Beer and football III — week ten

The game: Bills at Patriots
The beer: AleSmith Nut Brown English-Style Ale
The result: Win, 37–31
The commentary: God bless the DVR. Continuing the trend, this week's "1:00" game didn't start for me until almost 3:30. Sunday was the deadline for a local arts festival logo contest that I entered, and after running a few errands early in the afternoon I had to drop A. and G. off at home so G. could have lunch. She no longer naps in the morning so we've been trying to institute an afternoon napping schedule about fourteen months too late. Unfortunately she fell asleep in the car before we got home and had to be woken and brought upstairs to eat, then refused to nap at all until later (which I'll get to). Anyway, after dropping them off I had to scoot over to Marblehead to turn in the logo.

For some reason I was expecting more formality than a cardboard box with a slot in it. There didn't seem to be many other submissions, though people had another two hours or so to bring them in. My only goal—well, my low-hanging fruit goal apart from the $150 cash prize—is to beat the woman (definitely a woman) who wrote her name in giant fourth-grader's script on the back of her entry. It's a certainty she designed her logo using PowerPoint and some web font. May the best design win, you hack!

On this topic, before getting to football, I had major flashbacks to my time at Mass Art on Saturday night as I finished my design, printed it out, cut down a piece of museum board (for some reason the contest specified that it "be mounted on eight- by ten-inch board (no other size accepted)," carefully applied some regrettably low-quality double-sided tape to the back of the print, mounted that shit and then covered it in a flap of tracing paper to protect it from scuffs and stray marks. All the night before it was due, of course! Ah, old times. I wanted to save a second copy in my old portfolio, which hasn't accepted new entries in the six years since I earned my degree because I've had a steady in-house job and haven't branched out into freelance work like I sort of planned (drag).

My three years at Mass Art (officially Massachusetts College of Art and Design, though minus the "and Design" in my day) as a graphic design certificate candidate (that BA in Journalism years earlier was ill-advised) were one big blur. I seemed to be one of only a handful of students who worked full time in addition to the three or six evening hours of "class time" (mostly standing around critiquing everyone else's work) per week. Overall it was a pretty taxing and unpleasant experience, some of which was my fault. I never did spend enough time on any projects (usually medium- to long-term deals, lasting anywhere from three weeks to entire semesters each) until the very end, which resulted in too many rushed all-nighters spent with a Canon i9900 that didn't produce my best work. Most of the instructors, especially this one woman in charge of the whole program who "taught" two or three of my classes (I'll politely refer to her as Tuesday instead of the one word I'd use if I didn't have a daughter), never did offer a whole lot of support. My critiques usually consisted of "it's not good enough," and for that I often drove home feeling like shit. It sucked.

(I should mention here that Tuesday taught my Wednesday evening Graphic Design I classes during the Fall 2004 semester and she was not a Red Sox fan or, I gather, a fan of anything that might be considered fun to non-artists. Do you know what happened on Wednesday evenings that semester? October 20: Red Sox–Yankees, game seven. October 27: Red Sox–Cardinals, game four. Naturally she didn't let us out early, but thanks to Fox's decision to start games way past the bedtimes of most impressionable young sports fans who will grow up without an allegiance to baseball, I was able to catch about the last quarter of each of these historic games. What a Tuesday.)

With less than a year remaining in the program I interviewed for the job I've held ever since. I brought a stripped-down version of my portfolio, weeding out a few designs I didn't feel were particularly strong (thanks to the non-specific direction mentioned above) and maybe it got me hired. Maybe it didn't. When December rolled around and I put school behind me forever, I closed up my portfolio case (containing many reworked pieces that had been significantly improved over the course of several lessons on what television shows air at four in the morning) and didn't open it again, even through two moves. Thanks to the brain trust of Mass Art's continuing education certificate programs, I was very near ashamed at how much "better" all the other students were than I was. At least that's how I felt—following my concluding presentation, the panel's seeming reluctance to graduate me certainly didn't help in the confidence department. Instead, it was just the twisted knife I needed to become convinced that my portfolio—symbolizing three years of major sacrifice (quitting a reasonably lucrative job that made me miserable in order to do something creative) and hard, hard work—was not worth the cost of a pad of newsprint. But graduate I did, allowing me to put the entire affair behind me. What a relief.

Fast forward to Saturday. I wanted to file the extra logo away with my old work, just because it was a place to put it. For old times' sake I sat next to A. on the couch and we flipped through those three years. A redesigned James Brown CD. An identity system (brochure, letterhead, envelope and business card) for the Tannery, another (print advertisement, letterhead, envelope, business card and cocktail napkin) for Gate Gourmet and a third (letterhead and envelope) for Dado Tea. A series of three posters encouraging voter turnout via MassVOTE. A free-form book combining window reflections and snatches of overheard conversations in Harvard Square. An annual report for the American Red Cross. A redesigned issue of (fictional) Talk Back magazine with two additional covers. A registration mailer that folded out into a poster calling for entries for an alternative fuels design competition, along with an invitation to the awards ceremony and a certificate for the winning designer (the invitation was replaced upside down on its board, which confirms that I hadn't opened the portfolio since the final presentation—that's something I would have corrected had I noticed, but those eggheads couldn't be bothered). A book of stamps highlighting the American typeface Franklin Gothic (probably my favorite piece). A pencil set chronicling (what else?) the history of American rock music. A logo, poster and T-shirt promoting a digital film festival. Packaging for a sports drink endorsed by John McEnroe. A website for a (fictional) Boston-based "social dessert" portal called The Icing. (A. said she wanted to bookmark it.)

