Shut The Door. Have A Seat.

The third season finale of Mad Men was very satisfying, and showed once again just how great the show is, and why. (Spoilers, if you haven't seen it yet...)

Most of the focus of the story was back on the business, the agency, the partners, something that many people, including me, felt the show hadn't spent enough time on this season, so it was nice to have some of that sense of balance back. I predicted this outcome back at the beginning of the season, though it was a statement that only the Mrs. heard, and her recall is not always the best, so I have no way to back it up and you'll just have to trust me.

It was good to see Don have to humble himself a bit and admit that he needs people like Pete, Peggy, and even Lane around because they are good at things he isn't. Don has certainly been taken down a few pegs this season, both at home and at work, but it was also good to see him be the one stepping up to convince Bert and Roger that they needed to act to preserve the business they have all worked hard at for a long time.

And Lane--who saw that one coming? Sure, he was acting in his own self-interest as much as anything else, and the others couldn't have pulled off their little stunt without him, but he seems to have come around to a greater appreciation of his American colleagues, and saw that ultimately he would be treated better by them than by his own people. Loved his kiss-off to his boss in London, and to his smarmy assistant.

Pete may be good at client relationships, but he's still a clueless, utterly self-absorbed child (he thought Roger and Don had come to his apartment--on a Friday night--to fire him because he'd gone on an interview at a competing agency), and I imagine he will continue to be all those things. On the flip side, I think Peggy still needs to become a little more self-aware; she needs to realize that being with Duck isn't going to get her anywhere.

It's wonderful to see Joan back in the fold and taking charge of things like she always did. Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to be seeing Sal again, since the tobacco company was the key account they needed to make the move, but I'd like to be wrong about this. If not, I'll miss his wit and style. It appears that Paul and Ken were also left out in the cold, but we may still see them again next season--part of the fun of getting wrapped up in this show is speculating about what will happen in the future.

Some people seem surprised that the Drapers are really going to get divorced, but I believe it was inevitable. If you think about it, how families coped (or didn't) with familial strife and the changes it wrought is as important an element of the sociocultural environment of the 1960s as civil rights, Vietnam, the changing role of media in people's lives, or any of the show's other major themes. Showing the effects of the split on Don, Betty, and the kids is going to be a significant part of the show's storytelling next season and beyond.

I was wrong about my Miss Farrell prediction. Will Don take up with the free-spirited teacher again now that he's going to be a swingin' bachelor in the city? Or will she no longer interest him when there's no illicit allure to their liaisons? And I really don't get what Betty sees in Henry. You have to figure he's not quite the white knight he appears to be.

So much to mull over and discuss. Now comes the hard part: waiting the nine months or so for season four.

This Week in Awesome (11/7/09)

Sorry for the delay in posting this, but we had some unanticipted drama today: the Mrs. took the dog to a greyhound open house for some dog socializing, but one of the other dogs up for adoption bit our dog, and our regular vet was closed, so we had to take the dog to Angell Memorial for treatment. She's still a little groggy and refused food (!), but she should be fine in a few days.

Now, let's look at some stuff on the internet... Unlike last week's ill-chosen parking lot clip, it's okay to go ahead and chuckle at this forklift driver's misfortune. Mmm, schadenfreude. (Gizmodo)

Ford has a solution for people who need a car but can't afford one. (Onion News Network via Jalopnik)

There are a couple of movie mashup clips making the rounds. This first one takes a rather literal approach to some famous lines from the movies (you'll see what I mean)... (VideoGum via The Awl)

...while the second blends in bits from TV shows, and gets an assist from Auto-Tune. (YouTube via Waxy.org via Unlikely Words)

And I leave you with a mashup of a different sort: Kristen Wiig reads the poetry of a famous person. (Best Week Ever via TV Squad)

Anticipation

It's already time for the third season finale of Mad Men, which airs this Sunday night, November 8th. The waits between seasons are tough, but I don't think I'd want them to do more than 13 episodes a season. I think it's better to produce a season of a show (not just Mad Men, but any show, really) that's as good as can be and leaves the audience wanting more. This past spring and summer, FX aired a 22-episode season of Rescue Me, and while I thought it was one of the show's better seasons overall, it felt a little stretched out and overlong by the time the end rolled around.

One of the quirks surrounding the production of Mad Men is the terse, obtuse episode descriptions that deliberately give almost no information about what's going to happen in a given week's episode. These blurbs, which appear in listings and accompany DVR recordings, always pull out the most minuscule and unimportant bits of information, or understate more significant developments.

For example (this is gonna get kinda spoilery), for last season's episode "The Mountain King" the blurb says, "Don meets up with an old friend." Technically that was true, but (a) it was during his business trip in LA when he abandoned his work and literally disappeared for weeks, and (b) that "old friend" was his fake ex-wife. Or from this season's episode "Souvenir": "Pete helps a neighbor." Sure, Pete helped the neighbor's au pair deal with a stained dress that belonged to her employer, but then he also helped himself to the au pair, so I guess by "helps" they meant "drunkenly forces himself upon." See?

The same vagueness and misdirection extends to the little preview clips at the end of each episode. These are always disjointed assemblages of moments from the upcoming show that have nothing to do with each other, but are sequenced in such a way that they suggest Something Big is going to happen, but it's deliberately misleading: what they portend is never what actually ends up happening.

Clearly show creator/executive producer Matt Weiner keeps a very firm hand on exactly what information is revealed about each week's episode, and I suspect that if it was entirely up to him, the blurbs would contain nothing more than the episode titles, and there would be no preview clips at all.

Before seasons two and three began, there was much speculation as to how much time would have passed on the show. (This info usually ends up being revealed a few days before the season premiere by critics who have received review copies of the first episode.)

But even from week to week, we don't always know how much time has passed. Two episodes ago it was Halloween 1963, and then we saw at the beginning of last week's show that Roger Sterling's daughter Margaret's wedding had not yet taken place; early on in the season we'd seen the invitation with the date of November 23rd, so we knew it was somewhere between those two dates, but it wasn't until the scene in Harry's office, with the TV on in the corner, that we knew it was That Day, the one we'd been anticipating the show's treatment of all season.

And it was brilliantly done: Harry turned down the TV so he and Pete could talk seriously, we the viewers saw the bulletin appear on the screen and could just barely make out the voice of Walter Cronkite, but the two of them paid no attention to it until the door flew open and a bunch of people burst into Harry's office to commandeer the TV.

But rather than finding all this annoying, I find it endearing. I appreciate the show's commitment to building some anticipation for the episodes, and I applaud their restraint and secrecy, unlike some other networks (cough *NBC* cough) that are in the habit of giving away far too many details about upcoming shows in their promo ads.

And you know what? It works. I time-shift just about all of my TV watching, but on Sunday nights I try to watch Mad Men live, because I just don't want to wait until the next evening to see what happens. In fact, since the Mrs. goes to sleep rather early, I usually end up watching the episodes again with her on Monday evenings. And I usually go back later and watch the whole season again.

At the end of last week's episode, I was expecting AMC to show the usual batch of incongruous and unrelated snippets from the upcoming finale. Instead we got this clip, which is a rehash of things that have already happened this season. How's that for not giving anything away? And the blurb reads: "Don has an important meeting with Connie [that's Conrad Hilton, a client]. Betty receives some advice. Pete talks to his clients." We know what those last two mean, but we don't know what the outcomes will be. I imagine critics won't be getting any advance copies of this episode.

Good thing the Patriots-Colts prime-time game is next week, but if I had to choose, I'd watch the Mad Men finale and record the game.

Last Week in Pinhead

In last Saturday's TWiA, I linked to a video clip of an SUV suddenly accelerating and climbing up onto another car, kinda sorta crushing it, then driving away.

I realized, too late, that including this clip might be sending the wrong message. I do not think what the BMW driver did in this footage is awesome. I think it was cowardly and despicable. My only excuse is that I was taken in by the fact that you don't see this sort of automotive gymnastics every day, but really, I should have known better.

Yesterday I read that the owner of the blue Hyundai that was the unfortunate victim of the parking problem was given a new car by Hyundai Canada, which is certainly a happier ending.

TV Fatigue

You may recall that back in September I did a fall TV season preview. At the time I talked about a couple of promising new sci-fi shows on ABC, FlashForward and V. FlashForward has been on for about six weeks now, and V premieres tonight. So this is the point I should be telling you how good FlashForward is, and that you should plan to watch V because it's also really good. But I'm not going to do either.

I recorded the first five episodes of FlashForward before I ever watched a minute of it; it was only because the Mrs. was working on a sewing project one night last week that I found myself in front of the TV alone and decided to finally check out the pilot (she'd made it clear she wasn't interested in the show). After watching it, I went back and forth for days about whether or not I wanted to keep going with it, and yesterday I decided to delete the unwatched episodes and cancel the season pass from the TiVo.

Which is not to say it isn't any good. I have heard that some critics, after seeing a few episodes, don't think it's living up to the promise of its pilot, but I really didn't get far enough into it to form an opinion either way. Right now I just don't feel up to the task of keeping up with another show every week, and I figured it was better to cut the cord before getting any deeper into the show's overarching mysteries.

Normally I will give a new show at least four or five episodes before deciding whether or not I consider it a keeper, and that may continue to be the case with future shows, but at this moment I just can't muster the energy to care about FlashForward. If any of you are watching it, I'd love to hear what you think.

The reviews for V that I've read have generally been quite favorable; if anything, it sounds like a better show than FlashForward, but again, I'm not sure that's enough to draw me in. The mitigating factor here is that, if I decide not to watch it and later change my mind, I can catch up online.

The bottom line is that I believe it's only possible to handle regular watching of a certain number of shows at a time. Even someone like me who loves TV has to have a limit, and I find that there is always one show that settles to the bottom of the TiVo queue that we end up having to catch up on later. We are watching two new shows this fall, but both are comedies: Modern Family on ABC and Community on NBC. Sitcoms are much easier to digest, because you can watch one in 20 minutes if you skip the commercials.

Elsewhere in TV land, if you're a fan of the CSI franchise, you probably already know about the three-part crossover coming up next week. If you're like me and only watch the Thursday show (which I like to refer to as "CSI: Original Recipe"), you'll probably want to be home on Monday and Wednesday nights for the Miami and New York editions of the show, or set your recording device, because the case is going to carry across all three shows next week, and Laurence Fishburne's Ray Langston is going to appear in all of them. At least the producers and writers had the decency to structure the story so that it starts on Monday and concludes on Thursday.

That Was Intense

(I had originally intended to post this during October, so it's not quite as on-target as it might have been, but I'm going to forge ahead anyway...)

25 years ago this autumn, I first became acquainted with a movie that came to mean a great deal to me: Repo Man. Directed by Alex Cox, the dark, twisted low-budget punk/sci-fi satire quickly became one of my favorite movies, and it still is.

According to IMDB, Repo Man premiered in May of 1984, and the Boston Globe archives show a review from July (which I unfortunately can't read or link to because they still expect people to pay for access to their archives), but I became aware of it after returning to school in the fall, and I first saw it at the Nickelodeon Cinema near campus (now gone) at the beginning of October.

It's long enough ago now that I don't remember who I saw it with the first time, but I do remember that it made such an impression on me that, for the rest of the month of October, I convinced different groups of people to see it with me every Saturday night. I ultimately saw the movie more than a dozen times, and of course I own the DVD (a gift from a fellow admirer).

What I loved most about it was its attitude, the perfectly encapsulated gleeful nihilism expressed in lines like, "The more you drive, the less intelligent you are" and "Ordinary fuckin' people... I hate 'em." And also, it was sort of about the cars, which made it automatically of interest to me.

A couple of months ago, the car-nut site Jalopnik did an interview with Cox, which was what triggered the idea to write this. The interview is mostly about the cars used in the movie (no surprise on a car site), but it's also revealed that there is a sort-of non-sequel on the way: Repo Chick, according to IMDB, is scheduled for a 2010 release. I can't imagine how it can possibly live up to its antecedent, but I'll go see it anyway. "Let's go get a drink!"

This Week in Awesome (10/31/09)

Happy Halloween, everybody. I'm going to eschew the obvious and not do a Halloween-themed post, because we've all had about enough of it by now, right? I mean, Halloween is fun, but everything is so overdone these days that it's hard not to get sick of it. Just go buy some 50% off candy.

I was originally heading toward a completely different theme this week, but I decided it wasn't really viable in this context. So, onward... (BTW, all this week's links are video clips.)

This motorist had a slight parking problem that was captured by what seems to be a security camera. Funny, unless it happens to you. (YouTube via BoingBoing)

A mashup of sorts, comedically combining crime-fighting and tasteless fashion. I like this, and hope they do more with it. (Funny or Die)

Finally, see what happens when funny lady Amy Sedaris visits funny lady Chelsea Handler's show. It gets a bit, un, clinical, though not in a raunchy way, and Chelsea seems a bit taken aback at first, but really, what would you expect from these two? (YouTube)

Smoke Signals

Another day, another incident with an ignorant smoker. I had intended to write about something much lighter and fun today, and maybe I'll still do that later, but I'm still so angry about this I need to vent.

The bus stop near my house is generally smoke-free, but occasionally someone lights up while waiting. Generally they have the decency to stand where their smoke isn't going to bother anyone. But there's one woman who clearly doesn't care, and she arrived just after me this morning, and her noxious cloud arrived a couple of seconds later.

I stepped over to her and asked her if she would move to where the smoke would not waft toward the rest of us. She just stood there and acted like she hadn't heard me. Bad sign, right there. I raised my voice and said, "What are you going to do, just stand there and ignore me?" She retorted with, "This is a public sidewalk, right?" (That comment suggests to me that she's had this type of encounter before.) "I'm standing away from everyone else."

I tried again. "You're not standing far enough away, and the wind is carrying the smoke right past the rest of us. If you would just go and stand on the other side of the group..."

She turned to the others. There were maybe three or four other people, though none of the people who are usually waiting at the same time were there today. "Is this bothering any of you?" They all just stood there, and no one else said anything. She gave me a look that said fuck you, I win.

(By the way, big thanks to my fellow commuters there. Way to step up and do the right thing.)

Not seeing any other viable option, I moved back from the curb, and the bus arrived a minute or so later. But I'm absolutely livid about this woman's selfishness and disrespect for other people. In my experience, people who smoke are by nature somewhat less concerned with others, otherwise why would they inflict their exhaust on the rest of us? But this was jerkage on a higher level. This was willful disregard for my discomfort.

When I find myself in such situations, I always approach the person calmly, with initial respect, and try to make an appeal to their sense of common decency. If it's an open, outdoor area with no specific prohibition posted, I will only ask a person to move rather than put out the cigarette. But I think this is the first time I've encountered someone who obviously carries sociopathic tendencies and simply refuses to capitulate.

So I'm asking all of you, in complete seriousness, what would you do? Continuing to berate the woman wasn't going to do any good. I considered taking out my newspaper and using it as a fan to send the smoke back toward her, but at that point my behavior would have turned aggressive, making my behavior no better than hers, and might even run the risk of a harassment complaint. (If she won't move when asked to, who knows what she's capable of?)

If a nearby factory was disgorging polluted smoke into the air in my neighborhood, I'm sure people would not tolerate it. Inconsiderate smoking is still a public health issue, just on a smaller scale. If we just walk away and stand somewhere else, every selfish smoker wins, and this allows a minority (currently less than 20% of the US population, I believe) to inflict its toxins, which are known and proven to be harmful, on the majority. I can't just stand there and say nothing.

I'm not asking people to pick fights and put themselves in danger. I'm saying that we, as the majority of nonsmokers, need to stand up for ourselves and make it clear that smokers' behavior is offensive.

I know there are far more important issues we all need to deal with in our lives. I know some of you are going to think I'm just nuts. But I would like to know what you think about this.

Watch Wednesday Thursday (10/29/09)

AAUGH! I forgot again... (Since it's Halloween week, the Charlie Brown exclamation seems appropriate.) Seriously, why doesn't anyone email me and say "Hey, why no watch post?" I guess you'd rather sit back and enjoy watching me screw up. All right, fine...

This time we're back to vintage, and while by no means have I exhausted all my Accutron-Bulova-Caravelle holdings, I thought it was time to venture elsewhere. This is a Zodiac Aerospace Jet from, I believe, the mid-1960s. They didn't date-code them the way Bulova did, but a couple of minutes of searching on the web seems to confirm my assumption.

You probably noticed that the watch has a 24-hour dial, because it has a 24-hour movement, meaning the hour hand goes around the dial only once per day. In the picture above, the watch is showing 8:10 PM. As you might imagine, telling time with this watch takes a little getting used to. I made a reference to this in the Accutron post last month, but other companies made such movements too. They were popular with pilots and military personnel. I tend to gravitate to watches that do things that have nothing to do with my boring life, but that's because those are the watches that tend to be the most interesting looking.

