode things usually cycle around to being about trust, friendship and just being there for each other.   There is something infinitely special about a show exists in a world of the aforementioned KFC Space Shuttle and at the same time can make poignant commentary about the melancholy and non-drunk-driving-related dangers of alcohol (s2 ep 10 Mixology Certification).  Plus, Pierce’s Twitter feed reads like text messages from my dad. A+ level accuracy there.

I’ve read a few articles today about what Community does wrong.  What I am noticing about a lot of the complaints in these lists are not really the show’s fault.  Community didn’t choose to schedule itself against The Big Bang Theory or American Idol and it certainly is not in charge of its own promotion, those balls are in NBC’s court.  An aspect of the show itself, that it can control and that people seem to complain about the most, is that Community is hard for new viewers to get into with all of its in-jokes and meta-commentary.

Perhaps I am being a little too nice to the rest of the television-watching population out there, but I don’t think the show’s in jokes are completely inpenetratable. With one study group greeting you’ll being to understand the oddities of Dean Pelton. Witnessing Troy and Abed’s handshake (mega mix style in the youtube video above) is the beginning of an easy path to understanding their friendship. And it takes only a few lines of context do get what characters mean when they say someone “Britta’d something.”  I get what “Bazinga” means and I’ve seen about 3 episodes of The Big Bang Theory and one of them only because they mentioned Montana.

As for the meta-commentary complaint, Community may be a show for former children with television babysitters by former children with television babysitters: to get every joke a little bit of cultural currency is required.  However, Community’s popular culture references never seemed too out of reach. They aren’t crazy obscure for the most part, and I would argue most people have seen or at least recognize the genres and films referenced.  The most obscure film referenced I can think of is My Dinner with Andre, and if “Critical Film Studies” (s2 ep 19)  led a few people to add it to their Netflix queue, then all the better!  Further I’d argue, the gags on Community are usually funny even if you don’t get the reference, making the full joke a nice little easter egg for people who get all the layers.

Jokes in jokes in jokes super-example: Henry Winkler jumping the Shark on Arrested Development

One of the episodes of Lost often regarded as the best, “The Constant,” is all shifting timelines catching up with each other.  A stellar episode of Breaking Bad, “Fly,”  is an excellent and very well received bottle episode. These are both more recent examples, but they’re both from series which are  largely considered “successful.” Adjustments to traditional narrative structure is certainly nothing new, Community  just draws a little more attention to it than your average sitcom.  The people in the coveted 18-34 ratings demo have literally had television around them their entire lives, even if they don’t know the full sitcom vocabulary, they should at least recognize the tropes.

Some of my favorite Community episodes are reference heavy (s1 ep 21 “Contemporary American Poultry), genre heavy (s2 ep 16 “Intermediate Documentary FIlmmaking,” s2 ep 11 “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas”) and have ridiculously clever structures (s3 ep4 “Remedial Chaos Theory).  I don’t think that this necessarily makes them inaccessible or hard to love though, because while these episodes are genre, reference and meta-heavy that’s not all they are.  What is being overlooked in the recent criticism of this series, I believe, is that while the show can lean heavy on mass media or narrative commentary, it fills in all the remaining space with tons of jokes, gags, Spaceman Paninis and Black Hitler:

Community may sometimes be too clever for its own (ratings) good, but it is also really funny. In has reached Anchorman levels of reference and quotation amongst myself and my other “in the know” friends (a rare feat!). The only show on TV that I have a competing laughs per minute (LPM, duh) is Parks & Recreation, which is also excellent.*  I’ve read a lot of columnists and commentors wondering aloud today if Community is just “too clever to find an audience.” Arrested Development was also deemed “too clever” and also lasted three seasons, until the timeslot was shifted, the order was cut down and it was cancelled, so you can see how ominous “too clever” can really sound.  Community makes smart jokes sometimes and finds new and interesting ways to tell stories, sure but it also makes plenty of funny, dumb jokes.  You can’t cast Chevy Chase and not write a broad gag every few episodes where he falls off of, onto or into something. It is just not done.

So where does that leave us? I suppose that if you’re not watching the show it may sound daunting to just jump in and begin watching from here on out.  I do think most anyone would be able to catch up with the characters and relationships fairly quickly, but just in case I’ve made a list of episodes I consider to be good introductory points.  Some of these are genre-y, but I think knowing its influences is part of eventually loving Community and what is being referenced (Goodfellas, the films of John Woo) should be modern enough currency.

