Posts filed under 'Fun'
Wow, the big pottery show is this week. Preparing for this show has been fun in so many ways.
Having a show has been a great incentive to make some nice new pieces. The new ones I’m completing this week are the best so far — though I shouldn’t say a thing until they come out of the kiln! I have some very large pieces that came together really naturally, from sketch, to wheel to glazing. I still can’t wait to see them after they are baked. And then I get to share them!
And this has been a great chance to invite people to a party and talk to all kinds of people about something I’ve been having fun with for a while. Putting this together has forced me to think about what I’ve been making and has helped me realize that there is a lot of intention behind it. I actually do have some kind of vision behind what I’m making. And since people are enjoying it, I have even more reason to make more.
So I’m looking forward to seeing friends and meeting some new people a the big opening this weekend — Saturday night at Jennifer Joyce Pottery Studio and Gallery. You can see the official unearthed pottery show site here. And read some blather about the pottery here.
October 8th, 2007
Dear waiters and waitresses of the world, you must hear my plea. When we, the families with young kids who come into your establishments, looking for a little break, a bit of recreation, a glimpse at our former lives when we could go out after dark, when we go out to restaurants, you must know: there is a very thin line between having a wonderful night out, and having and excruciating embarrassing catastrophe. We know you are just trying to help, but often well-meaning but inexperienced waiters and waitresses make little errors that tip the delicate balance.
Honestly, though we can be a pain, it can be pretty easy to get a good tip from families. We come and go as quickly as possible, we feel bad because our kids make a mess, and you can totally play us by saying nice things about our kids. Or you can really screw things up by offering bad service that results in whining screaming tantrums. And the kids may get upset too.
So here is a little list that should be mandatory reading for all wait-staff. It will help you get big tips, maybe not just from the family with kids, but also from their dining neighbors.
- Make it FAST. Don’t try to be polite and offer a relaxed dining experience. Kids and especially babies are time-bombs waiting to go off. Feel free to take dinner orders right away with the drinks, keep it coming and by all means, get that bill out there fast. You’ll be able to fill your table again quickly and it will score you big points with the family and everyone else in the restaurant.
- Bring lots of napkins.
- When you are setting up the table, don’t sit all the babies or toddlers together at one end of the table. They must be mixed in with adults!
- Make sure babies have clean highchairs with functional seat belts. Or we will make you take them back and get us new ones and maybe even have to leave because there is no way our active curious kids are going to sit still and not try to climb out of the highchairs and we don’t want them falling on their heads or sucking some other kids dinner off of the arm rests.
- Don’t set glasses full of water or bowls of soup or hot things or anything else in front of babies or toddlers. They will pick them up and dump them out or throw them on the floor. Duh.
- Don’t bring the kids’ food early! So many waiters screw this one up. Sure, if it looks like the kids are starving you might want to check with the parents. But when the kids eat before the parents it means that, when the adults get their food, the kids will be done, whining, screaming and possibly running around the restaurant. Please, feed everyone at the same time.
- If there is an utter and complete melt-down, yes, we would like that to go! Bring doggy bags and the check and help us leave with a small shred of dignity.
- Tell the parents that the kids are good looking, smart and well-behaved. Unless they are acting like brats because then we’ll know your just sucking up.
- Offering to wash off a bottle, sippy-cup or pacifier will score you big points.
- Also, for bonus points, provide something for the kids to do. Even and especially if your restaurant does not normally offer crayons and a coloring book, you may want to have them handy. Some places even offer toys to play with. (Yea, parents should always bring these themselves, but sometimes we forget or assume something will be offered.)
- Ok, this isn’t the waiter’s fault, but I wish you would offer something green on the kids menu. Kids don’t only eat fries and fried, cheese covered crap. (Though those are favorites). What better time to
bribe encourage kids to eat their veggies, than when a fancy restaurant dessert is coming.
- Please don’t offer dessert in front of the kids! Ask the parents first! Quietly. Discretely.
- You don’t have to seat us off in the back corner or in an empty room. Kids like to be where the action is and if there is a lot of noise and a lot to look at the kids will be happier.
Ok, that is what I have. Any parents or waiters have other pet peeves or helpful restaurant suggestions?
October 8th, 2007
You’ve got to come check out my first solo art show! I’ve been doing ceramics for a couple of years now and I guess people have been diggin’ it, so Jennifer Joyce offered me a show at her gallery!
Working in clay has been so satisfying — plunging my fingers into something substantial, away from the computer, in real life. And being able to create things that just ooze out of my brain. No flow charts, no code, no organization, no usability testing.
