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This is great: Hussein Alazaat and Ali Almasri have launced Wajha — "facade" in Arabic — in Amman, Jordan, a social initiative that brings effective design to small businesses and their facades.
Just one of a selection of boob-themed coloring books. (Photo via DNAinfo)
As of last Friday, Bushwick officially has a boob-themed restaurant and bar. Though we have many questions, the most burning one by far is this: How did it take us this long?
Via Bushwick Daily, Boobie Trap opened last Friday at Irving Ave at Bleecker Street near the Myrtle-Wyckoff stop, selling barbecue (pulled pork, smoked seitan, hot and cold sides), as well as a pretty incredible lunch deal in which you can get a half-pound of meat, two sides, and a beer for $12. What the article failed to mention, however, was that Boobie Trap was more than just a reference to The Goonies. It’s the theme of the bar!
DNAinfo spoke to owner and bartender Kristen North, who says Boobie Trap reminds her of a Tarantino film, and is a “bartender’s bar.” We do not disagree with this, as bartenders, like the majority of the population, seem to generally be great fans of boobs. There are boob-themed coloring books (see above), a topless mannequin, men’s magazine centerfolds, “breasts inside glass ornaments,” as well as non-boob esoterica, such as plastic fingers that act as coat hooks, a “fuck off” neon sign, bathroom doorbells, decorated phone chargers, and zebra- and leopard-print decor.
As for beer, Boobie Trap only serves two kinds on tap, one light and one dark, in an effort to focus more on canned beers, because they are “always super cold,” according to North, (um, except for in those cases when… they are not?). The drink deals are especially notable as well, including $3 wells and drafts and $25 60-oz pitchers of sangria or margaritas from 4 to 8pm, which in our opinion, might just be the breast happy hour in Brooklyn.
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the road to recovery for New York's World Trade Center has been financially and emotionally costly, logistically and politically arduous, and all of it has been minutially publicized. The site, owned by real estate group Silverstein Properties since 1998 when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey decided to privatize it, consists (or will consist) of five new skyscrapers (1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 WTC), the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, 550,000 square feet of retail space at Westfield World Trade Center, and a performing arts center. While each building and entity has its own logo, the World Trade Center complex as a whole hasn't had one, until now. Last week The New York Times was first to report on the new logo designed by Landor.
Logo detail.
One of the principal attractions of the story has been the $3.57 million price tag associated with the logo. As we all know, no logo is worth $3.57 million but even as the reported value of the contract awarded to Landor by the "authority board" — not really sure who that is — that is a pretty significant amount of money for even the most comprehensive branding project. But the point is: This is not a $3.57-million-logo.
The other appealing aspect of the story is that the logo is imbued with various meanings that perhaps no one will see. (Given the amount of press received so far I would argue that a large enough group of people now know the meanings and will probably pass it on to others — just like a limited few realized there was an arrow in FedEx's logo and now even your aunt knows about it).
The six implied meanings are all relevant, none are gratuitous — well, perhaps the 17.76 angle thing is a bit of a stretch — and, more importantly, it's quite likely that each of those meanings helped the logo make it through the approval process. Each meaning speaks to a different constituency of the interested parties; from those who see the site as an emotionally charged place that needs to be remembered to those who see it as the next real estate and business frontier. There is something in that logo for everyone to approve. And that's what makes this actually a brilliant solution besides the arguable fact that this may be Landor's most successful and relevant logo since its late 1990s – early 2000s contemporary heyday.
WTC sign. Photo by Chester Higgins Jr. for The New York Times.
The logo is almost absurdly minimal, five bars that make a "W". This alone is reason altogether to celebrate it. It could have easily been the most convoluted logo yet to come out of all the WTC buildings. It's a bold, graphic, daring logo with a really strong presence when it could have easily been a boring wordmark. It demands decoding, yes, but for anyone interested in doing so they are rewarded with numerous satisfying answers. Even without any explanation, the bars, shaped like abstract skyscrapers and joined together as a whole communicate the basic premise of the new World Trade Center site. Given all the emotion and cash riding on the site and, by extension, on this logo, this is a remarkably successful solution not to be taken lightly.
Starting today, anyone with an internet connection and 23 minutes of free time can stream the season finale of The Hotwives of Orlando, the original Hulu series parodying the sprawling Real Housewives shows and the various franchises’ train-wreck stars. Like the reunion specials capping off Real Housewives seasons, the seventh episode of Hotwives reconvenes the titular narcissists (played by Casey Wilson and others) for a salacious update hosted by the show’s Andy Cohen–alike (Paul Scheer). Now that season one is in the books, Vulture closely examined the six O-Town hot messes and and ranked the Hotwives by their inherent hot-messness.
6. Phenemon “Phe Phe” Reed (Tymberlee Hill)
Real Housewives equivalent: Nene Leakes, Atlanta
Husband: womanizing Rodney (Jerry Minor)
Professions: lawyer, cake designer, Zumba instructor, foot model, CPA, minister
Hobbies: taxidermy, patronizing the Tools & Tapas strip club
Events she hosted: Amanda’s Intervention Party, Group Staycation (with Weird Al as self-help guru Cliff Bonadentura)
Legal spats: Was prosecuting attorney and defendant in Tawny’s lawsuit over the song “Save the Drama From Obama”
Mad that you skipped her: “I’m Getting Sued by Tawny” Party
Point of pride: Outspokenness
Hot-messiness factor: Negligible. She’s smart, hardworking and successful, although a little light on common sense (e.g., serving alcohol at Amanda’s intervention; referring to her husband as a professional athlete, even though he’s a team mascot). She’d be better off without Rodney — a serial cheater with several illegitimate children — but she drafts airtight prenups and insists, “Divorce is what makes ourmarriage work.”
Reunion bombshell: Phe Phe divorced Rodney for bedding her manicurist.
5. Crystal Simmons (Angela Kinsey)
Real Housewives equivalent: Alexis Bellino, Orange County
Husband: possessive, ultraconservative T.J. (Seth Morris)
Profession: TV weather reporter
Hobbies: Bible study, feigning sisterly concern for her own self-interest
Medical condition: Restless Leg Syndrome (self-diagnosed)
Mad that you skipped her: “I Just Had Sex With My Husband” Party
Point of pride: McMansion
Hot-messiness factor: Low. Crystal’s biggest problem is her husband, who believes that women shouldn’t read, work, or orgasm. She also uses her sister Amanda’s addiction struggles to bolster her own self-esteem.