The watch doesn't do anything other than tell time--no date, no chronograph functions, no alarm. I guess Zodiac figured telling the time on it was tricky enough. As far as I can tell, it's completely original too: it has the correct case back with Zodiac markings, and the crown is marked with that little cross-in-circle symbol that's on the dial. I added the strap, my standard black leather with white stitching. This is one time when I'm not unhappy with the strap; in fact, I bought three of these from The Watch Prince.

Zodiac has always been a below-the-radar brand, and they still are. It's very European, and I don't even know who carries them--maybe Tourneau? Consequently a watch like this is not especially valuable compared to other Swiss brands, but it's rare and cool, and that makes it valuable to me.

Tweed Encounter

This morning my bus came pretty late, and sometimes when that happens I'll switch to the Green Line at North Station. Even though I dislike riding it, sometimes it makes more sense to take it, because while there are numerous buses that run through Ruggles that can get me to work, they run less frequently after 9 AM. On Wednesdays we have our weekly breakfast at work, so I don't eat breakfast at home, and I didn't want to get stuck waiting for a bus and end up late and hungry.

So this morning I was on the Green Line, sitting in one of those perpendicular seats near the middle of the car, reading the paper and minding my own business. I noticed a really strong cigarette smoke odor, so I glanced around. There was a guy standing directly in front of me, and clearly he was the source of the smell. He took the opportunity of me looking up to get my attention and start talking to me.

"Is that cap a Donegal tweed?"

I was in fact wearing a Donegal tweed cap, so I knew he had to be talking to me. He told me he was from county Donegal in Ireland, and he certainly sounded the part. I hadn't completely disengaged my brain from the paper, I wasn't entirely awake yet, and I was still a little distracted by the smoke stench, so at first I wasn't sure how to respond and I managed only, "I haven't been there, I got it here."

We proceeded to have a conversation about the Irish imports shop in Cambridge where I'd gotten the hat some years ago (in fact, it was so long ago that the store was actually in Quincy Market at the time) and how to get there. Not knowing whether he was familiar with the area, I told him it was on Mass. Ave. between Harvard and Porter, on the northbound side of the street. He allowed that he would just go to Porter and ask someone there where to find it, which seemed fairly sensible to me.

I considered mentioning the Scottish import shop that's also in Porter Square, upstairs above the bagel place, but decided it was too early in the morning to provoke that sort of angst. By that point we were pulling into Park Street, and he abruptly left the train, without saying goodbye or thanks or anything. Maybe he was just a figment of my imagination. Wait, did I meet a nicotine-addicted leprechaun on the T?

Substitutions

As you all know by now, I love clothes and shopping. I also love getting a good deal, because value is an important part of the shopping experience. Almost anything in a mainstream store will go on sale if you wait long enough, so long ago I learned to wait. There is some risk that if you wait too long, the size you want will be gone, but in this age of national chains and online stores that complement brick-and-mortar locations, it's fairly small.

But what happens when the item you want doesn't go on sale? What if it's not something available from a large retailer, but rather is an esoteric item, or one that was made in limited numbers? What happens if your size is indeed sold out? There is almost always an alternative, if you're willing to look hard enough, though sometimes the alternative finds you.

J. Crew started selling this shirt online back in the spring. I wanted one immediately, without ever having seen it in person at a store or even in a catalog photo. But $100 is a lot for a casual shirt, especially one that's a little too casual to wear to the office. (For that matter it's a lot to pay for a dress shirt, but if you need to wear dress shirts to work every day, I think that expense can be justified if you buy for quality and durability.)

So I waited. And waited, all spring and summer, but no markdown. J. Crew has gotten stingier with the markdowns over the past few years, mainly because it helps their bottom line. The stuff that ends up going on sale is usually not the stuff I want. There are exceptions, of course, like last year's flannel-lined khakis, but often I end up passing up things I want because I won't pay their asking price, and it looked like that was going to be the case with this shirt. (I've also noticed that some of the stores have cut back on their sale sections, but this seems to vary by location.)

About a month ago I went into a Gap to see what new fall things they were offering. I tend to do this about once a month just to keep up, and also to see what's been marked down. I came across a shirt I'd never seen that was pretty much an exact copy of the J. Crew shirt. (I can't link to it because it's not on the Gap site, but this shirt seems to be the same style only in a different color.) All the key details--the white contrast stitching, the two patch pockets with buttons (the left one really ought to have a pencil slot, huh?), even that little extended tab thing at the neck--were the same.

Stores' collections often mirror one another in a given season to an extent, but I don't think I've ever seen such a blatant copy of one store's item in another store while both stores were concurrently still selling the items. The best part was that the Gap shirt was only $45, and I had a $10 reward card (earned from purchases on a Banana Republic card that I mostly use at Gap and Old Navy these days) to spend.

When I bought the shirt, I happened to be in a shopping area that also had a J. Crew, so I wandered over to do a little comparison. The fabrics are about the same weight and the cut is about the same, but the Gap shirt was a slightly lighter shade of gray, which I found I liked better when I saw them side-by-side. The J. Crew shirt has one quirky detail that isn't apparent from the pictures on the web, nor is it mentioned in the description: hidden buttons under the collar, like some early-90's department-store shirt. It's an odd and incongruous detail that adds nothing to the shirt, and I'm glad Gap didn't copy it.

The Gypsy and the Hobo

(Caution: Mad Men spoilers...)

Guess I was wrong: Don seemed completely unprepared when Betty confronted him about the contents of the box. Some people seem surprised that this took place so soon, but after Betty got into the desk in last week's episode, I could not see her biding her time sitting on those unanswered questions for long.

I think last night's scenes between Don and Betty regarding the contents of the box were the finest moments the series has given us yet. I'm always prepared for something to come along and cause me to change that opinion: after season 1 it was the Kodak presentation followed by Don's return to the empty house; during season 2 it was replaced Don's visit to Peggy in the hospital, and later that scene was replaced by the one where Peggy told Pete she'd had his baby. There's no question that Mad Men is one of the all-time masterworks of American television, and it's thrilling to be able to witness it on a weekly basis.

When she surprised Don at home, Betty was clearly ready to let her anger loose, but for once she was able to keep it in check and act like an adult. Don was the one who was childish at first (his wounded, plaintive "it's private!"), but he realized that in order to have any chance to set things right with Betty he had to give her the (almost) complete truth, which he did (except for the part about the dog tags). This is not the Don Draper we're used to; this was a Don we've never seen before, one that Betty had never seen either. Amazing acting by both January Jones and Jon Hamm in these scenes. Hopefully this will earn Jones her belated Emmy nomination, and will bring wins for both of them next year.

And of course, looming over the whole evening was Miss Farrell sitting outside in the car. I need to go back and watch the whole episode again, mostly because I was distracted by that little detail, and kept expecting her knock on the door, which pulled me away from the story. And would Don have been so distracted by the illicit getaway that he'd fail to notice Betty's car, indicating that she had returned unexpectedly? I tripped over that too.

This Week in Awesome (10/24/09)

This week, some sites that can help make your life a little easier, and some other stuff...

Is your office the kind of place where everyone can see what everyone else is doing? If so, this site offers ways you can look busy while not actually doing any real work. (UrbanDaddy)

In a similar vein, the site ThinkGeek offers accessories that can be of assistance, like this convex mirror so you can see bosses and coworkers approaching behind you, and this USB foot switch can make switching between not-work and work super-easy.

There are a number of web sites that do one thing but do it well, such as tell you what color the lights on the Empire State Building are going to be on a given day and why, or whether or not Abe Vigoda is alive. The New York Times City Room blog was kind enough to provide a link to a list of some of them.

Have you ever wanted to have an action figure made in the likeness of yourself, or someone you love? Now you can. There's also a site out there that will make you into a bobblehead, but I couldn't find it again... (Thrillist via Racked)

And finally, another reminder that foreign countries produce much better commercials than we do. This one's a bit NSFW, so put those headphones on... (YouTube via Jalopnik)

Youth of Today

I just got back from doing an errand. It's about 45 degrees out today, somewhat cooler than was forecast, and I was barely warm enough in my coat and cap. On the T there was a young woman, probably a Northeastern student (it's where she got off the train) wearing a snorkel parka and flip-flops. I can only imagine how uncomfortable she must be when walking outside.

I also happened to overhear another student talking to one of his friends (the train was fairly crowded, and like me, they were standing): "Dude, I would love to be in a wheelchair. Getting to sit down all the time would be awesome."

In the Air

The Mrs. has been suffering with a cold this week, and I think I may finally be getting it. Every day I go to work on subway trains with, typically, dozens of coughing and sneezing commuters, and I don't catch anything, but my immune system can't fend off her feeble germs?

The wise and thrifty Giuseppe over at An Affordable Wardrobe, a bit under the weather himself, posted a hot toddy recipe yesterday. If things get worse I'm going to sample it. In the interim, it's time for bed.

Homophonally Yours

Dear Gap,

As someone who works with words for a living and who expends a fair amount of effort in achieving correctness in spelling, grammar, and punctuation, I feel compelled to bring this error to your attention.

This item on your web site is described as a "buffalo yolk puffer jacket." By "buffalo" I assume you are referring to the buffalo plaid that's crawled back from the dead along with all the other 80's fashion cues and is everywhere this season. I can also handle "puffer," although I think it's a stupid term to describe a jacket.

It's "yolk" that has me confused. Even if buffalo could lay eggs, I don't see how they could have anything to do with this piece of outerwear. I mean, they'd spoil, right? Perhaps you meant "yoke," referring to that area across the shoulders where the buffalo plaid has been placed? Oops, how embarrassing.

Or maybe not: if this sort of mistake made it past your production staff and onto your web site, then maybe the majority of your customers are just as poorly educated and won't ever notice. Kids these days just don't know how to spell anymore, but who cares? They can still aspire to get jobs writing product copy or doing web production for the Gap.

Your intrepid blogger,
Some Assembly Required

P.S. If you decide you want to hire someone who can do this sort of thing correctly, get in touch. But I don't work cheap.

The Color Blue

(Caution: Mad Men spoilers...)

So, Betty finally got into the desk drawer. I think we all expected her to eventually; it was just a question of when. Obviously she's upset, and being such an emotional child, she's going to stay that way.

As usual, more questions than answers. For me, Betty's discovery raised more questions about Don than about her: why would Don keep all that sensitive, potentially incriminating stuff in the drawer to begin with, and then leave the keys in his robe pocket? It would be easy, and make much more sense, for him to get a safe deposit box near the office. And he's much too careful about everything.

I can understand him wanting to keep his family photos nearby, but in that case he should have had copies made so there would be no revelatory writing on the back. But the deed, and the divorce papers? (By the way, shouldn't Anna have that deed?) The more I think about it, the more I think Don wanted Betty to find these things. I think part of him enjoys putting her through the mind games. But I could be totally wrong. This show usually doesn't end up going where you think it will, which is one of the reasons I love it so much.

I am going to make one prediction, though: Miss Farrell was in fact the one who called the Drapers' house, even though she denied it, and she is going to wig the fuck out at some point before the season ends. I mean, showing up on Don's commuter train? That's getting dangerously close to Fatal Attraction territory.

Lazy Sunday

Yesterday I woke up (at 9:30) to find it raining hard. I knew we didn't need to go anywhere, so I decided it was going to be one of those days where I just threw on some old comfy clothes and didn't leave the house. I spent the remainder of the morning enjoying organic Mexican coffee and "two-bite cinnamon rolls" from Whole Foods.

The Mrs. had put on the TV (not something I would typically do on a Sunday morning, but she is who she is) and The Remains of the Day happened to be starting. She had never seen it, and I hadn't seen it since it first came out; its sadness was quite appropriate to the gloom of the day. After that we watched a documentary about the heavy metal band Anvil that I'd recorded from VH1 a couple of weeks ago. Slightly opposite, yes.

I took the dog out later in the afternoon, and by then it was raining harder, so she didn't even want to be outside for more than a couple of minutes. I came back inside, assembled a little tray of cheese and crackers, and tuned the TV to the Patriots game, to find it was SNOWING 30 miles away in Foxboro. What month is this? (For some reason I'd thought yesterday's game was being played in Tennessee; guess I'd read the schedule wrong.) That was one of those strange games that happens every once in a while, and even though I did feel a little bad for the Titans, it is kind of fun to watch a blowout, as long as you're on the winning side.

I didn't do anything more productive than a load of laundry, though I did have to trudge back outside around 8 PM to put out the trash. It was still raining hard, so apparently it wasn't cold enough where we are to become snow, which is really just as well. This week we're supposed to have a few days of temperatures around 60, which is what it's supposed to be for this time of year.

This Week in Awesome (10/17/09)

This was deadline week at work, so I wasn't able to goof off online quite as much as usual, but I have a few items. In order, from coolest to strangest...

England is releasing some sweet postage stamps of classic album covers. Why can't we get something like this in the USA? (The Awl)

Now something can come between you and your Calvins, but only if you're the sort of guy who feels like you need some enhancement downstairs. Ick. (NY Observer via Racked)

And finally, a cute little animated video illustrating the challenges faced by the people who do all that driving for Google Street View. (Funny or Die)

Watch Wednesday Thursday (10/15/09)

Hmm, what did I forget to do? Again? I may have to start marking up a calendar or something...

Anyway, it's time for another contemporary watch. This is another Casio analog watch. This one is a large and rugged diving model that I got on eBay (of course) back in the spring, for less than $50. The second button above the main crown is for a light. There are actually two LEDs set into the rim that runs around the outer edge of the dial, one at the 12 position and the other at the 6. It's got to be the brightest illumination I've ever seen on a watch, and makes Timex's Indiglo light look sad and weak. Seriously, I think you could use this watch as a flashlight in an emergency. Unfortunately, it doesn't stay on long enough to get a decent picture, so you'll have to take my word for it.

The strap that looks like a tire did not come on the watch; as usual, I had to change the standard diver's strap because it was ugly, uncomfortable, and made of a cheap resin that I figured would crack and break after just a short amount of wear. These tire-tread straps are made of rubber, which is more comfortable on the wrist, more flexible, and last much longer. I got quite a bit of wear out of this watch over the summer, because rubber straps tend to be easier for me to wear in warm, humid weather.

Thursday Afternoon Distraction

Kinda busy this week, so I thought I'd find something tasty for you to read until I can resurface...

I have not attempted to make (or wear) any sort of Halloween costume since, oh, probably around 1993. You may be one of those people who enjoys doing so, but you don't have to be to enjoy this piece over at The Awl.

And I'm not sure if I've said this before in this space, but just about everything at The Awl is pretty frickin' awesome, so you may want to browse around for a while. I mean, how can you not like a site whose tag line is "be less stupid"?

A Chill in the Air

The cold sneaked up on us kind of quick, huh? It's been about ten degrees below normal during the day, and this morning it was 39 degrees. Whoa. The dog was whining at 5 AM because she had thrashed around and knocked off her blanket, and was cold.

We're in the somewhat awkward position of still having the air conditioners in the windows. Okay, maybe not "awkward" per se, maybe it's more like "lazy." I completely forgot about it over the long weekend until Monday, when the Mrs. was working and I couldn't deal with them by myself.

And as much as I don't want to be turning on the heat this early, I would be inclined to, but there's no point in doing that, yet. See, I'm the sort of person who is compulsive enough to have cut blocks of foam to fit around each of the AC units to create a tight seal. That works great when we want to keep the cold in and the heat out, but not so great when it's the other way around. I'm not going to turn on the heat before October 15th just to have it wasted with cold seeping in around the AC units.

No, we just have to deal with them, so we'll remove and store the units tonight. Regardless of whether or not we turn on the heat, it's too cold to wait until the weekend.

Condiment Deficiency

We took a little day trip up to Portland yesterday. Nice day, cute shops, lots of pretty foliage on the drive up, etc.

At a brewpub where we went for lunch, the menu had a pastrami sandwich that was described as being served with dijon mustard. I asked the waitress if it was possible to get the sandwich with Gulden's mustard instead. She replied, "I don't know what that is, so the answer's probably no." She also volunteered that they had yellow mustard and honey mustard.

Needless to say, I ordered something else. I was willing to overlook the fact that the sandwich had provolone instead of swiss, but the mustard is non-negotiable. Those poor Portlanders have it tough.

This Week in Awesome (10/10/09)

Lots o' good stuff this week:

First, a callback of sorts: if you remember the Traffic Barrel Monster I mentioned a few months back, you may be pleased to know that he has found himself a friend. (WRAL-TV via Jalopnik)

Halloween is just around the corner, and these treats seem especially appropriate. (AdFreak via Kempt)

Here's a quick little video clip for anyone who was a fan of the cheesfest that was Baywatch  I don't count myself in that group, because a person has to have some standards. (Funny or Die via TV Squad)

Here's a site that spotlights the darker side of making and selling your own craft items. I'm honestly not sure if this is a spoof or real, but that's part of its appeal. (Gizmodo via Racked)

And finally, those of you with small children may want to think twice before giving them one of these cookie cutters to use with the clay. (Consumerist)

Happy long weekend to those of you who don't have to work Monday...

