Today a quick intermission from our NYC Notes.

Deborah Solomon interviewing Christopher Hitchens about his just-published memoir.

Did you write the book for money?

Of course, I do everything for money. Dr. Johnson is correct when he says that only a fool writes for anything but money. It would be useful to keep a diary, but I don’t like writing unpaid. I don’t like writing checks without getting paid.

Source

On the other hand, being retired, I don’t do anything for money.

As, for example, this blog.

It Could Be Worse

In the end, I think my way is less stressful.

Hard as it may be to believe, I had never heard of David Blaine before today.

Well, I had seen some of his stunts reported in the press, but didn’t have a name or personality to go with the news stories.

But now I do.

Blaine talked about endurance at the TedMed conference that was held a few months ago.

Click Here To See What An Endurance Artist Does For Fun

You can find out what an Endurance Artist is by watching his talk at the TedMed conference that was held a few months ago, but just made available to the general public this week.

Amazing is all I can say. He received a standing ovation, so I’m not alone in my evaluation.

Keep in mind that his lecture goes for exactly the same time that he held his breath.

I’m late to this party and probably over my head but that’s never stopped me before.

Let’s talk about Art and Celebrity.

What got my attention the other day was reading the lyrics to a Nora Jones song. I can’t remember which particular song, but it doesn’t matter. The point was that the words themselves were brain-dead. Maybe worse. But out of those terrible lyrics Nora Jones created an incredible work of art. Most of the time I don’t appreciate the genius of this kind of artist because they make it seem so natural.

Next let’s jump to acting. Once again we start with a script that has dialog, story line and stage direction. But when you look at the finished product from a great actor it starts to become clear how much talent is involved in creating the character. OMG, that character was created from virtually thin air. Once again the good ones never make it look hard, so I don’t appreciate how much work and talent went into the role.

In the world of art-art, like painting or writing there isn’t much confusion between the artist and their work, but in the realm of Actors and Recording Artists it’s different. Also, Actors and Recording Artists are usually a whole lot better looking, reinforcing the fantasy.

Which brings me to my friend Tony (not his real name). I used to work with Tony. By a quirk of fate Tony looks exactly like Viggo Mortensen’s character Aragorn in the Lord of The Rings Trilogy. And I don’t mean kinda looked like him, I mean exactly, specifically, unquestioningly looked like him.

Tony worked out at our local health club and was really buffed, so the physique was Aragorn’s. He had the same day or two beard growth, and his hair was long and once again perfect for the role. He was also a modest kind of guy so the personality wasn’t hugely off base either.

When I asked him if he was aware of his likeness he said yes he guessed he was, since people in the street would do a double take and then say something. At this point I need to point out that Tony looked like this before LOTR, and still looked the same after the clamor for LOTR died down.

Last month Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road” was released to theaters starring Viggo Mortensen in the lead role. When I saw the PR pictures that were promoting the film I was shocked. Shocked!

Because I expected to recognize my friend Tony in those pictures, but instead it was Viggo Mortensen in a different role. Didn’t look anything like Tony!

Point being that Tony looks like Aragorn, not Viggo Mortensen. There’s a big difference.

Which leads us to the 12,775 women that spent some quality time with Warren Beatty.

But I’ll stop here.

One of the Interweb’s most recently developed art forms is the Unboxing.

This is defined by the Urban Dictionary as:

The Internet trend of showing photos or video from the unpacking of a retail box of some desirable product, such as the latest laptop or portable music player.

Since we try to remain fashion forward, it’s time to hold our very first Not A Mystery Unboxing.

And don’t be intimidated.

Remember what Sarah Palin said, “I may not know as much about Unboxing as the East Coast elites, but I sure as heck know what I like when I see it!”

Thanks for that Sarah. We will now proceed to Field Dress a Box before your very eyes.

For this Unboxing we’ve chosen a recent purchase from Amazon; Kettle’s Lightly Salted Chips (Crisps to you Brits), 4-Ounce Bags 15-Pack.