Reunion bombshell:Crystal, Are You Clear?, Crystal and T.J.’s sitcom, will be produced for the Christian Broadcasting Network by Kirk Cameron.
4. Veronica Von Vandervon (Andrea Savage)
Real Housewives equivalent: Lisa Vanderpump, Beverly Hills
Husband: none
Profession: owner of Von Vandervon Hot Holes Heavy Putting and Snack Shack
Hobbies: visiting website called Super Cougars, speaking in a British accent
Event she hosted: dinner party with the Ghost Shouter (Big Bang Theory’s Melissa Rauch)
Medical condition: “deviated septum in her vagina”
Mad that you skipped her: dog’s funeral
Points of pride: richness, whiteness
Hot-messiness factor: Moderate. Veronica is confident, detached, and vaguely white supremacist. Thanks to family money, she can treat herself to vaginoplasties and underage pool boys (she loves to educate others in the art of double entendres). However, her world is shattered when her dog, Lover, overheats in a tanning-bed accident.
Reunion bombshell: She and new husband Billy (actually a gay high-school student) will take in an African foster child (actually a ripped black man).
3. Tawny St. John (Casey Wilson)
Real Housewives equivalent: Gretchen Rossi, Orange County
Husband: much older Phil (Stephen Tobolowsky)
Professions: founder of Classy Canines charity (provides high heels for dogs); designer of “Tight Little Pursie” handbags; former Hooters Airlines stewardess
Hobbies: screwing her trainer (New Kids on the Block’s Joey McIntyre); volunteering with Lap Dances for Veterans
Event she hosted: Classy Canines fundraiser (with Jeff Hiller as party planner Antoine)
Medical condition: painful urination
Legal spats: sued Phe Phe for copying her song, “I Don’t Wanna/Your Drama”
Mad that you skipped her: Eyebrow Extension Launch Party
Point of pride: bod
Hot-messiness factor: Large. Tawny is a self-deluded gold-digger, banned for life from entering Ruby Tuesday. Despite her husband’s devotion to her, she tells everyone that he’s dying, hoping the universe will comply. Although her best friend is overly competitive, drama queen Tawny repeatedly goes too far, outing Shauna as broke in front of their friends and wearing a wedding dress to Shauna’s vow renewal.
Reunion bombshell: Tawny divorced Phil, who proceeds to drop dead when she tells the world.
2. Amanda Simmons (Kristen Schaal)
Real Housewives equivalent: Kim Richards, Beverly Hills
Husband: none
Profession: former child actress
Hobbies: looting liquor stores, blacking out
Medical condition: drug addict, alcoholic
Point of pride: childhood stardom as the Florida Prune Juice girl
Hot-messiness factor: Enormous. Unlike the other Hotwives, Amanda’s addiction issues are life-threatening. Besides copious amounts of alcohol, her drugs of choice include meth, crack, horse tranquilizers, and dog food. When she could have been playing with her childhood peers, Amanda was on a set; thus, she never developed basic social skills. Yet when she doesn’t have the reality-show producers to cloud her judgment — they check her out of rehab to film the reunion special — Amanda seems capable of making positive, proactive choices.
Reunion bombshell: Since Florida doesn’t recognize gay marriage, Amanda’s recent union ended when she realized the “man” she married, Joe, was actually Shauna’s lesbian sister.
1. Shauna Maducci (Danielle Schneider)
Real Housewives equivalent: Teresa Giudice, New Jersey
Husband: Anthony (Matt Besser)
Children: “four or five” daughters Shana, Shayna, Shanti, and Shania
Profession: none; former stewardess for Hooters Airlines
Hobbies: compulsive shopping (Kate Walsh plays her interior decorator), one-upping best friend Tawny
Event she hosted: Pimps & Hoes Party (with Horatio Sanz as pimp instructor Tito, and Kulap Vilaysack as prostitute professor Carmelotta)
Medical conditions: herpes, eczema
Legal spats: foreclosure (Orange Is the New Black’s Lauren Lapkus plays a bank representative); plumber threating to sue for assault; looming fraud charges
Mad that you skipped her: Car-Housewarming Party
Point of pride: marriage
Hotmessiness factor: Immeasurable. Crashes into a homeless man while drunk driving. Gets attacked by a ghost. Punches a goat in the face. Declares “I spent my daughter’s college fund on throw pillows.” Thinks her husband is being romantic when he’s insulting her. Pronounces words wrong. Wipes her ass with formalwear. Believes in unicorns.
Reunion bombshell: Shauna gloats to being the brains behind her incarcerated husband’s schemes.
by Kevin Montgomery on Valleywag, shared by Nitasha Tiku to Gawker
Tech buses don't need anymore bad press. Their mere existence in San Francisco has been enough to make them the most hated bus system in America. But a new report is certain to drag their reputation down even further: companies are paying their bus drivers obscenely low wages and forcing them to work 15.5 hour days, six of which are unpaid.
The area around Bedford and South 2nd is a winter wonderland right now thanks to none other than GIRLS filming in the neighborhood. Rami even noticed they made South Williamsburg seem like Greenpoint by adding Greenpoint Avenue G train signage. I don’t know what movie magic is more insane, making it seem like winter in the middle of August, or making it seem like the Greenpoint G is running right now. See more pictures below:
An ordinary sight this is not: a decommissioned 20-seat plane has been sitting parked beside a McDonald’s restaurant in Taupo, New Zealand for the past 24 years. After all this time, it is finally being put to good use—it has…
I’d Rather Get a Spanking Than Go To the Doctor
Frandsen
1987
This title isn’t at all creepy.
Thanks to an alert Twitter follower, I was referred to this title and couldn’t wait to see if someone had it locally. I was not disappointed!
The premise is that a little girl is told she has to go to the doctor for some shots. The girl then lists all the things she would rather do instead including cleaning her room and even getting a spanking. She ends up at doctor’s office and getting her shots. The book never does talk about what actually is involved in getting a shot and the illustrations don’t help explain either.