Bad Clothes Day

Last week I thought it was fall for sure--I needed a jacket in the mornings, it was cold enough at night to need an extra blanket--but the weather can't make up its mind. Yesterday it was raining but also kind of warm (definitely much too warm for my Barbour coat), and I decided I didn't feel like wearing my blue L.L. Bean rain jacket because I tend to get overheated in it (Gore-Tex can claim whatever it wants, but I've yet to find a waterproof rain garment that does not cause this feeling).

A while back I'd picked up one of these on eBay, and it seemed like the right sort of day to wear it. As it turned out, I got just as overheated wearing it, even though it's very light. The other thing about that, though, is that because it's so light and is only lined down to about the mid-chest, it doesn't really have any body or drape. It's kind of floppy, and yesterday was very windy. I didn't get especially wet, but if you'd seen me walking around the Longwood area you might have thought I was trying to swat away an errant bee or something. I'm contemplating whether it's worth keeping, and wondering if I can convince the Mrs. to sew some fishing weights into the botton hem.

I think this is the sort of problem that women experience with their clothing more often than men. I hate wearing clothing that I have to keep fussing with once I've put it on. To compound the situation, I'd chosen to wear a pair of corduroy jeans (yeah, the ones I bought at Gap last weekend). Those fit fine, but the color, which indoors looks like brown, gray, and olive all at once (Gap calls it "gray pearl") looked green outside in natural light. Like, Mr. Green Jeans green. I wasn't too pleased. It was the sartorial equivalent of a bad hair day.

Oh, and the forecast says it's going to rain again tomorrow. Swell.

Promotional Consideration

A while back I wrote about some mints I like. After that post I got a nice email from a person who does PR for the company. She had found me through a Google alert for "Newman's Own Organics" and wanted to thank me for writing about the company and the product. She offered to send me a sampling of some of the company's other products, which I gratefully accepted.

Since then we've been enjoying items like cookies, chocolate bars, pretzels, dried fruit, and more mints. (There were also some soy crisps, but those are not our thing at all, so I brought them to work and put them in the kitchen.) She even included some dog food (which I had requested for our spoiled girl). I thought it would be a small sample of dry kibble, but it was several full-size cans of "wet" food. Our dog was beside herself with food joy, but we only gave her a small quantity of it on a few random occasions, and mixed it in with her regular dry food, because we didn't want her to get too used to this luxurious delicacy (and thus expect it every day).

I liked everything and would recommend it, though I think the pretzels and the chocolate are particularly good. The chocolate bars come in six flavors: milk, mocha milk, dark, orange dark, espresso dark, and super dark. I didn't find the super dark as exciting as I thought it would be, but it may just be my palate and personal preferences. I liked the plain dark the best; I thought it had an excellent balance between bitterness and sweetness. And if you are the sort who prefers milk chocolate, this one is better than most.

[I had been planning to write about these treats at some point, but in light of the recent news that the government may require bloggers to disclose items they may receive (for review or as gifts, if I understand correctly) I thought I might as well go ahead and do it now. Thank you, Newman's Own Organics, for the extremely generous box o' goodies you sent me.]

Hard to Forget

About a month ago in one of my TWiA posts, I alluded to a story involving my father-in-law Bill and Al Gore. Today seems as good a time as any to spin out the tale...

For a number of years my father-in-law worked as a journalist. He was old school before it was even called old school, and was thoroughly versed in churning out concise, accurate copy on deadline, which also meant using proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation at all times. (And believe me when I tell you that even if he wasn't writing for a living, he was the sort of person who would have followed those rules anyway.)

He spent about eight years at the Nashville Tennessean as a science and environment reporter. During that time he mentored some of the younger reporters, including Al Gore, who worked there for about a year around 1970. He felt it was his responsibility to emphatically impress his beliefs regarding the fundamentals of good writing upon all the young reporters, including Gore.

Many years later Bill ended up working as a consultant to local political candidates in the southern California town where he lived, so he was acquainted with many members of the city government. At some point after Clinton and Gore left office, Gore was scheduled to give a speech in one of the nearby towns, so Bill went with one of the city council members.

Outside the venue, they stood behind a barricade along the path Gore would take to enter the facility. He arrived and climbed out of his limo along with his Secret Service detail. Gore made his way down the walkway, waving at various people. He spotted Bill, shouted out Bill's name, and veered off his path toward him, confusing the Secret Service agents.

He shook Bill's hand and Bill said, "I wasn't sure you would remember me." Gore replied, "Remember you? I used to have nightmares about you."

Jean Therapy Revisited

About a month or so ago, the Gap brought out its new line of jeans for men and women. I had read about them several months before they reached stores, and I was somewhat curious, as I have been having a minor moment of enlightenment about my jeans. I finally realized that I've been buying jeans that are cut much too full for me and don't look good. While I avoid slim-fit pants, there is certainly a lot of space (no pun intended) between these two extremes.

So Friday night we needed to go to the mall to take care of a couple of errands, and I decided it was time to check out the Gap jeans. For me "check out" means "try on." I generally hate trying on clothes in a store, and tend to buy things and bring them home to try on, which means I sometimes have to go back to the store to exchange or return items. I guess I just don't like fitting rooms, but in this case I figured it was easier to do the trying on at the store.

There are seven fits for men, ranging from skinny to loose. To me this seems like too many, but I understand that Gap is trying to appeal to the broadest possible range of customers. I was able to eliminate anything that was too slim, low-waisted, or boot-cut. Knowing that I was also trying to avoid anything too loose meant being able to eliminate styles from the other end of the range as well. Eventually I was able to settle on the appropriately named Standard, which is in the comfortable middle of the range. Not tight, but not a lot of excess fabric either.

I was very impressed with the fit and construction of the jeans. The fabric is nicely soft and broken in, unlike a lot of other jeans. They sit nicely just below the waist. The leg openings are neither too wide nor too narrow. I was ready to buy a pair, but then I ran into the fail: every single style of Standard jeans has some kind of wash or treatment or finish that is distressed, discolored, or whiskered. This is absolutely a deal-breaker for me. If I'm going to spend $55 on a pair of jeans (not an unreasonable amount of money, but not throwaway either), I expect to be able to wear them to work, which means the color needs to be consistent. They aren't of much use to me if I can only wear them on weekends.

I did find corduroy jeans in a slightly different fit that were not faded or distressed in any way, so I bought a pair of those. (J. Crew has taken to sanding the thighs of theirs so they appear worn, and theirs cost $20 more than Gap's.) Cord jeans have been a staple of my wardrobe since I was in high school; I went to a parochial school with a dress code, and denim jeans were not permitted, but cords were, so I had them in many different colors. Now I stick to tan, brown, gray, and olive-ish green, but they still are just as comfortable and versatile.

I'm hoping Gap gets a clue and brings out additional denim styles that are not distressed. In the meantime, I'm going to have to look elsewhere.

This Week in Awesome (10/3/09)

For this week we have a small but tasty selection...

You knew this one was coming: Sesame Street spoofs Mad Men. (YouTube via Basket of Kisses)

Just discovered this site yesterday, courtesy of Consumerist: Your Logo Makes Me Barf.

This site is one I have been visiting regularly for a while, and I thought it was time to share with the group. I guess you'd call it an image blog, but it really ends up being much more than that. The name alone makes it worth checking out. (Note: there are a few images that may be a little NSFW.)

The Peggy Olson Freakout

(We've been catching up on some of the TV we missed while away, hence the delayed sentiment of this...)

Oh, Peggy. Peggy, Peggy, Peggy. What were you thinking? I mean, how could you? Ewwwww. Just. Eww.

Watch Wednesday (9/30/09)

Welcome back to another edition of Watch Wednesday (now actually appearing on Wednesday again, but subject to possible future schedule adjustment due to middle-aged brain malfunction). This time around the watch is an Accutron Deep Sea from 1970. The Accutron completes my personal trifecta of vintage watch obsession, as it was and is a sibling brand to the Bulova and Caravelle watches previously featured.

Accutron was started at the beginning of the 1960s as a showcase for Bulova's technological achievements in watchmaking (which, of course, could be sold at higher prices than even the fanciest Bulova models). The Accutron 214 movement was the world's first battery-powered watch, but quartz watches would not come to market for another decade or more. The battery supplied power to a movement that ran off the vibration of a tiny tuning fork; if you hold one of these Accutrons up to your ear, you can hear it humming.

Accutron produced mamy desirable (and now valuable) models, including the Astronaut, which had a 24-hour movement (the hour hand goes around the dial only once per day instead of the more typical twice), and my personal favorite, the Spaceview, which exposed the electronic movement to view by eliminating the dial altogether. I had a Spaceview a long time ago, pretty early in my collecting, but sold it some years back when times were tight. I've been looking for another one for a while, but they have gotten consdierably more expensive in the intervening years, and if I'm going to make that kind of investment again, I want to find exactly the right one.

The Deep Sea was marketed as a diver's watch, which is fairly obvious given its rotating countdown bezel and the depth rating of "666 feet" marked on the dial. Other cool features of this model: the Accutron tuning fork symbol at the end of the second hand, the red numerals on the date wheel, the magnified date window on the inner side of the crystal so that it doesn't protrude on the outside, and the crown tucked in unobtrusively at the four o'clock position.

I love this watch, but it has always run fast. It can gain a couple of minutes over the course of a work day, which isn't terrible, but it should run more accurately than that. However, when I took it out of the drawer to take the picture, it was about 30 minutes slow, so I have no idea what's going on. I may have to think about having it serviced.

New York Thoughts

A few observations and thoughts from my most recent visit to New York:

Everyone should visit the observatory at the the Empire State Building. It's a little corny, but it's one of those things that you really ought to do. I had been twice, as a kid of maybe ten or eleven, and once during college, on the way back from spending spring break with a friend at his grandparents' place on the Jersey shore. If you have been, you should go again, at night. The Mrs. had never been, so we went on Friday night. It was beautifully clear and just a bit windy a thousand feet above Fifth Avenue. The stars, the lights, the night air, it's all truly an amazing experience. We even saw a group of Tibetan monks in line.

I also recommend walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. You can get the same view by riding the subway line that passes over one of the bridges, but it's gone in a couple of minutes. You can walk the bridge at your chosen pace and really soak in the magnitude and grandeur of the city.

All the fashionable people in Manhattan were wearing scarves looped and draped loosely around the neck. Mostly women, but a noticeable number of men too, and no one seemed to have any regard for the temperature. I mean, it was around 70 degrees the whole time we were there, and the parade of scarf-wearing folks never let up.

It's almost impossible to walk down the sidewalk on Broadway in Soho on Saturday afternoon. On Sundays, most of the stores start opening at 11, but hardly anyone shows up until at least an hour later.

Greenwich Village, particularly west of Seventh Avenue, is an excellent place to park the car for a few days. There are no parking restrictions other than street cleaning, which means you can park on Friday afternoon and not need to move it again until Tuesday morning.

And you won't need the car. Between subways, buses, cabs, and just walking, you can get anywhere you need to be. Just being there encourages walking, which is great.

Go to ground zero. Just go down there. Don't go as part of a big tacky group of bus-riding tourists from out in the flatland, though you'll have to work your way around plenty of them. Go and stand and look at the actual site, sixteen-plus acres, and contemplate what happened there. Go over to St. Paul's church on Church Street, on the east side of the site, and look around at the commemorative displays they've set up inside, and think about how incredible it is that one of the oldest buildings on the island, that close, was not damaged. Then go around the corner to the firehouse on Liberty Street, on the south side of the site, and look at the bronze memorial that runs the length of the building. I've done this several times, and I'll keep doing it long after the new buildings are finally finished.

Breakfast at Junior's on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. We go every single visit, without fail. Get the french toast.

Three

We're back, and we had a wonderful time. And, as it happens, today is my third blogoversary. Each time I hit this milestone and look back, there is so much more to reflect on. I keep coming up with new ideas that take the blog in new directions, and I appreciate that dozens of you (yes, I track the stats, no point in being modest) stop by on a regular or semi-regular basis to read my often self-indulgent windage.

Having an audience is terrific, though it brings with it a sense of responsibility. But the great part is that, the more I do this, the more it energizes and motivates me to keep producing stuff that's entertaining and worthy of an audience. So thanks to everyone who reads, everyone who's commented. I could and would keep going even if you weren't visiting, but it's much more satisfying because you are.

This Week in Awesome (9/26/09)

Hi there. I'm away for a few days and probably not in the general vicinity of a computer, but you're still reading this fresh installment of TWiA through the magic of post-dated posting. Isn't technology cool?

There's a site called Old Jews Telling Jokes. Really. I wish it had been around a couple of years ago; we could have tried to get my father-in-law on it, except they probably would have run out of videotape before he'd finished telling the joke. (The Awl)

Three words: Lego. Iggy. Pop. (Telegraph UK via Unlikely Words)

In the vein of last week's "MA Men" but not quite as over the top, there's a new McDonald's commercial that's geared specifically to the sensibilities of New Englanders. (YouTube)

Programming Notes

The Mrs. and I are heading to New York for a few days to celebrate our 11th anniversary. I considered borrowing a TV-network approach and running a repeat of an earlier TWiA this weekend, but concluded that would be pretty low-class and tacky, and I was raised better than that.

So I've prepared an episode that will appear on Saturday (the clever folks at Blogger have given me the ability to write posts and schedule them to go live on a future day and time of my choosing). After that I don't expect to post again until Tuesday.

And best wishes to all our friends who are also celebrating wedding anniversaries this weekend (it's a popular time of year to get married), including APB and The Prof, W&C, and our Brooklyn friends whom we'll be seeing Sunday (what was that line Peggy Olson said early on in the first season of Mad Men? "I’m from Bay Ridge; we have manners." Completely irrelevant to this, but they live in Bay Ridge so my mind just jumped there...)

File Under "Fanatically Obsessive"

Last week on the season premiere of Fringe, there was a nice little shout-out to The X-Files, its obvious television antecedent. Actually, there were two. The first was in the first scene, when the guy in the apartment was watching the show (the image of Scully and Mulder was briefly shown on his TV set), and then later, during Agent Broyles's testimony before the Senate committee, one senator made a reference to more than 50 years of budgetary indulgences of "the old X designation" and Fringe Division.

While reading a post on TV Squad about these references, I followed a link posted by a commenter that's pretty seriously brain-bending. If you remember the 1980s TV series St. Elsewhere, then you'll probably recall that in the final scene of the final episode, it was strongly implied that everything that had happened in the six seasons of the show's run had been a figment of an autistic boy's imagination.

What I didn't realize is that, based on character connections, crossovers, references and other links between St. Elsewhere and other TV series, and further connections between those shows and others, there is a school of thought that contends that all shows within this web of connections would also have to be products of this boy's imagination.

This theory is referred to as the "Tommy Westphall Universe" (referring to the boy with the vivid imagination), and it encompasses nearly 300 TV shows going back as far as I Love Lucy and includes The X-Files, and thus Fringe as well, although this is debatable: the mythology of Fringe is predicated on the existence of a parallel universe, or possibly many of them, so I'm not sure that would count under the rules of the theory (yes, there are rules), or whether or not it explains how Fringe can link itself to the X-Files and have someone be watching The X-Files within the same episode. Ouch.

If you find this stuff interesting and feel like having your mind twisted, beat on, drop-kicked across the room, and otherwise blown for a couple of hours, have a look at it here.

Regardless of whether or not a sizable chunk of our collective television history was entirely the product of the imagination of someone who himself was a character on a TV show (just forming that phrase made my brain hurt), the simple fact that there are connections linking so many shows is pretty amazing on its own.

Bad Vibes

There's been some weirdness in the air. Yesterday morning as I was getting off the bus, the doors slammed shut in front of me. I think the driver wasn't paying attention, because as I reached the front of the bus I looked toward her, meaning to say thanks, but she was looking the other way out her side window, perhaps checking her mirror in preparing to pull back out into the road. Fortunately no damage done (the doors caught the tip of my shoe and reopened), but it was close. Kind of jarring when you're not fully awake yet. Some days just getting to work is work.

Later on, while on my way home, I got bitched out by a panhandler because I ignored her. That's a new one, a panhandler with issues. To be honest, I've been ignoring panhandlers for almost 30 years, mainly because I don't like the idea that I may be supporting someone's drug, liquor, or cigarette habit in the guise of a request for money for food (and in instances when I have had surplus food on me and offered it to someone, I've been rebuffed and scowled at), but also because I think it's unfair to give money to one person and not to the others who are also out there asking, so it's just easier not to make eye contact or engage. Obviously there's no easy answer, but I guess the woman had a valid point.

