Gray bunny

Just one more: I can’t recommend enough the This American...

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 05:21:37 -0700

Just one more: I can’t recommend enough the This American Life segment mentioned below.

“Looks good. By the way it has Julian Koenig’s fingerprints all over it.”

Don delivers this backhanded compliment to the painfully hip young pitchmen (the kid with the greaser hair and the Austrian twink) in Season 2. Koenig was a ‘legendary’ ad man of the sixties. He came up with the ‘Lemon’ campaign for Volkswagen — the ad which Don and co. enviously snark on— and the indelible/catchy Timex’s slogan (‘Takes a licking keeps on ticking’). Koenig has been in a year 40 year pissing match with his former creative partner George Lois, the creative mind behind Esquire’s most iconic covers (Incidentally, Esquire is still dry humping Louis’ ideas.)

Above is another Keonig ad . And this is a clip of a This American Life segment did on the Koenig and Lois rivalry. It’s called ‘Mad Man’ and it is dope.

madmenfootnotes: In the way casinos still encourage their...

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 05:13:03 -0700

madmenfootnotes:

In the way casinos still encourage their cocktail waitresses to flirt and seduce in order to glue the clientele to carpet, the airlines were once in the same racket:

“In 1979 I flew to Sweden in SAS, and I still can remember the blondes in the pretty uniforms, their eyes, and their smiles. Which means I noticed (maybe too much, given my passion for the Sweden, Norway, and Denmark—although I blame Lego for that one). Those affable, efficient women hosted the Golden Age of aeronautics, being professional, attentive, sympathetic, and yes, absolutely sexy.”

Here is a solid photo-gallery of all their gloriously kicky outfits.

And for some scathingly brilliant commentary on the ad above click here.

We will always be fans of the “What did you bring me, Daddy?” slogan. Ah, the airlines. Soaring air-buses fueled by our Freudian complexes.

What a fun new tumblr!

I actually like John Hughes movies

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 05:44:44 -0700

… and they meant a lot more to me than the crappy excuses for teen movies we got in the 90s (Clueless excepted, since it’s the best movie of all time). Empire Records and Can’t Hardly Wait!? Are you kidding!? Those movies don’t even have their own personailities, they’re studio-tested-into-blandness bullshit. I log back into tumblr for the first time in two weeks and this is what everybody’s doing— shitting on a guy who died before his time and was the voice of a generation? He may not have spent the last 15-20 years doing great work, but people will still be watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when the movies above are long de-accessioned from film archives for having no cultural or technical relevance (like they were ever there in the first place, heh). Go read this and feel bad about yourselves. And then tell me off the top of your head who wrote and directed the ridiculous movies you’re championing. Yeah, you don’t know, because those people don’t matter. Just because the generation he portrayed wasn’t yours doesn’t mean that he didn’t mean anything.

(whoa, sidenote: I just looked at the creative force behind Can’t Hardly Wait and that is the crappiest body of work imaginable. Wow, that’s sad. I’ll give the writer of Empire Records props for writing Center Stage, a hilariously bad yet still awesome movie, but I think most of its awesomeness comes in the execution, by a too-talented director who makes terrible choices and a cast of amazingly awkward non-actors, rather than from the script)

paulscheer: Amy Poehler, Sarah Silverman, Christina Applegate,...

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:16:30 -0700

paulscheer:

Amy Poehler, Sarah Silverman, Christina Applegate, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mary-Louise Parker and Jane Krakowski—got together for an Emmy round table.

Helena Bonham Carter, please... just stop

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 14:45:10 -0700

danhacker:

We get it, you’re weird and revel in it since apparently that’s the only film role you can do now.

She’s not acting. If she wasn’t already Crazy before, Tim Burton has made her so. They are the scariest famous people I’ve ever seen in person.

And to think, “Room with a View”-era Helena used to be my hero… heroine? You know what I mean.

I don’t know if Jellyfish means anything to any of you,...

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 06:46:55 -0700

I don’t know if Jellyfish means anything to any of you, but if they do, then check out members of Rooney, Jellyfish member Roger Joseph Manning Jr., and one of our favorites Bleu doing a Jellyfish cover, calling themselves MOGUL. They’re great.

