A Sentimental Christmas - Part Two

The tree was overflowing underneath with presents this year.  Mostly for Mom.

On Christmas eve day at Wal-mart I guilted Mom into buying us nerf guns as stocking stuffers for old times' sake.  After breakfast we set up a timed obstacle course with different stations and targets.  There's bob doin' the tongue thing we saw on the tape he did as a kid

the parents competed and mom actually beat me by a 10th of a second!!!!  They weren't so happy about it the next day.  At ages 35 and 33 we got yelled at by our dad for playing nerf guns because we hit one of his guitars.

we used stop watches and bob made a spreadsheet which shows that mom beat me by .1 seconds, but she rockets ahead because she hit 1 more target than I did.

I read reviews for these guns outloud but no one found it amusing except for me.  Maybe it's cuz i didn't do it in my southern grandma voice.  Anyway this gun sucks and is super innacurate but it was beloved by nerf nerds online.  The gun and arrow tech has definitely improved a ton in 20+ years.  Now the arrows sting a little and its really hard to swat them out of the air now because they really get movin'.  

Nerf N-Strike Strong arm with slamfire which is just cocking and slamming the arrows out in rapid succession, highly innacurate.  This gun was beloved by all nerf nerds and i guess if i had to go into battle i'd pick this guy just for his 6 round capacity although he misfires a lot.

this Zombie strike gun was the most accurate but least powerful.  and like the bastards that they are they only give you two count em' 2 arrows.

They have a great business model going, forcing you to buy these extra packs.  Well I bet my parents are happy that there are no more darts whizzing through the air at their houses now that their adult child men kids are gone.

got Jen a 60s style wes anderson like record player cuz she (we) have wanted one forever.  And totally seperately Phil got her a D'angelo Voodoo record (the best record you could have gotten me in my opinion)!  No coordination going on, just happened serendipitously.  Sidebar:  little did I know Jen wanted a clear top player like what her parents had and what mine had so this one is going back and we spent a whole day researching and have a U-Turn Audio custom wood walnut turntable coming in a couple weeks.  Its a beauty and you'll see it here.

A new Christmas tradition?  this is our 3rd year making gingerbread houses and 2nd year destroying them.  Jen has a sad.  She got the Raish family started on the tradition of making gingerbread houses and really likes eating them.  But we are only human and we like to create and destroy.  Why do humans like to do this?

something like 4 teaspoons of gasonline in that bottle with the sandwich bag of tannerite with a snowman covering it all up.  Nothing to see here.

we got little sheets of Lexan to protect our phones set up for slow mo and my Canon Camera set up.  Lexan is 200x stronger than glass while Plexiglass is only 8x stronger than glass so we went with Lexan.  The air pressure from the explosion just tipped the phones over inside the boxes instantly so next year we will have to rig up for that.  My camera was fine because its heavy enough.

on all of the test videos also there would be this yellow glow 1 frame before the explosion happened down in the bottom part of the frame.

Merry Christmas

explosionslomo from Jason Raish on Vimeo.

The explosion in slow mo captured on jen's google pixel phone googlepixelexplosion from Jason Raish on Vimeo.

dad did a smoked turkey

Christmas dinner with the addition of a butter christmas tree.  Well what an adventure filled Xmas day that was and we were happy to find our parents spearheading the exploding things segment.

A Sentimental Christmas - Part One

Christmas countdown in Carroll Gardens

I went to the end of brooklyn in greenpoint to get a priceless vhs tape transfered to digital by DiJiFi (they did a great job).  This is called Newtown Creek and its the border of Queens and Brooklyn.  Pretty desolate place so let's get outta here.

Holiday season driving was sweet so we made it home in time to trim the tree and throw tinsel at it.

Improving upon the destruction of Xmas village my parents actually took my thought of exploding it for real, not just setting it on fire.  My dad got a pound of Tannerite and aluminum powder because when you mix it together and hit it with a bullet travelling at 2200 feet per second it explodes

he made 1/2 cup, 3/4 cup, and 1 cup samples to test out before the big day.  There are youtube videos he showed us of guys using 100 pounds of tannerite to blow up an entire barn.  Sure we could buy a lot and make big booooms but we were going for a more artful sized explosion to decimate our gingerbread houses.

it was really cold up there buddy

this was the biggest 1 cup explosion.  With the inclusion of some gasoline in a little bottle we thought we had what we needed.

the parents have some Amish folks fixin' up the barn and roof which made the Xmas gift for Mom even more perfect.

Jen and I's house

bob's humble single occupancy unit.

the parents swedish abode

i put a winter cabbage garden in the back of ours with a snowman scarecrow.

and there you have it, 2016's Xmas village.