This morning's commute sucked, but not for the usual reasons. Traffic on route 28 (the Fellsway) was backed up as far as my street, which fortunately is a very unusual occurrence. It has happened a couple of times before, but I haven't seen cars backed up so far. There were some problems on 93 south this morning, and a lot of people take 28 south to get over to Storrow Drive or get onto 93 by Mystic Avenue. When things get messy, the backups can extend all the way through the ridiculous light cycle at Wellington Circle, but where I board the bus is about a mile and a half from 93, so things had to be really screwed today. Instead of standing around watching traffic crawl by, I opted to walk up the road ten minutes to an intersection where two other lines meet my usual one, and caught a different bus there.

When I finally made it to Wellington and onto an Orange Line train (20 minutes later than usual), there was no AC in the car, and of course the train was fully packed, and just for good measure we had to stop in the tunnel outside North Station because the trains up ahead of us were not yet moving. Yeah, good times. But really, it's been a long time since I've had a rough morning commute, so I have no real cause to complain. But we're going away this weekend, and I hope the vibes or karma or whatever has sorted itself out by then.

Analog

The older I get, the more I look backward with regard to music. I suppose this is natural; the music of our formative years tends to be deeply rooted in the psyche. I still like discovering new music, but I find less that appeals to me these days.

I have over 200 vinyl LPs in the basement, and I've started going through them with the intent of selling some of them on eBay. But I wasn't one of those people who bought duplicates of everything on compact disc when CDs replaced vinyl. I would have loved to do that, but I was making so little money at the time that it was impossible. As time went by I rebought some albums on CD, and I still do once in a while; I recently found a remastered edition of Graham Parker's 1979 new wave classic Squeezing Out Sparks.

Now it's possible to buy many of my old albums as mp3 downloads, but I haven't quite been able to give myself over completely to that notion. I have bought mp3s, of course, but only scattered singles, like the '70s classic "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult, or The Pogues' bittersweet Christmas song "Fairytale of New York."

I received an iTunes gift card for my birthday, and spent about two hours looking around, trying to decide what to use it for. I found a best-of compilation by Bauhaus, a band I'd always liked but never got into too deeply (though among my vinyl there is a 12" single of "Bela Lugosi's Dead"). It seemed like a good choice until I noticed the dreaded iTunes words "partial album" in the listing. I went looking for the CD on Amazon and found that three of the tracks are not part of the iTunes version, for whatever reason.

Eventually I settled on a two-volume, 32-track greatest-hits collection by Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble. Listening to it reminded me of Jimi Hendrix, not just because of SRV's version of "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" but because he's often compared to Hendrix. I've always loved Hendrix's music, but I've never owned any of it, so I rolled over to half.com and picked up the three original Jimi Hendrix Experience releases for about $5 each. One of the sellers had a copy of the Bauhaus disc, so I got that too.

I don't get why music labels don't make older albums available at lower prices; five or six bucks seems reasonable for something that's been out for twenty years or more. I know I would buy a lot more CDs at those prices, and since the music industry is supposedly struggling, it might boost sales.

All this nostalgia must have caused some sort of brain fever, because I found myself looking through the "vintage electronics" section of eBay in search of an Onkyo analog receiver like the one I had in college (scroll down a bit to the pic with the Yale pennant). I found and passed on a couple of them before succumbing and buying one. I don't really know what I'm going to do with it. I don't have a place to put it, and I don't have any speakers I could connect to it, and looking for vintage speakers is a sure route to madness. But there's some space on top of the dog's crate, and I could haul my old turntable up from the basement...

This Week in Awesome (9/19/09)

After a busy week at work, I slept for almost ten hours today (minus a brief dog-walking interruption), and it felt great. Wish I could do that every day...

This has been around since the beginning of the week, but it's too good not to mention: a Mad Men spoof with a heavy Boston accent. Warning: extremely NSFW! (Funny or Die via Universal Hub)

I don't know if these awkward facebook moments are real or not, but they are funny. (CollogeHumor via Unlikely Words)

And I leave you with a roundup of some very inappropriate toys. (Huffington Post via Consumerist)

Fall TV Thoughts

The fall TV season is upon us. You are of course entitled to not care, but if you're reading this, then you know that I do care, at least to some extent. As with every new season, there are some promising new shows; the trick is to figure out which ones are worth your time. I usually try to do this before they make their debuts, but that's not always possible. At least now, with DVD box sets and Hulu and Netflix streaming, it's possible to get on board a show you didn't start watching from its premiere.

In 2004 I was determined not to get caught up in Lost because I wasn't sure I wanted to make the commitment to a serialized show that would require rigorous weekly attention. But there was so much buzz leading up to the premiere that at the last minute I decided to go ahead and record it (I was still using a VCR back then, how quaint), and ended up recording three or four episodes before getting around to watching them, at which point I was, of course, completely hooked.

Ours is a TV-loving household, but we are selective. The Mrs. goes to bed much earlier these days, because she has to get up earlier, so the evening's TV viewing typically ends by 9:30 or 10 PM, which means we are usually catching up on shows over the weekend. Also, I have learned to muster the strength to stop watching a show when it declines or jumps the shark, which helps cut down on the overall time commitment. And with a TiVo we save some time by skipping over commercials.

(For a handy grid showing all the networks' fall schedules, see this TV Guide Magazine page.)

I'm going to run through the networks one by one, starting with ABC. They have a block of four new comedies on Wednesdays, all featuring familiar faces like Kelsey Grammer, Patricia Heaton, Ed O'Neill, and Courteney Cox. So far the only one of these that has any significant buzz is the one with O'Neill, Modern Family, which is presented as an Office-style mockumentary about three families. I'm not a particularly big fan of O'Neill, but I'll be checking this one out because it looks pretty funny. The rest of them just look like the same old sitcom thing.

ABC also has four new dramas: one, following those Wednesday comedies, is called Eastwick and is based on the book and movie about the witches, which means it has no appeal to me whatsoever and I can skip it. There's a procedural on Tuesdays called The Forgotten that looks an awful lot like Cold Case, which I've never watched, so I don't need to watch this. As of now, there is not one single show on Tuesdays that we already watch or plan to, so it looks like it will be a good night to catch up on Sunday's and Monday's shows.

On Tuesdays starting in November, ABC will launch a remake of the 80s sci-fi miniseries V (which I never watched, as it was on during the 1980s, a period of time when, amazingly, I watched almost no TV). It stars Lost's Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet), but that alone isn't enough to get me to watch. I'm still undecided on this one.

The one that has caught my interest is another sci-fi show, FlashForward, which will be on Thursdays at 8. Everyone in the world blacks out for two minutes, and during that time has visions of themselves six months in the future. ABC is hoping this turns into their next Lost, and it even has two of that show's actors, Dominic Monaghan (Charile) and Sonya Walger (Penny), along with Joseph Fiennes, John Cho, and others. I'll probably end up getting hooked on this one too.

CBS has one new comedy and three new dramas, but not much here is looking interesting. The comedy, Accidentally On Purpose, stars Jenna Elfman as a cougarish woman who hooks up with a much younger dude, gets pregnant by him, and decides to keep the baby. Hilarity ensues? The few brief bits I've seen have been very typical, cliched, and not funny. Also, I don't care much for Ms. Elfman as an actor; she always comes across as the same character to me regardless of what she's in.

I don't care about NCIS, so I don't need to care about its LA-set spinoff. The casting of Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J tells me that CBS is going after the female audience for this one anyway. Three Rivers is a medical drama about a transplant team at a Pittsburgh (hence the title) hospital that also tells the stories of the organ donors and recipients. My mom is psyched about this one, which tells you all you need to know. The Good Wife brings Julianna Margulies back to TV as the wife of a disgraced and imprisoned politician (Chris Noth) who must return to work as an attorney after 13 years. I dig her, but I think I'll skip this one. Thanks, CBS, for making this easier for me.

I talked about NBC's new shows back in the spring when they were announced. Since then I've had a change of heart about the comedy Community, which premiered last night (most new and returning shows premiere starting the week of the 21st). I still don't care for Chevy Chase and I never have, but the rest of the cast and the writing will more than offset his presence. The pilot had snappy dialogue and knowing nods to pop culture touchstones like The Breakfast Club, and Soup host Joel McHale is a much better actor than I expected him to be. This one looks like it will fit in nicely with NBC's other Thursday comedies.

I'm fighting the lure of Trauma, which looks to be an action-filled hour about EMTs and first-response rescue personnel in San Francisco. This sounds strangely familiar... anyone remember the 1970s series Emergency! (from Jack Webb's production company)? Hmm, what network was that on? I try to avoid shows like this, because l end up feeling like I'm wasting my time, but it's the kind of thing I might check out for the sheer popcorn, things-going-boom stupidity of it after the Mrs. goes to sleep, knowing I don't have to make any kind of week-to-week commitment to it.

There's also a show about nurses called Mercy that's going to be on Wednesdays. Consider yourselves warned.

The Jay Leno Show doesn't interest me, but I am interested in what kind of ratings it gets, considering it means five fewer hours per week of original scripted programming. On the other hand, it's five hours per week of prime-time TV I don't need to watch, schedule, or think about. Thanks (sort of), Jay, for making this easier for me.

FOX only programs from 8 to 10 PM, which means that, like NBC, there isn't as much programming to be concerned with. Glee (about a high school, with singing) may turn out to be a great show, and it's from the creator of Nip/Tuck, but I am definitely not the target audience for it. FOX also has two new comedies: The Cleveland Show is a spinoff of Family Guy and it fits right into the Sunday animation block, so I'll probably watch it by default, but I'll only keep watching if it's funny. Brothers is about a retired pro football player who moves back in with his family, and it looks like one of the worst shows of the decade.

One other note about FOX: why did they have to move Fringe from Tuesdays to Thursdays? Now it's opposite CSI (which I refer to as "CSI: Original Recipe" and is the only one I watch) on CBS and The Office and 30 Rock on NBC. It just complicates matters, and I'll probably end up watching Fringe online. Thanks, FOX, for making things harder for me.

Oh, speaking of "not the target audience," I almost forgot the CW: since they canceled the doing-Satan's-bidding dramedy Reaper, I don't need to care about them at all. It's one thing to not have any new shows I'm interested in, but to not have any shows I'm interested in at all? That's special. Thanks, CW, for making this even easier for me than CBS did.

Watch Wednesday Thursday!

Whoops, didn't take me long to screw that up, huh? This is my deadline week at work, and after I got home yesterday I completely forgot about my biweekly watch post. Anyway...

This is a Casio analog chronograph I got about a year and a half ago (on eBay, of course). I didn't realize Casio made analog watches until one time when I saw one that had hands but also displayed all this other digital stuff on the face when you wanted it to. I thought about getting that watch for a while, then I saw this one and liked it much better. Turns out that Casio makes a whole line of watches with analog movements that are accurate, dependable, and reasonably priced. I've gotten two others since.

It also comes in a version with a black dial, but I have so many other watches with black dials that I thought it might be nice to have some variety.

This watch is very large; the face is around 45 millimeters in diameter, which is far larger than someone with wrists as skinny as mine should be wearing, but somehow it looks all right on my wrist when I wear it.

This was another instance of a watch that came with a horrible crappy band, a resin diver thing with ripples. Because the watch is so large, the band is kind of wide, so it took me a little while to find something suitable for it. I ended up getting this nylon thing with a leather backing, but I'm not that thrilled with it, so I'll probably be looking for something to replace it.

The Fog

This season's episodes of Mad Men seem to be getting under my skin a bit more than the previous ones. I think it's because of the ways the characters are reacting to things happening in the world of 1963. I woke up this morning thinking about last night's episode.

(Potential spoilers ahead...)

Last night we had an extended exchange between Don and another expectant father in the hospital waiting room. At first I thought nothing much was going on there, but they kept cutting between them and Betty's troubled labor and Demerol-induced hallucinations, leading me to think that the contrast between the trauma of giving birth and the ennui of waiting for the news was meant as another reminder of how the experiences of men and women are so starkly different in our society, even today.

It looked to me like we might be being set up for something like a stillbirth, but then I thought that probably would be much too obvious a move for a show that's all about subtlety and subtext, what's left unsaid, what's beneath the surface. The baby finally arrived, but even though Betty said she wanted "everything to be perfect" when the baby came, I don't think that's really going to be the case.

(And baby Eugene was born about two months before I was...)

Then in the hallway, the other new dad wouldn't look Don in the eye, like he was embarrassed for having shared his true feelings with another guy. And of course, his earlier words about being a better man remind us again that Don keeps struggling with the same issue, and losing.

And hey: Francine! Where have you been? We missed you. Well, I did. After Anne Dudek's character died on House last year, I thought we'd see more of her in season two of Mad Men, but the opposite happened; I think she was in maybe two episodes last year (goes and checks IMDB... okay, three). Maybe now that the Drapers' housekeeper has left, Francine will come around more often to give Betty a helping hand.

But I thought the most interesting part of this week's episode was (again) Peggy's struggle with her own ambitions and desires. Sneaky old "Duck" Phillips showed up to try to lure Peggy away from Sterling Cooper, which sent Peggy to Don to try (unsuccessfully, for now at least) to get a raise. It seemed like a no-brainer for Peggy to accept Duck's offer, but I have a feeling that she feels a certain loyalty to Don because it was he who first promoted her to junior copywriter, and perhaps she feels that her loyalty and patience will eventually be rewarded. I hope for her sake that does in fact happen. I also think she doesn't trust Duck, which is probably prudent.

This Week in Awesome (9/12/09)

Apologies for the recent, unintended interruption in service (the last post was Wednesday morning). I started working on something yesterday afternoon, but I couldn't find the right way into it, and then the rest of my workday intervened, so it will have to wait a bit.

We're off to RI today, for two main reasons: my (parochial) high school is having a 50th anniversary mass tomorrow morning, and a number of my former teachers are returning for the event, so I thought it might be interesting to attend; and my dad's birthday was this week (he, my brother, and I are all Virgos) so we're going to visit and see if we can talk him into being taken to lunch or something like that (more difficult than you'd think).

So, onward... this Brooklyn store has a slightly unorthodox return policy. I wonder how many customers follow it? (Gizmodo)

I happened across an eBay listing with a strange comment in its description that deftly straddles the awesome/awful axis. Hmm, no bids yet--what a surprise. Please, readers, I implore you: if each of you contributes, say, five cents, we can hopefully raise the $3 needed to get this poor, forlorn idiot woman the fucking lint roller help she so desperately needs. And man, that is one fat dog.

Chelsea Lately is a humor/talk show on the E! channel hosted by comedian Chelsea Handler, sort of a pop culture analogue to The Daily Show (in fact, both shows are on at the same time, which is slightly inconvenient). In the first part of this clip, a reality dating show visits the set of CL (it's not clear why). In the second, much funnier part, Chelsea shows us some of the workplace perks her staff receive. (Hulu via TV Squad)

And finally, this is one of the more bizarre incidents I've seen in quite a while, which is precisely what makes it so awesome. The power of the human spirit is... oh never mind. I don't want to give it away, just watch it. (Chronicle-Telegram, somewhere in Ohio, via Consumerist)

Dodged a Bullet

Coming home from work last night I was waiting for the bus at Wellington. There was a woman standing next to me, not more than a couple of feet away, with a sheaf of printouts she was studying. I was reading the paper, and so not really paying attention to her or others.

Suddenly she shrieked, and the papers went flying in all directions. I looked over to see her looking up in the air, then she looked back down and said, to everyone, "That seagull just shit on me!" (There were a couple of them overhead, looping around aimlessly and squawking. They must have gotten lost looking for Revere Beach.) Sure enough, she had a substantial tannish blob on her right sleeve. She removed her sweater and tied it around her waist.

She said the guck had hit her pretty hard, and at first she thought she might have been shot. I thought about how close I'd come to being the victim.

Under Construction

Hi, we're back. We had a nice, relaxing weekend, plus the weather up here in the Northeast has been fantastic since the last heat 'n' humidity wave left over a week ago. People apparently are still pissing and moaning about what a lousy summer it was, but hey, guess what? It's still summer. Yeah, check your calendar. And September tends to be one of the nicest months around here (assuming, of course, there aren't any hurricanes).

Only one thing marred the weekend: the people next door are having their back porch rebuilt, and whoever they've hired must be in a really big hurry to get the job finished, or something, because they were there working all weekend. Yesterday was the only morning I was in fact awakened by construction noise (to wit, a table saw), and that happened around 8:30 AM, which is not a horrible hour.

Saturday I slept in until around 9:30, and Sunday until 10. The work started right around 10 on both those days, so I do think they were trying to show us some consideration. It just wasn't particularly conducive to sitting out on our own back porch enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee.

This Week in Awesome (9/5/09)

Hello, and welcome to this Labor Day weekend edition of TWiA.

