the hearts and laserbeams blog!

recently blogger decided we can't publish my blog to my own website anymore so here we are! pardon the dust, and please visit us online at www.heartsandlaserbeams.com!

hearts and laserbeams is the wacky good-times art and design by me, steph calvert. i team up with robots, cupcakes, and stick people to show people art isn’t all about seriousness, missing ears, and deep thoughts; it can actually be tons of fun.

9.29.2009

this morning's commute playlist, or you should check out these hot traxxxx!

lots of mornings on the way to work i'll hook up my ipod, pick a particular somethin' to listen to and that is it.

other mornings, i set the ipod to shuffle through my schizophrenic music library and pick some gems for me for the 40 mile drive - this morning's playlist was killer! your homework is to check out any of the songs you've never heard before:

1) "take me with u" by prince and the revolution
2) "happy rap" by junior senior
3) "talk dirty to me" by poison
4) "the other way of stopping" by the police
5) "rockabilly" by the mavericks
6) "like a virgin" by madonna
7) "interlude... the set up" by foxy brown
8) "fat bottomed girls" by queen
9) "she's automatic" by rancid
10) "won't get fooled again" by the who
11) "heaven must be missing an angel" by tavares
12) "only the lonely" by roy orbison
13) "dick lips" by blink 182

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9.28.2009

a quick thought for a monday evening...

i have quite a lot of times in my life where i am excited and happy about things that are going on.

and i am really fortunate and grateful for how freaking awesome my life and the people involved in it are.

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9.25.2009

T to the G to the I to the F y'all!!!

this weekend is gonna be jam-packed with awesomeness, here's what josh and i have on tap:

kickball championships on saturday - it's the last games of the season, and it's almost unnecessary to play the games because i know exactly how it's gonna turn out... there's 3 games being played. #1 top team will play the #4 bottom team, the #2 (us!) and the #3 team will play each other, and then the winners of those two games will play each other.

so basically, #1 team will win and we will win (cuz we've beat the #3 team twice before), then we'll play the #1 team and they will kill us because apparently they're amazing. but it'll be good times and there's gauranteed snacks!

after that josh gayle and i are gonna go to the sneak preview showing of whip it at the long beach towne center. i don't know if i've mentioned before... but i'm crazy about roller derby. if i'd discovered it like 10 years ago when i didn't have things like a sometimes-angry knee, and i had the money and time, i would so join a league! but alas, for all the reasons stated above, i must be content to sit and drink my beer from the sidelines.

SO EXCITED FOR THIS MOVIE! josh and i have been waiting for it to come out for months. and if you go to the sneak preview they're givin out free tshirts! they're showin it at more places than long beach town center, check out moviefone.com or fandango.com and you can find the theater near you!

also, sunday morning josh and i are starting a 4 week long sailing class - i don't know why this terrifies me... but i'm kinda freaked out by the idea of driving a boat. i'm pretty sure i know why, but it's a stupid reason so hopefully i'll be able to put that behind me and kick some watery ass!

and then mixed in there will be the usual weekend web design class homework and some writing for the next week's oc weekly blog posts. and painting a commission. aaaaaand what else. sleeping i hope! i definitely hope there'll be some sleeping in there.

like i said, this weekend's gonna be chock full of awesome! will hopefully get a post up this weekend with an update on our backyard garden - our plants have completely BLOWN UP!!!

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9.22.2009

fight for your right to carbs!

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josh decided the other day he was going to start making ribbons out of spaghetti noodles to sell on etsy - to raise carb awareness!

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9.19.2009

concert fun and internetty news!

ok so last week josh and i went to see the killers play at the hollywood bowl, and it uberrocked!!!

i didn't realize until like a day before the show that the psychedelic furs were opening for them, and i was like uhhh that's cool. because it makes me wanna rummage through thrift store racks for pink things to shove in jenn's face while singing (badly) "PRETTYYYYY IN PIIIIIINNNNNNNK". i didn't realize at the time how amazing this one-two punch of musicness was gonna be!!

so we pretty much had the perfect concert experience - we drove up to hollywood early afternoon, got there before rush hour traffic had even begun. checked into the best western that's like 2 blocks from the bowl, and moseyed down to the hollywood/highland complex. it really kinda cracks me up how this place is billed as so hip and trendy and the oscars are held there, but really... it's just a fancy mall.

i'm not exaggerating. it's a mall. there's a hot topic. steps away from where they hold the oscar. it just cracks me up.

we were lucky! we were there the same day hot topic was having a q&a about that new jennifer's body movie, and i guess panic at the disco was gonna play. i didn't so much care about that, we were just there to gawk at celebs. so we hung out directly behind the sound booth, listening to them talk shit about everybody was awesome. and on the second level you could see celebs getting their pics snapped and doing interviews. saw adam brody from the oc, megan fox and diablo cody.

i don't know about you but i wanna party with diablo cody. she reminds me of my girl liz. i bet she rocks the karaoke stage!

anyhow, i found out after the fact that my old pal ed killmond from scad was there and thought he recognized me, and that is super awesome even though we didn't get a chance to say hi. hi, ed!

after we hung out there a bit, walked back to the hotel and packed up our snacks for the concert. i LOVE that you can bring your own snacks to the h-wood bowl. we brought enough for 20 people, but it was just me and josh... we may have overpacked. for certain shows you can't bring your own booze, and i declare shenanigans!

the show was AWESOME. every song psychedelic furs played i was all "i know this song! i know this song!" it was like sitting and listening to a john hughes movie soundtrack. and then they didn't play pretty in pink. and their set was over. and i was like "WHAT THE HELL!!!"

