Seriously, you’d think two married graphic designers would have done fancy homemade gifts and a holiday card by now, right? This year, it was imperative that we make sure those happened.

The Mrs. made a beautiful tin for family and close friends with homemade white-chocolate peppermint bark. Drool… She also included some little bags of dried fruit and just about every flavor of Hershey’s Kiss imaginable. (Have you tried the Hot Cocoa flavor of Hershey’s Kiss? They’re killer.) I’ll post a picture of it later this week so you can see for yourself why I value and respect my wife’s talent every day.

While Mrs. Guthrie worked on our gifts, I worked on our card.

Guthrie Holiday Card 2008

The idea started a few years ago when I was asked to design a wedding invitation for my friends Eric and Angie. Both are actors and just plain fun folks, so I didn’t feel too limited when brainstorming. Even I, though, had an idea that was certainly too crazy: pose them as boxers and make a vintage silkscreened boxing poster. The copy even wrote itself — “A match so big they’ll need TWO RINGS,” for example. Clearly, it’s an idea that wouldn’t work for most weddings, but I never forgot it.

Earlier this year, though, it occurred to me the same would work for a holiday card for us, seeing as how I was raised in a Christian household, and my wife is Jewish. The challenge was writing copy that actually downplayed any violent overtones. Boxing promotion is about raising the stakes, classifying the title match as an act of war.

Despite a desire to print our card on my beloved Gocco, we opted to simulate the distressed texture and pulpy print quality in Photoshop. I actually think that was a better choice, as I was able to get more detail in the type. Unsolicited recommendation: Staples-brand double-sided photo quality matte paper.

What wasn’t a better choice, though, was using Photoshop to put in the boxing gloves. Using some cheap stock photography as a guide, the Mrs. and I posed in similar stances to the source images, and I brought in the gloves. However, I had to add lots of shadow and depth and move some bodily appendages around. Honestly, I should have just headed over to Sports Authority and bought some gloves; would have saved me hours of tense Photoshop work, praying that any imperfections in my clone stamping would be hidden by the halftone pattern.

So far, my favorite reaction has been, “So, when is this?” Sorry, it’s not a real event. Just our way of saying Happy Holidays, no matter which holiday you celebrate.

While the Mrs. and I did go off in separate directions to work on our self-appointed projects, we certainly do check in with each other constantly. A lot of people ask if it’s difficult being in the same field as Lesley, but it has been quite the contrary. Since we worked on our wedding invitation together, we’ve learned how to give each other constructive feedback and to support each other’s decisions. Plus, I trust her talent. She always scoffs when I say she’s a better designer than I am, but she really is. I know just about anything she creates, I will love. Thanks for keeping me inspired, honey.

On behalf of Lesley and myself, we wish you Happy Holidays and a prosperous New Year.

In previous years, my favorite album choices would end several paragraphs of lukewarm observations about the previous twelve months (example — I still love that album, unlike my top choice in 2003). This year, I don’t feel compelled to rail about politics like I used to because a majority of Americans made their voices heard. Despite the suffering economy, I’m full of Hope™.

In 2007, I didn’t listen to nearly as much music as I usually do. In fact, seeing as how I was between blogs last December, it was not only necessary but perhaps even appropriate that my best album picks were broadcast via Twitter.

Not so this year. New blog, new attitude.

I’ve narrowed my list down to five favorites (with three runners-up that needed to be called out). In an effort to rank the albums arbitrarily and not give deference to any specific choice, I’ve arranged them in ascending order of the album cover’s average lightness value.

TV On The Radio
Dear Science

This band gets better and better with every release. They still create complex harmonies, evocative lyrics, and dense productions. Dear Science, though, is a much more accessible, melodic album than previous albums. I love this album more than their past efforts, and I love their past efforts.

Amazon MP3 Store

Girl Talk
Feed the Animals

I’m not sure even Gregg Gillis knows how brilliant he is. Girl Talk’s mash-ups are booty-shaking romps that also deserve careful consideration. His ability to love and skewer popular culture may fall somewhere between Weird Al Yankovic and Negativland, but even that description defines his skill too narrowly. I will be bold enough to say that Girl Talk is (hyperbole warning) the most important musical artist of this decade. He captures the cacophony of the entire musical landscape and molds it into a listenable work of art that is so much more than the sum of its 300+ parts.

eMusic / Download directly from the source

MGMT
Oracular Spectacular

It’s not often that I have a favorite album that actually makes me happy, but maybe I’m just happy these days. Their new-wave, soul-injected Brian Wilson schtick shows no signs of wearing off on me. I wonder just how good this album would have been without the influence of Dave Fridmann, The Flaming Lips’ go-to producer. Whoever deserves the credit, nevertheless, earned it with this incredibly silly yet strangely sophisticated album.

