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This blog covers everything except sports and gardening, unless we find a really good link about using dead professional bowlers for mulch. The author is a StarTribune columnist, has been passing off fiction and hyperbole as insight since 1997, has run his own website since the Jurassic era of AOL, and was online when today’s college sophomores were a year away from being born. So get off his lawn.
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"Twin Peaks" returning to TV?
Posted by: James Lileks Updated: January 3, 2013 - 12:28 PM
That gum you like may be coming back in style. Uproxx says:
For years, creators David Lynch and Mark Frost have discussed the possibility of Twin Peaks, which aired on ABC from 1990-1991, returning to TV, most recently in SciFi Now, where Frost said bringing the show back is “something we talk about from time to time…If we ever do decide to move forward, I know we have a rich trove to draw from.”
Is it going to happen? Did David Lynch meet with NBC to talk about bringing Twin Peaks back?As far as I can tell, the rumor is based on a tweet. Which seems to be based on a screencap from some board.
I’m not clearing out space on the DVR yet.
If it happens, that's good news. This is where you say "no, it's bad news, because the show was stupid and overrated Yuppie tripe and Lynch is overrated and I hated it so you should too." Noted. But there are still fans, as much as that may bother youu. Sorry! Have some pity for people who had to live with tbe worst cliffhanger in the history of TV: your hero is trapped in the underworld and has been possessed by an ancient murderous spirit. The end.
If they picked it up 20 years after the show ended, that would mean that Agent Cooper had been harboring the evil spirit for two decades while working as an FBI agent. A rich trove indeed - but would we really want the show to return if Dale’s the bad guy? Most people want the old ticks and traits, the damn-good-coffee and pie-fetish conversation, the creepy quirky locals, Audrey tying cherry stems, and so on.
Wouldn’t be opposed to a “Gravity Falls / X-Files” crossover. Not at all.
WEB CULTURE Today's site you probably can’t get to load: the Beat. Giz says:
As if Instagram wasn't already an amazing way to snoop on what people are doing around the entire planet, a new website called The Beat lets you see exactly where the photographs were taken, too.Put together by Rutgers' Social Media Information Lab, the site uses Instagram's API to tie geotagged photos to their physical location captured in Google's Street View.
They seem to have crashed the server, so bookmark it and go back in a few months. If you care, that is. If you have friends who are on Instagram but don’t give much thought to things like “settings” and “privacy,” you may want to tell them to rethink the wisdom of adding geotags to everything. Or posting everything on the Internet.
In related news: Years ago I kidded Jason DeRusha for being on Tumblr - man, that was fun in 2007 or ’08, but no one’s there anymore. You’e going to be the last man on it when they turn off the lights. Brilliant prognosticating, eh? Last year tumblr had 86 million blogs and a 39 billion posts, total. THIRTY-NINE BILLION. I’d guess that half the 86 million blogs are ghost towns, and half the remaining amounts are full of pron gifs, but it’s a great platform for people who aren’t very good with words, or putting lots of words together. Pictures, quick hits, quotes - it’s good for people who don’t want to spend a lot of time tending Facebook, or want a hole they can climb into and carry on conversations in the dark with like-minded people. It’s mostly 25 and under. If you’re older, and female, there’s Pinterest. If you’re older, and male, there’s . . . I don’t know. I’m on tumblr, and use it for old amusing advertisements. Others can use the exact same platform for gifs of cats reacting to pictures of oral surgery. It’s rather flexible. But how can it make money? some ask. That’s the internet today: 39 billion posts, and no clear path to profit.
This is Tumblr’s make-or-break year, where it needs to prove three things: That it can continue the growth. That it can actually make money. And that David Karp, the creative genius and quintessential minimalist, is the right guy to lead Tumblr to glory. “The road is littered with dead companies that made the wrong move at the wrong time, the MySpaces of the world,” says Gartner analyst Brian Blau. “They’ve got to be really careful.”
A consultant will probably take a big pile of money and tell them to A) charge money, or B) sell ads. If they charged money, everyone would go away. If they sold ads, everyone would complain, and stay. Whatever they do, they need to do it soon:
Tumblr spent an estimated $25 million on its operation last year and will likely have to shell out up to $40 million this year.
