Jerks, Jerky and Work
So here's the promised post.
The weather in PDX is great. It's overcast during the morning but the clouds burn off completely before noon. I'm really glad I have a small AC unit because, even though it isn't anywhere near as hot as it was last year, it's still uncomfortably warm some days. I've temporarily stopped feeding the birds because the pigeons have found the feeder. I've decided to find a thistle feeder with seed holes too small for the pigeon beaks but large enough for the finches and chickadees. Either that or acquire a dart gun. The image of impaled rock doves raining down on people walking by on the sidewalk below is highly amusing to me.
It was brewfests week last week. On one weekend it was the Portland International Brewfest over in the park blocks and on the next it was the Oregon Brewers Festival. Unfortunately, the former festival is expensive and most of the beers I wanted to try were very expensive (a dollar per ounce, essentially) and the latter festival was crowded because I was unable to attend early before the crowds arrived which meant the lines for some of the beers I wanted were stupidly long.
I went to the Oregon Brewers Festival with a classmate, Michelle, after class on Thursday. Her husband and aunt/uncle in law had been there since noon. I hadn't planned on going until the next day when my father was to come over from the coast but I thought "What the heck?" and went on Thursday. It turned out to be a good thing since I enjoyed the company of the others. In fact, as we were leaving, the band started playing Led Zeppelin's Kashmir and the uncle started dancing up at the front of the stage. He even started dancing around a stranger who was standing near the front of the stage which caused many onlookers to roar in laughter. I think the husband even got footage of it on his iPhone.
The next day, Michelle, her husband and I went to a Russian night club out on 92nd and Foster called Ararat for a school assignment dealing with observational research. It ended up being an unsatisfying evening because the Eastern European crowd we had hoped to watch didn't show until 12:30...right as we were leaving after having watched a non-European crowd for a couple of hours. However, I did get the opportunity to try a mixed drink I'd seen mentioned on Drinksmixer.com called "Adios Motherfucker." Partly it was the fact that it had so many components but mostly it was the name. Essentially, it tasted like an alcoholic Sprite soda.
In class today, Michelle and I decided that we'd start back at square one and go to a motocross even at the Portland International Raceway and interview people there for our class assignment. We both like this much better.
The next evening I went to see the documentary "Restrepo" which, according to my cousin Andrew who is in the Army, it is the most accurate portrayal of what it's like in Afghanistan. I found the movie disappointing - not because it was poorly made but because of the story the makers decided to tell which was essentially one of futility or even counter-productivity and loss. If Andrew says that this is closest to the truth of things, then our action Afghanistan is a phenomenal waste of resources and lives without any chance of achieving the intended goals. The fact that our friend Karzai isn't so friendly anymore and other bits of news I read corroborate this notion is very unfortunate indeed.
I recently submitted work for a new organization called Cooking With The Troops. The contest page can be found at cwtt.org/logocontest.html. I didn't win (my submissions are #13 and #14 in the slide show). I'm not crazy about the first and third place submissions but the second place submission is okay. My distaste for the winner is that there is no text which is a critical component of any logo and my beef with the third place finisher is that they use the typeface Stencil. Stencil is a terrible choice because it's unfriendly and that clashes with the group's image, it's an expected aesthetic when you're talking about the military, and its Fugly. Also, the "with the" is awkwardly off center. Whatever. I didn't expect to win.
I'm currently working on an electro house remix of Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Dani California." It won't be done for some time, though, due to time constraints. I also have a new, completely original, track which I aired on my podcast and which I'll probably upload to the music player on my website sometime soon. The problem is, no one in my family likes that kind of music so it's hard to get good feedback. My mom is the most open-minded person in matters of music but getting to her when she's in the right mood is key. I guess my work is by-me-for-me.
Three of my four classes this term are "taught" by Tim. Actually make that four of my five classes. The department chair failed me in a class last term because I turned in the final project 13 minutes late. I have come to loathe - positively loathe - the department chair. I won't go into that too deeply, but the way I see it, all the problems that exist in this department are not things he hasn't dealt with but actually caused by him. The thing that gets me is that the Portland AI a model school in the system. Tim and Norton are sent to other schools in the US to try to help get their ad programs in line. The instructor at the Miami school, according to Tim, is just some woman who owns a dance studio and sticks cutesy headlines on kitschy images and calls them successful ads. No strategy or planning. It's one of those "If I were in charge" situations. I'm apparently accidentally in the best ad school in the system and it sucks so if I were in charge...
