Eat your heart out, Bob Costas

So it’s the second day of November, and I know, you’re still not seeing any changes to the design of this site, even though I said it would be launching yesterday. Turns out Jon doesn’t respond to repeated beatings, and since we’re switching content management systems he’s had to hire some outside help. And we’re almost there, I promise, it’s just a matter of coordinating this with that and some things over there. If it takes much longer I may resort to pulling his toes or dangling his precious clogs over the toilet.

In the meantime I’ll be putting up a new masthead for November in the next couple of days, and this afternoon I’m going to be providing live commentary for the Layer Tennis match over at Coudal. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Layer Tennis it goes something like this:

Two artists (or two small teams of artists) will swap a file back and forth in real-time, adding to and embellishing the work. Each artist gets fifteen minutes to complete a “volley” and then we post that to the site. A third participant, a writer, provides play-by-play commentary on the action, as it happens. The matches last for ten volleys and when it’s complete we declare a winner.

Today’s match is between veteran designers Marian Bantjes and Armin Vit and will be played in Illustrator, a program I have used once. So you know there is no one better equipped to critique the work of two experts. And holy shit, what have I gotten myself into? Why did I agree to this? I think I’m going to start drinking at right now o’clock.

All the action starts at 2pm Chicago time, and you really should stop by and take a look at the previous matches as the artists who have been involved so far have created some really inspiring work.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go poke my thumb in Jon’s eye a couple hundred times.