December 2008
54 posts
'The City'
NY Mag’s David Amsden tackles MTV’s latest and greatest:
This points to the potentially complicating difference between The City and its predecessor—namely, that The City is being created in a post-Hills universe. To a certain type of young person—abnormally good-looking, independently wealthy, eager for attention—the success of The Hills has created a peculiar opportunity that...
Salt Caramel
If I’m eating dessert…
From the Times:
It has been a challenging year for investors, homeowners and Republican candidates, but 2008 was very lucky for sweet caramel seasoned with fancy salt.
The combination has long enchanted French and American chefs, but this year it became one of those rare flavors that works its way from an elite culinary obsession to the American mass...
Pie 'n' Burger
Last night’s dinner. Highly advisable.
Pasadena since 1963.
Reading as Jenga
Looks pretty, though.
Cannedchance (via Reference Library).
The Press Haberdashery
Irving Press, front left:
From the Times obituary, Nov. 7, 1993:
Born and raised in New Haven, Mr. Press graduated from Yale in 1926 and its law school in 1928, then practiced law in New York for a brief period.
He then joined his brother, Paul Press, and their father, Jacobi Press, who had founded the J. Press store in New Haven in 1902, in developing a line of natural-looking men’s...
1963
Natalie Wood + Steve McQueen:
‘Please Please Me’:
‘Live at the Harlem Square Club’:
The Compact Cassette:
‘Dr. No’ (U.S.):
Lucky Charms:
‘The Freewheelin Bob Dylan’:
JFK’s Civil Rights Address:
‘8 1/2’:
Sandy Koufax (Triple Crown, NL MVP, Cy Young, Hicock Belt, World Series):
‘Ready Steady...
Psychology of Crying
From Softpedia
There are numerous scientific studies that argue the benefits of crying for most people, in terms of letting go of their inner emotions and of whatever bothers them. But a new research, conducted by researchers at the University of South Florida and the Tilburg University, in The Netherlands, shows that these benefits depend entirely on when, where and why crying occurs. The...
NY to Berkeley by Train
From the Times
Taking the train across the United States is a trip of a lifetime, especially since the rails travel through stunning areas of the country where highways don’t reach. It is possible to travel on Amtrak (www.amtrak.com) from New York to Berkeley, going through Colorado and northern Utah, but you’ll need to change trains in Chicago and Sacramento, Cal.
The trip will take at least...
The Upside of the Downturn
The Times reports:
On a recent morning, a 27-year-old skateboarder who goes by the name Josh Peacock peered into a swimming pool in Fresno, Calif., emptied by his own hands — and the foreclosure crisis — and flashed a smile as wide as a half-pipe.
“We have more pools than we know what to do with,” said Mr. Peacock, who lives in Fresno, the Central Valley city where thousands of homes, many...
'A Present from Mother Lucy to Eliza Ann Taylor,'...
From “Heavenly Visions: Shaker Gift Drawings and Gift Songs”: ‘During the spiritual revival known as “Mother Ann’s Work” or the “Era of Manifestations” (1837-1850), Shakers throughout the eastern United States experienced instances of intense communion, believing they served as instruments for heavenly spirits. Moved by a dream state or ecstatic...
The Faces, “Glad and Sorry” (1973)....
Mmm
New York Magazine’s New Year’s Eve Punch suggestions.
Punch bowl service at Weather Up. (Photo: Matilde Delich) (Photo: Melissa Hom)
Pisco Punch (View Recipe) From Audrey Saunders of Pegu Club The original Pisco punch recipe is 150 years old, but Audrey Saunders’s reworking updates the classic with bracing citrus syrups. Home-made pineapple-infused brandy rounds out the...
John List | b. 1925
From the annual Times Magazine “The Lives They Lived” issue:
Wanted
By ELIZABETH McCRACKEN
The lives of the missing begin, “Last seen.” The loved, the important, the engaged by the world: they disappear in an instant. We watch them go. They wander off the security-camera recording, stumble out of the bar drunk. They turn from the tarmac or the dock to the gangway and wave goodbye....
'Miss Peaches'
Etta James, “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” (1966). Good enough to make up for the sweater.
Nina Simone, “Trouble in Mind”...
