Savannah's Savannah

"You wan'a spend 60 hours in the next 4 days doing a mural for me? You wan'a?" Yes I do, little Savannah. In fact, that 3 year old girl could get me to do nearly anything by flashing those big brown eyes at me, grabbing my hand, and saying "You wan'a?" in that sweet little voice. You wan'a watch a show with me, you wan'a jump in a circle with me, you wan'a eat oatmeal with me, you wan'a jump off the Golden Gate Bridge with me? Anything you say. Yes. When the coffee and the diet cokes and the whiskey and the corndogs wore off, that was the voice that kept me going in the 18th hour of the 4th day of this ridiculous project.


But let me start by saying that customer service at airlines and airports in the US is at an all-time low. I know. That's obvious to anyone who flies these days, but they really took it to a new nadir on this trip. I won't go into the details of the way in which they screwed me on my flight to San Francisco on the way over a week and a half ago, because they were many and varied, but let's just say that it took me a cool 15 hours to get to my destination. Once I arrived, everything was great though, as akboognish and wife sc showed me a great time and some first class hospitality. We got some quality Cali-Mexican food and hit some fun hip spots in the Mission before calling it a PST night. The next night, we headed back down to the Mission (an area known for its murals, incidentally), met up with a handful of former Massholes, and partied it up at the bars and at a hopping house party. After a couple nights of partying, we were happy to take a leisurely drive up to Napa to hang out with MCSmackdown and his lovely little lady.


The room is 11 ft x 12 ft x 8 ft high and MCSmack had primed it with a metallic paint that was going to allow magnets to be hang all over the mural. We weren't sure how well that was going to work with 2 coats of semi-gloss on top of it (that was back when I thought I was going to be able to do two full coats of the entire mural in 3 days and change) but MCS'down thought it would be worth it to try. Here's what it looked like when I got there:






On my 4th day in Cali, I got right to work on the mural (well, after eating oatmeal and playing house with Savannah - can't say no. can't do it). She was in and out, being run around on errands and playdates, but when she did pop in, she was happy to identify the animals I was penciling in on the wall and didn't seem to have a problem with what I was doing to her room, despite not really understanding it. She even helped by drawing a bird on the wall, which I later painted in (see the photo at the top of the post). Later in the day, she came in to give me a big hug goodbye (she was going to her mom's for a few days), and she asked "wha's that?" about the drawing on the wall at her eye level. I told her that it was a rhino. She looked at it, gave the wall a hug, and stomped out of the house shouting "klop a pop pop! klop a pop pop!"

the exact moment that my heart disintegrated.

at which point, I resolved that she was going to get a kick ass mural no matter what. Well, I don't know if it's "kick ass", but the "no matter what" on the mural turned out to be 60 hours over 4 days, including an epic 18 hour painting session that spilled into 4:30 AM on Thanksgiving morning (which was the last possible morning I could leave to go back to SF). Here it is:








If you want to see what it would be like for a 3 year old to walk into the room, including my impression of how she would say "Wan'a see a mural?", view here:



I could've easily put another 10 - 12 hours into it to get it to a point where I would've been satisfied, but that's all the time I had, so some of the things I wanted to do didn't get done, or got done insufficiently. But I got it to the point where all the animals were done to my satisfaction and all the mistakes and drips were touched up. Hopefully, Savannah's going to "wan'a" hang out in her room. I'm pretty sure she'll like it. MCSmackadoo said that she's not scared of any animals so that wasn't an issue and he was very happy with the final product so that's that.



Postscript: A few hours later, I was back in San Francisco, physically and mentally exhausted, with a 15 person Thanksgiving dinner on tap. Good company and free flowing beer and wine assisted me greatly in making it through that. Not that it was particularly stressful. But it's the holidays. And I was 100% out of gas. But I got my wind (fumes?), and the next day brought a little leisure (including a stop at the mystery book store pictured at right) until I decided to go online and reconfirm my 9:39 PM red-eye, non-stop, first class flight back to Boston at around 3:00 PM. I couldn't seem to get any results from my search of the confirmation number so I called the 800 number. Turns out that they had cancelled the 9:39 flight and I was supposed to have been on the 1:30 PM flight instead. A solid 8 hours earlier than my flight. And they didn't feel the need to inform me of that in any way. Moral of the post: airlines suck, murals are hard, Savannah is cute.

The Ball, Dropped

Eight days since my last post = shameful. What kind of mickey mouse operation am I running here at VTK? My apologies to all 5 of my remaining readers for dropping the ball. I have a good excuse for not posting during 1/2 of that span - I was in Michigan, ie on my dad's dinosaur machine. After several frozen screens, crashes, mini memory dumps, spyware and cookie cleaning sessions, etc, I asked him exactly how old it was and he said about 10 years. (*pulling non-existent hair out*) I told him that it's unconscionable to be working on a machine that far past its life span and that he needed to buy a mac laptop. C'mon. I think all non-technical people and all people over the age of 60 (is that redundant?) should have to buy macs. That should be a law. But the point is that I wasn't going to attempt to do anything other than a 60 second check of my email on that piece of dung. So posting was out of the question.

