My grandmother passed away yesterday.
– Death notice, Newark Star-Ledger
Let the official record show that Grandma made a mean hamantaschen (and kreplach and mocha cake and rugelach). The rest is a fond, kind memory best shared offline.
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Today marks the public debut of my new weblog: Retail Media, a discussion of the increasing efforts by consumer-goods retailers to harness the power of the media. The blog is off to a juicy start thanks to Nordstrom Silverscreen and Saks’ new children’s book (read more). Retail Media will be updated regularly as retailers and brands make continued forays into publishing, broadcasting and interactive content. See you there.
Not only is the design and programming on this site ancient, the whole concept is, too: Tuesday marks the Ideapad’s seventh birthday. Been a bit quiet in the main column of late, but the linklog on the right is busy as usual.
The Economist launched a redesigned economist.com this week. New pages are preset to 1024 width (nice for advertising, less so for the 29% of Americans still surfing at 800×600) with a colorful top- and left-nav scheme. The basic design is modern and stylish. Online exclusives, like city and country guides, have been made much more prominent.
Lots of nice touches surround the content. I particularly like the muted color offsets and the robust footer, and the integration of items like Backgrounders is much better. And, of course, I appreciate that the Economist.com logo (which I created, pat pat) is still in use.
I have quibbles, but they are few. The light font colors on the home page detract from the power of the headlines, and the white space surrounding the content seems a little arbitrary. Economist.com hasn’t gotten around to updating its section indexes, either, which suggest the site was pushing to a deadline.
On a personal note, this redesign is a little bittersweet. Economist.com was overdue for an overhaul, but the new site marks the conclusion of my work in commercial web design. While I segued out of design several years ago, Economist.com lived on, and the fact that it was live for five years—my redesign launched this week in 2000—was my proudest design achievement. Now that it’s changed, I am somewhat saddened at the realization that my old career is officially gone.
Congratulations and good luck to the Economist online staff. May the new site serve you as well as the old.
This past weekend I ventured to Lancaster, Pa., for the first time in nine years. Franklin & Marshall College was celebrating its annual Homecoming, and as a graduate of the Class of 1995, I joined numerous friends at our 10-year reunion.
(What follows is not a pristine op-ed so much as an opinionated summary of events at the request of several colleagues. Click Read More if you’re interested in the rest.)
This past weekend I ventured to Lancaster, Pa., for the first time in nine years. Franklin & Marshall College was celebrating its annual Homecoming, and as a graduate of the Class of 1995, I joined numerous friends at our 10-year reunion.
Superficially, the weekend was a success. Campus looked great, as it often does; I saw friends with whom I reconnected, places full of fond memories, and acquaintances who made me smile. My dorms, apartment, frat house, newspaper office, radio station: all intact, and not much worse for wear. The new buildings and pathways on campus look great, and Homecoming events were well-organized.
However.
My satisfaction was tempered significantly by the annual alumni meeting of my fraternity, Phi Kappa Sigma, where the brotherhood learned about the dire straits the active membership faces—an effect that stems directly from the re-recognition of Greek life last year. Our officers made clear that should the school bar a freshman pledge class this spring, Phi Kap—a 151-year-old organization, the oldest of its kind at F&M, and the third-oldest active chapter of the fraternity—could face extinction. While the national chapter shares blame for the severity of the situation, the assumption here is that the school would cry no tears should the fraternity disappear, the alumni equivalent of rooting for a 38-year-old ballplayer whose team is patiently waiting for his contract to end.
Similarly, those who attended the Class of ’95 Reunion Dinner came away thoroughly disappointed with its execution. For $30 a head, we were brought to what used to be the dining hall and treated to a tiny and inexpensive buffet dinner: gnocchi with sausage, “cheesesteak wraps,” some soup and salad, and a do-it-yourself mashed potato bar. The beer and wine served at the bar hardly made up the cost difference. Let me also throw into the mix the fact that barely half of our class alumni council attended the dinner they organized. I should have followed their example.
By griping to a powerless audience, I am apparently preaching to the choir, too; I heard this weekend about classmates who stopped participating in alumni organizations after tiring of making suggestions that were summarily ignored. Never one to stand idly by, I post this in the hope that people react in a positive manner. I even called the alumni office to request a refund on the dinner. (At least the College Reporter, the campus newspaper, is on an upswing and run by editors who are dedicated and proud.)
As a result, I unfortunately stand by much of my statement from April, however disillusioned and acerbic the tone. F&M remains a beautiful and welcoming school, but it has flaws that endanger the lifestyle and culture that made me proud to have gone there. One would think a bad dinner wouldn’t be such a big deal, but it’s actually a microcosm of the past year, the generic emails and profit-first nature of the campus thrown into bold relief.
At least my trip turned out as expected. Nice trip to school? Check. Show Lancaster County to my (good sport and rather patient) wife? Check. Get a reminder of how the school is treating me as an alumnus and a Greek associate? Big, fat, ugly check. And a check, by the way, is what F&M won’t be receiving from me, since voting with my pocketbook is the most surefire way to get the school to take notice.