So, with complete disregard for utility or what anyone else thinks, I’ve somehow been making some nice pieces that people like. I don’t want to whine… I’m not quite satisfied with the work I’m producing. I feel like I’m just now starting to control the clay more than it controls me. But I’m pleased with enough that I’ll be able to fill a small room with some interesting stuff I’ve made.
Anyway, the show is called ‘unearthed’ and you can check out a few pieces of pottery at www.quixo.com/unearthed. You can give each piece a little spin with the fancy interactive-online-art-spinning-widget. And I hope you’ll join me at the opening Saturday, October 13, 5-8pm.
I try not to analyze it too much, but I like to think of it as punk pottery, all spiky and pock-marked. But, you know, not the punk rock of pure oblivion, destruction and fury, but more the throw out the rules, start over from scratch, anti-pop punk. And I’m sure you can see the other influences banging around in my head too. It is abstract but with enough direct connection to the natural world that the forms are sensual, grotesque and maybe a little humorous. The kind of thing you might find in the forest or under a microscope or possibly just after a meteorite has made landfall delivering artifacts from a lost or future civilization. Or whatever. I’m just making this stuff up. Come on out and you can take from it what you like…
Oh, and the art will surely be upstaged by the yummy munchables crafted by Stacy TenHouten who is firing up her new business, Butterlove Bakery.
September 19th, 2007
Just a little reminder that the Eva Zeisel exhibit at the Los Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum is starting September 9 and running through the end of the year. There is more on Eva Zeisel and the Los Angeles exhibit here in my previous post.
We just returned from the opening and this exhibition is set up differently from the San Diego show. In San Diego the work was grouped thematically, but here Zeisel’s work is laid out chronologically. This made for a great tour led by Pat Moore, my step-mom and the founder of the Eva Zeisel Forum. I had heard all the stories before but never all at once, in order and with examples laid out so beautifully. While I’ve long appreciated the work, Zeisel’s biography really hit home tonight. Highlights of the tour include hearing her history including traditional apprenticeship in Hungary, imprisonment by Stalin and a conscious move against the coldness of Bauhaus and modernism. Gonna have to break out some of her books (listed here). Anyways, check it out before the end of the year. (and the circus exhibit, also now showing, is great fun!)
September 8th, 2007
Who doesn’t like fun facts? They are… well… fun. And factual. And for some reason they are popular.
Here on Quixo, we have of course, completely exploited them. We have Fun Facts About Spain, Fun Facts About Peru and even a tongue-in-cheek Fun Facts About Global Warming.
Early on we noticed that “fun facts” is a frequently searched phrase. But it has very little competition. There is a good reason for that. People searching for “fun facts” are not getting ready to spend money. So they aren’t worth anything to web publishers. They don’t generate ad clicks and they sure don’t sell product. But they are kinda like Top 10 lists — they are enticing to read and for some reason, even though they are always cheesy, people search for them.
Here is a Fun Fact about Fun Facts. They are absolutely tied to the school year. Check out this Fun Facts graph from Google Trends. I haven’t done any scientific research on this (yet) but I’m guessing kids need fun facts for reports. And teachers need fun facts for their lesson plans. And look, ‘animals’ and ‘geography’ follow the same pattern. Ooh, and check out the similar search trends for cliff notes, book report and bullies.
And here is another Fun Fact: Fun Facts do not pay off for webmasters. Before all you web content providers rush out to exploit this popular phrase, note that you won’t make any money off of it. Both the students and the teachers are searching, probably at the last minute for a class the next day. They aren’t about to spend money. They aren’t even gonna buy books because they don’t have time to get them delivered.
And one more Fun Fact about Fun Facts search trends. “Trivia” is much more popular than “Fun Facts.” And trivia and fun facts seem to trend inversely. I guess people are really into trivia during the holidays and slightly more into to it over the summer. And it must be more lucrative than fun facts — there is a lot of ad competition for that phrase in internet advertising programs like Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing. I bet websites sell all kinds of books and games related to trivia.
So get ready for the Fun Facts season, here it comes. And remember, here at Quixo, when we offer you Fun Facts (and Top 10 lists), we know we are completely pandering. And we also know we won’t make a dime off them.
August 29th, 2007
I’ve fallen in love with a website for hand-crafted kid stuff. Well it is more like a crush, I’ve only known about the site for a few days, but I just dig the whole hand-crafted movement, the beautiful design of the site and the idea of one-of-a-kind toys that are not plastic and were not made in China.
Mahar Dry Goods is a Santa Monica based web store with clothes, toys and other paraphernalia for kids. The site and brand are reminiscent something by retro comic hero Chris Ware
. It is a wonderful world to visit where you can buy hand made objects or just check out the blog for the latest on hand crafted toy food or inspiring crafty art.