I understand the point, but the execution is not that great. The book is also stained (God, I hope it is coffee!) I say weed it and get something newer.
If a bike thief didn't know he'd slipped up when he snatched Aaron Rush's new mountain bike, he's certainly aware of it now. Rush posted a "Dear Douchebag Bike Thief" letter all over the racks where the theft occurred, and it's since spread across Twitter and a number of U.K. news sites.
Located in a repurposed industrial area of Beijing, China, the Mansudae Art Studio Gallery displays exclusively North Korean works of art that are produced under factory-like conditions in their home country.
The first such art outlet and one of the few DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea)-approved tourist sites outside of their tightly controlled borders, the gallery is said to be overseen by Kim Jong-il himself, allowing only the finest of the Mansudae Studio pieces to be shown. According to the gallery's website, the studio back in North Korea employs around 4,000 people on a 40,000 square foot production facility to churn out their governmentally approved artworks. It proudly claims to be the largest art production center in the world, and the gallery in Beijing is the one of the only places in the world for outsiders to acquire the cream of that crop.
Much North Korean art is known for its meticulous attention to detail and stark realism. Works in the museum range from oil paintings to sculptures to watercolors to ink drawings to a unique form of North Korean art that uses jewel dust as a medium. Buyers for the pieces range from Americans looking for "unique" pieces to nearby African politicians looking for momentous works for less cash.
The gallery has been known to loan out works for approved exhibitions, but for the most part, the Mansudae Art Studio Gallery is one of the only places in the world that outsiders can view, and purchase, the North Korean art of today.
Danny Meyer's obsessively loved Shake Shack has finally reached Barclays Center. The long-awaited Flatbush Shack, as its dubbed, opened yesterday across the street from the home of the Nets. The newest outpost, which is the borough's third, is serving all of the Shack classics including its much missed crinkle cut fries. As per usual, the team has come up with a new custard concrete for this location. It's called the "Nothin' But NETS", and involves chocolate and vanilla custard plus marshmallow sauce, crunchy bits, and chocolate sprinkles. That Four & Twenty Blackbirds pie concrete from the Dumbo outpost is also on the menu.
· Let's Do This, Brooklyn! [Official Shake Shack Website]
· All Coverage of Shake Shack [~ENY~]
In May of 1981, party people gathered for one of the nerdiest soirees ever to grace lower Manhattan. Billed as the “Foot Ball,” the event was an anti-metric shindig. Its revelers—including author Tom Wolfe and Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand—had joined to protest the encroachment of the metric system into modern American life. They threw shade on the meter and kilogram, and toasted the simple beauty of old classics like the yard and the pound.
A fascinating paragraph in a David Remnick profile of former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul pronounced Barack Obama's foreign policy leanings mysterious, inscrutable, and almost hypocritical:
Obama’s advisers and the Washington policy establishment have all spent countless hours trying to square the President’s admiration of George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft—classic realists—with his appointments of interventionists like McFaul, Rice, and Samantha Power. In the end, one leading Russia expert, who has worked for two Administrations, told me, "I think Obama is basically a realist—but he feels bad about it."
This goes to show mostly that the Washington policy establishment engages in a lot of tedious conversations. It's pretty clear to me that Obama is a realist and senior officials in the administration don't feel bad about it at all. Nor should they. Obama's actually quite good at it — as this months' opening with Cuba and simultaneous collapse of Russia's economic and strategic situation shows.
To its detractors, realism is a policy of cynicism — one that, in the name a cold-hearted national interest, leaves on the table a bounty of humanitarian gains ripe for the plucking.
The more generous view is that realism is a policy of limits. A recognition that for a moral foreign policy to do any good in the world it must be feasible, and that even the mightiest empire the world has ever known faces daunting challenges when it attempts to remake the domestic politics of foreign countries. A recognition that the long-term ability of the United States to do any good for anyone hinges on maintaining domestic strength and advancing foreign goals in cost-effective ways.
In Ukraine, for example, Obama has not opted for the path of maximum punishment for Russia. He has opted instead for the path of punishing Russia as hard as possible at minimum cost to the United States. Russians are paying a far higher price for the conflict than are Europeans, and Americans are paying a lower price still. Putin hasn't had a change of heart, but Ukrainian forces have the upper hand and Russia is becoming both a pariah and an economic basketcase. Steady gains at minimal cost don't make for great speeches, but they do put American influence on a sustainable basis.
Meanwhile, the rapprochement with Cuba is already paying dividends in terms of America's relationships with Mexico, Brazil, and even Venezuela with no conceivable downside to American interests. All it took was an ounce of political courage. If we manage to muster more and end the embargo, we'll see even more in the way of concrete economic and political payoffs.
In the Middle East, things are of course messy.
But it's a mess that is not incompatible with our main objectives in the region. Israel is more secure than ever. Not just beneath its Iron Dome but because Hamas has been cut off from Iranian patronage, and Hezbollah is too busy fighting the Assad regime's enemies in Syria to open a northern front against the Jewish state. The Syrian civil war itself is a humanitarian disaster. But in a war between a vicious government and a rebel cause full of its own vicious jihadis, a brutal stalemate that sucks up resources is an acceptable outcome for the United States. The damage of the war, though real, has little direct impact on America and the costs of attempting to dive in and resolve the situation would have been prohibitive.
In the Persian Gulf, key US allies such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are perfectly secure from external aggression, pumping oil in peace even as the progress of solar power and fracking reduces our long-term dependence on these questionable regimes.
And yet it's the right call. The Kurdistan regional government is friendly to the United States, is viewed as legitimate by the Kurdish population, and has demonstrated considerable fighting skill in the past. A relatively small amount of American military assistance should be able to secure their continued autonomy, a useful and humane objective that is achievable at low cost. For the Iraqi government to entirely reconquer its lost Sunni hinterland, by contrast, would be considerably more difficult. It is also not entirely clear what the point would be, in terms of concrete American interests. It's far from obvious that a strong unitary Iraqi state is in the interests of the United States or reflects the desire of the Iraqi people.