Made Coq au vin

and then the parents unwrapped a sentimental gift of a dvd from a converted vhs tape they filmed for my grandma 26 years ago.  She gave it to me last time I was at her house.  In 1990 I was 8 and bob was 6

the door to my room had a sign saying no BJs allowed (Bob Jin Raish = BJ back then).

still can't spell

 I'm sure it was a melting pot of feelings and thoughts and embarrassment and wonder and reminiscing for everyone.  Seeing themselves 26 years earlier, their young hopes and dreams.  Seeing how innocent and undeveloped of a kid you are.  Seeing your vulnerabilities on screen.  Seeing what a happy life it was.  Seeing family members that are no longer here.  Things happen, hormones and age kick in, teenage angst and a lot of things that cloud your memory.  The teen years took it's toll on Bob and I in different ways and I can certainly say for myself that I was an angsty teen with an undeveloped pre frontal cortex that made things hard and probably heartbreaking for my parents, and lonely for Bob.  Now that i've carved out a space for myself in this world its back to the happy times. Sure growing up and learning of the crushing defeats of reality does a lot to squash your childlike energy and innocence but I guess in return you get a more developed brain and the ability to enjoy the aspects of life like watching this video with your fam 26 yrs later and taking a 2 hr journey down memory lane.  Thanks for this tape Grandma!  And to the parents, hopefully seeing this tape will put us back on your goodside a little bit and help you forget what snide, judgemental, idealistic, and snooty little @ssholes your adult kids are like now and remember how cute and polite we used to be.

A year's worth of Illustration Spread Out - Part 1

Looks like i've neglected to show the illustrations I do as my living on this here blog for a year or more so here goes in a multi part series spread out so you don't get inundated with illustration.  This one was for the cover of Atlanta magazine's annual college guide

I started playing Pétanque when I lived in Paris and fell in love with it. Big 24x36″ poster size. In a kind of hidden corner in on Ile de la Cité there is Place Dauphine, where the Horse Chestnut trees bloom with pink in the spring and you can find people drinking wine, snacking on glorious French foods, and playing Pétanque. The rules are similar to Bocce but I think it’s more fun because the balls are smaller making it possible to snipe out someone’s ball or other strategic plays. The aim of the game is to throw your metal balls (boules) as close to the smaller wooden cochonnet ball (literally piglet) as you can. As with Bocce it’s traditionally been old guys playing outside but like with all things old the hipsters have taken to it also. Shout out to C. Coles Philips. Happy Pétanque’ing! Prints available here https://society6.com/product/ptanque_print#s6-4514349p4a1v3

I grew up with Newfoundlands amongst the pines of western New York State. I got the coolest pocket square in Japan with a blueberry pattern on it and lost it so this coat pattern is a shout out to that poor pocket square lying in the street somewhere in the world.

Oscars 2016 who should win and who will win annual thing they do in The Hollywood Reporter. This spread like illustration was a lot of work but a lot of fun. Represented here from left to right we have Joy and Fear from Pixar’s Inside Out, the Bear from The Revenant and Mark Ruffalo from Spotlight. Amy Winehouse from Amy and Sylvester Stallone from Creed. Brie Larson from Room and Lady Gaga for best song from The Hunting Ground. Alicia Vikander from The Danish Girl is drawing Leonardo Dicaprio from The Revenant holding the dress that Eddie Redmane’s character holds in the Danish Girl. Saoirse Ronan in Brooklyn rounds out the page. Of course there are many more peeps up for oscars and if they featured them all here I would be dead now.

Pick a universe. Any universe? What’s to do when our best theories of reality can’t be tested. Illo for The New Scientist in the UK about theories like string theory that can’t be tested and the controversy of this untested method causing an uproar with the people that like scientific process

China’s richest man, Wang Jianlin buying big Hollywood studio Legendary. China has a foreign film quota of 34 films per year maximum that can be show in the country and they all have to pass the censor board’s approval. With this deal Wanda can make Hollywood films that aren’t foreign made, bypassing the quota (they still have to deal with the censors though).

contemporary writers envision lost and rebooted scenes from Shakespeare’s works for his 400th birthday.  Richard III played by high school nerd up against the quarterback in the school election (ps Richard III had a hunchback).  

half pager for Philadelphia Magazine about Millennials and how molly-coddled and protected and sensitive they are. Biting editorial that I agree with as a millennial myself.

Quick one for the NY Times in today’s paper. This was the brief I got because the story wasn’t in yet: “How New Yorkers are carving out personal space with headphones and nothing playing.”

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan is a must read if you care about your health and the food you eat. His little haiku is: Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants. He actually wants you to eat, but moderately and make sure its food and not food-like substances. You can still eat meat. He outlines a bunch of simple rules backed up with science and the fault in this and this book. I included the ones that seemed most prominent in my illustration. Take your time on your food is the biggest take-away I got, hence the hourglass. Take the time to cook your own meals, take the time to eat your meals at a table and with others, take the time to garden, to shop at farmers markets. On the crest: drink a glass of wine with dinner, eat fungus and bacteria, cook, eat little oily fishes (healthy and well stocked in ocean). Bob’s favorite rule: Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. You’ve seen Pollan on food documentaries like Food Inc. and Fed Up. The PBS documentary came out a few weeks ago, streaming for free http://www.pbs.org/video/2365635287/