Amazon MP3 Store

The Kills
Midnight Boom

The album cover looks exactly like this album sounds. Dark, brooding sexual tension wrapped in sludgy blues coupled with a distant, alienating drum machine — it might as well have been recorded on that messy bed. I probably listened to this album more than any other this year; I just get lost in it when it starts playing. It sounds like a really bad night in a really good way.

Amazon MP3 Store / eMusic

Marnie Stern
This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That

Marnie Stern almost defies words. It’s all in her riffs, the way her fingertapping style leads to constantly moving, often pounding rhythms. Coupled with the voice necessary to pierce those rhythms, “This Is It…” is quite a propulsive ride.

Amazon MP3 Store / eMusic

Buy the Albums

Each album above has a link to eMusic and/or the Amazon MP3 store, my favorite ways to purchase music now. And yes, I purchase music. Most of these bands are on independent labels who need your money just as much as the band does.

None of these links are affiliate links, either. I will make no money off of these purchases.

You should also go see the bands live.

Runners Up

This time in alphabetical order by band name, each described simply with two words:

The Bug, “London Zoo”: Urgent dubstep.
Fucked Up, “The Chemistry of Common Life”: Epic hardcore.
Vivian Girls, “Vivian Girls”: Dreamy lo-fi.

Next Year

My old college roommate Clint has a nearly fetishistic relationship with tracking data. His annual movie list is no exception. I will say, though, since I’ve been playing this pretentious role of pretend music pundit, I’ve become fascinated with the prospect of tracking all of the albums I hear in a year, and not just the newly released ones. For example, I recently listened to all of Foo Fighter’s post-The Colour and the Shape albums and decried them as now being in the same category as Nickelback (earning me some jeers on my Facebook wall). So starting this year, I’m going to make track my feelings about every album I listen to that’s new to me, no matter when it comes out. I’m looking forward to the exercise, and I’ll share the results next December.

(Okay, perhaps Clint is not nearly as obsessive about data as Nicholas Felton, but I know Clint personally, so he got the nod.)

I want to be remembered as I was when I was young and in my golden times… I want to be remembered as the woman who changed people’s perspectives concerning nudity in its natural form.

I don’t think you’ll have to worry, Bettie. Thank you.

Moment of silence for the one and only Bettie Page.

Anyone who knows me knows that I hate meetings. We all spend too much time sitting around talking about stuff we should be doing instead of actually doing stuff. More often than not, any information required can be either decided by an individual with authority and the groups’ trust or acquired via a quick email or instant message.

Nevertheless, sometimes there are so many moving parts that the emails start flying. You’re replying to an email at the same time someone else is, and all of a sudden, everyone is confused. That’s when I stop everything I’m doing and pick up the damn phone. That just happened to me. Too many emails, too many people, too many elements — so I picked up the phone.

And then it dawned on me — there has to be a formula to this. After some doodling and calling upon high school physics, here’s what I came up with:

m

The number of people involved in the conversation, including yourself (in other words, mass)

e

The number of emails sent by all of those people, including those you’ve sent yourself

t

The amount of time in which all of those emails were sent, measured in minutes

Plug in the numbers. If the above formula is indeed true — the left side is greater than or equal to the right side — then you probably need to pick up the phone or have a meeting. Clearly, if there is that much to say, then you need to talk. Or if everyone is so unfocused that they are just sending short emails pretending to be involved, then you need to get everyone together and get focused.

Every scenario I’ve plugged into this formula seems to work. Does it work for you?

• Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
• Turn to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post that sentence along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

So the nearest book to me, as is usually the case when I’m doing a big layout, is Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style. And here’s that fifth sentence, which I love:

They can also be used (as they often are) to shout at readers, putting them on edge and driving them away; or to destroy the historical integrity of a typeface designed before boldface roman was born; or to create unintentional anacronisms, something like adding a steam engine or a fax machine to the stage set for King Lear.

Bringhurst is, of course, referring to the bold italic weight of type that appears in many fonts these days. Bold italic as a Roman variant didn’t appear until the 19th Century. So there.

Update: There’s also this one, which I also posted to Delicious. Therefore, I’m pleased to announce that my band Jovan Sterija Popović’s new album “Only While I’m Asleep” drops next Tuesday. Here’s the album cover:

So, yeah, I posted about silly Internet memes. Hey, at least I posted something, right?

My introduction to Studs Terkel was a monologue from Working that I used in high school for college auditions. A cop on the edge who got to say the F-word, just what a 17-year-old boy like myself wanted to scream. I was too young and naive to really appreciate how important those words are.

Moment of silence for Studs Terkel.

