Five things about me (meme)
Feb. 28th, 2009 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rickvsI asked ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
twfarlan to list five things he associates with me, which I shall bloviate about below. Let me know, Gentle Reader, if you want me to give you five topics that remind me of you to expound upon in your own journal.
1) Radio contests:
I play a lot of these games, and I mean a *lot*. The only reason I'm writing this up at the moment, instead of listening to an earbud with one hand on the phone, is that I'm in prize time-out with eight of the stations I usually call. I'm not sure that's something to brag about ...for while I win something once a week or so, that something is almost certainly worth less than fifty dollars, and I spend so much time with one ear cocked, I can't fool myself anymore that I'm making my usual hourly rate playing them. But I enjoy acting like Santa by giving concert tickets out, thereby shmoozing my boss, or co-workers, or vendors, and these contests profit me more than playing frisbee golf, which is another hobby I don't intend to stop pursuing.
The self-imposed governors I have on the volume of contests I play are these: I don't want Rachal to ever feel I am ignoring her just to call a radio station, and I don't wanna do anything that'll get me fired from my job. As it happens, most of the games I target are during hours when Rachal's not awake and I ain't workin'.
Local readers are invited to put in requests for specific concerts or other events, and I'll let you know if I can nab them. I like showing off as much as the next fool.
2) Movie trivia:
I've been a movie fiend from a young age, although I've not been to the theater as often in recent years as I would have liked. I have fond memories of a joint in California which would show you a double feature for two dollars, and the time my best friend Carl and I sat through a double-double feature once. (The high point of those four flicks was _Top Gun_, with _Solarbabies_ providing the "I'll-never-have-that-ninety-minutes-back" segment). In high school, I hung out with some other triviaheads, and I remember handing our own sorts of pop quizzes back and forth in math class -- but in these, you'd write down a line of dialog (without the name of the movie), and the person you passed it to would have to write down the next line, until somebody couldn't. I think I spent too much of my youth confusing "knows a lot of the same movies I know" with "is intelligent", and I hope I've eventually internalized that "smart-assed" does not always equal "smart". But that's wandering into the territory of item 4), below.
3) Illustration:
Illustration is only a small percentage, these days, of the artwork required in my daily workload. (Heck, *artwork* is a only a subset of my daily workload; I spend more time chasing down vendors and people who owe us money. But that's what I signed on for, at what amounts to a two-man shop for the moment). I'm not the best illustrator I've ever seen -- I'm not even the best one I know personally -- but I think I can objectively say that I'm pretty good. The thing that grates at me a bit is, I'm not much better than when I graduated college, in 1991.
As far as my philosophy of illustration goes, it's not just being able to duplicate the scene like a camera... although the extent to which I possess that skill dictates how often I can put a line of ink where I want it to go, on the first attempt. My belief is that above all, a good illustrator is *informative*. Deciding what to enhance or leave out is important. Drawing with an agitated rather than a smooth line can tell the viewer something about the subject -- and so can choosing to render in pencil, rather than ink or paint. For example, I enjoy the "day-in-the-life" cartoons posted byarchanglrobriel more than his realistic work *because* I find the quirky stuff more informative about his mood and thought process.
I've got many theories about what makes successful Art-with-a-capital-A, but a lot of it falls outside the scope of an illustration discussion. If anyone's curious, I may post more about it later.
And as far as current commissions go, I haven't forgotten you,browngirl!
4) Dry humor:
I frequently describe myself as the sort of person who doesn't mind making a quiet joke in a room full of people, knowing that only 10% caught the humor. I don't feel obliged to explain myself to the other 90%, whether they realize I was attempting a joke or not. I think my idea of a perfect gag is to say something in front of ten people, seven of whom don't hear anything funny, and three of which find it hilarious for three entirely different reasons. I can't often do that trick, where I paint a verbal baseball different colors, then throw it between the listeners carefully enough that they each think they know what color it is all over ...but when I pull it off I'm jazzed.
5) Hospitals:
I know more about hospitals than I would prefer to know, for someone not yet forty. But I still find them comforting, rather than scary, and my frequent visits to them (usually with Rachal as the patient, not me) have helped to solidify my positions on some philosophical matters that I might not have done for a few decades otherwise. The advice I have for people visiting hospitals is similar to the advice I'd give for people playing radio contests: make an effort to stay in the good graces of the front-line employees, even more than the marquee talent. The nurses and hospital techs have more power to cushion your stay than the doctors, I believe, so don't get on their nerves.