We chose this product because (a) it was recent, (b) it was large. Plus, the fact that it consists of Chips makes it sound Hi-Tech.

Here we go:

Unboxing Is The New Field Dressing, Take Note Sarah!

1. The outer package as delivered by UPS 2nd Day Air from Amazon (free with our Amazon Prime membership). Note the Fragile sticker, which is a bit of a head scratcher for a box of Potato Chips, but I guess you can never be too careful.
2. Poping open the outer Amazon shipping box, we see brown butcher paper. No plastic air bags or bubbles in this box. Very Green; shout-out to Amazon for sustainable packing!
3. Opening the outer box a bit more we see that in fact we have an inner package.
4. And now we can see the original Kettle’s master pack box. Shipping specialists will note that although there is no cushioning between the outer and inner box on the sides, that the boxes have maintained their good alignment. Perhaps the Fragile notice induced UPS to play nice during shipment?
5. We’ve now taken the outer Amazon shipper away and what remains is the Kettle master pack. Note the white tape seal across the top says “Lightly Salted” to avoid confusion and add authenticity. Well done, Kettle!
6. And finally, we open the Kettle shipper and see our individual packs of Chips or Crisps, standing straight up at attention, like pert Little Rogues. Bravo.

Product Shot, Front:

"Made From REAL Potatoes"

Product Shot, Back:

"Absolutely Nothing Artificial"

And Finally the Chips/Crisps themselves:

Kettle Baked and Lightly Salted, Delicious

To sum up. Great product, met all our expectations with no surprises. Quality of Chips/Crisps and packing excellent. Amazon and Kettle doing a good job of producing and delivering a sustainable, REAL, Chip/Crisp.

Having gained some confidence in this our first Unboxing, the plan is to next take on a product with moving parts.

Happy New Year!

It’s refreshing when an industry looks to new ways of promoting their products instead of being stuck in the past. And especially when that industry could be the world’s second oldest.

We are talking Perfume.

Common wisdom is that demographics are a problem for the perfume industry, with people today wearing fewer fragrances. So what to do?

From the NY Times:

Meet the perfumer, the fragrance industry’s latest ploy to lure people to the perfume counter. After recruiting designers, then celebrities to distinguish one fragrance from another, the industry has dispelled the aura of secrecy that long surrounded perfumers and tapped the creators to help sell their products.

By promoting the names and personalities of the people who create a particular fragrance the industry is taking on risk in a number of ways. But while transparency is always risky, it resonates with the current demographic.

As part of a 2010 campaign, the Fragrance Foundation is encouraging retailers to hold seminars where perfumers will meet with customers and discuss the inspiration for their fragrances … “The consumer will say: ‘Oh, it was developed by Jane Smith? I love her work.’ And it will be a very normal extension to your purchase” …

I applaud the folks who are taking this risk and having confidence in their customers. I wish more industries would take this approach, e.g. ‘old media’ are you listening?

By the way, if you’d like to read a fascinating book about perfume, and need a Christmas gift suggestion, then I recommend The Emperor of Scent. It not only invites you into the world of perfume creation, but provides an extraordinary evocation of scent on the printed page.

Teensy addendum: The second half of The Emperor of Scent gets a little nerdy around the physics of olfaction. Mass spectrometry and stuff like that.

Praemonitus praemunitus.

We don’t usually comment on Celebrity Events, but today will be an exception.

ZURICH (AP) (Published: September 27, 2009) – Director Roman Polanski was arrested by Swiss police for possible extradition to the United States for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl, authorities said Sunday.

Polanski was flying in to receive an honorary award at the Zurich Film Festival when he was apprehended Saturday at the airport, the Swiss Justice Ministry said in a statement. It said U.S. authorities have sought the arrest of the 76-year-old around the world since 2005.

WTF?

The only thing missing from this famous Swiss Tool, is a Brains attachment.

In Switzerland Blades Are The New Brains

If you can’t wait and need a quick news fix, here’s a NY Times report, but much better would be to get to know the story behind the publicity. For this your documentary is “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired” which was released in 2008. Leslie and I watched this several months ago and awarded it 5 Stars.