As in Syria, stalemate between Sunni-held and Shiite-held territories could be ugly — but an acceptable form of ugly. Don't expect to hear it in a Rose Garden speech, but the main oil fields are down south near Basra in firmly government-held territory.
Meanwhile, democracy marches on. The Arab Spring has mostly been a disappointment, but the new regime in Tunisia is real enough. Indonesia is poised for its first peaceful, orderly, transition of power to an opposition presidential candidate. China is friendless in East Asia. "We'll do what we can, when we can do something useful on the cheap" doesn't quite have the glorious ring of JFK's vow to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship." But it does have the advantage of being a sustainable, sensible approach to 21st century world affairs.
There's just something about spiders that makes people want to burn them to death with homemade aerosol flamethrowers, even if their houses nearly burn down in the process. It happened earlier this year in Seattle, causing $60,000 in damage, and now it's occurred again in Wales.
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Dirty Bird, a food truck serving fried chicken in Cardiff, UK, has been raising eyebrows because look at it. Owner denies phallic approach. Designed by MarkJames_Works and judging from the poster on his site I question their innocence.
Guinness parent company Diageo rolled out Black Lager in 2011 in an attempt to convince the craft-beer-drinking world that it was so much more than its classic namesake Irish stout, and now next month it will debut Blonde American Lager, which is exactly what it sounds like. The company has dubbed its new "hoppy" beer, which is made in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, using yeast from Dublin, a "fusion brew", and hopes are that the release will help slumping sales. If all goes well, the Irish-American lager will become a permanent Guinness offering. [Businessweek]
As a serious student of Neil Young, aviator glasses, musicians who wear football jerseys, and rock-related debauchery, I’ve been obsessed lately with the recent CSNY 1974 boxed set. It documents Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s infamous Doom Tour, a two-month series of shows in the U.S. and U.K. that became the first large-scale stadium tour in rock history. In retrospect, these concerts are remembered primarily for the backstage excesses of the star consonants — were it not for Brian De Palma making Scarface a decade later, the Doom Tour might still be the go-to cultural signifier for “insanely ostentatious abuse of cocaine by wealthy maniacs.” The music itself has usually been dismissed as bloated and off-key, an all-too-accurate reflection of the band members’ inebriation and greed.
CSNY 1974 attempts to mount a defense for the tour being worthwhile musically by compiling the best performances from several dates and, in many cases, “correcting” those scattershot harmonies. I really love it, though I’m not always sure if I’m hearing the songs or the context for the songs.
With three discs collecting 40 songs (plus a DVD composed of eight performance clips), the boxed set is a predictably bumpy though always fascinating ride. Young comes off great, performing several tunes from his brilliant post-hippie nightmare masterpieces from the period, 1974’s On the Beach and 1975’s Tonight’s the Night, as well as a generous number of new songs not officially available anyplace else. (The most essential being “Pushed It Over the End” and “Traces.”) Young’s bummer odes about the end of his own idealism give CSNY 1974 its self-referential undertow. Hearing him tear through “Revolution Blues” on the Doom Tour is akin to Lou Reed playing “Heroin” while overdosing on heroin.
What I like most about CSNY 1974 is the documentary aspect — everything that was both transcendent and terrible about stadium rock can be traced back to here. Not even the post-production cleanup work can fully obscure how Stephen Stills appears to nearly forget the words to “Blackbird,” or how David Crosby teeters on the edge of falling into a coma while performing a spellbinding version of “The Lee Shore.” CSNY 1974 is basically a mess, but it captures the time with more honesty than I expected.
As far as the performances backstage, the Doom Tour has spun off stories so good they don’t seem like they could possibly be true. To illustrate this, I’ve compiled a 10-question true/false quiz about the Doom Tour, with the answers posted afterward. NO CHEATING!
The Scenarios
1. In advance of the concerts, Stephen Stills told Cameron Crowe, in reference to CSNY’s prior tours, “We did one for the art and the music, and one for the chicks. This one’s for the cash.”
2. On this tour CSNY invented the 10-second rule for blow. This occurred one day when they spilled cocaine on the carpet, and responded by getting down on the floor and snorting it off the carpet.
3. Jann Wenner visited the tour’s opening date in Seattle to show his support. David Crosby, high on mescaline, refused to speak to him because he mistook Wenner for disgraced ex-Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman.
4. Bob Dylan showed up backstage at one point and played all the songs from Blood on the Tracks for Stills and bassist Tim Drummond before the album was released. Stills, coked out of his mind, told Dylan the songs weren’t any good.
5. Neil Young wrote “Powderfinger” about snorting bumps off his fist each time Stills played an overly long guitar solo.
6. Graham Nash and Stills almost had a fistfight before a show in Milwaukee because Stills had deliberately smoked Nash’s specially rolled “cross joint,” which Nash had been saving all tour for his performance of “Chicago” in Chicago the following month.
7. Drummond once appeared onstage wearing a T-shirt that read, “NO HEAD, NO BACKSTAGE PASS.”
8. Road manager R. Mac Holbert recalled how Crosby would order him to his hotel room and make him discuss business while one of the two girlfriends accompanying Crosby on the tour went down on Crosby.
9. Rock journalist Ben Fong-Torres reported in Rolling Stone that all four band members caught an STD from the same woman in Texas.
10. According to Joni Mitchell, at the tour’s climactic show at Wembley Stadium in London, the band members were doing so much cocaine that they had nosebleeds as they approached the stage.
The United Kingdom's National Health Service posted these flyers in hospitals and on college campuses as part of an anti-rape campaign called "Know Your Limits."
(National Health Service)
Unsurprisingly, the posters have been met with outrage, as they pretty much shift the blame onto rape victims who have been drinking. This edited version of the poster, by a British blogger with the Twitter handle neverjessie, captures the reaction near perfectly.
They are now just reviewing aisles in the Price Chopper?
For Sunday’s casual-dining review, Bryan Fitzgerald visited Chef’s Grill, a sit-down restaurant at Price Chopper’s Market Bistro concept store in Latham. Short version:
One bite of the slow-roasted tri-tip sirloin is enough to make you forget entirely you’re eating dinner at a place where you can buy milk and a box of Special K for tomorrow morning on the way out. … Recipes at Chef’s Grill are simple, detailed and well-executed, with some prices I haven’t seen since I was in middle school.
