Do fashion detectives get promoted from the rank-and-file of the fashion police?
Khoi Vinh gon’ be piiiiiiiissed. . .
In this week’s NY Magazine (which you really should check out regularly), there’s a short item about Gay Talese’s work on a documentary about . . . well, let me just run it here in its entirety:
Erstwhile Timesman Gay Talese, whose 1969 The Kingdom and the Power is a classic study of the paper, is back on the beat, working with fellow Times alum Arthur Gelb on a documentary about the paper’s struggles in the digital age. “It’s about why the Times is having difficulty attracting readers when in my opinion it’s still a very good paper, and about the difficulty of convincing young people to read it,” Talese said at the PEN gala April 28.
Is it because young people are reading the paper online? “We’re not interested in their Website,†he said. “We’re interested in our insights as veterans of old-fashioned journalism.” But does he read the Times site occasionally? “Never, and I never will,” he said. “I don’t even have a cell phone. I don’t deal with the technology. I don’t even know how to go into the Web. Maybe Gelb will do it. I insist on being with the people I’m writing about.”
Now, I can understand an old coot of a writer not dealing with the internet, but I’m not sure how many of them decide to make a documentary that’s intrinsically about the internet and refuse to even engage it. How self-important do you have to be to go down that path?
Unrequired Reading: May 2, 2008
It’s Friday, dear readers! Time for all sorts of oddball links I didn’t have time/motivation to write about!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: May 2, 2008”
Final Tale of Hofmann
When I was a student at Hampshire College, the annual Halloween tradition was known as “Trip or Treat.” Being a total square, I never partook. For a variety of reasons, I wish I’d tried acid, but it’s a bit late in life for that.
Anyway, Albert Hofmann, the man who first synthesized LSD, has died at the age of 102. But, as Acid Archie sez, “ACID NEVER DIE!”
(written by Grant Morrison, drawn by Steve Yeowell; not sure who holds the copyright, which is 1990)
Kin and Kindle
Once upon a time, Robin Williams said, “Cocaine is God’s way of telling you that you have too much money.” This week I bought a Kindle
(And it’s proof that I’m a tremendous geek, but it’s not like we needed more of that.)
Click on the image for pictures from the unboxening:
That’s an excerpt from Chelsea Handler’s new book, Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea
Anyway, I’ll play around with this thing for a while and report back. If it manages to become a book-version of the iPod, I’ll be a happy man. This will be predicated on how comfortable I get with reading off an e-ink screen like this, and how insecure I get at not having “the actual book” in my hands.
(Man, it sure is an awful piece of design. Makes you realize how amazing Apple is with this sorta thing.)
Undercover Blocker
In the tradition of the cassette guy whom I used to buy music from in Philly, the Kennedy Fried Chicken that Dad & I used to hit in Paterson, and, of course, McDowell’s, it looks like some black people have been sticking it to The Man by genetically bootlegging beta blockers.
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):
Unrequired Reading: April 18, 2008
Special shenanigans-heavy links, dear reader! Just for you!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: April 18, 2008”
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.)
What it is: 4/14/08
What I’m reading: Locas
What I’m listening to: She and Him, Vol. 1
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.