Episodes to Sample if You Aren’t Already Watching Community 

• Introduction to Statistics (s1 ep 7)
• Contemporary American Poultry (s1 ep 21)
• Modern Warfare (s1 ep 23)
• Accounting for Lawyers (s2 ep 2)
• Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (s2 ep 14)
• Advanced Gay (s3 ep 6)

If you’re not watching Community, maybe give it a shot? It has to be better than 85% of anything else you could watch instead, and since it is on Hulu you can watch it whenever you’d like. If you are watching Community tell your friends. It isn’t enough that the internet is in love with this show. Oh and people not watching this show? When you give discover it on DVD or Netflix streaming a few years after it is cancelled and immediately fall in love and then begin bemmoaning its cancellation? You totally deserve the “Told ya so.”

Six seasons and a movie!

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*Also American Horror Story, but those are more “OH HELL NAW” laughs.

Sugar cookie you are so pretty and seasonal, what with your pumpkin shape, orange frosting and fall-colored sprinkles.  I know I shouldn’t, but I am craving sweets. Plus, the thought of dunking cookies in coffee sounds spectacular.

First bite.

This is delicious and it goes great with all this coffee I have. This turned out to be such a wonderful idea!

Quarter done.

This is way too much sugar for this early in the morning. One more bite and I am done for now.

Half done.

Ok I will save the rest of you for later, you are too sweet for me. Plus, sugar cookie frosting tastes weird and chemical after a while.

Three Quarters Done.

Who am I kidding? I can’t just let half a cookie stare at me at my desk all day. I will just finish you now and I won’t have to think about you anymore.

Four-Fifths Done.

What have I done?

Finished

THERE IS AN EPIC BATTLE IN MY STOMACH AND I CAN STILL TASTE THE COATED FROSTING IN THE BACK OF MY MOUTH. DAMMIT. WHAT HAVE I WROUGHT?

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(This is a repost from my tumblr, but I am pretty impressed that the only thoughts I’ve had today non-code related were cookie related, so I’m double sharing.)

Now I have business cards.

I spent quite some time looking at examples compiled at places like Smashing Magazine and then just started doodling like crazy.  I was a little limited in terms of what I could afford to print, so no fancy cutout, foil-lining for this girl… yet.  Even so, I was able to find a place that with a reasonable price for my pretty, new, dual-sided card with pretty colors, a talking giraffe and a handy QR code from the future.

I finally got my cards back last week and I am pretty excited about the quality. I opted for the heavier stock which I think was a really good choice because I tested it thoroughly and my card flings across a room *really* well.  As an added bonus, when I ordered my cards I got a free sticky note pad with my info on it as well as a super-good deal on a pen with my name on it.  It is very silly but I am SO excited about having my name on a pen. When I write with it I feel like I am a doctor or maybe a bar.

If I see you out in the real world I will probably foist a dozen of them on you, because one thing about business cards is that you can’t really order a small amount of them.  I have hundreds of friendly giraffes waiting in a long box to say hello to you.

You can see larger versions of my card  in my portfolio.

Storage Wars follows the story of auction bidders as they attempt to win the contents of unpaid storage units in hopes of turning the other people’s mysterious processions into cash.  Sometimes they find rare and expensive antiques, sometimes they find some dude’s old, run-down bachelor furniture and sometimes they even find straight-up cash, which just brings up a whole lot of questions about the people who filled the units initially.  This American Life chronicled the storage unit auction phenomenon in episode #399 Contents Unknown, if you want more background on the subject or simply can’t get enough Ira Glass.

It makes sense that the Hoarders network would expand into the storage unit business.  Excess storage units are often an aspect of hoarding and several times units featured on Storage Wars appear to be collections that formerly belonged to some poor hoarder who ran out of floor space (the floor is the biggest shelf after all) on which to stack their various trinkets, newspapers, Christmas decorations and jars of old food, so they took it all across town and shoved it into a locker.  Come to think of it, Billy the Exterminator could fit within an all-hoarding and hoarding related television too, because from what I’ve seen nearly every hoarder house is full of rodents and occasionally opossums (EEK). Maybe A&E will expand their all-Hoarders-related content block to include shows about people who clean up other people’s messes and/or pick through the giant trucks of discarded Hoarder treasure – kind of a more depressing version of American Pickers.

