Welcome Back!

We hope everyone had a relaxing and delicious Thanksgiving weekend.

Here's a little peek into the work we've been doing. We give you, "Ugo Posters" made by Mutt for Paciugo. You should see the prints, they're gorgeous.

Clean Up On Aisle Your Team

Mutt has received a face-lift. Today the partners and Mr. Beauvais were hard at work rearranging and organizing Mutt Headquarters. And may I say, It's like a whole new office. Kudos boys.
Onto something completely unrelated to the office. This weekend I hung out with some old friends. One night we headed over to McMenamin's Back Stage Bar and played pool and drank beer. By the time we started our second game I was feeling fairly confident in my game, not to mention my teammate had taken billiards in school. I bet a round on the following game. I thought we'd clean up and then HAZAH! we'd get a free pint of beer.

Cut to twenty minutes and a sad David Z later and you'll see that my buddies had pulled a fast one on me. They didn't tell me that they too were well versed in billiards and do, on occasion, win games when bets are on the table. And that's where today's title came from, miss Reardon uttered it as I walked to the bar to get her a beer- a free beer.

Good story, right?

New Mutt Business Cards

It's official. We're official. With a new wave of mutts came a new wave of Mutt business cards. Here they are in all of their letterpressed glory...

Tomorrow We Have A Very Important Business Meeting

Our fearless partners and Mr. Beauvais are at the Portland airport as I write this, about to take-off for dear old Atlanta and Coca-Cola headquarters. Tomorrow they meet with Mello Yello and present our latest work.

With that said, last night was a biggy, a lot of wonderful things happened.



Lessons Learned. Nick Cline is not this man.

The cue to show Steve work was three deep. It lasted something like two hours.

Apparently David rather enjoys the warmth of his pockets, even while sleeping.

What a wonderful thing mobile devices are these days for the amateur journalist.

Today is a Special Day

Today, November the 18th, is Teresa Lynn Zavertnik's Birthday.


This amazing woman was the one to give birth to me.

Thanks Mom, Happy Birthday.

I'm So Tired.

A little side story for you. Lately our man Grand Master D has being controlling Mutt Music. You see, we have some fancy little Bose speakers that are attached to our server so whoever is quickest gets to control the music for the day. So D-mon has been on top of it these days and he has a knack for picking songs that are eerily apropo. In fact, his current pick was the inspiration for today's title.

Anyway.

The big news here at Mutt is our latest creative venture. We've got a presentation for Mello Yello later this week and lately we've been absolutely killing it. But with this high level of creativity comes a sacrifice or two. Ours can be explained by the following images.

Big Brother Is Watching

If you haven't yet deduced, I'm the youngest of the Mutts, unless of course you count the recent surge of babies being had around the office. And I suggest you do not, lest you want to insinuate we here at Mutt don't believe in labor laws. HAHAHA. I just made the entire office laugh.

Now, my point here is this. I'm young and like most anyone who is older than someone else, the boys here are keen to give me big brotherly advice. Or tease me like the younger brothers they likely did not have. Needless to say, life here is an experience.

Tonight Big Brother Nick gave me a little reminder of his cultural positioning.

The post it is an eye. It represents Nicky vonNickington's every-watching eye. The stuffed Owlgiraffe next to it reads faster, as in "your current pace is unsatisfactory, you need to work faster."

Thanks boys.

Fabian's Story

Mutt Industries World Headquarters is home to an interesting and eclectic group of small businesses, artists and storage units, all of whom are worth getting to know. They've all got stories and histories that have already dropped

This is Fabian Gordon.

Fabian owns and operates North West Imports and Liquidation. I sat down with him shortly after his birthday (September 30th) and asked him a series of random questions in an effort to learn a thing or two.

MUTT: Did you have a favorite stuffed animal growing up?

FG: Yeah, I had a lot of them. My father was a carnie when he was young. He left home when at 16 and went to work at a carnival. He worked his way up and owned the midway games, [Midway games are most of the games you imagine when you think of the carnival. Ring Toss, Test Your Strength and so on. They’re the ones that give you stuffed animals with a high enough score.] He also designed some toys for his games. So there were a lot around when I was a kid. My favorite was a penguin, and I took it with me in the bath, obviously I was too young to understand the plush toy conundrum. Needless to say the penguin didn’t last the experience….”


MUTT: Speaking of your dad, I hear he's kind of a big deal. What's his story?

FG: My father (Terry Gordon) is famous for being an innovator in adult entertainment. In his heyday he was known as the King of Tease in Las Vegas. He invented the Champagne Room.

The story behind it was this: Terry Gordon was vilified in Las Vegas to the point where he wasn’t allowed to possess a license for anything “privileged” like alcohol. So he got a deal with a supplier in Australia that produced non-alcoholic champagne and imported a grip of it. Then he’d wash the labels off and replace them with expensive champagne labels, or knock-off’s of expensive champagne labels. They’d sell it at expensive champagne prices and no one knew.

But there was no sex in the Champagne Room.

Oh and his brother was Jack Gordon who was married for a while to Latoya Jackson. So, Jack was married Latoya who is Michael Jackson’s sister. And Michael was married to Lisa Marie Pressley, so I was, for a stint, related to Elvis Presley...

To keep this interesting for everyone we're going to end there today. Check back soon for more from the Fabian Chronicles.

Take That Mrs. Peller's Homeroom

The boys have a library of books here at Mutt and it's a goal of mine to read them all. Yesterday I took a gander at two of Paul Arden's books (1)(2). I preferred the latter of the two, but the first had this gem:

Mutt knows this. I was told from day one here not to be precious about my ideas. But it wasn't always this way.

If you're quick witted you've deduced that this story is about Mrs. Peller's homeroom. I got in many-an-argument over sharing work. Everyone was precious about everything. I'd say things like, "come on man, it's called collaboration." Or, "It's not hurting you any." Or even the sensible, "it's better for your back not to hunch over like that." And would you believe people argued? Apparently I was ahead of my time.

So now I'd like to say, "I knew it. I knew better." And I hope you've learned your lesson. Thank goodness for collaboration.

Only Time

It's no surprise, I'm a n00b and am, for all intensive purposes, uneducated in the law of the land. I went to school and they told me I could be amazing. I got a job and thought I would be amazing. For these past few months I've been quietly soaking up everything ounce of knowledge I can from this place, but it doesn't come easy. Tonight however, I had a formal schooling. During a pit stop at La Merde with the boys I had the opportunity to explicitly learn a thing or two. Here's my main takeaway from the evening:

Why November

You've snuck up on me. October was a month amongst months and we here at Mutt are sad to see it go. I've got to catch you all up on a few things. The last of October brought the highlight event of the season, the Moulé Fall Fashion Show. Our good friends (and wonderful client) Moulé hosted an evening of ghoulish (see the Halloween pun there?) -ly good times. The inspiration for this season's show were the Cullens of the world.

That's a vampire reference for the rest of you. Set to a gothic vampire theme, we here at Mutt were asked to produce the visual aesthetic for the event on behalf Ms. Rachel Gorenstein and her tribe of Moulé Fashionistas.

We'll have a video up here in the near future that documents the entire evening, but to give those of you non-attendees an idea of what happened, we have some pictures to share. As you can see, we all had quite a good time.