WALLYWARE

Could somebody please put a straight jacket on that juggling jogger!

Wow!  For the second time this year, I got one of my funny running memoirs printed front and center in “The Lighter Side” section of Colorado Runner.  This one is from a collection of stories about “My Craziest Races”:

At age 47, I was feeling pretty good about myself by qualifying for the A wave of the Boulder Boulder 10K.  Two miles into the race I was running comfortable 6:05 minute miles when I passed a college age guy who was JUGGLING TENNIS BALLS AS HE RAN!  It totally burst my bubble and I suddenly realized how one person’s race pace is another person’s easy clip.  I managed to stay ahead of him for the rest of the race, and the high point of the day for me was beating the legendary Bill Rodgers who finished a minute and a half behind me.  I don’t know how Bill did against the tennis ball guy.

And I just discovered a really cool database for runners that allows you, with the click of a button, to compile a list of all your race results over that past few decades.  Athlinks is perfect for the running geek who wants to instantly calculate the average time of his or her marathons, half marathons, 10Ks or whatever.  Check it out!

Here’s a nice shot Lori took at last month’s Mt. Evans Ascent.  It’s a 14.5 mile race that starts at 10,600 ft. elevation and finishes at 14,264 ft.  The weather was perfect and I felt pretty strong considering the high elevation.  I’m the runner in the yellow shirt:

Celebrating one’s abusive muse.

Here’s a unique cup and saucer designed for the artist who has to has to force himself to get to work.  Is it semi-autobiographical? You bet! I only have one of these in stock, so head on over to the online store to to snap it up.

In other words, decaf is a false idol.

Java is a time honored theme in my work.  It’s no secret that a coffee mug with a good joke about caffeine, the joy of guzzling your morning brew, or the horrors of decaf will have a solid fan base.  100 million Americans drink 350 million cups of coffee each day, which explains why roughly half of the pots I make are coffee mugs.  To get your hands on this new religious object, speed on over to the online store!

Here’s more proof that I might be loosing my mind.

OK…. I think this is a really great coffee mug.  If you agree with me and you want to own it, you better get over to my online store ASAP because I only have one in stock right now.  This design just kind of came to me in a flash and I like the way it makes fun of the people who are always telling other people how to be when they in fact are that way themselves.  There is probably even more under the surface here, but let’s not get into it, OK?  I did a series of weird and wonderful “deluxe” mugs last week and I’ll be posting little write-ups on them every day this week just for fun.  So come back tomorrow and check out my latest ceramic oddity!

April Fool’s Day Odds ‘N Ends

Halloween is for exhibitionists and St. Patrick’s Day is for drunks, but my favorite second string holiday is April Fool’s Day because it celebrates my profession: humor.  I love the fact that nobody even knows the origin of this holiday which was first recorded in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in 1392.  In honor of this day, I have painstakingly added a bunch of weird odds and ends items to my online store.  The above piece was a collaboration with my former assistant John Lacey, and it was exhibited in the 2002 Colorado Men in Clay show. The thumbnails below are just some of the pots that are available on this hallowed idiot’s holiday.  It is important to note that if you don’t see them in the online store, it means that they were snapped up by an earlier shopper.  Better luck next year!

One of my favorite April Fool’s Day memories is that of a prank that Lori and I pulled on our daughter Monica when she was in the first grade.  We have a family tradition of pulling practical jokes on our kids on April Fool’s Day, and they generally (but not always) have gone well.  This one could have gone bad, but Monica’s keen sense of mischief saved the day.  The joke was simple: we put a note in her lunch that said:  “This coupon is good for one FREE PUPPY!  Simply take it to the principal’s office and give it to him and he will give you a puppy!”  Yes, it’s a knockoff of that great joke about the “free horsie” coupon in Shel Silverstein’s, Uncle Shelby’s ABZs. Monica handled this prank wonderfully well.  First she showed it to her teacher who laughed a lot and told her to go to the principal’s office.  The principal was, of course dumbfounded and couldn’t produce a puppy.  Monica’s memory of this event is that she wasn’t traumatized, and I think she “got” the joke.  The fact that she loves pulling pranks nowadays is a testament to the fact that this wasn’t a case of child abuse.  Either way, the statute of limitations is long gone because Monica is now in a freshman in college and doing quite well. I wonder how her roommates are doing today?

A new drug mug + Wally’s Prius tries to kill him

Two of the top selling themes in my line of pottery are coffee and drugs. “Holy Shit! That’s good coffee!” was one of the very first jokes I ever put on a mug and it’s still selling really well.   So it is with great pleasure that I debut one of the best cartoons ever on the topic of mind altering stuff: the “Tell me about your drugs” mug.  The words come from one of my favorite songs by Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians, and I think this is one of my finest “collage of images” designs.  What I really like about this one is that it makes you think about the good and bad aspects of drug use.  Some drugs are wonderful: music and art have the ability to take our minds away and return us to the real world in better shape than before.  But drugs, gambling and alcohol are clearly on the other end of the spectrum.  I’m thinking about marketing this item to the psychiatric community as it could be the perfect gift for the people who deal with these issues on a day to day basis.

