things that inspire us, greeting card designs before they go to print, live coverage from roadtrips/trade shows, custom projects on the drying rack, scandalous photos of the bbh crew and friends, & other mindless drivel
A now rare occasion: Brandon (left) and Tony (right) together again.
My long lost brother Tony has been living in Bolivia for more than six years now, but came for a week long visit in Asheville to introduce me to his son, meet my GF, see Blue Barnhouse, and catch up on the lost years. He had a hand in starting the business, but left after mouthing off at several clients and a few violent altercations between he and I (when Tony and I butt heads we are prone to engage in Fisticuffs.) I had asked him to leave the business, and he happily complied. Tony hasn't seen the operation since we lived in San Francisco, when BBH was renting presses from the SFCB. When I decided to move back to North Carolina, a few months later Tony packed it up, took a bus to Mexico and dissappeared for several years.
Last year he made contact with our family to let us know he is alive and well in a village along the waters of Lake Titicaca called Ispaya, and is now a father. My sisters and I recently chipped in for plane tickets and he's been making his rounds in New Jersey and North Carolina with his infant son, Valencia, to catch up with family. His reaction after seeing the studio: "I'm not impressed." (He might have been joking. You can never tell.) His recent fatherhood has calmed him down some, he didn't turn over the dinner table even once! He's come and gone and is now up in NJ visiting our mother, where we will see each other again when I'm up for the Stationery Show. Before he left he filled his suitcase with BBH product to share with the villagers. Hopefully they won't have him deported.
For the first time in BBH history I am slacking off before a show. My Hot GF was in town for a month and we've been hanging out/figuring out what it's gonna look like when she gets here this summer. And since the day before she left, I've been sick, in bed, watching an endless barage of Battle Star Galactica. My official first day back was midday tuesday. The January NYIGF was slack enough that new product is not a top priority. I was gonna print some T-shirts myself, but after what Fritz Klinke of NA Graphics dubbed "the Bluebarnhouse economic stimulus package," that same day I decided to hire a friend to make prototypes of 14 different T-shirt designs in time for the Stationery show two Sundays from today (and bought an iPhone that same day). Yes, we make money. But then we immediately spend it on new endeavors.
F-hizzle screens a call.
We printed like 100 new designs since NYIGF August so I'm not sweating too hard about cranking out anything new, though we finally knocked out the colonoscopy card. That might be a good one for Fritz. I'm more worried about being prepared, as more than 20 styles are awaiting reprints currently, and more than 50% are in a 2nd reprint status and requiring larger, more expensive runs. But there are a few new ones coming out, because it is the BBH tradition, but late nights and stressful leave conditions are not in order this time around. The idea is whatever happens, is what will happen. Everything is waiting for us in NY already. Having a booth stored up in NYC is a huge stress relief, as we can just fly in this year, as opposed to the original ordeal of packing up a trailer driving up all day before setup.
What else. We got pirate wood postcards now. Again, I am paying an assload to someone else to make new product, which is a new thing but I know I can sling them like candy. I really like these cards and figure our audience will too, so I talked to Kristin Sekula of Spitfire Girl fame about buying these cards I designed for her enmasse at a lower rate than what she normally sells them at and reselling them through our own market. They will have her name and manufacturing on it, our sense of humor and design aesthetic. I got a sample before they went to print. They look amazing.
1 of 6 wooden postcards printed in the pirate tradition.
I've said it before that I don't expect much from the NSS this year. And usually when I don't expect too much I get blindsided-- my hope is that the lack of competiton at the shows will bode very well for us this year. More to report on this subject on the Manhattan side here in a week and a half.
Cranking it out the BBH way. All 3 pressses going all day long.
I started watching Sci Fi's Battle Star Galactica. I avoided it, for a VERY long time. Four seasons, It's over now. I just started watching three days ago. All signs, mostly coming from Marc McCloud, purveyor of my favorite video fix, Orbit DVD, and his frakking praises of this series, have brought me to this moment. And maybe some subliminal help from Robot Chicken.
