Decoration

Decoration was basically left up to Jerry. But before he even started, we realized we had a nice natural style that came from the sheets of plastic. Jerry bought some red fabric (which I originally vehemently opposed) and decals from Blix to give the exterior a little color. He added some carpet to fully hide the wood from the interior and to add some warmth.

The idea of a built-in seat had been long abandoned for a chair, and after searching several thrift stores we found one in our game room that was both the perfect size as well as color. So, we, uh, we took it.

Jerry also added a little personal color to all the blix decals: since many of the decals were books, we added goofy titles to match the booth.

If you can't read them, here are most of the titles (including some not shown here):

    • I am Tom, by Tom Williams
    • Gnuplot And Other Obsolete Programs, by Josh Hyman.
    • Branching With The Perforce Davidians, by Valentin Wustholz.
    • I am Still Tom, by Tom Williams
    • Jonestown, Revisited, by Edgar Ortiz
    • Cool Ways To Use Your 50% Time, by Benji Sterling
    • Dianetics, by L. Ron Hubbard
    • The Cult of Tom by Alan Davidson
    • Eight Great Cults I Know by Rob Konigsberg
    • The Cult of Prada by Jerry Liu
    • I am Tom, Unabridged Version, by Thomas Williams
    • Pixar Porn
    • [paw print] - Maggie Shea & AARP

Do you remember back at the beginning we also wanted a huge likeness of Tom on the booth? Thanks to gimp and gwenview we made poster size images of Tom. When Alan saw the poster you can see below and said, "Is that a wizard hat??!" And he simultaneously threw his hands in the air like Rocky Balboa, as portrayed by a four-year old.

We even managed to create an eerie effect on one of the walls. Look at the picture on the left. Besides the image of Tom at the top, do you see the one at the bottom? The image on the right comes from the same photo, cropped and adjusted for brightness and contrast.

It's eerier in person, I assure you. There's a pipe hanging from Tom's mouth, an intentional reference to J. R. "Bob" Dobbs of the Church of the SubGenius.

By the way, the trick to making the effect was by placing the image on the inside of the plastic wall. The interior light mixed with the translucent plastic sheeting created the mild shadow effect.

We even added a Tom icon next to the camera and monitor.

I added a couple of extra touches on the last Sunday: with a bit of the unused plastic and some permanent markers I made a couple of signs:

My "Who Da Man" dreams actualized!

Tobias is our coworker. I love Tobias.