On what? Bandwidth, sure. Salaries, yes. But it’s not like they have a huge team of crack developers beavering away at wonderful new features; as far as I can tell, it hasn’t changed in a few years at all, aside from being slightly more reliable. Queued posts still have a way of vanishing in a puff of incorporeal bits, which is one of the reasons I left for Posterous a few years ago. I thought I was part of the vanguard, too: hey, everyone’s going to Posterous! C’mon, guys! It’s the next Tumblr! A year later tumbleweeds were blowing through the site. It was bought by Twitter, which doesn’t seem to know what to do with it - except wait for all the people who leave Tumblr when it asks people for a dollar a month. Which would be an OUTRAGE. I mean, that’s like, one-fourth of a cup of coffee.
URG Flu season is one thing; norovirus season is another. We used to call it the “stomach flu’” until we wised up; there’s no such thing. It’s either food poisoning of something like the norovirus. This article details why it’s such a nasty virus, and how it works its magic. Bookmark it. Read it two hours from now. Fun facts:
The name norovirus comes from Norwalk, Ohio, where it was first isolated from a school during a 1968 outbreak.
Also:
While healthy people can clear out a norovirus after a couple of exhausting days, the virus can cling to people with weak immune systems for months or even years.
That’s it. I’m never leaving the house again. “How long have you had this stomach bug?” “Oh, gotta be going on six years now.”
That's it for today; off to write the column. See you around.
The Mary Tyler Moore font
Posted by: James Lileks Updated: December 31, 2012 - 12:29 PMNo lists! Okay, one list. It’s the law. But first:
MOVIES The lowest grossing film of 2012 was “Playback,” with Christian Slater. It made $265. Sometimes these “releases” are just technicalities, done for legal reasons. The story notes that the lowest-grossing wide release is the “Oogieloves in the BIG Balloon Adventure,” which opened in over 2,000 theaters and took in about $448,000. Never has a creative vision been so roundly rejected, and for good reason; that thing made the Teletubbies look like a Lars Von Trier film.
It’s also a reminder about the power of advertising: marketing costs were $40 million. Didn’t do a thing.
HISTORY In 1966 Henry Ford II commissioned a redesign of the classic Ford logo. The man who’d done UPS, IBM, Bell and others came up with this - which Ford rejected. I think I know why: it’s the R.
The more they looked at it the more it bothered them.The more I look at it, it looks like a little man is pulling “Fo” behind him. Full story is here.
LIST Here’s a list of Most Hated Fonts. Are these the most hated fonts of 2012? No. Can’t find a list of hated fonts for the last year; it takes years for the hate to build up. People can be interested in Lobster at the start of the year, tired of it six months later, disappointed with sites that use it three months later. True hate builds up. There’s Peignot, aka the Mary Tyler Moore font. Agreed.
One of the designers says Brush Script is worse than Comic Sans; men have dueled with pistols at high noon over less serious charges.
Brush Script was originally designed by Robert E. Smith, and released into the wild by American Type Founders in 1942.
Released into the jungle? you ask. No, “in the wild” was a term for the general world, and made the list of “Most Hated Internet Writing Cliches” back in 2007.We continue:
. In his book “Just My Type,” author Simon Garfield mentions that “if you were ever persuaded by government posters to bathe with a friend or dig for victory, then the persuading was probably done in Brush Script.” I cannot fathom why the public as a whole would be subjected to such a font, especially when compared to the much more clean-cut and graphically appealing nature of Gil Sans (from “Keep Calm and Carry On” fame).
Perhaps he could fathom why the public as a half- or quarter-whole could be subjected to it. In case you need to be reminded:
Perhaps he could do quick google search and look at the many propaganda posters online, few of which seem to use Brush Script. And by “few” I mean “None as far as I can tell.” Big blunt sans-serifs abound. But perhaps Simon was exaggerating for the sake of having some fun. Hah! Dig for victory. Right.
Maybe not. Here’s where I begin to wonder about this typographic expert, Mr. Garfield:
While Brush Script is supposed to be a “quaint and consistent type that looked as if it was written by a fluid, carefree human,” Garfield points out that “no one you had ever met actually wrote like that.”