One thing I am in charge of is my portfolio and I'm redoing it. Completely. Apparently advertising is a COMPLETELY different animal. Most professions worry about how many letters come after your name. Creative professions don't give a damn if you're a Lord High Practitioner PhD, XyZ, or PdQ. They care if you can produce good work so it's all about the portfolio. In graphic design, employers want to see finished work but in advertising, according to local creative directors, they want to see concepts. That is, they'd rather see sketches and ideas (the process behind everything) than beautiful finished ads. This means that I'm going to have to do a lot of scanning in of crappy drawings. However, ultimately it's EXTREMELY freeing. When I concept ads for class assignment (remember that "Turn in 15 finished ads in a couple weeks, okay? Go." bull shit.) I am limited by what I am able to produce in a finished form. Yeah, I can think of police running out of yellow tape and being forced to use toilet paper to rope off a crime scene but I can't make a finished ad that doesn't look like crap out of it. However, I can DRAW that exactly the way I want which means that ideas that were once effectively off limits are now back in the mix. It's stupid, really, that the department chair insists on getting 15 nice and finished ads that he can use to hang on the wall for prospective students to see when they suck strategically, visually, and conceptually and creative directors don't even want to see them anyway!
Most of my classes this term deal with strategic planning and only 1 deals with any sort of creative production. In my Tuesday class - Public Relations - my group was given a choice of clients and we chose to do PR for a new brewery that is opening here in Portland called Burnside Brewing. We're going to make a press kit for the company as our class assignment. Pretty simple except that trying to meet with the clients has been a pain in the ass. They're really busy and don't have much time to meet with my team so, through no fault of our own, we're spinning our wheels. As Tim says, "Clients are a pain." They are. They really are. As evidence, I submit the website clientsfromhell.net/.
On the plus side, Tim brought up the BP disaster as an example of how PR has come into play in a big way recently. Tim is a Libertarian and in our class is a girl named Tolva who is a granola eater. The resulting dynamic is very fun to watch.
Also, my roommate and I seem to be getting on better terms. We were never on bad terms. We just weren't on ANY terms. He did his thing, I did mine, and there wasn't really much interaction. Recently, though, we've been chatting more, even perhaps doing this thing that might qualify as "hanging out" together. I dunno.
I'm also thinking about joining a gym. There's a small one between school and my apartment that a fellow ad student now works at. Gone is the six pack I had from my wrestling days in high school, replaced by an accordion of belly fat and I'm disgusted by it. My grandfather, a lean, rugged, dried jerky looking man, even made a comment about my weight while we were down visiting a few weeks ago. If only thinking burned more calories.
The weather in PDX is great. It's overcast during the morning but the clouds burn off completely before noon. I'm really glad I have a small AC unit because, even though it isn't anywhere near as hot as it was last year, it's still uncomfortably warm some days. I've temporarily stopped feeding the birds because the pigeons have found the feeder. I've decided to find a thistle feeder with seed holes too small for the pigeon beaks but large enough for the finches and chickadees. Either that or acquire a dart gun. The image of impaled rock doves raining down on people walking by on the sidewalk below is highly amusing to me.
It was brewfests week last week. On one weekend it was the Portland International Brewfest over in the park blocks and on the next it was the Oregon Brewers Festival. Unfortunately, the former festival is expensive and most of the beers I wanted to try were very expensive (a dollar per ounce, essentially) and the latter festival was crowded because I was unable to attend early before the crowds arrived which meant the lines for some of the beers I wanted were stupidly long.
I went to the Oregon Brewers Festival with a classmate, Michelle, after class on Thursday. Her husband and aunt/uncle in law had been there since noon. I hadn't planned on going until the next day when my father was to come over from the coast but I thought "What the heck?" and went on Thursday. It turned out to be a good thing since I enjoyed the company of the others. In fact, as we were leaving, the band started playing Led Zeppelin's Kashmir and the uncle started dancing up at the front of the stage. He even started dancing around a stranger who was standing near the front of the stage which caused many onlookers to roar in laughter. I think the husband even got footage of it on his iPhone.
The next day, Michelle, her husband and I went to a Russian night club out on 92nd and Foster called Ararat for a school assignment dealing with observational research. It ended up being an unsatisfying evening because the Eastern European crowd we had hoped to watch didn't show until 12:30...right as we were leaving after having watched a non-European crowd for a couple of hours. However, I did get the opportunity to try a mixed drink I'd seen mentioned on Drinksmixer.com called "Adios Motherfucker." Partly it was the fact that it had so many components but mostly it was the name. Essentially, it tasted like an alcoholic Sprite soda.
In class today, Michelle and I decided that we'd start back at square one and go to a motocross even at the Portland International Raceway and interview people there for our class assignment. We both like this much better.