And then there's the media. Newsweek, EW, NY Times(:
"Ideas of faith, coexistence and democracy have been delivered with an air of intellectual rigor and a vagueness that has allowed the series to exist as a tabula rasa on which nearly any strain of speculative meaning might viably take shape."
what?!?)
and many more call it the best television, Ever. I hate 24. I hate Grey's. I hate Lost. Trash, all of it. I have a hard-on for Zach Braff. I do not own a television, but it doesn't mean I can't own a TV series. DVDs are a much more preferable way to watch TV anyway.
I hate this show because I cannot stop watching this show. It is like crack. I weep real human tears every frakking episode, and am deprived of sleep because I cannot stop. I started watching Early Early Monday Morning, it is now Wed Night and I've racked in 30 hrs and I'm not through the second season. That's all I have to say. Fuck all of you! Especially you, McCloud!!!
When I was 10 years old the most terrifying way to die in my young unsullied mind was to be executed by a firing squad. I think the initial horror came from watching the act on an episode of the A-Team (and later in an episode of Amazing Stories), but I started having nightmares about it after catching Red Dawn on HBO: a movie about a Soviet invasion of the US, chock-full-o' executions by firing squad. I was especially horrified when the protagonists, a group of teenagers, are left with no choice but to execute one of their own. They scream and cry at each other during the process of not wanting to, but having to, and then at having done it. They weren't made to do it. There weren't any adults around, no villains making them do cruel things to each other. It was a decision they made on their own, it was something they did in order to survive. Seeing something like that put a serious ding in my childhood innocence, which before that point was pretty much intact.
The Third of May, 1808 by Francisco Goya
Much later, while taking art history courses in my undergrad, I fell in love with the work of Francisco Goya, the above painting being my first taste of his work. I haven't thought much of firing squads since then. This week however, at the insistence of an apprentice, I watched Sergio Leone'sDuck, You Sucker (aka A Fistful of Dynamite.) Set in the midst of the Mexican Revolution, it is an incredibly violent and unforgiving film and offers a schmorgesborg of deaths via firing squads. A lot of interesting ghosts were let out of the closet that night. Goya immediately came to mind, and while researching the film I learned that some scenes were inspired by a set of Goya drawings called The Disasters of War; Leone asked his cinematographer to work off the drawings as a reference for the framing, lighting, and color effects he wanted.
Poster for "Duck, You Sucker," Leone's last Spaghetti Western. It looks fun and happy go lucky, and on the surface the film seems that way. But then there are scenes like this: two long pits full of captured rebels stand helplessly under a monsoon of automatic weapon fire.
I've been working on a "kids as soldiers" writing project for more than a month now, and scrapped all the work I'd done so far after seeing this film. Duck, You Sucker starts off with a scene with a large family of bandits, mostly boys between 8 and 16, toting carbines, who murder a stage coach full of people in order to rob it. It is their family's way of life. Eventually they get sucked into and squashed by the effects of the Mexican Revolution.
I started thinking about what it look like for a whole regiment of kids to fight a "Just Revolution" against its own country as a matter of necessity (as opposed to being made to, as has happened in places like Sierre Leone. (and a revolution based on greed and general stupidity.)) Though we've been attacked, we haven't had a war on American soil since we fought amongst ourselves two centuries ago. I'm very interested in what that might look like, in these times.
I watch films as much as I read in regards to research, and this weekend I've been having chills and fevers fighting off a cold in bed, so it's been movie time all weekend long, with wikipedia breaks in between (Pancho Villa, Che Guevara, Cuban Missle Crisis, Attrition Warfare, Guerilla Warfare, etc.) Post apocolypse, Revolutions, Cold War, you name it, I'm into it.
