The Mary Tyler Moore font

No 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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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,"