The Day Facebook Changed: Messages to Become Public by Default

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:12:16 -0700

The Day Facebook Changed: Messages to Become Public by Default:

This is what Facebook has to say about it. They will prompt you to change or accept your new privacy settings— while the recommended setting will be to share a few things more publicly, you will have the option then and there to keep it all private. I personally have crazy privacy settings on FB: different information available to different groups of people, and I still say next to nothing publicly on there because it’s almost more a professional networking spot for me now than anything else. I’ll be interested to see if I can keep my complicated privacy settings while FB is trying to simplify all of it….

danhacker:

Some more Facebook bullshit that proves once again Facebook is their own worst enemy. Now by default status messages, photos and videos, etc… are visible to the public by default unless you change your privacy settings. So lame Facebook, so very lame…

Twitter is what you make it

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:44:00 -0700

Twitter is what you make it:

“For me, the conversation about Twitter closely resembles the tale of the blind men and the elephant. People are so determined to pin down what Twitter is and is not that they are missing the overall point: that Twitter is everything that people describe it to be. Want to share what you had for breakfast? Go for it. Want to keep tabs on a couple of friends? You got it. Professional networking? It’s there, just do it. Build up an online presence cult of personality? Tweet away, oh future internet trend despot. It is the Web 2.0 Mirror of Erised, a magical looking glass upon which a person can gaze at what they wish to see and input their say in their Twitter feed. How can it possibly be any simpler? While it might not be for everyone, with the proper external tools and some internet elbow grease, it can satisfy the most picky user’s expectations.”

(I’m a personal subscriber to keeping tabs on friends and letting them know what’s going on with me, especially now that I’m across the country from most of my twitter people rather than in the same room with them. Throw in some Brits who make me smile, and voila, that’s my twitter- simple as that)

She reads!

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:56:35 -0700

I actually finished a book! Cormac McCarthy’s The Road was excellent. I even knew what was going on most of the time. (Kidding) (Okay, not kidding, there were a couple times I totally didn’t know what was going on) (I promise I’m not illiterate)

Anyway, I watched the trailer for the movie and am quite worried about how conventional blah blah it looks, so read the book instead. Which you all have probably already done because you do useful and enriching things with your time like reading, while I lie on the couch watching TCM continuously.

Hey, it’s almost work-related for me.Sort of.

Yeah, not really, since now I just catalog TV shows all the time. But someday someone will ask me if Freddie Bartholomew was in the 40s version of The Secret Garden and I’ll say “No, goddamnit, that was Dean Stockwell! Come on!” See how useful I am?

On a related note, my co-workers and I mused at lunch today about what drinks named after child stars other than Shirley Temple would be made of. Hence, my random spouting above about Freddie vs. Dean. We all got weirded out when contemplating the “Rusty Tamblyn”. I’m stopping.

Yeah, I was with you for about 5 minutes, until I read the list...

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 09:21:00 -0700

Yeah, I was with you for about 5 minutes, until I read the list of things I would have to do in order to read this book properly. Aren’t summers for laziness and cold movie theaters? Come back to me when I’m arriving and leaving work in the dark this winter, then I might be more open to homework-like personal enrichment projects.

sharingtime:

Let’s do this!

How to Tell if a Recipe is Cheap and Healthy Just By Looking at it

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:35:29 -0700

How to Tell if a Recipe is Cheap and Healthy Just By Looking at it:

Now that my Kris is a house-husband and endeavoring to make affordable, tasty dinners for us, we have a renewed interest in cooking and just spent the last 45 minutes looking at this site. Now I just have to talk him into the healthy part! Thanks for the link Jess!

jessicalindsey:

Kris at ‘Cheap, Healthy, Good’ has you covered. Tips include things like:

DO choose your source wisely

DO check the number of servings

DON’T dismiss a long list of ingredients outright

DON’T rule out all fatty ingredients

Just discovered this resource and I can already tell it’s going to be one of my daily must-reads!

applebottom: kayfabe: Green Wing is now on Hulu

Fri, 29 May 2009 19:07:30 -0700

applebottom:

kayfabe:

Green Wing is now on Hulu

I’m disappointed in the lack of hysteria over this afternoon’s earthquake. I, for one,...

Tue, 19 May 2009 16:23:40 -0700

I’m disappointed in the lack of hysteria over this afternoon’s earthquake. I, for one, did not feel it, but I am still getting the heck out of Dodge.

THR - NBC renews 'Chuck'!

Sun, 17 May 2009 23:58:13 -0700

THR - NBC renews 'Chuck'!: Hooray hooray! Fedak just had a baby, so he could definitely use another season of paychecks!

danhacker:

” In the battle of Chuck vs. the Network Suits, the Buy More geek has prevailed. NBC has decided to give Josh Schwartz’s well-liked action-comedy another shot next fall.