Let's begin with a funny little spoof video for a device no one really needs. Careful with that thing... (CollegeHumor via Gizmodo)

Some wag (from the UK, not surprisingly) with time on his hands decided to send invoices to companies he patronizes, billing them for the time he has lost standing in lines and such. That's kind of cute in a "what an asshole" sort of way, but he actually got a response from one company that's even more amusing. (Consumerist via #sixweeks)

Some clever folks managed to surreptitiously film a comedic soap opera inside an IKEA without getting caught. Nice. I hope they're able to do more of these. (Buzzfeed via Racked)

Now for my favorite thing this week: a candidate for Cambridge School Committee sent out a flyer that was riddled with mistakes. This is quite possibly one of the most awesome things I've ever seen on the web, and also vindicates my decades of grammar, spelling, and punctuation snobbery.

My father-in-law, who was a journalist with exacting writing standards (I'll have to tell you the story about Al Gore some time), used to write campaign pieces like this for a living, and I know he would have been colossally amused by this story, while at the same time horrified that someone else had done such a poor job at it. Thank you, Rachel Rubin. Thank. You. (Wicked Local Cambridge via Universal Hub)

And finally, it you haven't already seen it, People of Walmart. It's awesome and awful at the same time.

Ciao, amici...

Labors

Everyone is hustling to get out of town for the long weekend. My coworkers have been slipping out of the office since the middle of yesterday afternoon. One sent an email this morning saying she would be leaving around 3 today to "attempt to beat some Cape traffic." Good luck with that. I mean, no offense, but that's pretty much what everyone else is doing, right around the same time they're doing it, so you're not really going to be beating anything, except perhaps your forehead against the steering wheel.

To me, the three-day weekends that bracket the summer season are absolutely the worst time to go away to the Cape, or Maine, or any similar New England vacation destination. I haven't been to the Cape in a few years, but for three years in a row we went for a weekend in October, and it was much more enjoyable because the weather is still quite nice, but there aren't nearly as many people around. You get better hotel rooms at better rates, you get seated in restaurants faster, you don't have to sit in traffic for three hours.

So we're staying around this weekend. We don't have any definite plans yet, but as I put it in an email to one friend, "'Go somewhere and eat something there' is about as far as I've gotten. I know it lacks detail, but I'm liking the simplicity of its structure." I've got some bits for TWiA, so there will be a post tomorrow, but after that probably not again until Tuesday. Enjoy your (hopefully long) weekend.

Watch Wednesday (9/2/09)

I've decided a couple of things about this feature: first, every other Wednesday will be Watch Wednesday. It has kind of shaken out that way on its own, and I think it works better when spaced out as such--I don't want to overdo it. Also, I'm going to attempt to alternate between older watches and contemporary ones, so that means this edition's watch is vintage.

This watch is a Caravelle, which was a low-priced sibling line that Bulova introduced at the beginning of the 1960s to better compete with Timex, which was making serious inroads in the market with its low-priced models. Based on some period advertisements I've seen, a Timex or Caravelle sold for around $10 to $15, which at the time wasn't cheap, but was a lot less than typical Bulova prices of the period. Bulova hoped that the halo effect of its prestigious status in the marketplace would rub off on Caravelle, making it more appealing to consumers than Timex's somewhat more hunble image.

This watch is from 1969, and by then there was some cross-pollination going on: the Caravelle line had expanded to include self-winding models to keep up with Timex, and since Bulova was already making some excellent automatic movements, they started showing up in certain higher-end Caravelle models like this one.

Compared to some other Bulova products, this is a pretty rare model; I've seen maybe half a dozen of them for sale in ten years of collecting. It took me a long time to get hold of one--I was outbid on the first couple I encountered on eBay. Eventually I was able to buy one relatively cheaply because it was not working and was in very rough condition. A while later I came across another non-working example that was much nicer cosmetically, and I bought that one too.

A couple of months back, after they'd sat in a box for maybe three years, I decided it was time to talk to a watch repair person and get one clean, working watch out of them. It was also fitted with a new crystal, as neither one was any good. Now that I have one in working condition, it has quickly become one of my favorite watches. I like the juxtaposition of the black and white elements in the design: the days of the week on white background, the date numerals reversed, and how that is echoed on the half-and-half inner bezel.

The rotating outer bezel is also a cool touch. (The lettering looks yellow in the picture, but it's actually a very interesting metallic-looking gold-orange.) Set your corresponding time zone next to the 12 at the top of the inner bezel, and you can see at at glance that it's three hours earlier in the Pacific time zone, or five hours later in London, or something like that. It's a throwback to a time when dealing with someone several time zones away was still not an everyday thing. The little triangle says "GMT" inside it, and on the opposite side it says "DATE LINE." (They were probably hoping pilots would buy this.)

It takes an odd size strap--literally, it's 19 millimeters wide. 18 was kind of the standard at the time, though certain Rolex models did (and still do) take 19 straps. Maybe this was a conscious attempt on Bulova's part to imbue the watch with some perceived glamour, but it was probably a pain when it came time to replace it. I was able to find a very nice strap without too much trouble.

One other thing about this watch that's potentially frustrating: most modern watches that display the day and/or date have a "quickset" feature that allows you to adjust them easily when the month has less than 31 days, or when you haven't worn the watch for a while and you want to reset the day and date without having to keep turning the crown to get to the correct day. This watch doesn't have such a feature, and come the end of this month, I don't know how to get the date to advance without changing the day of the week. Should be interesting...

Overheard: Not Even Close Edition

1:30 PM, Green Line E train inbound, Museum of Fine Arts station: "Does this go by BU East?" Ah, September...

Wake-Up Dog

About a year ago, we stopped crating the dog at night. It was partly because after having her for two years we figured it was no longer really necessary, and partly because she was waking us up by whining, sometimes several times during the course of one night. The reason for the whining was she didn't want to be in the crate while we were home (it didn't seem to matter that we were asleep), so we gave her what she wanted. She started sleeping on her bed in the living room most of the time, reverting to the open crate (where it was warmer) during the winter.

This has gradually led to more freedom for her while we are not around, including leaving her to sleep where she wants during the day while we're at work, and she has behaved admirably. But there are some unanticipated consequences as well. Her latest ploy for attention is a little gimmick we refer to as "Why Aren't You Up, It's Playtime!" She wanders into the bedroom, usually around 6 AM, making sure she walks loudly enough on the carpet to wake me. (This is the same dog who gets bumped into, and sometimes stepped on, because she has a tendency to sneak up on us, so she can be quiet when it suits her.) She comes around to my side of the bed, sniffs, and waits.

If she doesn't get an immediate response, she throws herself into her "play stance," thumping her front paws on the floor with her front legs and torso extended, butt up in the air, tail wagging feverishly. Typically she can barely be bothered to lift her head to acknowledge me when I arrive home, even though she has previously done a happy dance and thrown her stuffed toys around for the benefit of the Mrs. when she arrives home. So I'm not sure why I'm the lucky recipient of the early-morning attention, but it may be because I'm the one who walks her in the mornings before I leave for work. Who knows what goes on in a dog's brain?

If I pretend to still be asleep and continue to ignore her, she starts barking, which is really charming at 6 AM. Greyhounds rarely bark, but this has happened a couple of times on weekends when she has needed to go out, so it's usually wiser to give her a little attention (she's particularly fond of having her ears rubbed) until she decides it's time for her to go back to sleep and she wanders off again. Meanwhile I attempt to grab 15 more minutes of sleep before my alarm goes off.

Style File: Shuron Freeway Sunglasses

I talk a lot about style and putting thought and effort into how you look. I thought it might be fun to periodically explore some of my personal "elements of style" (with apologies to Strunk and White).

I wear prescription sunglasses. I really have to; the sun is just overwhelmingly bright otherwise. When I wore contact lenses I could wear just any old sunglasses, as long as they were suitably dark. When I decided 11 years ago to go back to wearing glasses full-time after 15 years of wearing contacts, I knew I would have to deal with the sunglasses issue.

My first solution was a pair of glasses with the Transitions lenses. They didn't really get dark enough, and I spent a couple of years walking around squinting. In 2001 I purchased a new pair of glasses and a pair of sunglasses to go with them. (I wanted to go with the magnetic clip-ons, but I couldn't find them in a frame style I liked.) I still have both of these, but the everyday glasses got pretty beat up, so I replaced them about a year and a half ago.

Not long after that, I started thinking about getting a second pair of sunglasses. I wanted a change from my standard roundish metal frames. After much searching I happened upon the company Shuron, from down in South Carolina. They are the originators of the Ronsir, which is sometimes referred to as the "Malcolm X" frame style, with plastic temples and brow pieces on a metal chassis. (Tom Hanks also wore these in Catch Me If You Can.)

I was very surprised to learn that they still manufacture all their frames in the United States. I thought it would be great to get something classic, a little retro, and somewhat out of the ordinary while supporting an American company. I was set on getting the Ronsir with a chrome chassis and dark gray lenses, but my friend A Proper Bostonian looked at their web site and told me that the Freeway in tortoise with green lenses would look better with my fair coloring.

Of course, she was right (when it comes to matters of style, she generally is). Shuron has excellent customer service, and since their products are not carried by many stores, they will sell direct to individuals. You can purchase frames from them and take them to your preferred optometrist, or they can make your lenses and fit them to your frames in their in-house lab. You can pay for one frame and they will send you two or three different sizes of it, so you can determine the best fit, and then return the others.

With regular lenses the Freeway looks like Buddy Holly's glasses, but in the "demi amber" color with sunglass lenses it's something altogether different, I think. It makes me think me of those French New Wave movies from the early 1960s that I've never seen. I wish the green lenses were just a little darker, but otherwise I really like them. One other thing: I discovered that they are too wide to wear with curved-bill caps, so when it gets cool enough to need a hat I'll have to revert to my other oval sunglasses.

This Week in Awesome (8/29/09)

Can't believe August is just about over already... but it did have five weekends, so five TWiAs.

This is a couple of weeks old now, but it's kind of cool. There's a public art project going on in Philadelphia that involves painting "love letter" murals on buildings, in lieu of graffiti I guess. (PSFK)

I don't know how I missed a great site like this for so long: Overheard in New York.

Similar to the job interview questions I mentioned a while back, here is some of the crazy stuff people put on their resumes.

After the Bridezillas clip and the KFC thing from last week, I was thinking that we may have to start dividing this feature into "awesome" and "awful." Here's this week's contribution to the latter category, something that as a dog owner I could not conceive of using. (Consumerist, Soup blog, many, many other sites)

Just Can't Get Enough

If just watching Mad Men isn't quite enough for you, the web is happy to help you augment your viewing experience. (I promise this isn't going to turn into an all-MM blog, but I do feel an obligation to point out these things.)

Start with the show's official site, which is full of good stuff, including episode recaps, longer previews of upcoming episodes, interviews with cast and crew members, background on some of the products and companies featured as Sterling Cooper clients, trivia quizzes about the 1960s, a lively fan forum, contests, and much more.

Basket of Kisses is a fan site run by two sisters that has a very active fan community, interviews, and lots of other good stuff. They have an impressive level of access to the show and its creators and actors.

The localish blog Unlikely Words is not exclusively a Mad Men site, but one of its creators has gone to the trouble of sifting through the first two seasons in order to isolate all of Don Draper's lines of dialogue. Wow. (He's also done the same for all of Tracy Jordan's lines on 30 Rock, which is equally ambitious, but reads a bit differently.) They also do episode recaps.

Update 2:30 PM: I accidentally left out what I consider the most interesting of these sites, The Footnotes of Mad Men. They dig into many of the references made in the show that people younger than, say, 50 might not have firsthand knowledge of, like (from just this week's episode) the 1964 World's Fair, the outcry over the plan to tear down Penn Station, Pepsi's Patio diet soda, Yetta Walenda, and so on.

Loafing

Went down to RI yesterday to visit the family. My mother is still recovering from knee replacement surgery, and she asked if we would go and get her some groceries. Since the arrival in her area last year of a branch of the European grocery chain ALDI, she has done a good portion of her shopping there due to their rock-bottom prices, so that's where she wanted us to go.

You find some unusual things in ALDI, many of which are available for only a limited time. While picking up a package of lunch meat, I noticed this. I thought it was so strange that I had to take a picture of it with my phone, but getting pictures off the phone and into the computer is still such a ridiculously difficult process that it's easier just to link to it.

Has anyone ever tried this product? I'd be too scared.

This Week in Awesome (8/22/09)

There's so much stuff this week (some of it held from last week because it wasn't on theme) I almost don't know where to start.

In that case, why not start with another crazy gadget? I can't imagine anyone seriously using this, but you never know. (Dvice)

Remember the guy who wrote the song about United Airlines wrecking his guitar? He's back with the second song. (Consumerist)

This Is Spinal Tap is still one of the most brilliant movies ever made. How could it possibly be improved upon? Here's how. (YouTube)

The rest of these fall more or less in the category of "there's so much I want to say, but I just can't find the words..." You'll see what I mean:

A surprising sighting in a Walmart parking lot. (Autoblog via Bloodhound blog)

Did you know there was a show called Bridezillas? If I didn't watch The Soup I wouldn't have. Maybe this is typical of the show, maybe it's not. I don't really want to know any more about it. (Soup blog)

And finally, a fast food item that is both horrifying and strangely fascinating. (Consumerist again)

Cultural Disconnect

The Mrs. saw my Mad Men cartoon icon and decided to make one for herself to use on her Facebook page. Her sister commented on it, so she made one for her too.

Some time later they were talking on the phone and the pictures came up, and the Mrs. said something along the lines of, "It's really a great show." The SARSiL (Some Assembly Required Sister-in-Law) said, "What do you mean?" The Mrs. explained that the illustrations were related to the show Mad Men, which her sister had not heard of.

See. the SARSiL does not watch television. She has one, but she lives in a fairly remote, wooded area up in the hills north of Santa Cruz. There is no over-the-air reception to speak of, and she does not have cable or a satellite dish. So the TV is only used for watching DVDs, and she's a bit out of touch regarding a lot of pop culture stuff.

In a way I envy her ignorance, but I don't think I could give up TV.

Wet Dogs and Cheerleaders

Can't forget to mention this... you may (but probably don't) recall that last year we took our dog to a dog-washing event to benefit the MSPCA that featured New England Patriots cheerleaders helping to wash the dogs.

Well, it's that time again. This year, the fifth annual "Paw Wash" event takes place this Sunday, August 23rd, from 10 AM to 1 PM in the parking lot of the MSPCA's Angell Memorial headquarters at 350 South Huntington Avenue in Boston (last year it was at Gillette Stadium). It costs $15 to get your dog washed, $15 for a photo of your dog with cheerleaders, or $25 for the combo package.

All proceeds benefit the MSPCA's Boston Animal Care and Adoption Center.

Trade-In Allowance?

In the past three days I've seen three dorks people zipping around on Segways. Are they having an end-of-model-year sale or something? Can you apply the Cash for Clunkers discount to the purchase of one?

Watch Wednesday (8/19/09)

I was all set to shoot some watch pictures with the other camera (the one that's better at close-ups), but it needs a new battery, and it takes a weird lithium one. I keep meaning to stop and get one on the way home from work, but it's been so hot that I don't want to do anything after work other than get home as fast as possible. (Having several nearby coworkers who run heaters under their desks because their feet get cold from the AC means the office is less comfortable than it ought to be.) Since I skipped doing this last week I didn't want to blow off doing it again, so I used the newer camera that doesn't focus as well up close.

After the vintage Bulova, I thought I'd go with one of my contemporary pieces. This is a Momentum M1 dive watch that I bought new three or four years ago, on eBay of course. I'd been looking around for something with an orange face and came across this (it's also available in several other colors). I wear it frequently during the summer, but almost never during the rest of the year. Orange is just more of a summer color, I guess. I don't dive, but divers' watches tend to be highly water resistant, which never hurts. It's also easy to read, which is always a bonus.



This watch has had several straps since I got it, and I haven't really been happy with any of them. It came with a horrible nylon thing that I had no intention of keeping (I often buy watches knowing the first thing I'm going to do is change the strap), so I put on whatever leather strap I had around.

Later I came across someone else selling these watches on eBay who also sold silicone straps with contrast stitching in the same colors as the faces, so I ordered one with orange stitching from him. But it was shaped in such a way that the edges of the strap flared out past the inside edges of the lugs (difficult to imagine without an accompanying image, I know) and I never really liked how it looked. The strap that's on it currently is a faux-Kevlar style, another one that I just had lying around. I still like the idea of the stitching picking up the color of the watch face, so I'm looking around for something else in that vein.

One-Track Wonder

I finished watching the second season of USA Network's very worthwhile In Plain Sight. The show is about a US Marshal who works in the federal Witness Security program (what most people incorrectly refer to as "witness protection"). It's wry and funny, the characters are very nicely drawn and played, and the show made some great strides in its storytelling this season.