You could say the same thing about virtually every piece of handwritten typography in advertising. The author goes on to note that Brush Script has spawned other script fonts.
People aren’t fooled – there’s not a string quartet sitting in your living room, waiting to play a merry little entrance march to announce the arrival of a dinner guest. And Brush Script isn’t the work of a caring sign-painter or concerned matron giving you a kind-but-necessary reminder in the form of a handwritten little note.
It’s probably sufficient to say the font was over-used, since it came pre-loaded on so many machines, and should be avoided. I think that sums it up and no one’s embarrassed.
Then it’s three knock-out blows. I can agree with the last three choices entirely. But here’s the conclusion:
There are hundreds of thousands of fonts and typefaces to choose from, each with their own characteristics and personalities. But, that doesn’t mean you can use them all. If there is one little nugget of advice we can give on choosing the perfect font to support your message – imagine the font as a great actor and ask yourself, “Is it James Cagney or Jimmy Stewart, or is it Richard Little doing James Cagney or Jimmy Stewart?” Avoid the font that’s trying to be something it’s not, and go for the classics.
Mistral, one of the hated fonts, hails from the 80s. Peignot is from the 70s. The most hated of all, Hobo, can be found in 1920s magazines.
In other words, classics.
MEDIA Came across this review of Young Frankenstein, one of my favorite movies. The site’s nicely designed, has upscale ads, and a thriving forum with over a quarter-million posts in the “General horror” forum alone.
As for specific horror, here’s what popped up in my Zite feed today. I assume people are paid for this.
From the opening black and white sequence in Young Frankenstein, that conveys a strongly ominous and foreboding atmosphere I believe what is immediately clear is the respect that Mel Brooks and his cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld has for the original 1930 films.
I mention this in case your New Years Resolutions include “reading as many high-school English assignments as possible. Really, it’s all like that: stating the obvious in a tone that mistakes “wordy” for “insightful,”
Crucially the contrasting black and white cinematographic style allows the audience to appreciate the originals strong influences of german expressionist cinema. What also so effectively conveys the original are the suitably impressive and detailed sets which helps to continue this aesthetic throughout the film’s running time.A distinct and strong sense of atmosphere is also achieved so well through the suitably grand and fine musical score by John Morris. From these various elements we can only assume that that the production crew oversaw extensive research on the original James Whale films.
Yeah, one might assume that. Otherwise the similarities between the Whale films and Brook’s version might be absolutely coincidental.
Love to see what he writes about Oogieloves, though. Happy New Year!
Another World's Tallest Building
Posted by: James Lileks Updated: December 27, 2012 - 12:56 PMToday’s appliance term you never knew until it breaks: Actuator. I’ll explain later.
#HASHTAG The worst social-media “fails” of the year. We used to have another word for these things - mistakes, failures - but “Fail” is apparently sufficient these days. Even though it sounds so 2010. Somehow I missed this one, which came out in the aftermath of the Aurora movie-theater shooting:
Yikes.
GEEK Shocker! Peter Parker is dead! But his consciousness survives in the mind of Dr. Octopus, who will now be Spider-Man.
That’ll last. Can’t see them coming back with Spider-Man in accustomed Parker form. I mean, he’s dead! They can’t do anything about that! I give it a year before someone grows Peter from some DNA they find on a comb, or they restart everything by going back to the origin story and starting again. That’ll be interesting. If there’s anything people are eager to see retold, it’s Spider-Man’s origin story - which, in the original, I believe, consisted of two panels. Or three? Checking . . . .
Yes, that’s about it. In related news: Jack Kirby is still regarded as one of the greatest comic artists, so it’s a bit odd to find out he did the comic version of Disney’s sci-fi misfire, “The Black Hole.” Regardez! (It’s in French.)
ARCHITECTURE Here’s a new museum in San Francisco, named as “one of the buildings to watch in 2013.” It’s an interesting thing that appears to be pre-collapsed for your convenience:
That will be a nice view for the hundred or so people who see it. Most people will see it from the street, where the building gives everyone a blank wall punctuated with a few windows.
The underwhelming One World Trade Center is another building to watch, although I’ve no idea why; is it scheduled to do something interesting, like shed its skin and reveal a beautiful structure that’s been hiding all along?