Photo of tri-tip steak with crab cakes by John Carl D’Annibale/Times Union.
The times are changing. Leafly, which is a bit like the Yelp of medical marijuana, on Sunday will run a full-page ad in the New York Times. The company believes this will be the first time a marijuana business has been approved to run in the pages of the Times, although a Times spokesperson said the newspaper has run ads from marijuana advocacy groups in the past.
The New York Times Editorial Board last week endorsed marijuana legalization, sparking an increase in discussion about drug policy reform. The placement of this ad captures some of the broader societal changes going on.
Of course, not everyone is happy with the Times' endorsement. Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), which opposes legalization, ran its own ad in the Times on Saturday:
There's some validity to this ad's point. A recent study of Colorado's legal pot market found the 30 percent most frequent pot users make up nearly 90 percent of demand for marijuana. Mark Kleiman, a drug policy expert at UCLA, describes this trend as a for-profit incentive that's at odds with society as a whole. "Their best customers are the problem users," Kleiman said in a previous interview. "They are an industry with a set of objectives that flatly contradicts public interest."
Still, legalization advocates pointed out that the ad could be easily misinterpreted. Tom Angell, head of the Marijuana Majority, said SAM's ad actually helps the legalization movement.
"As someone who has been working in the legalization movement for over a decade to smash unhelpful stereotypes about who uses marijuana, I actually love this ad," Angell said. "The vast majority of people who see it in the newspaper are going to think it's a pro-legalization ad making the point that not only hippies use marijuana, but successful businesspeople do too. And most people who bother to read the text are going to realize that legalization means that a professional, aboveground industry will be taking control of the marijuana trade once we take it out of the hands of the violent drug cartels and gangs that run the show in the prohibition-created black market."
To learn more about marijuana legalization, read our full explainer:
So I gave up on Rectify this season. There's a show that moves at a leisurely then there's that show, which is like watching Norwegian "Slow TV" of a fire on loop for six hours.
I have watched six hours of "The Hono(u)rable Woman" over vacation and have been quite enjoying it. The pace is deliberate and they are certainly working with archetypes, but when the montages and/or scenes of Maggie G. crying, there's some wonderful dialogue and quite a bit to chew about on Israeli/Palestine relations and the potential role of outside actors. It's all aired in the UK so no need to watch for them to air on Sundance.
e Channel, neither show is even making a ripple from a ratings standpoint.
Thursday’s edition of “Rectify,” which was the second season’s penultimate episode, drew a 0.0 adults 18-49 rating (with just about 30,000 viewers in that demo) and a total audience of 0.12 million.
Lead-out “The Honorable Woman,” which recently kicked off its inaugural season, posted the same 0.0 rating (but with a weaker adults 18-49 audience of just about 10,000) and garnered a total audience of 0.08 million for its inaugural airing.
So a while ago I had decided to treat myself and go to Burger King. I hadn't had the greatest of days and I had a headache coming on. It was a very long line and I was at the end of it waiting patiently. When behind me comes this woman yapping on her cellphone with a little monster of a child. This kid was out of control, screaming, punching his mother throwing around a gameboy whenever something didn't go right in the game. The mother didn't seem to pay any attention to him and his continued yelling of 'I want a Fucking PIE'. After about 5 minutes of the line with these people behind me, I had gone from a headache to a full on migraine, but nothing was going to stop me from getting those burgers.
I calmly turn and ask her nicely if she can please calm or quiet her child down. Immediately she gets up in my face telling me I can't tell her nothing about raising her child and to mind my own business. I nod and turn around, shes still yelling at the back of my head when the child cries out again how he wants a pie, the mother consoles him, calling him sweety and ensuring they'll get pies for lunch because she loves him so much.
Things immediately go back to the they were and I wait another 5 minutes before getting to the front of the line. It turns out it was so slow because they had 1 trainee on cash during the lunch hour rush. All I can think of is how the people behind me ruined my splurge and gave me this headache. I then decide to ruin their day. I order every pie they have left in addition to my burgers. Turned out to be 23 pies in total, I take my order and walk towards the exit.
Moments later I hear the woman yelling, what do you mean you don't have any pies left, who bought them all? I turn around and see the cashier pointing me out with the woman shooting me a death glare. I stand there and pull out a pie and slowly start eating eat as I stare back at her. She starts running towards me but can't get to me because of other lineups in the food court. I turn and slowly walk away.
The number one game show I want to be on is Supermarket Sweep!
In entertainment, an awful lot of stuff happens behind closed doors, from canceling TV shows to organizing music festival lineups. While the public sees the end product on TVs, movie screens, or radio dials, they don’t see what it took to get there. In Expert Witness, The A.V. Club talks to industry insiders about the actual business of entertainment in hopes of shedding some light on how the pop-culture sausage gets made.
Initially conceived as a daytime program that aired on ABC during the ’60s, Supermarket Sweep’s second and third iterations ran in syndication off and on from 1990 to 2004, offering its three pairs of contestants a chance to win $5,000 and unlimited grocery store glory—minus taxes, of course. Packed with brand logos, mottos, and iconography, the show was an ode to consumerism—the more contestants “spent,” the more they won. (That “buy, buy, buy!” mantra was especially prevalent when Sweep was paired with Shop ’Til You Drop, its de facto spending-friendly partner.) Mike Futia was on the show in 2001 with his then-girlfriend and now wife, Amanda. The pair made it to the final round but failed to bring home the $5,000, thwarted by some tricky clues and a giant inflatable bottle of Snapple. The A.V. Club talked to him about the experience, the fake meats, and his 22 minutes of basic cable fame.
The A.V. Club: When were you on the show and how did you get on?
Mike Futia: We were on in March of 2001. At the time, we were living in Los Angeles, and the Internet boom had just busted. We had lost our jobs, and were just kind of looking around. My girlfriend at the time, Amanda—who is now my wife—was dying to be on a game show, so she used to look at the back page of the newspapers, and there’d be auditions for all sorts of shows, and I would drive her to them. And she put in for Supermarket Sweep, but you had to have a partner. I’m actually happy that it happened the way that it did, but the first time the phone call came, I had no interest in doing it at all, so I actually took out the message and I deleted it because I wanted nothing to do with a game show. But of course, they were persistent and they called back and my girlfriend— my wife now—got the message.
