[infographic] Eat Sriracha Or Slowly, Slowly Die

2810I have been recruited to the Rooster Sauce side of the Force since some time ago. There's very little that can't be improved by Sriracha.

We all know what The Oatmeal had to say about the Rooster. But did you know that it was just so damn' miraculous? I didn't. The skinny … and there is some skinny … on a long, skinny infographic, perforce.

Clicky to embiggenate. You are the Embiggenator.

Created by: CookingSchools.net

Via here. 

[teh_funnay] The Premiere of the 3rd Season of You Suck At Photoshop. Here, Now.

2809The big fishies at MyDamnChannel haven't yet released the premiere of YSAP 3.0 as a stand-along ep, but you can see it if you load up this episode of MyDamnChannel Live and go to 5:48. It runs to about 12:50.

Here's the video cued-up to the starting point for you all. Click on this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8mux_Rhh24&t=5m48

You got your Donnie Hoyle coming to you after all this waiting. You're going to get him good and hard.

[art] A ZKT Exclusive Interview With I've Been Framed's Newest Employee

2808I'll say it until I can't say it no more: Local art stores rock and there are two that are instrumental in putting the cream in our coffee, the art supplies in our bag, and taking the money out of our wallet. One of them is I've Been Framed.

We like our two favorite stores for mostly the same reasons. They're both staffed and owned by local Portlanders who are passionate about art and sincerely love their customers. They both have different approaches that mean you get a ton of good out of them and the prices are seriously affordable. They care about what they do and almost everyone who works there are artists themselves.

When you walk into IBF you get the idea that you've walked into a delightful collage that will also sell you art supplies. They not only have brands that you look for but they also sometimes have insanely-discounted clearance lots. IBF has a nice little framing department in the back, which is where they get the idea for the nam.

The employees at IBF, as I intimated, really make the store however. Really friendly, really care about the art. Really care about making your experience there a good one. A new employee has been added, and he's a sweetie. I understand he works really cheaply … mostly for Little Friskies. You can get a good idea of who it is when you enter:

He, like all great artists, goes by a single name … Jordie. He's still settling in, but he's got a warm charm all his own. After asking Mark for an introduction I was shown into Jordie's office, where he was busy at work, holding down the Adorable department, as well as some of the inventory.

Actually, he may have been on break. With a kitteh, it's hard to tell.

I'm not sure if he was up to a hard-hitting interview about the ins and outs of being the only known art-store cat in Portland, but I wasn't about to back down. Here was a story that needs to be told, and in the wake of the loss of Powell's Books' legendary store cat, Fup, the position of Dean of Portland Store Cats is still up for contention. The public wants to know if Jordie can make the grade. And I wasn't about to be swayed by purring and cute looks.

Oh, heck, he's a cute cat. Of course I was. But on to the interview:

The Zehnkatzen Times: Jordie, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to speak with us.

Jordie:

ZKT: You have the opportunity of working as the store cat in one of the two most awesome art supply stores in the Portland area. How did you feel when you realized that you're the point kitty here? Particularly honored?

Jordie:

ZKT: Indeed! A great opportunity. Now, you're settling in, getting used to the crush of customers coming through … they're very creative types. Do you find the artists that come in for supplies particularly inspiring?

Jordie:

ZKT: That's a great story. You never know who you'll run into here … I just helped an artist who was working on ancient methods for making gessoes figure out how to come by the circumference of a circle so he could lay out some calligraphy. You don't have to work here to learn something new! You do work here though … do you feel that you're luckier than most kitties?

Jordie:

ZKT: Yes, it is a special place. That's why we keep coming here, especially with personnel like yourself that make the experience so nice.

At that point, Jordie had some important item on his kitty agenda to complete and had to end the interview, but not before there were skritches and pettin's and purring. But, withal, it looks like Jordie has all the chops to be a great art-store store cat. He's still got some settling in to do, learning the ropes of a very important position, but it looks like he'll grow into the position just fine.

So, visit yourself some I've Been Framed … local art stores are cool, and local art stores are awesome. Also stop by Muse. Support your local sources. They matter.

And pet yourself some kitty when you can. It may not make you rich, but it will make you happy.

[PDX_liff] LOLBurgerville At SE 11th And Hawthorne

2807Burgerville USA, the only burger joint worth visiting, indeed, the only burger joint anywhere, has good news for this particular kitteh:

Yes, you can haz that cheezburger. Might I suggest the Tillamook Cheeseburger?

