Name brands and Brand X

In my supermarket life, I've been a sucker for name brands, having grown up in a family with a healthy respect for them. Our ice cream was Breyer's. Peas came from LeSueur. We shunned Brand X. This attitude was born not of affluence but of my parents' post-Depression intent to provide the best that it was within their means to provide.

Even as a frugal graduate student, I avoided Brand X. It never occurred to me to buy something other than, say, Skippy or Smucker's. Now things are different, and our kitchen is filled with store-brand items. But there are at least four name brands I can never forsake: Cheerios, Grape-Nuts, Gulden's, and Heinz.

As to the cereals: store brands don't compare. Oaty O's and their ilk are porous compared to Cheerios. Crunchy Nuggets and company lack Grape-Nuts', well, nuttiness.

And as to the condiments: Gulden's and Heinz are mustard and ketchup. I like Dijon too (store brand, way cheaper than Grey Poupon), but Gulden's is the Platonic ideal.

Reader, what name brands are you unwilling to forsake?

Hi and Escher?

I thought first of Lucy's psychiatry stand, but the real inspiration here might be M.C. Escher.

[Hi and Lois, August 19, 2008.]

Related posts
House?
House?
Returning from vacation with Hi and Lois
Sunday at the beach with Hi and Lois
Vacationing with Hi and Lois

NowDoThis

When keeping track of things to do, I prefer paper. But I still find NowDoThis an attractive and useful online tool. It has the virtue of extreme simplicity: a text area of unvarying size in which to enter and arrange an unlimited number of items (a scroll bar appears when needed). After you save a list, your items appear in large bold type, one at a time, waiting for you to click "done." No registration required.

NowDoThis might prove especially useful in managing time spent in front of the computer. I can imagine, for instance, making a list of everyday online reading —

NY Times obits
Arts and Letters Daily
Inside Higher Ed

and so on, so as to limit idle browsing. Putting such a list in the Firefox sidebar looks like an especially nifty way to stay on task. (Please be sure to include Orange Crate Art on said list.)

Related posts
Ta-da List
A timer to limit browsing

Violet candy and Mad Men

A candy reference in Mad Men tonight: Don Draper describes his father as a man who liked "candy that tasted like violets, in a beautiful purple and silver package." That would be Choward's Violet Flavored Mints, still available today. Violet mints offer "a very unique candy experience," as the C. Howard Company puts it. I keep a package in reserve simply to look at. It's candy from the dowdy world.

When I was a little kid (in the Mad Men era), Choward's lavender gum and violet mints provided two of the curious fragrances that seemed to accompany old people. Cigarettes and Sen-Sen, too, went with old.

Will violet mints now join Frank O'Hara's Meditations in an Emergency as a new object of consumer curiosity?

Related posts
Gum, then, now
Frank O'Hara and Mad Men

Plagiarized comment-spam

I've received two unusual comments over the past two days in response to posts on the films Laura and The Street with No Name. In each case, something was off: neither commenter said anything to engage what I'd written. Think "parallel play." Two Google searches let me understand what was going on: these were not genuine comments at all but excerpts from unrelated (and smart!) online writing about these films.

The comment-spam strategy here is to look for a blog post with a key word or phrase and adding a pseudo-comment whose content is cut and pasted from elsewhere (in these instances, from film blogs). The commenters' URLs make it clear that the sole purpose of these phony comments is to drive traffic to commercial websites, one for bail bonds, one for fountain pens. I deleted both comments after previewing them.

I don't know if such comment-spam is automated or requires manual effort. Either way, I'm amazed that a spammer would expect a return on this investment of time and energy.

By the way, if any reader needs a fountain pen recommendation: Lamy and Pelikan are excellent choices. As to bail bonds, I wouldn't know. I always make bail.

99¢ plus

"The whole thing, now, is the 'plus.'"

A new direction in NYC retail: 99¢ stores in which everything costs 99¢ or more. Read all about it:

The Cost of Retail Survival: 99¢. Or Maybe 99¢ Plus. (New York Times)

Persian salad

Another recipe of daunting complexity, with several ingredients and several steps. But master it I did. Persian salad is an exciting alternative to coleslaw or potato salad when grilling or picnicking (and when not grilling or picnicking).

1. Peel and dice a large cucumber.
2. Dice a large tomato and ten to twelve scallions.
3. Combine the above ingredients in a bowl.
4. Add the juice of a large lemon, a teaspoon half-teaspoon of salt, a half-teaspoon of black pepper, and a generous dash of cayenne pepper.
5. Stir and serve.

