One of the more cringe-inducing uses of quotation marks.

The Dining with Notebook Manifesto outlines an ingenious way to get a better dining experience, with some effort and preparation:

Because I’m a bit of a food-geek, I always had a notebook to take down my observations in text and drawings. I semi-noticed that the chefs and staff would become aware of my scribbling in the notebook and that the level of dialogue and service would go up – but it never quite surfaced in my mind why this was happening. It was not until one chef finally asked me what magazine I wrote for that the light bulb clicked on – they thought I was a critic. Cool.

Charlie Rose talks with Alex Ross.

A 360-degree view from the top of Mount Everest.

I like this bit from an interview with Ellen Lupton, talking about common design pitfalls: "My students avoid printing out their work, to save time and money, but then they are disappointed that it doesn’t look good. I explain to them that everything looks good on the screen, because of the glowing light and the way we are constantly adjusting the scale of the image to suit ourselves. The same layout may die on the printed page."

When Bela Fleck gets an idea for a song that he can't develop completely at the time, he calls himself and leaves a voice mail.

Terry Gross interviewed Chuck Close a couple years ago. Chuck Close is known for his super-large portraits built up from smaller bits. For some reason I just really liked his interviewing style. [via 43 folders]

"There are only two kinds of reform that have any chance of actually reducing total expenditure on presidential elections. The first is to reduce the value of the presidency itself... The second is to reduce the uncertainty about who's going to win." I vote for the former.

Arnold Kling on politics and cults:

I do not know Ron Paul. He may be wise. He may be decent. But to dismiss all doubts about his judgment and his character would be to succumb to a cult.

Let me hasten to add that I do not think of the Paul cult as unique. I am equally loathe to join the Clinton cult, the Obama cult, the Guiliani cult...you name it.

For me, democratic politics is a "lesser of evils" game, and I'm never sure how best to play it. But I have to say that when I read that this year's New Hampshire primary had a record turnout, it made my heart sink rather than warm. Not that I'm against voting, but I hate to think of people as buying into anyone's political campaign.

"The electromagnetic field surrounding the power lines is enough to make fluorescent tubes glow." [via jb]

Over the past 5 years, 32% of the New Yorker's fiction came from 14 different authors. [via Pete Lit]

Over the next year, Get Rich Slowly is tracking how much money a garden will save. The monthly reports should be worthwhile.

On January 28 is Unseen Forces: Electronic Music by Atlanta Composers at Eyedrum, presented by the Atlanta Composers Group. Here's the program.

Nick Hornby interviews David Simon, of The Wire fame:

There are two ways of traveling. One is with a tour guide, who takes you to the crap everyone sees. You take a snapshot and move on, experiencing nothing beyond a crude visual and the retention of a few facts. The other way to travel requires more time—hence the need for this kind of viewing to be a long-form series or miniseries, in this bad metaphor—but if you stay in one place, say, if you put up your bag and go down to the local pub or shebeen and you play the fool a bit and make some friends and open yourself up to a new place and new time and new people, soon you have a sense of another world entirely. We’re after this: Making television into that kind of travel, intellectually.

Paul Festa left a comment that his film, Apparition of the Eternal Church (trailer), will be playing in Athens, Georgia on January 30, and showing across the south in the following week. I've got it on my calendar.

A video montage of almost all the uses of Turbo Boost in the Knight Rider television show. I used to watch Knight Rider religiously. [via waxy]

Clyde Fans: Book One, by the cartoonist Seth, is split into two halves. Each half tracks the memories and relationship between two brothers, both of whom worked for the family business, the Clyde Fans Company. In the first section, set in 1997, we see the older Abraham walks from room to room in the old Clyde Fans storefront. Abraham keeps a constant monologue. As the only speaker in the first section, and perhaps the only family member remaining, he's both narrator and the only repository of family history. Abraham reminisces as he wanders throughout the old building telling old jokes or digging up old stories---as you might daydream through your own past, stopping every now and then to pick up a memory and turn it in the light before you move on to another. Although he controls the story, he leaves the building only briefly.

Like Abraham's nostalgia, Simon's memory has him trapped, too. The second section rolls back 40 years to follow an anxious Simon, finally given a chance as a company salesman. His narrative, following him as he hoofs it from place to place with display sample in tow, always circles back to his memories: the high expectations of his brother, brush-offs from failed sales calls. The combination of his recurring flashbacks, his obsessive recall of failure, and his own expectations cripple him.

Beyond Seth's good writing is the attention to detail that helps you trust his writing in the first place. It's the subtle attention that wins you over. Take a look at this image from the first page. You can see the stars high up in the sky, and as in real life, the lights from the street make it hard to see stars closer to the horizon. There's that band of darkness that shifts into a field of stars:

And further into the first part of the book, there's a stream of water from a faucet. Seth illustrates that sweet spot of water flow. At a certain water pressure, the flow is slow enough to not be forceful and straight, but fast enough that it escapes from the thin trickle. Seth draws that exact moment that makes the cool spiraling, helical column:

And the faucet handles even have shadows playing on the tub. Seth drafts some great architecture throughout the book. There are the cityscapes and building snapshots to make the setting, of course. But like the faucet shadows, in the interior scenes you can find all sorts of little details that make the time and place come alive, like molding at the joins of floor and ceiling, or wainscoting, or the floor tiles that aren't standard squares, but octagons with little diamonds between them. And shadows, always wonderful soft shadows falling and bending together.

The worthy detail makes it happen. When you can trust the writer as an observer, you can trust them as a storyteller that much more. You don't have to draw or write every detail---Seth leaves out a lot---but a few well-chosen particulars make the rest of the story that much more compelling.

It's 23 degrees outside, and I catch myself silently complaining that the shower is too hot. One 2008 goal among many: complain less. There are bigger problems on this planet.

A panel interview with Seth and Chris Ware conducted by Ivan Brunetti, told in comics form. I love the way that Gordon McAlpin, the cartoonist, mimicked each of their styles when they had the floor.

Chip Kidd interviews Milton Glaser: "My father was a kind of a metaphor for the world, because if you can’t overcome a father’s resistance you’re never going to be able to overcome the world’s resistance."