Looks like it's New Year's Eve again and all that.
Thanks to everyone who made 2006 so sweet.
Good luck on making the most of 2007.

I've been messing around with Blogger's new layout tools. I think I've got it looking like it did. I like how it puts the number of posts next to the months in the archive. Did I really only post 9 times in September?

This shall be the Christmas Day post. It probably won't be as long as the Christmas Eve one (maybe it will!). Woke up late (7:30!). Went back to sleep. Got out of bed at 8:30 filled with CHRISTMAS JOY. I went downstairs and discovered that only my mother was awake. I plugged in the tree and sat on the couch, basking in the glow. Waited, but no one else got up. Decided to take a shower because I knew that, with everyone home, hot water would be at a premium. Showered, dressed, and returned to the couch. Still no signs of anybody. I decided to see if I could get myself and the twenty questions game my sister got the night before on the same page. Finally succeeded (I was thinking of pants!).

Eventually, everyone woke up and we opened presents. I got some candy, a thermometer, a toy dart gun, a random issue of a painting magazine, a Popeye book, a book to help me meditate, season one of Amazing Stories, a pair of knitted pants, season one of Futurama, a sketch book, a couple black shirts, a pair of black pants, random other shirts, season one and two of Arrested Development (season two exchanged later for season three giving me the complete set. Woo!), and an easel.

I got everyone shirts except my mother got a CD and my parents got a framed print. Everyone seemed to like everything. I made all the shirts except my dad got a Pitt shirt and Luke got a really cool Pete Yorn one.

Yes, I said knitted pants. My sister made them. I've learned to watch what I'm joking about around people who knit. When I put them on I feel like half a muppet or a casual pimp. They're pretty awesome.

Then we went to my grandmother's for leftovers and ham. My cousin was wearing the shirt that my aunt got in the grab bag on Christmas Eve. I think it was the first time I've ever seen someone wearing one of my shirts. I hope she doesn't grow out of it too quickly.

After eating, we made our way up Mt. Washington to my other grandmother's for more food and presents. I think I spent most of the night sitting on the couch watching Deal Or No Deal.

Merry Christmas!

Top albums of 2006:
5. I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass - Yo La Tango
4. At War With The Mystics - The Flaming Lips
3. The Believer - Rhett Miller
2. Nightcrawler - Pete Yorn
1. Boys And Girls In America - The Hold Steady

Top concerts of 2006:
5. Girl Talk - July 22nd @ AIR
4. Soul Asylum - June 24th @ Riverfront Park
3. Wreckless Eric/Amy Rigby/Teen Riot - July 23rd @ The Brillo Box
2. Suburban Sect - August 5th @ The 31st Street Pub
1. Rhett Miller/Garrison Starr - April 14th @ The Rex

This shall be the Christmas Eve post. I woke up early, popped It's A Wonderful Life into the VCR, and decorated the tree until the Steeler game, where the dream finally died. I'm realizing that I can't quite remember the order of things as it was a crazy weekend. My parents brought my brother and sister home from the airport. There was much rejoicing. My sister made cookies in Arizona so we got thimble cookies after all (more rejoicing).

Christmas Eve means dinner at my grandmother's on the South Side. I came in through the front door, dumped a couple bags of presents by the tree, and proceeded to snag a prime seat in the dining room where I stayed for most of the night. There was a pretty good sing-a-long and the best food in the world (pirogies, stuffed cabbage, pickled herring, and gummy bears).

We've done an adult grab bag the last few years at my grandmother's. We had a pretty good one this year. All the kids were banished from the dining room and the grab bag presents were stacked on a table. I believe there were 27 people in the grab bag and I picked number 8 (my brother was number 9, incidentally). When it was my turn I opened a box and got a Steelers blanket. My brother stole the t-shirt I made from my cousin's baby daddy. At some point someone stole the blanket from me and I selected the plain, brown paper bag and got a classy pitcher (thanks for not stealing it from me, grandma!). My brother's grab bag experience was more exciting. My aunt Donna stole the shirt from him and he went through a number of presents, including a gift certificate to the Olive Garden, before ending up with a set of candles. In one of the cutest moments of the night, he was soliciting advice on which package he should select from a bunch of our cousins who were standing on the stairs. They were all hanging over the railing and pointing. That's the picture that I'm the most sorry I missed.

The grab bag was only marred by a couple fits of shouting. We sort of made of the rules as we went but the young people were able to force the game to be played the way they thought was right. It got a little heated at the end. Some people take the grab bag very seriously. I can't wait until next year.

