Art / Graphic design for public transit

If you're like me, one of your favorite parts of seeing new cities is checking out the logo(s) of their public transit system. Nowadays you don't even need to travel to these cities to appreciate their variety; here's a site with an amazingly thorough catalog.

Fresh Air interview w/ Mike Mills

Mike Mills is a graphic designer, director of many excellent music videos (among them: "Kelly Watch the Stars," by Air, the one with the 70's-looking slow-motion ping-pong players), and all-around aesthetic bad-ass. Terry Gross interviewed him on Fresh Air a couple of weeks ago, and you can check out the archived version on the NPR website. It includes a funny anecdote about his experience as an apprentice for a well-known Scottish artist -- at the risk of giving away the ending, Mills didn't assist in the creation of the work as much as he created the work for the artist, who was too hungover to do it himself. Here's a really comprehensive collection of his video work, including "Kelly Watch the Stars."

Incidentally, when I was growing up, a different Mike Mills was the bassist for my favorite rock band c. 1985-88 -- REM. You can hear his thin, poignant harmonizing on Murmur, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, Life's Rich Pageant, Dead Letter Office, and Document. (Don't bother with anything after Document; it's all downhill from there). Let's hear it for all Mike Millses!

New Yorker cartoon formula exposed!

Take one character each from column A and column B, place them in one of column C's settings, and voila! You have the makings of a New Yorker cartoon. Supposedly, this was the doing of a group of NYer cartoonists at a recent festival.

Burgers in SF

After a chill afternoon at China Beach, we checked out some burgers at Bill's Place, which made me think about all of the good burgers to be found in San Francisco:

• Bill's Place (pictured) grinds its own, and names its burger platters after local celebrities. Extra credit for the chandeliers and non-mayo cole slaw. On the downside, it's unjustifiably pricey. $10 for a burger? Maybe at Zuni, but it seems weird to pay this much at a diner.
  


• If you're interested in diner-style ambiance more than good-tasting burgers, you can check out Joe's Cable Car. I really wish that the burgers tasted good there, but the reality is that they don't.
• For fake retro ambiance, high tourist quotient and really mediocre burgers, Mel's is your place. There are at least three very unconvenient Mel's locations, if you're Mission/Lower-Haight based.
  
• Slow Club has (or used to have) a good yuppie burger -- sprouts and fancy aioli, on some kind of Euro roll. Being from the Midwest, I dislike froofy interpretations of burgers, but in weaker moments I have been known to order this burger. And enjoy it.
  
• Speaking of froofy, Zuni serves a burger amidst its generally tasty Cali cuisine. In 1996-ish, I could not bring myself to admit that it was good; in 2005, I can.
  
• On cold nights, Zeitgeist can ring your chimes with a good char-burger. On warm, busy nights, expect extra char.
  
• BurgerMeister and Burger Joint are all about happy cows (Niman Ranch beef), sterile, fluorescent-lit dining rooms (creepy) and, in the end, similar burgers. Hipsters split hairs about which is better. I call it a tie. (But the Meiser has Mitchell's ice cream.)
  
• I'm a recent convert to the virtues of Big Mouth in the Mission. Quality control is in full effect on both fries and burgers, plus greasy-spoon atmosphere distinguishes it from the sterile environs of the BJs and BMs of the world.
  
• Everyone talks about Barney's Gourmet Hamburgers but I personally don't see what the fuss is about. It's not that I dislike white people, but it annoys me that the owners avoid all but the whitest of white neighborhoods -- North Berkeley, North Oakland, Noe Valley. Dude, next stop: Mill Valley.
  
  There are lots more. I'll update soon.
  

Architecture / Seattle library

I took this picture in a small atrium overlooking the lobby of the Seattle Library, designed by Rem Koolhaas and opened a year ago. As Mara and I enjoyed the cool, green light, we overheard a conversation that went something like this:

Middle-age woman to her husband: I can't believe they spent so much money on this thing.

Husband: It's absurd. What's in a library? Books. You don't need all this other stuff.

Middle-age woman to Mara: What a waste of money, right?

Mara: [Flabbergasted]

People raise the same argument when cities build new sports stadiums. Of course, stadiums bring in huge amounts of revenue and, the last time I checked, libraries were free. On the other hand, stadiums house teams owned by zillionaires who, the last time I checked, could probably afford to build the stadiums themselves.

In any case, the taxpayers of Seattle have contributed to the construction of an amazing public space where EVERYONE can go, read, hang out FREE OF CHARGE and be inspired by the wisdom of the ages surrounding them. I can't imagine a better environment in which to do this. Citizens of Seattle, I salute you.

Following the Roberts confirmation hearing

Law nerds around the country are providing interesting commentary of the Roberts confirmation. SCOTUSblog provides a blow-by-blow account of the posturing and intermittent questioning of the senators alongside interesting legal commentary, but it's a blog, so you have to scroll down to the bottom and read upwards if you want to read chronologically.

Balkinization, a blog that includes many quite interesting essays by Yale Law professor Jack Balkin, has an interesting discussion about why Democrats should not confirm Roberts. Balkin recently published an interesting piece in Slate about originalists and the concept of a living constitution: "Alive and Kicking: Why no one truly believes in a dead Constitution."

If you're willing to sift through the details -- and each memeber of the Senate Judiciary Committee tends go into excessive detail before getting to his/her question -- the NYT has raw transcripts: Day 1, Day 2.

Termites eat New Orleans

After Hurricane Katrina, the recent Harper's magazine feature about the uncontrollable, unfathomed termite infestation of the French Quarter seems downright eerie. Equal parts information and meditation, Duncan Murrell's "The Swarm" is an effective, moving blend of first-hand reporting on blizzard-like termite swarms, spooky interviews with insect experts, and genuine Southern gothic moments:

Where the Formosans are foraging -- in the studs of a wall, for instance -- the carton sometimes takes the shape of the very thing they're eating. Pest-control operators in New Orleans told me many of stories of ripping out drywall to expose what looked from a distance like solid two-by-four framing pieces, only to find that they were looking at carton nests, the ghosts of a wall long since consumed.

It also provides a peek into the world of the termitologist, touching on the tragic tale of a manic-depressive South African entomologist who became so obsessed with termites that he began to view their behavior in perhaps overly sophisticated terms:

[Eugene] Marais believed that colonies of termites were distinct, compound organisms not unlike the human body, that every component from queen to worker served a function not just analogous but identical to the function of our own hearts and livers and brains and blood cells. Marais thought that the termite colony lacked only the power to move together as one organism, and that someday they would develop even that skill.

Next on my reading list: Marais's "classic work of obsessive observation," The Soul of the White Ant.