toooooo early

My friend Laurie is nuts about Christmas, and sure enough, she had Stu out there this weekend hanging the lights and setting up the inflatable whatsit in the front yard.

My family had a tradition of setting up a small-ish artificial tree either the night of Thanksgiving (after post-meal naps) or the day after, to kick off the Christmas season. Aside from growing up with that tradition, I simply don't want to steal any thunder from Thanksgiving, which is one of my favorite holidays. It pained me to see Christmas crap in the seasonal section at Target next to the Halloween stuff when I was shopping for pumpkin carving tools.

As I said in 2005:

In many ways, I prefer Thanksgiving to Christmas. Thanksgiving doesn't have nearly the hype that December 25th holiday brings. One often finds more hospitable weather -- and more hospitable attitudes of the general public -- on the fourth Thursday of November. The day comes without gobs of money spent on gifts no one really needs; instead, the day is unabashedly devoted to food we don't need.

[...]

Thanksgiving also ushers in the season of Christmas, and despite the best efforts of the retail industry, it provides a barrier to keep us from diving into The Holiday Season™ too quickly. Christmas hypes up the gift exchange with lights and trees and carols and parties and alleged goodwill toward all, only to have it all come crashing down within a few hours' time on December 25th. Thanksgiving isn't nearly so pretentious, and thus isn't such a letdown when it's over.

This will be a different shopping season for me. Now that I'm living on my own, I have significantly less disposable income to spend on such things. And speaking of spending money on Christmas, I'd like to get an artificial tree for my apartment, but I won't even have room for it if I don't finish unpacking -- or at the very least, resign to stacking boxes in a semi-out-of-the-way place, which is a gateway drug to clutter and apathy. I know; I grew up in such a house. I really don't want to go down that path.

(Apparently, I'd rather live in denial and continue walking around the boxes in the mistaken belief that if they're in my way, I'll eventually be annoyed enough to unpack them. As if that weren't a gateway drug to apathy. Argh! It's starting already!)

Edited to add: I'm not Scroogish about Christmas, though. I was reminded of something else that was a de facto tradition in the Bird household. Since my parents were both teachers, certain aspects of our lives were aligned to the school year. As I said, we'd put up the artificial tree on Thanksgiving night, but we didn't assemble a live tree in the living room until a few days or a week before Christmas.

For one, that ensured it was still fresh and piney-smelling for the 25th. For another, it meant we got to enjoy it through New Year's and the end of winter break. So not only did Thanksgiving get its due in November, we got to enjoy Christmas for a few weeks in January as well.

I know people who chuck the tree out on the curb on the 26th; I just can't imagine doing that. Such an act is not even in my vocabulary. (Moot in my case since live Christmas trees aren't allowed in my apartment.)

another op'nin', another gig

Next Monday I will be performing in From Ohio to Broadway, a half hour program chronicling Ohio composers and lyricists whose work has made it to the Great White Way. Here is the description from the presenter:

Come hear the stories and songs FROM OHIO TO BROADWAY on Monday, November 17 at 7 p.m. at the Renaissance Center, 26376 John Rd. in Olmsted Township. This program takes a look at the works of composers and lyricists from Ohio whose works have been performed on Broadway and will be performed by Pianist Bryan Bird and Narrator Bette Lou Higgins. This performance will be free and open to the public. For further information, call the center at 440-235-7111.

For a complete schedule of Eden Valley Events check out our calendar page at www.edenvalleyenterprises.org.

In addition to playing, I'm also singing about half the songs, including "Brotherhood of Man," "A Lot of Livin' to Do," "De-Lovely," and... appropriately... "Ohio" from Wonderful Town.

Grease, for which I'm playing at Magnificat High School, opens this Friday and runs for two weekends. Fridays and Saturdays are at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 4:00 p.m. Nov. 14-16, 21-23. Tickets can now be purchased online with a credit card, or via phone at 440-331-1572 ext. 277 for cash and check sales. Magnificat is located at 20770 Hillard Blvd, Rocky River (although the Performing Arts Center entrance is most easily accessed off Wagar Road).

After that is the start of my allegèd theatre hiatus... That doesn't mean I can't be called out for something really good, of course...

pepsi decides to put the 'ugly' in 'fugly'

My new favorite blog -- which satisfies the logo/identity design geek in me -- is the Brand New section at Under Consideration. That's where I discovered the abominable travesty that is the new Pepsi logo (or should I say, pepsi, lowercase?).

