Hegel-themed Kraft Cheese Lunchables

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I dreamt last night that I was throwing a party and someone brought Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel-themed Kraft Cheese Lunchables.
Der Wikipedia tells us that Hegel (1770-1831) talked about “a relation between nature and freedom, immanence and transcendence, and the unification of these dualities without eliminating either pole or reducing it to the other.”
I’m trying to find the connection my subconscious was drawing between Hegel and Kraft Cheese Lunchables. The best I’ve come up with so far is that Kraft Cheese Lunchables are free from nature. Transcendentally free from nature.
Immanence.

My most original idea ever

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So I have this new idea for a movie. It’s the most completely original idea I’ve ever come up with. And tonight I’m giving it to the world because that’s how much I love the world.
The movie’s called “Gnome Alone.” And the idea is, I’ve gone away for Christmas vacation and I’ve accidentally left my gnome home, all by himself. Two bungling crooks try to rob the place, but my gnome fights them off with a series of slapstick Rube Goldberg-style defensive maneuvers. And then he stabs them in the heart.
I’m proud to say, this idea is entirely fiction. (I don’t even have a gnome!)
It’s sort of a send up of all those gnome movies from back in the late ’50s. “The Third Gnome.” “Gnome on a Hot Tin Roof.” Remember those? “12 Angry Gnomes”? What was up with that?
Update: My family reminded me that Meg Ryan also had those pair of gnome movies in the ’80s and ’90s: “When Gnome Met Sally” and then a few years later, “You’ve Got Gnome.”

Jack

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When I first put my real name up here on the site about three weeks ago, I thought to myself (largely in the second person) “Not to worry, So-Called ‘Cecil.’ It’ll be years before you feel the urge to post something that in substance or by way of word choice might leave you later thinking, ‘Perhaps this isn’t the sort thing I’d necessarily want associated with my name for the rest of my life.'”
Turns out I was off by roughly X, where X = [years minus three weeks].
Here’s the latest addition to the Virtual LP. You’ve been warned. Therefore you can’t say, really, that I didn’t warn you.
time: 1:08 seconds; specs: 1.6 MB
Press Play to play.

Snow lights

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Snow lights
the heavens you
sparkle at me cold
soft indentations
that last a week or so
the footprints crushed
the heavens sparkle
at me cold
you
snow.

Toast!

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I’ve been thinking a lot about toast and how everyone takes it for granted. I mean, how many foods taste great uncooked and taste even greater after you’ve heated them up? 10? Maybe? Maybe 12? It’s not a lot.
So I’ve started working on some new slogans that I hope will help turn things around. See if you can incorporate these into your daily conversations. You know, virally.

  • “Toast: Like bread, only naughtier.”
  • “Suddenly everyone’s talking — about toast!”
  • “If you combined ‘toad’ with ‘roast,’ you’d get ‘toast.’ Who’s hungry?”
  • “Toast!” (this one’s not really a slogan, just a fresh way of saying the word toast — with extra emphasis.)

OK. Enough jibber jabber. Let’s get this toast party rolling!

An Interview with Tobie Giddio

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Creativity interview with visual artist Tobie Giddio
Image created for Tiffany & Co. by Tobie Giddio, reproduced courtesy of the artist.
Tobie Giddio grew up on the New Jersey Shore where she fell in love with fashion and art from the books and magazines in her basement makeshift studio. After graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology, she began illustrating advertisements for Bergdorf Goodman that ran weekly in the New York Times. Other work during this period included editorials for Interview Magazine and elaborately illustrated forecasting books and editorial work for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. Since 2000, her work has been commissioned by clients ranging from Seibu Department Stores of Japan, to Apple, Inc., and Tiffany & Co.
Recent projects have included a series of classic charcoal and pen and ink drawings for Amy Sedaris’s book, I Like You: Hospitality Under The Influence and a series of drawings for Infiniti Cars, as well as animated projects with Dovetail Studios, a collaboration between Giddio and her fiancé, motion/graphic designer Peter Belsky.
Tobie Giddio on the Web: Tobie Giddio.com, Dovetail Studios
Cecil Vortex: Can you describe your background?
Tobie Giddio: Well, I started out in fashion illustration. I studied with a number of teachers at F.I.T. [the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York – ed.]. And one of my main mentors was a teacher who was very rooted in fine art, so I was getting taught both principles at the same time. I was learning about drawing, and drawing the figure, and drawing the fashion figure, and then at the same time I was learning how to abstract the figure and learning about color and fine art and especially the modern art folks. To this day, I work in the fashion industry, and I spend a lot of time abstracting fashion and beauty and nature.
CV: How does fashion illustration work — when you’re working on an ad, for example, what are you working from?

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Everybody Wants to Be a Cat

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Once again it’s been a while since my last track on the virtual lp. I’ve started playing piano again of late. Not sure what’s triggered it, but it’s fun. Here’s a mimosa toast to piano, on this Saturday morn.
Specifically, my daughter brought home a great Disney songbook, which led to this here mini-cover of “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat” from Disney’s immortal Aristocats. (Not to be confused with more recent and slightly more mortal flick entitled The Aristocrats, particularly on family movie night.)
Thanks for listening…..
-Cecil
time: 1:35 seconds; specs: 2.1 MB
Press Play to play.
note: updated from Saturday’s initial version.