I don't mean to suggest that you shouldn't, as a patient, ring the buzzer if you're uncomfortable, or should act like everything's sweetness and light when it's not. I'm recommending that you avoid the specific jackass behavior of deciding you are in such a bad way that you can only distract yourself from it by biting the head off of whoever walks into your room. If you can utilize the words "please" and "thank you", even through gritted teeth, many hospital employees will notice ...and be more inclined to go out of their way for you, beyond the requirements of their jobs.
twfarlan to list five things he associates with me, which I shall bloviate about below. Let me know, Gentle Reader, if you want me to give you five topics that remind me of you to expound upon in your own journal.1) Radio contests:
I play a lot of these games, and I mean a *lot*. The only reason I'm writing this up at the moment, instead of listening to an earbud with one hand on the phone, is that I'm in prize time-out with eight of the stations I usually call. I'm not sure that's something to brag about ...for while I win something once a week or so, that something is almost certainly worth less than fifty dollars, and I spend so much time with one ear cocked, I can't fool myself anymore that I'm making my usual hourly rate playing them. But I enjoy acting like Santa by giving concert tickets out, thereby shmoozing my boss, or co-workers, or vendors, and these contests profit me more than playing frisbee golf, which is another hobby I don't intend to stop pursuing.
The self-imposed governors I have on the volume of contests I play are these: I don't want Rachal to ever feel I am ignoring her just to call a radio station, and I don't wanna do anything that'll get me fired from my job. As it happens, most of the games I target are during hours when Rachal's not awake and I ain't workin'.
Local readers are invited to put in requests for specific concerts or other events, and I'll let you know if I can nab them. I like showing off as much as the next fool.
2) Movie trivia:
I've been a movie fiend from a young age, although I've not been to the theater as often in recent years as I would have liked. I have fond memories of a joint in California which would show you a double feature for two dollars, and the time my best friend Carl and I sat through a double-double feature once. (The high point of those four flicks was _Top Gun_, with _Solarbabies_ providing the "I'll-never-have-that-ninety-minutes-back" segment). In high school, I hung out with some other triviaheads, and I remember handing our own sorts of pop quizzes back and forth in math class -- but in these, you'd write down a line of dialog (without the name of the movie), and the person you passed it to would have to write down the next line, until somebody couldn't. I think I spent too much of my youth confusing "knows a lot of the same movies I know" with "is intelligent", and I hope I've eventually internalized that "smart-assed" does not always equal "smart". But that's wandering into the territory of item 4), below.
3) Illustration:
Illustration is only a small percentage, these days, of the artwork required in my daily workload. (Heck, *artwork* is a only a subset of my daily workload; I spend more time chasing down vendors and people who owe us money. But that's what I signed on for, at what amounts to a two-man shop for the moment). I'm not the best illustrator I've ever seen -- I'm not even the best one I know personally -- but I think I can objectively say that I'm pretty good. The thing that grates at me a bit is, I'm not much better than when I graduated college, in 1991.
As far as my philosophy of illustration goes, it's not just being able to duplicate the scene like a camera... although the extent to which I possess that skill dictates how often I can put a line of ink where I want it to go, on the first attempt. My belief is that above all, a good illustrator is *informative*. Deciding what to enhance or leave out is important. Drawing with an agitated rather than a smooth line can tell the viewer something about the subject -- and so can choosing to render in pencil, rather than ink or paint. For example, I enjoy the "day-in-the-life" cartoons posted by
archanglrobriel more than his realistic work *because* I find the quirky stuff more informative about his mood and thought process.I've got many theories about what makes successful Art-with-a-capital-A, but a lot of it falls outside the scope of an illustration discussion. If anyone's curious, I may post more about it later.
And as far as current commissions go, I haven't forgotten you,
browngirl!4) Dry humor:
I frequently describe myself as the sort of person who doesn't mind making a quiet joke in a room full of people, knowing that only 10% caught the humor. I don't feel obliged to explain myself to the other 90%, whether they realize I was attempting a joke or not. I think my idea of a perfect gag is to say something in front of ten people, seven of whom don't hear anything funny, and three of which find it hilarious for three entirely different reasons. I can't often do that trick, where I paint a verbal baseball different colors, then throw it between the listeners carefully enough that they each think they know what color it is all over ...but when I pull it off I'm jazzed.
5) Hospitals:
I know more about hospitals than I would prefer to know, for someone not yet forty. But I still find them comforting, rather than scary, and my frequent visits to them (usually with Rachal as the patient, not me) have helped to solidify my positions on some philosophical matters that I might not have done for a few decades otherwise. The advice I have for people visiting hospitals is similar to the advice I'd give for people playing radio contests: make an effort to stay in the good graces of the front-line employees, even more than the marquee talent. The nurses and hospital techs have more power to cushion your stay than the doctors, I believe, so don't get on their nerves.
I don't mean to suggest that you shouldn't, as a patient, ring the buzzer if you're uncomfortable, or should act like everything's sweetness and light when it's not. I'm recommending that you avoid the specific jackass behavior of deciding you are in such a bad way that you can only distract yourself from it by biting the head off of whoever walks into your room. If you can utilize the words "please" and "thank you", even through gritted teeth, many hospital employees will notice ...and be more inclined to go out of their way for you, beyond the requirements of their jobs.
