eating breakfast with wayne thiebaud (nyt)
"Subjecting Wayne Thiebaud to a $48 breakfast was a mistake.

"The scope of the miscalculation was clear as soon as a sunny, wiry, well-coiffed guy bounded off the elevator, stuck out his hand and said, "I'm Wayne." It was more apparent when he looked at me with dismay and asked, "We're eating here?" But it was crystalline midway through the meal, when he finally admitted that if he had chosen the site, we would have been tucking into cereal with snappier service over at Three Guys, a diner a couple of blocks away on Madison Avenue."
(Friday, June 29, 2001)

wayne thiebaud (nyt)
he is so good. i love the hot dogs!
(Friday, June 29, 2001)

analyzing useit.com
it had to happen eventually. better than webmonkey's rant which didn't even spell jakob's name correctly in the home page blurb.
(Thursday, June 28, 2001)

krugman on power, again (nyt op-ed)
"Why are the state's power plants operating again? More to the point, why weren't they operating back when the state was desperately short of power, and prices were much higher than they are now? Many economists now accept the uncomfortable answer: Generators deliberately withheld electricity from the market in order to drive high prices even higher."

Surprise!
(Wednesday, June 27, 2001)

mayday!
i have two of these lamps. they're fab. i'm thinking that it would be nice to have like six or seven of them, laying around the house. the walls should have hooks placed where i would most likely want to hang them, so i can move them around. maybe i only need two or three, and i can move them from room to room. they throw off a nice light, too.
(Wednesday, June 27, 2001)

bryan boyer's california lexicon
this is nice.
(Monday, June 25, 2001)

ten reasons to like suck.com (ojr)
"But the best of the bitch-slaps were often the briefest. For instance, on Dave Eggers:

"'These days, when the model for youngish, hearth-throbby men of letters is a preening, long-winded Little Lord Fauntleroy given to publishing 10,000-word screeds against reporters who fail to kiss his ass enthusiastically enough - well, we just wonder what kind of message it's sending to the children.'"
(Sunday, June 24, 2001)

terry colon's new yorker cartoons
these are really spot-on.

suddenly, i'm sorry that i stopped reading suck every day sometime around year three.
(Sunday, June 24, 2001)

she wasn't the sexiest geek alive?
I dunno, the fireplace is pretty cheesy, but she's hot stuff. The contest seems pretty silly; at least the winner wore a slide rule strapped to her leg.
(Friday, June 22, 2001)

mosquitos invade houston (nyt)
"In all, 55 species of mosquitoes call Houston home, and even under normal conditions man often wages a losing battle against them. But this outbreak is the worst in memory, said Dr. Ray Parsons, head of Harris County Mosquito Control. He said it was the custom of the different types of floodwater mosquitoes to scatter their eggs in the soil. If there is not much spring rain, the eggs do not hatch. Tropical Storm Allison hammered the region for five days ending June 10 so severely that for one 24-hour period some areas reported nearly three feet of rain. As a result, Dr. Parsons said, millions upon millions of mosquitoes were hatched last week."

This is one of the many reasons I am glad that I no longer live in Houston.
(Friday, June 22, 2001)

first panels of beetle bailey comics... (mcsweeney's)
this would make a great art project. it reads nicely, too.
(Thursday, June 21, 2001)

inside on buckley on a&f soft porn
wonderful!
(Thursday, June 21, 2001)

manute bol, post-nba (nyt)
"I'm a nobody now," he said one day recently as he sat in a taxi speeding across the Nile to go watch a basketball game, "but I'm still somebody for my people. They still love me."
(Wednesday, June 20, 2001)

karl rove's conflicts of interest (slate)
amazing. karl holds hundreds of thousands of dollars in the stocks of the companies he meets with to discuss legislation that would affect them. then he sells the stock after doing something favorable to the company. and yet most news outlets stay quiet, and the democrats let it slide.

it's fucking ludicrous!
(Wednesday, June 20, 2001)

oma! prada! nada? (sfgate)
"'I came to the item prepared to laugh, but (now) I'm not laughing,' board President Tim Kelley told an architect from Koolhaas' firm. 'It's fair to say you intend to challenge (the surroundings), but that may be a good thing. It's an impressive building.'"

