Archive for August 2006

Starbucks Salon is a pop-up version of it’s coffeehouses. The first incarnation was at Park City, Utah for the for last winter’s Sundance Film Festival. We’re still a week and change away from the opening here in NYC but the website has new info and a schedule of events.

The Salon runs every day from September 8th through September 17th at 76 Greene Street in Soho (between Spring & Broome), with rotating art, interactive installations, and free nightly performances.

PSFK is unofficially endorsing Sept 10th for House of Diehl at 4pm and Sept 16th for José González at 4pm and Darryl “DMC” McDaniels of RUN DMC at 9. See you there.

This is definitely the funniest thing I have read today- ihaveanidea, Advertising’s Intellectual Archive, has commissioned a witch to forge a potion that will supposedly enhance the creative abilities of advertising professionals around the world!

Ads around the world haven’t been that inspiring lately,” says Ignacio Oreamuno, President of ihaveanidea. “I think everyone in the industry could use a spark — a little touch of magic. As a result, we decided to ask Heidi Reiss, a real certified witch to create a magic potion that would enhance the creative abilities of copywriters and art directors around the world.

Blood, brains, bones,, and joints, Tse Lim knows his food and isn’t afraid get his hands dirty.  Carrying on with our Carnival of Man series, Tse points us to a real mans cookbook: Nose to Tail Eating.   

You might accuse Fergus of monotony – duck fat, green sauce, sea salt, pepper, cook till “giving” – but every page, every single recipe, right down to the terrine of lamb’s brains, sounds like something I would love to cook and serve. The now customary lecture on the need for perfect ingredients is absent, and there is no glossary nor directory of purveyors nor list of tools – these are all unnecessary, because this food is so transparent. You need nothing in your pantry beyond salt and pepper, and the most basic of tools. Some recipes call for a food processor – or you could just chop faster.

And if you’re thinking to yourself, butchering animals without instructions isn’t what makes you a “man,” Tse has a few thoughts on why defining masculinity has become so hazy. 

We can no longer describe masculinity because even though sociology tells us we live in a gendered world, we no longer feel comfortable claiming traits for genders.  If we start talking about an aspirational masculinity, things we believe masculinity should be about, then I’d like to sign up with Fergus – idiosyncratic, unpretentious, deeply serious, and completely without bravado.

Off The Bone: A Gentlemans’s Cookbook

Technorati Tag: modern man                                       

The Guardian has a nice featured interview with Paul Sams, onw of the World of Warcraft creators. Some nice probing questions and here’s his response to how females are getting more involved:

Word of mouth has been spectacular as well, especially among female players. Girlfriends and wives are playing with their partners and telling their friends about it. Globally, around 10% of WoW players are women whereas historically for this genre it was around 2%.

One of the questions relates to how its in the WoW developers interest to create an addictive nature to the game:

Good games are fun to play, like a good book is fun to read. I’m not sure MMOs are inherently more addictive. It all depends on the individual and how compelled they are to play it. I mean, I read incessantly, but it’s all about making balanced entertainment choices.

Go here for the full interview.

People are describing a Chumby as a cross between a Furby and an alarm clock. It has a 3.5inch LCD screen which uses software ‘widgets’ which people are invited to develop and share. It’s Wi-Fi enabled and here’s a little blurb about what it can do:

It’s designed to show pictures that your friends send you from their cellphones, and messages from your IM buddies, your blogs and social network sites. It can display your daily horoscope and the weather, and a whole community of artists and animators can send their creations around the chumby network to entertain you.

Still not for sale but available for ‘alpha-geek hackers’ (sign up to receive your free sample on their website), the developers are actively promoting people to mash-up their chumby’s . Could this be the next big/little thing?

What does it mean when The Gap sell ‘em?? This ad found on the Bleeker Street subway station in NYC.

This alarming piece was received this week in the mail. Thank goodness I’m getting out of here for a while. For those of you who don’t know, I get married this weekend in Philadelphia then a couple of weeks with the Lady in Bali. Thus far, PSFK has been a blast - thank you for all your support.

Meanwhile, the PSFK & IF! teams will continue to write - and look out for a great series of interviews that we’ve scheduled to publish while I am away - some on Inspiration and others on Independent Publishing.

See you on the other side.

It’s the 30th of August in the UK, but in Selfridges on Oxford Street it’s already Christmas-time! Thanks to Dom F for the photo.

It’s the 30th of August in the UK, but in Selfridges on Oxford Street it’s already Christmas-time! Thanks to Dom F for the photo.