And my new Wally design is pretty darn timely.  The bizarre mystery about what is causing random Toyotas to speed up and apparently attempt to kill their owners reminded me of the dialog between astronaut Dave and Hal the computer in “2001: A Space Odyssey”.  Until they find out what is actually causing this phenomenon, my explanation is as good as any…

Funny Running & Coach Sam Adams

I have two distinctly different bits of news from the running world to share today.  The first is on the lighter side and was in fact published this month in the section of Colorado Runner Magazine called “The Lighter Side”.  Last summer they ran a contest where readers were asked to send in their funniest running stories.  I had a good one so I wrote it up and sent it off.  Lo and behold, it took first place and I won a free entry to The Rock ‘N Roll Marathon in Tempe.  I ended up selling my entry to the race, but it was fun to see the story in print.  My memorial beat out stories about getting shoes stuck in mud, using a maxi-pad as a shoe insert and a bout of uncontrollable diaherria at a track meet.  (EEEEEW!)  So I think the best tale won.  You be the judge:

“I was a junior at UC Santa Barbara it was the first week of organized workouts for the intercollegiate cross country team.  We were taking a couple of the new members on a run that finishes up on the beach.  As we descended a trail that leads to the beach, we practically ran into a couple making love in the sand on the beach.  We all breezed passed them silently and the new guys were totally floored, to say the least.  Later, we made a lot of jokes about ‘the natural flora and fauna at UCSB’.”

My other sports news is about the passing of Coach Sam Adams.  He died last Monday at the age of 78.  I was fortunate to have been coached by “The Rock” during my four years at UCSB, and he was a great guy to know.  He was quiet, gentle and humorous.  His forte was the decathlon.  In the late 70s I was there to see him coach star pentathlete Jane Frederick, who was America’s best throughout the late 70s and early 80s.  The film, “Personal Best” was based on her life, and it’s like a time machine for me to watch as a lot of the track scenes have Jane and other athletes I knew from that era.  Sam, you will be missed!

George Clooney Flavored Tofu Confirms My PETA Conspiracy Theory

This week I’m going to use my blog to expose something I’ve been wanting to expose for years: my sincere belief that PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) simply has to be run by people who hate animals and they are doing everything in their power to make a joke out of the animal rights movement. This heinous subterfuge has been painfully obvious to me for a very long time, and I’m hoping that last week’s ultra-wacky PETA news story will finally make my theory clear to the rest of the world. For those of you that missed it, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk procured a sweat-soaked towel used by actor George Clooney, and she is in the process of trying to develop a food product that will taste just like the academy award winning actor’s precious bodily fluid. In a letter to Mr. Clooney, Ms. Newkirk wrote:

“The technology actually exists to take your perspiration and make it into George Cooney-flavored tofu (CloFu). We could do that and give the tofu away. Of course, your fans would swoon at the idea of eating CloFu, but what interests us most is that we would attract many people who don’t try tofu because they worry that it would be bland or that they wouldn’t know how to cook it.”

There are so many levels of bizarre and stupid in the above paragraph that it totally boggles the mind. Why would anyone be attracted to a food that tastes like movie star sweat? If she were pitching smoothies with the flavor of Angelina Jolie’s breast milk, I suppose an argument could be made that there is a small niche market out there, but true CloFu aficionados are creatures so rare you will only find them described in abnormal psychology textbooks.

But the abnormal is the norm in PETA-land and to support my conspiracy theory I will list below some of their “greatest hits” stupid news stories over the past decade. These prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the people who run this left-wing organization are a cabal of right-wingers. And they are laughing their asses off as they do so.

• January, 2009: PETA calls for fish to be renamed “sea kittens” so people will be less inclined to eat them. It makes perfect sense. We’ll all stop eating tuna sandwiches if we just change their name to “sea kitten sandwiches”.
• December 2007: The “KFC blows” campaign in Thailand uses inflatable sex dolls to protest the fast food chain. Again, there is the subtle theme of perversity in this PETA protest idea.
• February 2005: “The Fish Empathy Project” borrows the slogan “Fish are friends, not food” from the animated film Finding Nemo. This catchphrase is from that great scene in the movie where the sharks are in the mock-AA meeting trying to deal with their urges to eat fish.
• June 2000: The CBS TV show “Survivor” was blasted by PETA protesters over an episode where the contestants caught, cooked and ate some native rats on a remote tropical island. For some reason. the TV viewing audience was unable to develop an empathy for rats.

The sad thing here is that the cause of animal rights is a valid one and PETA continues to make a mockery of the very thing it claims to champion. I’ve always felt that Greenpeace and PETA are on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of smart vs. ridiculous media campaigns. Greenpeace seems to have its way cool public image figured out and the fights it chooses to fight are respectable and thought provoking. PETA on the other hand picks stupid issues. This George Clooney sweaty tofu story is just another example of how idiotic this organization has become. I do wish PETA would dissolve and get replaced by a group that the public can listen to without breaking into uncontrollable laughter. I’m half serious when I say it’s a right-wing conspiracy. That’s the only logical explanation here. Are there any investigative journalists out there that could prove my theory? I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out my joke was the truth and PETA’s “truths” turned out to be a joke.

