Joe Mills

In-N-Out Burger

On this day when kids are getting their favorite junk food put in a bag for them, I’m thinking about one of my favorite junk foods. On Friday, I’m going to Los Angeles for the weekend, and I can’t wait to get an In-N-Out Burger. I was introduced to In-N-Out burgers while in Las Vegas a couple years ago, and they are one of the best things about the West Coast. I mean…you can get a great burger in Chicago as well, but there is something special about an In-N-Out burger. I think one of the cool things about going there is that they have a limited menu and they stick to it. The fries are hand cut and fried which is the best way to do it in my opinion. Plus, they have all of those secret codes you can ask for at the register. I don’t forget to say “Well Done” when ordering my fries. My mouth is watering already…

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Ann Smith

Image courtesy of Ann Smith

These are just terrific sculptures. I read about Ann Smith in Wired, and I think her sculptures made from…junk?…old machines?…eBay purchases?…I don’t really know are an exercise in patience and precision. It seems like the parts she chose are perfectly crafted for the desired effect. I can see how some people would not think of this as “art” but the level of craftsmanship and attention to detail makes it art in my book.

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Didier Massard

Image courtesy of Robert Klein Gallery

I think these “photographs” by Didier Massard are fantastic. Very surreal…well-crafted…and I just want to stare at them trying to figure out how they were done. I love the blurred background effect, and I think Massard uses it to perfection.

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Office Lingo

I’m not really a big fan of GQ, but I’ve been getting a subscription because Cargo went under and they switched it to GQ. Whatever…I just loved this article written by Cecil Donahue about office lingo. The quote below says a lot:

“Think outside the box.” This is the classic example of unintended corporate irony: invoking a wretched cliche in a vain attempt to inspire creativity. the guy who utters this crap has never actually set foot outside the box. He would not, in fact, know a triangle if it stabbed him in the eye. As a highly respected company square he is skilled in the art of squeezing a few more pounds of sh** into said box and declaring that he’s created “an expanded fecal quadrilateral.”

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The Wire

So, I got into this show VERY late, but I might not have gotten into it at all. Above is the promo for the fifth season of The Wire. It is slowly growing into one of my favorite television shows ever. Let me break it down:

1. It is a true serial series. As enjoyable as it can be to sit down and watch an episode of CSI, SVU, or CI, there is something about a serial series. I can’t speak about 24, but even though Lost has this over arching theme for the whole series/season, it still packages each episode which you could technically watch individually. The Wire doesn’t have any of that. There is a theme for each season, but you really need to watch from beginning to the end. No show-to-show stories…watch the season or you won’t get it. I like that.
2. Crazy amounts of characters that have personalities immediately. I kid you not…in just the first 5 episodes, there must be at least 30 to 40 regulars. Plus, they all aren’t just caricatures of some cliched character…they seem whole right away like you can relate to them. The actors really nail everything.
3. In relation to the above, even though nothing earth shattering happens every episode, it is interesting as hell. The dialog is on point. It adds interest through its mutliple characters and scene changes. You really have to keep up. It is almost like you take a really good, dialog heavy movie and just chop it up.
4. It’s really like no other show I’ve watched. Even though it seems on the outside to be a cop show, it bares no resemblance to any other show on television…ever. The fact this thing got greenlit…even on HBO or any other cable channel….is amazing.

I have actually found it difficult to watch other television shows because The Wire does things so differently, everything else just seems to pale in comparison. I hate to call it “the thinking man’s show” but in this day and age of easily consumable entertainment, The Wire is anti-TV.

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This is Not a Photograph

Image courtesy of Blair Art Studios

I guess this is really an exercise in patience, determination, and skill more than it is inspiration, but the picture above was created completely from an airbrush and Photoshop. They did not use a woman’s photograph to make the picture…she is completely made-up. I doubt many “artists” would see it as art, but what it lacks in a purpose, it completely makes up for in attention to detail. A masterpiece….

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Another Rube Goldberg Machine

I read about this  here…I’m telling you…I love these things.

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No Impact Man Strikes Again

I really like this guys take on so many things. He has been living this life for ten months, and it just feels like normal life to him…it hasn’t “impacted” him that much. I’m pulling a large chunk of text from his post, but he makes a point that most people would think is completely preposterous, but so true it almost hurts…

Probably it feels that way because, according to the boffins who research what makes for happiness, the “positive psychologists,” people quickly get used to almost any set of conditions. Within a few years, lottery winners and people who become paralyzed tend to return to the same level of happiness they had before their change in circumstance.

What people can’t get used to, though, is the loss of one of the main factors positive psychologists find does have a lasting affect on happiness: community. In fact, in may be that breakdown in community in the United States is one reason that, although material wellbeing has increased hugely in the last 50 years, rates of depression, substance abuse and teen suicide have skyrocketed.

We move away from our families and friends. We stay in the office until all hours. We travel endlessly on business trips. We spend our spare time in front of screens instead of with each other. All these things, we do because we think they will ultimately make us feel better, but in fact, they undermine our connections to each other and make us feel worse.

In the No Impact experiment, as I’ve written before, without all the mod cons to distract us, we spend more time with each other, our friends and our neighbors and actually feel happier.

So what if, as a society, we worried less about a booming economy which drains the planet of its resources? If, as the positive psychologists suggest, having more stuff isn’t going to make us happier, shouldn’t we worry more about things like building a culture that emphasizes personal connection and community?

If the results of the No Impact experiment are anything to go by, not only is that an approach that would help cure our environmental crisis, but it would also help cure our unhappiness.

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Park West

When I say Park West, I mean the best place to see a concert in Chicago…maybe anywhere. When I started going to a lot of shows around 1994, this place had all the great hip hop acts. I’ve seen Pharcyde, Roots, Fugees, Goodie Mob, Latyrx and others at the Park West. There is a dance floor right in front of the stage. Around the dance floor are a bunch of black colored booths. It almost looks like a tiny coliseum. Behind all of the booths was a walkway and bar area. The best part about the Park West was the low stage. We used to get to these shows early enough so that we could stand right by the stage and be a part of the stage. The best show I saw at the Park West was the Fugees, Roots, and Goodie Mob. This show took place right as the Fugees were making their meteoric rise to stardom. Amazing. There is just something about this place that makes it different from the other venues in Chicago…maybe it truly holds a lot of nostalgia for me. After they built the House of Blues in 1996, all of the hip hop acts started going there and now the Park West gets acts that I’ve never heard of. Just give me one reason to go, and I’ll go again.

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Zappos…A GOOD Consumer Story

I tend to be very anti-corporate, but I really liked this story about Zappos that reaffirms my faith that their are good people out there. I found it on the Consumerist.

When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could. They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to do it myself. I was so touched. That’s going against corporate policy.

Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving. It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations. Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears. I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is.

You just don’t see that very often.

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