Typically, they left us with a cliffhanger that won't be resolved until the show returns next spring. But as the final scenes of the episode played out, they were accompanied by a striking piece of music that grabbed my attention. It was unfamiliar to me, but the show's web site is courteous enough to list songs that are featured in the episodes, so I browsed over to check it out.

I was stunned to learn that the song, called "The Lightning Strike," was by Snow Patrol, the Irish band responsible for that horrible, insipid weeper ballad "Chasing Cars." You know the one, "If I lay here/If I just lay here/Would you lie with me/And just forget the world?..." Ecch, just typing that makes me feel ill. I never would have guessed the two songs could possibly be by the same band.

I only heard a minute or so of "The Lightning Strike" during the show, but it turns out that what I heard was just the beginning; the song is made up of three "movements" and clocks in at around 16 minutes long (link to listen here). Unfortunately, the other two parts of the song are not as impressive as the first, and they probably should have been three separate songs, but I'm just a snarky blogger so what do I know?

And of course, you can't buy the song by itself at iTunes; you have to buy the whole album to get it. while that other piece of dreck is on a different album, I still don't think I'm going to be interested in the rest of this one, based on a quick sampling of the other tracks. Anyone got a copy?

Clickin' Drag

Technology is just great, until it fails you. At work I use a trackball that I bought years ago, but at home we have a small bluetooth mouse because the Mrs. has wrist issues and prefers to mouse with her left hand, and it's much easier to switch back and forth with a wireless device.

On Saturday the mouse, which is three years old, gave out. Actually, it still turns on, but its bluetooth seems to have ceased to work. I have another of those trackballs somewhere (I used to use the same kind at home), but damned if I could find it. So I had no other input device available, which is an odd situation indeed.

Yesterday I made a trip to a nearby OfficeMax. I didn't expect to be able to find what I wanted, and they didn't disappoint me. (Well, technically they did, but I was expecting to be disappointed, so...) They carry one bluetooth mouse, it's made by Microsoft and they sell it for $50. I paid $30 for the dead one, and that's about all it's worth to me.

I asked the upstairs neighbors if they might have a mouse I could borrow, but the only one they could come up with was from a pre-USB Compaq with the old cylindrical type of connector. (I think they're all using laptops at this point, so they don't need modern mice.)

It was weird to spend the weekend unable to use the computer. We have a laptop, but it doesn't have any of my passwords stored, and its screen is too small to use for long periods of time. I have a spare mouse that came with my work computer, which is going to fill in until I can get a replacement, but I couldn't get it until today.

This Week in Awesome (8/15/09)

Welcome. Are you ready for some Mad Men? I know I am.

If you're in the Boston area and feel like getting together with other Maddicts (devotees of the show) to watch the season premiere, the Noir bar in the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square is hosting a viewing party starting at 9 PM tomorrow. Period dress is encouraged, but you already knew that. (I'll be watching at home, because it's a school night and I want to be able to just fall into bed as soon as the episode is over.)

If you haven't had a chance to see the first two seasons and you're looking to get up to speed quickly, New York Magazine has an extremely concise (some might call it pithy) synopsis of the first 26 episodes. If that's not quite enough detail, AMC has put together a four-minute video recap of season two. If you'd rather watch the episodes and find out what happens on your own, I suggest avoiding these links. Come to think of it, that's probably true of most of these...

The food section of Wednesday's New York Times had a fun little piece about the role of alcohol and drinking in the show and the producers' quest for accuracy in this, as in everything else about MM.

In a slightly more serious vein, the Times also talked to Matthew Weiner, the show's creator, about the seismic cultural shifts of the 1960s that serve as the show's foundation.

This month's Esquire has an interview and photo shoot with Christina Hendricks, who plays office manager Joan Holloway. The word "hotness" seems ridiculously inadequate. This is (some of) what you're missing if you don't watch, because there's plenty of beauty among the whole cast, the gents and the ladies.

And for something a bit different, here's a well-done video essay on the cinematography of Mad Men.

(By the way, the image above is from the December 2007 issue of GQ. Front, left to right: Christina Hendricks, Jon Hamm (Don Draper), January Jones (Betty Draper). Rear, left to right: John Slattery (Roger Sterling), Bryan Batt (Salvatore Romano), Robert Morse (Bert Cooper), Vincent Kartheiser (Pete Campbell), Elisabeth Moss (Peggy Olson).

What Gives, T?

And now for the flip side... For the past three years, I've been going to work through Wellington station on the Orange line. My daily travels have generated some observations about how this station could be improved.

When the northern portion of the Orange line was rerouted and extended out to Oak Grove in the early 1970s, perhaps the station's design made sense. I'm not really talking about the aesthetics, because there are none; it's just a big lump of concrete. I mean the functionality, the ways that people and vehicles approach and exit the station.

For pedestrians, entering the station is needlessly difficult. There is only one entrance, with eight steep steps up from curb level, which slows people down. The station doors are almost never propped open, which slows things down more. Once you get up the steps, the corridor is too narrow for the volume of people using it at rush hours, and then you have to make a 90-degree left turn to get to the fare gates. The entire area leading up to the gates is a giant choke point. It seems like every aspect of the on-foot approach was designed to be as difficult as possible, to thwart the movement of people in and out of the station.

There is a ramp, which was probably added later, that is easier to walk up, but the bottom of the ramp is situated away from the doors, away from the direction people are moving. This entrance also serves people coming in from the parking areas. It could be widened and extended outward and made so the whole thing was a ramp instead of stairs. (The ramp could not be built inside the existing structure because of the clearance needed above the train tracks.)

But before people can even get into the station, they have to pass through other obstacles. Most buses enter from the eastbound lanes of Route 16, requiring a tight right turn that also descends a grade. Then they have to stop for crossing traffic coming from a road that runs under Route 16 (some of which is heading into the station's parking areas, some to get on 16 going east), make a left turn, and pull up to the station to drop off passengers.

I think the biggest problem is that buses coming into the station have to mix it up with vehicles near the entrance. There should be a way to establish some sort of priority for incoming buses. I think the best way to accomplish this would be to build a dedicated roadway for buses leading into the station. An elevated viaduct could funnel buses off Route 16 and into the station above and parallel to the train tracks; they would not have to contend with crossing traffic, and passengers could then descend to station level instead of climbing up stairs. Buses would then loop around to pick up passengers where they do now. Access to the roadway would be controlled by transponders in the buses that would activate a gate or bollards (those pop-up pillars used in European parking facilities).

I realize this is just idle daydreaming. It's unlikely that any of this will ever come to pass, especially given the T's always-precarious financial situation. But the station is probably going to have to be overhauled and refurbished at some point. Why shouldn't we imagine how it could also be improved?

Smart Move, T

It hasn't been a good time for the MBTA lately. Lots of malfunctioning subway trains, the general manager being shown the door last week, problems with the launch of the online CharlieCard system, etc.

But I noticed something recently that (to me, anyway) constitutes improvement: for about a week now, the T web site's service alerts page has been including information about delays on bus routes. (Because I'm a bit anal, I check this page every morning before I leave the house, so if there's a problem I can attempt to avoid it.) Most of these delays seem to be due to traffic problems. Prior to noticing this, I can only recall info being posted about diversions due to road closures or station work, but these alerts are of a more up-to-the-minute sort.

Finding out your bus is going to be 20 minutes late may not be what you want to see when you're getting ready to head home from work, but it's better than standing around waiting for a bus that never comes, and not having any information about what's happening. Knowledge is indeed power, and knowing there's a delay can help you reroute, or just kill time somewhere until things get back to normal.

Out of Focus

I didn't do a watch post yesterday, because I'm unhappy with the quality of the pictures I've been getting. I finally realized that my camera just isn't any good at close-up shots. We have an older camera that is much better at this type of thing, simply because it has a different lens that is able to focus on items as close as a couple of inches. When I bought the newer camera I completely forgot about this feature, which is very useful when shooting things for, say, eBay. I'll get to work with the other camera and go from there.

Mulch

Lucky me: I got to do yard work yesterday. It's one of my least favorite things; I'd rank it right above camping, because yard work is over in a couple of hours, but you're stuck in a tent for a whole night, or worse.

Last year, our landlord let the back yard get really overgrown. We tried to tame it with a weed whacker, but it was just too dense and thick. After he finally took care of it, I thought he might hire someone to maintain it. Instead, during the winter he told us he was going to make it maintenance-free. In the spring he had a load of mulch delivered and spread it over the grass. But the weeds grew right back, because he didn't lay down a barrier layer of landscape fabric, like you're supposed to. This year's excessive rain didn't help.

I told him the yard was getting overgrown again, and he needed to come by and deal with it. He put it off, and the weeds grew. When the biggest ones got close to my height, I sent him a photo. He finally came by a couple of weeks ago and cleared everything, and put down some landscape fabric. Last week he had another load of mulch delivered and he came by and covered the fabric with it, so we probably won't have any more weed issues.

After he'd cleared all the weeds and dirt, he put everything into heavy-duty plastic bags and left them by the curb, but last week the trash truck didn't take them. He didn't close the bags, so the contents got wet. Meanwhile, this week is the monthly yard waste pickup, but they won't take anything unless it's in barrels or those brown paper yard bags. Like a sucker, I told him that if he got us some of the paper bags, I'd transfer the yard waste from the plastic bags.

So that was my chore yesterday. There were half a dozen trash bags, and I ended up using one paper bag for each one, plus one more for a pile that for some reason he'd left in the back yard. The toughest part was keeping the bags balanced, because he had pulled everything out including roots, so there were these big, heavy, wet clumps of dirt and root balls and long, wet weeds that caused the bags to tip over. I just wanted to do the right thing and make sure the waste gets properly taken away and turned into mulch, or whatever it is they do with it.

This Week in Awesome (8/8/09)

A full bucket of awesome this week, kids:

Are you a gloom-and-doomer? Do you enjoy speculating about nightmare scenarios? This little exercise is for you. (Slate)

It was only a matter of time... the Snuggie is spawning. (TV Squad)

These go around the web every so often, but I think this is a fresh batch, because I don't remember reading any of them before. (AOL Jobs via Consumerist)

But the most awesome thing about this was a comment posted to the Consumerist story: "After a friend of mine realized he had no chance of getting the job, he replied to one of the interviewer's question with. "KHAAAAAAAAAAAN!" He was promptly escorted from the building by security." Brilliant. (If you don't understand why that's funny, email me and I'll explain.)

And finally, an amusing little clip starring Saturday Night Live's Fred Armisen that comically skewers the potential dangers of watching too much television in a way that's very meta. Bonus: it also features Fred's fiancée Elisabeth Moss, who plays Peggy on Mad Men. (Funny or Die via New York Magazine's Vulture blog)

Next week, in honor of the show's return: an all-Mad Men edition of TWiA!

Summer Clearance

If you're fortunate enough to be employed and have money, the end of season clearance sales are in full effect. Fall fashions are starting to hit stores, but the retailers still have stock left that they need to unload. You can find summer clothing for as much as 80% off original prices, depending on the store, and still have a month or two to enjoy it.

But keep in mind that stock will dwindle as discounts increase, so if you see something you like, don't hesitate, especially if you are of a more common size, because if you don't grab it, someone else definitely will.

(UPDATE Saturday 8/8: According to a story I read in yesterday's New York Times about July retail sales, stores have less leftover inventory this season due to more conservative ordering, so your mileage may vary.)

Last night we were at our local Stop & Shop, and I noticed that they were clearing out seasonal merchandise like coolers and outdoor furniture. On a previous trip a little "balcony set" had caught my eye: a high table with a small-diameter top and two tall, barstool-like chairs with backs, intended for small outdoor spaces.

I'd thought this would fit nicely on our back porch, which is only about five feet wide. Yesterday it was 50% off the original $100 price, and there were about half a dozen sets left. Rather than return today and risk having them be gone, I sent the Mrs. to the car with the groceries and went back and bought the set. I intend to spend weekend mornings sitting out on the porch, drinking coffee and reading the paper, until it turns too cold.

Watch Wednesday

After talking about watches again recently, it occurred to me that featuring some of the watches in my collection might make a neat semi-regular feature. (This requires that I expend the energy to take an acceptable photo of each one, which is why it may end up being semi-regular, but I'll try.)

I thought it made sense to start with the first vintage watch I bought on eBay. (I had another, older watch that I had bought from another web site prior to buying this one, but I sold it some years back when money was tight, and I don't really miss it. Also, wristwatches tended to be smaller 50 or 60 years ago, and looking at similar watches now, it was really too small for me.)



My interest in watches is partly rooted in nostalgia, but I also value them for their aesthetics and as functional objects. I appreciate how a small steel container that attaches to your wrist on a piece of leather can encompass all these qualities, and so many more, and you can carry all that around with you every day.

For some reason I have always been drawn to Bulova watches, particularly those from the 1960s. The Bulova Watch Company was founded in New York in 1875 by a Czech immigrant. You can read a history of the company here; the company still exists, and you can find its watches in jewelry and department stores, but it doesn't carry quite the same cachet it once did. A half-century ago, Bulova was a high-end brand sold in prestigious stores; you gave or received a Bulova to mark a special occasion such as a college graduation, promotion, birthday, or important anniversary.

This watch is from 1967. I know this because one of the cool things about Bulova watches is that they are stamped on the back with a date code: a letter for the decade and a numeral for the year. It is not particularly valuable, and there is nothing special about it; it's a manual wind, and the hands are missing their original glow-in-the-dark material (it probably disintegrated over the years), but the simplicity of its appearance is what I like about it so much, and for its age it is in excellent condition.

Finned Glory

I've always been interested in the design of objects, which dovetails nicely with my lifelong interest in cars. The 1950s produced the most flamboyant car designs ever; some were beautiful, others were bizarre, and some could have been loved only by their creators.

The New York Times recently posted a neat piece about 1950s cars and their tailfins, which reached their exaggerated peak in 1959. If this piques your interest, you can check out one of my favorite sites, the Old Car Manual Project archive of car brochures.

This Week in Awesome (8/1/09)

I know it's no longer Saturday, but I like to think of the weekend, and this feature, as a state of mind. I'm a bit underwhelmed by this week's selection, but you know, it's August, and I'm afraid my brain took a quick vacation. Hey, not every week can be stellar.

Continuing with the meme of crazy ads for crazy stuff you can buy from TV or the web, we have two entries this week. This first one I would describe as slightly odd. (Consumerist)

The second one is in a whole other class of bizarre. (TV Squad)

Excerpts from Sarah Palin's farewell remarks, "interpreted" by a master thespian, followed by similar treatment of some of her Twitterings. (Tonight Show via Hulu)

More Chicken, Anyone?

A while back I mentioned our visit to the Revere Chelsea branch of the chicken chain El Pollo Loco. We've been back a couple of times since, and it's definitely some of the best-tasting fast food you can get.

We tried to go on Sunday, but they had closed early for a staff outing. We were trying to figure out where to eat, then the Mrs. remembered that we hadn't yet tried the Guatemala-based chain Pollo Campero that opened in Chelsea a few months back. I'd read a Globe article that claimed their chicken was causing something of a sensation, so we headed over.

The line wasn't too bad, only about eight people ahead of us, and it moved pretty quickly. I ordered three pieces, two legs and a thigh, with a side of cole slaw. (There are also beans, rice, fried plantains, and for you true gringos, fries.) The Mrs. got two pieces and rice. The chicken is delicious, living up to the hype. They also offer grilled chicken, if you're feeling guilty.

Is it the best around? Who knows. That's a mighty big gastronomic project, but I welcome suggestions for other places in the area we should try. By the way, there's also a drive-through, which can be handy for those late-night cravings.

Pollo Campero is at 115 Park Street in Chelsea (if you've been around here a while, it's where Riley's Roast Beef used to be). El Pollo Loco is at 1014 Revere Beach Parkway, also in Chelsea.

Emmys 2009, Part 2: Make Me Laugh

This part is going to be a little easier. Best comedy: 30 Rock. Best actress in a comedy: Tina Fey in 30 Rock. Best actor in a comedy: Alec Baldwin in 30 Rock. Best supporting actress in a comedy: Jane Krakowski in 30 Rock. Best supporting actor in a comedy: well, Tracy Morgan and Jack McBrayer are going to have to slug it out. Yes, both of them are on 30 Rock.

Okay, I'm kidding. Sort of. Fey, Baldwin, and the show all won last year, and expectations are going to be high for all of them to repeat. Looking at the competition, I'd say it's possible, though not a foregone conclusion. Let's look at the other nominees.

Comedy series: The Office had what I thought was an uneven season. The writing is still good, but some of the situations are wearing thin, and it won three years ago, when it definitely deserved it. Weeds: I have to be honest, I've never seen the show, but it looks like I'd enjoy it. Gonna beat 30 Rock? Not this year. Entourage: zzzzzzzz, enough already. Flight of the Conchords: I love this show, and I love that it got nominated, but it's even more loopy and out there than 30 Rock. How I Met Your Mother: four seasons in, the show is starting to get some deserved recognition. but in this race I'd call it a long, long shot. Family Guy: huh? Who does Seth MacFarlane have dirt on? It isn't even that funny anymore.