Aside from the stark and self-diminishing logotype, I'm not sure what they're trying to get across with the variety of swooshes. I guess the idea is that diet has a smaller white swoosh because it has fewer calories, but Pepsi Max has a larger swoosh because it has more calories than regular Pepsi... oh wait. Well, maybe it has more flavor than Pepsi...?

The new Mountain Dew logo literally made me laugh. I saw that logo online last week, and actually thought it was an old one from the '70s. I sort of see the "M" giving the idea of mountains, and it then being flipped around for the "w," but the whole thing strikes me as clunky.

The Sierra Mist design looks like something I designed in 1996 when I first discovered the Photoshop blur filter. The word "sierra" uses a typeface which bears no personality or anything significantly different from the "generic store brand" king, Helvetica (although even Helvetica can be nice when used properly). Even the new "pepsi" type has unique letterforms -- including the bar of the e, which, ironically, mimics the swoosh on the former Pepsi logo -- and that font might have worked just as well here, too. However, the can design as a whole redeems itself with the green tree silhouette against the yellow sky.

Along with what was apparently a bid to keep graphic designers like me employed, Pepsico also gave new branding to the Tropicana line. I don't mind those as much; they look up-to-date, fresh, and -- it almost pains me to use the term -- "Web 2.0-ish."

I feel similarly about the new Holiday Inn logo, even though I agree with this person who said,

The Holiday Inn logo reminds me of any or all of the following:

• Gum
• Paper towels
• Bleach

I admit the new logo brings to my mind fabric softener or pre-packaged salad greens at first glance rather than a hotel. I enjoyed the previous "brushed metal" look that freshened up the identity while incorporating the old script that is ingrained on the public's mind.

But what's nice about the new one is that they can build a brand off of the green "H" by itself, which means eventually they will no longer need the words "Holiday Inn" at all -- much like the Nike® swoosh™ obsolesced the word "Nike" from their branding -- and it will give them more options for its use. (We toyed with a similar idea at work when we merged earlier this year, creating an "LM" logo in addition to the name fully spelled out, to use in places where we might not have room for the complete name; but so far we haven't used it or promoted it.)

Fortunately for brands like Pepsi and Holiday Inn, they are popular enough that they can roll out new identities like this without losing customers to confusion. I'm guessing that's the reason Holiday Inn previously had stuck with the familiar script letters for so long. This time, they've moved to a more contemporary and (I believe) friendly and clean lime green, after decades of pool table felt.

Meanwhile, Mountain Dew has done exactly the opposite, going from the bright nuclear green that stood out on shelves and in advertising, to some sort of stodgy forest green -- though I admit it sort of goes along with the "pine trees on a mountain" theme they've got going on in the background of the new label. And who knows, maybe Pepsico is just on some cutting edge, and every logo in the world will look like these in a couple years. We'll see.

So, who am I to be critiquing these logos? Well, I'm a graphic designer, but a pretty lowly one at that, so I won't flaunt that in this post. (And if you read the comments on Under Consideration, you'll find I'm far from the snootiest designer out there.) I'm just a consumer of these brands expressing his initial reactions. It also happens that brand identity is a particular interest of mine, so I enjoy following things like this. Don't ask me why.

And now, back to real life.

smells like onions

I highly recommend checking out The Onion today. A few select headlines:

Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress

Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job

Hillary Clinton Resumes Attacking Obama

McCain Gets Hammered At Local VFW

Republican Party, Average Working Joe Bid One Another Adieu Until 2012

Magical Voting Booth Transforms Clearheaded Americans Into Reactionist Morons

I voted today

From last Sunday's episode: Homer Simpson tries to vote for Obama

This was my first time voting in Strongsville, so I wasn't sure what to expect. In Elyria, we used to use punch cards, then after 2004 moved to electronic touch-screen machines with a paper printout. I usually voted before work, and never waited more than 10 minutes.

I got in line to vote at the Strongsville library at 7:01 and was voting 20 minutes later. It took just over 10 minutes to fill out the ballot because it was two pages, double-sided, and you had to color in little ovals with a ballpoint pen on a hard, non-angled metal writing surface with poor lighting. By the end I realized it would go faster if I turned the ballot sideways to color in the oval, because the hand can more naturally fill it in vertically than horizontally. It would have taken longer if I knew anything about the dozen or so "non-partisan" judge races; I left them all blank. I had researched the state issues, and even the local ones, but not the fifty billion Court of Common Pleas judges.

Afterward, we stood in another line to insert our ballots into the counting machine, so anyone standing near me could probably see how I voted on certain races since it's not easy to obscure an entire legal-size double-sided sheet of paper. I found the whole process a little more awkward than Lorain County's system, but it was fairly straightforward and painless.

