Month: January 2008

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Belichick Chemicals?

Yes, clients occasionally put me up in fancy-pants hotels (where amenities include loaner laptops and goldfish) for press briefings.

Yes, clients occasionally take me out to dinner in fancy-pants restaurants.

No, this hasn’t stopped me from hitting a halal street-meat cart for lamb & chicken rice platter.

* * *

Best line from the press briefings: When asked about about the rigorous process his company has for suppliers of chemical ingredients, one of the VPs told us, “One supplier sent us the chemicals in a cut-off sweatshirt sleeve.”

Evidently, the supplier didn’t want to bother filling out proper certificates or taking care of traceability requirements, so they just . . . wrapped the chemicals in a cut-off sweatshirt sleeve and shipped ’em off to a global provider.

“The supplier was based in an, um, evolving economy,” we were told.

* * *

Here’s a picture from the staircase in the restaurant:

Staircase at Amalia NYC

And here’s a picture of Greene St., running north of Canal:

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Scenes from a weekend

Sorry for the lack of a post on Sunday; I did resolve to post something every day, although I didn’t make any resolutions about the quality of those posts.

Anyway, it was a pretty relaxed weekend. Amy & I drove down to Manalapan on Sunday for her friend Naomi’s wedding. It was a traditional Jewish wedding, with various celebrations that I sorta figure were traditional to Russian Jews. I’m sure Amy’ll write about it this week.

Me, I’m gonna send you over to a small set of pix from the weekend, including Santa In Chains:

Santa in Chains

And, for your edification — or your imagination — the secret and partially fictive history of the revolving door.

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Maps and Legends

One of my favorite recent essays was about a subway map. The original version of it was published at Design Observer in 2004, but the author expanded it for that book I keep mentioning all the goddamn time, which I read last year. The great thing about the online version is that it has reader comments, including a neat exchange between the author and one of the 2Blowhards about visual poetry and the utility of design.

Bierut’s essay was the first exposure I had to the work of Massimo Vignelli. That is, it was the first time I’d read his name; it turns out I’ve seen his work all my life, in various corporate logos and other pieces of design: Bloomingdale’s, American Airlines, Bennetton, and others.

This morning, taking a break from playing around with the iPhone (a.k.a. one of the finest pieces of design I’ve ever seen), I caught up with New York Magazine‘s issue on Design Revolutionaries, which I’ve been saving for a while (for some reason, the website refers to it as “Home Design”). It turned out that its feature on Vignelli and his wife Lella was minuscule — Martha Stewart received a much longer piece — but it did include a large replica of the (in)famous subway map, so that was nice to see.

More importantly, its splash-photo shows that the Vignellis’ home on the upper east side is the greatest apartment I’ve ever seen in my life:

Vignellis apt., photo by Dean Kaufman

(Photo by Dean Kaufman)

Seriously: those windows are TWENTY FEET HIGH.

So, even though it’s not like he needs my money, I ordered a copy of Vignelli From A to Z off Amazon today.

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Unrequired Reading: Jan. 11, 2008

It’s my birthday, dear readers! So I’m taking today off to celebrate!

Still, you deserve some Unrequired Reading, so here’s a neat article detailing the history of the development of the iPhone, because

a) it’s a really neat story about how the wireless industry works and how Apple has tried to shake it up with this device, and

b) my wife just got me one for my birthday!

Thanks for enabling my geekiness, darling! (more Unrequired Reading after the break)

Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Jan. 11, 2008”

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Coffee break

There were two significant (and probably related) coffee announcements this week: McDonald’s plans to add coffee bars to its stores, and Starbucks founder and chairman Howard Schultz has taken back his CEO role. I don’t have a horse in this race, since I prefer Dunkin Donuts’ coffee (unless there’s a Tim Hortons around, of course), wouldn’t set foot in a McDonald’s for anything except a fry-fix, and can’t stand Starbucks’ actual coffee (y’know, the black stuff).

I’ve read a lot of commentary on these moves — check out Megan McCardle’s and Bill Conerly’s — but I think the most salient insights come from this conversation between Roast Beef and Ray:

ME: Tell me what you like most about Starbucks I mean I know you get coffee there.

RAY: The chicks who work there, dude! All tight black pants, smilin’, hell of took a shower lately . . .

ME: Now tell me what you remember about the McDonald’s worker chicks.

RAY: They . . . they get these weird little purple blotches on their faces, but they don’t seem to come to a head. And . . . and they got those flappy bellies that the company makes them tuck into their pants. Bellies that could hang into a sink, but not stick out above a sink. Wait, hold on a minute, man–

ME: Plus think about it Ray if they can’t even repeat NUMBER THREE, DIET COKE how they gonna do with a double venti short tall nonfat mocha no foam cappuccino with two ice cubes and a half shot of sugarfree vanilla for Mackenzie who by the way is a skinny woman in Versace sunglasses and not a fat Irish man in an Aran cable sweater holding a Guinness.

Now go read some Achewood. I’m gonna get me some DD and finish up that Jan/Feb ish.

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Hero with a Thousand Typefaces

A book that didn’t make my “best/worst/weirdest” list from 2007 was Michael Bierut’s 79 Short Essays on Design. I adored it but couldn’t come up with a decent joke award for it. Looking back, I should’ve gone with “Most fonts used in a good cause,” since every essay is set in a different font, to great effect.

Virginia Postrel writes about the profusion of fonts and includes a neat 8-minute video interview with Mr. Bierut.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to laying out my magazine. Which uses Palatino for body copy, Helvetica Black for headlines, Gill Sans for author/contributor copy, and Univers 55 for sidebars.

(Oh, and Mr. Bierut has a new essay up on Design Observer, but I haven’t read it yet.)

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Show some resolve!

Whoops! I was so busy getting the Jan/Feb issue of my mag together that I almost missed my New Year’s Resolution of making sure I post at least one item every day!

Fortunately, I came across this neat writeup about companies that worked for/with Nazi Germany. “Enjoy”!
(And, yes, I do own a Hugo Boss suit, but it was in clearance, so I got to exert my Jewish stereotype on that one.)

My other resolution is to get back to only drinking water, black coffee or gin. I slipped up and had a Dr. Pepper a few days ago, and Amy broke out a bottle of wine Saturday night, but I’m sticking with it pretty well!

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A Vast, Right-Hand Conspiracy

Trying to find information on setting up college funds for my nieces, I came across this FAQ list that includes one of the greatest questions ever:

Misc. and Unusual Questions

1. I have heard about a scholarship for left-handed students. Can you tell me more information about it?

This question comes up frequently, because the popular press and scholarship matching services like to use it as an example of unusual scholarships.

The only scholarship for left-handed students is the Frederick and Mary F. Beckley Scholarship of up to $1,000. This scholarship is awarded to left-handed students who will be attending Juniata College. This scholarship is not available to students who aren’t enrolled at Juniata College. For more information, write to Office of Student Financial Planning, Juniata College, 1700 Moore Street, Huntington, PA 16652.

Of course, this led me to look for other bizarre scholarships. If I knew about this stuff, I wouldn’t have pretended to have Serbo-Croatian and Navajo parents when I filled out my financial aid application.

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Gangburger with cheese

I knew that The King was a Burger Crip:

But that’s no reason for Ronald to start flashing gang symbols:

Man, this could lead to worse violence than the time Biggie got killed.

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It’s a celebration!

Happy 8th birthday to Liat, my co-favorite niece!

(Note: yes, the candles show that this picture is from her 7th birthday. I’m a total heel for being unable to attend her birthday party this year, but I promise to make it up to her this summer when she comes out to visit!)