As we’ve previously established, I’m not particularly good about sitting still. I try to sit by the pool and read a magazine, but after 5 minutes I notice that the patio needs cleaning, or there are weeds in the cacti garden. When it rains, I’m forced to find things to do inside. Fortunately, the work never ends. I have a dark hallway in my house that bugged me since we bought it. It’s an interior hall and perfect for attacking someone if you plan a mugging. I tried painting it white and this made it seem like being in a dark hallway in a mental hospital. Then I found an article in a 1965 Sunset magazine that gave tips on brightening up a house. “Try painting each door a different color,” was a small throwaway piece of text.
What could be better? This would take hours. Each door would need to be taken off, cleaned, and painted. And I would need to buy several cans of paint, and rewash the brush for each door. It turned out to be a larger undertaking than I imagined, but idle hands are the devil’s playground.
A few months ago, I posted some of the remarkable awards Lou Danziger gave me. We’ve considered framing them and putting them on our conference wall. It would look very impressive. But, a potential client might not understand how we won an award in 1962. A young woman, who was showing Noreen her portfolio, asked her if her father had started AdamsMorioka with me. So I guess I could pass for winning these, and Noreen could be the younger daughter of my original business partner.
I’ve always thought it was somewhat cheesy to have a wall of awards. We like to take the stance of, “We won’t boast.” We put our awards in a filing cabinet somewhere. If they were as beautiful as Lou’s was, though, I’d pull them up and fill a wall. Or maybe I’ll just use Lou’s and place them too high to read clearly.
The last time my brother and his family visited, we went to Travel Town in Griffith Park. Travel Town is basically a holding pen for out of service trains. It sounds exciting and evokes the idea of seeing new places, but the trains are secured to tracks that go nowhere. It is a good place to take hyperactive children, but you must be willing to accept the danger of actual steel trains. Back in my day when we still read by kerosene lamp, we didn’t have all plastic and rubber playgrounds with no sharp edges. We had swings with chains that would rip your thumb off, merry-go-rounds that had a tendency to throw you off and drag you under the contraption, and lots of exposed rusty nuts and bolts. I’m still here, although almost all of my scars (the physical ones) are from a playground.
We left Travel Town with one cut finger, but no other accidents. Of course I took my camera. What better photo op than cute kids playing on trains? I may joke that every designer I know has an Album named “Type” in iPhoto, and I’m no different. In the end I ignored the kids as they shouted, “Uncle Sean, over here. Look. Look at me. Take a photo.” Instead I focused on the remarkable typographic language of the railroad world. I did snap one photo of the kids after relentless shouting, but by then it was dark.
The beautiful Contemporary Hotel, site of the incident
One of the things I learned soon after AdamsMorioka was first published in a magazine, is that everything you say will be reinterpreted. I might say, “Design is in transition,” and someone is bound to disagree and believe you are attacking them personally. So I became fairly adept at staying away from problematic topics, i.e. anything off-color or distasteful. This might seem easy. You are probably saying, “That Sean is nothing if not innocuous and nice.” But I really do prefer to stay in the realm of off-color and distasteful. As I get older, it’s been seeping out more. Hence this post. Warning: If you’re squeamish or follow 18th century Calvinist thinking, you may want to not read any further.
On one of our first trips to Walt Disney World, Noreen and I stayed at the Contemporary Hotel. We were young and still shared hotel rooms to save money. (We don’t do that anymore, except the time a hotel in Toronto made a mistake and we ended up sleeping as far away from each other as possible on the double bed. I know she was trying to touch me.) Now, we were at WDW theoretically doing a field audit for signage, but of course, we were also having fun. After a day of walking miles around the parks, we were exhausted. We got back to our room, put on our pajamas (hot, I know), and climbed into our separate beds. The next morning we woke up and I pulled back the covers and got up to get ready. “Oh my God! What did you do?” Noreen said. “What?” I asked. “Oh my God,” she kept saying. I looked down and, this is the disgusting part, the sheets were smeared with brown streaks. My first thought was that I’d slept through the night and had some sort of filthy accident. But that hadn’t happened before, so what could have gone wrong? This was really embarrassing.
Then I noticed the chocolate mint foil stuck to my pajamas. I had climbed into bed without seeing the mint on the pillow, and managed to melt it and smear it all over the sheets. I was pretty relieved I wasn’t incontinent.
This terrifying moment over, and after we were dressed, Noreen opened a bottle of orange juice. It sprayed all over the room. Now we had brown stained sheets and yellow spray on the bed and walls. If we were decent people we would have left a note for the maid, but that wouldn’t be fun. So we hid the foil and bottle and left for breakfast. Later as we passed the maid in the hallway, she stared at us all the way back to our room, disgusted.
A room at the Contemporary when the colors were hyper-groovy
You might find this hard to believe, but I love Gidget. Here’s the quick synopsis: Gidget wants to learn to surf, but girls don’t surf so nobody will teach her. She persists and finally becomes part of the gang. She’s not busty, blonde and tall like the other women on the beach, so the boys think of her as their kid sister. All types of high-jinx occur as Gidget navigates the wacky world of high-school, Southern California, and surfing. There was a movie with Sandra Dee, and then the TV show with Sally Field.
I’m not so keen on the Sandra DeeGidget. There’s something wrong with her; she’s just too perky. I suspect amphetamines. If she were my child, I’d send her to rehab in Malibu. Sally Field, however, has the right amount of cute with less frenetic nervous energy. She has a snappy style, is nice, and tries really hard to be a good surfer. I love the fake surfing scenes and her best friend LaRue is a wonderful sidekick. Gidget already has learned that you should hang out with someone less attractive and dowdy and you’ll look better. The title sequence must have cost 49 cents, and stole the type from I Dream of Jeannie. But how can you not love Gidget’s cute facial expressions and costume choices? For those who aren’t Gidget aficionados, Gidget is a mix of Girl and Midget, hence Gidget.
