Birthday Girl

She's long since asleep and onto her second day of 23rdhood, but here it's technically still her birthday, and here, the US, is where she was born, so happy birthday again, Stasia. Naturally she's already seen these, since they were made for her, but for posterity and all that, a couple small tokens of my affection. Any images I post can be clicked to enlarge them -- I keep having to remind my mom of that, so maybe others don't know it, either.



You didn't think she was getting through a birthday without a Muppet picture, did you? Yes, I looked at reference photos for this. A girl's birthday was at stake!

The Count is sometimes pink and sometimes purple. Check google images if you don't believe me. That's why I hedged my bets and colored him pink and wrote in purple. Also, did you know he had a beard? I'm not sure I ever knew that. It blends in with his suit. And it's impossible to make Oscar the Grouch look angry without drawing eyes -- without them, his naturally angry uni-brow becomes an Asian happiness emoticon (^^). I was trying to make him happy, not ecstatic. Impossible. (Please prove me wrong if you can.)

Scho-Ka-Kola

I don't eat (use? chew? what's the proper verb here?) mints much these days, but a couple months ago I stumbled across a list that almost made me reconsider. (No, it wasn't a list of ways my breath could be improved. I use the internet so I don't have to have good breath. Or leave my parents' basement. Okay, this joke is too real to be funny anymore. Abort. Abort!)

Here's the list that made me want to pick up a bad mint habit: 22 Manly Ways to Reuse an Altoids Tin. If you can browse that list and not have a Dwight Schrute Pavlovian response, you, sir or madam, mystify me. But really, I didn't even want the mints; just the packaging. I admired the ingenuity and frugality on display and buying a tin of mints solely for one of these projects would have been counter-intuitive. Thankfully, pretty much any little tin will do for most of these, so I didn't have to buy a tin of Altoids and enjoy their curiously strong minty freshness; henceforth, Altoids will be stricken from the record.

I wished to assert my own manliness through the art of mint-tin re-purposing. Naturally, I alighted on the least manly way to reuse a tin, aka the least labor-intensive and most manageable way for ME to reuse a tin. I gave the finished product to Stasia as a gift, however, in an attempt to put the "man" back in "manageable."

Anyway, I already spilled the beans last time so you know roughly where this is going: I re-purposed a tin as a pocket watercolor kit. I didn't re-purpose just any tin, though:


My parents bought this extra-caffeinated chocolate in Germany as a souvenir last time they were over there. The name Scho-Ka-Kola is a mix of the words "Schokolade" (chocolate) and "Kola" (cola, i.e. any Coke or Pepsi-style soda) and plays on "Coca-Cola." My parents love both chocolate and Coke, but they don't drink coffee or drive 18-wheelers through the night, so despite "The Energy Chocolate's" claims that it "creates power" and "makes you alert," the tin remained firmly sealed through its "best before" date of March 4, 2011. She chucked the chocolate but thankfully my mom held onto the beautifully bizarre tin long enough for me to spot and claim it. Now it's filled with better things:

It turns out real watercolors are expensive and the kinds of people who need a pocket kit of them probably already have the materials required for miniaturizing them as suggested in the instructions, including crafting separate paint enclosures out of brass strips or clay. In my case, as I also mentioned last time, my mom finally helped me find a cheap ($2) solution at Michael's. The paints are already in their own containers, I just pulled the plastic connectors apart. Then I sawed (well, scissored) a brush in half and included the non-bristled end as a stirrer. The lid doubles as a mixing surface. Technically, you could even use one of the tin halves as a water cup.

And the best part? With this fashionable little kit, Stasia actually paints pretty pictures - Sam Eagle and a gnarled tree, to date.

How cool is that?

realpainting: Sam Eagle

Two posts ago I promised that "next time" you'd see Stasia's second contribution to the world of Muppet fan art, then I made myself a liar by posting my own drawing which I had given my mom for Mother's Day. So really, in so many ways, my mother made me a liar. It's good to get that off my chest.

Only one post later than planned, here's Stasia's rendition of Sam Eagle, sketched with pencil, outlined in marker, and then painted with actual paint and actual paintbrushes on actual paper. Who even has the time these days?


See, Big Bird's cool and all, but S. Eagle is one ice cold bird. He will PECK you, man. This wasn't done from memory, but it was done awesomely. Check out the shading on his face! That was done with $1 "watercolor" paints and $1 paintbrushes I picked up from Michael's Stores. And Stasia rocked 'em.

Next time I'll show you some behind-the-scenes pictures of the artist herself at work on this meisterwerk, including her secret weapon: the portable watercolor kit I put together for her, full of $1 paints and $1 paintbrushes. Don't you wish I were your sugar daddy?

Happy Muppet's Mother's Day

Sorry, Cookie Monster ate your rose.

mspainting: Bat Bird

"Bat" in the title refers both to "batting one's eyelashes" and to "Batman." It seems clever to me, and even if you don't agree, you'll at least see what I mean.

I pestered my sister into drawing me a picture. While she was mspainting (which is a legitimate term now that I've coined it) she remarked, "jeebus it's pretty horrifying already." That's what we like to hear!

Full disclosure: Alena admits she cheated and used a photo reference. I've already said that doesn't bother me. If anything, it makes resulting flaws much more entertaining. Plus, if you're reading my blog, you've got so much Big Bird on the brain that you'll never forget what he looks like again.

Anyway, while drawing anything strictly from memory is an added level of difficulty, the biggest challenge here has to be drawing anything with MS Paint. Using a mouse is great for so many things. Drawing is not one of those things. Hell, even using a touchscreen I struggle to draw basic shapes on the computer.