I had the occasion in Italy to drive a Smart roadster coupe for a day. I was excited for the opportunity: As a former owner of a Nissan Sentra SE-R, I appreciate good small cars, and I have admired Smarts from afar for years. The thought of renting one (at less than two-thirds the cost of a, well, normal-size car) appealed to me, and after a little cajoling, my wife agreed, and off we went.
Smart is an impressive company in its conception—luxury automaker Mercedes creates a right-sized car for moped-friendly European cities—and its general appeal. Smarts are cute. They fit anywhere (a Fortwo can be parked head-in alongside parallel-parked cars). And, one would hope, the German engineering brought by DaimlerChrysler would make for a sturdy automobile.
Except the car is—how to put this?—a piece of junk.
As a basic disclaimer, let me state again that we rented the roadster, which is Smart’s version of a Testarossa: “a light, puristic car which makes every moment behind the wheel an experience in itself,” according to the Smart website. It had manual steering, a clutchless manumatic, a quick-firing engine and surprisingly fat rear tires.
But that selling statement was all too accurate. The six-speed manual, while fun on the Autostrade, was otherwise difficult to manage. Every gear shift, whether manual or automatic, was accompanied by an odd fluttering noise from either the rear tires or the gears themselves (we never pinpointed the sound). The brake pedal was surprisingly soft, a marked contrast to the peppy gas pedal and rear-mounted engine. The car had a hard time adjusting to Italy’s winding country roads; in automatic mode, the engine often revved to unreasonable levels when encountering small hills. Coupled with the soft brakes, a few hours on the back roads left me with a very sore knee.
This might be acceptable if the car were well made, but it’s not. Our 1000-kilometer-old roadster had wind noise and rattles from all directions. Doors and trunk slammed shut with the clang of metal against metal, not the comfortable thunk found in most new cars. Climbing into and out of the car was just that: climbing. At least the ergonomics in the cabin were good; controls were easy to reach, the seats were comfortable, and open windows provided great air without buffeting, although the low, curving roof limited visibility.
I had fun driving the Smart roadster coupe toward the end of the day, when we hit straight, open lanes and the car could act like itself. The engine was fun to push on gently curving one-lane roads, and on the highway, hitting 130 kph (80 mph) was a breeze—a breeze we heard, thanks to the poor wind deadening noted above. But the rest of the day was tough to handle (pun intended), and at one point the engine’s poor shifting made Amy nauseous.
I came away from the Smart generally disappointed. Its size and nimbleness are fun and particularly useful in Europe; I squeezed into one or two very small parking spaces. We probably would have been more satisfied with the Fortwo, which is a more civilized car that would have been easier to maneuver. But the build quality and poor engine responsiveness turned me off, and I no longer await the Smart’s uncertain entry to the U.S. market.
Mini, I’m all yours. Let’s go for a spin.
I’m off to Italy on vacation until the 25th, blissfully separated from Internet access. The Ideapad (and any email correspondence) will resume upon my return.
Gillette announced today a five-blade razor that includes a “precision” blade in the back and a second lubricating strip. Consumers like me, still uncertain of the utility of our lubricated Mach 3 blades, are going to be a hard sell.
More deliciously, Gillette has apparently stolen its product concepts from its own parodies: check out The Onion’s Fuck Everything, We’re Doing Five Blades, from February 2004. “What part of this don’t you understand? If two blades is good, and three blades is better, obviously five blades would make us the best fucking razor that ever existed. Put another aloe strip on that fucker, too.” Ouch.
(links courtesy of Jay)
A quick sidenote: I have been utterly fascinated (and a lot of other less pleasant verbs) by the goings-on surrounding Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath. I haven’t written much about it at length, but I’ve been logging lots of interesting news and perspective pieces, with snippets of my own commentary, in my del.icio.us news tag.
Here’s to a speedy recovery for all those affected by the storm, and to a winning season for the New Orleans Saints, because to many, sports still equals hope.
More from the front on the pharmacy issue: last week I saw two customers at a Duane Reade near my office engage in a lengthy, “nigga”-filled shouting match at the checkout line. Why? Because Duane Reade’s “ONE LINE FOR EACH REGISTER” signs were ignored by a man who waited behind two stations and took the next one that opened, angering the man beside him. (Pharmacies in New York like one line for each register, even though a single snaking line is faster for all involved—another nod to Whole Foods’ intelligence.)
Even worse, the shouting continued for several minutes as the staff watched with smirks and averted glances. A woman from the stock room had to break the squabblers apart after the store manager stood powerless (and amused) by the fight. Topping it off was the cashier, who got into the verbal jousting and threw a very loud “No, you’re the bitch!” at one of the men as he left.
Thank goodness for Gallery Drug.
Also: in June, New York magazine ran an excellent profile of Duane Reade and its philosophies.