Progress Report, Day 32: Cold House, Warm Puss

Getting closer and closer. We're heating our old, drafty house/studio solely with electric space heaters which means once you get a room cozy you don't want to leave or even open the door. I've been holed up stamping, painting, coding and burning the CDs to get them ready to go out to stores. In the picture above Missy has secreted herself in my coat to try and stay warm while I finish up a stack of One Got Fat copies. Once I finish burning an edition of OGF and First Issues / Care all that will need doing is the formatting and printing of the inserts and the stamping of the CDs themselves (I bought some gold ink which is made to stay on glass and plastic - I hope the fact that the plastic is hot and spinning in a CD player won't cause any disastrous state change to it).

To keep my mind occupied while my hands are busy I've been watching every James Bond film in sequential order. Right now Missy and I are cuddling up to play For Your Eyes Only. So far my list of best Bond films from best to worst in order of personal preference is as follows:

1. Goldfinger (Connery)
2. From Russia with Love (Connery)
3. On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Lazenby)
4. The Spy Who Loved Me (Moore)
5. Live and Let Die (Moore)
6. Dr. No (Connery)
7. Diamonds are Forever (Connery)
8. Thunderball (Connery)
9. You Only Live Twice (Connery)
10. The Man with the Golden Gun (Moore)
11. Moonraker (Moore)

And my list of the best Bond theme songs is as follows (not counting the actual James Bond theme and Louis Armstrong's "We Have All the Time in the World" cuz that's kinda it's own thing):

1. Goldfinger - Shirley Bassey
2.  Nobody Does it Better - Carly Simon
3. Live and Let Die - Paul McCartney and Wings
4. Thunderball - Tom Jones
5. From Russia with Love - Matt Monro
6. You Only Live Twice - Nancy Sinatra
7. On Her Majesty's Secret Service - John Barry
8. Diamonds are Forever - Shirley Bassey
9. The Man with the Golden Gun - Lulu (stupidest Bond song but memorable)
10. Moonraker - Shirley Bassey (just as inane/meaningless but less memorable)

Progress Report, Day 15: Monkey Break Two

I dropped the artwork for First Issues/Care off at the printers today. Once that's done and the barcodes are printed up I'm going to start putting the packaging together. The first round of stamps came in the mail but I only have gold and silver ink to test them with. Still, it's exciting to get a stamp of yourself. More and more this is looking like a viable thing.

Plus I've been slowly doling out Kickstarter prizes. The only prizes I'm sleeping on is the YouTube covers of songs, mostly because I'm afraid just recording them on my still camera will look and sound chintzy and stupid. My perfectionism won't let that kind of thing stand so I'm putting it off until all of the album art components come and I can give the songs my full attention.

One Got Fat is also coming along. The recording is 95% done. If I get it completed and mastered I could be pressing two CDs this winter, which is really rad. Here's the first mockup of art for it. Depending on how I feel about the rubber stamping process with FI/C I might make a series of monkey-face stamps for it but we'll see. I like the colors on this so I might make it an insert:

Progress Report, Day 12: Monkey Break

As of today almost everything is ordered. Hopefully all of the supplies are en route to my house and I'll be able to start assembling CDs ASAP. Tonight, though, I'm watching old Universal horror movies and sketching art for One Got Fat, the new album. Here's a taste: