Werk! Werk! Werk!

“My week beats your year” – Lou Reed, Metal Machine Music

If there’s no rest for the wicked then we have been very, very wicked. There was the assignment to do linens embroidered with Gary Baseman images for his upcoming show, “The Door Is Always Open”, which is now showing at The Skirball Museum in Bel-Air. The show replicates Baseman’s surreal vision of a middle-class Jewish household and all the century-old traditions and customs twisted through his surreal vision. Rebecca skillfully reproduced all of Gary’s characters and idiosyncratic lettering and embroidered them to his specifications.

We created chair slipcovers, a dining room tablecloth and a bedspread with Gary’s many images embroidered them. In addition to sewing the fabrics I also had to digitally edit the images prior to embroidery. Placement on the linens had to be done with absolute precision, otherwise the desired effect would be lost. The results turned out very well and Gary’s opening was a big hit. Also on display was Rebecca’s tapestry she created for Gary’s “La Noche De La Fusion” Culver City show in 2009.

After the job we wanted to take a break but the phone rang with an assignment to fabricate 350 waiter outfits for Napster co-founder Sean Parker’s wedding in Big Sur, California. The outfits ran a large variety of sizes which had to fit the staff that couldn’t be present at our studio for a fitting, so in some ways we were flying blind. Any alterations had to be done at the wedding site before the ceremony.

The outfits involved quite a lot of detail, and most of the outfits once brought up state fit pretty well. The wait staff outfits involved a lot of pleating which I handled pretty well after the first 200. Just kidding, the costumes were designed by Doug Hall who did wardrobe for the movie “Sling Blade”, and any comments, any direction came directly from New Zealand where she operates.

During that job Rebecca got a call from Nick Cannon’s costumer requesting a James Brown-style Uncle Sam outfit he can wear for the season premiere of “America’s Got Talent”. This entailed a star spangled tail coat and long striped slacks as well as a big cray cray top hat. A lot of time management came into play for this one, i.e. we were up all night cutting and sewing this whole extravaganza. Once completed it was given to Mr. Cannon who didn’t want to take it off and spent the whole day dancing around the set with it on posing for pictures.

After the Napster wedding job was over I stopped to scratch my ass when the phone rang and we got the assignment to make a C3PO outfit for film star Alexis Denisof, who was going to wear it when he ran for the fund-raising Course of the Force, held at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch. Course of the Force is a multi-day benefit in support of the Make-A-Wish foundation and begins at Skywalker Ranch and ends at Comic-Con in San Diego, California. Jeeeezus!

The C3PO outfit involved a lot of gold spandex with a few mixed-media items. Alexis chose to wear runner shorts to keep his lower extremities family friendly. Several vents were built into the outfit so he wouldn’t suffer heat prostration in the dead of summer. I thought the outfit turned out brilliantly and the photos of the event looked terrific. Alexis looks happy just like Nick, just like Gary, and baby that’s where it’s at. Keep the customer satisfied – Paul Simon said it and he probably got it from The Bible. Or Mr. Blackwell.

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I'd like to say a few words about Lorna Knight's book "The Dressmaker's Technique Bible: A Complete Guide to Fashion Sewing". It is absolutely indispensable! Yes it's a $30 sewing book, but it's the best sewing book you'll probably ever own. Every component used in the craft of clothesmaking is explained in simple detail, from the design of each outfit to fitting weird body parts (pear shaped bodies, big bootays, big hips, yow) to the essential art of finishing, etc. Every page is jam-packed with helpful illustrations and broken down point by point that even a little greeen man from outer space could follow. If you were previously too scared to sew this is your life preserver.

Junkies For Obama

Well, the election is finally over and thanks to the hard work of every shrill liberal white girl on the planet President Barack Obama has been reelected for a second term. His fans are dancing in the streets because their hero will be around for another four years of rising unemployment, forced insurance payments, rising gas prices, a heavily censored administration and not one, but two concurrent wars created by Americans for Americans. Black Superman promised us four years of change, we definitely got change for the worse and the next four years will be more change for the worse. Thank you, Black Superman.

No one’s saying the other guy was better but it’s weak to think that Warbama was the better alternative. Either way everyone loses, and if you don’t believe me check the national suicide rate. It’s at the highest level in decades, in fact the highest since the Eighties when Ronald Reagan was President. Was the rising suicide rate what Warbama had in mind when he talked about change?

A lot of Black Superman’s fans rallied on Facebook, protesting Genetically Modified Foods. Many of these people are already taking steroids, taking ecstasy at shows or just doing drugs of all kinds to maintain their hipness quotient. I didn’t know there were such prioritized standards in harmful elements you could place in your body. Some of them even cried about Hostess Twinkies getting phased out(!). Talk about Genetically Modified Food. Change!

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Drove by the El Rey Theater the other night and saw the marquee announcing the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion playing. When I saw them play there it was the mid-Nineties and there was a line going down the block waiting to get in. Fast forward to now and there were, at best, maybe twenty people standing in line. Sad, I know. I pulled into the supermarket a block away and as I walked up the staircase to the market a tiny mob raced out with Mr. Spencer holding a birthday cake in his hands. His entourage acted very important and almost elbowed everybody out of the way. I just thought it was a whole lot of fuss over a fading star. Sad!

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There's something simultaneously exciting and surreal when you make outfits for celebrities and it shows up on TV shows like TMZ and tabloid magazines like The Star. Rebecca and I were hired to make Halloween costumes for stars Alexis Denisof and his wife Alyson Hannigan and their kids. They wanted outfits that looked like sea horses, which was right up our alley since I already wore a sea horse pendant around my neck.

Click on the next line to see the UK Daily Mail pictorial on their costumes made by us:
Alexis and Alyson Sea Horses

The project took a few weeks since we were dressing four members of the family of varying sizes (one was a newborn so that was a good challenge). They were very easygoing and open to our ideas so they were a pleasure to work for, plus they liked our choices of multicolored sequin fabric. They were not only a hit for the holiday but garnered tons of publicity from the "paps". It's one thing to let your clothes speak for themselves, it's quite another to turn jaded Hollywood heads around, but that's what makes Rebecca such a genius.