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Jacobin Joe - Coincidence or Fate?

If you have been in my house, or any of my previous apartments, you know about Jacobin Joe. So when a good friend of ours got married at The Old Library Restaurant in Olean, NY - one of the coolest sites ever - I figured it would be a night full of dancing and friends, and low on eerie coincidence. I was wrong. Above the stairway going to the second floor, I found an old friend creepily staring down at me:

Creepy, but amazing, right?

Here is mine:

My friends wedding was awesome. But it made me realize that our wedding was missing two critical elements. One - Jacobin Joe was left off the invite list. Two - we should never have banned The Devil Went Down to Georgia from being requested and played. That song rocked.

...and then the etching cream took off my arm!

For the last couple of months I've been obsessed with glass etching. I decided upon this craft whilst trying to figure what exactly to make for my groomsmen. Although this was an easy craft (I mean, I did it, how hard could it really be,) the numerous steps involved made it very time consuming. The first step was to find an image:
Then, I converted the image to a simple black and white, preserving key aspects intact in order to keep the image recognizable:

Then, I transferred the image to contact paper, put it on the chosen glass surface, cut out the black spots with a box cutter, brushed on the etching cream, waited a couple of minutes, rinsed it off, and viola!:

Working on these glasses required all of my concentration, as well as the use of a head lamp.

In the end, I etched 23 different glasses. Here are some of the others.

Here are some old school Super Mario Brothers power ups.

Go Bills!

Final Fantasy Vii!

Cutting Instruments!

My next etching project has something to do with a previous blog post of ours ...

Hey Iraq, you've just been Matt Stock'd

The images seen below have recently surfaced.

At first glance this looks like nothing more than a photo of a helicopter and a wall, but when you look closer there is that suspicious dark smudge there ...
And here is another photo, this time of a wheel, presumably of the helicopter seen in the previous one.  And there is that smuged again, although this time with a bit more detail ... what could it be?
Here is a photo of that smudge on the wall.  I think it might just be a face!  But why would a face be there.
Okay, so it is definetly a face.  And according to the caption, its in Iraq!  So this is what has been happening - my pal Logan has been stationed over in Iraq for too long.  Apparently, he got bored, and decided that what the country really needed was more Matt Stock.  I cant say that I disagree. 

Here is the template that Logan used for this little project.  I think I turned out rather well! I think this would make a rather nice tattoo.  In fact, I may be willing to pay for said tattoo if you would like to get it... 

Thank you Logan!  And get back soon!

Brothers in Trees

While on a recent trip upstate to good ole Greenville, NY, my brother and I found ourselves in bit of a predicament - the Nintendo Entertainment System didn't work! "Egads!" I exclaimed to James, "How are we going to stay out of trouble with no Nintendo?!?!?!" James looked to me and cryptically said "we don't. Today, Brother, we climb trees."

And so began a day that would go down in history as The Day When Matt Almost Broke his Leg for the Third Time.

The exciting part about this adventure (besides me not breaking my leg again and attracting the wrath of El Sar) was that while in the woods, we happened upon a single shedded whitetail deer antler!

Look how proud James and I were! Now that I have this antler in my possession, the obvious question is "what to do with it?" Sarah wanted me to graft this to my forehead as part of my RockBand outfit, but I felt as though if I'm going to do this I might as well hold out for moose antler and do it right. So, I am therefore considering suggestions as to what sort of craft project I should do with this one of a kind item. If I hear one that really strikes my fancy, maaaybe I'll just go ahead and do it. If not, I'll just keep this thing around intact and poke Sarah with it. I'm cool with both scenarios really.

Eat your heart out, MacGyver!

So I try to bring my lunch to work everyday. Some days I'm more rushed than others and occasionally I forget something. Well, the other day I forgot an vital part of my lunch - a fork.

I looked around, hoping to find a plastic replacement somewhere. All I could find was spoons. Spoons! Spoons are no good to me! What I needed was a fork! Or perhaps some sort of spoon/fork hybrid ...

That's when I had what I deem to be, without question, the best idea ever. I grabbed an extremely sharp pair of scissors nearby, and viola! A hand crafted Spork of the highest order!

The evolutionary apex of the spoon!

Another lunch successfully consumed!

And in a related story, I want one of these Titanium Sporks.

Cutlery of the Gods!

Dont mess with a Spork.