Here's what I got under my belt this weekend via video: Red Dawn: Watched it for the first time in probably 20 years. It's a great film, and full of young actors we all loved from the eighties. At the time it was the most violent American film in history: 2.23 acts of violence per minute. It was the first film to get a PG-13 rating, and would probably get an R rating by today's standards.
Road Warrior: I thought I hadn't seen this. But it was Mad Max that I hadn't seen yet. I watched it anyway, though I wasn't all that into it.
Mad Max: Had to go back to the video store. I knew it would be bad. I was wrong. It was intense and way more interesting than it's predecessors.
First Strike: I found a documentary/simulation filmed in 1979 about how quickly a tactical nuclear launch from the Russians could force us into a surrender. (There are 2 more parts outside the above video on youtube.)
Che Guevara Trailer: This movie just came out of under all of our noses at the end of last year, starring Benicio Del Toro as Che (a very limited and short release in the theaters, from what I can tell.) I just found out about it, and am impatient. DVD already, please. The Wild Bunch: It was mentioned that this film by Sam Peckinpah is what inspired Leone's Duck, You Sucker. I saw no resemblence, other than guns, horses, explosions, and dead bodies everywhere. There was also the Mexican Revolution but it was a fringe story element. I've seen one other Peckinpah film, Straw Dogs, which was a brilliant, disturbing, and very controversial film (banned in the UK) starring a young Dennis Hoffman. I really didn't think I could handle another Western and it was getting off track of my whole research bingeathon, but I figured it was something I could fall asleep to. But holy moly, what an incredible and tragic movie. Peckinpah was the first Hollywood director to use violence as an aesthetic and he was a master, but he's also a great story teller, and put me in all sorts of emotional pockets. He had me cringing and biting my nails off for the last 45 minutes. Christ. I've been doing this to myself since I was a kid. How are you supposed to sleep after watching something like that?
Men's Journal interviewed me for an article about West Asheville a few weeks ago. I started off the interview by telling the journalist that I really don't want anybody else to find out about this place, but I would talk to her about it anyway.
A fact checker just called today, to like, check on some facts:
FACT CHECKER: ...and I wanted to verify that you refused to share information about your favorite hiking trails in the area?
"...and I can't understand why something good's got to die before we miss it." Shannon Hoon, 1967-1995
behind a truck stop, is thinking Hoon in the "No Rain" Video, for which Blind Melon is probably best known. Axl Rose, a friend of Hoon's sister, touches heads with Hoon in a video from the double album, Use Your Illusion, in which Hoon performed backing vocals on several tracks. It was Hoon's first lick of stardom. Hoon, Stage Right, on "Don't You Cry"
Hoon died on October 21, 1995, leaving behind his 13 week old daughter Nico. The album Nico, a posthumous release of various recordings he left behind, donates its proceeds to both his daughter and to drug abuse programs for musicians.
I am grateful I have Soup in my paws again, having been without it for more than a decade. I am grateful to have known about the album at all, I found it by accident. It's one of those gems that was for the most part, overlooked, and not talked about much. It's as good as it was when I heard it the first time, and there's a lot I loved back then that I just can't hang with these days.
I won't whine about what's been lost. But if I die and don't get to see what all these young and dead musicians have been up to since they'd left, then I must be somewhere besides heaven. I'll leave you with that poem by Blanche Bridge, which Hoon had carved into his arm.
God's Presents was written by Blanche Bridge on February 11, 1884 (Recorded February 11, 1995)
GOD'S PRESENTS
If my path be smooth or rugged If with thorns or roses strewn Where I go the Father seeith And He will leave me not alone
If I take the wings of morning far within the silent sea Even there His hand will lead me Even there my God will be
Though the gloom of night be round me Though I cannot see my way Yet the Lord will see and guide me Because unto Him the night is day
If my thoughts are good or evil Set me think to hide them not there is one above all seeing And He beholdth every thought
And ever more my eyes beholds me And all my ways to Him are known And His loving arms enfolds me He will leave me not alone
It's been ten days since my last post. It's been four months since my favorite painter/printmaker's last blog post. She recently shook hands and perhaps flirted with Frank O'Hara and felt compelled to blog about it. You can read more about Gus's artwork in an article about a collaboration between she and I here, and about her current show at Harvest Records here.
