Lefty Like Me

Grilled Cheese Invitational. The Fromage was strong with this one.

The following is the piece of paper submitted with each grilled cheese sandwich to the fans.  

Cheese Wars

Episode 2

Grandma’s Revenge

Over one year has passed since the Grilled Cheese Intergalactic entered the Oakland empire to seek out Cheese masters.   The search had brought with it chaos to the area in the form of spatulas, well drinks, and sandwiches.  When the war finally ended three rose from the Missionary category there were three chosen ones.  Partying ensued.  Yet there….was…another.

A young man had received fourth place and claimed his skills came from an ancient and powerful Grandmother, master of the cooking side.   Learning from his mistake’s the previous year….the man set out to the GCI’s home location of Dolorescant.

The fromage is strong with this one…..

This is the blog about a lefty who could. Who could what? How about make the best god damned Grilled cheese this hipster hopping, foodie fanatical, green gala of a city called San Francisco had ever tasted.  This was the 1st National (Regional) Grilled Cheese Competition of San Francisco, but would not be the last for a lefty victory as the one seen here.

1st Place Winner. Missionary Category.

and started. here. 

The story will follow shortly.  The Finals are April 25, 2009 @ L.A. 

Never been there. But I will leave a champion and a instant star……..mark my sammy.

Think Tank.

I am not sure what % of my day I spend thinking about new ideas, old ideas, weird ideas, practical ideas, impractical ideas, or other peoples ideas but I can imagine it’s a lot.  Today at work we were actually invited to a group brainstorming session where we were given free reign to come up with any and all new ideas regarding our work and workplace.  Needless to say mine went from the serious such as whole kit testing and statistics/theory/why lunch sessions to the silly need for a boombox in our lab so I can reclaim my throne as resident laboratory DJ.  Nothing like aliquoting to some Armin Van Buren or pipetting to Paul Van Dyke.  Fine, all I get to choose from is classic rock who is so fucking loyal to about 200 classic rock songs it should be called Classic Rock 200.  I am both happy and angry that I know at some point I will here Styx – Renegade at some point in my day.  Oh the tunes we use to tune out the mundane reality of a lab rat’s life.    

So a few of my ideas were well accepted and even approved to move forward into the planning and action stages.  This is what LeftyLikeMe is to me except for the daunting fact that I pretty much get to pass on my genious gems to myself and only I can get the hamster ball rolling.  Before I get in any trouble I will admit I have a few fellow furballs who probably will never read this very sentence but I will still say are crucial to the cage.  Maybe just the artist.   Although I am very happy with what I have accomplished with this so far knowing tens of various lefties across the are country proudly displaying my first T-shirt design, I still am struggling with the time to keep bringing more of my ideas for this site to fruition.  I see this site as not only a place for myself to share my lefty vision through my art but for it to be both a discussion and a display of other people’s wares and cares.    As we originally started working on this site and rushing to try and meet Mr. Obama’s rapidly oncoming Inaugeration I was asked what the main goal of this site was and what I intended to get from this.  A single sale room for some lefty inspired shirts and some blogging and community building was not the big board room surprise I have been waiting to share with the world.  No, actually I have had a vision for a site for a while where I could incorporate some of my artistic talents for a while.  It quickly evolved into a very complex new idea that I consider to be almost its own new medium.  New medium…..now that’s something you might mention to get some heads turning.  Too bad we are a million meetings away from me even getting close to delivering that bombshell.  I first gotta get a better feel for the company and where they can go.  In this case for me the company is a website.  I have never written code of any form except for Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left Right, A, B, Select, Start but who the fuck hasn’t right? But last year I took a Flash class at the local community college to see if I could even begin to make my dream a reality.  What did I learn? I did learn how to animate a raindrop falling and turning into a fish.  I don’t want to see that I animated rain turning into fish because honestly it would have been just copies of the exact same fish and rain drop being pasted all over the place and who is that fooling? I will never forget that raindrop fish.  I will also never forget that I did learn there was some possibility in this programming pudding.  No the goal was not for me to learn how to code it myself and get that wheel turning but instead to be able to understand the language of the code so that I could speak it and have someone else translate my vision.  I think it is very important for me to understand the language of a blueprint before I go and hand someone it because in the end it allows me to say make it like this….