Long time VTK readers know what a visit to Michigan means: Costingo! Newer readers can familiarize yourselves here and here. With myself, lil bro, and MAC on site, Costingo was on again. Unfortunately, the absence of lc and the undesirable scheduling made for a somewhat muddled affair. I suppose it was folly to think that we could recreate the phenomenon that was Costingo.06, but we had to try, right? Due to an adults cocktail party on Friday night, a kids High School Musical 2 party on Saturday night, and a scheduled departure of lil bro and MAC on Sunday afternoon, Costingo.07 got slotted for 11:30 AM on Sunday morning. And I have to tell you, I think I speak for everyone when I say that Costingo is more of a 4:30 PM on Saturday affair. The late afternoon ramping up for Saturday night highballs gave way to the late morning hair of the dog Sunday bloody marys and coffee/bailey's. The afternoon of getting jacked up for the big event gave way to the harried morning hungover preparations and artificial excitement. You can see how the vibe might be affected. But it's still Costingo, so it kicked ass, naturally. The kids and the neighbors showed up in their assorted hodge podge outfits and, as was the case last year, everyone was a bit confused and uncertain as to what exactly was going on. Costumed bingo dance party with a cupcake frosting competition? what? But eventually lc's dance mix kicked in and we were off. The chicken cup craft session got everyone more confused/excited, a rousing game of bingo included a hungover UJ leaning back in his chair and breaking an expensive stained glass window, and tacos and hotdogs set off the bailey's heavy coffee nicely. Also, no one cried. So Costingo was a success.

Speaking of my ongoing blogging anxiety, I just realized that a google search of "Costingo" yields 3 links to VTK in the first 3 results. So I guess, welcome to VTK, everyone who is old enough to google "Costingo". Eat your vegetables, listen to your parents, do be happy, and disregard everything you read from/about your step-uncle here at VTK. It's all nonsense. And stay in school. And be nice to your siblings and cousins. And don't swear. And a special shout out to the newest costingita, baby C. She's probably not reading this yet, but she's so cute and well behaved that she gets a shout out anyways.

Rounding out the trip to MI was a flight delay for the NYC contingent which led to them staying an extra day. An extra day in which we watched a bunch of movies: Breach (sucked), My Big Fat Greek Wedding (cute/boring), The Interpreter (best of the bunch), and Bourne Ultimatum (good for what it is - 90 minutes of punching/crashing/smashing tension).

Rounding out the post, I'm listening to the "new" Modest Mouse right now, and I have to give it the thumbs up. Better than their last album, with which I was a little disappointed. It starts a little eh with the first few songs, but brings it around with the next few, and finishes up strong. I'm especially intrigued by track 11, Steam Engenius, which seems to be a bit of a mash-up of Third Uncle by Brian Eno and Learning to Fly by Pink Floyd. with a some Isaac and Johnny Marr thrown in. I'm not saying it's a ripoff, just recognizing influences. All in all, I'd say that the addition of Marr to the Mouse was a success.

Boston Baby Boom

I am awash in babies these days. What, you say? The perennially single bachelor VTK? Babies? OK, clearly I'm not as awash as the parents of said babies, but I'm a little bit awash nonetheless. Ten good friends of mine (5 couples) have welcomed newborns into the world in the last five months and, by my count, there's one more baby on the way in the next 4 months or so. I think it's just the one. That's in addition to five VTK friend toddlers (1 to 2.5 yr olds) already bopping around. Oh, and there's the seven (soon to be 8) step nieces and nephews out in Michigan - the Costingitos. And the five young children of my cousins that I saw at XMas. So, I guess I'm awash in kids in general, but I've got babies on the mind right now. Counting the five new babies and the one on the way, that makes twelve friends of mine that are now consumed with all things baby, so I'm in second or third degree baby mode by default. Which is probably slightly easier than doing the actual parenting. I get to make faces at the tots and buy them Celtics gear and watch their development from unfocused, contrast-recognizing infants to smiling, more reactive, interactive tiny people. And I don't have to change "poopy diapers", get up at all hours of the night, breast feed, deal with separation anxiety, or feel the pain of hearing my child cry (am I missing anything? that pretty much sums up the experience of being a parent, right?)... Maybe "awash" isn't the right word here. I really do nothing other than go to the occasional baby shower or briss and visit the newborns occasionally. I guess I just went to Baby M's briss last week and visited Baby C and Baby L (aka Baby LDNCSC) the last two evenings, so it seems like I'm awash. In a good way, of course. Kids and babies are great. So untainted by the world. Hanging out with them is sort of like rebooting my opinion of humanity.

So, since it's become a major topic of conversation, supplanting usual VTK topics such as sports, politics, music, etc, I thought I would do a post giving a shout out to all the young babes out there. GOO GOO GAA GAA, y'all! And now, I will rank them in order of cuteness:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

... hmmmm ... maybe I shouldn't do that. Suffice it to say that your baby (yes, you) is without question the cutest I have ever seen.

And now for the real reason behind this post - the latest in the Creepy VTK Picture Series (baby and papa blurred for their protection). Would you let this guy near your baby?