kottke.org posts about Chris Piascik
Adam Sharp has curated the most flamboyant ways to tell someone to pound sand in other languages, and it’s delightful. There’s “go ski into a spruce” from Finland, in Brazil you tell someone to “go pick little coconuts,” while in Poland you say “go to the park and paint the ceiling.”
The most devastating in the entire thread, though, is the French saying, “go back home, your mother made you waffles.” If someone said this to me, they would need a dustpan to sweep up the dust of me. If someone said this to me, they’d have to put in the newspaper I wasn’t mad. If someone said this to me, I’d think about the time my 5th grade teacher goaded the entire class to laugh at me because she was wrong about Berlin being on the border between East and West Germany, but I was right! If someone said this to me, all the liquid in my body would heat to one thousand degrees and my skin would melt. If someone said this to me, I’d move away and change my name and miss my family. If someone said this to me, the yellowjackets inside my chest would chew their way out and then sting ME for making them chew through bones. If someone said this to me, all of the songs I’ve heard plus all of the songs I haven’t would play at once inside my brain resulting in a symphony of anguish. If someone said this to me, I would go into debt buying a yacht hoping a gang of orcas wearing dead salmon on their heads would sink it.
Seven benign words on their own collocated into a soul-destroying eviscerator punctuated by a normally pleasant breakfast item. I told the very tall Chris Piasick about this saying and he drew it.
I’m sure there are science or moral reasons I shouldn’t use Jason’s “World’s Best Pancake Recipe” in my waffle maker, but I don’t care, I’ve been doing it for years and the resulting waffles are fabulous.
The scaly-foot snail or sea pangolin developed overlapping scales of iron on its foot to survive the high temperatures blasted out by the hydrothermal vents in the Indian Ocean it lives near. It also has a huge snail heart because “to accommodate the oxygen needs of symbiotic bacteria that live in their bodies and provide most of their nutrition.”
Longtime Kottke readers will remember my friend Chris Piascik who drew this metal snail after I told him about the other metal snail. Chris has an excellent YouTube channel where he talks about stuff I can’t really understand in an engaging and delightful way. In 2018, Chris and I spent about 6 months working together and putting out a kids’ book and he was mad at me every single day.
In the 1930s and 40s, artist Eric Godal drew some anti-fascist political cartoons that urged people not to listen to right-wing authoritarians who want to destroy and pillage society for their own ends. Godal, a German Jew, had escaped the clutches of Nazi Germany in the 30s and labored to warn America and the world about the fate of the Jews in Europe.1
Illustrator Chris Piascik has updated Godal’s drawings for 2020 to feature our own corrupt crackpot wannabe dictator. Calling Donald Trump a fascist is hardly controversial these days — he clearly is. What his supporters need to reckon with is: are they?
My pals Aaron Cohen and illustrator Chris Piascik, both of whom have contributed to kottke.org for years now, have produced a children’s book called The Salty Avocado, which you can pre-order on Kickstarter.
The Salty Avocado is a children’s book about a truly rotten fruit who finds redemption in the healing power of raspberry hugs. The book features Chris Piascik’s vibrant illustrations and style-defining lettering matched with Aaron Cohen’s playful and endearing story. This book is for kids who like big colors and catchy words, but it’s also for parents who end up reading the same story every single night.
Since it’s Giving Tuesday today, I’ll point out that one of their most popular rewards is the “One for you, one for them” option — you get a book for yourself and they donate a second copy to a school or library of your choice. To sweeten the deal for kottke.org readers, they’ve added an option called “Kottke’s One for you, one for them” that also includes a set of 3 buttons and a PDF copy of the book. It’s the second-to-last day to order, so make sure to check it out before it’s too late.
I’d missed that Chris Piascik, who sometimes illustrates posts on this site (this one is my favorite), came out with an adult coloring book last month called Weird & Funny & Cool Stuff to Color and Draw!: For Kids & Cool Adults.
And scene! No Kottke.org guest editor takeover would be complete without a birthday card by frequent Kottke.org illustrator, Chris Piascik.
The craziest thing about this thing we put together is that it wasn’t until the last minute that we knew for sure it was your 40th birthday. But we figured even if you were turning 39, we were going for it anyway. Thanks for the good times, and for leaving your back door open. We hope you and everyone who reads Kottke.org liked the party we threw.
Aaron, Adam, Ainsley, Anil, Choire, Chris, David, Greg, Joel, Sarah, and Tim!
Many thanks to Aaron Cohen for holding down the fort here at kottke.org for the past week. You should check out the Mad Men recap he did for last night’s episode, complete with an illustration from Chris Piascik (prints and t-shirts available).
You can also find Aaron at the helm of 2012 Boston Bacon and Beer Festival…tickets go on sale soon.
After Wendy’s tweeted that “Dubstep sounds like a broken Frosty machine”, illustrator Chris Piascik made this:
It took me a few seconds to notice the Skrillex-ification of Wendy. Awesome. Prints are available or you can get it on a t-shirt. (via @unlikelywords)
My friend Chris Piascik has done a daily drawing every day for over 2 years. Some really good stuff. It’s almost always a crazy squiggly monster of some sort or intricately hand-drawn typography.
He also loves The Misfits. A couple months ago, he mixed The Misfits’ Crimson Ghost logo with a cat to get Cattitude. I thought the Crimson Ghost would go well with Justin Bieber, too, and have been asking Chris to do it for weeks. He finally did, and oh man, he might be making it a T Shirt, as well. 10 points if you get the reference in the title of this post.
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