I'm not sure why I started reading for pleasure two separate novels on the eve of the new semester, but I did. Maybe I'm trying to squeeze a few more drops of summer out of the first week of classes, before my reading for work grows too heavy. First up is Hari Kunzru's Transmission. The… Continue reading Kunzru’s Transmission and Gaiman’s Coraline
Category: Nostalgia
Let Us Now Praise the Tater Tot
photo credit: JaseMan I've always suspected that Tater Tots were the ultimate comfort food. Something about them calls us back to childhood, back to the deep fried goodness of elementary school cafeterias. Even full grown adults are susceptible, drawn to the warm potatoesque mush inside and the crunchy, flaky shell outside. Some salt and some… Continue reading Let Us Now Praise the Tater Tot
My musty old comic books
Adam and I have been friends for over thirty years -- he's one of the few people I regularly keep in touch with from my childhood. And lately Adam's been mining our childhood for memories of our individual and collective comic book "habit," writing some wonderful reflections upon comic books and what they've meant to… Continue reading My musty old comic books
The World Trade Center (from the archives)
Lately I've been reading up on the history of the World Trade Center. It's easy to forget, in this post-9/11 world, that for most of their life the Twin Towers were reviled. One of the most prominent critics was Wolf Von Eckardt, the Washington Post's eminent architectural critic. Upon seeing Minoru Yamasaki's model for the… Continue reading The World Trade Center (from the archives)
Mergers and Acquisitions
The recently proposed merger between JP Morgan Chase and Bank One has got me thinking about the ways that multinational corporations work. Never forget that these two "banks" are really corporations -- meaning that their primary concern is, always, to make more money. And, ironically, to make more money at any cost. The cost, unfortunately,… Continue reading Mergers and Acquisitions
In LA this week
In LA this week I met a former animator for Disney who now designs murals and sculptures for the Disney Stores. Right now he's working on a Goofy sculpture for the Disney Store in Paris. He told me that every detail of the three-dimensional Goofy---the length of the ears, the diameter of the eyeballs, the… Continue reading In LA this week