Author: Gil

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Mall crawl

A lot of my years were spent in malls. Most of my friends detest malls, or at least profess to, but I embrace them. I enjoy meandering through high-end ones with quirky boutique shops, and I enjoy visiting the occasional Mall of the Living Dead, if only to see how it can all go wrong, and how a new highway can leave a landmark in the dust. I am unabashedly obsessed with retail in its many shapes and guises.

Fortunately, I live and work close to Paramus, NJ, which puts me in proximity of a broader array of retail than you can imagine. One of the neat things about Paramus is that, despite having a mind-blowingly huge amount of malls and strips, everything is shut down on Sunday. Here’s a neat newspaper article about the town, its evolution, and just how much the locals treasure that day off.

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Say hello to Hollywood

Derek Lowe writes about a great article in the February issue of The Scientist. The anonymous author discusses the flaws in the R&D model among major pharma companies and develops an interesting method of fixing them: Go Hollywood!

Big Pharma continues to follow the old studio model, though there are signs that this may be changing. A similar and necessary evolution to what Hollywood underwent in the 1950s may be beginning, with increasingly more drugs being discovered outside Big Pharma, presumably because the R&D process elsewhere is more conducive to creativity. Biotechs or small pharma settings tend to be flexible and nonhierarchical, with a tolerance for mistakes and constructive dissent — all characteristics of environments that nurture creativity and innovation. Consequently, the trend towards more drugs being discovered outside Big Pharma is likely to accelerate.

There is a precedent for pharma emulating Hollywood: Pharma’s main preoccupation, the creation of blockbusters, was directly copied from Hollywood. The blockbuster model is really defined by broad and aggressive marketing, though the term is less accurately, if more commonly, used to define revenue thresholds. Hollywood’s blockbuster model was created in 1951, when the term was first applied to the movie Quo Vadis because of its then-huge budget of $7 million and the unprecedented zeal of its promotion.

I know it sounds bizarre, and it may be dry subject matter, but this is a really compelling opinion piece, and I think laymen (like myself) can gain a lot of perspective from it on some of the problems with developing new drugs.

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Blame it on the rain

The Colts win left me at 2-9 for this year’s Playoff “Challenge”, while Ron Rosenbaum went 6-5. More importantly, I’m out $50 after the Bears failed to cover. Of course, devoted readers of this site — seek help! — may recall such remarks as

Rex Grossman looks like the most confused quarterback in the NFL, with literally no ability to grasp when the pocket is collapsing.

and

Rex Grossman is a terrible QB.

Unfortunately, I had to stick with Chicago +7 to have any chance at salvaging some pride in this playoff debacle, and the city of big shoulders let me down. On the plus side, their wind chill is about 20 degrees worse than the wind chill here in NJ right now. And maybe I’ll stop getting a bazillion google hits from people trying to find out if Rex Grossman is Jewish. (He’s not.)

At least our little party went well. Amy’s red beans and rice and her king cake bestowed a nice Mardi Gras vibe, and our company was top-notch. We didn’t take any pictures during the festivities, but Amy will soon post some shots of the food preparation and display. I even broke out my framed copy of the Super Bowl Shuffle 12-inch record, just to get some Chicago mojo going.

Oh, well. Time to get ready to fail at my March Madness picks. . .

(P.S.: Many thanks to Ron Rosenbaum for being a good sport and participating in the NFL Playoff Challenge. Pick up his new book, The Shakespeare Wars, and/or his tremendous collection of writing, The Secret Parts of Fortune. You’ll thank me.)

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Monday Morning Montaigne

This week’s Montaigne passage comes from Of the Power of the Imagination. When I saw that title, I assumed it would be an essay on creativity and art.

Nope! Turns out it’s all about erectile dysfunction!

People are right to notice the unruly liberty of this member, obtruding so importunately when we have no use for it, and failing so importunately when we have the most use for it, and struggling for mastery so imperiously with our will, refusing so much pride and obstinacy our solicitations, both mental and manual.

If, however, in the matter of his rebellion being blamed and used as proof to condemn him, he had paid me to please his cause, I should perhaps place our other members, his fellows, under suspicion of having framed this trumped-up charge out of sheer envy of the importance and pleasure of the use of him, and of having armed everyone against him by a conspiracy, malignantly charging him alone with their common fault. For I ask you to think whether there is a single one of the parts of our body that doesn’t often refuse its function to our will and exercise it against our will.

It even has a “friend of mine” anecdote that’s pretty obviously referring to the author himself. Anyway, I enjoyed this one much more than the previous, which was about how philosophizing is how we prepare for death. Especially since the passage above leads into a digression on flatulence.