Of course, the injunction is delivered with a smile. Because that's how Burgerville USA rolls, yo.

[teh_funnay] Donnie Hoyle is Back … and You Still Suck At Photoshop

2806Got something for you all …

Today on MyDamnChannel's YouTube channel, during the daily broadcast of the MyDamnChannelLive web series, something happened that I'm betting you didn't know you wanted but you did in your heart, oh dear yes you did.

Remember You Suck at Photoshop? Remember how much Donnie Hoyle went through to train us on how not to suck at Photohshop? And remember how he seemed to go out in a blaze of … well glory, or something like it?

Well, friends, he didn't die. He's just been hidin' out. And rocking CS5, of course. Today, MDCLive premiered Volume 21 in the series, which illustrates Puppet Warp and Content-Aware Fill, which are awesome of course.

The videos aren't up in their own channel, of course, but you can probably see it as part of today's MDCLive, which are in this YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/MyDamnChannel. If you go there nowish you won't see it, but if you do it, say, later this evening or so, it should be up.

For now, this should hold you.

Maybe.



Oh, you are in for it people. You really really are.

[OR_liff] The Popcorn Machine Has Been Cleared Of Blame …

2805Not long ago, word broke that Silverton's magnificent Palace Theater, a fixture for most of a century (and as an opera house, even longer) at the corner of Oak and Water Streets in the center of downtown, suffered a tragic fire.

At the time, one of the theatre's owners, the famous Stu Rasmussen, guessed it might have been the popcorn machine. The lobby suffered a remarkable amount of damage, and the estimate went as high as $300,000.

Good news: a message on the marquee has proclaimed that WE WILL BE BACK, and word is the business is on the mend: fully insured, saith this article at the Statesman-Journal.


Good on Stu and his crew. I always figured him for a smart cookie.

And the popcorn machine is off the hook for the blame. 

[OR_liff] The Perfect Sister City For Boring, Oregon?

2804Why, that would be Dull, Scotland, of course.

No, seriously. Really.

I mean, here it is. Right next to the Dull Wood, in fact.

Why would anyone bother to make this up?

(Via)

[liff] I Tried Out A ChromeBook … At The Multnomah County Library

2803This is a thing I just stumbled on. It's a good thing.

For a while I've wanted a crack at a Chromebook. The way things go round me, chances were hard to come by. But I saw this placard in the Midland Branch of the Multnomah County Library that said something about Community Chromebooks.


I was intrigued, and asked about it. Google has apparently provided Chromebooks for checkout to certain branches of the County Library, and I asked one of the librarians about it.

They're spiffy new machines, so there's a fair amount of rules to follow. You can check one out for two hours only, and if you keep them out after two hours, it's a $10 overdue fine per hour. They'll give you a sheet to read and sign; read it carefully. Take good care of that Chromebook while you have it; if you break it, you'll pay to fix it. Resist the urge to go all hacky on it, and keep your latte off to the side.

All I'm sayin' is, be careful. They have to take good care of them, so others can check them out too.

What you'll get for your trouble is a spiffy little Samsung Chromebook, and you can check out for yourself what they do. And for what they're intended, they work pretty well actually.

When I go out or go to the library, I'll want to check in online, see what's going on. As long as you're near a public WiFi network, you get signal, and all the net's bases are belong to you. If you want new apps, you download them from the Chrome Web Store, just like on your Chrome-equipped laptop or desktop. I don't know how much you can get done without net access, but you can apparently do some things; but essentially because the experience is basically a Chrome browser with a really nifty case, and you'll be using the Chromebook in situations where you're connected, this'll probably not be too much of an issue.

The machine boots up quick, just like they say it does, and runs really pretty well for what it does. Sort of the ultimate netbook really.

If you want to try out a Chromebook, your chance may be as close as your nearest Multnomah County Library. Like you needed any more reasons to go to the Library, Portland.

[comic art] How To Draw A Male Manga Face

2801Mark Crilley has an approach to manga that results in a look I like quite a lot … a face with realistic aspects but that visually-addicting manga style. This is from a series of very easy-to-follow manga tutorials on his YouTube channel.

