I apologize for the lack of a WTF post yesterday; I was playing hooky and losing my body weight in sweat at the ballpark watching the Orioles lose to the Red Sox.

It was hot. Like, unnaturally hot. When I left the house last night at 11pm to pick up our pizza for dinner, it was 90°. Right now it’s 102°. Tomorrow’s projected high? 106°. DO. NOT. WANT.

Anyway…what better way to stay cool than a refreshing libation? This tasty treat is courtesy of Carrie Vibert at Poet In The Pantry. Looks and sounds delicious, but we need a snappier name for…

Blueberry Lemonade for Mamas and Papas

Ingredients:

• ice cubes (Carrie suggests freezing blueberries in the cubes for presentation)
• 2 oz blueberry vodka (I recommend Stolichnaya’s)
• 3 oz lemonade (Store-bought is OK, I guess, but seriously: make your own. Juice of 1 lemon, 1/2-1 Tbsp. of preferred sweetener, and a pint of club soda should do it. Experiment with those ratios until you hit on something you like.)
• slice of lemon

Drop some ice cubes into your glass. Pour the blueberry vodka and lemonade over them. Stir. Garnish with a slice of lemon. Get crunk!

(Via PopHangover.com)

Austin, TX-based artist Summer Anne Burton took on quite a challenge in January of 2011: She set out to draw annotated portraits of all 293 members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame within a year, each one featuring key statistics and anecdotes. That’s roughly 1.25 portraits a day, which is pretty impressive—granted, her stuff is a little more basic than my work, and she’s doing this as a purely self-satisfying enterprise, so she’s not really going out of her way to sell these and suffering through all the marketing and self-promotion that it entails (though she is taking commissions for stuff at her Etsy shop)—but I’m lucky to average one new design a WEEK.

Still, the concept is sound, and her simple line art style is perfectly suited for this sort of project. Pains me as it does to feature a YANKEE on my blog, The Babe was born in Baltimore, and since Summer Anne is drawing these chronologically based on their induction into the Hall, it’ll be a while before any Orioles pop up (John McGraw is in there, but the Baltimore Orioles of the late 19th/early 20th century have no real connection to the team that moved here from St. Louis in 1954 other than geographical and titular symmetry.)

As bands who sound indie but record for major labels are fond of saying, “Indie is more about a state of mind and sound than it is about corporate affiliations.” (Ed. note: I just made that up, but it feels true. Truthiness!)

Wind-Up Records is an independent record label, but they have Creed on their roster, while Interpol’s third album came out on huge major label Capitol Records (home of, among others, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Beastie Boys, Radiohead, etc).

But “indie” isn’t just about bands and small businesses and crafters. There are lots of things that share a similar ethos and vibe that have nothing to do with spazz-core and knitting things with owls on them. Here’s a list!

10. Baseball teams: Despite their history of losing, no one is ever going to think of the Chicago Cubs as “indie”—they bring in way too much money and have way too many fans. Think Pittsburgh Pirates, Baltimore Orioles, Minnesota Twins, Kansas City Royals, and Tampa Bay Rays. If you skew indie and have to root for a team in New York, it needs to be the Mets. Though you’re better off forgetting about baseball entirely and becoming an Islanders, Bills or Sabres fan.

9. Major fast-food chains: Any jerk can toss a greasy cheeseburger into a bag and pass it through a window, but I think that Panera Bread Co. is where it’s at, especially if you are a vegan or vegetarian in the suburbs.

8. Cars: MINI, even though it’s owned by BMW now, is about as indie as it gets. Small, great fuel economy, appealing to anglo and europhiles, and easily convertible to bio-diesel. When they finally roll out an all-electric one, it’s gonna be huge.

7. Pets: Adopted, non-pedigreed animals. Dogs will suffice, but this is all about indie, so the cats win it. Duh. Adorable, fluffy, and act like they don’t care if you like them or not, and much more prone to flip out at you for no reason.

6. Scientists: Nikola Tesla. Dude developed a way to draw power from the Earth itself and transfer it wirelessly to power electronic devices for free the low, low cost of an antenna. J. Pierpont Morgan fired him b/c there was no money in it! Capitalist!

5. Politicians: Ohio’s 10th District Congressional representative Dennis Kucinich. Vegan, very green and left-leaning, pasty, and with a slight, scrawny stature, and the uncanny ability to land wife after wife further up the attractiveness scale than he is. Sounds like a hipster to me! We’ll overlook his frivolous lawsuit against the cafeteria for mistakenly allowing an olive pit to slip it’s way into his veggie wrap. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin gets a nod, but is disqualified due to no longer being in office.