A Do Not Miss Documentary

Here’s your link for the DVD at Amazon and your link to Netflix. Both of these feature a short video preview. As I write this the Netflix version can be streamed instantly.

By-The-Way-Note: If you are a Netflix subscriber and stream ‘instant’ films, then the Roku player is highly, highly recommended. At least in our case it provided much better quality than an HP laptop (Vista) connected to a plasma display via HDMI cable; and featured a vastly superior interface. It’s $100, but worth every penny.

Timing and Location, Dominick Dunne had them both in spades during his life.

But Dunne’s sense of timing failed him at the end. He died the day after Ted Kennedy.

[The] spokesman … initially declined to confirm the death, saying the family had hoped to wait a day before making an announcement so that Mr. Dunne’s obituary would not be obscured by the coverage of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s death.

Who was Dominick Dunne anyway? Well, if you’re like me and don’t live in Hollywood, follow Celebrity Trials, or read Vanity Fair magazine, you can still watch “Dominick Dunne, After The Party” and find out.

It's All About The Stars

Leslie found this documentary (made in 2008), and we are pleased to award it 5-Stars.

Here’s a short summary of his life from the NY Times Obituary:

Dominick Dunne…gave up producing movies in midlife and reinvented himself as a best-selling author, magazine writer, television personality and reporter whose celebrity often outshone that of his subjects…”

The film is fascinating for its voyeuristic look at behind-the-scenes celebrity and Dunne’s complete openness about his life and personal shortcomings. He presumes to hold very little back, although at times it seems he is pulling a few punches, at least to this reporter. But that just makes him more human.

For more info, here’s the Wikipedia write-up on the film.

And at the end it’s nice to know that even if his timing with Kennedy was a bit off, Dunne lived long enough to see Phil Spector put behind bars for the rest of his life.

It’s important to find a niche where you can excel.

And when it comes to photography my niche is pretty small.

I specialize in pictures for your computer’s desktop;  they are (just a little) harder to create than you might think. Because you need to frame and expose them so that the icons on your desktop still show up against the background without giving you a headache.

Anyway, for your computer’s enjoyment, here are three to share. But first some explanation.

To look just right they need to be the same size as your computer screen in pixels. OMG. This is beyond what I can explain here, so I will offer up the pictures with very brief info and you will either know what to do, or bribe your neighborhood teenager.

The images just below on this page are sized for a netbook, 1024 x 600 pixels. You can save them directly from the image by right-clicking if you have a PC, or something like that if you have a Mac.

For larger screens scroll down the right side of this page to the Box titled “My Shared Files”. This downloads images sized for 22 inch monitors, 1680 x 1050 pixels.

For anything in between, download the large image and then resize it for your particular desktop or laptop display, preserving the ‘aspect ratio’ so they don’t get distorted.

Point Lobos State Reserve, South of Carmel, California

Ocean Ripples on the Mendocino Coast, Northern California

Coastline South of Fort Bragg, Northern California

Enjoy!

And I thought the people who publish books were a whole lot smarter than the people who publish music.

My Bad!

Wise As A Book Publisher?

The recent product recall of George Orwell’s 1984 from those Amazon Kindles showed us that anybody can get wrapped up in their DRM underwear.

But everyone is getting their panties in a bunch over a mistake that was prompty recognized and addressed; the final bow was tied in the ribbon with Jeff Bezos’ personal apology to the Kindle community.

No, the real problem is the Publishing Industry’s business model. These guys and gals act like they want to stick with what has worked since Gutenberg until we pry their cold dead hands from those price controls.

I thought the Music Industry already taught us that holding onto old practices instead of embracing the new guarantees failure. But no, everybody thinks they are different.

Up to now Amazon has managed to keep the prices of electronic books ‘artifically’ low by subsidizing the publishers. When Amazon sells those new books for $9.99 they have been (mostly) taking a loss to ramp up the market for e-books.