Comedy actors: heaven help us if Tony Shalhoub wins again. Charlie Sheen, Jim Parsons, Jermaine Clement: all of you play your characters well, but that doesn't mean that any of you should be nominated. The one factor that may keep Alec Baldwin from repeating is that Steve Carell has yet to win an Emmy after five seasons of playing Michael Scott and four consecutive nominations. I thought he really delivered some great performances this season, especially in the stories involving Holly and in Michael's attempt to start his own paper company. Let's give this one to Steve.

Comedy actresses: looking at the five women besides Tina Fey who are nominated--Sarah Silverman, Mary-Louise Parker, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Toni Collette, Christina Applegate--there was excellent work by all of them (some of whom I admit I've only read about). I feel about Sarah and her show the way I feel about Larry David and Curb Your Enthusiasm: it's a kind of humor I just don't get. Mary-Louise: see Weeds above. Julia won three years ago, and I enjoy her show, but she wasn't up against Tina at the time. Toni: I have no idea. Christina: ABC treated her show horribly, yanking it for several weeks in succession in January, in favor of extending Dancing with the Stars to two hours, but each time they did so it was so last-minute that my TiVo still thought it was recording Samantha Who? There's a slight chance she could get this award as a sort of consolation prize.

Comedy supporting actors: almost the same as last year's group, except 30 Rock's pair knocked Jeremy Piven off the list. Once again, most of them don't make sense: guy from Entourage, again; Jon Cryer's one-note whiner, again; Rainn Wilson over Jon Krasinski, again. As much as I'd like to see a 30 Rock sweep (I'd give the edge to Tracy Morgan), I really think this one should go to Neil Patrick Harris for Barney on How I Met Your Mother.

Comedy supporting actresses: Vanessa Williams, Amy Poehler, and Kristin Chenoweth all repeat as nominees. Elizabeth Perkins is nominated for Weeds; maybe she'll be the one to snag a win for the show. I think most people are familiar with at least one of Kristin Wiig's Saturday Night Live characters; the problem is that if you've seen one, you've pretty much seen them all. I think she can be genuinely funny, but isn't given enough of a chance to do so; the show's quest for laughs causes them to keep going back to the same shallow wells over and over. If this one is not going to Jane Krakowski, it should go to an SNL actress, and if that's the case it should be Amy Poehler. Still, Wiig winning here might be preferable to William Shatner winning in his category.

Retroize Yourself

Time for a little Tuesday morning fun: the countdown has begun to the third-season premiere of Mad Men on August 16 (10 PM Eastern time on AMC), and over on the show's official site, you can "Mad Men yourself." This is sort of like that "Simpsonize yourself" thing from a couple of years ago when the Simpsons movie came out, but in this case you don't have to upload a picture of yourself first, because the configurator supplies a number of body types, head shapes, noses, and such.

After you've finished the physical characteristics, you can dress yourself in one of several period outfits and add show-appropriate accessories like cigarettes and drinks, or more traditional accoutrements like a cup of coffee and a newspaper. When you're finished you can paste your groovy MM avatar into a scene with other cartoonized characters from the show, then download it as desktop wallpaper, or grab a cropped head shot for a chat icon. (You'll notice that I've updated my profile picture over on the right, at the risk of revealing the closely-guarded secret of my identity...)

Emmys 2009: More Nominees, More Griping

The 2009 Emmy nominations were announced recently. Maybe two or three of you were wondering why I didn't do a big critique like last year. I admit that I spend far too much time watching and thinking about TV for someone who doesn't get paid to do so, but the fact is, life intruded: I was a little too wrapped up with my monthly deadline stuff at work to comment at the time, but I'm not going to do another elaborate four-part assessment. While it was a good exercise for me, it was also really time-consuming, and I don't think I want to get that deep into it anyway. But I will run through the highs and lows of this year's choices.

First, the television academy did a very smart thing by selecting Neil Patrick Harris to host this year's ceremony, especially after last year's disastrous tag-team reality-show-host clusterfuck. (Hopefully, the loud and clear message from that was "NEVER AGAIN.") NPH has been on a bit of a roll the past few years, with his hilarious appearances as a funhouse-mirror caricature of himself in the Harold and Kumar movies, his role as Barney on the genuinely funny CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, a respectable turn as guest host of Saturday Night Live during this past season, and his recent gig hosting the Tony Awards, which I didn't see (I'm sure you're shocked) but was well received. He is the perfect choice to host the Emmys this year.

Now, the nominees: it seems like the majority of the academy has finally gotten access to a full package of basic and premium cable TV service, or maybe its membership is just getting a little younger, but the nominees are skewed even more toward non-broadcast channels than previously. I don't necessarily consider this a bad thing, because it reminds the broadcast networks that they aren't getting the job done well enough, which will hopefully spur some of the genuine creativity and risk-taking network TV so desperately needs. (Oh, who am I kidding, they'd just end up canceling it.)

The categories have been expanded to allow for six nominees instead of the previous five, and in the best drama and best comedy series categories, there were ties so there ended up being seven nominees each. This resulted in oddities like Lost getting a drama nom. As much as I love Lost, I don't think this season was quite as worthy; the time-travel business that dominated the season's storytelling was confusing and ultimately became tedious, and I think it detracted from the show's impact. Maybe the academy was trying to make up for last season, which I thought was superior to this one, but that sort of strategy usually doesn't work. If the academy really wants to show Lost the love it deserves, they need to start nominating the actors, like I said last year. (At least Michael Emerson got another nod for Ben, but that isn't really enough.)

Same goes for House. This season's "Wilson de-friends House, then they kiss and make up" and "Cuddy realizes her dream of being a mom by adopting a baby, then stresses out from trying to balance work and motherhood" storylines just didn't equal last season's "House gets a new team" (I think I'm in the minority on this one, but I thought those were great episodes) and "Wilson's true love dies a horrible and tragic death" arcs. The academy was probably responding to this season's Kutner suicide story and its aftermath; after all, shows don't get nominated based on an entire season's body of work, but rather on a kind of highlight reel.

House will likely keep getting nominated as long as it's on the air, unless the quality really tanks, but it's a different playing field. Ten years ago it would have cleaned up, but I think it's always going to be a bridesmaid in the best drama category as long as it's up against top-quality cable shows like the rest of this year's nominees: Big Love, Breaking Bad, Damages, Dexter, and Mad Men. (Damages wasn't as compelling this year, might have been nice to see The Wire get some respect on its last time around instead.)

In drama acting, no offense to Simon Baker (nominated for CBS's cutesy crime procedural The Mentalist), but you don't deserve to be in the company of your fellow nominees. I watched your show a few times, and it's popcorn, pure and simple. My mom likes it. I call this Patricia Arquette Syndrome, after her puzzling nomination (and win) for Medium in 2005. It's an okay show, but I actually find Ms. Arquette to be a rather poor actress, so I wondered what the academy was seeing that I wasn't. Same goes for Baker, who is certainly TV-pretty and has clearly found the right vehicle, but his performance on the show is style over substance. Will Bryan Cranston win again after his surprise upset last year? Will Jon Hamm get the nod instead? Will both of them be overshadowed by Gabriel Byrne? I think it's got to be one of those three.

Turning to the ladies, this year's group of nominees is exactly the same as last year's, with one notable difference: the expansion to six nominees allows the addition of Elisabeth Moss, who plays up-and-coming copywriter Peggy Olson on Mad Men. Peggy is the dark-mirror doppelganger to Don Draper. She's every bit as ambitious, and in the structure and context of Mad Men's changing workplace milieu, it's clear she represents the future. As the show progresses, I'm finding her the most interesting character, and she was truly amazing in a couple of scenes last season. But I consider Peggy a supporting character, and I don't understand why January Jones, who plays Don's increasingly aggrieved and unhinged wife Betty, wasn't given this spot. (Again, I said this last year, and if anything Jones was even better this year.) I think Ms. Moss would have been a front-runner in the supporting actress category, but up against an entrenched crop of leads, her chances are slim.

Supporting actors: good to see John Slattery get noticed for Mad Men; although Roger doesn't seem to do much besides drink and philander, Slattery embodies him in a thoroughly entertaining way, plus he's been around and paying his dues as an actor for a long time. William Hurt on Damages: sort of obligatory, had a couple of nice moments. Aaron Paul on Breaking Bad: nice job. Wait, two nominations from Boston Legal? TWO? Jesus Mary and Joseph on a sesame seed bun, what is wrong with these academy voters? Michael Emerson, it's on you to put a stop to it.

Supporting actresses: what's interesting here are the nominations of Rose Byrne, who plays Patty Hewes's young protege on Damages, and Cherry Jones as President Taylor on 24. Interesting because I didn't think either of them did an especially good job, but sometimes that doesn't matter. The competition is from Grey's Anatomy (Chandra Wilson and Sandra Oh, just like last year) and In Treatment (Dianne Wiest, nominated again, Hope Davis for the first time). Wiest won last year, and is probably the front-runner to repeat.

Okay, I guess comedy is going to have to get its own post. But just two parts this year, I swear...

This Week in Awesome (6/25/09)

Hello, and happy Saturday. I should probably be out doing something fun, but instead I'm home posting this, because I care.

Here's a retro-future rendering of what Apple's home page might have looked like circa 1983. Take a moment to absorb and process the implications of that statement... (Flickr, via Cult of Mac)

If you don't think Alec Baldwin is funny, or Tracy Morgan is funny, or if you don't watch 30 Rock, you may not care about this one. If you do, then click away. (Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, via Hulu)

This one is old by now, but if (like me) you didn't watch the MTV Movie Awards, then you didn't see it. And no, it's not the Bruno thing. It's Andy Samberg, with Will Ferrell as Neil Diamond--really, that's all you need to know, right? Trust me, it's good. (Lonely Island)

And finally, this is one of those instances where reality is just so much better than anything you or I could come up with ourselves. (Photobucket, via Jalopnik)

Wretched Excess Unit

Sometimes I see things that are just so completely insane, I have to make note of them. This is a perfect example.

I collect watches. I've talked about this before; I have a particular fondness for mechanical (winding) watches from the 1960s. At the beginning of that decade, that most likely meant a watch you wound by hand every day, but within a few years automatic models, which are wound by the motion of your arm, became popular. Unfortunately, within a few more years they would be rendered technologically, if not functionally, obsolete by quartz watches, which are far more accurate than mechanical watches.

If you're the sort of person who cares about this type of thing, chances are you have more than one automatic watch (I have a few myself), but I mean more along the lines of Rolex, TAG Heuer, Omega, Breitling, etc. Fancy stuff. Spendy. You get a few of those, you'll want to keep them wound, because if left unworn (and thus unwound) for long periods of time, the precision of the moving parts can suffer.

It's also a huge drag to contemplate your vast collection of luxury timepieces, trying to decide which one you feel like wearing on a given day, only to realize that the one you're in the mood for hasn't been worn recently and therefore has to be wound and set to the correct time and date. Sigh...

To alleviate such stress, someone invented this thing called a watch winder. It's typically a box made of wood or leather, with a little stand where you park your watch that's attached to a motor that simulates arm movement. These things typically run at least a hundred bucks apiece, but can cost a lot more. Of course, if you can afford a $4000 watch, you can afford the gizmo to keep it wound. (It's analagous to the idea that people who can afford $100,000 cars can also afford to insure and run them.)

Eventually the watch winder people figured out that people with collections of fancy watches might be interested in winders that could hold multiple watches, which led to things like this, and this, and ultimately this: a free-standing floor cabinet for winding up to 56 automatic watches.

And it's only $166,000.

I guess there really are some people who have so much money they don't know what to do with it. If you are in fact the sort of person who has a genuine need for an item such as this, you could pay someone $40K a year, not even one-fourth of what this costs, to keep your watches wound for you. I suspect that person would feel fortunate to have a job, and you'd be doing your bit to boost the economy.

By the way, I don't own any watch winders. Maybe I should, if only to take better care of my vintage pieces, but seeing things like this makes me kind of disgusted by the whole idea.

Fashion Violation

On my way home tonight, I got on the bus and noticed that T-Mobile guy I talked about yesterday, only it must have been his day off, because he wasn't in his fuchsia shirt, so it took me a moment to realize it was him.

Then I got a look at what he was wearing: a long-sleeve knit top (kinda warm out for that, maybe?) that had a pattern that reminded me of a sponge-painted wall, very light-blue jeans with rather wide legs (possibly a thrift-shop find?), and shiny silver sneakers. If this is what he chooses to wear on his day off, maybe he should just stick to the uniform.

Color Keyed

About a month ago I noticed a guy on my morning bus wearing a fuchsia shirt. I'd read a lot of stuff recently about how bright pink was going to be a hot color for guys this year, so I thought he was just being fashionable. He had a shaved head, funky rectangular glasses, and just had a general look of being trendy.

On a different day I noticed he was again wearing the fuchsia shirt, with a black jacket (it was one of those damp days before it got hot) that set it off nicely. I thought, good for you, not afraid to dress sharp. I imagined that he worked at an ad agency or was some sort of web developer.

Yesterday I saw a coworker on my way into the T station, and we started talking. When we got down to the platform, I noticed the guy was standing next to us. Then I noticed that his fuchsia shirt had a big "T-Mobile" above the pocket. Suddenly it all made sense, just not in the way I'd thought.

I think what threw me off was that it was a button-front shirt, because when I think of a typical cell-phone store guy, or even a typical electronics-store guy, I always think of someone wearing a polo shirt. It is kind of the default uniform; for a while I even worked at a such a job and had them. But we also had long-sleeve, button-front shirts with the brand logo embroidered above the pocket, and I'd simply forgotten about that. (Well, let's face it, I've tried to block as much of it as I can.)

This Week in Awesome (7/18/09)

I had a very hectic week at work, more so than usual, but never fear, I still have the goods...

I'm tempted to just post this clip without saying anything else about it. Near the end there's a shot of what looks a lot like the Zakim Bridge, which doesn't make any sense. (Very Short List)

This one is slightly more self-explanatory... eventually. (EA Games via YouTube via Jalopnik)

What is it about road signs that attracts those with mischievous intent? Oh, Canada! (Jalopnik again)

And finally, I'd like to introduce you to my new favorite snark site, The Hater, brought to us by the folks at The Onion's AV Club. It is to pop culture what Go Fug Yourself is to celebrity fashion commentary. Be sure to read the story about how Jon Gosselin is pimping out his kids to Ed Hardy...

Steamed

I hope all of you people who were bitching about the weather are happy with today, because I'm miserable, and so is the dog.

A Piece of the Rock

I'm stuck in deadline week, but I do want to throw my $0.02 on the WBCN story, even though it's now a couple of days old. For those of you who are not in the immediate Boston area or who may not have heard for some other reason, CBS Radio has decided to pull the plug on "The Rock of Boston" after 41 years, replacing it with a sports-talk station as of August 13th.

(The situation is actually slightly more complex than that: the new station will take over the 98.5 FM frequency, and the CBS-owned "Mix" station currently at that spot on the dial, the one that plays music for people who don't really care that much about music, will assume WBCN's 104.1 frequency. Why they couldn't just put the new station at 104.1 is best left unasked, I guess.)

I first became aware of WBCN around 1979, and it was responsible for a significant degree of my adolescent musical awakening. As a bored teenager growing up in suburban Rhode Island, after seeing artists like Elvis Costello and Talking Heads on Saturday Night Live, and then discovering a syndicated show called Rock World, a late-1970s precursor to MTV that showed the early video work of groups like Devo and The Vapors, I was eager for an outlet that would expose me to this sort of new music for more than an hour or so per week (and, since Rock World aired after SNL at 1 AM Sundays, one that would allow me a little more sleep).

One afternoon after school, I was idly fiddling with the radio in my room, searching for something interesting. I have to be honest: given that it was 30 years ago, I can't remember what song was playing when I first stumbled across WBCN on the dial, but I am fairly certain it had to be something adventurous that other radio stations would not have been playing at the time. At first, I was actually a little more impressed with the fact that I was pulling in a Boston radio station from 50-some miles away.

I quickly realized that WBCN was just the sort of station I'd been looking for. There was a Providence station, WBRU, that played much of the same music, but what they were missing and 'BCN had in abundance was attitude: young, brash, rebellious, alluringly cool. Not only did I feel like it was my station, that it belonged to me, but I felt like I belonged to it, that I was part of a club, and cooler for being part of that club. When I decided soon after to go to college in Boston, I felt that listening to 'BCN gave me an advantage over the other incoming freshmen, because I was already tapped into the cultural landscape of the city that I was about to become a part of.

Back then WBCN was considered cutting-edge, and other stations around the country followed their lead. They were early supporters of acts that went on to become worldwide stars, including The Cars and U2. In the spring of 1981 I was one of three people in my high school senior class of about 260 who had heard of U2; I'd heard them played on 'BCN and rushed out to buy Boy.