After that we returned home, vacuumed, hung up the stockings, and threw our presents under the tree. My brother and I stayed up until 2:00 watching a Wallflower's concert on PBS. I was pretty tired at this point but I think Santa Claus arrived and put more presents under the tree, but this is moving into Christmas morning and that's another post.

I hope you're having a happy holiday.
Christmas Eve pictures are up on Flickr.

I'm in the attic and off the grid the next few days.
May your days be merry and bright and all that.
Also, Merry Christmas!

Alright, after two days of printing at AIR my holiday gift giving needs have been met. Also, the lights are on the tree. Also, Muppet Family Christmas is the best Christmas special ever made. Tomorrow is going to be crazy. I have to haul all the decorations out, help my sister decorate the tree (you are getting in early enough to decorate the tree, right?), wrap presents, watch the Steelers, and stuff my face at my grandmother's house. Pray for me.

My mother and brother went and cut down a tree. I guess that means I won't be out looking for one on the 23rd again this year.

A fun game: open your word processor and try and spell the name of the Jewish Festival of Lights off the top of your head. Next, run spell check and see what it thinks you were trying to say. Some of my favorites: churchman, chokeman, and hooey.

Dear 80s night,
Sorry to nitpick, but Dancing Queen was released in '76 and Stevie Wonder's Superstition came out in '72. Also, although Pretty Hate Machine was released in '89, Head Like A Hole really isn't an eighties song, is it? Come now, we must preserve the purity of essence of our precious theme nights. If we don't, I fear we are lost.
Love,
Our Hero

Lets take a moment to mark the passings of Peter Boyle and Lamar Hunt, but, please, lets first remember Mr. Boyle for his work in such movies as Young Frankenstein, The Candidate, and The Dream Team, and his award winning guest appearance on the X-Files and not for Everybody Loves Raymond. As for Mr. Hunt, last year's Super Bowl run now becomes even more poignant since it means the Steelers won the last Lamar Hunt Trophy that Lamar Hunt lived to see awarded.
Godspeed, gentlemen.

The Christmas lights are up again. There were whispers of doing something different this year but when it was all said and done I ended up doing the same thing we've done the last few years. The twist this year is that they go across the front of the porch three times, up from two last year, and only once the year before (the first time we did it like this). It's so nice to not put the lights on the damn dog wood tree anymore. Also, we are five days ahead of last year's pace.

"Sometimes I have to remind myself to include your good-looking friends in the conversation. Sometimes I have to remind myself to look your good-looking friend in the eye. Sometimes when I look your good-looking friend in the eye I realize she isn’t so good-looking. Actually, you’re both pretty good-looking."

Someone had taped some movies off of Cinemax. The tape was cued to the end of a softcore porn movie about a contortionist. Next was the extended director's cut of the Terminator. It was the version that still has all of Richard Dean Anderson's scenes in it. The machines were starting to take over and Richard had inadvertently lead them to the freedom fighting humans' secret hideout. This hideout was very important because it was where the stockpile of all of Jack Kirby's original artwork that they had managed to save was kept. Richard, sensing impeding doom, grabbed a handful of Daredevil and Fantastic Four covers and bolted from the house just minutes before the Robots descended and wiped everyone else out.

This article from today's Post-Gazette is all over the damn place but it cracked me up. I especially enjoyed these numbers:

A poll released Nov. 30 by Zogby International, in partnership with the American Bible Society, found that 72 percent of respondents want television programming to have positive, anti-sex and anti-violence messages -- of that group, 51 percent said it was acceptable for the programming to have biblical messages as well. Just 6 percent said they wanted edgier material, with more violence and teen sex.

The American Bible Society? I think we can be pretty sure that it wasn't quite a representative sample. I would love to see the actual questions. I mean, what percentage would want edgier material with the same amount of violence but more teen sex? Also, anti-sex message? I can understand wanting less sex on tv, but anti-sex? My other question would be what is anti-sex and how do I go about having it?

After much hassle, I finally made it to the supermarket. The outside was rundown but the inside was pretty impressive. You had to go through in groups. You were shopping but it was also like you were touring the place. It was really early in the morning and I was really hungry. I kept trying to get away from the group so I could eat some food without anyone seeing. I ended up hooking up with John Wayne and Ronald Reagan who were trying to do the same thing. We tried to eat some donuts but there were always people around. Eventually, we came to some sort of breakfast buffet, and we stuffed our faces with french toast. We rationalized our behavior by saying we'd be more likely to buy stuff on a full stomach.