A couple of weeks ago I posted a bunch of the best toys that were our favorites when my kids were small. It was a few years ago that we struggled in our search for more obscure and natural toys. I even designed a bunch of odd custom stuffed toys for babies and almost even finished sewing one (hey, twin babies are a little time consuming). And now it seems like there are tons of crafts people making brilliant original toys. (We also used to, by the way, search long and hard for cool, interesting or punk toddler clothes, and now you can’t open a trendy magazine without getting them crammed down your throat — hello, it is not cute any more. And toddlers shouldn’t have ‘juicy’ on their butts.) Anyway…
What I really enjoy about Mahar Dry Goods is that there seems to be a movement of people creating craft that is art and is still new and modern and is anything but mass produced. And the latest internet mumbo jumbo makes it possible for online communities to develop and share these very low-tech pleasures. It helps me understand a little better my appreciation and enjoyment of pottery. We are hooked into and inspired by this digital world, but there is still a place for tangible objects that are made from the earth and show the imprint of the person who made them.
August 26th, 2007
Betty Lou bakes bountiful bundles of satisfying Spirulina-Ginseng Balls, so when you are buying Spirulina-Ginseng Balls, be sure to buy Betty Lou’s Spirulina-Ginseng Balls. They’re the best. I know Betty Lou makes all kinds of healthy organic sugar-free healthy snacks including lots of vegan items. And she has many other treats like Almond Butter Balls
, Coconut Macadamia Balls
and Fudgie Filbert Balls
. And not just balls, she also makes all kinds of bars. I just thought it was kinda funny to find Amazon selling, of all things, Spirulina Ginseng Balls. But then I remembered they just started the new Amazon Grocery Store. And it looks like their store has a much wider health food section than say, Costco. You might not be able to do all of your shopping through Amazon Grocery — they only offer non perishable items. But it can be a good alternative, especially when you are looking for the cheapest prices on items you know and love. Oh, and it is covered under Amazon Prime! (Do you know Amazon Prime yet? It is completely worth it! Quick free shipping on all of your orders. I easily pay for it on a couple of last minute birthday gift orders a year. And you can share your membership with people in your household.) While you are at it you can order some Ka-Me Satay Noodles in a Microwavable Box
— man those peanut satay noodles are good. Yea. From Amazon.
August 6th, 2007
The new Best Toys for babies, toddlers and kids page has had such a great response so far so we’ve polished it up, added some pictures and added some detail. We list some truly great toys, several extremely trustworthy brands and our experiences with the best tricycles around. If you prefer natural, educational and durable toys over cheap plastic junk, this is the list for you.
AND this Top 10 Toy list is better than all rest — it goes up to 11.
July 30th, 2007
Ok, I have some new heroes, Catherine Bailey and Robin Petravic. If for no other reason, I’m pleased that they like Orr Hot Springs and Eva Zeisel. But they also purchased Heath Pottery in Sausalito, CA and are running it as a socially responsible business. And they producing a combination of the company’s traditional mid-century designs along with new designs. I get excited whenever I hear about businesses that are integrated with social causes … and with ceramics too, wow.
You can see a nice little interview about them and visit the Heath Ceramics site .
July 25th, 2007
Ok, I’m a little obsessed with outdoor showers right now. I mentioned a couple of fine showers you can buy from Amazon in a previous post on showering in your backyard. And now this nice little shower design book has come to my attention to help you design and build your own outdoor shower.
I had no idea that outdoor showers are becoming the hot new luxury item. I just know that my significant-other has a soft spot for them because as a kid she would visit their family’s homestead shack out in the Mojave desert and use an outdoor shower. Years later we visited Costanoa, a luxury fake camping resort where you sleep in tent cabins under electric blankets and use shared camp style deluxe bath facilities. The bath house floors are heated with radiant heat and you can shower (in private stalls) under the open sky. And now we are renovating our decrepit bathroom with that style in mind. Most of all I just remember as a kid, some of my favorite times were coming home covered in dirt, mud or sand so that I needed to be hosed off outside. Now I just need the time and energy to build a shower to make it more fun.
Beware– I’ve found that you may need a permit to build an outdoor shower. My plumber warned me that in Santa Monica (where we have a lot of very good strict building requirements) it is technically illegal to build a shower without proper drainage and permits. I need to find more info, but this action by the City Council points out that outdoor showers are really supposed to be used for recreational purposes like if there is a pool or sauna. But it shouldn’t serve as the primary shower for a granny flat. Who knew it was so complicated to hose off in your own yard? You have to admit though, it is important to keep untreated water out of our ocean! It is contaminated enough. So get your permits!
Anyway, this shower design book has received some nice reviews and I’ve got to order mine.
July 17th, 2007
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