Dream come true / My Simpsons character

Thanks to a tip from fellow Simpsons fanatic and Cooper colleague Chris Noessel, I discovered that I could generate a Simpsons character with my likeness on the Simpsons Movie site. Holy crap. Truly, a dream come true. Now the only thing left is to have my likeness drawn in the Wall Street Journal "hedcut" style [a PDF on the Dow Jones site about how pictures become WSJ-ready].

And it's me, right? Except there were no options for beards, which is strange considering that there are quite a few bearded Simpsons characters. Homer's got a perpetual five o'clock shadow; God has a flowing white beard; Hyman Krustofski has the impressive ZZ Top-style beard befitting a cartoon rabbi; Dr. Marvin Monroe has a beard that is more like mine. So there's got to be lots of existing styles to choose from.

When I did a Google search for "simpsons beard," I discovered that Simpsons creator Matt Groening is a self-described beardo, as revealed in this email chat from 1993: "I've been mistaken more than once for Stephen King, Leonard Maltin has been mistaken for me, but I think I look more like a bearded hippie verson of Homer Simpson." (This chat took place on Prodigy, of course. Wow. Simpler times.)

Yosemite rules

I'm usually the person who recommends going anywhere but Yosemite in the Sierras because it's expensive and tends to be over-run with people even in the high country, whereas the Emigrant Wilderness, for instance, tends to be pretty sparsely visited, even on the busiest of weekends. But let's keep that on the shhhh. Anyway, I spent 3 warm, sunny days in Yosemite last week with my good friend and all-around good guy Andrew Goodman.

We had nice weather, went to popular places (North Dome, Yosemite Falls -- which has its own Wikipedia page), and yet saw very few other people. Maybe it's the time of year, or the fact that it was a low-snow year, or both? Or our route? We hiked down to North Dome on the Porcupine Creek Trail, and then got back to 120 via the Yosemite Creek trail (where, incidentally, we took some excellent swims). Whatever contributed to it, I've now seen the good side of Yosemite.



Yosemite Valley from North Dome, rendered via the magic of Autostitch. It assembled 25 or so photos from my Motorola SLVR into a pretty complete panorama, and even the artifacts -- moving clouds and ghosted edges -- seem to make the result more compelling, I think.



Yosemite Valley is an incredible place, especially when seen from a place above the Valley, like North Dome or the outcropping above Yosemite Falls. If you want a glimpse at the Valley was like when people were putting up the first routes on El Cap, check out Glen Denny's photo book, Yosemite in the Sixties. It's really nicely produced and filled with amazing black-and-white images of simpler times and the legends who started it all -- Yvon Chouinard, Warren Harding, Royal Robbins, Galen Rowell, and many more.

Absolutely, positively time for a new wallet

Years ago, I tried to make a wallet out of a Fedex Tyvek envelope, based on instructions from the inaugural issue of Readymade magazine. I liked the idea of a super-slim wallet that was (a) really cheap without seeming (b) totally cheapskate. The problem was, as simple as it seemed, making the thing involved a sewing machine, a device that is actually somewhat hard (not to mention scary) to use. So I gave up on the idea of having one until about a year and a half ago when I saw one for sale on Etsy for $5.


This is my Tyvek wallet after 18 months of use. When I bought it, I figured that it would last for a couple of months before it fell apart, but I was pretty amazed at how well it held up without much outside assistance other than a couple of layers of packing tape now and again.

As long as we're talking about Fedex, here's the cool 70's Fedex logo, and one of those 80's ads with the fast-talking businessman [YouTube]. Next up: a relatively inexpensive wallet from All-Ett that uses silicone-coated ripstop nylon. Doesn't have the cool DIY look of the Fedex wallet, but seems a lot more durable.

UPDATE: Just got email from Terrence Kelleman at Dynomighty Design, who designed a wallet made from a thicker, more durable grade of Tyvek and which is held together by gluing and folding rather than stitching. No sewing machines: bonus. Check out his demonstration [You Tube].