Monday, September 29, 2003
Letters of Distinction
As a kid growing up in a Mac family (my dad brought home the first 128K version in 1984), I always sided with the Apple crowd. Back then, of course, DOS - and later Microsoft's creepily parasitic Windows-dressing - was no match for Mac's GUI. No contest. Not even worth talking about, really. It just was.
I even had a kind of cult Mac club at Kealing back around '89-'90. A group of us that would skip the noisy cafeteria (or else sneak food out of it) and hang out in Mr. VanNort's classroom full of Woz-edition IIci's and a coveted Mac II with 4-bit color. There are still a few of us out there, I suppose. Like Jon Gilbert or Cody Koeniger. Or Chris Reeve (remember his Foreign Design BBS?). Not that I really keep up with those people anymore. I doubt Cody still has the Apple 1200 baud modem my parents sold him back in the day for $50. You know, the kind that sat under the rotary phone, with little grooves for the AT&T Bakelite feet to rest upon.
Geez. Doesn't John C. Dvorak write for PC Magazine now? And whatever happened to the inimitable Guy Kawasaki? Is LaCie still in business?
Anyway, beyond sheer usability or OS stability, one of the attractive things about Apple was just how stylish and spunky they seemed compared to Big Blue. From the OS and the computer itself to the kinds of people who built and used them, there was a cult of personality around Apple. And then there were TBWA-Chiat-Day's snazzy marketing campaigns. The 1984 Superbowl ad. And the fun yet classy Apple Garamond that graced all their copy.
Well, until recently, that is.
Has anyone noticed that Apple Garamond is being phased out in favor of some generic chunky sans-serif thing? I think the new corporate typeface - currently used for all product labeling and their website - is called Myriad. Which seems fitting, given that it pretty much looks like every other sans-serif font out there. Goodbye brand distinction, hello homogenized milk.
I'll be blunt: it looks cheap. It looks commodity. It does not have anywhere near the class and charm of Apple Garamond. I hate it.
Apple Garamond was so distinctive that just seeing it clued you in that you were looking at an Apple ad and that this was a company that was Thinking Different. The new Myriad-based ads look as if someone grabbed anyoldfont off the shelf and slapped it over a photograph in Quark. Or, in other words, they look pretty much like everything else out there but for the iPod or PowerBook prominently looming in the background. Okay, so the product itself looks kinda cool. Great. Uh, where's the ad design?
I've always been a design junkie and a lover of typefaces. I just find that stuff cool. How one develops a form to perfectly send a message or fit a function; the art and craft of unifying style and substance into a coherent whole. A perfect design seems at once beautiful and inevitable, something inseparable from content. And it's damn hard to do.
Every once in awhile, a corporate logo or typeface or ad campaign achieves this rare sense of identity and becomes a Design Exemplar studied for decades afterwards. The AT&T Bell. The original US Post Office Stylized Eagle. The Columbia Records Eye.
And like everything else in the land of Corporate, some idiot sees fit to trash them in favor of streamlined or reinvented replacements. Hasn't anyone figured out that logos composed of abstract jumbles of dots and lines all look the same? That seeing the same old Futura and Helvetica and Times in copy after copy is just getting dull? Is it just me, or are the vagaries of the new Agilent and Accenture and Innovan (or whatever) indicative of businesses that really don't know what they're doing anymore? Someone please tell me: why should I deal with a business going through an identity crisis?
To me, Apple Garamond was a corporate typeface milestone. It was one of the few times a company created their own unique font to represent themselves. But how fitting, though, that of all companies, it would be Apple. What kind of outfit goes to all the trouble of cooking up their own version of a venerated typeface like Garamond? Who? The company that brought desktop publishing to the world, the company that clearly cared that your stupid church newsletter looked cool and unique when it rolled off the LaserWriter, dressed up with inset graphics and letters of distinction.
That was the Apple that Apple Garamond announced. Quirky. Different. Stylish. And I miss it, the AT&T Bell and stately Post Office Eagle, and all the long forgotten and abandoned artifacts of classic corporate design that are still to be found in rusted East Texas towns.
posted 11:52 PM | 0 comments
Saturday, September 27, 2003
Alone in Kyoto
Check out this breathtakingly perfect track from Lost in Translation. It scores my favorite scenes (by far) in the movie, the sequences where each character is exploring Japan alone, sneaking up on things, observing the beauty of ritual and scenery from a distance.