And then there’s Sky City. It will be the tallest building in the world. Built in China.
It will be constructed in three months.
Two hundred and twenty stories.
It has the massing of traditional 30s skyscrapers with none of the grace. Also, it’s a conceptual failure, says Christian Sottile, SCAD Dean of the School of Building Arts:
if you look at the outcome of this endeavor urbanistically, it is at best a folly, and at worst, madness. The proposition that a city can be contained within one building is unnatural and devastating to the human spirit. This project would, however, not be the first to propose such an end. It follows a long tradition of audacious architecture attempting to rethink the city. But in the end, the city always wins. I am speaking of the evolved city of over 7,000 years of transcultural human history — cities that honor the human being, as well as the art, craft, culture and resources of places.
Other than that, it’s a home run. If I lived on top of a 220-story building, I wouldn’t exactly be reassured that its builders were trying set a world record for fast construction.
As for other new structures that try to push the boundaries of architecture, tell me this doesn’t look like it will disgorge a billion bees some day.
This one just looks embarrassed for itself.
THE ACTUATOR EXPLANATION It’s the thing that makes the ice come out of the front of a refrigerator. The one I had was made of plastic - wise choice, Electrolux, for something people shove six or seven times a day with a hard object! Because the electrician had to disconnect the power, and because he wanted to cut the power at the fuse box, and because he didn’t know which fuse was the right one, he cut power to my home office, and when the computer came back on the fans were blowing in full panic mode, and haven’t stopped. All because of a cheap piece of plastic.
Well, as the philosophers say, everything is connected.
UPDATE: Infant-snatching eagle was faked
Posted by: James Lileks Updated: December 19, 2012 - 1:44 PMLate and short, that’s me. Okay:
TIS THE SEASON ETC The sad life of a Novelty Christmas Wreath.
ART This is, perhaps, the golden age of beer label design.
YIKES Eagle tries to snatch a child. Video has swearing, so the usual rules apply against embedding. It’s here. Thanks, uploader, but “Chariots of Fire” was not the wisest soundtrack choice.
By the way: this is not a repeat from 1907, as they say on Fark. Except it is.
UPDATE: that was fast. Fakery revealed, here.
ARCHITECTURE We were talking about architecture the other day. Well, I was. Here's another new project, the Velo - it will no doubt be nice to live in, with Amenties and things, but lacks pizzazz:
The rain has passed, it’s twilight, and everyone’s home.
Got a press release on this one, down in the Mill district on the English side of the river. Starting to see a pattern?
Mill & Main. Great views, judging from the website It uses materials common to the area, which is nice, but suffers from the blocky sameness that affects the genre these days. The large windows are nice, and I’m not saying they should all wear an oversized Mansard roof like the craptacular apartments of the late 60s and early 70s, but would it kill you to put a cornice on one of these guys? Back in college a bartender at the restaurant where I worked was an architecture major, and delighted in telling me how he shocked his teachers by putting “An (expletive) hipped roof” on a house for an assignment. So bourgeoise! That’s what it took to be a rebel: make your house look like a 1962 rambler.
Obviously you’re going to want the most floor-space the plot permits. But these designs seem to defeat the possibility of ornamentation - anything tacked on the severe surfaces would just look, well, tacked on, like an I-Beam welded to the side of the Seagrams Building to impart the idea of Miesian purity.
Still, the Seagrams is a pretty handsome building.
Back to column work; see you around.
Clint Eastwood in Mime Form
Posted by: James Lileks Updated: December 12, 2012 - 12:12 PMLet's see if I can time this so the date stamp is 12:12 12/12/12.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Updated Seinfeld Twitter feed has “gone viral.”
@seinfeldtoday, a new Twitter feed that imagines what Seinfeld episodes might be like if the '90s sitcom were still on the the air, sprang up two days ago and already has more than 122,00 followers.The feed features haiku-like descriptions of potential new episodes set in today's world of the Internet and Twitter.
For example, a recent tweet: "Jerry discovers Newman is secretly an Internet famous fan fiction writer. George gets aroused reading 50 Shades of Grey, questions self."
There was movement! I was more interested in a story in the sidebar: Jerry Seinfeld Defends Use of the Word 'Really' in Angry Letter to New York Times Critic Really? Really? Really.