4. Comic Book Characters: Oliver Queen, The Green Arrow. Ollie is a trust-fund hipster, dedicated to environmental protection and inner city revitalization when he’s not busy shooting arrows at bad guys. He also sports questionable facial hair and patrolled the streets of Seattle in the late 80s and early 90s…BEFORE grunge broke.

3. Fruits: Pomegranate! Strange-looking, willfully difficult to get through, delicious with a hint of sharp tartness, and only available every once in a while. Often overshadowed by its seasonal contemporaries the apple and the pumpkin. Kind of like Wrens albums.

2. Soft drink: Flavored, unsweetened seltzer or club soda. Supporting Big Corn is so mainstream.

1. Monsters: Werewolves. Solitary, shaggy & unkempt, prone to moodiness, especially around objects of affection. If you have a LiveJournal, you’d probably make an excellent werewolf! (Ed. note: I did, once upon a time. Have a LiveJournal. I was never a werewolf.)

After several days of not cracking 30°F (with no snow to show for it), I can safely say I’m over winter. Here are some things I’m looking forward to in the next few months:

10.Wearing t-shirts as my primary upper-body article of clothing: This sort of ties in with number three, but gets it’s own slot because it’s integral to me being able to pimp my wares to you fine people when I’m out getting drunk.

9. Longer Days: I hate Daylight Savings. Just because time is a human construct does not mean we can just tug it back and forth willy-nilly.

8. Groundhog Day: The movie, not the holiday. I will admit to a very slight desire to trek up to Pennsylvania and see Punxsutawney Phil peek out of his little hollow, but it’s purely out of love for the 1993 Bill Murray masterpiece that a) introduced us all to Ned Ryerson, and b) inadvertently named one of the best bands to ever come out of Washington, DC.

7. Foster kittens: OK, I’m not really looking forward to this; in a perfect world, people would be responsible about fixing their pets and feline procreation would result in a manageable amount of kittens that could all be adopted into safe, loving homes, and the need for fostering them wouldn’t exist. But since it does, I do feel lucky that I get to help out. Because of the cute!

6. New music: November through January is a pretty fallow period for the music industry; the really good stuff doesn’t start rolling out until February. I might do a list next week of my most-anticipated releases due out in 2011!

5. New vegetables: Specifically, fresh stuff from my garden. Sadly, this won’t actually be ready-to-eat until, oh, June at the earliest, but at this point I’m actually dying to get out into the back courtyard and sweep out the dead leaves and plant new stuff.

4. New fruit: Don’t get me wrong, I love citrus, but I’m really looking forward to berries.

3. Not spending a full five minutes outfitting myself with layer upon layer of clothing before leaving the house.

2. Walking to the gym: The only thing one of countless things better than going to the gym regularly is being able to stroll along the Patapsco River on the way there.

1. Baseball: Let’s be real; I would happily watch meaningful baseball 365 days a year. Hell, I even tuned into the World Baseball Classic in 2009 because I was so desperate for the MLB regular season to start. At this point it’s only a couple weeks until pitchers and catchers report to spring training facilities in Florida and Arizona, and I’m giddy at the prospect of watching meaningless* exhibition games. Though it makes me crack up every time my wife calls the winter months the “hot oven” instead of “hot stove” season. Much like when she asked if the American League played against the Justice League.

* I hear my wife in my head right now: “ALL baseball games are meaningless. And slow. And boring. I hate you; you’re a terrible husband for making me watch this.”

I know that I’ve made passing references to by my baseball fanaticism here in the past; I try to keep it to a minimum, both at my wife’s behest, and because I realize there’s not a ton of overlap between people who like cute critters, zombie, robots, comics, indie rock, and sports. But this story from earlier today both gave me a sad and a happy when I read it.

Chicago White Sox pitching ace Mark Buehrle and his wife Jamie are avid animal lovers, and despite Mark collecting pretty much every major piece of hardware boys and girls dream of as little kids when they first pick up a ball and/or bat (World Series ring, Gold Glove award, and a perfect game AND no-hitter—basically, your average Hall of Fame resume), the couple are tireless advocates for animals.

Apparently, some jack-ass in Godfrey, IL decided it was a better idea to shoot an arrow into a dog’s side instead of shoving it into their own eyeball. I would have chosen the latter. Anyway, Mark and Jamie have picked up the entire $3000 (and climbing) vet bill to ensure the 4-year old Sheltie’s recovery.

Now, even if this gets into the tens of thousands, it would still be a drop in very large bucket: Buehrle makes $14 million a year. But it should also be noted that Mark and Jamie volunteer often for various animal shelters and charities in and around the Chicago area, even going so far as setting up the monthly pre-game Sox For Strays adoption drive at U.S. Cellular Field. So he does walk the walk.