But do they get any thanks from the Publishers? Make that the Big EN OH.

If you’ve noticed (and I have) prices of many new Kindle editions have been going up.  Amazon has been quietly throwing in the towel.

Let me predict what will happen, and this really ain’t Rocket Science.

Books Will Be Free.

The DRM will be broken. Oh, you might say, it hasn’t been broken so far and the Sony and Kindle Readers have been out for a long time.

It’s the same reason there aren’t many viruses targeted at Apple Computers. Not because it can’t be done, but because there’s no money in it.  Apple doesn’t have enough market share. Simple as that.

Soon there will be a huge market for electronic books. Have you perhaps noticed that young people have a different take on things compared to their Boomer parents?

The smell and feel of a real book (give me a break) doesn’t mean much to our kids who grew up with a mouse and keyboard. And they are not impressed with shelves full of books any more than they would be with piles of records when they have thousands of them on their iPods.

Duh!

High prices that can’t be justified, plus high market share equals busted DRM.

I strongly believe in paying authors for their work. It’s up to the book publishers to deliver products their customers want, in the formats that they want, at a price that makes sense to everyone. They should understand that change is an opportunity, not just a threat.

Don’t think the people who broke the un-breakable Blu-Ray DRM in a month can’t break e-book DRM?

Think again.

I’ve been trying to simplify my so called life since I retired. At this point I’m looking failure directly in the eye.

But there is always the hope that simplicity will find us. Take a look at this painting by Rene Maggritte. Simple.

It's Not A Pipe, It's A Painting Of A Pipe

Which brings me to the topics of Multi-Tasking, Mash-Ups and Life Hacks, all tools that we are told will simplify our lives.

Here are my Academy Award nominations for the Meme of My Simple Life.

• Multi-Tasking involves doing more than one thing at a time, where each activity invariably gets done less well than if we just did it alone.
• Mash-Ups consist of the combination of several activities into one single activity, where the result is better than the sum of its parts.
• Life-Hacks are anything that can help you be more productive or more efficient, or simply a way to get something done smarter.

I’ve been trying to think of a single good reason to Multi-Task; I can’t. On the other hand, I know there are lots of people who don’t know any other way to go about their daily lives. Scary.

• One thing we are learning about Multi-Tasking is that in addition to making the people around you nuts, it’s also dangerous to your health. We now have MADD, next will be MAMT which is fine with me.

Mash-Ups on the other hand feel comfortable to me, calming even. Lots of information in a small package. Intuitive, with very little learning curve. Cuddly.

• Mash-Ups have been mostly conceived so far as media or digital creations. But I’m suggesting they be used as a life visualization overlay. Remember YHIHF.

Life-Hacks are simple and specific. To know one is to love one. Loyal, dedicated.

• Like this for example: “Buy only gray colored socks.”

So having listed the nominees, I get to pick my favorite. Let’s have the envelope please.

And the winner is…Life Hacks!

So for now, it’s Life Hacks, one trick at a time. No Multi-Hacks or Mash-Hacks.

Before everything was either black or white.

Now, I’m all gray socks, all the time.

I still need his chin though, click here.

From His Chin To His Socks

I guess I completely missed the 80′s. I know for sure I missed the 60′s, but I came by that honestly; as in “if you remember the 60′s you weren’t there.”

So imagine the surprise when my son Matthew told me he found a really great T-Shirt featuring a Flock of Gulls. He pointed me to the design, as you can see below. And I said, “So What?”

What The Flock?

That’s when he made a few comments I won’t repeat, and brought me up to speed.  Turns out there was a band called A Flock of Seagulls from the ’80′s, and then the brilliance of the T-shirt comes into its own.

I Don't Remember A Thing

Click here for an enlarged side-by-side. Kinda cute, after all.

Here’s your link to threadless.com and the Flock of Gulls T-Shirt designed by Andrew John Mohacsy.

And the final shameless plug for Matthew’s website, TreasuredFinds.com, your home for Sterling Jewelry and Gifts.