AVC: They called twice? They really wanted to give you their money.
MF: They really did.
AVC: Do you have a sense of why you guys got picked for the show?
MF: I do. We were out there to perform, so I wasn’t a deer in headlights in front of cameras or in front of people or anything like that. So when we went there, we definitely could answer questions and talk, and [Amanda is] pretty animated. When we were going through the process, they put you in a room with a few other people and ask you sample questions. And you could sense it was because they wanted to see if you were slouching and things like that. As we were leaving, Amanda was like, “How do you think we did?” And I was like, “I think we’re going to get it.” I felt pretty confident that we’d get the callback to have a taping.
It was definitely low-key the way they set it up. It was a syndicated show, so they taped all the episodes, and you didn’t even know if you were going to get the money if you won unless it aired, which could be six months later, because they then had to sell it.
AVC: They had to sell each episode? They didn’t have a contract?
MF: Nope, not at all. When it aired, it was on PAX, which isn’t even a channel anymore. I don’t even know if that was a national channel.
AVC: It was a Christian channel, right?
MF: It was. I was just about to say it was a religious channel.
AVC: Well, Supermarket Sweep was ostensibly a family-friendly game show that was also basically about how great consumerism is. And about how well you know tuna slogans.
MF: It was.
You know, probably everybody on that show was in California at the time. I don’t think anybody was traveling to be on Supermarket Sweep like they do for The Price Is Right. But it was tough because the prices in California are so much more expensive than they are in other places. I just remember growing up and watching game shows, thinking something was way cheaper and then seeing the price come up. When our show was on, I was watching with my family, and it was kind of comical because I knew what happened. In one of the games, you had to literally decide which one of the products was more than $3.50, I think. And there were cheeses and all this stuff and one was Ocean Spray cranberry juice or something, and I think that’s the one I said, and everybody in my family, as it’s happening on the television, is like “No! Why did you say that?” And I was right and I’m just laughing in the background because they were thinking these local New York prices, not the ridiculous California prices, where cranberry juice was $4.50. So it was weird in that sense.
AVC: Do you have a sense of how they calculated the prices? Were they just going to a local Safeway near the studio?
MF: I don’t really know, but I know they were high.
AVC: What was the actual taping like?
MF: They taped it in segments. We literally got in a room when we got called back for the actual taping, and they said, “Be prepared to be here. It could be a 12 to 14 hour day because there are three pairs of people on each show.” That day, I want to say they were taping something like eight shows. So you had 48 people just in a room, and the first thing they tape is your introduction where you run down to the camera and everybody gets introduced to [host] David Ruprecht. He is asking you questions and all that, and then you leave. And then the other seven groups did that, and then they call you back and you tape the first segment.
AVC: So all eight sets of three tape their first segments, and then you all tape the second segments?
MF: Exactly. We got lucky because we were the first group to tape, so we were the first ones out of there. I think we got to go at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, but I think there were seven other people who were going to have to run around with their turquoise sweaters and their—what are those things called that you wear around your neck? It looks like you’re wearing a turtleneck, but you’re not.
AVC: A dickey?
MF: Yes. You’re wearing a dickey, exactly.
AVC: Those are dickeys? Not turtlenecks?
MF: Yes, they are. And then you wear this sweatshirt, and the best and worst part was we actually won. So by winning, we didn’t get to keep the sweaters because we got paid. But if you lost, your consolation prize was that you got to keep the sweater, but you didn’t get to keep the dickey.
AVC: That was all you got?
MF: That was all you got. There’s no Supermarket Sweep home edition or anything like that. You just got your sweatshirt.
AVC: That’s crazy.
MF: I know. We were kind of disappointed that we didn’t get our sweatshirts. I think they were turquoise. We didn’t get those but we did get paid, so that was something.
AVC: How much did you win? Did you get the whole $5,000?
MF: I actually got the check out because I figured that was going to be a question. We won $1,511. We went into the last round with $1,111, and then you had to guess three clues and then find the money in the store when you’re running around, and for every one of those you found there was $250. And then if you found the third one, you got the $5,000. We solved the first two clues, but we didn’t find the third one, so we only got $500 additional dollars.
AVC: Did you train when you knew you were going to be on the show? Did you practice running around your local store?
MF: We did watch the show. We didn’t train because we realized, well, we don’t know where the things were going to be and we thought it’d be better to watch the show and say, “Okay, what are the people doing who are winning?” So we watched shows to be like, “Okay, they’re always getting meats. They’re always getting pans. Diapers, the baby stuff.”
When you’re taping the show before the—I don’t even know what they call that round, but I think it’s the “Supermarket Sweep” round—you get about 10 minutes or so to walk around the supermarket so you can see the prices. Everything has a price on it, so you can see where everything is and then you kind of map out what you’re going to do. And it’s the weirdest things that were expensive, like hoses. And you can only get five of one thing. But hoses were $20. So it was like, “we’ve got to grab hoses,” and brooms were some ridiculous amount of money. That’s where we think the pricing was a little bit odd, because it was like they made cumbersome things expensive because of the comedy of you trying to hold brooms in your cart with hoses and having your cart stacked with diapers and all this with really expensive stuff.
AVC: That makes sense. It’s funny to see the juxtaposition of all that stuff together.
MF: That’s what it is. And everybody had a cameraman and there’s no sound when you’re running around. You’re not miked when you’re running around, so the cameraman was actually—I don’t know if he helped the other people out but he was helping me out because I was just grabbing the meats and throwing them in. He was like, “you know you can look at the prices because some are more expensive than others.” It’s just like a supermarket. If one could be a pound less, it’ll be $2 or $3 less than the one you had, even though they’re fake. It’s funny. I guess in the first ages of the show, they were real meats.
AVC: The meats were fake? You’re blowing my mind.
MF: Yeah, they’re fake because what happened was, you don’t think about it, but the meats were thawing so people were getting the juice on their shirts. They didn’t think it through. So in the beginning everything was working and it was a real freezer and real refrigerated foods and all of that, but when we were on, none of the perishable stuff was real. Everything that was meat, cheese—all that was fake because they’d get the meat juices on their sweaters. And that’s not telegenic, so they wanted to get rid of that.