I saw the movie a second time this afternoon and only then just realized how much this piece adds to those sequences. I really, really, really like this type of ambient techno. Stongly and simply melodic with rich harmonic powerchords. Peaceful. Surreal. Conveys a sense of awe of something bigger than oneself. Delicately textured with all the rythym rising up from melodic and harmonic lines rather than being externally imposed by a drumbeat exoskeleton. Reminds me a lot of the opening-title track that Tangerine Dream did for Risky Business back in the 80's.
Mike, Josh, take note.
To give you a sense how great these scenes are: they are the only reason I went to see the film a second time. They are little breaths of fresh rainstorm air relieving the slapstick claustrophobia that comprises most of the film. They seem to perfectly conform to Bazin's theory of the Ontology of Film, which is that under ideal circumstances, cinema can capture the face of God. I simply had to see how Sophia pulls it off.
Part of it is this music, part is the cinematography, part is the gorgeous overcast weather, part is the strength of the principle's acting. And so it all works. Locks into place brilliantly. As I watched and listened, I felt a powerful force well up over me and show me something I can't at all describe. I don't usually find myself getting teary-eyed in movies, but...
Go see this film this weekend. Write me back and tell me if you agree about these scenes. They are not to be missed.
posted 2:33 AM | 0 comments
Sunday, September 21, 2003
Carl goes Critical
You've seen the dummy link on the masthead all this time, snookered into clicking on nothing, cursing me for teasing you with movie reviews that never materialized. But now, nine months later, I present you with my first two such essays, those for Lost in Translation and P.S. Your Cat is Dead.
And yes, the masthead link will now take you there with a simple click of the mouse. No more hunting around my file structure, looking for those hidden jewels of cinematic insight. Or whatever.
I'll update this new section of the site every time I see a new movie and whenever I revisit a personal favorite - or get force-fed a not-so-favorite.
Let me know what you think. Enjoy.
posted 4:55 PM | 0 comments
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Published, Sort of
Check out McSweeney's for a little fun, Durrenberger style.
posted 9:12 PM | 0 comments
Sunday, September 14, 2003
Talented Josh
Josh's KVRX live track is enjoyable stuff for chilling out on those lonely Saturday nights when your only companion is your parents' radio dial glowing blue. Mellow, sweet, a touch daring, emotionally reserved - perhaps like the man himself. Nice.
Kinda like black licorice and tarnished stainless steel with a cup of Earl Gray on slightly uncomfortable furniture. A nice complement to my dark oak, cheap coffee, and brown corduroy ambiance anyday.
Recommended. But only with twizzlers and squeaky office chair. Analog radio tuner dialed to white noise optional.
posted 1:35 AM | 0 comments
Saturday, September 06, 2003
Granta 82
This is one of the better short stories I've read in a really long time.
Refreshing, sharp, economical. I love writing like this.
posted 12:04 AM | 0 comments
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
Life Imitates Art, Again
As usual, life outdoes art in its marvelousness. Anyone who writes about Texas politics, however, faces the problem known to religious ecstatics of trying to explain an experience in terms that don't sound delusional. Looking back on my unsold script, I realize that not even Hollywood would buy the idea, for instance, of a legislator who arranges to have himself shot in order to gain the sympathy vote. That actually happened; truth, however, is not a refuge for an artist trying to hawk his script to the Hollywood skeptics who believe they know real life when they see it.
...
The point of the walkout was to keep Texas Republicans from doing to the country what they have already done to Texas. Tom DeLay, the implacable majority leader of the United States House of Representatives and himself a veteran of the Texas House, wants a Congressional delegation that more accurately reflects the allegiance of the state's voters. Democrats now outnumber Republicans 17 to 15 in the Texas delegation to the House. The districts were drawn by federal judges after state lawmakers failed to pass their own plan in the last legislative session two years ago.
Guided by Karl Rove, the man who helped elect most of those Republicans, Mr. DeLay got behind a plan that would help bring the Republicans up to 19 or 20 seats. Lloyd Doggett, who represents the capital city of Austin, would have seen his district cut to ribbons. Mr. Doggett was a Killer Bee, and Republicans have never forgiven him for it. Under the proposed redistricting plan, one could walk from the statehouse in the middle of town to the Interstate — a distance of seven blocks — and cross four Congressional districts, one of which stretches to Mexico and another that ends in Houston, nearly 200 miles away.