The cast of Storage Wars is relatively small. You have your auctioneers, Dan and Laura Dotson, who sell the units and talk real fast.  Darrell Sheets who A&E calls “The Gambler” and who, despite this moniker, seems to go home empty-handed about 40% of the time.  Jarrod and Brandy, a couple who run a second-hand store and really only seem to be in competition to rub each other’s noses in failure.   Dave Hester runs a much bigger store and seems to spend the most and consequently finds the biggest money-making deals.  He annoys the crap out of his competition so they are always trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to mess with him.  Then there is “Hollywood” Barry Weiss.

I LOVE Hollywood Barry.  Barry loves finding treasure, goofing on his competitors and making quips.  I wish he was my awesome uncle who I got to visit once a year and look at his cool stuff.  I imagine his house is full of treasures and if you were to visit he would take you on a tour and probably give you something cool if he liked you enough.  I am not entirely sure he isn’t Robert Evans (or at least some distant relative of Robert Evans who shares the same voice genes).

I suspect Hollywood Barry and J.J. Abrams could talk for several hours about their love of mystery boxes.  Barry will spend hundreds of dollars on seemingly uninteresting storage units so he can look inside the chests and boxes he sees inside.  Sometimes he finds antiques and sometimes he finds a solitary glove, but it is all about opening the box.  As long as he gets to do that, it seems he’s won, which is a worldview I wish I could have more often.  Even when he does find something of value, Barry often gives his find away to someone who’d appreciate it more.  When he doesn’t know if he’s found a treasure,  Barry takes it to get the price evaluated by an expert.  If that expert is a pretty lady you can guarantee Barry will be ok with not getting a high price estimate on his find, because now he knows one more lovely lady and that counts as a win. Oh also, his custom Cadillac was used in an Outkast’s “Roses” video.

Here is an overview of what awesomeness Hollywood Barry brings to television courtesy of an AOL interview:

AOL: We’ve seen you use a psychic, a little person on stilts, night vision goggles and your pal Patch’s one good eye to try to get a better idea of what’s in the storage units. Any other imaginative Barry methods we’ll see this season?

Barry: Oh yeah. We’re going to expand it a little bit this year, and I got a bunch of good stuff cooked up. And I can’t wait, because my mission, really, on that show, is to disrupt and annoy. And I’m going to continue to refine that. But, really, unnerving my competitors is something that I get the most kick from.

Essentially Hollywood Barry is the chillest dude on television and watching him win storage units should be added to everyone’s very important TV schedule.

Knowing A&E programming, you have roughly 1,854 opportunities to do so every week.  Get on it.

My favorite place.

The one thing we do every year as a huge group is the Annual Hot Dog Roast and Pot Luck.  Somehow along the way we started putting someone in charge of this get together and that person has to plan an activity for the evening post-dinner.  At one point the kids just played games together after dinner and the parents ignored us. These were the good old days when nobody had to plan anything because kids can amuse themselves with tree stumps (we used them as podiums and we were statues and the game was to stay quiet and not move until it was your turn… I think we were tricked into thinking this was a game and not just an elaborate rouse for some peace and quiet). Later we had a kids’ talent show with prizes, but this ended the year there were three separate lip sync/dance routines set to “Lucky” by Britney Spears.  So now somebody is put in command and we have organized games.  After 12 years of this, my name finally came up and 2011 was the year my brother and I were placed in charge of the festivities.

Of course we were chosen in 2010 so I had a full year to forget I had anything to plan.  At the end of June I got this text from my brother, Jared:

Yo we host the lake hotdog party this year...what's up with that?

To which I replied:

Well I forgot THAT entirely.

Let the mild-panic begin!  Jared and I had absolutely no ideas.  Our number one contenders at one point included:

• Beer Pong, King’s Cup, any drinking game really.  College, right? IT IS ALL I KNOW, OK? Lay off me!
• A friars’ club style roast (because we love bad ideas that will make people hate each other, see also the aborted plan my friends and I had to have a party where we all came dressed/acting like each other).
• A treasure hunt with elaborate rules but no pay off, when people came back asking “What was all that about?” we would just say “The treasure was the time you spent working together as a family!” You can probably blame Indiana Jones 4 for that one.
• A treasure hunt which in which all the treasure is margarita ingredients. When the contestants bring everything back we just say “good on you” and make margaritas.

Our ideas were all winners, clearly.

