Bubble boy commercial (vw)
This is just fab. Totally captures the mundanity of daily life. Great work.
(Friday, December 20, 2002)

lebron james (espn)
He's going to be on ESPN2 tomorrow night. Dick Vitale is going to call a high school game on national TV. I hope the kid makes it through the hype without completely getting taken advantage of.
(Wednesday, December 11, 2002)

surprise: cheney off the hook for energy task force info (nyt)
"Vice President Dick Cheney won a major victory today when a federal district judge here threw out a suit, brought by the head of the General Accounting Office, to require him to release records of the Bush administration's energy task force, which Mr. Cheney led."

Here's what makes the ruling such a surprise: "Judge Bates, appointed to the bench a year ago by President Bush..." Just another case, like the Supreme Court's decision about Florida's recount in 2000, of judges protecting the politicians who appointed them. Disgusting.
(Tuesday, December 10, 2002)

uniball vision elite 0.5mm
Finally, a pen that's advertised as being airplane-safe. I've been using UniBall's Vision series of roller-ball pens for years and years, and hated the fact that they leaked on airplanes. I'll have a chance to test out the new Elite line this month. Plus, these ones are refillable, which means fewer plastic casings going into landfill.

Now if they'd just make an aluminum version...
(Sunday, December 8, 2002)

hello kitty does stephen sprouse's lv graffiti

(Friday, December 6, 2002)

bombs at ikea (ap via nyt)
"All 10 stores in the Netherlands belonging to the Swedish company were closed while police searched for more explosives.

"'We are taking this drastic measure to protect the safety of our employees,' IKEA said in a statement. 'There are strong indications there may be more explosives.'"

'Soft targets', indeed.
(Wednesday, December 4, 2002)

normand leveille
I just watched a SportsCenter clip on former Bruin Normand Leveille, who was struck by an aneurysm during a game (he'd already scored two goals) when he was just 19.

He still has trouble speaking and walking, but he "founded the 200-acre Normand Leveille Centre seven years ago to provide a country vacation retreat for the disabled, many of whom see only hospitals and nursing homes for most of the year."

A friend of mine also had a stroke at a young age (hers came during finals her senior year of college), but I still can't imagine what the disruption to one's life would be like. Normand can't remember ever playing in the NHL. It falls on tape and memories to do it for him.
(Monday, December 2, 2002)

airlines finally drop business fares (wsj)
"But for a long time, airlines have clung to a belief that business travelers didn't care about the price of their tickets because the cost wasn't coming out of their pockets. When road warriors had to go, they'd pay the price -- no matter how high. So cutting the price for business travelers wouldn't bolster demand, the airlines believed, and no carrier could afford to leave any money on the table at a time of massive losses."

Ah, the beauty and frustration of deluded industries.
(Monday, December 2, 2002)

wallpaper* (nyt magazine)
"Brűlé called the whole thing 'an exercise in optimism.' Others called it 'yuppie porn.' Like it or hate it, though, Wallpaper under Brûlé's reign -- unashamedly aspirational, obsessively stylish, flamboyantly free of care -- captured all the frenzied vacuity of end-of-millennium life."

Wallpaper* will be one of the cultural touchpoints for the late 1990s boom.
(Monday, December 2, 2002)

sonic youth gets melodic on it (nyt)
"Then a few years ago the band decided to rework its old songs and make live shows into retrospectives... And now more than ever Sonic Youth is a true rock band, by which I mean that there is little self-distancing from the basic pleasures of mainstream rock: impact, concision, postures, being in tune. The band members used to cling to amateurishness; the expansion seems to have freed them to let go of it."
(Monday, December 2, 2002)

Nielsen Media Research Local Universe Estimates
Ever wonder how big a television market you live in? (I love that Nielsen calls these "Local Universes.")
(Monday, December 2, 2002)