- From an Op-ed in NYTimes 5/23/2003 by Lawrence Wright, reprinted in its entirity here on his personal webpage
Yup, that's right: Gordon's dad wrote a screenplay about a fictional walkout of the Texas Senate Democrats 3 years before a very similar episode actually took place. And no one would buy it.
Okay, so the fictional characters holed up in the Alamo instead of an Oklahoma motor inn. And in the play, there is no department of Homeland Security around to track down the fugitive legislators (like there was in real life with Pete Laney's personal plane).
Wait a minute - the real thing is more unbelievable than the fiction. I find this extremely funny.
By the way, does anyone else gasp at how ludicrous the redistricting proposal was? I had no idea it was this obvious a gerrymander until I read Larry's piece. How could any sane person possibly justify such a maneuver to his fellow countrymen, wife and kids, or even himself?
And the sad thing is, it looks like it's going to get pushed through next session.
Ugh.
posted 10:29 PM | 0 comments
Beware Bimeanings Incognito!
Ever get the feeling that some words are holding something back from you - that they're not showing their full hand (or in some cases bluffing!) - in order to conceal some dirty little secret? Yes, you know what I'm talking about: those words just one letter away from meaning something entirely different from what they at first appear. Those words who casually "forget" to declare a most damning consonant at customs or try to feign respectability at a supper club by putting on a nice, drycleaned vowel.
Well, if you don't know about this insidious underclass of the English language, you should. Did you know that an estimated 10% of the population of Webster's Unabridged are bonafide bimeanings?
What are we to do with words such as 'friend' when we find - to our shock and horror - that behind the ostensibly amicable lounging of an 'R' lurks a backstabbing fiend? Or when a strip-search of 'realty' turns up a "misplaced" 'I,' drawing gasps over inflated housing prices from the crowd?
Is there anything at all classy to be found in the deceit (aka, 'decent') that 'public' has been pulling off for centuries with its cleverly-positioned 'L?' Or in the so-called polite suppression, over after-dinner brandy, of the most disagreeable flatulence of 'far' by covering up its dangling you-know-what?
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a literary crisis on our hands and must act now to avoid further infiltration into our language. The next time you see suspicious verbiage, confront it and demand that it show identification. Tug on its trenchcoat and watch for any letters that may come tumbling out onto the floor.
Report all accounts to Merriam Webster immediately so that our great lexicon may be purged of this most sleazy riffraff. Such undesirables, with all their charm and wit and baked brie and champagne, may appear harmless but are in reality corrupting our adolescent vocabulary into reckless symbols of untruth.
Beware. Be vigilant. Be true to your diction.
Watch.
posted 3:02 PM | 0 comments
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Ka-boom!
Oh - my - God. It's raining. Raining in San Diego. Thunder. Lightning. Little rivers of water spidering across the ground. This never happens here. At least not like this. A sprinkle, a dash of water dusted on for taste, yes. Real, live thunderstorms with arcwelding bolts jumping across the sky and seizmic disturbances shaking building foundations, no. Except now. Wow.
Work has ceased to function. People are running towards the banks of windows at the cubicle sea's extremities, only to find themselves paralyzed, dumbstruck in awe at the hypnotic Zen spectacle going on oustide.
'Will the traffic on the 15 be terrible?' people wonder aloud. Will there be accidents? Flooding? 'I hope puffy isn't outside right now.'
Poor kitty.
Heh. These people react to rain the same way Texans react to snow: giddy apprehension, a sense of the world temporarily jarred into a strange parallel universe with meaning, action, and personalities shifted slightly off-center from nominal and a whole catalog of bizarre, dreamlike fantasies suddenly made possible.
Before the rain, it was just another day. But now, in this moment, one gets the sense that something special is about to follow, something that might render the day uniquely distinct from the blur of time.
But really, it's just rain. So, back to the practical issue at hand:
I suddenly want to pull on my brown cordouroy sportscoat, find a Landmark cinema, get a hot cup of tea at the counter, and go see art films. Anyone wanna come with?
I knew you would.
posted 5:22 PM | 0 comments
