Author Archives: Robert

After a long day of work and rehearsals, I came home and flopped down on the couch.  Ray looked at me square in the eye and said, “There is a mistake on your blog.  It’s Karmann Ghia not Carmengia.”

Apparently, enough people have posted enough Carmengias on the Internet to make Google ask, “Did you mean Carmengia?” when I searched for Carman Gia.

Now that we have that cleared up, let’s take another look at this classic car and remember; Designers are important.

Even the logo is bitchen’

Homer had a little Easter Eggy decoration get-together tonight.  Ray and I made the trip down to Tucson to join in the fun.  As usual, Homer had several creative fun loving people there. 

Ray and I chatted, ate yummy food (there’s this rage-inducing lemon meringue thing going on) and enjoyed the good company. 

Homer went to the trouble of hiding a ton of those little plastic eggs in his yard.  We had an Easter egg hunt!  In the rain.  OK, so it wasn’t really rainy but it was drizzly.  I’m such a whimp with the cooler weather.

One of my little plastic eggs had a number in it.  It was kind of like a lottery.  I won a kiddie fishing pole!  It was made in China.  Better not suck on the little plastic peices.  I could get lead poisoning.

Homer always has such fun parties and he’s a great host.  It was well worth the trip there–with the exception that it was totally snowing most of the way home.   Traffic on I-10 slowed down to a crawl.  That sucked–especially ’cause I was driving.

I had forgotten that Easter was around the corner.  I guess it’s because my mind is focused on the play and my project at work.  Ray has been a very good sport reading lines with me.  I hope I don’t fuck up my lines.  I hope I don’t fuck up the website.  I hope I don’t…I need to calm down or I’ll never sleep until next July.

The ultimate highlight of the party was getting to see Jimbo in person again.  He’s here visiting Homer.  I met Jimbo online and he e-troduced (I couldn’t resist) me to Homer.  Jimbo got me interested in blogging and then after reading Homer’s blog, I decided to try it myself.  They’re my blogspiration.  Really.

I heart Jimbo and Homer.  Ray and I are glad to know them.  Jimbo makes me laugh because he’s a total 80’s music geek like me.  I feel like the bee girl when I read how much he loves Duran Duran and Xanadu. 

It’s great to be home after driving 90 miles in the snow.  I’m going to bed!

OK, I’ve had a long day,  work from 6:30 to 4:30, an hour of running lines for the play, three hours of rehearsal and a couple of hours to relax with my guitar…and a teeny tiny bit of Vodka.  I got bored so I got all Google happy.  I Googled lopakalounge and after clicking on a few recognizable sites of which I am affiliated with, I came across this tidbit on  www.queerfilter.com.  “Lopaka Lounge Description: A partnered fortyish urban-bred gay man with a high sex drive tries to figure out the secret to rural living in the high Arizona desert”

I honestly can’t remember if I wrote that or not.  It’s far too accurate and clever a description to have thought it up on my own.  Perhaps I was having a fleeting moment of brilliance. . .

. . . or perhaps some automated web bot thingie complied the information based on whatever I have posted out to the Internet. 

Google responsibly.

Countdown…less than one month until the launch of the new Cochise County website.  I don’t sleep much anymore.  I’m moody and totally *freaked out by minor details and sudden unexpected obstacles.  My former coworker at Zefer, Holly Blankstein, referred to those types of things as an “added layer of complexity”.

I am a designer before I am a web developer–which drives IT people up the wall–it drives most people up the wall.  Brian, you totally know what I’m talking about, “That dropdown menu is 2 pixels lower on the nav bar in Firefox than it is in IE–dammit!  We can’t go live yet! I want beta testing on all platforms!”

I am quite capable in the technical aspect of web development but wont sit still for substandard design.  I am a visual engineer and deserve respect. 

DIV TAGS–NOT TABLES!!  YOU’RE USING COMIC SANS?  NOT ON MY SITE!!!