After many a late-night googling of group games, what seemed like a thousand crappy team-building websites, a lot of suggestions from friends and a lot of help from my parents, Jared and I settled on Folf, or rather, Mini-Folf.  Mini-folf would be played with regular frisbees and not folf discs and have a much smaller playing field. To get ready, I did what I do best (or at least what I do better than preparing folf courses) and designed a logo:

In the last few weeks leading up to vacation my mom got us supplies (thank god for her, seriously) which included 40 frisbees for our contestants and flags and fabric to mark the holes. When we got to the lake, Jared and I set about constructing a 9-hole folf course around the grounds.

Folf Hole

Our course wrapped around cabins and across the beach and was marked with numbered flags and matching fabrics.  We even made up a par for each hole.

After the BBQ ended, we split our players up into pre-determined teams, gave them their frisbees, staggered them on the course and stood back and watched, only really stepping in to help when the next hole wasn’t readily apparent.

Frisbees flew all over, but once people realized the way you had to throw it was different than a regular folf disc, the scores on the holes started to drop and our contestants were flying through the course.

We lucked out too, the night before when we plotted the course the winds were going crazy and Jared and I couldn’t land a frisbee on the fabric squares to save our lives.  The night of the Hot Dog Roast the weather was absolutely perfect.  No winds, not chilly, nothing but pretty skies and a light breeze off the lake.

Gorgeous Evening on Hole 2

Frisbees flying.

Jared with one of our "Person in Charge" flolf flags. They were later turned into excellent marshmallow roasters.

I ALSO had an "In Charge" flag. Total Boss of Folf right here. This one met the fate of "4 year old throwing it into a lake".

When everyone finished we tallied up the scores, averaged them and found our winners.  The winners got first pick from our wonderful table of prizes which included classy selections from the dollar section at target, leftover giveaway items from places my family members worked, watches from a woot! sale, zinc sunscreen and other goofy odds and ends.

In case you were wondering, the winners were:

GO TEAM GRAPEFRUITS. Jared named the teams. Team aMAYOzing AKA The Miracle Whips is based on a conversation we got into about how much Miracle Whip sucks and also tastes like butt. Jared disagrees, he is obviously wrong.

Team Grapefruits won and Mini-Folf was a rousing success! I got several awesome compliments on how well it worked out, which I ate up considering the last-minute stress of putting it all together.  Again, another huge thank you (and about 700+ other huge thank yous, if I am being honest) goes to my mom, because without her help, time and guidance in setting this all up, Jared and I probably would have just gone with the drinking games, do what you know, etc.

THANKS MOM!

I am not entirely sure how, but eventually these little “something extras” were called “Pop Tags.”  I couldn’t be more pleased with how nicely they fit within the overall design of the pages.  They remain true to the theme, color and font-scheming of the site while standing out on their own.

The pop tags were a very fun diversion from the more intense coding I had been doing on the site.  I drew them with a tablet and by hand over the course of a few weeks, whenever I had time.  Finding images and themes to represent the various sections while working within the size-limits of the page was an enjoyable exercise.  The pop tags really taught me how much a little bit of extra, content-specific flair can add to a site and I am really excited to add elements like the pop-tags to sites I work on in the future.

Here’s a small sampling of them, but you can see all the Pop Tags on the Glacier Country website and my portfolio.

Adam Limbert “Dear Gournal…”
screenprint

Allison Reimold “Sunset Over Camp Firewood”
oil

Jayson Weidel “Wet Hot American Gothic”
giclee print on archival paper

Andy Ristaino “Camp Firewood 1981″
ink and photoshop

Evanimal “Growing Up”
acrylic transfer

Lauren Gregg “Class B Dungeon Master”
cel vinyl on wood

Glen Brogan “Wet Hot American Summer”
giclee print on archival paper

—

Gallery 1988 do you take IOUs?

SPOILER ALERT. I’ve seen the movie and if you haven’t and don’t want to be know a few spoilers, don’t read this.

As far as terrible movies go, Drive Angry certainly could have been worse. It stars Nick Cage (not Nicholas Cage, that name is for good movies) as a soul what done escaped hell to save his baby granddaughter from a satanic cult. If you’re counting, this is the second Nick Cage franchise to feature him coming back from hell with powers.

Also in the movie is Amber Heard playing a diner waitress who is totally ok with turning into a cop killer and William Fichtner as the guy responsible for bringing Nick Cage back to hell while doing his best Christopher Walken impersonation. David Morss shows up in a role that seems like it was meant to go to someone else.  I like David Morss a lot, don’t think I’m dissing him, but the role seemed very ripe for a weird cameo from the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Stephen Segal or maybe Bruce Campbell. Actually, it totally should have gone to Bruce Campbell, he would have been perfect. Why am I not casting more movies? Nobody answer that.