I Want To Go To There
All-you-can-eat meals with homemade pickles, sausages and maple candy. Count me in.
“Guests sit at long wooden tables, surrounded by walls adorned with moose antlers and old sugar molds. Lively fiddle and accordion music triggers spontaneous dancing and the room fills with joie de vivre.”
Sample menu from Auberge Des Gallant:
·Beets, pickles, home-made ketchup ·Coleslaw with...
Cate Blanchett on... this.
Interview via Interview:
CB: I think the downside of the Internet is that speaking-or writing-has become the point in and of itself. I’m of the opinion that it’s okay to be silent, to not speak if you don’t have anything to say. Someone was talking to me the other day about her teenage daughter who is very creative. Now, to become a painter or a sculptor or a graphic...
Colin Blunstone (1973)
Steinberg + Eames
The Drink
Thanks to construction, the water’s temporarily out at the ancestral Romano estate. What I’m drinking instead:
“Personally crafted by Balvenie Malt Master David Stewart to mark his 45th year in whisky making, The Balvenie Signature 12 Year Old is a skilful marriage of three casks - first fill bourbon barrels, refill casks and sherry butts.
The result of this union is a perfect...
George Lois + R.F.K.
Lois: “As the campaign entered its final week, I was shaky because I feared Kennedy might lose to incumbent senator Kenneth Keating because of a large undecided bloc, including many voters still troubled by the ‘ruthless’ label. I begged Kennedy and his campaign manager, brother-in-law Steve Smith, to let me immediatedly produce and run a 20-second TV spot that would cause...
The Gift I'd Give DBF...
… if I were a millionaire:
Via the recent Sotheby’s auction “‘That sort of Bear’: E.H. Shepard’s Winnie-the-Pooh From the Collections of Stanley J Seeger and Christopher Cone.”
“WINNIE-THE-POOH LIVED IN A FOREST ALL BY HIMSELF UNDER THE NAME OF SANDERS.”
175 by 175mm., ink drawing, signed with initials ‘EHS’ in lower right...
Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Goodnight
Not Bad
Alain Delon. Ferrari 250 GT Spyder California. One lucky blonde.
Photo by Edward Quinn of Riviera Cocktail.
(Knight School, 2008; Photo by zbsachs)
Toasted
Doyle Dane Bernbach shows Don Draper how it’s done (1964):
The Book Is Dead. Long Live the Book.
In which André Bernard (via the Post) memorializes the book industry:
I can’t help thinking that as this year gasps its way to its merciful end, something terribly sad is happening, that a vague, general shift in the cultural landscape will alter how or what we read in some still indefinable way; that a quirky, creaky, financially insupportable business that in spite of itself produces...
Silent, Patient, Toiling Meat
In which the Times slobbers over Peter Luger’s meat box—and the symbolism thereof:
With its old-world furnishings, its blunt, gruff-mannered staff of servers and a starkly (almost unattractive) industrial locale, Peter Luger, which opened in 1887, has always had a traditional appeal. It is at once a memory and an incarnation of everything old and steadfast in New York, on a par in...
The House of Bourbon
As my Newsweek colleague Julia Reed correctly notes, “in light of the recent 75th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition, it seems appropriate—and not just a little necessary, since we are also in the midst of an especially fraught holiday season—to meditate on America’s great contribution to the world of spirits, bourbon whiskey.”
George Washington distilled bourbon at...
Hoops
Damion Berger, via Detour:
'Ballad of the Band'
Felt (1986)
Monkey Business
Natalie Angier of the New York Times reports on the evolution of deceit:
Great apes, for example, make great fakers. Frans B. M. de Waal, a professor at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory University, said chimpanzees or orangutans in captivity sometimes tried to lure human strangers over to their enclosure by holding out a piece of straw while putting on their friendliest...
Brooks
From G. Bruce Boyer’s ‘Elegance’ (1985):
There was a great story in Lawrence Van Gelder’s Metropolitan Diary in the New York Times a couple of years ago about an important-looking, white-haired, well-dressed gentleman standing on a Park Avenue corner, talking with a friend and waiting for the light to change. The white-haired fellow could be heard talking proudly about his...
Vested Interest
Paul:
John:
Me?