[comic art] Creating A Dystopian-Future Comic Book Cover

2801 (Via Dark Horse Comics at the Book'o'Face) The Massive is a dystopian near-future comic series coming soon that is supposed to take place in an environment where the the race between global climate change has ended, and global climate change has won. There are previews available here and about.

The cover art, like any great comic cover art, hooks you in.

In this article at iO9, Brian Wood takes us through the creative process that led to that cover.

[comics] Archie Comics #636, Where Girls Will Be Boys, and …

2800You can probably finish the title yourself.

I'm amused that, amongst all the people or things that are bravely (or accidentally, even) leading us into the future, Archie comics would be one. When I was growing up, of course, Archie was fun, but conventional, safe … and rather boring. While the visual style has always been engaging, as time went on the impression I got was of something that didn't require too much skill. I imagined that Archie characters weren't so much drawn as assembled.

But within the last year, Archie has taken what is, for me, an unexpected place at the front of the changing times. But then, what does popular art do but reflect the times, if it does anything worthwhile at all? So, last year, we had two important supporting gay characters get married, something which stirred up its own controversy. And now, Archie's going all Freaky Friday on us.

According to this article at gay.net (http://www.gay.net/hot-reads/2012/04/19/archie-gang-goes-gender-bender), as the story apparently goes, the male side of the gang and the female side of the gang get into a big argument about who has it easier … so Sabrina, The Teenage Witch (and her kitteh) decide to change everything up so that each other gets to see for sure.

What got me about the whole thing though was the art. There's something subtly different about the cover art (see the link). The standard Archie kit is all there, but it's somehow more accomplished. Of course, Veronica is adorable in that cute mini-dress (that said, I've always been a Betty partisan. I liked Mary Ann over Ginger, for what that's predictably worth), but one of the keys to a winning comic is drawings you like to look at (as Charles Schultz alluded to when he commented on Calvin and Hobbes) and these two cover arts are comic arts I enjoy looking at. The burger-munchery on the part of Jughead was a little gratuitous, and I still wonder how Archie gets those grid-prints in his hair, but the indignant look on Betty's face is one for the books, and the irritation between Archie and Veronica is the most real emotion I've seen in a long time from any Archie comic.

Despite the adventure, some things remain ere the same; on the cover of the swtiched (see the link) identities, "Archina" (argh!) is still the meat in the "Ronnie"-"Billy" sandwich. But that's all they're tipping thier hats to.

Archie #636 is scheduled to hit the newsstands in August, so we'll all have to wait until then.

[branding] Whither And/Or Whence Oak Grove, Oregon?

2799Seen in The Oregonian today:

The sign just appeared. If anyone knows where it came from, they haven't come forward. But there it was -- the white and green "Welcome to Oak Grove" sign nailed below the green state signs on southbound McLoughlin Boulevard alerting drivers to the next towns coming up.  

That was April 4. Two days later, Milwaukie crews took the sign down because it wasn't actually in the unincorporated Oak Grove area, but one-third of a mile north, inside Milwaukie's city limits. Instead of trashing it, Milwaukie staff turned it over to Oak Grove resident Fred Nelligan. 

As it would happen, Oak Grove is a community laying roughly in the northern part of the unincorporated area of Clackamas County between Milwaukie and Gladstone. It doesn't include the whole of that area, of course; if you go to the corner of SE McLoughlin Blvd and SE Oak Grove Blvd, right by the Oak Grove Fred Meyer store, and draw a circle about 1.5 miles in radius about that point that'll pretty much take in most of the community. While some definitions have it between the Willamette River and Oatfield Road, others are a little more generous going east. And I'll be frank; I don't know what the neighborhood association's definition is.

But it's a pleasant enough place. I know several people there and they're very happy with the area; there's always been a banked fire of pride about being from Oak Grove. But never a strong sense of that thing we can't do without any more, 'brand identity'.

What is Oak Grove? Well, it's a bit of land in Clackamas County with a community that has a shared identity. It's got all sorts of incomes and lifestyles, from high to low; its axis is one of Oregon's oldest highways, State Hwy 99E, also known as McLoughlin Blvd, named for Oregon's most notable European pioneer. Follow that road south just a couple more miles and you land in Oregon City, where Oregon (and most of the organized American West) began. There are prosperous middle-class residents off either side of McLoughlin, even if some of the properties along that old road seem rather distressed. And there's a panoply of opportunities to spend your money on the main drag; chances are, if you can't find it along McLoughlin, you can get by without it for a little while. There is some local history, if one considers the famous "Bomber", which has a quirky history of its very own.