AVC: This is a weird question, but if you were picking up a ham, did it have the heft of a ham or was it like picking up a Styrofoam ham?
MF: It’s like a heavy plastic ham. It’s not super light, and my guess is they do that because everybody would look like Superman trying to lop the thing out of the bin, so they had to give it a little bit of heft to it. But yeah, it’s not heavy at all.
They also give you side items that you can get for extra money. Ours was bagels. You had to get two chocolate bagels and then some water bagels, which I had never heard of before. If you grab that and put it in a bag, you get an extra $250 bonus. So that’s why everybody went right to that bread section first, so they didn’t forget.
But you forget everything is fake. Even the bagels are fake. I picked them up out of my cart and I put something down like I didn’t want to get them smashed. So everybody was laughing at me for that. The fake rubber bagels are not going to get hurt.
AVC: So if you went to buy a box of cereal, they had taken the cereal out and replaced it with Styrofoam or something?
MF: Exactly. I think the canned stuff was real. The candy was real. Things that wouldn’t melt too bad. It was all very cold and super air conditioned, but yeah, the meats, the cheeses, the milks—the baby formula, because that was another thing that everybody was grabbing because that was really expensive. I think those were fake as well. But they may not have been. They were pretty heavy.
AVC: Talk about the final round when you were trying to win $5,000.
MF: Before the sweep, before you run around with the teams, they tell you, “Okay, you guys have to decide if you want to go for A or B,” because apparently there’s two sequences of riddles you can get. So the three teams voted and everybody said “A.”
And then after you run around in teams, you get back to the cash register and then you leave. We just went back in the hallway and sat on this couch and closed the door, and Amanda was yelling at me because I didn’t get a bonus thing that I ran right by that she saw. We were all stressed out because it hits you that you just ran around a supermarket for a show that’s going to be televised and you might not have even won. You think, “This is going to be horrible.” But while you’re doing that, these people are literally checking you out and adding up all the scores and you don’t actually find out how much you got until they’re taping. You don’t know who wins. They call you back in and then they’re taping as he’s giving you the answers to get that real feeling, like, “Oh my God, we just won.” We beat another team by $5. They had $1,106, and we had $1,111.
And then it’s like, “Oh my God. We’re going to be going for this challenge.” And then they go right to it. There’s no cut from there. The other teams leave, and we picked an envelope and listened to the puzzle. And that’s what got us because it didn’t make any sense to me. It said, and I’ll never forget and I can’t believe I’m going to bore you with it, but it said, “You wake up and in your favorite voice you ask for a cup of…” and it just bothered me. Like, “What do you mean your favorite voice for Taster’s Choice?” My mind would not let me say Taster’s Choice because it’s coffee, and obviously you’re getting a cup of coffee when you wake up in the morning because I didn’t understand what a voice would have to do with a cup of coffee. So it took us like 20 seconds of the 60 just to get that, and then we didn’t know where the coffee was. So that killed us. Because once we got that, the clue was about Dr. Ruth Westheimer and what an infant is called, so it was a Baby Ruth candy bar, and we had to run and get that. And then the last one was something about a snowman and tickling piano keys or something related to Ivory Snow, which I had never even heard of. I didn’t even know that was a laundry detergent. So we actually felt good that we didn’t have any time to get that one because we literally just solved the clue, and ran out of time. But we both kind of looked at each other and were like, “I don’t even know what Ivory Snow is. Is it a soap?”
I’m glad we didn’t just stand there because if we had gotten the first one quickly, at the end, we never would have gotten that one anyway. And then of course at the end of the time [David Ruprecht] walks you around and that’s all in the moment too. There’s no stopping there. He’s like, “Oh, you found two,” and then he knows where it is and he’s walking with you around the store to go to where it is and he’s like, “It’s right here,” and we were like, “Oh, okay.” And then that’s when all the credits are starting to go, when you’re in the back.
We actually surprised [Ruprecht] because, like I said, we did our due diligence and watched all these shows. And at the end, when he did his little thing at the end, the contestants used to say, “Supermarket Sweep!” So they didn’t tell us to do that, but we just knew it. So when he did it, we both loudly said “Supermarket Sweep!” And he kind of looked at us startled, but they kept it. We thought we messed up, like, “Oh no, are we not supposed to do that?” But everybody else did it, so that was kind of interesting, that after all the stopping and starting from the moment you start running, you just wait in the hallway and then from there’s it’s all fluid. There’s no cutting, there’s no stopping. It’s just like, “Go, get this done.”
AVC: Do you think they do that to keep you off balance?
MF: Probably so. You can’t sit there and figure out, “Okay, because we had that 10 minutes earlier, where is everything?” It’s a lot to remember even though it’s not as big as a regular supermarket, but still where everything is it was hard to remember.
AVC: How big was it?
MF: I don’t know. There were four aisles, I want to say.
AVC: Like a small market?
MF: Oh yeah, very much. A little bit bigger than a bodega in the city or something like that. It’s very tiny. It looks huge, but it’s small. Even in the aisles, you had to be careful if you and your cameraman were running and another group was coming down that aisle. You had to make sure you were all the way to the side or there could have been an accident.
What I always get ridiculed for the most is—I don’t know if you remember the show at all, but when the groups come in, they get introduced. The announcer is like, “Welcome to Supermarket Sweep. Our contestants are…” and then he names them. The cameras are at the end of an aisle and the contestants are coming from the opposite side of the aisle and just running into the frame, and they’re all doing something goofy and energetic. Anyway, they tell you what to do. We always used to make fun of the people when we were watching, but there’s no choice in the matter. We were the last group to go, so they were like, “Okay, Mike and Amanda, you guys are going to look at each other and give each other two thumbs up and then look at the camera.” And I’m like, “Are you kidding me? This is why I did not want to do this, Amanda.” And my father still, to this day, if anybody gives thumbs up, he will do that to me because it’s the cheesiest thing you can ever imagine.
We always used to laugh and say, “Why would someone choose to do that?” But they didn’t choose. They told you to do that because they want some variety.
AVC: You have to pretend like you’re totally into it. You want to win that $5,000.