josh and i started figuring maybe they were one of those bands that was so sick of that song, maybe they refuse to play it these days. but then the killers started, and their sound is SO psychedelic furs, i started thinking. omg that's gonna be the encore. they're gonna do pretty in pink with the furs.

and they did.

and it was AMAZING.

seriously, the killers rock my socks off and almost every song has this nostalgic quality about it, every song is so awesome. i heart them hooray!

once the show was over, instead of having to deal with crappy parking lot traffic we just had a short 2 block walk to the hotel and that was it. bliss.

the hotel thing, it made all the difference. a while back i saw the police at dodger stadium with my sis danielle and some friends, and we were in the parking lot for like an hour and a half after the show.

so that's my recap - in other news, hearts and laserbeams was offline for a couple of days due to hacky shenanigans. it's back online and all fixed now, so thank goodness for that! i have to seriously thank raina from the queen's men for getting rid of all the hacker shenanigans, and bluehost for helping me get my hosting account unsuspended. y'all are the best!

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9.15.2009

he works hard for the money...

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here we see my fabulous huzzz hard at work in the hearts and laserbeams sweat shop! we're sending a box full of tees to shopScad today; if you're in the low country you besss get in that shop later this week and pick one up! shopscad features work by students, alumni and faculty of the savannah college of art and design, and is located at 340 bull street in historic downtown savannah.

not fortunate enough to live in the south? don't fret my pet, our tees are also available online!

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9.14.2009

i've had the time of my life...

all right dude by now it's old news, but patrick swayze passed away today. i'm really sad about it - that guy made both the best and the worst movies ever and now you gotta sit there and listen to me talk about it!

number one, like most preteen girls in the 80s i LOVED the dirty dancing movie. had the soundtrack, had the second soundtrack, saw the movie about 8 billion times between the ages of 10 and 32. (lemme share with you that in the back of my head, i always thought it was kinda weird that johnny and baby hooked up because it was like the gabrielle carteris thing in 90210 - i could not get past the fact that swayze looked way older than the early 20s or so character he was playing)

yeah, i liked ghost all right when it came out. (SAM WHEAT!!!) but for me, it was all about coming out - one of my fave swayze movies ever was to wong foo, thanks for everything, julie newmar. PURE COMEDY GOLD.

no wait, what's better - patrick swayze as a drag queen or patrick swayze doing chippendales dancing with chris farley(r.i.p.) ?!? crap. this may take some thinking.

while i still haven't seen point break or roadhouse all the way through, i did get to see a chunk of roadhouse once a couple of years ago, and one of the best lines ever is "you're too stupid to have a good time". also, a couple of years ago the huzzz and his brother introduced me to the classic red dawn. that shit is intense and fully awesome so you should probably rent it. rumor has it they're working on a remake. rumor also has it they suck.

so back to swayze! true story, a couple of halloweens ago josh and i went out to south carolina to see our savannah friends for halloween, and when we got there our buddy trav had carefully placed a huge dirty dancing poster on our bed, complete with fake autograph from johnny castle himself saying "thanks for the great time at kellermans this year! i truly was the time of my life".

i think it was shortly after that, that josh and i found his older than dirt typewriter. we started writing random silly letters to the savannah kids. i don't know who got our patrick swayze letter, but it started as a fan letter to patrick swayze, and then slowly devolved into creepy fanness, and then joking anger that he may have pushed jerry orbach (r.i.p.) down the stairs. and i think it was the last line of the letter where we wrote "i hate you johnny castle".

jcastle_josh

which we later made into a shirt design that we sold via hearts and laserbeams for a long while.

also, one year for our anniversary i spent about 10 seconds photoshopping (badly) josh and i's faces onto the dirty dancing poster.

dirtydancing_joshsteph

that's not all the reasons i love johnny castle, patrick swayze, vida boheme, the whole kit n kaboodle, but it's a lot of em. and that's all the reasons i'm wishin i had a watermelon to carry in mourning.

WOLVERRRRRIIIIIIINESSSSS!!!!!

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9.10.2009

all kinds of fun news!

i am chock full of art news today!

yesterday i found out that my art school savannah college of art and design was looking for people that went there to contribute paintings for an upcoming project. so i email the gent, and send him to the paintings section of my etsy shop. he wrote back telling me that my flipping bird painting would be perfect and could i get it out to new york by next tuesday?

"flipping the bird"

um, yes please thank you! even more so when i asked for more details about the project. apparently, scad's working on revamping studio 54 and will be styling a dressing room for an upcoming carrie fisher 1 woman show. and my painting will be in her dressing room.

my painting.

will be in her dressing room.

carrie fisher.

there's talk that hgtv will be covering this project and that us weekly, usa today and other press outlets have made inquiries, and that is awesome. but i'm completely bowled over by it being for CARRIE EFFING FISHER!!!

want a little piece of hearts and laserbeams history? prints of this painting are available!



in other exciting news, my candy corn party fabric design is part of this week's spoonflower halloween contest - i am currently getting my butt kicked by another cute design so please PLEASE consider a vote for hearts and laserbeams! if i win there'll be a great big sale to celebrate!

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9.06.2009

stop that car!

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i saw this car on the drive home last week; why is it that anytime i see amazing airbrushed artwork on the road there's no way i can get a decent picture?

this one was elvis - the other two airbrushed treasures i've seen were a scene of the last supper and a montage of pics of selena with her name in a fabulously scripty font!

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