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Rainy Days and Mondays

PWC Consulting, separating from PricewaterhouseCoopers (the post-Enron thing to do at the Big 5), is changing its name to Monday. Hmmm. Odd. Better, perhaps, than Accenture, I suppose, but that's not saying much. But Monday? It's a bit too touchy feely for my image of the postive brand attributes PWC Consulting presumably still carries. So far, the site looks like an ad agency has just run amok without any real thought to the business positioning of the new firm.

I hope Monday Magazine got a pretty penny selling its old domain.

- 6/13/2002

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Spelling Correction

Mr. Haas also corrects my spelling, that the plural of "goy" is "goyim" not "goim" as I said in my recent note. I think I saw "goim" somewhere on the Web, but I'll go with the more classic spelling he suggests. What would I know, I'm just a dumb goy.

Reminded of remember the joke: Why did God invent goyim? Because somebody has to pay retail.

- 6/13/2002

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Dancing Dubya

Silly fun with Flash, Dancing Bush. Much better when you turn on the music, dancefloor and lights before you start playing with the dance moves.

Source: Mark Haas, who is threatening to take my advice and launch a blog of his own, which should be good, but at my expense, since I already pass off many of the amusing tidbits he regularly emails me that he would presumably use on his own blog instead. Stay tuned.

- 6/13/2002

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Americans Just Don't Understand the World

This is sad. The Pew Research Center just released results of a recent survey that said that despite September 11, most Americans still don't want more foreign news coverage because "they simply have trouble understanding foreign events," as this Washington Post article puts it.

Source: Maass

- 6/12/2002

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Bloomberg vs. Recycling

I had to dig to find this story buried on the Time's web site (tho the issue is getting lots of coverage on WYNC), about how the NY City Council is holding up the city budget, technically due today, because of a stand-off w/ Mayor Bloomberg over recycling. Everything else they've agreed on, including putting money back in for teachers and other good things he was trying to cut.

I'll admit, I didn't vote in the mayoral election. Green was too much of a weenie and I didn't know what to think of Bloomberg and was still in a fog after Sept. 11, so I decided to let it slide and accept my fate. I didn't think either would be so bad. And so far, Bloomberg hasn't outraged me. He's presentable, seems reasonable, he takes the subway (supposedly), which is cool.

But I'm totally behind the City Council on this recycling stand-off. Bloomberg was supposed to be the businessman who could fix inefficiency in the system. So he accuses the recycling programs of being inefficient because a sizeable portion of bottles and cans end up in landfills (this Times article doesn't cite what percentage, but I seem to recall from earlier reports something like 20-30% fall thru the recycling programs). But just axing the program is hardly "fixing" the inefficiencies. That's penny wise and pound foolish.

Besides, the money to be gained from killing the program is a drop in the bucket: the article says killing recycling would save the city budget $56 million, but the budget deficit is estimated at roughly $5 billion. I empathize with Bloomberg about how difficult his job will be to close that massive and unexpected gap, but killing this program is hardly the answer. I don't understand why he's making such a stand on something that is monetarily meaningless in the big picture but symbolically so important.

Regardless of whether there are inefficiencies in the current recycling system, the truth is recycling as we now practice it across this country makes virtually no difference to the rapid deterioration of our environment. It's not really part of the "sustainable development" movement that preaches a significantly different approach to industry and product development for humans to continue to live in harmony with the planet for several more generations. I nominally subscribe to the sustainability movement, in as much as I think it's the right idea but have my doubts that it will ever take hold w/ the powers that be. Which is precisely why I think Bloomberg should back off recycling. Not because I believe that it actually makes much difference to the environment, but because it's symbolic of at least our will to try to do the right thing. If nothing else, sorting your damn papers and cans is one of the simplest balms to assuage liberal guilt.

It's taken years to get people to even disciplined to do this much. To throw that away is to throw away an important vision of our future.

