Pink Minute

"Watch out behind you."

When I did this search several months ago after I heard that another shirt decorator in town was making i’msojai gear – a claim that I still have yet to see evidence of – I realized quite quickly that this was not an original concept. Surely at some point I’d heard of the local legendary Sojai Boys who are known to maraud around Meiners Oaks after hours. And perhaps it just took someone to put this on a shirt for it to become something more. So I did this past spring of 2009. I did my thing, messed around with fonts in photoshop, settled on one, printed out a transparency and burnt a screen. It’s been well worth the effort. Local stylist, thespian, bartender Buddy Wilds bought the first one after I posted pics on facebook. And they keep selling.

But back to the point of this post. These two posts I found totally tickled my ego. First was Emily Collins @1mrthng2wsttmew who tweeted about her love of the shirts this past Christmas day. she tweets.

1. “best Ojai themed shirt i’ve ever seen …. “I’msojai” 11:06 PM Dec 25th, 2009 from web”

I wonder if she got one as a present. I’m getting all warm inside thinking about it.

And second was AUNTGIGI, who apparently road tripped to Ojai recently with friends. I didn’t take a lot of time with the blog, I just thought this part was cute.

AUNTGIGI writes on her blog Pixie Dust Glitter and Sequins “We both loved Ojai. Really. It was a town that seemed to signify “us”. Easy, earthy, friendly, warm, a glowing energy. We were meant for that place, and it was meant for us. We found treasures. We’ll return. Imsojai. We’resojai. Only one person flipped me off. Must have been an out-of-towner. Back at ya, dude.”

It was probably a local.

Another thing that I’m pleased about is one of my friends and another early i’msojai shirt buyer, Jeff Foster, of Pixel Painter fame, has offered to do a little design work on a halftone pattern of the i’msojai design. That should be totally awesome.

I’ll keep you posted that’s enough for now.

Technically, the Cafe Press store for the Ojai Face still exists, but zazzle seems to be the current place to sell online creative merch, so I sat around on the couch with the lap top for a few hours yesterday and put together a starter Ojai Face shop

Who wants Taco Tuesday?

with several designs I haven’t even looked at lately and many of you, my tens of readers, surely have not seen. Sorry for calling you Shirley.

The xjxi face, my most recent design, as pictured here in the screen cap was inspired by the famous Poison Control Mister Yuck logo as seen in this 70s psa for household product child safety.

Now if I could only figure out my prestashop open source webstore on ojaiface.com. this is my new challenge.

Here’s a favorite video. These guys are my heroes.

“In the writing state—the state of inspiration—the fictive dream springs up fully alive: the writer forgets the words he has written on the page and sees, instead, his characters moving around their rooms, hunting through cupboards, glancing irritably through their mail, setting mousetraps, loading pistols. The dream is as alive and compelling as one’s dreams at night, and when the writer writes down on paper what he has imagined, the words, however inadequate, do not distract his mind from the fictive dream but provide him with a fix on it, so that when the dream flags he can reread what he’s written and find the dream starting up again. This and nothing else is the desperately sought and tragically fragile writer’s process: in his imagination, he sees made-up people doing things—sees them clearly—and in the act of wondering what they will do next he sees what they will do next, and all this he writes down in the best, most accurate words he can find, understanding even as he writes that he may have to find better words later, and that a change in the words may mean a sharpening or deepening of the vision, the fictive dream or vision becoming more and more lucid, until reality, by comparison, seems cold, tedious, and dead.”

– John Gardner, “The Art of Fiction”

- via toomuchnick

whole wheat baguette with sunflower and golden flax seeds. So nutty and delicious. Crispy crust and light chewy crumb.

In the past week or so, i’ve baked about a dozen loaves of bread. I was inspired to take on this challenge again from a reminiscence of some excellent artisan loaves that I baked about a decade ago while in college. I remember the process involved several doughy bricks before I was able to get to a tasty, hearty loaf. But once I had it figured out, I was all over the bulk seeds and nuts at the store, pouring through recipe books in the library and kneading my way into another, waistline expanding mass of carbs. So delicious.

Lately, my quest has been to create a decent french boulangerie styled baguette. It’s about the only kind of bread I’ll buy in the market these days save for a dark rye loaf we get occasionally at rainbow bitch that is loaded with sunflower seeds and other yummy denseness. But the final inspiration came from a $9 artisan loaf that we bought at the farmer’s market a few weeks ago. Yes, I was driven by fiscal conservation. And my love for hands on art projects.

I started, of course, with a google search for “best baguette recipe.” I figured there were probably scores of them and I needed google to help me sift through the chaff. I’m still working up to the Chew Wise award winning recipe, and I’ve ordered a kitchen scale to help in the accurate measurement of ingredients.

two of my early baguettes. good dimension but lacking in texture and flavor. nonetheless, quickly devoured.