The network picked up 13 episodes of the series from Warner Bros., which, in a business-side trend this year, made some budget concessions to secure the show a third season.Fans pushed NBC very hard for a pickup, launching a “Save Chuck” campaign that included buying sandwiches at series sponsor Subway.” (via:thr)

I bought my $5 Footlong from Subway to support ‘Chuck’ and it looks like it worked. NBC made the right decision this time.

In the saddest, scariest moments of this cross-country move,...

Sun, 17 May 2009 08:49:07 -0700

In the saddest, scariest moments of this cross-country move, like right now, there’s one thought that calms me down and makes me smile: I’m married to my best friend, and he’s coming with me. Not only that, but he’s excited. I couldn’t ask for more.

Well.

It’d be nice if he’d get out of bed at some point this morning.

Good audiobooks?

Tue, 12 May 2009 17:20:00 -0700

I’m sorry that I now only ask questions of Tumblr; moving across the country in less than a couple weeks has made our lives a bit hectic but not very interesting to anyone but us.

But we will be driving cross-country beginning on Memorial Day, and I’m looking for some audio book recommendations. The last few I’ve tried have been failures- either books too free-form to listen to (like THE ROAD, which I’m now reading) or those with terrible readers (reader of BLOOD MERIDIAN had ridiculous mouth noise). And those just both happen to be Cormac McCarthy.

So you know what’s good- quality readers reading something that’s easily followed while still being complicated or interesting enough to be engaging. I, personally, would probably listen to Stephen Fry reading me every Harry Potter book again, but Kris doesn’t have that kind of tolerance for repetition. Thoughts are appreciated!

Neutral Milk Hotel Album Transformed for Stage

Tue, 12 May 2009 17:11:38 -0700

Neutral Milk Hotel Album Transformed for Stage:

hipsterdiet:

(via blairports)

I'm almost finally allowed to say it

Thu, 07 May 2009 16:25:36 -0700

I haven’t been posting partially because I had crazy big news that I wasn’t allowed to share, but I got the official word and am just declaring it sharing time.

I’m leaving the beautiful, silly place I work and Los Angeles and the west coast altogether to take a job at another beautiful, though maybe slightly-less-silly place: the National Audiovisual Conservation Center, home to the Library of Congress’s motion picture department. Kris and I are overjoyed to be headed back to the east coast, more homey-feeling territory closer to our family and with a more reasonable cost of living.

But I’ve been in LA six years, and I admit that I will miss it. The tacos. The not having to look at the weather because it’s always the same. But mostly I’m going to miss my job and all the crazy people I work with, to the point that I can’t type this sentence without crying. It’s pretty much the only real job I’ve ever had, and I know more than anyone how lucky I’ve been to have had this experience.

God, I can’t believe we’re going to have to pay for movies from now on.

I start a month from tomorrow. If you find yourself near Culpeper, VA and want to check out the awesomest place ever built for a film collection, let me know.

"And here, my friends, is the problem with Twitter: Everyone wants to believe that everyone else..."

Sun, 03 May 2009 00:07:31 -0700

“And here, my friends, is the problem with Twitter: Everyone wants to believe that everyone else thinks they’re important, because everyone, at their core, is a narcissist. And how better to give yourself an inflated sense of importance, than to think that there are groups of people who are reading a 140 word post you’ve written that says, “Going to the store to look for cereal. Hope they have Chex!””

- Oh, You Have 70 Thousand Twitter Followers? Congratulations, Shitbag. (via jessicalindsey)

Yes, the guy referenced is of course a total douche. Ugh, “People have called me…” But, can’t you just replace the word Twitter in this quote with Tumblr, or blogging, or Facebook status updates? Except that in some other venues, you’re asking people for more of their time to read your crap that doesn’t matter? We all do it in all sorts of places- singling out Twitter as being inherently douchey doesn’t really make any sense. Because I kind of just like to know what my favorite British people and favorite people in real life are up to. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t follow them. And I certainly don’t expect anyone to follow me- it’s just an easy way for me to keep tabs on what I’ve been doing because I have the memory of a goldfish these days. Plus, now my officemate and I don’t have to have the “How was your weekend?” conversation on Monday mornings because we already know. Sometimes we don’t even talk to each other at all on Mondays. Okay, that’s not really healthy, but it makes me laugh.

I just have to say....

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:35:26 -0700

I’m on a plane, on the internet. I love you, Virgin America, and your $99 each way cross country flights!