Vroom baby....

but apply all these tools/things/spiffynesses so that in the end they turn it into what I actually was envisioning all along.  Except mine would have even more rockets!

Batmobile....lost a wheel!

So tonight I hope that I, like President Barrack Obama (I only have a few more days until a new theme so I gotta give him more name time), have helped make you better understand the plan ahead.  It will be a slow and steady process that will take time.  The bat cave wasn’t built overnight.*  I hope that one day we will all look back at this blog post and be proud to say that we were one of the people that pledged to keep loyally holding on.  We would refresh the news page day in and day out in hopes of some news that we didn’t hear from day 1 (or Jan. 20th however you look at it).  We would pretend to not notice that the contest deadline for the logo was pushed back and changed with no mention as to allow more time for entries other than our friends or family members.  We would buy the last few remaining damn shirts so we can officially take that off the page and start shirt #2 without having those extra haunting my closet.  I actually wish they were literally haunting because then they would not take up any real space and I would not be pushing this so hard.  And that we lefties, we non-lefties, we-ambids would come forth and join the forum and start disussing anything and everything and start submitting new lefty ideas and artwork.  So don’t lose hope because this tank still has plenty of think left in it and I hope you enjoy all that is to come so that one day I get to share in the coming of a new day.  Even maybe a new medium? ! ! 

Sincerely,

LeftMastaMike

*No proof it wasn’t either but I’m going to make that a fact here. 

My first Etsy sale!

So we sold our first Obamii shirt on Etsy today! Hoo-ray to the girl from Illinois! Much love to get some representation out there.   The funny thing is I made a quick run to the nearby Walgreens in the pouring rain while already quite under the weather and as I am hurrying in to prove to my roommates I can do it in about 10 minutes a woman outside in the pouring rain asks me if I want to buy an Obama shirt.  I proceeded to lock up my bike and scream in the downpour to the woman that I actually sold Obama shirts myself.  At first I was glad to see that Obama shirts were still a wanted item but after about 5 minutes of being stuck with the woman asking me to spell etsy at least 10 times my attitude was a little less patient. .  E s t y.  E x t y. E s t y. E t s y.  E…..what? and so on.   I still tried to help……competition is good for markets right?

I actually have been quite far from my little lefty world for a while due to some long work days and my take on of becoming a docent at the Academy of Science in SF.  I have to say that of all my volunteer jobs this was is unique because it is an absolute honor to work there.  Most of my previous jobs have been fun, rewarding, moving, and so on.  The Academy, however, has opened the doors to so many resources, outlets, opportunities, angles that I am not even begin to understand where I want to dive in.  For all you SF folks if you haven’t already heard the museum has started doing a NightLIFE program on Thursday nights till sometime in October.  What this means is the world’s greenest and newest museum in the world that people travel far and wide from with friends and families is being offered for 21 and older to come chill in on Thursday nights.  Sans kids, strollers, screams, any full family unit of any kind and instead is full of young adult and old with food, booze, and a DJ to boot.  I’m not sure what the animals think of electronica but just like the rest of us it grows on us after a couple nights.  

I don’t plan on giving up on my lefty legacy here though.  I am hoping to become more loyal to you visitors and making more of a reason to come and stop by more often.  Very soon I hope to have a somewhat nice looking ARTS section that shares some personal art and future art for sale.  I would like to do another Obama shirt for sure but think we are fist going to go with our Lefty standard.  This next shirt is going to allow all lefties to be proud of how they are……..and its definitely going to be a “turn on” whenever someone sees it.   I am hoping we can sell the last of the Obama shirts (mostly XL and S left so come on all ye outiers!!!) and look to posting the next shirt on our one month anniversary to when this all began…..Feb. 20, 2009.  Wow….Obama has only been in office a month and its already this crazy.  God bless America and President Barrack Obama through these times. 

LeftMastaMike