The next evening I went to see the documentary "Restrepo" which, according to my cousin Andrew who is in the Army, it is the most accurate portrayal of what it's like in Afghanistan. I found the movie disappointing - not because it was poorly made but because of the story the makers decided to tell which was essentially one of futility or even counter-productivity and loss. If Andrew says that this is closest to the truth of things, then our action Afghanistan is a phenomenal waste of resources and lives without any chance of achieving the intended goals. The fact that our friend Karzai isn't so friendly anymore and other bits of news I read corroborate this notion is very unfortunate indeed.
I recently submitted work for a new organization called Cooking With The Troops. The contest page can be found at cwtt.org/logocontest.html. I didn't win (my submissions are #13 and #14 in the slide show). I'm not crazy about the first and third place submissions but the second place submission is okay. My distaste for the winner is that there is no text which is a critical component of any logo and my beef with the third place finisher is that they use the typeface Stencil. Stencil is a terrible choice because it's unfriendly and that clashes with the group's image, it's an expected aesthetic when you're talking about the military, and its Fugly. Also, the "with the" is awkwardly off center. Whatever. I didn't expect to win.
I'm currently working on an electro house remix of Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Dani California." It won't be done for some time, though, due to time constraints. I also have a new, completely original, track which I aired on my podcast and which I'll probably upload to the music player on my website sometime soon. The problem is, no one in my family likes that kind of music so it's hard to get good feedback. My mom is the most open-minded person in matters of music but getting to her when she's in the right mood is key. I guess my work is by-me-for-me.
Three of my four classes this term are "taught" by Tim. Actually make that four of my five classes. The department chair failed me in a class last term because I turned in the final project 13 minutes late. I have come to loathe - positively loathe - the department chair. I won't go into that too deeply, but the way I see it, all the problems that exist in this department are not things he hasn't dealt with but actually caused by him. The thing that gets me is that the Portland AI a model school in the system. Tim and Norton are sent to other schools in the US to try to help get their ad programs in line. The instructor at the Miami school, according to Tim, is just some woman who owns a dance studio and sticks cutesy headlines on kitschy images and calls them successful ads. No strategy or planning. It's one of those "If I were in charge" situations. I'm apparently accidentally in the best ad school in the system and it sucks so if I were in charge...
One thing I am in charge of is my portfolio and I'm redoing it. Completely. Apparently advertising is a COMPLETELY different animal. Most professions worry about how many letters come after your name. Creative professions don't give a damn if you're a Lord High Practitioner PhD, XyZ, or PdQ. They care if you can produce good work so it's all about the portfolio. In graphic design, employers want to see finished work but in advertising, according to local creative directors, they want to see concepts. That is, they'd rather see sketches and ideas (the process behind everything) than beautiful finished ads. This means that I'm going to have to do a lot of scanning in of crappy drawings. However, ultimately it's EXTREMELY freeing. When I concept ads for class assignment (remember that "Turn in 15 finished ads in a couple weeks, okay? Go." bull shit.) I am limited by what I am able to produce in a finished form. Yeah, I can think of police running out of yellow tape and being forced to use toilet paper to rope off a crime scene but I can't make a finished ad that doesn't look like crap out of it. However, I can DRAW that exactly the way I want which means that ideas that were once effectively off limits are now back in the mix. It's stupid, really, that the department chair insists on getting 15 nice and finished ads that he can use to hang on the wall for prospective students to see when they suck strategically, visually, and conceptually and creative directors don't even want to see them anyway!
Most of my classes this term deal with strategic planning and only 1 deals with any sort of creative production. In my Tuesday class - Public Relations - my group was given a choice of clients and we chose to do PR for a new brewery that is opening here in Portland called Burnside Brewing. We're going to make a press kit for the company as our class assignment. Pretty simple except that trying to meet with the clients has been a pain in the ass. They're really busy and don't have much time to meet with my team so, through no fault of our own, we're spinning our wheels. As Tim says, "Clients are a pain." They are. They really are. As evidence, I submit the website clientsfromhell.net/.
On the plus side, Tim brought up the BP disaster as an example of how PR has come into play in a big way recently. Tim is a Libertarian and in our class is a girl named Tolva who is a granola eater. The resulting dynamic is very fun to watch.
Also, my roommate and I seem to be getting on better terms. We were never on bad terms. We just weren't on ANY terms. He did his thing, I did mine, and there wasn't really much interaction. Recently, though, we've been chatting more, even perhaps doing this thing that might qualify as "hanging out" together. I dunno.
I'm also thinking about joining a gym. There's a small one between school and my apartment that a fellow ad student now works at. Gone is the six pack I had from my wrestling days in high school, replaced by an accordion of belly fat and I'm disgusted by it. My grandfather, a lean, rugged, dried jerky looking man, even made a comment about my weight while we were down visiting a few weeks ago. If only thinking burned more calories.