REALITY Local man writes run-on sentence, because of reasons:
In a lawsuit that threatens to throw back the door on Storage Wars and reveal all the unbelievable things that just happen to be hidden there totally by coincidence, a former cast member of the A&E show has sued its producers and the network, alleging that it is nothing but a staged "fraud on the public." David Hester—a frequent purchaser of abandoned storage units known on the show as "The Mogul," because of irony—has claimed that A&E "regularly plants valuable items or memorabilia" inside the storage lockers that he and other cast members bid on, such as a BMW Mini and "newspapers chronicling Elvis Presley's death" that are really valuable, we guess.
Really? As long as “Hoarders” is real, my world remains intact.
In related entertainment news: If you're getting tweets that says Gandalf has cancer, his agent says no.
INTERNET It only took 42 hours before Ikea Monkey was mashed with Ruined Icon. Obvious, yes, but well done.
The rest of the Buzzfeed entries suggest that inspiration is beginning to leak out of the internet. A Worth1000 contest it’s not. Speaking of which: you need to see these celebrities in Mime Form.
And speaking of the lady we know as the Fresco Ruiner: she’s selling her own work on eBay now. Like this.
TECH This story popped up in my Zite feed for “Minneapolis,” which always tosses out the oddest things. This is either your idea of an interesting interactive opportunity, or hell: Nibletz reports on a local photo-tagging social-network / floor polish / dessert topping app, Peerparazzi.
Peerparazzi says they provide an exciting new picture taking and social experience. Everything in the photo can be tagged, the people, places and things. Tagging photos within Peerparazzi allows you to automatically send the photos to the people that are in them. On the business side, businesses can claim themselves in photos so that tags become interactive. A tag for a Wendy’s or McDonald’s could send a user to an interactive promotion. A tag for a shopping mall could send out a daily deal. A tag for a museum could send a user to a website. Peerparazzi founder Damen Johnson believes that people are more likely to interact with product photos shot by their friends and family rather than just regular advertising.
Maybe I’m just thick and old, but I don’t get the point. There’s a link to the angellist site where people put up ideas and wave their hands, hoping investors notice. The description:
With Peerparazzi we create a fun interactive way to get your picture taken. You check into a location like foursquare and take pictures like instagram. The unique thing about it is you take pictures for others checked into the location and have your picture taken by them. You earn points that go towards your social celebrity status. All of your activities and tags within your photos can become ads for the locations and businesses once they set up an account and claim their locations and tags.
Good luck to them; I'm sure there's an audience. Personally, I think: Why? For God’s sake, why? Granted, I’m not the target market here, because I’ve never checked in to Fours quare for anything, although the service is useful for identifying people you want to unfollow on Twitter. Oh who’s the mayor of the Lake Harriet Bandshell Ice Cream Stand? You are? What sort of Borgia-like political strife went on behind the scenes to elevate you to that lordly position? I use the most basic tags imaginable on my own Instagram photos, because I really don’t care if they come up in a search for old rusty neon signs don’t even tag my own computer files, because my own filing system is so obvious, clean, and logical, that I’m never more than four or five folder clicks away from what I need. Unless it’s a pdf of the dog’s rabies vaccination record from 2002. That stuff’s on CDs in the basement. (Numbered, arranged chronologically on a spindle.)
But! If you want to add tags and help businesses and get ads and think that this increases your social celebrity status, to use a phrase that sums up everything annoying with contemporary culture, go ahead. This app had better include filters, though. Everything needs filters. Twitter just added filters to their own picture-posting features, lest any shot of a heart drawn in coffee foam NOT look like a faded Instamatic shot from 1973.
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recent posts
- High-level Griefers
- "Twin Peaks" returning to TV?
- Let's clone some French Kings
- The Mary Tyler Moore font
- Another World's Tallest Building
- USB Toast. About time.
- Are Apple Store employees peeking at your files?
- UPDATE: Infant-snatching eagle was faked
- Will you quit Instagram now?
- The Sloooow Internet
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- Clint Eastwood in Mime Form
- Snow Emergency Rules in Song Form
- Martian moon may be hollow, cranks say
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- The new (old) Star Trek villain
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