The opening was pretty cool. Lots of cool people hang around that there Artists Image Resource. Here are the highlights: Ian Short almost being fooled by the insidious, imitation Mountain Dew. The horse's doovers. Mike Budai's story about smoking PCP laced pot at Woodstock. DJ Marymack. "Punch her in the ass and when she turns around say, 'I made the food!'" It was a good time. Yes, all that and I finally got to give my prints for the exchange to Jamie. Also, I only have 11 prints left now (well, 10 since I should probably keep one) since I entered into a deal to trade one to Julie for one of her awesome prints.
Hooray for making stuff!

The edition ended up being 39 prints. 27 of those go to the exchange and the other 12 go into the pile on the dresser in the attic to be discovered by my children or grand-children when I die.

The opening at AIR is from 7-10 7-9 tomorrow. Come on out, eat some food, and drink some booze. There's some cool stuff in the show, the coolest being a video installation that all you pyromaniacs out there are going to love.

Today my brother and I braved the cold and snow to see Scott McCloud talk about comics at CMU. The crowd was late arriving but the auditorium filled out pretty well in the end. The talk was really good, very amusing. Those 700 slides seemed to fly by. Scott McCloud just seems like a really cool individual. We were trying to figure out how we first heard about him but really couldn't remember. I know we got Understanding Comics for Christmas one year, and I can remember going to his web site back when it was still just an under construction graphic, but I guess it was just one of those things that happen. Anyway, we're both fans (we've even got The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln around here somewhere). I did have a surreal moment towards the end of his presentation when it occurred to me that it was Scott McCloud right there and he was talking to me about comics just like in his comics.

After his talk and his daughter's presentation about their tour (which was cute), we stood around for a bit deciding if we wanted to buy a copy of his latest book and get it signed. We decided to do it and stood in line for a bit. So we get up to the front of the line and buy a book, and I let my brother take charge because I know he has more of a capacity to do something interesting. If I hand the book over it just ends up saying To Nick and Luke, Scott. But my brother hands him the book and says something like, "do you mind if I make a strange dedication request?" and he proceeds to get Scott McCloud to dedicate the book to Nick and Luke Fredland - Innovators of the Future. You see, while we were standing in line, he had randomly opened the book to page 139 where it says "innovators of the future take note" and decided that that was us. Anyway, we got a good laugh out of it.

Yahoo released their list of the year's top searches. This quote stuck out.

As for Shakira, Early said, "Unlike Britney, her popularity came from her music."

Is that right?

There's some cool stuff going on this week. The incomparable Scott McCloud is speaking at CMU on Thursday afternoon, and Saturday from 7 pm to 9 pm is the Projects Artists opening at AIR.

Staying up until after 5:00 am on Friday night has thrown off my internal clock and wrecked my sleep schedule. Who would'a thought?

Because you demanded it (I'm talking to you, Kelly)--a blog post! So, yesterday, oy, right? I wake up slightly hungover from 80s night. I didn't mention 80s night, did I? The plan was to get together with Sarah and some of her friends at the Upstage on Thursday night for awesomeness, but she didn't show. I ended up having a beer and getting into one of the pool games (I was 1-1, winning my first game because my opponent quit since he had to leave, but I was unable to defend my title). So, I woke up Friday morning feeling kind of hungover and kind of bummed. I check my email to see what was up with Sarah. It turns out she was walking to a friend's house to so they could take the bus together to the club and she got mugged. Thankfully, she's okay.

Armed with this new emotional baggage, I head to AIR. I didn't mention AIR, did I? I'm in this print exchange. An edition of 27 prints due by last Monday. I finally got my image done this week and got it onto a screen and proofed it on Thursday. It turns out that I had to re-burn one of my layers and tweak some of the colors. I do some work around the studio for the Project Exhibition that's opening next Saturday (7:00 - 9:00. Bring your friends), and I print out and burn the last film.