I started with the Food Network baguette recipe. Its pretty basic and straightforward, and gave me a good grounding in what to expect from rising dough and what I could get away with, like letting it rise all day while I worked out in the barn studio and letting what’s left – after the first few loaves have been baked – rest over night in the fridge.

Tonight, while munching on the loaves in the pic at the top of this post, I mixed up a little poolish with yeast water and all purpose flour. Got to keep this dough coming daily until I tire of getting fat, then I’ll go back to steamed vegetables, soup and daily walks.

What are you making in your kitchen?

I wrote this a while back to elevate consumers beyond the disposable plastic shopping grocery bag…

The Ojai Face Manifestote

When you find yourself shopping — I mean really find yourself — do you feel proud because you remembered your tote bags? It’s a really great feeling when you remember to be a part of the solution. That’s why the Ojai Face now comes printed on a quality, organic cotton tote bag.

Super Sweet Organic Ojai Face Tote Bags empower you to manage your consumption footprint while elevating your hunting and gathering experience; blasting you past the plastic paradigm.

Soft and sturdy organic cotton caresses the skin. It breathes and feels alive. It develops character as it rides on your shoulder shuttling your library, your bottles, your candy and your private things.

With Ojai at your side, glowing in wide-eyed, organic wonder, you’ll find yourself — I mean really find yourself — as a bigger part of a world community both lazy and powerful, ordinary and magical that you’re actively making better.

Enjoy!

Originally published in Pink Minute 2.1 December 2007.

Take 60

by Chris Wilson

No true soul can deny their lover at sunset. Not in a place so amorous, that on the verge of night, even the obstinate sand-stone bluffs ripen like cherries and smolder and giggle and say, “Stop, you’re embarrassing me.”

Like an Arcade waffle cone, The Pink Moment is fleeting, butter-cream sweetness. Pink Moment’s Production adheres to a strict schedule — arriving daily 10 minutes before sunset — Pink wows Ojai rookies and comforts village lifers alike. Pink is steady, reliable, and entirely lovely and has a daily exclusive showing on the Topa Topa screens through late 2012.

Pink takes itself quite seriously, despite its ephemeral nature. Early on in its career, Pink secured representation from a cosmopolitan agency and has since become unbendably stubborn and obsessively narcicistic. Would-be partners stumble back down Sisar Road, after three days max. Their stories all the same. They say The Pink Moment spends the entire day preening in front of the bathroom mirror, then just before dusk dashes out onto the stage all snappy and stressed that the show is getting stale. After a brief, but captivating routine – that never, ever includes an encore, Pink is back, asking if the gig was OK, if the tim- ing was off, and complaining that its face is blotchy and cracking from too much late-afternoon sunbathing. Pink then downs a bottle of Jim Beam, smokes half a pack of American Spirit Yellows, and passes out watching reality television. And we love it. We rave about it. Big Pink is our muse, our call to worship, our reminder that we’re scheduled to catch a flight at the Ojai Beverage Company.

Despite our blend of deliberate creation and subtle groveling Big Pink has yet to return any of lil’ pink’s requests for an interview. And that’s okay, we all have habits; we all resist change to some degree. And after 40 million years (give or take) of the same gag over and over and over and over and over, Big Pink has miraculously avoided carpal tunnel and detox.

For in the end, cliché as it is, we covet The Pink Moment’s schooled nonchalance, blanketing the foothills and draping over the bluffs. I am resigned to recognize that I want Pink more than Pink wants me. We know that the Minute in its youth is green more than anything. It shows up at its own leisure, naps on the couch and has conversations with its imaginary friends in the front yard.  Until next time use your brain and not your back.

Call it a 2010 resolution, a spark of creativity, call it anything you want. I’m Chris Wilson, I invented the blessed Pink Minute a few years ago and have published a few one-sheet paper editions of the Pink Minute and had a blog for a while that got a little attention (very little).

Gosh, so I’m all trying to figure out how to thematically focus this post and I’m not sure that focus and me updating the content of this site go hand in hand. Like a lot of us, I’m a thoughtful, interested, caring individual who gets bored very quickly and has to have several obsessions at play at any given moment. So the Pink Minute then will be my virtual playground and when I get a hankerin’ to share what the obsession of the moment is, then I’ll update the site. My plan is to do this regularly, I mean, that’s the idea behind online posts, right? Keep them moving, keep them fresh and fun and funky. Plus you’ll get to see my experience with Wordpress and php and css and all that other digital fantasy crap get relearned, updated and upgraded as each moment passes. Oh, you’re gonna want to subscribe to this blog where we’ll share in everything from shoes to socks and other musings. What I’m not likely to publish a lot of ranting about is religion and politics, that’s being handled already, and I’m far to lazy to caress that learning curve or seek to compete with the likes of Ariana et al. but I may link to other blogs that do offer insight and commentary that I find pleasing or crass. I may swear and curse on occasion so hide your children.

with love,

chris wilson

upper ojai