Stand for something*

Magnet #1098 - Malcolm X

I missed using this magnet on the 21st, the 46th anniversary of the day Malcolm X was killed. I'll be the first to admit to not knowing as much as I probably should about the man, or what he stood for.

What little I know is from History channel, summarized here: that he was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of a Baptist minister who himself was killed when Malcolm was only six. From there, the boy was raised in and out of the system, until finally he ended up in jail at 21 for burglary.

There, he learned of Elijah Muhammad and the teachings of the Nation of Islam, a black nationalist group, changing his name to Malcolm X in honor of his stolen African identity. He became a full-on minister of the Nation of Islam, taking a harder, more aggressive line in the fight for civil rights.

Eventually the Nation of Islam forced him out, as his influence grew, and he went on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He came back as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, forming the Organization of Afro-American Unity, in support of black identity. A year later, he was dead, shot down by members of the Nation of Islam, a shocking end to a life of conviction.

And that's what little I know, paraphrased from the History channel. Incidentally, this is why I can't watch any of their shows or documentaries. I end up repeating every little thing I've just learned. But, thanks for the lesson, History!

He was an intense man, for sure - you can see it just in this rather striking iconic image on this magnet. It's why I picked it up in the first place. I debated ever magnetblogging such a controversial figure - after all, this is just a magnetblog. But, once I read a little about him, I wanted to.

It's weird, you know, history is chock full of good men and bad men and everything in between, and you can read text after text, attend lecture after lecture, to learn and understand what each person believes and what course they followed. In the end though, regardless of how you feel about anyone's politics or tactics, you do have to respect a man who believed in what he stood for, and had the courage to not only defend, but fight for it.


*"If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything."

- Malcolm X

For time and the world do not stand still.*

Magnet #1004 - John F. Kennedy

Where were you forty-seven years ago today?

It's definitely one of those days that a few generations can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news about John F. Kennedy being shot in Dallas.

It would be a good decade before I was born, so all I have is the legacy of his presidency and the tragic story of his assassination. And several magnets...including this one, from Pomegranate.

It looks like some folks are planning on educating a whole new generation about the JFK legacy, with a January 2011 launch of JFK50 - currently a launch page announcing an innovative community website dedicated to celebrating the 50th anniversary of his presidency.

I'm not gonna lie, the hopeful tone of the video and the content just made me all teary - especially within the context of today's turbulent times, and how far (or how little) we've come in the last 50 years.

Nice job, JFK50.


*For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

- John F. Kennedy

Too thinky! Tooooo thinky!!!

Magnet #897 - Albert Einstein

I picked this Albert Einstein magnet from Pomegranate for today, because I think he would have had a heyday with Inception. He'd probably talk for hours about the layered realities and dreams, the inherent quantum time and physics of each layer, and of course, the relativity of it all.

But, here's the thing. He'd have to go discuss it with someone else.

I hate movies that make me think too much. There. I said it.

There's a reason I go to movies, and that's to go into a darken theatre and forget about the world at large for a couple of hours.

Yes, there's an argument to be made for a movie to challenge your thinking about what you know to be truth and reality.

There's an argument to be made for a movie to expand your horizons, to teach you something.

There's even an argument for a movie to scare the living daylights out of you.

But, you know what? I hate being mindf*cked. Hate it. So any movie that exists solely to make me think about it days later makes me crazy.

On top of that, I also hate nonlinear storytelling, which is why I also didn't get through Christopher Nolan's Memento. And, yes, I know that's quite an unpopular, if pedestrian, opinion. I don't care.

The story line, screwy though it was, does keep you engaged (unless you were that idiot girl child in front on me on her Blackberry for the last 30 minutes of the movie. It would have been different if she were saving lives on email, but she was on Facebook. Tagging pictures. Of her and her boyfriend. Kissing. Several pictures. And her and her girlfriends. Not kissing. Dudes. Tagging pictures. I get that you're too dumb to understand what was happening, but seriously? Dim the freakin' BB display then! /endrant), and the ending is open ended enough to make the entire room (except dumbass Facebook girl) grunt. (Admittedly, I also hate open-ended endings, for the same reason I hate unsolved mysteries.)

Now. On the flip side? Inception was gorgeous. The direction was phenomenal, the cinematography was beautiful, the effects were amazing, the multiple locations were fabulous, the architecture was awesome, the score was terrific, and the pretty people were, well, pretty.

