Don't Cry It's Only a Joke
2010 | May 4
Two low-res screen grabs from a video shot during the installation at CAMSL with Emily Lacy:
Not Church Singing
2010 | March 2
GORDON FAMILY R.I.P.
2010 | February 7
The Gordon family were a cool family from Dallas Texas who, in 2003, made a cool website. It featured this animated gif:
PLUS it described (in detail) their "copy cat" (their words) recipe for Cinnabon cinnamon rolls. Bottom line: the Gordon family cinnamon roll recipe is the best cinnamon roll recipe I've ever made. Proof:
We took this photo minutes after this batch (totally vegan, duh) came out of the oven.
Sadly, at the end of 2007 gordonfamily.com ceased to exist. Where did they go? Ron (dad) owns the domain until 2013. SO WHY DID THEIR ENTIRE FAMILY WEBSITE GO DOWN!?
You can look at the Waybackmachine archive of their site. You can also look at a PostScript (?!?!?!?!) file of the cinnamon roll recipe thanks to Graham Davies (WARNING: POST SCRIPT [?!?!?!] FILE). You can also look "Marysdottir"'s tweeked version. But seriously, why would you make a recipe posted on RecipeZaar anyway?
Here's the REAL DEAL Gordon family cinnamon roll recipe retrieved from archive.org's December 18, 2007 archive of their site.
BEGIN:
We've worked very hard over the past several years to develop a clone or copy cat recipe that you can prepare at home for Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls. We've improved the earlier recipe and after several test batches, we're convinced that this new improved recipe is as close to the real Cinnabon Rolls as one can get! This recipe is great fun to prepare, which we do for most holiday gatherings.
The recipe below is not their recipe, but one we've engineered through extensive research, discussions with many Cinnabon Store employees, and by careful tests and experimentation. Although several other Web pages claim to have the "Real Cinnabon Recipe" the one presented here is by far the most accurate. We've made every effort to closely duplicate their proprietary recipe and clone that great Cinnabon flavor! Judging from the many letters we've received from readers around the world who have used our recipe and achieved great results, we've succeeded!
This recipe has been sized so that the dough may be prepared using a large capacity (2 pound) bread machine. Additional notes are provided to help you achieve the very best results.
[I REMOVED THIS PARAGRAPH BECAUSE IT'S JUST SOME LINKS DIRECTING YOU TO THE CINNABON WEBSITE AND YOU DON'T WANT TO BE DISTRACTED NOW THAT YOU'RE SO CLOSE TO THE GORDON FAMILY CINNAMON ROLL RECIPE]
1/4 C water
1 C whole milk
1/2 C butter (melted)
1 1/4 egg (well beaten)
1 t vanilla
1/2 t salt
1/2 C sugar
4 1/2 C unbleached white bread flour
1 T vital wheat gluten
2 1/2 t dry yeast (1 envelope)
Remove a large egg from the refrigerator and permit it to reach room temperature. Gently melt the butter. Add the Water and Whole Milk. The resulting liquid mixture should be permitted to cool so that it is between 75°F (24°C) and 85°F (30°C) before proceeding further. Then add the remaining ingredients, in the order listed above, to the bread machine and prepare using the dough setting. (Follow your bread machine instructions for dough preparation.)
1 C brown sugar (firmly packed)
5 T cinnamon
1/2 C margarine
Remove the margarine from the refrigerator once you've started the dough cycle and allow it to reach room temperature. In a small bowl, mix the brown sugar and cinnamon.
After the dough cycle has completed, roll and stretch the dough out on a lightly floured surface into a 15" by 24" (38 cm by 61 cm) rectangle.
Mark off 1" along the 24" edge of the dough, closest to you. You will not spread any Margarine or Sugar-Cinnamon mixture on this edge. Spread the softened Margarine over the dough with a rubber spatula and then evenly distribute the Sugar and Cinnamon mixture. Be careful to leave your 1" edge clean. As a final step, use your rolling pin to lightly roll the Sugar and Cinnamon mixture.
Starting at the far edge of the dough, roll it up tightly. Begin at the far 24" edge and roll up the dough toward the 1" clean edge. The clean 1" edge is used to seal the finished roll. Trim the left and right ends of the roll. The result will be a 24" roll. Trim off the left and right ends of the roll so that you have a fulsh end at each end of the roll. Then mark the roll every 1 1/2 inches (3.8 cm). Cut the roll into 1 1/2" long portions. This may be done with a knife, as they do at the Store. However we've found it easier to use dental floss. (We use cinnamon flavored dental floss just for dramatic effect!) Cut the roll by placing the thread under the roll at your mark, crisscross over and pull it to cut. You should get 15 rolls.
Line your baking pans with parchment paper. Place 5 rolls into 8" square baking pans 1" apart. (One roll in each corner, and one in the center.) Cover with a lint free cloth and let rise in a warm, draft free place until almost double, approximately 1 hour. After rising, rolls should be touching each other and the sides of the pan. This is important for best results. This gives the resulting rolls the soft, moist outer edge that most people prefer.
After rising, bake in a convection oven at 310°F for 15 minutes. If you are using a conventional oven, bake at 335°F for 20 minutes. The resulting rolls should be only lightly browned. We bake only one 8 inch square pan of Cinnabon rolls at a time to obtain uniform results.
[AT THE END THEY DESCRIBE THEIR FROSTING WHICH I DON'T INCLUDE HERE BECAUSE I HATE FROSTING ON CINNAMON ROLLS AND IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW THEIR RECIPE YOU SHOULD FIGURE OUT HOW TO USE THE WAYBACKMACHINE]
Haiti Benefit Show
2010 | February 4
Done!