MF: Exactly.
Oh, also, we played this game where I had to give Amanda clues. They kind of stole—not stole, but borrowed from different game shows as part of their games, and I had to give her clues to get her to say words. So I think one of the words was “album” or “record”—one of those. And I had to get her to say that, and the first letter of that word would go on a line and those would spell out a product. So it looks like she’s looking at me, but behind me is a woman with a big piece of cardboard writing out the letters as she gets them. It was literally like a hangman game with the slots empty, and she would just sit there with a magic market, and if Amanda got it right, the woman behind me was just writing in the letter of the word that she got right. And then she could spell the word out. So it was interesting how they did everything there.
AVC: They kind of want you to win. They don’t want it to be the world’s hardest game.
MF: Exactly. They’re helping you because like you said, it’s geared to families. It’s fun.
When you talk about Supermarket Sweep, everybody’s always like, “Oh my God. I remember that show.” It was one of those things you’d flip through and then stop on because you couldn’t stop laughing. Like, “Oh my God, look at what these people are doing, running around in a supermarket.”
AVC: And you’d get so angry at them.
MF: Oh, absolutely. And that’s why Amanda was mad at me, because there was one of those inflatable Snapple or soda bottles, and if you got one, there was a hidden prize amount when you ripped it off. I apparently ran by two of them, but I had tunnel vision. They said, “Don’t have tunnel vision; look around the aisles,” but I did. I had my game plan and I would just run right for things. I wasn’t looking anywhere else, and I apparently passed two of these huge inflatable sodas.
AVC: How was it decided that you were going to be the one that ran?
MF: Because she refused. As much as I didn’t even want to be on the show because it was a little embarrassing, she was like, “Yeah, I’m not running around that supermarket.” But she had to do it once. One of the mini-games, she had to run and grab a Butterfinger. Or a Nutter Butter? She had to run in the store and get it within 30 seconds and bring it back to David, and if she did it, we got an extra $100 bonus, and she did that. So she did have to run through the store for that.
AVC: Has the experience changed how you grocery shop today?
MF: No, it has not.
Actually, maybe it has? I will look for hoses. I look for things that are not ever there. No one ever sells hoses at a grocery store. Why are they in Supermarket Sweep?
AVC: Because they’re weird looking.
MF: Yeah, they had a hardware aisle. I know the Walmarts and the Targets have those, but I’ve never seen that aisle at a supermarket.
AVC: To this day, I still sometimes think about that show when I’m in the meat section, like, “Oh, I’d grab these hams, and then these ribs.”
MF: We were definitely thinking that. We knew you had to get the meat, so we had to get the turkeys, we had to get the hams, and I think those were the only two meats. And then there’s these huge laughable blocks of cheese, like from a cartoon. You had to get those. And then it was interesting. When you went through to be like, “Okay, oddly enough, we’re going to grab pans and hoses and then the diapers and the baby formula,” which was really expensive. One of those cans was like $29. And you could get as many carts as you wanted, but you had a limited amount of time based on how you did in the game. Whoever had the most seconds had an advantage, but as long as you filled your cart, you could come back and get a new cart and go. But I think I only ended up getting two because we had a minute and a half or a minute and 40 seconds to run around.
It was interesting trying to get a plan because we definitely talked about one, but then trying to execute it was hard. Like, “Okay, am I getting everything?” You could sort of sense what everybody else was doing, just in a different order, because everybody is kind of getting the same things. You would see somebody at the bread section and somebody at the meat section.
At the very end, you don’t have to cross a line or anything. When the time’s up, the last thing you put in your cart is it. And I know that the other group and myself were right near each other, so he was at the meat section and everybody was kind of doing the same thing.
AVC: Would you do it again?
MF: Oh yeah, totally.
AVC: So you didn’t want to do it to begin with and now you would do it again?
MF: I had a blast. I think it was in Burbank, I want to say, so it’s a bit of a drive, and with the traffic out there we didn’t want to be late. So we got a hotel room, we made a night of it, and then had to be there early so we went to the studio. Just being in the studio was fun enough. It was the same studio that filmed Family Feud when Louie Anderson was there. So that was kind of interesting that he was filming just down the hallway. We never got into the studios often or anything like that, so it was just kind of neat to be in that kind of scene.
AVC: I was on Jeopardy! a long time ago, and they took us to the studio commissary for lunch. I remember thinking that was neat.
MF: That is cool. See, we had it catered so we had to go to another room and eat off a buffet.
AVC: How long after your show taped did it air? And then how long did it take to get paid?
MF: The show aired six months later in October of 2011, and then the check is dated Jan. 9, 2002. That’s what they said. “Once the show is aired, that’s when we’ll cut the checks and then it takes 60 to 90 days.” And it was about 90.
AVC: The amount you can win is pretty low, if you think about it. Compared to something like Jeopardy! where you can win $20,000 an episode, winning $5,000 for Supermarket Sweep is pretty chintzy.
MF: Oh, absolutely. And I would hope we’re not the only people who didn’t win the big one, and they got away with only paying us $1,500.
AVC: Do you think companies like Butterfinger or Snapple were paying them for product placement?
MF: I’ve always wondered. In the first game, it was literally three products just displayed right there. It was Ocean Spray cranberry juice, some kind of cheese, and I think a deodorant or something. They were right there. There must be something those companies are doing to get picked.
AVC: Or to get their slogans repeated over and over.
MF: One little thing that was kind of comical is that there’s a game where you have to rotate. I answered a question first and then you have to switch, and so Amanda would have to go. And they give you a 15-minute lesson about how basically it’s like a waltz. They teach you how to step to the right and then step forward. It’s like a box step, and they had to teach us that in a room so that it looks good when we’re doing it. So everybody was uniform when they’re stepping to the left and then stepping back so the person behind you can step to the right and then step up and be ready because they wanted it going well. That was always kind of creepy.
AVC: I can’t believe that since you won, you had to give your sweatshirt back. Did they reuse them?
MF: They did. It was a sad rack too. They rolled this wardrobe rack around, but it only had 12 sets in different colored sweaters on it, so it was just kind of comical.
by Mark Shrayber on Jezebel, shared by Max Read to Gawker
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