So, I guess that leaves me on the fence about Inception. I hated the mindf*ck, but loved the production as a whole.

And, I dunno what dreams may come tonight, but the movie kinda made me realize that the vivid, violent and unhappy dreams I was having earlier this summer have all but gone away in this last week of freedom.

It's kinda nice to have my good sleeps back.

Now, I just gotta find me a totem.

Reading IS cool!

Magnet #824 - Make Reading Cool

Woot! I'm off work today, so I can go to BEA (BookExpo America), and perhaps work on my back-up plan.

What's that plan you ask? I dunno, it depends on how much you like this blog. Heh.

Even though we all know I'm gonna end up on my blackberry on the exhibit floor (if I actually get off this sofa and stop answering emails, because apparently I enjoy playing the martyr), I'm totally gonna roam the BEA booths and see what they have to offer.

And? I'm gonna just wander the floor, rather than plan a course of action to see everything. Gasp! I know! I'm a rebel!

Seriously, I'm like a kid in a candy store at BEA, for a couple of reasons:

• First, because any trade show, is a good trade show.
• Second, fun swag.
• Third, free books. Though, this shouldn't count, since more often than not, I never end up reading them, I pass them along.
• Fourth, it's fun to see the Pomegranate stuff. Yes. You know I love them. One whole booth of well-designed heaven.
  
• Fifth, it's nice to visit the publishing world, and wonder if I should go back, and then determine that I'm too fulfilled by my marketing/advertising life to ever think seriously about going back. Insert sarcasm here, though, remember we learned last year that publishing and marketing/advertising are basically the same thing!
  

Anyway, I picked up this pin/magnet at last year's BEA - Ripple Reader is a kids eBook/eReader resource. Aside from the pretty colors and fun characters, I just love the simplicity of their mission statement.

Reading is cool!

Oh, the impossibilities!

Magnet #626 - Escher's Belvedere

Another cool art magnet from the Pomegranate folks. Oh, you know how I love them so.

This is a magnet of M.C. Escher's Belvedere lithograph. Like his Cycle, the image totally draws you in.

At first glance, it looks pretty darn cool. But then, you look closer, and you realize it's a structure built of impossible planes, stairs, pillars and perspectives.

Lookit, or here, if you don't want to download, or here, if you want to see the Lego version. Quite amazing.

I just happen to like this piece because of the sheer impossibility of it all, even if it looks perfectly normal.

Yeah, I was planning on going deeper than that - waxing poetic about how while advertising looks fairly normal on the outside, the more time you spend in it, the more you realized that all we do is try to sell possibilities and impossibilities, and how admen are all rainmaking salesguys. Which is true.

And I'd expound on it further, were I not already late for an admen meeting where we're going to make rain and sell some possibilities and creative.

Oh, and some impossibilities, too. Heh.

"Note: We are now in the domain of virtuosity, romance & symbolism."*

Magnet #526 - Frank Lloyd Wright's Saguaro Forms and Cactus Flowers

Picked this one up at BEA, again from the Pomegranate folks, and using this one for today, since we had a pretty good Frank Lloyd Wright day in Oak Park.

We spent the morning at the new Modern Wing, and then we booked it through an hour traffic to finally arrive at FLW's house and studio by 3:35pm...only to make our way toward the back of the gift shop to see the sign above their heads say, "Next Tour: Tomorrow" and hear the cashier explain to several people that they were sorry, but there were no more spots available.

You have to hand it to the guy - he was incredibly patient with the huffy visitors there - to the folks ahead of me, and to at least half a dozen more people asking for the tour while I was browsing the gift shop. I mean, telling people who traveled from states and countries all over that they couldn't see the one thing they had come for can't be an easy thing.

So, we didn't get to take the tour. And that's fine, that'll give me something to look forward to on my next trip out.

I did get to visit the little shop - though it was supertiny, they did carry the Gug and Fallingwater lego sets. And, shocker! I did walk out without them. The Gug is priced out at something like $45 - which would normally be ok for something like that, but the darn thing is seriously not taller than my hand! Crazy. And, the Fallingwater is also pretty cool, but priced at $100 and not all that much bigger than the Gug, I just couldn't justify the cost.

In the end, I picked up even more Pomegranate magnets, and an Oak Park area map that plotted the houses of FLW and his ilk, plus other important houses, and created our own drive-by tour.