I know one of the OMA architects working on this. I think the city ought to be happy; the first time I saw the preliminary renderings it had black walls. It's like New York's preservation laws, in that every time government tries to legislate 'goodness' it manages to have the opposite effect. Neiman Marcus' store is huge and ugly, so hopefully Prada will get its cool tower as cultural recompense. (Marc Jacobs' store isn't far from here, and has a wonderful facade.)
(Tuesday, June 19, 2001)

minimalism finds its true clients (nyt)
"Brother Thomas gave the book as a gift to the abbot, who subsequently visited Mr. Pawson at his famous home in London. 'It was very nice,' said the abbot, with a sly smile, 'for a monastery.' He recalled with a laugh how Mr. Pawson's wife had a hard time answering the telephone because she didn't remember where it was hidden."
(Thursday, June 14, 2001)

the world within these walls (nyt)
"'I've lived in this apartment 36 years. You ever seen a lion in a cage? You leave the door open, and he doesn't go out. He doesn't want to. He just stays. That's how I feel. I could go out, but why?'"
(Saturday, June 9, 2001)

dubya's arrogance bites him in the ass (nyt op-ed)
"The political incompetence that led to Mr. Jeffords's defection hardly squares with the prevailing Beltway view of the Bush White House during its first 100 days. That view, as usual, is best articulated by Washington's Dean, the pundit David Broder, who in February gave the new administration high grades for having "a cabinet of C.E.O.'s, made up mainly of men and women who have run large enterprises." But of course it's exactly the C.E.O.-itis exemplified by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul O'Neill that led the administration to be blindsided, taking the Jeffords rebellion seriously only days after it had been reported by such obscure news outlets as CNN. As one veteran of past administrations and the corporate world puts it: 'C.E.O.'s are used to flying their own planes, seeing only their own subordinates and being accountable to no one. They are profoundly certain of their own value system. They have contempt for the public and the press. They have none of the accountability required of a president of the United States.'"

Lewis also notes that Jenna Bush is "a margarita away from serving 180 days in jail," thanks to the three-strikes law that Dubya signed in Texas.
(Saturday, June 9, 2001)

yep, global warming is real (nyt)
um, surprise.
(Thursday, June 7, 2001)

twa leaves memorabilia behind (nyt)
i know a few people who collect airline china and other things. i only have silverware from a few carriers. it's really handy for picnics and taking your lunch to the office. us air has some great short tumblers with their logo on the sides; i'm hoping to get a few of those before the airline is subsumed into united.
(Thursday, June 7, 2001)

remote keyless entry (nyt)
"Despite their differences, remote unlocking, immobilization and keyless ignition together form the core of a new type of vehicle: the keyless car. Mercedes-Benz and Lexus already have keyless models, and more car manufacturers are likely to jump aboard. It has taken a century, but fumbling for car keys may soon be a thing of the past."

Except... I like keys. Not too many of them, like James Spader's character in Sex Lies and Videotape, but I like the idea of turning a key in the ignition. The new Swiss-army-knife style of keyfob is pretty cool, too.
(Thursday, June 7, 2001)

a [trent] lott of b.s. (nyt)
"Echoing comments he made on a radio show on Wednesday, Mr. Lott also sought in the memorandum to blame Mr. Jeffords, who was elected senator from Vermont in 1988, for the defection.

"'We must ensure that the decision by Senator Jeffords is accurately portrayed, now and for history,' Mr. Lott wrote. 'It was a 'coup of one' that subverted the will of the American votes who elected a Republican majority.'

"Mr. Lott also asserted that the Democrats should not be treated as holding a majority. Democrats, he said, 'hold a plurality, not majority in the Senate,' and 'their effective control of the Senate lacks the moral authority of a mandate from the voters.'"

Wow. Replace the words Democrat, Senate, and Jeffords with Republican, White House, and Rehnquist, respectively. Then you end up with something closer to the truth of what happened in Washington.

I am so hoping that McCain runs as an independent in 2004. Hopefully he'll get fed up and defect soon, too. That would be awesome.
(Sunday, June 3, 2001)