And goddammit, it was good stuff! The MassVOTE posters are underdeveloped but the concept was strong. The Dado Tea pair is cute but needs "more" (that's the vague kind of expertise I benefited from during those critiques). Same with Gate Gourmet. I really like the film festival logo but the poster would benefit from better typography. I would also choose a different typeface and find better images for the mailer (freely available high-quality options are limited, even for student use; most likely I'd take my own photographs as I had successfully executed on the Tannery and Harvard Square materials). That one wouldn't make the cut in an interview tomorrow anyway because, on the whole, it is under-designed. Everything else though? I would hire the talented bastard! The craft and construction are strong, which is something I struggled with on just about everything—even the best large-format printers don't print fifteen by twenty inches, so there were many seams to meet up. Printing and taping together ten page spreads, complete with cut-outs designed to precisely line up with something on subsequent spreads, to form a twenty-page annual report? No thanks, ever again. So I'd like to buy that guy a drink. I'll buy him a smooth brown ale and pull up a seat to listen to him bitch about his instructors and how they don't really help make him a better graphic designer and how they play favorites and how he suspects this one dude is sleeping with a couple of students. Admire his typographic sensibilities and tell him to buck up, he's better than he thinks. Anyway, I was happy to reacquaint myself with my past. I was happy to add what I think is a well designed logo to a pile of other well designed materials. I was happy that I became a graphic designer. And I'm happy now to give a big "fuck you" to Mass Art. My only regret is that I didn't attend the Art Institute of Boston instead.

Wow, that really escalated. (Jefferson Airplane on line one!) There was a game? Right! So… I got home from Marblehead a little before 3:30 in time to discover that G. wouldn't nap. I let her cry it out long enough for me to wolf down some chips and salsa and crack open the AleHouse and then set her free to run around the living room while I zipped through the game. She had a blast listening to me rant and rave about this being Mayo's worst "television copy" game as a pro (because there's a lot of film that viewers don't see). If it weren't for some costly penalties (most of which were correctly called) and Ryan Fitzpatrick remembering that consistency is not his thing then Buffalo would have won this game. They should have won this game. But they lost. Fitzpatrick later called Brandon Spikes a "punk" after Spikes sacked his entire family and got called for a personal foul, even though the only reason Fitzpatrick's helmet came off was because Spikes blasted through the offensive line so uncontested that he wasn't slowed at all, and as he brought the quarterback down (with incidental helmet-to-helmet contact due to Fitzpatrick turtling) he overwhelmed the guy so thoroughly that his waistband was responsible for removing the helmet. Spikes and his athleticism smothered that bearded motherfucker, and even with the penalty (which wasn't dirty) I welcomed seeing some aggressive play-calling. The talent of this defense lies in the line and the linebackers, all starting with Wilfork: this guy convinces me a little more each week that he's much better than I ever gave him credit for. Without him the team might not win eight games. And Jones, Spikes, Hightower, Ninkovich, even Cunningham… let them loose from time to time!

On the topic of play-calling… to whomever called the quick snap three plays before the Pats' final field goal in the fourth quarter: stop it! Stop trying to be cute! Get it down to the two-minute warning and then get cute if you want, just make sure you don't give the Bills two full fucking minutes and an extra stoppage to try for a game-winning touchdown. I mean, what the hell? Even G., who finally fell asleep in my lap after repeatedly manhandling the wireless router and laughing hysterically every time I took it away from her, seemed to stir as if in the throws of a clock-management nightmare. Poor thing.

OK, enough. Cranky today! How about this little girl of mine? As I said, she refused to nap and was consequently punchy, bouncing around the room with Elmo (glad that's cleared up), trying to high-five players up and down, bringing me coasters as if I were drinking four beers at once, gazing at me while resting her head on the ottoman… these are my favorite moments. I picked her up several times and tried to snuggle her into accepting sleep. On the fourth or fifth attempt she calmed down, put her thumb in her mouth and eventually snored her way to dinner. I, too, was able to relax and resist the urge to fast-foward to the end of the game to see how it turned out. I'm a better football fan for it. She is beautiful.

Up next: Offensive Rookie of the Year Andrew Luck and the Colts hope to reboot the rivalry. The game has been flexed to 4:25 so Luck will have plenty of time beforehand to throw firecrackers at local stray dogs. Cheers!