Gussin' up for a date with a raging fire in a command module.
Greetings Valued Retailers, friends, and family, This is awesome! It's a grassroots stimulus plan for independent brick & mortar retailers. Have you heard about the recent online campaign that brings together vendors, small business owners and consumers?
It’s called The 3/50 Project. The project is based on the idea that independent specialty stores are important to our economy and can be saved from extinction if consumers take ownership and pledge to shop them!
Consumers are asked to choose their 3 favorite retail stores and spend $50 a month (total) at them. If half of the employed US population did this it would generate 42.6 BILLION dollars in revenue! The best part is that 68% of that money goes back into the local economy.
How you can get involved: Go to www.the350project.org and pledge your support.
While you are there, check out the Resources page where you can print flyers, signs and request a free store window cling. Please download the pdf file attached, it's the press release for Project 350, and a very interesting read.
Forward this email on to your customers and friends
McSweeney's? For real? Do you not realize that they are gods among men? All has come full circle, we can now rest easy in our mortal graves.
This came from a newsletter sent by Asheville's most awesome independent bookstore, Malaprops, a place where we have been trying to get our cards in for years now. It took our NC sales rep, Steve, to get our foot in the door, it happened just recently, and Steve reports it is already their best selling card line.
Here it go:
We’re carrying a new line of cards from local letterpress company, Blue Barnhouse. These cards are beautiful, whimsical, and often darkly funny. If you’re a fan of McSweeney’s books, you’ll love the design and sentiments on these cards. Blue Barnhouse has a very strong local following. If you’re not familiar with their work, ask us about them next time you visit and we’ll lead you to them.
I wish I could print this tomorrow. But it will be months before we'll get to it.
We've now spent 2 days, both in the office and bathroom, laughing riotously at an endless variety of greeting card options that arrived via post from our Ace in the Hole from Hillsborough, NC.
Today in the shop I got asked the #1 question about our greeting cards again, which is "who the hell writes these?" Yes I write some, and design most, everyone else here has had their glory and/or glories in one way or another, but nobody can do what Tyler does, which is create a brilliantly illogical fucked up and funny situation from seemingly harmless characters. It's highlighted cuz its a sure winner and will probably be on the next negative.
The ideas come to us in vast catalogues, usually 10-25 ideas are used from a single session , but I've been known to go back on stuff from years back and have decided the world is now ready for one particular shock or another. I'm glad I've saved it all, for it is endless.
This will be a poster, not a card.
For the first time ever, Tyler has actually written right on the image page (after he found out thats how WE do) --- instead of his standard notepad rants such as this one from our Oz series, in which he will take multiple cracks at a single image:
My favorite of Oz, "That's right Motherfucker!" came off of this page. Another good caption from the list was "Don't worry, it won't be bad- [Scarecrow] put condoms on ALL his fingers."
Here are a few of Farrell's picks from the new material. The last image is what apparently had Sarah in hysterics in the bathroom and she recited it verbatim from memory to me, tho it were lengthy.
I like to imagine the shoe salesman as Christopher Walken. You'll see what I mean once I get a design together and break up/pace the dialogue.
I think we have 2 or 3 cards we'll make from this group (wanna vote, make a comment), but that doesn't mean we can't post the funny-but-not-for-cards stuff here.
Just in case you missed Tyler's twitter address from the last post. Just in case you wanted to know what his day job is.
Just in case you are wondering how Tyler and I know each other, we went to art school together, shared some classes, and lived (next door, Tyler?) in the same dorm. We were on the same floor to be sure. That's another blog, which might or might not happen, one of these days.
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