from those wonderful folks who brought you mad men

Like the rest of the broadsheet-reading masses, I am currently engrossed in the TV show Mad Men: a show which seems to be the cultural reference du jour, even while remaining a niche interest on BBC 4. From style and fashion magazines concentrating on what the ladies/men wear; to health magazines examining the effect of living the lifestyle of Mad Men (conclusion: not positive); to men’s magazines extolling the lifestyle (GQ/Esquire) or phwooaaaring over the beautiful Christine Hendricks (FHM/Loaded); it seems that no article is complete without a reference to Don Draper.

In the wake of this cultural blitzkrieg of all things Draper, several books have been re-packaged and re-published to cash in on this interest in Madison Avenue. Foremost among these items is the Jerry Della Femina book “From Those Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Pearl Harbour”, which just like the others, rides the Mad Men gravy train as hard as it can, right down to the stylistic “man-in-suit-on-red-background” front cover. Unlike the others, it does at least have a tenuous link to the series, as it was this book that inspired certain elements of the show.

Written by an ad-man who lived through that time, it was obviously an invaluable reference for the producers in getting a sense of the boozy lunches and high jinks, as well as the politics of an advertising agency just right. But anyone taken in by the styling of the book, and expecting a full immersion into the Mad Men world will be left very disappointed. There are a number of genuinely funny anecdotes, and the tone of the book as a whole is friendly and chatty. But there is an overall lack of control in the book, and it quickly becomes a chore to keep reading anecdote after anecdote.

Imagine your friendly uncle, coming over and having a drink, and telling you a story about the time him, Tony and Jim had to go all the way over town and something happened. Then imagine him getting drunker and drunker, and the stories becoming less and less amusing, but your uncle becomes more and more insistent that you listen to him. He starts telling you stories about people you don’t even know, and then he starts complaining about work - each tale is delivered with a belligerent poke into the chest. You really want to listen to him at the beginning, and he says a few things that are funny, but as the night wears on, you begin to humour him, and then you slowly stop listening to him and just nod your head and smile in the right place, all the while thinking about how you could slip away without him noticing. This is the book form of that uncle: an incoherent jumble of stories about people you don’t know and don’t care about, only serving the purpose of the glorification of the storyteller, and how great he used to be.

mighty mouse summer mix

http://soundcloud.com/mightymouse-1/july-2010-mixtape-a-summer-in-space-by-mighty-mouse

This is a mighty good mix from the mighty mouse boys: lovely cosmic disco, perfect for dancing in the sunshine.

mark cavendish - 5 stage wins at tour de france 2010

This is an impressive video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K_1Dnl0mdA which showcases just exactly why Mark Cavendish is the top sprinter at the moment. The video includes a lot of top-down shots as well as a side-on view for the last sprint on the Champs d'Elysee, which really show the extra couple of gears that Cav has over the rest of the chasing pack. He wins by a ridiculous margin for most of them, which is an astonishing feat.

I really hope that he can claim the green jersey next year, although Husholvd's policy of going for the intermediate sprints in order to claw back points seems to be a good one.

High-pressure industry standards

The annual wine-tasting extravaganza in Bordeaux must surely rank as one the most high-pressure weeks in any industry. For one week, the great wine makers of France open their doors and allow the critics and tasters into the estates in order to taste their new vintage. A whole years worth of toil and effort, of baking outside in the sun, diligently watching your grapes get ripe enough, yet not too ripe. A whole year of hoping that there is enough rain, but not too much rain, hoping for a gentle breeze, crossing your fingers against an out-of-season frost. All this waiting, and then gentle harvesting, mulching and decanting into perfectly seasoned old barrels - knowing that every single thing has to be absolutely perfect, not allowing any imperfection to get into the process at any stage.

And for all that effort, you are rewarded with a week that will decide whether you make a million or a half-million, or whether in fact you will have a job next year. And on the imprecise science of the tastebuds of critics who have managed to become taste-makers. I can't imagine whether this would work in any other industry - if Apple made their new product, but it's success didn't rely on mass-market appeal, but on the whims of an uber-geek, would they realistically have been able to continue? What if that uber-geek simply didn't like listening to music while on the move: they would have been dead in the water with their launch of the ipod.

The "new" Doctor Who - review

So, the "new Who" era ends, to be replaced with the "new new Who" era. I think that any comparisons with the Russell T. Davies flavoured series will be a bit premature after only one episode, so I will wait until the end of this new run until I give my full review, but the early indications are good.

The episode itself was a bit hit and miss, but such is the way with series openers - you have to introduce new characters, new plot devices for the series as a whole, AND you have to have a decent story that will hold it all together and stand by itself. There were enough interesting things going on to hold the attention, filled with the usual Steven Moffat motifs: the everyday things being subverted into something more sinister, such as the crack in the walls and things just being in the periphery of your vision. It also acknowledged the geekier elements of the fanbase, with plenty of potential clues and/or red herrings to satisfy the internet detectives who will pore over every detail of the series.

The writing was also very good: it wasn't a classic Who (or Moffatt, come to that) story by any means, but it was a very different beast for the executive producer - rather than providing the chillingly terrifying episode, as he normally does, he had to write something else entirely, and to these end it was entirely efficient, with some excellent lines across a lot of the characters.

I do like the new Doctor as well - I had a lot of goodwill for Matt Smith, who I wanted to succeed in the role, and there is enough evidence to suggest that he will be a success. I quite like the fact that he stopped off mid-plot to change his outfit, and I hope that this attention-deficit part of his character continues throughout the series - I quite like the idea of the Doctor being intensely relaxed about the whole "saving the world" thing, instead of being angsty about the burdne he carries with him. In an ideal world, he'd stop off at a newsagent to get a can of coke or a mars bar, before continuing on and demolishing a couple of daleks.

new favorite design blog

http://grainedit.com/



They seem to be able to find a whole load of cool design work - I really like some of the modern shizness they have on there. I'm dranw more towards the really simple design pieces that they have on there - I find them more striking than things that are really cluttered and full of busy-ness

It really makes me wish I had paid attention in Design & Technology a bit more, instead of just tracing words using the font pages we had. And that I had more drafting skill, obviously.

Maps of London

The Londonist is running a competition for maps of London, and this one caught my eye: it is a very cool, esoteric hand-drawn map of London - very creative, with dinosaurs, giant snails and minor landmarks, such as pubs and favourite thai restaurants taking precedence over the more common landmarks of London. As an accurate depiction of London, it falls way short, but as an act of pyscho-geographic* cartography, it is really brilliant.

The original, full-size version can be found here.

*Pyscho-geography: The relationship between pysche and place - rather than simply describing a place, you describe how it feels, how it makes you feel, the memories it evokes, and so on. So a road that you walk down for the first time may be threatening, loud and bustling, but once you have walked down that road 100 times, you no longer notice the groups of men standing outside cafes, the noise, the smells. The road has not change, but your reaction and your relationship to it, has. For more information, you could do worse than read these books: Book 1, Book 2.