Amber Heard is not responding to Nick Cage's intensity appropriately.

I should put this out there: I LOVE Nick Cage movies, this fact is well-documented. The face/hair combinations he is responsible for are top notch.   Is anyone working today combing as many weird face with weird hair choices?  I am not going to try very hard to think of another because this is a prize I want Nick Cage to win.  It should go on his mantel in one of his 10-minutes-apart New Orleans mansions next to his Oscar.  In case you are wondering the face/hair combination most prevalent in Drive Angry is “Determined Grimace”/”Swept back, stringy blonde with the sides shaved.”  He shaved off the sides, 90s-style! The man is an artist.

This potent combination of Clinton-era bad hair choices and scowls naturally attracts every waitress that comes into Nick Cage’s orbit.  One girl gets away with just some light choke-kissing… at his table… while she’s on shift… in front of a packed restaurant.  The other waitress is less lucky as the Cage seduction method (a mixture of grunts and indirect eye-contact – are you taking notes Mystery?) works in spades and she ends up sexing him in his hotel room while he is fully clothed.  Back-from-Hell Nick Cage always has to be ready for action, so he never disrobes.  Clothes comes in handy when a bunch of dudes from the cult break in and try to kill him with sickles and hammers.  Since his pants are still on, Nick Cage doesn’t even have to jump for his gun, he just shoots all the dudes with physics-defying bullets while continuing to have sex.  He’s a good multitasker.

I suspect Drive Angry could have gone two ways at one point, and there’s a few bits of evidence that someone in charge was really trying to make a weird cult film.  They cast horror regular Tom Atkins as the police captain and for some reason put him in Threadless’ Spoilt tee for his entire first scene.  Amber Heard basically works at Denny’s but her boss comes straight out of a greasy spoon restaurant located at a truck stop in the 1970s. One of the featured cultists is wearing a big, obvious pompadour wig. The cult leader is dressed in casual-Elvis wear (Casual Elvis is the name of my new clothing line, don’t you dare steal it).  William Fichtner dance-drives to “That’s the Way (uhhuh uhhuh) I Like It.”  It is all very delightfully odd and exactly what you want in a good off-the-rails Cage flick.

Speaking of off-the-rails Cage, I do need to mention the man barely speaks in the movie.  He has one long information dump to set up the reason he’s chasing the cult, but other than it is mostly a few sentences sprinkled over driving sequences and scowls.  To be fair though, he is REALLY good acting out driving and scowling. Plus, he gets shot in the eye and gets to act out the emotion of “regrowing an eyeball.”  It is one for the reel.

What I Learned: A few lessons from Drive Angry

• Hell looks like a late-90s screensaver and it has “view screens”
• Air conditioners don’t hurt that much when they fall on your head.
• Your cult membership will grow exponentially when Nick Cage needs more people to set on fire with his car.

Rent it.  Give Nick Cage your money. Lord knows he and his pyramid tomb need it.  We have to do this together people because I know once everyone sees Drive Angry, there will be a  massive swell of interest in a sequel about David Morss and Amber Heard running from the law (she totally shot a cop) and raising Nick Cage’s baby.

When will Hollywood just give the people what they want?!

—

Are you perhaps thinking you may need to own Drive Angry?  Sure you are. There you go:

• Drive Angry
• Drive Angry [Blu-ray]

When it was our turn, my class made “Beyond the Myths: Growing up in Montana” (aka Monteentana). It was a tough semester and I pretty much lived in the edit bay where I worked on the opening and segment-introducing graphics for our film as well as two segments “Jessika” and “Hana”.  Fun Fact: our program’s editing studio was in the basement of an 80-year-old house, 530 Eddy, that used to live on campus.  I wouldn’t have traded it for anything though, some of my best memories from college happened in that basement.

When all was done, Beyond the Myths aired a few times state-wide on PBS, was named the National Winner in “Television In Depth Reporting” from the Society of Professional Journalists and won “Best Student Long Form Documentary” from the  Broadcast Education Association.

I’m so happy the doc unit  continues to go strong, it was such a fantastic opportunity and I hope it remains so for at least another 25 years!  A piece of the animated opener I created for my class’ documentary (and a few of my friends!) can be seen in the program’s 25th Anniversary video below.

If you’d like more information on the project please visit the University of Montana School of Journalism.

You can watch all of Beyond the Myths at Montana PBS or right here:

Watch the full episode. See more MontanaPBS Presents.