Archive for August, 2007

Dolly Dolly Dolly

August 29th, 2007

What with three manga book cover designs due on the same day, the workload ran so heavy today that I’ll likely be dreaming of saucer-eyed warrior women wearing thigh high leather boots tonight. One thing that made the day go by a little faster was listening to Andrew Dupuy’s fun audio essay on Dolly Parton’s […]

Extinct Attractions Club

August 27th, 2007

MSN catches a contributor in a nostalgic mood: 10 Things I Miss About Disneyland. A good article, although I think a lot of this second-hand nostalgia tends to gloss over the fact that some of those old rides may have not been all that. Sure, the Monsanto House of the Future looks way cool in […]

Indestructibles 4: Revenge of the Girls

August 25th, 2007

Last year I wrote about the “indestructibles”, my arbitrarily-chosen word for songs that hold up well to multiple interpretations by different artists, and now’s a good time to revisit that idea. Looking through my iTunes collection, I’ve listed the songs recorded by at least three different performers below (the ones that weren’t covered in the […]

Housing Developments

August 24th, 2007

Funny stuff: the Phoenix New Times‘ Robrt L. Pela begins a new column, Surreal Estate, with a piece on the new faux-Italian apartment complex bordering the busy I-17 freeway. This reminds me of when I went apartment hunting back in 1994. Looking for places in the East Valley (Tempe/Chandler/Mesa), I used the Arizona Republic listings […]

Big Fat Link Log 2

August 22nd, 2007

Looking back, it’s been a year since I posted My Big Fat Link Log with the intent of an annual refresh — so it’s high time to do an update. So in case you were wondering what I waste my precious daytime hours on while I should be working, here you go. Surprisingly I got […]

White on White Books

August 19th, 2007

We love our cat Eero. Even so, she’s fond of getting into places she shouldn’t be — like the five foot high shelf in our living room. To deter her I got a little book holder and filled it full of books with white, off-white and beige jackets to take up most of the shelf […]

Merv-elous Game Shows

August 16th, 2007

I’m setting the TiVo this weekend — GSN will be airing their Merv Griffin tribute which will include a Wheel of Fortune marathon Saturday and a Jeopardy marathon Sunday. What really excites me is that among the Wheels will be an early, Chuck Woolery-hosted episode and Vanna White’s first show from 25 years ago. Those […]

Concrete Reasoning

August 14th, 2007

Last weekend we caught a photography show called Midcentury Modern Buildngs in Phoenix at the local library. The Phoenix metro area doesn’t have a whole lot of eccentric midcentury architecture, but what we do have is something to be cherished. I’m glad to see a gallery of prints celebrating this stuff before short-sighted developers destroy […]

The Electric Light Orchestra/Animation Connection

August 12th, 2007

Recently I bought one of the recently marked-down Simpsons DVD box sets at Amazon. Needing something else to qualify for freee Super Saver shipping, I tossed in a copy of The Essential Electric Light Orchestra. Now, this was a band that I liked as a kid. I can remember having my mom buy me a […]

Looky Lou

August 10th, 2007

Spurred on by my illustrations from The New England Cookbook scrubbles post, Ward Jenkins has unearthed more of artist Lou Peters’ wonderfully versatile work from vintage cookbooks. This appetizer artwork is as elegant as the New England stuff is whimsical. The fact that this guy was somewhat prolific, yet doing ephemeral cookbooks for desperate ’50s […]

Thought-Provoking Weblogs

August 9th, 2007

I was thrilled to find that Ivan at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear tagged me with a blogging meme — and for once it’s a good one (Ivan also had some sweet things to say about scrubbles.net in his post). The basic jist of the meme is to select five “blogs that make you think” and […]

Sugar Sugar

August 7th, 2007

Last week me and Christopher (both natives of the Phoenix area) got to talking about the fondly remembered local businesses that we used to enjoy as kids. One of the first places that came up was Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlours. I used to love going the location in Tempe, which back in the ’70s was […]

They’re Special. They’re Exactly Like Me!

August 6th, 2007

The Washington Post on the long, complicated history of the Celebrity Profile (via ArtsJournal). Reading this made me think back on my time in the magazine world, and how depressingly samey everything is made out to be. Whether the subject is celebrities or cats or the hottest tractors, every magazine has to have the requisite […]

Bald Guy vs. Fat Guy

August 3rd, 2007

Very cool — digitized film reviews from Siskel & Ebert going back to 1987 are now viewable at atthemoviestv.com. Although it would be fun to revisit what they thought of the good movies, of course I had to immediately check out the worst ones. The first film I looked up, the 1996 crapfest Space Jam, […]