Thursday, June 11, 2009

Learning my ABC's

Wednesday at work was a great deal of fun. Lots of printing and even typesetting my own poster.

The first task I had was to set four fonts and proof them in black. Their purpose was for Matt to scan and use in computer design work. The fonts were all wood type, some that Brady hadn't even used yet. There was this amazing small and squat tuscan font that I adored, although it was missing a very essential "a" and "d".

Out of the four fonts, three were small enough to fit on one sheet of chipboard. I arranged them in a broadside style, attempting to have both form and function. I surprised Brady with how fast I finished setting the type and printing. He checked out my final result and loved it enough to set me to work on creating an alphabet proof poster using a variety of thick and thin fonts. The poster is very simple and graphic, although completely my choice of fonts and placement. Brady leaned towards a lack of embellishments and focusing on the boldness of the letterforms. He said he'd been meaning to make a type poster and now I've gotten to do it for him.

I almost finished setting the pressbed, but around 5:30 I'd had enough and went home before leaving to put up the Pistol posters.

At home, I ran into Joe. He wanted to join me in my pamphleting rampage, but needed to go to Costco to pick up food for the band playing later in the evening. We decided to compromise and do some poster pining on the way to Costco.

Not many posters ended up being hung, only four out of thirty. I'll have to finish tonight. Costco tricked me into buying two books with their low prices, "Botany of Desire", and "Eat, Pray, Love". "Botany of Desire" promises to be an excellent read.

The second show of my stay started at ten, and this time I did not strike out. There was no waffling in and out of my room or moping in a corner. Instead, I wore my new black dress, put my hair up and attempted to make conversations. Much to my benefit, I was friendly and outgoing. If one acts with confidence, others will assume they have it and react with that in mind.

One fellow who came over cooked a very delicious dinner of tortellinis fried in garlic oil. I am told he is a chef at a local vegan resturant. Occationally Joe enlists him to cook dinner for the touring band. This band, Dead Science, was touring from Seattle and we spent some time talking about Pacific Northwest venues.

The two opening bands were very good, much better than any who played last week. I have a new local favorite, Mannequin Skywalker http://www.myspace.com/mannequinskywalker1. They preformed a stellar live show, and musically fit the venue. There are some bands who's sound lends itself to a loft/warehouse, and there are some that do not. The headliner last night, Deas Science, did not. Their lead singer was among the ranks of front men who sing with a whine that is unappealing and personally, boring. Seems to make sense he's from Seattle.

While they played I went in my room to watch some Colbert Report and an episode of Buffy before falling asleep. It is about time for me to get started on my zine. I have an idea of what I'm doing, now I need to plan it out.

One last thing I did yesterday was the dishes. With that I found that if I am going to live here, there will have to be a cleaning schedule or I will end up doing everything myself. Not because Uriah or Joe don't clean, they do, but because they put it off until one cannot help but need to clean. It isn't everywhere either, mostly the kitchen and the cat hair. The kitchen quickly stacks up with dirty dishes, which can't be a good thing when it get hot, and the cat hair has created small rugs in some places along the walls. I plan to work on a solution more this weekend when I have better time to throughly inspect the apartment and decide what should be done.