Am I showing signs of cracking?  No!  I just refuse to settle.  Could you imagine Michelangelo’s David if he was all, “Whatever man, that looks cool.”

Here’s the most fucked up thing about being a good designer, the better you are at what you do, the more people think it was easy.  If you do something really well, it’s seamless.  Transparent.  If you do something mediocre, you’re screwed.  Do plastic surgeons deal with this?  No.  If a plastic surgeon does a great job, he or she gets rich and sometimes famous.  If a designer does a good job he or she gets, “We need a logo!”  Expected for free no less because we just have this string coming out of our ass that you simply pull and logos fall out.  It’s most embarrasing going through airport security. 

My former IT boss at the county called me the “Earth Tone Guy” because he thought what I did was easy, like staying within the lines in a coloring book.  I hated that (although I really was rather fond of him).   I hate that people think designers, “Make it pretty”.

Fuck you and yer pretty!  We make it awesome and appealing.  You know why they brought back the VW Bug and the MINI Cooper?  Classic design!  You can’t go wrong with the classics. 

 Why doesn’t Volkswagen bring back the Carmengia?

Talk about a classic!  Someday when car companies run out of ideas again the Carmengia will get another chance and I’ll buy one.  Or maybe I’ll win the lotto and be able to buy a restored one.  I’ll drive it around Southern Arizona with a big white scarf…

I’m wishin’ and hopin’ that I’ll someday we’ll get the respect and acknowledgement that we, as visual engineers, make a difference.  Let me tell you folks, if it looks really  cool, simple, elegant and evokes an emotional response…there was a talented designer behind it. 

I’m rambling.   I better go to bed now–so I can lay awake all night and ponder the best way to format my navigation scheme so that it’s optimized for all users.  Who am I kidding?  I’m not going to sleep until May.

*freaked out means that I’m consumed by my project–it doesn’t mean that I’m in need of intervention or that I can’t handle it. 

Last Sunday, I was going through some stuff in my office and came across the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly.  I turned to Ray and told him next time it came to subscribe, he could just throw away the notice.  Since we don’t watch TV anymore and most all movies that come out today suck, we have no connection to who’s who in EW.  Later that night, I remembered the ACADEMY AWARDS® were on and for the first time ever in my life…I didn’t watch them.  I didn’t care.

I have watched the OSCARS® all my life and dreamed of someday winning for best actor, director, screenplay and at one point–best special effects.  Over time–after more than a decade in the business–I grew weary of the whole OSCAR® thing.  It’s a shitty industry with shitty fucked up people–and probably why my language is unappologetically peppered with vulgarities.  The more famous someone is, the more they are in need of Thorazine.  I have been back stabbed, screamed at and mentally manipulated by messed up insecure people (and I use the term people loosely).  Some of my industry friends thought I was crazy to leave LA.  Hell, all of them did.  It wasn’t until a few years of living in Chicago–a real city–until I realized how messed up LA really was.  Chicago is great but cold and when Ray’s bank offered a move back to LA or a layoff package deal, we settled on the latter and decided to move to Bisbee, Arizona which is about as close to Lost Angeles as we wanted to be.

When we first moved here to Bisbee, a film company came into town to film Stephen King’s Desperation.  I was filling up my car at the gas station when I recognized a guy I had worked with many years before.  I said hi and he looked at me for a second, his face searching for some connection as to why he recognized me and then he said, “Bob! (my first name)  Oh my god!  It’s been years.  Hey, are you here on the production?” and I said, “No! I live here and work for the county!”

The look on his face was priceless.