Wally becomes a leading economic indicator and Tom discovers “Extreme Craft” (and vice versa)

New cartoon! With depressing economic indicators constantly beating on our brains all the time, it’s not surprising that my latest Wally adventure features a connection between the 1930s and the present. I’ll be pitching this one to my galleries and retail customers this week, and we’ll be drawing it on a bunch of mugs, plates and bowls that will be loaded in the kiln on Wednesday. If you have any specific designs or custom orders you need, be sure and let us know ASAP as Kelly is leaving on her academic world tour later this week. I’ll miss working with her but I’m so glad she’s going on this amazing trip. Her “Semester at Sea” destinations include: Spain, Morocco, South Africa, Mauritius, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, Japan and Hawaii. All I can say is, “Wow!”

Good news! My first week on Etsy had a nice little success. I was chosen by Garth Johnson of Extreme Craft as one of the featured artists of the week and my “Lost in Space” plate got pitched to all Etsy subscribers in a mass emailing. Garth is quite possibly the world’s leader in championing weird and wonderful craftspeople and the stuff that they make. I’m totally geeked about his blog that features everything from watermelon bras to people who create their own superhero costumes and weapons. I highly recommend exploring this site and reading his insightful posts. With an MFA in ceramics from Alfred and a lifetime of exploring all facets of the craft world, this guy is my new hero. As the other Garth would say, “I am not worthy!!!”

Here’s a Bowl of Mixed Nuts for the Holidays

This is my last post for 2008, and I’m happy to report that I’ve met my goal of putting up a halfway decent article each week. OK… you be the judge of the quality here. It’s been a lot of fun writing this blog, and I’m pretty sure I’ll keep it going next year as I’ve gotten a lot of positive responses from fans and friends. I do like the process of writing, and I think that this blog is a good way for me to share my thoughts with the people who buy my work.

Here’s a few odds and ends for the end of the year:
“The Goddess of Turkey Media” – I’m kicking myself for not having made at least two dozen of these plates last week. I got an email request to “do a joke about that Sarah Palin video with the turkeys” from a customer in California. After watching the YouTube video, the joke pretty much wrote itself. My initial thought was that this story was a flash in the pan and Wally pots with this design would get old quickly. But the image and story is something that is fun to remember, so I’m going to put this design in my webstore as this could be a great decorative Thanksgiving object to treasure for years to come.

“The greatest gift of all” – I think the best gift that I will have given this year is going to be the one that I made for the sheer fun of it. I’m in a guys’ book club that meets at irregular intervals, usually at cheap restaurants where we usually don’t talk much about the book that we read. It’s a group of men who are a bit older than me and have interesting lives with very successful, eclectic careers (film making, oil exploration, etc.). Last week we met at Bert’s house because he has been laid up with a back injury. He and another member of the group traded stories about the misery of sitting at home all day in pain, whacked out on drugs with not much to do but feel like crap. The day before, as Bert’s wife was putting up the Christmas tree, the two of them reenacted that memorable scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life” where George Bailey goes totally bonkers in the family living room on Christmas eve. Suffice to say, Bert just doesn’t have the Christmas spirit this year. Driving home that evening, I realized that I could make a nice commemorative gift out of this story. A week later, the ornament was out of the kiln and I literally ran it down to their mailbox. I live exactly five miles from their house, along the route of my favorite fifteen mile run. Bert called just a few hours later and he and his wife were totally thrilled with their ornament. Bert’s wife is a former potter and their home is filled with some truly amazing pots. I’m glad that their collection now has one of my best pieces in it.

“Yippie-kai-yay, Merry Christmas!” - While my all-time favorite holiday movie is and will always be “It’s a Wonderful Life”, I now have a close second. We were decorating our tree last week and we wanted to put on a Christmas movie but we had a problem. All of our holiday films are on VHS and a lightning strike last summer took out our VCR. Monica had just bought the first “Die Hard” movie on DVD and Lori remembered that the story takes place on Christmas Eve so we put it on. Man! This is the perfect film to prepare you for the stress of the holidays. What are our mere trials and tribulations this time of year compared to John McClane’s epic duel with a pack of terrorist/thieves?!!! Christmas music and imagery abounds in this film, as in the scene shown below. I love that moment when McClane’s first casualty shows up in the elevator wearing a Santa hat! This film brings back fond memories of Los Angeles for Lori and me. Our first home was just a few miles away from “The Die Hard Building”, as we called it. Lori commuted to UCLA where she worked and got her degree, and the cheapest gas station en route was “The Die Hard Gas Station” featured prominently in the film. To top it off, we had seen Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepard filming a scene from the TV show, “Moonlighting” one time when we were getting off a plane at LAX. The show was just starting to take off and Bruce Willis was still a relatively unknown actor. I made eye contact with Bruce and he gave me one of those patented eyebrow raises as if to say, “You’ve seen my show, right?” File it all under, “I love LA”.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!