If you're preparing this dish in advance, keep it in the Frigidaire, and hold off on the cayenne until serving.

This recipe came my way some years ago, without attribution, in a newsletter from a local car dealership. I've rewritten it and added the word generous in front of dash.

*

June 24, 2014: The salt now seems overpowering. I’ve cut it by half.

Other recipes
Adventures in grain
Cabbage soup
Pasta with spinach and lemon
Saturday night quesadillas

Ice cream vendor

From the Indiana University Archives:

Charles Weever Cushman, amateur photographer and Indiana University alumnus, bequeathed approximately 14,500 Kodachrome color slides to his alma mater. The photographs in this collection bridge a thirty-two year span from 1938 to 1969, during which time he extensively documented the United States as well as other countries.

The above photograph is dated September 4, 1950. The description reads "Ice cream vendor supplies 2nd story at Halsted & Cabrini Chicago." (More info on this photograph here.)

I'm about to make a lame joke about the vendor being a second-story man. So before I do, start browsing:

Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection (Indiana University Archives / Digital Library Program)

(Thanks to Michael at Brown Studies for pointing me to this collection.)

Free advice for Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben's foreword to Maggie Jackson's new book Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age begins with predictable irony:

As I settled down at my desk to write this brief foreword, a light on the computer blinked to indicate that a new e-mail had arrived. This left me with a quandary that by now must afflict most Americans most days of their lives: continue with the train of thought that I'd begun to follow or see who was hailing me and for what purpose.

McKibben clicks, replies, talks on the phone with the e-mailer, loses half an hour. And as the foreword ends,

The inbox is flashing again, clamoring for my attention. Loving novelty, I head in its direction; craving depth, I do so with a tinge of regret.

I'm puzzled when people who are skeptical users of technology seem unaware that they can prevent at least many digital distractions. Some free advice for Bill McKibben:

1. Turn off automatic e-mail checking and notification. (I'm assuming that the "light on the computer" involves Microsoft Outlook or a similar program.) Check e-mail manually, less frequently.

2. Use distraction-free writing technology. (I'm guessing that McKibben was getting ready to open Microsoft Word.) A text-editor beats Word for composing. Dark Room and WriteRoom are good choices too: in full-screen mode they remove access to other programs. Writing a draft in pencil or pen removes all computer-based distraction.

3. Read Mark Hurst's book Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload. One reason McKibben is distracted: Jackson's book offers no practical advice for managing digital claims on our attention. Hurst's book does.

Bill McKibben's quandary need not be a quandary. We already have the means to remove many of the distractions that can come between attention and the digital task at hand.

Two related posts
Driven to distraction
Review of Bit Literacy

Review: David Murray and Mal Waldron

David Murray and Mal Waldron, Silence (Justin Time, 2008)

David Murray, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone
Mal Waldron, piano

Recorded October 2001 in Brussels

Free For C.T. (Waldron–Max Roach) 10:44
Silence (Murray) 3:30
Hurray For Herbie (Waldron) 7:52
I Should Care (Sammy Cahn–Axel Stordahl–Paul Weston) 12:36
Jean-Pierre (Miles Davis) 10:03
All Too Soon (Duke Ellington–Carl Sigman) 7:08
Soul Eyes (Waldron–Kelly Beverly Wolfe) 14:17

This recording gives us two great and markedly different improvisers whose interplay bespeaks a deep musical and emotional connection. Had Murray and Waldron ever played together before making this recording? The one-page insert accompanying the CD gives no information about the circumstances of this collaboration.

Every track here is a standout, but I'm especially drawn to the last four (which twenty-five years or so ago might have formed the two sides of a perfect LP). Waldron introduces an ascending half-step figure in the seventh bar of "I Should Care" that reshapes (or Waldronizes) the melody, and he and Murray recast the first four bars of "All Too Soon" as a series of three-note phrases. "Jean-Pierre," one of the bright moments of Miles Davis' later years, is reharmonized into a gospel-funk extravaganza reminiscent of Murray's "Morning Song" (or Billy Preston's "Nothing from Nothing"). And finally, "Soul Eyes," whose lengthy coda suggests the joy these musicians found in playing together.

A bonus: sound quality is extraordinary. Three cheers for Michael W. Huon and Olivier Huillet, who did the recording, and Bill Szawlowski, who mixed and mastered.

I've gone as long as I can without saying it: what a record!

Samples of the first five tracks are available here.