Posts by matt

DrawerGeeks.com: Twice a month, graphic artists reimagine popular icons. Behold the wizardry. MeFidelic.

• Simon interviews Top Model Caridee.
  (tags: vitamn antm interviews funny beautiful)

PlanetDan’s Kick-assiest Xmas List is actually pretty kick-ass.

One of the tons of literary references in The Year of Magical Thinking is to the section of Emily Post’s Etiquette that deals with funerals. Didion mentions she ran across Etiquette on the Internet, and sure enough, here it is, with its ultra-authoritative tone, sage wisdom on matters particular, and wry wit:

A man whose social position is self-made is apt to be detected by his continual cataloguing of prominent names. Mr. Parvenu invariably interlards his conversation with, “When I was dining at the Bobo Gildings'”; or even “at Lucy Gilding’s,” and quite often accentuates, in his ignorance, those of rather second-rate, though conspicuous position. “I was spending last week-end with the Richan Vulgars,” or “My great friends, the Gotta Crusts.” When a so-called gentleman insists on imparting information, interesting only to the Social Register, shun him!

I move that we resurrect the verb to interlard.

• SpringWidgets: Cool portable Flash modules.
  (tags: flash ajax tools rss widgets)

TNR‘s Open University is reviving the age-old discussion of how awful PowerPoint is. (Cf. Gettysburg address told in PPT.) I’ve gotta dissent. I just think people use it wrong.

As a reporter/producer, I never had to make presentations. I told stories with images, audio, and text — using Flash, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Word, and the like. My first month at the Star Tribune, I found myself having to use PowerPoint. Initially disdainful, I sniffed around for a few PPT tutorials, and stumbled across this blog. As well as provided helpful tips, the blog espoused an approach to PowerPoint that helped me to see it as just another storytelling medium.

The PowerPoint I created last October still lives on in bits and pieces today, in presentations I’ve given all over the Twin Cities. And I always get pretty good reviews.

Hacktastic.

I heard one of this woman‘s songs week-before-last, immediately bought the album, listened to it during lunch at work the next day, and instantly went to a coworker’s desk to announce I’d found her new favorite thing. And now I give her to you. Her name is Shara Worden, but she goes by My Brightest Diamond.

Tomorrow night, she’ll be at 7th St. Entry, First Avenue‘s adorable little brother venue, but I cannot attend. This makes me sad. Support her when she comes to your town, that she may return to mine.

• Article on preventing runner’s knee.
  (tags: jogging article)

I’ve fallen in love with Philip Roth. Here’s a metaphor for you: a glass of wine so perfect you sip it slowly and carefully, resting it on the table after every drop to consider it afresh, swish it around and marvel at its taste and texture, savor its interplay with the ingredients of your meal. That’s Philip Roth for me right now. I love his books so much I want to put them down.

I want to live in Roth’s America. I don’t actually mean I want to live in Jewish New Jersey, but Roth’s Jersey is an apt stand-in for an America I recognize completely, riven by an endless battle between disappointment and hope. At least in his recent novels, you can read America into his protagonists as well: they’re giants with mythical qualities and deep, deep flaws, and antagonists whose motives are often (not always) sympathetic and understandable.

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