Market This!

Anyone who has wielded a Sharpie pen at a frat party and used the skin of an unconscious brother as the canvas knows that these versatile little pens aren’t just for marking your CD mixes anymore.

But Charlie Kratzer of Lexington, KY has taken the instrument to a whole new level, drawing an intricate Sharpie mural in the basement of his home that is elegant and fun, and beautifully complements the modern decor of the room. (Although looking at it does give us the uncontrollable urge to show up with a box of Crayolas and go nuts colorizing it.)

If Kratzer’s whimsical style isn’t your cup of tea, you may want to check out what artist Justine Ashbee is doing with her Sharpies these days. Or this Sharpie-decorated Lamborghini. Or the Sharpie Art Blog.

We think all of it is pretty darn cool. And as we stare around at the blank, boring walls of our home office, we can’t help but fantasize about the possibilities. Now let’s see; where did that marker go..?

I have to hope that all the warm and sentimental images of Christmas are true. That inside, houses really are filled with children elated to see that Santa ate the cookies. Where there are crazy piles of shredded wrapping paper and families gather around a warm fire to share home-baked cookies and stories.

Because from the outside, to those of us who are Jewish, Christmas can be downright creepy.

Christians don’t get to experience the queerness of a closed Home Depot during regular shopping hours. They’re unfazed by radio stations playing hours of ethereal choirs with no interruptions of jaunty DJ banter. To me, on Christmas day, it’s as if the whole world has been abducted by aliens. It’s no wonder Jews congregate at Chinese restaurants and movie theaters on December 25. It’s the only way we can get over feeling abandoned.

Driving to my friend’s house in the morning to feed her cats, mine are the only tire tracks in the snow. The eeriness of the day is heightened by the cold and silent contrast of the house that just yesterday had been bustling with family and friends wrapping presents and baking cookies, with a fire in the wood stove and holly jolly Christmas tunes.   When I arrive, even the cats look haunted and hunched in the farthest corners of the house, as if to say, “They all just disappeared.”

Returning home past the empty gas station/convenience store, mine are still the only tire tracks in the snow.

I remember the first Christmas my husband and I spent together. We were living in Salt Lake City and decided to spend the holiday rock climbing and camping in the Nevada desert. Not surprisingly for that time of year, the campground was empty. It was also unusually cold and extremely windy. Unable to keep a match lit long enough to get our propane grill going, we huddled inside the tent while blasts of wind grabbed and flattened the nylon walls against our heads. When it became clear heavy rains were about to ensue, we drove to a tiny outlying town where if not for the sleepy-looking old man at the front desk, we might have been the only people in town. With Denny’s (the only dining option) closed, we picked up a box of Froot Loops and some milk at the gas station and sat uneasily in our not-entirely clean room feeling like we were the unlikely leading characters in a holiday disaster movie.

Fortunately, the effect of the day doesn’t last long. And as the late Christmas afternoon wears on, I go for a walk to listen to the reassuring sound of the river. Passing house after house, I see inside: shimmering lights on the tree, an easy flow of movement and conversation, folks with wine glasses in hand, squirming toddlers in their laps, elegant dinners soon to be served on once-a-year china.

And though it’s cold outside and I am on the outside looking in on traditions I don’t share, I am comforted. We are all still in this together.

Tomorrow, the sun will rise and Home Depot will open again and thank goodness for that because Christmas day is the closest I ever want to get to the apocalypse.

Cheers and merry,

Amy

Remember when you were at the mercy of whatever was on TV during the holidays, so you had to settle into the smelly couch in the basement with a Diet Coke and watch a heaping dose of simplified moralistic “special holiday programming” until your eyes burned?

Yeah, we miss those days, too.

Evidently, so does Jeffery Bennett, a developer who took it upon himself to merge a quintessential 80s basement backdrop with the wonders of YouTube’s classic Gen-X Christmas material.

The result is a web app that, more than anything else we’ve seen, manages to eschew the “look what I can do!” flash that developers are always using to bring us back to the 80s – an ironic and unfortunate tendency where the new technology almost always eclipses the old and we just end up feeling sad thinking of how far gone those days really are.

Bennett, by contrast, allows us to wallow in them. Spend 10 minutes with this albeit still slightly buggy toy and you may genuinely feel you are once again a 12-year old in your parents’ basement, up past your bedtime watching the Perfect Strangers Christmas Special.

(Imagine my surprise when I actually had to adjust the rabbit ears on the TV to get one of the shows to come in – with all-to-familiar mixed results and prolonged frustration. If I could have banged on the top of my laptop monitor, I would have.)

The toy is here: http://betamaxmas.com/

Bennett’s other stuff is here: http://www.meandmybadself.com/

Enjoy, and Merry Christmas, kids.

(Word to the wise: if you’re channel surfing and getting the same 2 shows over and over, try a hard-refresh of your browser.)

We took our daughter out to eat the other night for her birthday, and this was the coaster that was placed under our giant 26-ounce mug. The words were so poetic, so loquacious, that we thought them necessary to share. (A few of them, we are convinced, are entirely made up. “Stanglmair?” Really?)

This “wine snob” approach to beer copy is not entirely surprising, but this particular coaster was certainly selling to the wrong audience. We were at a Ponderosa-esque, steak-and-fries joint, full of overweight American diners feasting on grease and cheap beer. (The waitress actually asked the table next to us if they needed anything or if they were “just taking a breather.” From eating. Our guess is they didn’t care about the “citrusy notes” in their 3-dollar draft.)

Anyway. Cheers, folks…

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“SOUL of the BEER:

Aroma hops, like Halltertau Mittlefruch from the Stanglmair family farm in Bavaria, express the fullest flavor dimension of the hop rather than just adding bitterness to the beer. THese hops impart the unique flavors from spicy to slightly floral to citrusy notes that give Samuel Adams Boston Lager its robust flavorful taste.”