I stuck with the station through college and the rest of the '80s. I remember they used to sponsor free lunchtime concerts. I went to quite a few of these, back when it was still legal, normal, and cool to do stuff like give away free drinks. You'd get free music, free hot dogs, and one free beer. I recall going to one such concert--the Del Fuegos, I think--before an afternoon final exam in December of 1984, and I went into that exam feeling like the beer had put me in a suitably relaxed frame of mind to properly focus on the test. It did.

Later on, under corporate ownership, WBCN tried being less alternative and more like a competitor to WAAF, the hard-rock station. That's about the time I moved on to WFNX. These days I hardly listen to radio at all. Perhaps if I commuted by car I might behave differently, but at work I'm more likely to open iTunes and fire up an internet streaming radio station. WBCN will continue to exist online in this form, so I'll give them another listen, but it will be more for the sake of nostalgia than anything else.

Radio has become much more of a business than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Everything is so packaged and focus-grouped, which may increase profits but also has the unfortunate effect of making it less interesting and appealing to listen to. I understand the business side of the decision, but emotionally it doesn't make the loss any easier to take. The WBCN I loved ceased to exist a long time ago, which is why I haven't listened in a long time.

Life is about change, and as we get older, the people, places, and things that mattered to us tend to go away, and usually they don't come back. But I'll always have great memories of the years when The Rock of Boston ruled the local airwaves.

Annals of Flawed Logic

While reading the paper on my way to work this morning, I was a little confused to see this headline in the section of little one-paragraph stories: "Arizona: Gun Rules Eased for Bars."

Then I read the story, and went from confused to, well, kind of appalled and scared shitless at the same time, if that's possible: "Arizonans with concealed weapons permits will be allowed to take a handgun into bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, under a bill signed by Gov. Jan Brewer. The measure, backed by the National Rifle Association, will require bar and restaurant owners who want to ban weapons to post a no-guns sign next to the business’ liquor license."

Drinking and guns--what a superb idea, because clearly the bar fights out there weren't violent enough already. This is why I prefer to stay in our little ivory-tower corner of the country.

Crumbling Façade

I managed to miss the excitement on Huntington Avenue this morning. I used to catch the 39 bus at Back Bay Station to get to my office near Brigham Circle, but now that I walk the dog in the morning, I leave the house a bit later and catch a later bus, and from past experience with the 39 it gets increasingly unreliable after 8:30 AM, due to increased traffic on Back Bay streets. So now I stay on the Orange Line and go to Ruggles, where any of five or six bus routes will get me close enough to the office.

A coworker came in around 9:15, having been stuck in the traffic backup caused by the debris, and explained what was happening. Strangely, there was nothing on boston.com at that point, and it took them a long time to post any information about the incident, compared to other local media outlets' web sites. I'm glad I didn't get stuck, and I'm also amazed and happy to hear that no one was injured by falling building chunks.

This Week in Awesome (7/11/09)

Jalopnik gave us plenty of good material this week. First, there are these two videos of police chases (Dallas, then Houston, hmmm....) from Fox News Channel. The only reason they were posted to Jalopnik in the first place, and the only reason I'm posting them here, is because of the insanely surreal commentary by one of the anchor dudes. (Apparently this is his specialty over at the creepy channel.)

Moving on, we have this series of photos from an, um, unusual accident scene in Virginia, but what really makes this one special is the accompanying analysis from one of that state's transportation engineers.

Changing gears, so to speak, there's the story of a guy named Dave whose guitar was rather badly broken by United Airlines baggage handlers, in full view of him and many other passengers on his flight. His attempts to get United to own up to the situation and provide some recompense were unsuccessful, so being a musician, he wrote a song about it--a pretty decent song, in fact--and put it on YouTube. Of course, this got United's attention, but it's been more than a year, Dave doesn't even care about the money anymore. (Consumerist)

That's all for now. Enjoy the weekend.

Act Now, Yesterday Only

You know how you sometimes make a purchase at a web site and then get emails from that site forever? That's how it is with me and Live Nation, the concert promoter/ticket seller.

I do tend to look at these emails, to see if there are any shows coming that I might want to see. This morning I found a message titled "Wed Only: $29.99 All-In Concert Experience." I had heard that Live Nation was doing a series of promotions this summer to try to make attending concerts less financially painful.

Out of curiosity I clicked on the message. "No Service Fee Wednesday. Lawn Ticket - Hot Dog - Soda All-In $29.99. July 8th 24 Hours Only." The time stamp on the message was 2:26 AM, today, July 9th., Oops.

Now, I don't care about seeing Toby Keith or Creed or, god help us, 311. And on the rare occasions that I've gone to the arena formerly known as Great Woods, I didn't sit on the lawn because, well, it rains sometimes, and who wants to sit with all the unfortunate plebes who couldn't afford better seats? I really prefer to sit on an actual chair, and I wouldn't be able to see anything from way back there anyway.

But it just looks bad, you know? It gives the impression that your big PR campaign for more affordable entertainment is just a load of crap. Maybe it's time to unsubscribe from those emails.

This Week in Awesome: Bonus Bit

I don't know how I forgot about this. It was on The Soup last Friday, and I should have checked immediately to see if it was on their blog site so I could have included it over the weekend.

Anyway, it's way too awesome to wait until next week. This clip is from the MTV show 16 and Pregnant, which I've heard has been given a second season. Lucky us...

Minty Fresh

I'm the sort of person who tries to have mints on me at all times. I hate the idea that I might be inflicting bad breath on someone, but I was never really much for chewing gum.

Over the years I have carried many different mints in various flavors. The main requirements are that they be easily portable, taste good, and not make noise when I walk. This means Altoids are out, and that's fine because I don't really care for them. They are certainly strong enough to eliminate odors, but their flavors are just so overpowering they are not enjoyable.

For a long, long time I bought multi-packs of Breath Savers wintergreen flavor mints. (The warehouse clubs carry these in packages of 24 rolls, which kept me minted for a couple of months.) Over a year ago, I found myself mintless in Santa Cruz while we were there visiting the Mrs.' sister. We stopped at a local market to get some lunch, and while wandering around the store I discovered cinnamon-flavored mints made by Newman's Own Organics.

I love anything cinnamon (especially cinnamon rolls), but the cinnamon Altoids had been as much of a disappointment as their other flavors. Still, I thought I should give these upstart mints a try, and I loved them. They are not particularly strong, but they do freshen the mouth. The only drawback was that, like Altoids, they came in a metal box (which, strangely, describes them as "hot" but they are the farthest thing from it) with an illustration of a ferocious tiger on it.

When we got home I found that the mints were available locally at Whole Foods stores. I also found that they sold a different variety of the mints in rolls; they are larger than the tinned mints and have a slightly different taste (also not hot). I've taken to buying both kinds; I keep the tin on my desk at work, and carry a roll in my pocket for mobile breath cleansing.

This Week in Awesome (7/4/09)

In honor of our nation's birthday, I thought I'd post a sort of public-service TWIA today.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission wants you to use fireworks cautiously, and to that end they have produced some videos showing the potential dangers of being careless. (There were two more of these, but they aren't working now, bummer.) (Gizmodo)

And for all you dog owners, here's another in our ongoing series of bizarre commercials for bizarre products. Note: if you watch this video and might actually be considering buying this product, you should know that there have been numerous complaints against the company selling it; apparently they thought it was a good idea to take orders for the product before they had product to ship, and they are just now getting around to filling orders from six months ago. Way to go, Potty Patch. (Consumerist)

Have a fun and safe holiday, everybody.

Dance Party in Aisle 5

A few days ago I was in the Whole Foods in Woburn, picking up coffee (you really should try the organic Mexican beans) and a few other things. The store's sound system was playing a fun mix of classic disco songs, like "Get Up and Boogie" (Silver Convention), "I Want Your Love" (Chic), "Boogie Nights" (Heatwave), "Let It Whip" (Dazz Band), even the instrumental "Love's Theme" by the Love Unlimited Orchestra, and others I can't recall now. (I had to look up some of those artists, but being of a certain age, I remembered some of them.)

I grew up listening to these songs, because they were all over Top 40 radio in the 70s. The Mrs. is a bit too young to remember most of them. I don't know if this music comes from a compilation, a satellite music service, or if the store actually employs a DJ (not too likely), but I'd like to tip my digital hat to Whole Foods for not subjecting us to the "light rock" or "adult contemporary" that you're more likely to hear in a store. Someone is thinking about the shopping experience. (On a previous visit to the Medford store, they were rocking the 80's alternative: The Cure, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Thompson Twins.)

While we're on the subject, let's take a moment to acknowledge the place of disco in music history. Disco was certainly derided and even reviled back in the day, and I'm not sure it's really ever gotten its due, but I'm not embarrassed to say that as a teenager I was a big fan (at least until I saw Elvis Costello on Saturday Night Live and realized there was a whole other universe of music awaiting my discovery). In addition to Top 40 radio, I grew up listening to a lot of my dad's Motown, Sly & the Family Stone, Wilson Pickett, and other soul and R&B acts, so it isn't that surprising that I gravitated toward disco.

I'll be the first to admit that a lot of disco music was lyrically slight (as was, to be fair, plenty of other 70s music), but what I think people tend to forget is that many of the groups were formed around studio musicians and backup bands for solo singers. people who had years of solid playing and performing experience. Chic is an excellent example, as is KC and the Sunshine Band. "Get Down Tonight" is kind of silly, but if you listen to the instruments--the bass, the horns, the electric piano--it kicks ass.

The disco performers just wanted to make music that would make people dance and have fun. I'm going to head to iTunes to look over some disco compilations.

How to Say It

Re: the previous post, be careful not to mispronounce "Oregon" in the presence of an Oregonian. You will be corrected, and quite possibly berated. It does not rhyme with "autobahn," but is almost exactly like saying the word "organ" except with an extra "uh" in the middle.

Similarly, a coworker who lived in Reno for 20 years informed me that the correct pronunciation of "Nevada" should rhyme with "claddagh" and not "armada."

Of Course It Comes with Fries

Kind of a quiet week, leading into the holiday weekend. Work has been slow, which gives me time to troll around the web and find little gems like this.

A diner in Portland, Oregon is serving a cheeseburger on a doughnut. I suppose I could be talked into trying that. Once. Reminds me of those mega-meals I linked to the other day.

And in the same vein, just in case you haven't seen it already, there's this frightening site.

This Week in Awesome (6/28/09)

Damn, I almost forgot again. It's not like I've been so incredibly busy; we went grocery shopping, and when we came back I put out the trash and recycling, then I had dinner and watched some TV... and here we are.

Regardless, let's go. We're all over the place this week. First, an artsy-craftsy person got hold of a stash of unused auto upholstery from the 1970s and is using it to make some pretty bitchin' handbags.

I guess the folks at Consumerist were getting a little hungry, because they started talking about ways to get your entire day's worth of calories in one meal. But I don't think they mean for you to really do it.

Weird products: at first it seems that this video couldn't possibly be real, but it's just too bizarre to be fake. The web site it's from contains a second video for a slightly more specific part of the target audience. But really, who thinks of this stuff? Somehow I suspect it wasn't a woman.

And finally, our old friend Fake Steve Jobs resurfaced this week, first to talk about his new liver, then to post this curiously touching tribute to the celebrities who passed this week.

Driving While Stupid

Every single one of you should go have a look at this article over at Car and Driver magazine's site. (Well, maybe not you, PB, because like me, you don't drive.) They devised a test to compare driving while drunk to driving while reading and sending text messages. Interesting results, to say the least.

Since our society is apparently too self-absorbed and stupid to realize just how dangerous this is (and people who do it will likely end up hurting or killing an innocent person while emerging unscathed but just as self-absorbed and stupid), I really wish some state government had the balls to pass a law making this behavior punishable by something like 90 days in jail and a $5000 fine. (While we're at it, I'm sure drunk driving laws could stand to be strengthened in most places.)

Beer Me, Marge

Over the weekend I attended the American Craft Beer Festival. I was fortunate enough to go as the guest of my friend Sandi, who covers food and drink as Boston Restaurant Examiner. Along with a couple thousand other beer enthusiasts, we filed into the World Trade Center on Saturday afternoon and received our two-ounce plastic tasting vessels.

Actually, they held about four ounces, but there was a two-ounce line marked on them where the breweries were supposed to stop pouring. With unlimited tastings available over the course of three and a half hours (depending on how many times you were willing to stand in line), watching one's overall consumption was a good idea. I also ate a big sandwich beforehand, which helped to absorb some of the beer's effect.

Nearly 80 breweries were in attendance, and nearly 30% of those were Massachusetts companies, which isn't terribly surprising. Other states with strong representation were California, New York, Maine, and Colorado. Given the size of the crowd and its inevitable intoxication, everyone was relaxed and genial; there was no jostling while waiting in line, and periodically someone would initiate a mass toast, resulting in raised arms and a whoop that passed through the crowd like the wave at a ballgame.

Due to the size of the crowd (to say nothing of the body's alcohol tolerance), it was impossible to visit every booth, and equally impossible to try every beer offered at a given booth. Inevitably I missed a few beers I'd wanted to try, but I still found a few choice ones. Bear Republic from Sonoma County, CA makes a mean IPA called Racer 5, as well as other interesting brews. Ommegang, from near Cooperstown, NY, works in Belgian styles, normally not my favorite, but their Witte was subtle and citrusy, and almost didn't taste like beer. Rogue of Oregon is known for its Dead Guy Ale, but its Shakespeare Stout was wonderfully rich and complex.

Probably my favorite of the beers I tried was Sword Swallower Steel Hop Lager from a line called Coney Island Craft Lagers, which is brewed by the people who make He'Brew, The Chosen Beer. The beers are really interesting, and the labels are colorful and evocative of Coney Island's storied history. I'll be picking up some 22-ounce bottles of this one at my local "packie," and from looking at the brewery's events calendar, it looks like they make fairly regular tasting appearances at Boston-area bars and liquor stores, so you too may have a chance to try it soon.

America may no longer be the industrial behemoth it once was, but craft brewing is thriving, and it's obvious from meeting various brewery representatives that they put a great deal of passion and desire for excellence into their work.

This Week in Awesome (6/21/09)

A belated Happy Father's Day to all of you dads out there. And it's a belated TWIA as well, because (a) I was visiting my own dad yesterday, and simply forgot about it when I got home, and (b) I was a little light on content this week. But never fear, the awesome is here...

Supposedly the creator of this colorful bit of roadside art was arrested for his creation. You'd think the highway department would have hired the guy to be its PR liaison, or something. (Jalopnik)

Way, way back in the paleolithic era of television (otherwise known as the 1950s), Jim Henson's Muppets were eking out a showbiz living as advertising spokespuppets (one of them looks a lot like a proto-Kermit). These ads are seriously strange, in a wonderfully twisted way. Just try to imagine a company wanting to run ads like these today. (TV Squad)

The new season of Top Gear premiered last night in the UK. For those of you who don't know, Top Gear is a BBC show about cars that's really more about being ridiculously entertaining than anything else. The Mrs., whose interest in cars covers only that her own car is safe and has gas in the tank, thinks it's terrific. I guarantee you you'll find it far more satisfying than any ludicrous "reality" trash. If your cable or satellite company has the BBC America channel, you can find Top Gear on almost as often as Law & Order reruns are on TNT, USA, Bravo, etc. Anyway, BBC did a couple of cute promo spots for the new season, with boys representing younger versions of the three hosts. (The one in the helmet is their test driver.) (BBC via YouTube)

Another Close Shave

Recently I started noticing that drug stores were no longer carrying my trusted Schick razor, and some of them stopped carrying replacement blade cartridges. I was in need of a new razor handle anyway, so I thought it might be time to revisit the razor question.

I still don't want to use Gillette products, because in my past experience they have gotten dull much too quickly, and I just can't get past the notion that they might be doing that on purpose. (I even keep my razor in a solution called RazorGuard that purports to prolong the life of blades, but with Gillette blades it makes no difference.)

I came across a reference to a Waltham, MA-based company called Preserve that is manufacturing razor handles and toothbrushes out of materials like recycled yogurt containers. I decided to try out the razor, and picked one up at Whole Foods. I wanted to like it, but I could barely get two mediocre shaves out of one blade cartridge. I'm hoping they'll keep trying and will find a way to improve their blades.

My next thought was to go back to Schick and try the Quattro, the four-blade razor that is gradually edging my three-blade out of existence. It was better than the Preserve, but I still wasn't wild about it. I found the solution at BJ's. They're still carrying my preferred razor; in fact, they had so many that I wondered if maybe that's why I can't find it anywhere else. Each package contains a handle and twelve cartridges. Since I only shave a couple of times a week, that will last me a year or so, for $13. Maybe I should buy two, just in case...