Knock, knock. Who's there? Our coffee table.

This is one of the cooler (my opinion) things we have done. It all started on morning when Sar and I were leaving for school/work. It was garbage pickup day, and there was a large pile outside of our building. So Sar and I have this habit, see, of looking at piles of garbage with this I-need-to-furnish-my-apartment sort of intent. And on this morning, while I saw nothing of note, Sar stopped me to look at this old, beaten up discard door. When I saw it I was like, "umm, we have one already, lets go" but Sar was all like "Hark, there within that refuse lies a golden opportunity!" So we stand there looking at a pile of garbage for a few minutes, when one of our building crew guys stops and asks us whether we want something (from the pile of trash.) Sar replies by saying something like "Behold, good Sir! Treasures abound! My Gentlemen caller and I desire that jettisoned domestic barricade." So after this guy is finished laughing at us, he agrees to take the door away from the pile and kept it on the side of the building for us.

"Elbow Grease!"

So Sar's idea was to take this beaten up door, and turn it into our new coffee table. The first thing we did with the door was to clean it, which we did in the alley next to our apartment building. After that, we brought it back up to our apartment (looking totally awesome as we did so,) and I began to put on a couple of coats of polyurethane. Meanwhile, Sar was busy online looking for something to use as legs. She ended up finding these awesome looking (and reasonably priced) hand-carved claw feet on ebay. I attached the claw feet using a combination of brackets and large screws. As a finishing touch, we added the door knocker from our Binghamton apartment (I wasn't the one who took it,) and viola our new coffee table was complete!

Tie-A-Thon: Week 3, 4, and 5

Tie-A-Thon is going smoothly, despite my inability to keep up with a demanding 1 blog per week. Hence today's entry.

So week # 3:

All of the above ties were thrifted except for the Whale tie, which is just too awesome to not buy new. The one on the end is my favorite because of it's ridiculous retro-ness. Its military green which - lets be honest - is my color.

And then Week 4:

Looking at this week's worth of ties makes me wish that I had the foresight to plan themes. I mean this is almost a complete brown week! With so many brown ties, its a good thing that brown is my color. The ties on the outside were thrifted, and the ones in the middle were purchased new. The outside ties are two of my absolute favorites. The duck one is knitted and is one of those ties that knot very easily. The one on the right features either two cowboys or two British gentlemen on a fox hunt. I have thus nicknamed it my Brokeback tie for obvious reasons.

And now Week 5:

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I know. But if I dont post this now, it'll take me a couple of weeks to do it. SO here are the ties that I'm wearing this week.

These ties were all thrifted. The first two are knitted ties, which is something that I'd like to find-buy-wear more of. And the last one is, well, a holiday appropriate little number I've been holding onto for a couple of months. My favorite of these three is the first one, because it ties like a dream and because pink is totally my color.

Tie-A-Thon: Week 2

Another week, another quintuplet of ties!

I know what you're thinking, is that really a quintuplet of ties? Were those ties all really born in a single birth? My answer, friend, is a resounding yes.

Tie-A-Thon: Week 1

One week down, numberless weeks to go! Here are the ties worn this week:

The Brown tie and the Bird tie were thrifted, I bought the black one new (before I knew any better), and I forget where and how I got the gold boring one. I probably wear the brown one the most, because I wear brown the most. That being said, the bird tie is my favorite because it is ridiculous. I only wore 4 ties this week because I was out sick one day.

Notice the craftsmanship - the finely knitted browns, the happy yellow symetry, and the life-like fear in the pheasant's eyes as the peregrine falcon swoops in for its mid-afternoon morsel.

Week One down ... how many more to go?

Neat Old Stuff: Creepy Portrait

This gem came from the Salvation Army in Binghamton Ny. I've forgotten what it cost me, but being that I was a sophomore in college, and had no job, I doubt if it was more than $8.99. Many cool things were purchased at the Bingo Salvo, and this was likely one of the first.

This portrait, nicknamed Jacobin Joe, has hung in my Sophomore year dorm room (above the door,) in my Junior year apartment (somewheres?), in the bathroom of our Senior year apartment (directly across from the crapper!), and now in the shadows of our mini hallway.

Sarah has long complained that Jacobin Joe is too creepy, too ugly, or something else that results in my complete zoning out. I say it could be worse.

OR MORE AWESOME!