The 'Darjeeling Limited' has a strange intro movie before the main film starts called Hotel Chevalier. Wes Anderson has a real talent for creating a hip, melancholy, even socially awkward mood that is at once both tragic and endearing. Jake, the male lead childishly puts on his theme song just as his estranged lover enters the room. 'Where do you go to my lovely'(Peter Starstedt, 1969) plays almost continuously throughout the rest of the short, leaving the viewer with a bittersweet, restless sense of love and failure...It has been stuck in my head, as is the rest of the full-length film; sad, oddly content, rootless, unhappy, and yet ever-so-mildly hopeful.

And the second half of the project...

Here is the first half of my midterm assignment...

Well, today is me first day as a real graphic designer; granted, it is a part-time position, but I am actually working in the field I am going to school for...things couldn't be better!

I get a huge kick out of vintage pulp art: movie posters, comics, novel covers, etc.; they are always good for a laugh of course, but sometimes there is some real (if rushed) talent there, and some of the layouts and text are well executed as well. Those artists put out a lot of work for very little pay, and they have found a permanent place in to consciousness of American Art. The midterm for my design class is coming up in very short order, and I have been drawing a blank for a project idea---I think there is perhaps too much freedom of subject and media this time---anyway, I'm pretty sure I will follow some sort of '50s pulp magazine theme...fictitious, naturally. Here are some initial sketches. I will post a finished product whenever that comes about!

A couple of miscellaneous images...more later.

We have been without power at our house for nearly 24 hours now---in Ojai, for Pete's sake! It is all because of the Domino's Pizza delivery guy (we didn't order pizza, but someone in our neighborhood apparently did); he came around the corner at the bottom of our hill in his souped up late-model Camero, showing off, and couldn't make the corner...he was just fine, but his car, the power pole, and the supply of electricity to our entire block were not. It was a VERY dark night in SoCal, but we drank beer on a blanket in the middle of the street and laughed at everyone who came careening up the hill only to slam on their brakes to avoid the 'Road Closed' signs, and later on we watched La Femme Nikita on the Mac (because the battery life is awesome); which was a GREAT movie. They say the power will come back this evening...we'll see. And how am I blogging you ask? Local coffee house, baby.