Month: April 2008

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What It Is: 4/21/08

What I’m reading: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz, as suggested by David Gates (not the guy from Bread).

What I’m watching: NBA Playoffs, except for most of the Nuggets-Lakers game.

What I’m listening to: not much. I haven’t played a lot of music lately, partly because I can’t (work-)write when there’s music on, and partly because my mom is visiting for a week and it’d be rude to play my music as loud as I like to. But I did just fall in love with Academia, off the new album by Sia.

What I’m drinking: G&Ts with G’Vine, a fancy French gin that my associate editor bought me for the holidays.

What I’m happy about: That Rufus was impossibly well-behaved (well, sleepy) during our Seder on Saturday night, despite the presence of 5 people he’d never seen before.

What I’m sad about: All the games we could’ve played. (oh, and these, too)

What I’m pondering: Going back to Montaigne and writing more of those Monday Morning Montaigne pieces that you hated.

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Papal Bull

I am so pissed off right now.

Yesterday’s kickoff of the NBA Playoffs featured a great game in the Suns-Spurs double-OT tilt. Nuggets-Lakers looked like the best game on tap for today, with the possibility that Kobe would go for 70 against the no-defense Nugs. So 3:00pm rolls around, and I click over to ABC, only to see:

The pope’s mass at Yankee Stadium. And guess what? It’s being carried on SIX local networks, plus uncountable religious and Hispanic channels! And the DirecTV guide says this mass runs from 2 to 6pm!

ABC’s corporate bitch, ESPN, is meanwhile carrying the “Mexico 200,” a NASCAR event in which drivers do their best to get across the border and back to civilization.

Now, I’m not biased against Catholics, but I’m going to compare this BS to the 1994 Ford Bronco run that pre-empted the fifth game of the Knicks-Rockets NBA finals.

You heard me: I’m comparing the pope to O.J. Simpson.

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Flip out

I’m pretty happy about that Flip Video Ultra I bought a few weeks ago. It looks like Pure Digital, the manufacturer, is pretty happy with the response, having turned the marketplace upside-down in the past year.

I know I haven’t posted much video yet, but I’ve been too busy to sit down and figure out optimal settings, edit clips, etc. So, in honor of his first seder tonight, here’s a new clip of Rufus going crazy on that pheasant-toy of his (you may recall that he tore the head off the guy about 5 minutes after we bought it):

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Peace process: solved!

In a Washington Post op-ed piece this morning, Mahmoud al-Zahar, the founder of Hamas, explains what the Israelis need to do for peace:

A “peace process” with Palestinians cannot take even its first tiny step until Israel first withdraws to the borders of 1967; dismantles all settlements; removes all soldiers from Gaza and the West Bank; repudiates its illegal annexation of Jerusalem; releases all prisoners; and ends its blockade of our international borders, our coastline and our airspace permanently. This would provide the starting point for just negotiations and would lay the groundwork for the return of millions of refugees. Given what we have lost, it is the only basis by which we can start to be whole again.

Note that this would constitute the starting point for negotiations. At least al-Zahar makes a concession that the Holocaust actually happened, remarking, “Sixty-five years ago, the courageous Jews of the Warsaw ghetto rose in defense of their people.”

His big threat seems to be “demographics”; that is, that the Palestinians will out-breed the Israelis. But that notion seems to be undercut when he points out how many of his own kids and sons-in-law have been blown up.

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Magaziner

I’ll be pretty busy this week, getting the May issue together. We launched the magazine in 1999, and I’m a little embarrassed that I’ve yet to do any sort of redesign since then. But dammit, Jim, I’m an editor, not a designer!

Except that we all do our own designs at my company, which is why the mags tend to look like they were laid out by editors. Anyway, to make myself feel even more inadequate as a designer, I read this long, engaging interview with “British editorial design icon” David Hillman.

To compound my sense of half-assing things, I read this insanely in-depth article about the design of Monocle’s magazine and website.

I’m glad I was able to get some laughs from this gallery of The Onion’s Sunday magazine covers. (link via macCulture)

(If you’re interested in what magazines I subscribe to, here’s the list.)

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What it is: 4/14/08

What I’m reading: Locas, by Jaime Hernandez. Just feeling sentimental for Maggie & Hopey, I guess.

What I’m listening to: She and Him, Vol. 1, but not getting into it.

What I’m watching: A marathon of The Deadliest Catch, in preparation for the premier of the new season.

What I’m drinking: Guinness Extra Stout (bottled)

What I’m happy about: That Starbucks’ new Pike Place roast isn’t anywhere near as offensive as its old coffee. I mean, I still wouldn’t choose to stand on line behind a bunch of people ordering orange mocha frappuccinos, but at least I know that if I DO have to go to a Starbucks, at least I’ll be able to get a decent black coffee. Oh, and here’s an article on their retro mermaid logo. This is not a mermaid.

What I’m sad about: That DirecTV’s installer messed up the installation of my new dish, so a bunch of my HD channels are badly digitizing/artifacting. Now I gotta work at home today so they can get someone out here to realign it. But it’ll be pretty sweet to have all those extra HD channels.

What I’m pondering: Why LeBron James is getting so much MVP consideration, given that his team is barely over .500 in a terrible conference.