Stuff from February, 2009
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on February, 2009.
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on February, 2009.
This Southwest Airlines Commercial entitled “Deposit” illustrates why following instructions is important. And here’s the thing about those drive-through bank teller set-ups: should I be trying to make eye contact with the lady on the other side? I mean, they can see and hear me, and I can hear them… yet, isn’t there kind of a void there? I raise the question because I think there is at least one person in tumbledry’s audience who can provide advice.
598,000 Jobs Lost in January; Rate Hits 7.6% - NYTimes.com:
“This is a horror show we’re watching,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-of-center economic research organization in Washington. “By every measure available-loss of employment and hours, rise of unemployment, shrinkage of the employment to population rate- this recession is steeper than any recession of the last forty years, including the harsh recession of the early 1980s.”
Have 3 minutes and 30 seconds? Why not take some time out of your day to watch a rather surreal and well-produced video featuring remote control car drifting. When I first saw this, I thought the big cars in the background at the beginning were a billboard! They weren’t. They were just regular-sized cars.
The spark of creativity is one of the most singularly electrifying experiences of the human condition. To bring something, no matter how small, out of nothing — a clever turn of phrase, a pleasant melody, an arrangement of paints on a canvas — is a powerful experience. In dental school, I miss the creative spark intensely. The longing for time to write a melody on the piano or a poem in a notebook makes me wonder: would I feel the opposite way were I in music school? That is to say: after countless assignments to “compose a melody in this time and this key signature,” would I crave a list of facts to memorize, a test in which the subjective was eliminated and I could objectively, predictably achieve success?
Though he didn’t sing a single melody, the driver on the 16 this morning had a truly operatic voice — he sounded not like an aspiring amateur, but a world-famous singer. “On top of that, he could easily sit in for James Earl Jones” I thought, as we bumped down University Avenue. Now, perhaps the driver leads a church choir during his evenings and weekends, but I couldn’t help but wonder how many gifts we possess of which we are not aware.
One of my recurring themes here at tumbledry is the stunning, underutilized power of corporate/industrial money to subsidize fine works of art. Here, I continue to crystallize and extend this idea.
The GE Building (also known as the namesake of the show 30 Rock) houses, among many other things, NBC studio 8H. If you think carefully, you’re sure to recognize 8H as the studio from which Saturday Night Live goes out. If your grandparents think carefully, however, they’ll likely have a rather different memory.