A Commonplace Book

This morning on 3rd Street, somewhere near Avenue A, I noticed an ad about spousal abuse. It seemed a bit odd at first glance and continued to bother me for another avenue or two. The text was simple, reading “Eat Your Vegetables. Do Your Homework. Respect Women.” Pictured was a young boy. Finally, somewhere around the subway entrance I realized what was grating at me.

I’m sure the public agency sponsoring this ad had its heart in the right place. My issue is with this being a pretty poor ascending triad, and in this case “pretty poor” is a bloodless euphemism for “grossly misconstructed.” No little boy really wants to eat his vegetables and no little boy wants to do his homework. He’ll (hopefully) understand the importance of these both at some point in his future, but until then the truth remains jammed away in some unused crevice of his conscience.

So do we really want public advertisements comparing respect towards women with carrot sticks and problem sets? In this itemized list, all three collapse into a pile of healthy obligations ignored in pursuit of teenage rebellion. Maybe I’m overestimating the impact of some poorly designed, publicly financed ad campaigns on 3rd Street, but this is probably the exact wrong comparison to draw.

• Off The Grid: Risk Black Ops and Hasbro’s Wrong Direction
  Can’t agree more with this – I totally would have bought this based on graphic design alone…

• Pitchfork.tv: Vampire Weekend: Secret Session, Columbia University
  And so everything comes full circle…

• Sigur Ros – 2008 Tour Dates (NYC Included)
  Presale disappeared in seconds, so i’m assuming getting regular tickets will be nearly impossible too…

• Bus Transfer
  I’m thinking of putting letterboxing on my own photos for the fun shot of melodrama it adds to everything…

• Clay Shirky on Cognitive Surplus
  I too will start using “One Wikipedia Project” as a unit of measurement now…

A few weeks ago I stopped by MoMA for a movie, something I wish I did more often since they’re free for members. Unfortunately I chose the one week of the year when the movies aren’t actually free; fortunately I paid to stay anyway and got to indulge in East Asia’s answer to Wes Anderson.

Naoko Ogigami’s “Megane” is so twee and cute it deserves some new descriptive word combining the two, like twutsy or cutwee. Well maybe those are terrible words, but something along these lines could work. Between the enchantingly reserved performances of the actors, Ogigami’s super-saturated visuals of the beach, and the pleasantly simple guitar score, I felt like I was on a vacation.

One and a half hours later though, the vacation was over. It was disappointing to come back to the real world where you can’t trade paper cutouts for the best red beans and shaved ice in Japan. But one and a half weeks later I was on a real vacation. For the first time in two years, since starting my current job in fact, I took some vacation time and flew to France.

I’m not too interested in summarizing here why the trip was so amazing (and most of my friends have already had to sit through hours of exposition about it in person) so a few pictures from the week will have to suffice.

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