I've been waiting four years for this day, and I'm glad my civic duty is done.

din-o'-lantern

I really didn't think this was going to be more complicated than last year's Maverick-o'-lantern, but three hours later, I was proven wrong.

I now present... The din-o'-lantern:







The most time-consuming parts were the letters, not because of the shapes, but because I chose not to cut all the way through. I thought that would be easier than trying to keep all the little lines attached, but it probably would've been easier than digging out the pumpkin skin (there's probably a better way, but I've never used that technique before). I eventually got the grand idea to shave away some of the meat behind the letters to allow more light through, which saved that experiment from disaster.

I realize my T-Rex doesn't have teeth, but by then it was 2 a.m. and I didn't care. It took a half hour to poke the design, an hour to carve the graphic, then an hour and a half to do the stupid letters and tweak/cleanup the design to allow more light to pass.

I'll set it out on my patio for Halloween, and since everyone leaving the parking lot across the drive gets a full-frontal view of said patio, at least someone will see it. I'm also going to my parents' house on Elyria's trick-or-treat night to celebrate my brother's birthday, so I'll take the din-o'-lantern and set it out on their porch as well.

And lest anyone think I'm out of date in carving the Jurassic Park logo, I'd have thought so too until a few weeks ago when I saw they were still selling Jurassic Park merchandise in stores. The first movie came out in 1993, but there have been two sequels (with an alleged fourth on the way), so I guess that keeps it current with today's kids. Now where's my cane, dagnabbit.

Edited to add: I just realized this is the 400th post on my blog!

shoddy modern construction

To eliminate one of many railroad grade crossings in North Ridgeville, a few years ago the city built a bridge along Avon-Belden Road/State Route 83. Because there were homes and businesses in close proximity to the tracks, simply building a bridge straight across would not be feasible since it would cut off driveways to these properties. Instead, the road was curved to the west and built on vacant land there, while the original Avon-Belden Road was snipped at the old crossing and turned into two culs-de-sac*.

*Believe it or not, "culs-de-sac" is the proper plural of this term. I don't like it either, but that's what we're stuck with.

I feel sorry for people who live there, first off because -- as far as I can tell -- the street was not renamed to anything like "Old Avon-Belden," as is usually done in cases like this (see "Old Grayton" by Cleveland Hopkins), so giving directions to people is difficult I'm sure. Secondly, because the former railroad crossing was closed, people who used to be neighbors no longer are, and going north on SR 83 from the south side of the tracks now requires going the opposite direction to connect with the bridge.

All of that is a long-winded way of getting to my main point of this post, which is the incredibly shoddy construction on this bridge which just opened not even two years ago. I was flying around Google Maps and noticed this:



Look at that! The right half of the bridge is already falling apart! It's as if someone took a Photoshop soft eraser to the northbound lane!

I kid, of course. I presume it's an artifact of how Tele Atlas stitches their satellite photos together. It reminds me of the time I was showing Stu where the recycling bins were in Strongsville, and noticed that the city only had half a water tower:



Frankly I'm just impressed that Google Maps even knows about the "new" Avon-Belden route; I wish my GPS were that up-to-date. My apartment's street doesn't even exist on my GPS, and Cherry Tree Drive is marked as the driveway for the apartments next to me, which is actually just an extension of Whitney Road. I've submitted the correction to TomTom, but haven't seen an update yet.

Interestingly (well, to me anyway), Google Earth had this same error, but Google Maps did not, because they used map data from different sources. I say "did," past-tense, because I see Google Maps is now using Tele Atlas as well, and likewise shows the incorrect Cherry Tree Drive. Annoying.

everything's coming up bacon

Everything Is Better Wrapped in Bacon
(Be sure to click on to page 2 as well.)

Bacon-wrapped cinnamon rolls made me laugh out loud. I'm not saying I wouldn't try it though. Really, I don't think it's any more ridiculous than wrapping a water chestnut in bacon and dipping it in BBQ sauce.

man decorates walls with sharpies

This seems like something I should do when I own a house:

Man Decorates Basement With $10 Worth of Sharpie

He also has a pinball machine in the basement, which is something else I want (next to the Ms. Pac-Man machine).

some movies would be a lot shorter if the characters had cell phones

The title pretty much sums it up:

Some Movies Would Be a Lot Shorter if the Characters Had Cellphones

In other news, this is the last weekend for Company, so... yeah. Come see it.