Game-ism’s most recent post is about Nike’s designs for this summer’s Olympics, and there’s a lot of really cool stuff there, including the Ippeas–a riding boot designed by Nike, drawing from motocross, track & field, and other sports’ designs. It’s pretty fascinating how Nike applied contemporary design to a very traditional sport:
I am planning a trip to each of the cities named in this post’s title between July 31 and August 10. I’m still hammering out the details, so if you live in one of them, or will just happen to be in one of them over that span,1 let me know.
1 Between my friends’ going to grad school and their general aimless wandering, I don’t even know who I know in any of those cities anymore.
Feb 152008
I really enjoyed this Washington Post story about Tokyo’s surfeit of great restaurants. The Michelin guide just released its first edition covering the city, canvassing its 160,000 restaurants (almost eight times as many as New York City) and granting an astonishing 191 stars (Paris has 98, NYC 54). The story is kind of about that, but it’s mostly just a snapshot of a cooking culture that values integrity, diligence, and freshness.
The curry bun is a sweet doughnut wrapped around a deep green dollop of mild English-style curry. The onions in the curry are slow-fried for four hours. Once cooked, the curry is given a day of rest before it marries its doughnut. Only about 400 of these buns are made each day, all by hand.
“I have found the perfect harmony of curry sauce and dough,” explains Hideki Okubo, who experimented with spices and curry powder for six months until he got it right.
That was 24 years ago, and his curry bun has since become something of a legend in Tokyo. Okubo said he has been offered lucrative deals to mass-market it but has never seriously considered doing so.
“A restaurant has to have one thing that stands out,” he said. “For us, it is our bun.”
And that’s not even from one of the restaurants with a Michelin star. I’m kind of obsessed with this stuff (even though I never cook anything with more than three ingredients) and I really dug this story. Two thumbs way up.
Matthew Weiner, the creator of Mad Men, has a short piece in the Times on the subject of gift giving. It’s pretty funny, but this part kind of blew me away:
The problem with gifts is the expectation — the truth is that one good experience can ruin you for life. For me it was two years into my marriage. I had graduated from film school and was living without a job, writing every day (or at least saying I was) and being supported by my wife’s starting architect salary and a small stipend from her mom.My birthday came, and the gift I wanted was to be shot in the back of the head while I slept — to be mercifully put out of my misery before I gained any more weight or finished the extremely depressing movie I was writing.
My wife handed me a large, very heavy flat box. Inside was a silver Zero Halliburton briefcase.
Now, if you missed the ’80s, let me explain what this was. It was the ultimate briefcase. It was the one you saw in the movies, carried by Feds, moguls, guys in sports cars, drug dealers. It was the kind that was filled with rows of hundreds and then handcuffed to somebody’s wrist. I had admired one in a window at the mall. My wife had clocked that and delivered. It cost $300. Our rent was $800 a month.
It was so extravagant, so ridiculous, so desired. I was speechless. My wife knew what I wanted. I wanted to feel successful. I wanted to go somewhere everyday with my papers in that gleaming hand-held Learjet.
When I saw that gift, I knew that no matter what I felt like, she somehow saw me as the kind of person who carried that thing. She somehow saw me as a success. And yes, there were hugs and kisses and tears.
I don’t know why, exactly, but this rubs me the wrong way. The extravagant, ostentatious gift, given at a time when they apparently could have used the money better? It is a very nice thought, and as we all know it ended up all working out in the end, but it still seems like an odd exemplar of a great gift. I mean, if you’re ever thinking about spending 1/3 of your rent on a gift for me while you’re getting financial support from your mom, please reconsider. It’s the thought that counts–just knit me a pink oven-mitt.
In related news, I thought the Apatow/Mann contribution to the Times‘s gift guide thing was pretty hilarious.
I was listening to this week’s Ante Up podcast, and the guys had a long argument about something that has always bugged people who play poker online: how do we know these sites aren’t screwing us over? It would be facile for a poker site to rig the deal in various ways, such that the cards a player is dealt aren’t truly random.
The guys on the show were arguing about two things: 1) continuous shuffle, and 2) weighting toward action hands. Unfortunately, I don’t think any of them really knew at any point which, if any, of these things they were actually talking about. I’ll address them one at a time, and give my opinion about both.
Oct 022007
Catherine has written regularly about the harassment she faces from random assholes on the street–guys cat-calling or yelling out all sorts of sexually explicit, aggressive, and violent things at her as she walks around. Her experience, sadly, is far from unusual–it happens to women all the time. It happens often enough when I’m walking with a female friend (or even in a group with both genders), at any time of day, in any populated area. I shudder to think about how it goes for women alone in sketchy areas at night. It’s not just winos in alleys (although it is them); it’s not just construction workers (them, too); it’s not just drunk teenagers and college students (although man, it seems like they comprise the gross majority of harassers); it’s dickheads from all walks of life.
If I were a woman, the prospect of being subjected to this kind of abuse (or, worse, the kind of abuse it forebodes) would scare the hell out of me. I wouldn’t feel safe. And the fact that for half of my friends and family this is not idle, hypothetical speculation–that it is, for all women, a very real problem–that really horrifies me.
I have been sharing some really awesome stuff via Google Reader recently. You can see the last few things in the sidebar over here at en-dash.com, but you can also click here or subscribe to the feed. Lots of options.
Also, I’ve been trying out another of Google’s sharing systems, the results of which you can see here (or subscribe to the feed).
Someday, I’m hoping Google will combine these two tools so that you can ignore just one thing from me, instead of two.
And while I’m here, let me just let you guys know a few things.
1) 3:10 to Yuma was pretty good, but the end was stupid and borderline incoherent in terms of characters’ motivations.
2) Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is in no way good. And yet I watched the whole thing anyway. There’s just something about drifting–I can’t look away. Also, the way it is so blatant about trying to cram in as much of what “the kids” are into as possible… it’s kind of adorable. Like when a politician mentions “the MindSpace.” Anyway, if you find yourself watching this you should keep an eye out for the ludicrous twist at the end.
3) Kanye’s new album is nice, especially the song that is just him rapping over a great Daft Punk song. I mean, that was a pretty easy day for Kanye the Producer. “I’m just going to… yeah, I’m just going to loop the chorus over and over. Let’s call it a day.”
4) I finally got around to reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma. This book was really amazing. I thought I knew everything about it without having to read it–organic food rules, corn is evil, meat is murder–but the book was fascinating. I give it a thousand thumbs up.
After explaining why young NBA players and their wives/girlfriends sometimes clash, Gilbert Arenas goes on to make a very compelling observation:
I know this is random, but I just want to clear this up for people out there.There are these things called shark attacks, but there is no such thing as a shark attack. I have never seen a real shark attack.
I know you’re making a weird face as you’re reading this. OK people, a shark attack is not what we see on TV and what people portray it as.
We’re humans. We live on land.
Sharks live in water.
So if you’re swimming in the water and a shark bites you, that’s called trespassing. That is called trespassing. That is not a shark attack.
A shark attack is if you’re chilling at home, sitting on your couch, and a shark comes in and bites you; now that’s a shark attack. Now, if you’re chilling in the water, that is called invasion of space. So I have never heard of a shark attack.
When I see on the news where it’s like, “There have been 10 shark attacks,” I’m like, “Hey, for real?! They’re just running around? Sharks are walking now, huh! We live on the land, we don’t live underwater.”
Nice use of the semicolon, too.
From Gilbert Arenas’s Blog.
(Great minds think alike, although I chose not to throw in a Rich Ankiel joke.)
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