The creative brief for this display must’ve read something like this:

...should also target key market demographic of adorable demon children who’ve just lost two teeth biting into the skull of a stray dog. And want to be lemony fresh!

It’s so mind-rending that I couldn’t allow it to be on my front page. Click below to gaze into the abyss...

I ran the JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge this past Friday, which is a 3.5 mile run through the curvy roads of Central Park. I did 3.5 miles in 30 min 45 sec., just under 9 minutes per mile. I set a 10 minute per mile goal for myself, so I’m pretty happy about that. I only had to walk for about a minute or so at around 2.5 miles to regain my ability to control my limbs. I didn’t want to give up on running most of the way, because the thought of extending the duration of the race seemed worse than any price I might pay upon finishing.

I haven’t run any significant distance in about 9 months (I was jogging about a mile every few days at that time), and I got back from a trip to Mexico the preceding weekend (which I still need to post about). So the day after the race was over, my legs were about as useful as two columns of stiff cardboard. Then, on Saturday, they became more akin to a stiff piece of balsa wood, incapable of bending. By Sunday I could hide the fact that my legs were still a bit sore when I walked, and didn’t have to take stairs like an old man.

I figure by Wednesday I’ll be fully recovered and can start my mission of jogging regularly. Maybe next year I can run with the big kids from work (who bettered my time by about 5 minutes) and not have the mobility of a corpse in a snow drift when I’m done.

I use Adobe Creative Suite (CS) on my home machine, and Adobe CS 2 at work. CS is a suite of about 7 or so Adobe creative apps: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, and GoLive, along with some other odds and ends. I made the transition from Photoshop 7 and Illustrator 10 at home about...maybe 9 months ago? I don't remember. Anyway, the old icons, some of you may remember, looked like this:

Adobe then put MetaDesign to the task of redesigning their product line (I still like MetaDesign’s work and general philosophy, even if they aren’t the darlings of the design world anymore). They did a great job, in my opinion, and unified the product line, integrated their relatively new app (InDesign) and created a clean, elegant identity and packaging line. The resulting icons, of course, had virtually nothing to do with their predecessors.

I saw it this weekend, and Batman Begins is better than or equal to Burton’s excellent Batman. This is Batman and Bruce Wayne as they always should’ve been done. The depth of one of the most enduring comic characters comes out brilliantly in this rich, powerful, thematic film.

I’ve just started reading Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, which I picked up during my trip to Mexico after exhausting my other reading options with 6 hours of travel time still ahead of me. My selection was limited and my list of Books I Want to Read was not yielding anything useful. Cryptonomicon, on the other hand, has always been one of those Books You Should Read. Well, at least for me, having just enough interest in computers, mathematics, WWII, sci-fi, snarky world views, espionage, and other nerdy and semi-nerdy subjects. Besides the magnitude of the You Need to Read This-ness of this novel, the physical magnitude has always kept me away from it. The paperback edition is a bit shorter than, but otherwise nearly identical to, your average, run-of-the-mill, red brick. Oof.

I’m 91 pages into it at the moment, and if Stephenson can keep this up for the remaining 80-squinjillion, this book may make it to my top ten. It’s a book that's essentially about its own audience and, as such, hits the target relentlessly. The effort required to navigate his prose is not inconsequential, but the reward far outweighs it.

I probably shouldn’t judge a book by roughly 8% of its total content, but considering that this amount of writing is around 35% of most novels, I don’t feel out of line displaying this much optimism.

Alisa and I went to see Autolux play at Northstar bar in Philly on June 1st, and it was great. We both like Autolux (Alisa especially so), so we really went just to see them. Unfortunately, because we have early-morning jobs (I have to get up at around 5 AM when commuting to NYC), we didn't stay for the headlining Ravonettes. But The Peels were new to both of us and they were on first, so we did get at least a little extra rock culture exposure from the night.

I just bought chicken tikka masala by the pound today, at a local farmers’ market.

There is no going back from this point.

If you find me underneath a mountain of delicious Indian morsels, you will know why.

Does anyone else get a kick seeing most of the major news outlets in the United States displaying the phrase ‘deep throat’ on their front pages and covers?

I mean, think about it. Am I the only one thinking this?

This past weekend, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that a gorgeous typeface I’d (very prematurely) considered a touch too mannered for the staid realm of book typography, is actually a pleasure to read. That face is Hoefler & Frere-Jones’s gorgeous and classically striking Requiem.