Wax On, Wax Off

Barcelona’s Hey Creative Studio started posting a daily pop culture illustration to their EveryHey Instagram account in early 2015, and the project has exactly the right logic: one image, every day, minimal and precise, pulled from the shared archive of things people actually love—music, film, TV, the whole sprawling constellation of it.

My favorites from the early run were Bender, Alf, and Captain Planet, though the Mr. Miyagi portrait was sharp enough to make me stop scrolling. Something about the economy of it—the way a handful of shapes summons an entire performance, an entire childhood. Wax on, right hand. Wax off, left hand. Wax on, wax off. That quote has shaped more of my adult life than I care to admit, and not entirely in the metaphorical sense.

If I could put in requests, the list would start with Sailor Moon, include Kate Upton somewhere in the middle—because of course it would—and end with the three kids from 3 Ninjas, which I was watching at the time and which I will defend to my last breath. The project is one of those slow-burn internet pleasures: not a feed you doom-scroll through but one you actually look forward to checking. Those are rarer than they should be.