So with all that in mind, let's see the masterpiece:


Wow, after having expectations set at an all-time low with "horrifying," this is brilliant. Here's the description that accompanied the email: "So I tried to give Big Bird his eyelashes, and ended up making him look like a chick (rimshot). Bonus Snufflepagus!"

Bonus Snuffleupagus indeed.

First of all, well done. Second of most, Big Bird always looks like a chick, with or without the pun intended. Third of some, Big Bird does not actually have eyelashes.

See? If she'd have stuck to drawing from memory, Alena would have had a better excuse for drawing eyelashes, as Stasia did. Also, apparently we would have gotten the super-villain interpretation, as Alena explained, "i originally had big bird with purple and green legs until i looked at the pic. very jokerish." Now you get the hilarious wordplay in the title. What you don't get, sadly, is to see the Joker version. I was disappointed too. Somebody get on that.

(In the meantime, here's a Muppet Wiki [yes, that exists] article about Batman's connection to Sesame Street along with video of one of Batman's amazing animated appearances on the show, doing absolutely nothing to stop the Joker from being run over by a car. Key line: "Holy manhole!" Not in public, Robin. Not in front of the children.)

Oh, and if bonus Snuffleupagus weren't enough, Alena went on to mspaint me something else, which she described as, "My current obsession. Drawn completely from memory (which explains the crappy logo)."

While it sounds revolting, it looks amazing. All of you, get on a caffeine high and mspaint me some more stuff. And next time: Stasia mspaints a muppet without the MS Paint. What's that called again?...Oh yeah, painting!

Ostrich Bird

When I was 14 I wanted nothing more than to own every version of every Beastie Boys album. I had just discovered some international versions in Germany and collected what I could. I sorta trailed off there, though, when I felt I'd gotten most of the stuff worth getting and when other music caught my attention. The Anthology was an excellent cross-section anyway.

Amazingly, 11 years later, the B. Boys are still putting out new stuff, and while I wasn't very impressed with their 2004 effort, To The 5 Boroughs, the newest release, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, is a remarkable return to form. You can stream it for free here (via Soundcloud) and you can stream or download a sweet megamix of the Beastie Boys through the ages by DJ Z-Trip here, which I'm jammin' to while typing this very post. Point being, if the Beasties can keep kickin' it after all these years, the least I can do is keep kickin' it after all these weeks, "it" in my case being Big Bird posts.

Another recruit from Easter, Stasia's aunt Meg requested to draw Big Bird on paper. Unorthodox, I know, but I allowed it: I don't say no to drawings in any format. Etch a sketch of Big Bird on an Etch-A-Sketch and mail me that if you really want. Just because I can't do it doesn't mean you shouldn't.

So here's our first colored-pencil-and-paper submission:


Magnificent. In case you can't read the inscription, the message reads, "This is what Big Bird really looks like." Can't argue with that.

Uhhhhhnless you've actually seen Big Bird. Then you've probably got a solid argument formulated.

The scan quality isn't perfect; some of the vibrancy of the colors were lost in scanslation. But this interpretation of Big Bird, with his gaudy head feathers and flamboyant neon orange- and pink-striped legs and neck, looks like an Ostrich of Paradise. This must be the mutilated extreme of the fabulous Big Bird envisioned by Stasia: Big Bird after years of wearing African neck rings to stretch out his neck in the vain pursuit of an ideal of beauty. (Or tourist dollars.)

Hollywood does terrible things to bird-people.

In Meg's defense, Big Bird wasn't of her childhood, nor did her kids watch much Sesame Street, so taking those things into consideration, this is a fantastic effort. Big Bird is also on the advanced side of Sesame Street characters you could draw from memory. Cookie Monster, my favorite, is probably beginner, since he's mostly just a blue blob with googly eyes and a gaping, cookie-devouring, black-hole of a maw. Snuffleupagus would be be intermediate to draw and advanced to spell (yeah, Google Suggest corrected it for me -- and that's Mr. Snuffleupagus to you).

So go ahead and try your hand at a drawing or painting or whatever, whether you're looking at it currently or you've only heard of it in passing and never actually seen one in real life. Hey, maybe you can find a field of blooming dandelions and strategically kick some of the yellow heads off to carve out a Big Bird shape. Now that's a picture I want to see (or a field I want to stumble upon while hiking). To inspire you, here's a poem I wrote in creative writing class in high school, after doing some tongues-on research by licking the head of a dandelion:

Dandelions
Ain't so dandy;
They don't taste at
All like candy.

I Dreamed I Was Eating a Giant Marshmallow...

...and when I woke up, I made Stasia this helpful guide, Dream Symbols 4 Dummies (Part 1):


I assume she cited me properly when she referenced my guide in her grad school essay. With my someday-complete 7-volume work by your side (7 is a powerful number because it ate 9 in this dream I had), you, too, will be destined for greatness as a drama- and/or movement-therapist with an emphasis on dream deliciousness. Also, you will no longer find yourself devouring inedible objects in non-dream world, or "the real world" (as some call it, though is something really real if it's inedible? Yes - check out volume 3 for the exciting proof!). This will greatly ease your stomach pains and subsequently your nightmares. Order now!

Go ahead and draw me your own dream symbol interpretations if you've got those kinds of things. Oh, and I'll definitely post a new Big Bird picture soon, promise. But send me more drawings, even in dream world if you'd like. Also by real world email, just in case. I tend to eat things in dream world.