But before you collapse into a puddle of warm & fuzzy goo, there’s a distressing post-script: Shelby the Sheltie’s original owners, despite micro-chipping her, declined to report the fact that she went missing SIX WEEKS AGO, and immediately surrendered ownership when they were contacted and told that she had been found last week. With so many jerks in Shelby’s life, I’m really happy that the Buehrle’s are out there doing what they can to help her and other critters like her.

So, those of you who read my blog regularly (all ten of you) may have noticed that I was MIA all last week. I wish I had a good reason for my lack of communication, but I don’t. The fact of the matter is, my wife was out of town (Way out of town. London, to be precise) last week, and if I’m being honest, it’s very difficult for me to stay on-task when she’s not around.

Tempting as it is to do the revisionist history thing and post a bunch of entries time-stamped for last week, let’s just pretend that it never happened (which is, in itself, a revisionist undertaking. Tautology! Look it up, kids. Also, what’s up with all the parentheticals today?)

Since only TWO of the aforementioned TEN readers have taken me up on my Meet the Fans Monday feature, I’ve decided to ease us back into the swing of things by interviewing myself. This exercise is two-fold: it give me a chance to mention Chuck Klosterman’s latest book Eating the Dinosaur, which examines the nature of the interview from the quasi-philosophical angle that Klosterman does so well, and it also allows me to talk about myself, which I love doing.

How did you first discover Ex-Boyfriend?
I started designing some stuff. It needed a name. And “The Beatles” was taken.

5 10 desert island musical artists?
Yikes! Idlewild, The Smiths, Waylon Jennings, The Who, The Beatles, The Cure, Miles Davis, Wilco, Elliott Smith, and Blur. I will rue this list on the days when I crave some Johnny Cash, Radiohead and/or Oasis.

Tell us about your pop cultural guilty pleasures.
I don’t ever really feel guilty about the stuff that makes me feel good… but I suppose the stuff that is the most incongruous with my persona would be my appreciation of certain Britney Spears singles, Jane Austen novels, “good” romantic comedies (Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, When Harry Met Sally, etc) and Gossip Girl.

What kind of tees do you hope we design next?
The kind that sell a lot! Ideally, stuff with monsters and robots and critters. You know, the usual.

Favorite haunts on the web?
Alright, time for some true confessions… I’m a bit of a sports nut. Not exactly the sort of thing you’d guess based on my job, wardrobe, haircut, listening habits, etc. But I LOVE baseball and football. So a lot of the places I visit deal with sports. Pretty much every one of the Yahoo! Sports blogs is choice. Fangraphs.com. CamdenChat.com. All are pretty entertaining reads. But I also love to drop in on chromewaves.net, because Frank Yang and I share a lot of the same taste in music (and I like free mp3′s), videogum.com is excellent because Gabe is one of funniest bloggers I’ve ever read. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention andiamnotlying.com, which is partially contributed to by my friend David William, who is an amazing artist “living the dream” in hipper-than-hip Brooklyn. And of course tastespotting and liquorious!

Do you have any pets? What are they, what are their names?
I think this is pretty well-documented, but I’m pwned by two cats, Oliver and Bigby. And let’s not forget the seemingly never-ending parade of foster animals.

If you had a time machine, where in history or the future would you go?
The future. To paraphrase Brian Fellows, I don’t do dinosaurs.

Beer, liquor, or wine (be specific)?
Beer and wine are more or less in a dead heat. I love a good Belgian-style wheat beer, but I also like a nice, flavorful copper, amber or red ale. As far as wines, I’ve graduated from the “I only drink whites” camp to almost exclusively reds. I tend to shy away from the drier stuff—no merlots for me, thanks. I like a nice full-bodied shiraz, cabernet savignon, malbec, or pinot noir.

What’s the first thing you notice about the ladies (or dudes if you prefer them)?
Teeth/smile. I can look past a lot of physical flaws, but bad teeth are pretty egregious.

Cake, pie or cookies (ice cream and candy are also acceptable, but be specific)?
This is tough! I love Starbursts. I like cupcakes a lot (though I’m pretty no-frills; plenty happy with vanilla-on-vanilla), and certain pies really get me going (key lime, blue berry, pumpkin, pecan). I appreciate a well-done cookie, but they’re more of a stop-gap dessert in my book—a sort of “well, if there’s nothing else around” treat. My wife’s cherry cheesecake is pretty awesome, as is her pumpkin cheesecake topped with toasted pecans and caramel-bourbon sauce.

I’ve been designing lots of new shirts lately. Below are two of the newest ones:

Also, we now have tote bags! They’re perfect for the beach, overnights and of course as reusable grocery totes. (Guys: Let’s be honest, tote bags that look manly are few and far between. If we’re lucky they’ve got some tomatoes on them and if we’re not they’re pink and covered in flowers, right? The new totes collection is chock full of manly designs featuring stuff like hammers, Bigfoot and zombies. MAN STUFF!)

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