2010
You are browsing the archive for 2010.
And then it’s summer again. Somehow it catches me by surprise every year. It always feels sudden, even when the weather has been circling around the inevitable conclusion for weeks, as if sighing and giving me time to get acclimated. Yesterday, a long and aimless walk through intermittent rain, a surprise eye-candy carnival, and a [...]
I love the websites of little hotels and B&B’s. There’s something sweet about how uniformly lo-fi and ugly they are, all the scrappy bells and whistles of the early internet hurled at one page. It’s like they’re trying to seduce and repel you at the same time, but because you know what to expect when [...]
what i was doing in 1994
I was 12 years old. This was typed on a typewriter, and signed in ballpoint pen.
In this article about a Boston University graduation ceremony held 40 years after the fact, Peter Simon (photographer and member of the Class of 1970) points out the all around awesomeness of his generation. “Mr. Simon said that when he speaks about his photography around the country, students frequently say to him, ‘God, I wish [...]
At the bagel place yesterday, there were monstrous Mother’s Day cupcake-muffin hybrids taking over much of the counter. They must have been corn muffins, the kind that are so dense they can do real damage to anything they’re thrown at. In general, eating them is not the greatest idea, but these ones were practically pulsing [...]
I was reading the New Yorker on the subway the other day, and saw this ad. It took up a full page, and there was a full-color shot of Michael Phelps, dripping wet, on the facing page.
They’re really milking that swimming metaphor, huh? If anything, I’d say we “swim” in the Internet and “surf” magazines [...]
This weekend’s Times Magazine story about how people who lost their spouses in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake are now getting remarried to each other (with some help from the Chinese government), reminded me of this pretty amazing 2004 piece about NYC firefighters who left their wives for 9/11 widows.
Virginia Heffernan contemplates the lost art of the analog datebook, with this caveat: “As a committed user of the BlackBerry, Kindle, MacBook Pro and World Wide Web, I rarely get nostalgic for print.” Conclusion? “You never know what you’re going to miss.”
The new book Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, points out that [...]
what’s your flavor?
I’m used to perfume being marketed as something that should complement the essence of my being, but this commercial points out a missed opportunity: My marinade sauce should really capture my personality, too.
Who needs therapy? Lawry’s sauce understands you.
“I’m always exciting, and a little exotic.” Then sesame ginger is your sauce! “I’m earthy, with a [...]
Last year, upon watching a six-hour DVD of the BBC documentary, The Story of India, our creative director realized that his three-year-long suspicion was indeed correct–that India, a subcontinent grandly described as “a land of a one billion people, 400 languages, and 33 million gods” by writer, historian, and documentary narrator Michael Wood, would serve [...]