*A handwritten note from a Louis H. Sullivan ornamental drawing, which really has nothing to do with this FLW magnet, or day, other than I just liked the lyricism and thought behind the turn of phrase.

Is FLW the new Monet?

Magnet #464 - Frank Lloyd Wright's City by the Sea

Here's one of the many (many, many, many, many) items I purchased today (at wholesale, thank God).

It's the City by the Sea design that FLW originally created in 1913 as a mural for the Midway Gardens in Chicago. Almost 50 years later, he brought back the design for the Music Pavilion at Taliesin West. It's supposed to be geometric forms abstracty image of a city skyline, complete with balloons and confetti of color.

Yes, I know - superbusy, huh. I bet it's even more awesome when you see it in person, as that guy did. (What a great Flickr photoset of Taliesin West!)

Anyway, this weekend was almost as busy as this magnet! Another weekend with terrific friends in town. Aside from visits to Burgers & Cupcakes (which I think has the best frosting in the city) and hanging out with fun friends, the Guggenheim and a trade show were my little highlights.

It feels like lately, more people have jumped aboard the FLW bandwagon, as his work over the past few years seems to be enjoying the same attention Monet did back in the 90s. Am I the only one to notice this?

Yesterday, I finally got to see the Gugg's FLW: From Within Outward exhibition. Words can totally not explain how terrific this was. It's their 50th anniversary, and this is the largest exhibition of his work - and is a fabulous tribute to his work - both built and unbuilt.

You basically start at the bottom of the rotunda, and wend your way upward, with separated out galleries for other segments of his work. The drawings are amazing, and coupled with slideshows of the works in real life. I'm totally going to have to go back, so that I can be that obnoxious person dwelling over all the drawings and models.

The models are amazing - particularly for the unbuilt works. Though, they had a model of my holy grail of buildings - the SC Johnson Wax headquarters. Yes, yes, I know all I have to do is go to Wisconsin to see it, but really, when was the last time you up and went, hey! I need to go to Wisconsin. So, sorry, Wisconsin, it'll have to wait a little bit longer. But, seriously. How cool is this lily pad great room? According to the Guggenheim audio tour, they almost didn't let him build it, because they didn't think the columns would hold. So he produced a test column, and put something like 60,000 tons of weight on it to prove a point, and they finally relented and let him build it.

And, yes, I could keep talking about this exhibit. But ya'll should all go. I'm just sayin'.

So, the other big highlight this weekend, was BookExpo America, which is just a big publishing tradeshow. That was fun, because I could pretend I was back in the industry, caring about books and literature and pub dates and distribution, and authors and backlists, etc.

Plus, on an advertising/marketing level, I do love trade shows, seeing the booths and displays, how people laid out their floor plans and foot traffic, and seeing which booths had great stuff. And even if they're all saying that there wasn't great swag out there, I beg to differ. There just wasn't as much as previous years, from what I hear. But then again, I was happy with fun pens and bags. So silly, but a great bag makes a booth. Chronicle Press had the prettiest damn bag ever - and at least a handful of people asked me where to find it. Now. Easily the hit (bag) of the show. What? I said I like trade shows!

Today was the best day, because while I love the free stuff, a lot of the stuff in the booth I wouldn't have minded buying. And buy, I did. You know how when you go into gift shops, and they have those supercool postcard books, or those wonderfully designed and packaged notecards? Or, even those fun decks of knowledge cards? The mousepads with the artwork on it? Or, those coffee table books that you love in the store, but feel too extravagant to spend on just yourself?

Umm, yeah. They come from a company called Pomegranate.

I LOVE THEIR STUFF.

I buy it everywhere I go - and ya'll know I'm in gift shops, constantly. Their stuff is in every nook and cranny of my apartment and my cubicle at work. And I bought a bagful of stuff from them today, from notecards and knowledge cards to notepads and mousepads, and of course, a handful of magnets.

No lie. In fact, I was chatting with one of the ladies at the booth, and I said, OMG, I love your stuff. I should own stock in Pomegranate with as much of this stuff that I buy! And she laughed softly and said, well, it's privately owned. And later, I found out...by her and her husband.

Good grief, how in the heck do I end up fangurling over the most obscure stuff - ever? With the people I'm fangurling over? Sheesh.