New Year’s Resolution decided.
Make this thing a reality. End of story. I have until Comic Con 2012.
Looking for a way back in.
Take page from Cortazar, build story from chapter of existing narrative.
Bill Pullman’s Fred character walks into void in Lynch’s Lost Highway. Exits into megacity BsAs. Streets never sleep. Obsessed with finding the right flavor of coffee at any late night corner dive. People told him it was like Paris but he doesn’t believe them. Leaves one crumbling dance at 3am to find freshly dressed couples leaving for the night. The night is young they say in the city that is lit by night.
Fred returns to his task of recreating the city block by block out of balsawood. He will light it on fire but chickens out at the last minute, holding onto the only memory he has. When he closes his eyes he still sees the streets moving and the dance he never left in the room with the 20 ft ceiling that threatens to cave in. Wakes to find himself teaching writing to a mixed bag class of never-weres and old high school rivals. His apartment is always in a state of repair. Scaffolding everywhere and no curtains and the drip drip drip of a leaky faucet.
He’s found the right coffee at last and gazes skyward at every monumental glass and marble highrise he passes in the cab. He will always look like a tourist; his enthusiasm gives him away.
Visit to DGPH hq.
My pre-conceived notion of the eternally black-clad Eurocentric designer pants designer is hard lived down. One of my goals on this Buenos Aires trip was to meet and chat with a group of my design heroes: namely DGPH, the design studio responsible for the whimsical character of Topo, a sort of magical cross between Domo and Chip and Dale.
I was actually a bit nervous to meet these guys. I greatly respect their work and totally expected some huge team of designers in a perfectly-appointed all white with mod furnishings studio with some German interns thrown in for good measure. Coming upon their simple (yes, white) Palermo building, I was pleasantly taken aback by the low key setting for their work. Three Argentines, toiling away, more than happy to take a lunchtime break to show me their space and how they go about their day creating awesomeness (in addition to doing advertising and character vinyl, the team has recently completed their first children’s playground in Buenos Aires). We had lunch, exchanged some goodies (Carter t-shirts for them, a Topo comic for me), and talked about BA and the mechanics of running a creative business. I left feeling humbled and even more inspired to keep pursuing my dreams. Diego (on the right and my main contact) was kind enough to give us a list of cool things to do around town, and his brother gave us a container of dulce de leche.
The new kicks. Almost fitting into the requisite swank Palermo Soho scene. Cortado-swilling gringo you know who you are.
Cortado at 8
I am taller than Willem Dafoe. I am also a more advanced tango dancer, but tonight that doesn’t matter. What matters is that despite being at one time Jesus Christ, another time a freaky psychiatrist married to a mentally devolving Charlotte Gainsbourg, and yet another time a blue speedo-clad German accented deck hand on the great ship Zissou, Willem Dafoe stands just a few inches below me.
The man has nerve. He enters the fray of milongites and faded Fassbinder strippers to stake his claim on the dance floor. I have to hand it to him to get out and do it despite his clear beginner feet. Acting must prepare you for the Chinese algebra that is learning the tango. He’s with his usual entourage: kind faced locals, his hot female partner, and the man that looks like a young bald Frank Langella who I assume is his agent. Young bald Langella has that constantly distracted look of being more important than anything that surrounds him. Willem is learning and doing his best. Next time we run into him, Lovica must ask him to dance; it is destiny.
I am getting it now, the late nights and the endless city. Eat at 10 so you can stroll back by 3 from your dance or your drink or your run in with the expat at the club. It makes for safer neighborhoods, if constantly tired mornings. The old kid feeling of missing something if I sleep doesn’t really come into play because the next big thing will probably be happening in a few hours. We have the knack of being everywhere just half an hour before the crowd comes. In another week maybe we will be in sync.
The fruitless search for Cortazar in translation has made me realize I’m living in a Cortazar story. I don’t need the words; I have the images. We wake at 10 and roust about for our daily coffee and medialunas at 11. Four o’clock naps wake to the sound of birds in our garden and every night is a new chapter in urban discovery. The trick to speaking Porteno is sounding amused and slightly stoned. Always ask what’s up. Say thank you and string together sentences with “emmm” not “um”.
If I were the paranoid type I’d wonder why the Portenos are so controlled and kind. But I feel invited to walk down those darkened leafy cobblestone streets. My head is like a cotton swab after navigating the Recoleta traffic but that’s nothing a choice cut of bife won’t fix.
Buenos Aires is many cities. It is New York on slow down or Paris with more dogs. Or maybe Austin without the cowboy hats and enchilada bars. Getting lost is the point.
Bobby Peru in Palermo
Willem Dafoe is starring in the late night tango movie of my life. He laughs his scary open mouthed laugh as he tosses back shots of a clear liquid with friends at a table and claps to the tuba tango band. Leaving the basement venue after 1 we wander cracked tile pavements and side streets with swaying Porteno tweeners. There must be something open we think so we go to the sound and the light blinking off the square where we had lunch in Palermo Soho.
Another tall ceilinged well lit cafe takes us in and we sit in a clean diner booth more New Orleans than Johnny Rockets. It promises ice cream with its all-white wainscoting and vintage American ads for Pepsi. But something is amiss something is different. Forgotten 80s videos play on the flat screen and the nachos have a separate cup for the melted cheese.
This is a crazy massive beautiful city full of kind-faced people and leafy streets and taxis that always appear at just the right time. But we must teach them about nachos.
The new moleskine style. Must figure out a name for this style. The new psych?
Nowhere Fast
This could be Carter’s head. This is machined metal, not to be confused with Metal Machine Music. It’s going to be too heavy for his tiny little plastic+bamboo body, but damn does it look amazing. I even like the striped traces of the tool on its face.
Picked this up on one of seemingly many rainy rainy soggy-as-shite nights in the ghetto. Dude that did this for me put down the bong in time for me to pick it up. Are all craftsmen/artists required to wake and bake? It seems so. Just as in all designers must be flakes. Ah but I digress.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, really) I will be spending November in Buenos Aires and so won’t be able to get the booth at Designer Con this year. Alas, I have still given myself the deadline of Halloween 2011 to get this prototype done. It is so close I can taste it.
To help matters I have hired my new right hand gal, the intrepid Katie Broughton of Wild Planet, to help with the final engineering. I like how this has come full circle. Katie was my first contact at WP oh so many years ago (a lifetime really) when I was still in school and taking a business class from her husband at Haas in Berkeley. I trust her engineering acumen (the MIT and Stanford degrees don’t hurt) and she is REALLY into robots.
I will make all attempts at updating this thing over the next four months as I head down the final stretch.
you’ve got everything now
Whirlwind of activity and new things since last I posted. To start off, Halloween was a blast as usual, me continuing to mine the deepest depths of my imagination to find ever-more obscure costumes. This time out I went for a homemade (second year in a row) kaiju/Ultraman fiend, Alien Zarab.
Mine was a little more Oaksterdam-Ninja:
…but I like to think I did him justice. Didn’t have time/money for the big alien chestsuit, so I made do with a puffy jacket (Oaktown style) under long underwear-purchased at of course-SuperLongs. Mask was silver-painted foamcore and fun foam and some old acrylic I had around the shed.
On to the big news. I am designing toys for the folks at Wild Planet in SF. Having a blast. I am tired all the time, but loving it. My mind gets stretched in so many directions on a near-daily basis and my personal fetishes/deviances/obsessions come to play in things I draw and present.
Other big news. Carter is printed and about 75% of the way there. After this I am going to do some toys that have no articulation and don’t come apart. Holy crap this has been an engineering nightmare. But look at these 3D prints!