How beneficial was it to have a poster to print immediately after the studio revamp? PRETTY BENEFICIAL. At least this proves that after all the time spent printing I now have an understanding of best-practice workflow processes.
Andy Warhol directing a The Cars video
2010 | February 1
Studio move and revamp complete!
Here's the larger version.
Exposing table, printing table, and drying box were all home built. The drying racks on the left are re-purposed kitchen tray racks. While awesome they're also kind of annoying. Who has a real stock drying rack I can buy?!?!?
The flat file under the printing table was purchased from a crazy flea-market hoarding guy. His original Craig's List post described an "estate sale" but when we turned up it was more the style of, "HEY I'M A CRAZY FLEA-MARKET GUY AND MY BACKYARD IS COMPLETELY FILLED WITH JUNK." Some of which was jammed under camo tarps, some wasn't. Also in the backyard was a large above-ground swimming pool. Of course the flat file was completely encased in other flea-market debris so his wife talked at us for a good 45 minutes while we watched his attempt to free our purchase.
Mark McGwire
2010 | January 28
A number of new projects just showed up:
1) Paul Costuros organized two Haiti relief benefit shows in San Francsco. I'm doing the poster for the second show at the Elbo Room. You may remember Paul from Death Sentence: PANDA! OR from Peace World's, the Randy Lee Sutherland band which played at the opening of "Hello How Are You," Jessalyn Aaland's art exhibition at Tartine Bakery. Peace World's seems to be a Bay Area skronk-punk super group comprised of members from all of the bands you associate with Bay Area skronk-punk. THINK ABOUT IT!
2) In conjunction with Machine Project I'm installing a semi-large scale print piece (well, large for me at least) at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Nelly and Tony Larussa.
3) A semi-mysterious project with the Hammer in LA.
C.L.A.S.S.I.C.
2010 | January 13
Why are conspiracy videos always so long:
Two and a half hours? And that's only the first out of a total of FIVE videos:
?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
And I thought I was a trooper from sitting though all three and a half hours of "The Money Masters":
Noise-rock as a genre
2009 | June 29
The last three weeks turned into a print bananza with a total of six different projects designed and printed including 500 record covers. And I finally got some anti-fatigue mats:
YES!!!
Thankfully there's more work to accomplish: The aforementioned 40 panel j-card (again, not a joke) for "2000 Tapes" and more Machine Project posters. And added just yesterday are posters and cards for Nadia Moss' show at Tartine Bakery in San Francisco.
Listening to: Insect Warfare "Evolved Into Obliteration" demo
2009 | June 8
– Ms. Aaland's 11th/12th grade class at Lowell High School is compiling a zine for which I'm making the cover. Topic: critical analysis of community. I heard Ms. Aaland "give[s] a lot of essays."
– 18 x 24 poster and card for Machine Project in Los Angeles. They're hosting a "get-to-know-us" evening later in June.
After a 24 hour straight print-fest I finished the three jobs above. I really really want some anti-fatigue mats for our print room.
So three down. But add a job back on the list as now I'm designing and printing artwork for the forthcoming High Castle one sided 12" (!!!) on Zum. WHERE ARE THE USED ANTI-FATIGUE MATS!?
And in my never-ending quest to make the left hand navigation run off the bottom of the page I've added an "other" section. Don't worry, this is where the High Castle cover is going.
Upcoming Posters
2009 | June 1
A slew of prints will spring forth from these pages soon. Here's the list:
– Ms. Aaland's 11th/12th grade class at Lowell High School is compiling a zine for which I'm making the cover. Topic: critical analysis of community. I heard Ms. Aaland "give[s] a lot of essays."
– 18 x 24 poster and card for Machine Project in Los Angeles. They're hosting a "get-to-know-us" evening later in June.
– 20 x 26 poster for Machine Project for an event in August about cool food.
– 40 panel j-card (not a joke) for the four-way Ettrick/Sword & Sandals/Vholtz/Woman's Worth release on George Chen's and Steve Santa Maria's new tape label "2000 Tapes." This is going to be so good.
– 18 x 24 poster for the Club Sandwich presented Upset the Rhythm showcase at The Lab in July.
Important Issues
2009 | January 27
Issues of importance.
I separated the documentation of the cards versus posters. Now you can scroll across the entirety of "Posters One" and all the photos are the same size. FINALLY. I should have done this from day one.
I'm doing the posters and cards for Lauren Barcelon's show at Maniac. I've seen snippets of the installation-in-progress and all I have to say is I LOVE GEOMETRY TOO. Seriously. So pumped to be part of this show.
Printing videos
2008 | December 27
Two kind of boring videos of the Painting Now: 2009 printing process.
New work for 2009
2008 | December 18
I'm getting the final details for my first poster of 2009; a show called "Painting Now: 2009" taking place at the newly opened Mua bar/gallery in Oakland.
Once again I'm making the poster for a show in which Erin Allen is participating. Hmmm...
DUI printing for Maniac Gallery
2008 | December 3
Currently working on a triple poster order for a Maniac group show. Three posters each visually mimicking a game of hide and seek. The theme of the show is "Drawing Under the Influence." Maintaining a cohesive color scheme across multiple posters is much more difficult than originally planned.
Also in the works is a postcard for a show at Tartine Bakery in San Francisco and a run of four-color note cards. Looks like that free three foot paper cutter we acquired from Morgan Hill will finally see some use:
And we just got it sharpened! Thanks horse ranch who was cleaning out their garage/office!