The first time I voted, it was absentee because I had just started college. (And I’m not afraid to admit that my first vote, in 1992, included a vote for George H.W. Bush. We live and we learn.) When I did finally step into a voting booth in 1996 — and voted for Clinton because I understood the world a little better — I loved it. I loved the line I stood in, the smell of donuts ordered for the election judges, the little plastic booth, the chad punch. It felt so sacred, so powerful. It’s why since then, I always vote as early as possible. I can’t sleep the night before, like the night before you’re going to Six Flags. I’m waiting in line like I want to scalp front row seats for Lily Allen.

I love love love to vote.

As they say in Chicago, “Vote Early, Vote Often.” This year, you can really vote early. Illinois is one of many states that have an early voting programs. No lines, no pressure, and the peace of mind that whatever BS your chosen candidate explosively excretes in a last-ditch effort to sway a few undecided voters won’t affect your decision. Okay, so you might learn on November 3 that your candidate is a serial killer, but you might find that out on November 5, too. It’s the risk you take.

As they say, all politics are local. In Chicago, that means voting on a crapload of judges and three commissioners for the Water Reclamation District. When was the last time you did research on who will do a better job of cleaning poo out of wastewater and selling it as drinking water to the suburbs? Honestly, even a political junkie like me needs help when it comes to the vast array of candidates on the ballot.

This year, as I do every year, I offer the power of influence over my own judgment to the IVI-IPO. This non-partisan organization cares about the things I care about: justice, honesty, openness, and fairness. In the past, I’ve done my own research on judges and referendums, and every time, my conclusion has been the same as IVI-IPO’s. Thanks to them, I’ve even voted for a Republican or two.

If you want the kind of world I do, check out their endorsements. If you agree, print out their sample ballot. Remember: Election judges cannot stop you from bringing reference materials into the booth.

Remember to vote on by November 4. I’m voting tomorrow, and my heart is already racing.

Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do:

This display of Christianity is not Christianity at all. Jesus sought to bring peace for those who believed in him. Do any of these people seem to have peace? They seem more bloodthirsty to me.

Furthermore, what did Jesus preach if not for tolerance? Jesus brought hope to the poor, to those who were persecuted by the powerful. Hmmm. Sounds pretty liberal to me.

And I’d like to remind Christians of the amount of persecution they’ve received over the last few centuries themselves. How dare you persecute someone else. Your messiah didn’t do it, and you have no right to do it either. Your faith should not be at the expense of truth and tolerance.

There are millions of peaceful, tolerant, real Christians out there. I don’t wish to call them out at all. However, when I consider, “What would Jesus do?” I believe he would tell the people in this video and everyone who agress with them that they’re full of crap.

19 days.

Sidenote: I know this is a clip from Al Jazeera, the Fox News of the Middle East, so it deserves a grain of salt. Bear in mind, though: This is the impression of the United States that the world has about us. So much for leading the world.

(Via Mac genius and fellow progressive John Gruber, who showed far more constraint than I did.)

After reading how AIG spent taxpayers’ money, I wanted to respond to two things folks have said to me about our burgeoning economic nightmare. Be forewarned: I know very little about economics, and I shouldn’t even be talking about this publicly. However, what are blogs for if not to espouse uninformed opinion.

When my father started going off about how Obama is going to raise our taxes and I started going off about how that’s a lie, Dad threw this little bit at me: “Why do the Democrats insist on punishing the rich for being rich? It’s not like the poor pay any taxes anyway.” The government needs to get their money somehow, right? So if it’s not getting it from the people who can afford it, it’s raising fees or selling debt to the Chinese, neither of which is good for anyone. Don’t get me wrong — I understand that if you raise taxes on corporations, that tax money may come out of salaries and benefits. But individuals? If a person making more than $2,500,000 a year has a problem with paying an extra $300,000 a year so that our country isn’t in debt and we can improve our workforce by improving education, then that person should go screw themselves. (Then Dad started saying that Obama is a Muslim, and the conversation ended there.)

A client and friend of mine suggested that the problem is not a need more regulation. The problem is we aren’t enforcing the regulation that already exists. As he put it, “If the animals escape from the barn, don’t lock the door to the barn so they can’t get in.” Well, he has a point, but that barn, though, is collapsing in on itself. Deregulation (like the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, both of which, incidentally, were signed by Bill Clinton) opened the door for subprime mortgage securities. There was a reason why FDR only wanted banks to worry about loaning money and let other firms worry about investments.

Other than that, I’m clueless about what’s going on. If economists support Obama 2-to-1, that’s good enough for me.

Update 10/10/08: I really forgot to change the title of this piece after I wrote it. It started out as one thing and became another. Neverthless, this seems like as good a place as any to point out that AIG loves retreats. (Via.)

I loved his acting. I loved his philanthropy. Hell, I loved his Balsamic Vinaigrette and his salsa.

Moment of silence for one of the all time coolest guys ever, Paul Newman.