Why is it that most art web sites suck? They are usually so bland, hard to navigate, not at all pleasing to the eye. Granted, they may not have a lot of money to spend on web design, but come on? They can do better! For the most part, they also seem very out of date – circa 1998. Here are a few examples:

• www.artcyclopedia.com
• www.artchive.com
• www.art.net
• www.nga.gov
• wwar.com
• www.artlex.com

I went to Borders tonight to look at magazines and catch up on the current design trends and while looking I found two very interesting things.

Forbes had an article about Castles for Sale. You can have your own custom castle built, starting at $200k. Can you believe that? You’re very own castle, that’s nuts!

Communication Arts,
a magazine for designers, featured some clever ad campaigns. One of them was
a three-page magazine ad for the Mini Cooper. The first page (on the right) was a view
of the Mini from the top, on a snow covered road. When you turn the page, it’s
stuck with that boogery, rubber cement. After pulling it apart you see that
the left page is the underneath of the Mini. On the right page you see the snow
covered road with interrupted tire tracks and it reads, “The Mini even sticks
in the snow.” Now that’s some clever advertising.

It’s been pretty cold here in Ohio lately, and everyday when I’d come home from work I’d find that Joe messed the bed up trying to get under the covers. Well I don’t really want his stinky butt under the covers, so I decided to put a blanket on the bed just for him. As it turns out, Joe LOVES the blanket, as you can see in this picture.

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events turned out to be better than I expected. You know how most Jim Carrey movies focus on him way too much? Well this one didn’t do that, his character was not the focus. Instead the children got front stage (as I imagine they were in the book, which I have not read).

Visually this movie was full of eye candy. I just loved every scene, rich with texture and depth. The set and special effects were fabulous.

I thought the girl (Emily Browning) was very beautiful. But something bothered me about that, which my boyfriend was able to identify. More often these days they are casting somewhat sexy young girls, and it’s disturbing to find a young girl so sexy and attractive. She’ll be a hottie when she grows up some, but I don’t really want to be thinking that about a 14-year-old character.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the flick.

We all know how much I love costumes and dressing up – so check this out, Cosplay is all about anime costumes and photoshoots. How cool! When I finally make it to Vegas, maybe I will look them up and have some fun.

Aunt Di and I went to the karaoke competition last night, the one that we qualified for last week. I had never seen, nor been in, any karaoke competition before. The way Gil had it set up, was that you had to enter a song specifically for the contest, and the talent would be judged based on that one song. The judges were some anonymous bar regulars, which in most cases means that other bar regulars are going to win. All the contest songs were side by side because Gil recorded the contest. I could have gotten a copy, but there were some really bad songs in there, and I didn’t want to waste the $2.

Gil’s prizes consisted of a Champion prize trophy, plus $100 and two runners up trophies; which he decided to make two first place prizes, because who wants to hang a second place plaque on their wall? Aside from that, everyone else who participated also got a little gift.

There were 14 people in the contest altogether. I entered “Crazy” by Patsy Cline and Aunt Di submitted “These Boots Were Made for Walkin” by Nancy Sinatra. We both sang our songs pretty well and both left empty handed -well, except for the cheesy little gifts we got for singing. Mine was a peppermint candle and Di’s was a cinnamon candle. As predicted, 3 of the bar regulars took the top three prizes.

Last night on NPR, Jon Hamilton did a report on crows being among the smartest of birds. The piece started off by stating that we all know dolphins and apes are smart, but birds? This irritates me a little, because I feel that all animals are smarter than we think, we just haven’t “discovered” it yet. I’m not saying they are all as smart as us, heaven forbid any animal be as smart as a human. I’m just saying they are smarter than we realize. I also think that among any species you are going to have smart individuals and dumb individuals, just like you do with humans. So testing one animal of any species cannot possibly be an accurate representative of the whole. You would have to test many different animals, because you’ll get a variety of individuals with different levels of intelligence, and personalities.

Last night I went to karaoke with my Aunt Di and her two friends, Dean and Mary. She invited me because the bar is going to have a karaoke contest; I went because I like to sing.

I started the evening off with “Excuse Me Mr.” by No Doubt, and did pretty well. It’s a good warm up song for me, it’s quick and short. There were a lot of people singing, one or two that were completely unbearable, so it took a while for my second song, “White Rabbit”, to come around. When it finally did, the DJ asked if he could record me because it’s a good song and he thought I’d do it well. “I’ll record you for free”, he said (they are usually $2.00). I said �sure, why not.� So he recorded me and the cool thing is that you can keep adding songs to your disc, so I also have myself doing “Bohemian Rhapsody” and Aunt Di singing “Strokin’” – she did a wonderfully hilarious job on that one.

Later in the evening the DJ announced that if he recorded you, you are automatically in the contest next week. So I guess Aunt Di and I are in. I doubt I’ll win anything though, because I listened to myself this morning, and I’m not very good – but I�ll still go because it’s so much fun to sing!

(If you are interested in hearing me sing “White Rabbit” – here’s the MP3.)

We have a winner for the November logo contest, congrats to Jen Wohlever!

Some good news… I just obtained a commission to do a portrait for a fellow Clevelander as a holiday gift for his wife.