What Oak Grove is really doing right now is growing an identity. Up until now, that identity was pretty much a place you passed through either just after leaving or just before you get to Milwaukie. There's bound to be some basic human "you had to be there" silliness, like an unknown signster putting up a "Welcome To Oak Grove" sign up on a state milepost sign that's actually 1/2 mile inside the Milwaukie city limits.

But Oak Grove is a nice place with a whole lot of nice people, and community is a good thing, and they have a right to be proud as they build that community.

More power to them.

Just put the right sign in the right place, next time. Remember, it's easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission, as someone once said.

You should probably try getting permission next time though.

[teh_funnay] This High School is The Fastest Hunk Of Junk In The Galaxy

2798Those who designed Parkland High School, Allentown, PA, claim they didn't intend to make it look, from the air, like a certain Corellian freelancer's ship …

Well, OK, we'll buy that. But so what? This is the most awesome HS campus ever.

And it made the Kessel run in less than 1.3 parsecs. Can your high school say that? I'll just answer for you: NO.

I'm reasonably certain that you won't find the droids you're looking for there, though, budgets being what they are.

Even more injustice: the sports team are the Trojans, not the Falcons.

[pdx] Urban Archaeology: At SE 42nd And Hawthorne, Where They Once Sold Ice Cream

2797This was a pleasant find to stumble upon, all the more so because we weren't looking for it and it concerns the continued success of peoples we are quite fond of.

I have exulted the charms. of Muse Art and Design before. Along with I've Been Framed they are the two art supply stores you must know if you need art supplies here in town. Local, passionate about what they do, and won't break your bank wide open.

Last we, me and The Wife™ slid along to the corner of SE 42nd Avenue and Hawthorne Blvd, upper Hawthorne, and we were amazed to see this:

Muse's current location is one address east of this (more on that allusion perforce). Until recently that location was a quirky, cool vintage shop called Shadowhouse Collectibles who, via the vicissitudes of business these days, had to quit the location and move on (we don't know where yet – if you never visited, you've missed out, my friend. Keep up to date with them here, as they say they'll be back). Shadowhouse has been good to us, as the vintage KATU sign will attest.

Alas and alack, for now Shadowhouse is gone. This has opened up an opportunity for Muse to move into a bigger space, which can augur nothing but good; but until then, remodeling of the space happens. And that has uncovered and unexpected visual treat.

The building on the corner SE 42nd and Hawthorne has had her makeup removed for a newer application, and we find that this used to be an ice cream shop.

The Portland Ice Cream Company, to be precise. I don't know whether they made it there or had it brought in, but the old hand-painted typography on the facade brings up memories I didn't know I had (mostly because I wasn't alive in the 1940s).

The old paint work itself shows signs of revision. We peoples, we just can't leave things along, can we? I'm guessing that the half-covered signage probably said something like Farmers Ice Milk and Cream, but we are certainly guessing there.

Old-fashioned ice-cream parlors. Doesn't that just speak 'small-town America'? One wonders what the then-denizens of upper Hawthorne would think of the current, with the ironic bars and the organic markets and the incense-and-peppermints shops and whatnot. Probably think they were on another planet or summat.

It would be far amiss if I didn't mention something about the remodeler. The job is being done by an outfit called Michael Cordes Remodeling, and we met the man as he was cleaning up at the end of what was obviously a long, productive day of work. There are all sorts of builders revising Portland at the present time but I don't think I've ever run into one that has this keen a sense of history. Very, very affable fellow; had a few minutes to talk and we had a fairly fun chat. But, you tell me … what remodeler would care enough about history to post a picture of the building in its heyday? I'm not sure what year this was, but the old-style street-blades on the corner suggest the 1940s.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who formats his business card and sign in lovely calligraphy is probably a cut above the rest. He can be contacted at mcremodel@rconnects.com, if you're of the bent.

He's said he has some more historic PDX photos to share after I post this, and i can share some, I will.

Keep your eyes open, peoples! History is right in front of you betimes.

[teh_funnay] Zooey Deschanel in a Post-Copy-Editor World

2796We always knew that Zooey Deschanel was a special woman of poise and good qualities.

Therefore we were not surprised when she divorced Death Cab for Cutie.

We never much cared for that group anyhow.