- 6/12/2002

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Winona vs. The FBI

The 2002 PowerPoint Competition is now underway! (In case you missed it, I blogged on this a few days ago.) The contestants, Michael Sippey in SF and Leslie Harpold in NY are battling to see who is the best PPT designer in America. The first of seven rounds (at ClicktoAddTitle.com) has Michael with "Improving the FBI Starts With You" vs. Leslie's "Winona Needs Us."

It's a tough call, but since Michael is a client and I'm running a bit late on an assignment for him, I'm going to give my vote to him this round. At least I know that while I'm wasting time blogging, he's spending a lot more time on these silly PPT presentations.

- 6/10/2002

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'Round Midnight

In the unlikely event that I were banished to a hermit's life with only one piece of music ever to enjoy, I think I'd pick this recording (MP3) of Thelonious Monk playing solo his beautiful composition "'Round Midnight" (composed in partnership with trumpeter Cootie Williams), recorded in 1954 in France. I got the track off a nice three-CD box set called "Jazz Piano Anthology," which Amazon is selling for $16 (as of this writing).

Monk is generally one of my favorite composers, and this melody in particular I find hypnotizing. Not only a great composer ("'Round Midnight" is a standard in the jazz world today recorded by everybody), but as a musician, Monk was one of a kind. The subtlety and nuances in this five-and-a-half minute recording is deep enough for me to listen to 1,000 times.

For anyone interested in Monk, I'd highly recommend the one-hour documentary "Thelonious Monk: American Composer," available on video.

Lyricist Bernie Hanighen also put a beautiful set of lyrics to "'Round Midnight" which has also been widely recorded by vocalists. My favorite vocal version is by Sarah Vaughan (MP3), available on a terrific album, "Sarah Sings Soulfully", where she's backed by only a five-piece band (I hate listening to her with the orchestras full of strings) (which Amazon has for $12).

- 6/10/2002

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Photos

I fancy myself a photographer, which is probably a mistake. Picked up contact sheets at B&H Photo today, always a sobering experience.

About a year ago, I picked up a Leica IIIa. It's a sweet camera, manufactured in Germany circa 1938 (not the proudest era of German manufacturing, but I bought it at B&H where they're all Hasids, so I don't feel so bad). My inspiration for this camera was Bruno Brourel, a talented French photographer friend of mine who lives in Budapest (here's the only pic of his I could find online). His black-and-white candid street shots are in the vein of Hungarian masters Brassai and Andre Kertesz. All of them (and many others, e.g., contemporary French master Henri Cartier-Bresson) use(d) similar model Leicas.

It's an incredibly simple camera design: the only things you can control are the focus, the shutter speed and the aperture. That simplicity, however, seems to have an inverse effect on the quality of my pictures, unfortunately. I finally broke down and bought a handheld light meter a while ago, as my previous attempts to "wing it" on the light were wasting a lot of film. Even with the light meter, I'm still pretty wobbly on getting the light right. Focus is occasionally a challenge as well. Loading the film, in fact, continues to post a challenge, perhaps explaining what appear to be scratch marks on the shots below.

Suffice it to say, I'm no Brassai. But what's the point of having a blog if I can't subject you dear readers (whoever the hell you are) to even my disappointments (this is, as the sign says, All Bruner, All the Time). These were shot at Peter's birthday a few weeks ago, using 1600 ASA film in available light in an apartment at night (should have had 3200). These were simply scanned from a contact sheet:

Brent 1	Brent 2	Peter
Sam	Sam and Friend	Sam and Friend Artsy
Subway

One final note. For anyone else out there familiar with B&H, what's the deal with the "Goi Goi" candy? Is that some kind of insider joke?

For those of you who don't know B&H, if you like photography, you should. It's a perhaps the biggest photography story anywhere -- certainly in New York City. I believe it is the successor of the famous defuct 47th Street Photo. In any event, virtually all of the 100+ staff are Orthodox Hasidic Jews. And on virtually every countertop throughout the store are bowls of Goi Goi fruit flavored taffy. And most of the customers stuffing their faces with the candies, unlike the staff, are goim. Is that supposed to be just an ironic coincidence?

- 6/10/2002

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