On the street in Calgary

 While in downtown Calgary, Alberta, Canada (around the intersection of 8th Street SW and 17th Avenue SW) in late May of this year, I saw some fun bits of graffiti. There were lots of interesting stand-alone bits, and one design that seemed to be everywhere on the few streets we walked on.

Here are the interesting single scribbles.

Bozo Crown

Doggie

Smoking Cowboy

Chair and Lamp

And here is the one scribble that seemed to dominate this area. A bearded king with a crown sometimes accompanied by a leafy branch. No idea what it means, but it's a strong design.

King and Crown with occasional leafy branch. Downtown Calgary, May 2023.

Hand-drawn street art stickers

A series of stickers in my Edmonton neighborhood. All are dated from March 2022. They are, as far as I can tell, individually drawn.

16 March 2022.

16 March 2022.

16 March 2022.

17 March 2022.

17 March 2022.

17 March 2022.

18 March 2022.

20 March 2022.

21 March 2022.

11 April 2022.

11 April 2022.

Updated Klondike Days logo is sweet

 The Edmonton state fair-like event is going on right now. State fair-like rides, food, and musical performances. Only the farm animals are missing. For the first time in ten years (since I've been paying attention), the logo has gotten a refresh. And I think it's a nice one.

The new logo carries over a couple bits from the old one. The the big K, and the side spike on the K. Adding a heart is a fun touch. Reminiscent of Milton Glaser's "I Love NY" logo — in a good way!

The new logo comes with a slew of icons on the K-Days website. Really fun.

I dare me

Saw a silly thing on Facebook. It's a comment on people who don't know about design stuff making silly suggestions to change designers' work. 

 Yes, I've been in this situation. 

 Anyway, the example being "improved" is a classic piece of design by Milton Glaser. 

It's also in a simple-ish style that I can kind-of mimic, so I thought I'd give the silly suggestions a serious attempt. Kind-of serious. 

 The original. Classic, of course.

The instructions. Funny? Maybe a little bit. I added the checkmarks.

 My version. 

It's not as good as Milton's, but it's not as bad as some things. Still awful, compared to the original.

Turner Classic Movies logo change

When Turner Classic Movies started in 1994, they started with a very strong logo. It was designed by the Minneapolis firm, Charles S. Anderson Design Co. It had a main version, with a gangster. But it also had other versions where other heads representing movie cliches were swapped in and out. 

These heads were really fun. Any of them could be slotted in to suggest a wide range of classic movies, from comedy to drama to musical to adventure. 

They kept this basic logo and its variants for almost 20 years. They stripped off the flag bits, but the heads were still in use on the website and in the program guide they published.

They finally dumped the heads but kept the original lettering in 2013, introducing the "Let's Movie" tag line.

 

This logo was used for eight years or so — until today, when TCM introduced an entirely new logo. But it sorta-kinda harkens back to the original in its use of the flexible image. Instead of using a cowboy or a glamor girl or a boxer, seemingly random stylized versions of the letter "C" are swapped in and out.

These rely on lots of wacky onscreen movement look lively. While it's nice to have that variety, all the life and personality of the original design has been drained away.

I found much of the historical info here in an article on LogoPedia.

Land vs. population

I like population-adjusted US maps. When presenting vote totals, showing realistic land maps give a distorted picture of the numbers. I particularly enjoy the map artists's decisions on how to mimic each state's shape. The limited pixel count adds an extra challenge. 

Minnesota comes off pretty well. Some other states leave a lot to the imagination. 

Daughter Number Three on Facebook suggested that Vermont and New Hampshire are poorly-served by these representations. I agree, but those states should just up their population, so the map artist has more pixels to work with.

I redrew the New York Times map and included the underlying grid. (I changed a few little bits in Florida and Texas, I changed Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine to vertical, and I moved Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota and South Dakota.)

Top maps from the New York Times website. I redrew the highlighted enlarged states.