He was…cordial to say the least.  I’m sure he was laughing inside, but when I think of how I no longer live out of a hotel room for months or have 15 hour days or deal with headcase movie people and stress levels like you’ve never felt before–I was the one laughing.   Yeah, I’m the loser who’s no longer in the Business.  I now have a steady creative/technical job I love in my chosen field.  I share a beautiful custom home with a pool on 16 acres and 360 degree views with an amazingly handsome man that I’m madly in love with.  I get off work every day at 5:30 and have every other Friday off (and I’m allowed to telecommute from home on occasion).  Did I mention that I look better than ever, have great sex on a regular basis and have enough free time to work on my own personal creative projects?  Oh yeah…it sucks not being a part of the Business anymore.  What misery…not.

I didn’t feel weird about not watching the ACADEMY AWARDS® this year, I felt weird because I just didn’t care.  Actually, I just didn’t feel anything.  There was no love lost.  The only thing in the movies this past year that had my interest was…

Daniel Day-Lewis with a stache!

And he won!  Of course he won.  He puts the ME in method actor.  I know because I worked on the film The Crucible.  Daniel doesn’t know it but, he’s in love with me. 

There were three highlights to working on The Crucible. 

1. Finding out that Winona Ryder is a total FREAK.
2. Meeting playwright extraordinaire Arthur Miller (His son Bob produced the film and Mr. Miller wrote the screenplay adaptation).
3. Meeting Daniel Day-Lewis and seeing him every day (BTW, he’s one of the very few I have worked with who’s actually quite nice).  Sigh…

I had a very bad experience working on that film.  It was to be my last film before I moved to Chicago to be with Ray.  They hired me on a “Five or six day workweek” contract but because the stupid producers made a huge scheduling mistake, I ended up working seven days a week with no compensation for the seventh day.  I quit the show two weeks before we wrapped and they gave my replacement, “Brian Albushies” full credit as the payroll accountant but that’s OK, the film tanked at the box office and Winona Ryder got busted shoplifting which ruined what was left of her career.  Can we say, “Schadenfreude”?

You never quit a show in Hollywood.  That’s bad mojo.  Years later, after the dot com bust, I went back to work in film production.  I was working on The Weather Man.  Long, freak-show story short, my boss Ramona <<insert whatever her current last name is based on her marital status>>, the complete C. U. Next. Tuesday production accountant who was a vampire–she fell and sliced her arm open and it didn’t bleed–was a horrible manipulative bitch and it just so happened that our house sold and we could move to paradise in Arizona whenever we wanted.  So I quit.  I quit a show twice.  He he he…

Goodbye OSCAR® and fuck you Hollywood.  Fuck. You.

This is me.  Aged 19 (around 1986).  Still had the blond hair.  Note my Dumbo left ear–had it tucked back about ten years ago.  It hurt like a mother but was worth it.  I’m not smiling either.  I hated to smile.  I could have still been wearing braces, I don’t remember.  I was a moody fellow back then.  Very moody.  The whole world sucked and nothing ever went my way. 

I hated myself, hated my ear, hated my pouty face and most of all, I hated that I looked like a little boy (not a hair on my chest).  Rich fat ugly sugar daddy types loved that about me and I had several repeated offers to get whatever I wanted as long as I–yuck, I can’t even think about it.  All the guys that I thought were hot were not into me at all–so I drank copious amounts of alcohol, did lots of drugs and engaged in risky sex.  I’m lucky to be alive.

My childhood and young adult years sucked big time.  You can see the way I look in the photo that there was way too much going on in my head for a young naive guy like me.  I was very lonely.  I love the way I look and feel now.  Nothing sucks and everything goes my way! 

I have no idea why I posted this photo.  I just happened upon it the other day and had a laugh.  Just a reminder of how things can change drastically if you set your mind to it (like, take a look at the “Your Host” photo on the right of this page)

Ray got home last night at around midnight.  Poor guy is out of it.  I’m not even making coffee as not to disturb him. 

I have the software technician here for two more days and my temp is in and I have rehearsal tonight for the play.  I just want to crawl back in bed. 

Hey!  I want to give Brian a special thanks for donating to the Mule Mountian Relay For Life.  Thanks Brian.  You’re the best and a hell of a designer too!