I know this is going to be a long night, so, at lunch, I go to the North Shore Deli to get me some meat. Now remember, the weather in Pittsburgh is going crazy on Friday. It was beautiful all week, high 60s and better. Pretty amazing for the last week of November. Friday morning it starts to change. When I left the house at 11:00 am it was still really nice but by 1:00 pm the wind was howling and the temperature was dropping fast. At the deli I order #15, the AGH Special--two hoagies for $7.30. My plan was to eat half of one for lunch, half of one for dinner, half of one for a mid-night snack, and still have half of one left over for an emergency. Anyway, I place my order, and, as I'm standing around waiting, the power goes off. But it comes back on. Then it goes off again. I think it went off and on four times before it died for good. It seems that without power they can't slice the meat, so no hoagies for me. I ended up not getting anything because I really had my heart set on those hoagies. I figured I'd go to Max's for dinner and get a giant fish sandwich or something. Little did I know that I'd be working late into the night on only an Odwalla bar and a bag of Fritos. The power went off briefly a couple times at AIR but it quickly came back on each time.

There were a fair amount of people at AIR, and I was helping out, but for the most part I was able to fall through the cracks and mess around with my computer. I fixed the screwed up layer in Illustrator and chatted with Sarah. Friday night was dominated by printing, but the afternoon was the tale of two emails (well, an email and a Myspace message). First there was the bad one from Sarah, but then I got a message from a guy I used to hang out with (in so far as I was able to hang out back then) at the Art Institute. We haven't had any contact since. Hearing from him was a nice little boost.

AIR starts to die down and around 6:00 pm I start on my print. First I lay down the blue. It's the one I had to re-do. It looks good. I make the next color (light blue) a little lighter. Now the fun starts. I know the registration is going to be a bitch, if not impossible, to get right. I line it all up and hit a couple. It's not working. I wash it out and regroup. I lower my expectations, the little slivers where the paper shows through are going to have to be part of the print. I hit all the light blue. It's still looking good. Next is the green. I decide to go with a completely different green from the proof. This is the kind of artist I am, when I look at the proof I don't think the green needs to be lighter or more yellow or anything useful. I think "the green needs to be more fun". I dig around for a new green and throw it down. I decide that the little line of white between certain of the green and light blue shapes are unacceptable. I find that I can fix this by changing the direction of the squeegee half way though the hit (!). Remember, there's much voodoo involved with screenprinting. Three colors down and it's looking good. It's 11:30 pm. Bill appears (he's the only other person there at this point) and we make a run to the gas station for beverages.

When I get back, I make the colossal mistake of logging on to Gmail. I lose 45 minutes to Kelly's and her infernal 'monkey face'.

Back to work. The pink for the baby needs a little more 'oomph' (add a little blue). The baby goes down easy. Clean out the screen and add the blood. This is taking forever (why did I put all the layers on the same screen!), but it's going well. It's 2:00 am. Bill leaves, and, after volunteering at AIR for over 2.5 years, I finally find out how to set the alarm. I'd never been the last person out. I debate skipping out now and leaving the black for another time but I really want to get it done. I stick around.

I register the black. It looks like it's going to work. I hit the first one. It's not quite right, but it's close. I'm not flooding it because some of the lines are pretty thin, so I can see through to the print underneath. Hmmm, if I pull the screen to the side and hold it, I can sort of line it up, I can pull the squeegee with the other hand...that works (at this point I'd like to pause and thank the big, wheeled print drying rack. Thanks, buddy. Couldn't've done it without you). I run the black and clean up.

Working alone at night is creepy. Nathan was doing a tutorial from 6:30 to about 9:30. He took off after 11:00, and Bill left at 2:00, so I was only alone for a couple hours, but still. Nathan was using the power washer before he left and he didn't switch it off when he was done. When you don't switch the power washers off they have a tendency to turn on sporadically. It's in the back by the washout sink and I was down at the far end of the studio when it kicked on but it's LOUD, and it was something like 3:00, so it freaked me out pretty good.

After I was done printing and cleaning up, I tore down some paper to put between my prints and stacked it all up. Now I just have to weed out the bad ones and tear them all down to the correct size. I think I started out with 47 pieces of paper and I'm hoping to have an edition of somewhere in the mid-30s. We'll see. I think they turned out all right. I'm kind of dreading looking through them. It's so easy to make some huge error and not pick it up when you're working by yourself late at night/early in the morning, and you've only had a 99 cent bag of Fritos for dinner.

That was my Friday. I hope this makes you happy, Kelly.

Three observations:

1. I love that I can have comments from my blog sent to my Gmail account, and have Gmail automatically label those emails 'blog comments'. 2. I really admire people with the ability to use a car horn to say 'thank you'. 3. They should try and get Ben Affleck to follow Bob Barker as host of The Price Is Right.

Oy, what a day.