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Adventures in Gin

We stocked up for tonight’s party at Bottle King yesterday and, as is my wont, I sidled over to the gin section to look over the wares. They had one of my favorite gins in stock: Martin Miller’s. There were two of the six-sided bottles on the shelf, so I grabbed the first one, with its familiar blue foil-wrapped top. The one behind it had a silver top, which struck me as odd. I picked up both bottles and looked them over, trying to figure out if there was any other difference, or if the company had just changed its packaging slightly.

Finally, I noticed that the silver-topped bottle included the words “Westbourne Strength” on the label, as well as in frosted panel down the sides. Checking their resepective alcohol contents, it turned out that this bottle was 10 proof higher than the blue-topped bottle. Naturally, I picked it up for tonight’s G&Ts.

Now, does anyone have any idea why it’s called “Westbourne Strength”? I’m thinking it might be some sorta “Westsiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide!” thing for snooty gins, but that can’t be right. I tried e-mailing Martin Miller’s, but got an undeliverable bounceback. So if you have any clue as to why my new gin has this name, please let me know.

And if you ever stay at the hotel that they run in London, tell me how it is.

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Little, Big

Around 7:30 last night, I clicked around the channel guide and noticed that King Kong was going to be on HD at 8pm. I wasn’t much interested in it as a movie, but figured it’d have some neat visuals. I hit the rest of the movie channels in the guide, and saw that The Station Agent was about to begin.

And, yes, I chose the dwarf over the giant ape. I really enjoyed the movie, and thought all three leads were a blast (especially Bobby Cannavale, who steals every scene he’s in).

Of course, since King Kong is about 8 hours long, I was able to click back to it afterward. I was amazed at how silly the special effects looked: 40-ton brachiosaurs stampeded over a frightened boat crew with all the ‘realism’ of one of those Universal theme-park rides; Naomi Watts gets whiplashed in every direction by The Big Ape while he’s saving her from a T-Rex attack, but suffers nary a scratch; that CGI version of Jack Black showed none of the spark of the real thing, delivering lines lifelessly. I’m sure they did a great job of motion capture to get this simulacrum to look like Jack Black, but I have to chalk it up to a failed experiment in letting the special effects tell the story for you.

(Wait? That actually was Jack Black?)

I actually stuck through to see the climax of the flick (while folding laundry and doing other stuff for a good stretch of it), and that’s what struck me as the big failure with this movie. See, everyone knows how it’s going to end: Kong climbs up the Empire State Building, planes shoot at him, and he falls off and dies. It’s tough to generate dramatic tension when the ending is predetermined (I hear some religions have a problem with this, too).

What you end up with is that aforementioned theme-park ride. Which is cool, if that’s what you’re planning to make, but I’ll bet those Pirates of the Caribbean flicks — actually based on a theme-park ride — are more entertaining than this. It’s not to say the movie wasn’t good to look at — I was interested in seeing Jackson’s version of 1930s Times Square, after all — but I never felt much sense of drama, just thrills.

Give me a pissed-off dwarf any day of the week.

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Gambling is the Devil’s work

That said, I’ve got $50 on the Bears +7. Ron Rosenbaum took the Colts, which is his privilege given that he trounced my ass in our inaugural football challenge.

I forgot to e-mail Thane Rosenbaum about his pick for the big game, but I’m hoping he’ll post a comment about it (hint, hint). Meanwhile, I have to get back to housecleaning, so the place will be in mildly presentable order for our Super Bowl + Mardi Gras party tonight.

Go, Colts! (just win by a figgie, alright?)

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SBXLI Gives You Wiiiiiiings!

Last night, flipping through Sports Illustrated, I saw an ad for “authentic Super Bowl XLI” gear, which included a jersey with “SBXLI” on the back.

For a moment, I thought Superman’s nemesis finally got through the 5th dimension conference championships and made it to the big game. But then I remembered that he’s got no arm.

Anyway, our office had its Super Bowl party this afternoon. Unfortunately, almost half the staff was out traveling or taking personal days, so we ended up with a ton of leftovers. I became the recipient of a massive tray of buffalo wings, which I now have to keep “fresh” till Sunday.

I don’t really have much to say, but I really wanted to use that headline, and the Mxyzptlk joke.

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I’m the agent orange of change agents

This article on BizWeek about the downfall of Wal-Mart ad exec Julie Roehm makes for entertaining reading. And it’s worthwhile to note that advertising people really do talk like this:

Wal-Mart, she says “would rather have had a painkiller [than] taken the vitamin of change.” What has she learned? “The importance of culture. It can’t be underestimated.”

. . .

“We’re probably the edgiest automaker in terms of the things we try. And the times Julie went over the edge have been well documented,” says Jason Vines, [Chrylser’s] chief spokesman. “But we realized you don’t know where the edge is unless you are willing to go over it once in a while.”