Save Our Snakes

I was relieved — and only slightly disappointed — that we didn't see snakes on the road, or anywhere else, during our visit to Dinosaur Provincial Park in southern Alberta. Delores did take this great photo just outside the park, though.

Just like the USA — Alberta, Canada has people with widely-differing opinions. 

The billboard is from the Wexit crowd (the Canadian twist on Brexit, Western Canada Exit, I think). They are unhappy with how the rest of Canada treats their province, so they want to leave Canada. And apparently join the USA. 

This letter to the editor in the Edmonton Journal is a rebuttal of that idea.

Platt and Bogdanovich

It's unusual that you get two documentary podcasts about one subject being released serially at the same time.

One podcast -- "The Plot Thickens" -- is from an established brand, Turner Classic Movies, and while it's TCM's first venture into podcasting, it has the slickness and polish that one would expect from a Turner Classic Movies "normal" documentary.

The other podcast -- "You Must Remember This" -- is from historian and film fan, Korina Longworth. This podcast has been it's been going since 2014, and it has a rich back catalog of subject matter relating to old and recent movies. It is also a slick and polished production

Anyway, both these shows offer viewpoints on the creative and romantic partnership of Peter Bogdanovich and his former wife and early collaborator Polly Platt.

TCM concentrates on Bogdanovich and slightly downplays Platt.

Longworth concentrates on Platt and plays up Platt's contributions to Bogdanovich's early successes.

Platt and Bogdanovich collaborated on "Targets," "The Last Picture Show," "What's Up Doc," and "Paper Moon." All three (leaving aside "Targets") of Bogdanovich's "good" movies. His output post-Platt is so-so. "Daisy Miller," "At Long Last Love," "Nickelodeon," "Saint Jack," "They All Laughed," "Mask," and a bunch of stuff you haven't heard of.

The shows treat the subjects's careers chronologically, and there are still more shows to be released, so, going forward, I'm pretty sure they will have less to do with the relationship between Platt and Bogdanovich, but I find myself more excited about hearing Platt's story. 

I guess she somehow ended up working with James L. Brooks on projects including "Terms of Endearment," and "The Simpsons." 

Bogdanovich ended up making a lot of so-so movies after Platt split, and I'm having a tough time listening to him talk about how much he loved Cybill Shepard and Dorothy Stratton.

My takeaway from both podcasts: Bogdanovich shouldn't have left Platt.

You Must Remember This

The Plot Thickens

Alberta election, April 2019

Long story.

Today we took advantage of advance voting in Alberta’s provincial election. It’s our first time voting as Canadians. Yay! Election day is Tuesday, April 16.

About these pictures: These distinctive bubble-window row houses are in our neighborhood. There’s another set of them a few blocks east of these on the same street. They strike me as very 1970s.

While the bubble windows are ignored by most of the people living in these houses, a few of the windows are decorated with Christmas lights in season.

The political race this month is between candidates of two major parties. The current party in power is the New Democratic Party (NDP). In 2015, they won power from the conservative party of the time, the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta. This was a huge upset as the Progressive Conservatives had ruled Alberta since the 1970s. The way I understand it, the loss was due to some particularly visible corruption.

The Progressive Conservatives were beaten so badly, they decided to disband and regroup, joining with a more Tea-Party-ish political party, the Wildrose Party, to form the United Conservative Party (UPC).

Around the time the NDP was voted in, Alberta’s lifeblood — the extraction of oil from the Alberta tar sands (most here call them the “oil sands,” only wild-eyed environmentalists use the “tar sands” term) — became much less profitable because of the global collapse of oil prices. The unemployment numbers have grown and anger against the NDP has grown.

So, the United Conservatives are heavily favored to take control of Alberta in this election.

But, at least here in our neighborhood, the New Democrats are still popular. Hence the bubble-window display shown.

Update: United Conservative Party won.

Grumpy cat on the internet

A Facebook ad urging participation in the April 16, 2019 Alberta provincial election. Featuring a grouchy cat. Nice drawing.