Kitchen secrets

Magnet #678 - National Kitchen & Bath Association

You know how sometimes I have like the coolest magnets and the fun write-ups? This is not that day.

Every so often, I like to use a real fridge magnet just to spice things up. A former client of mine gave me this NKBA fridge magnet - mainly because we were working on a line of kitchen and laundry appliances together back in the day.

You'd be surprised how much effort goes into the selling of product lines to you guys, the consumer, but also the amount of work that an appliance manufacturer has to do just to get their products sold in to like a Sears or Best Buy or Lowe's. It's hard, man. They have to have all their product specs down pat, all their collateral pristine, and know their sales pitches cold.

But, to get all that together, sometimes, you have to do a little recon in the stores - that's running around a P.C. Richards or a Lowe's or Home Depot, seeing who has the most appliances on the floor, the positioning within the store, and even the point of sale materials they have for the consumers.

It was totally fun, getting to visit as many of these stores as I could, pretending I was in the market for some new refrigerators or washer/dryers, and quizzing the sales folks on the differences between the manufacturers, picking up competitive sales materials...and when I could, taking pictures of the store.

Well, that is until I got run out of a New Jersey Sears for taking pictures. Whoops.

Sleeping beauty

Magnet #677 - Malta's Sleeping Lady

So, Save the World Couple went to Malta for their "post-wedding vacation," and brought this back for me.

I know, I know - I had to look up where Malta is on the map, too. They fell in love with the place, and are already trying to figure out when they'll go back.

So, the Sleeping Lady can be found at the National Museum of Archaeology. She's one of the most sacred treasures of Malta - having found her in one of the rooms of the prehistoric Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, which is this underground cave thing that they accidentally stumbled upon in 1902 and excavated. Now it's a UNESCO site.

The level of detail on this magnet is amazing, but I'm betting it's nothing compared to the real thing. Especially when you take into account that the Sleeping Lady's like 5,000 years old! For realz, yo.

No one really knows what her purpose was - she's a fat little thing, and some think that she symbolizes death, or that her sheer size indicates fertility, or that she's a priestess or goddess who induces and/or interprets the dreams of her followers.

Personally, except for the fact that they have other pieces that feature her, I totally think it could have just been some guy who really loved his wife, and made some cool clay statuette of her sleeping. What?

So I picked this for tonight, because of two reasons. One, because it's Save the World Brother-in-Law's birthday. And two, because we ate our weight in delicious meats at Fogo de Chao tonight, and now I'm totally in a food coma.

Capeside, seaside

Magnet #676 - Monet's Regatta at Sainte-Adresse

This is part of the Monet magnet set I picked up from the Met - it's an inset of this painting from the Met's site.

Monet spent a lot of time at Sainte-Adresse on the coast of France, where his Parisian parents moved. He painted Regatta at Sainte-Adresse (at the Met) supposedly as a companion piece to the Beach at Sainte-Adresse (at the Art Institute of Chicago), both in 1867.

There's some speculation that he painted it to show the class differences - the posh bathers versus the local fishermen.

I just like it because regattas always remind me of when stupid Dawson Leery entered Capeside's Annual Spring Regatta to win the heart of Joey Potter, even though everyone knows that the Joey belonged with Pacey J Witter.

What? I have a million Monet magnets...plus, my sister totally got me the complete series boxset of Dawson's Creek.

Now, if only I had time to do a proper marathon!

Flying carpet ride

Magnet #675 - The Modern Wing

I picked this up in Chicago - love when I can get image magnets of the actual museum. Of course, it's cool when the building's so darn cool to merit a magnet, I guess.

If ever you're hanging out in Chicago with a spare few hours, definitely go see the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. It's one of the biggest museum projects in years, and likely to be one of the last on this grand of a scale for a while.

Go for the art, but go for the building, too, which was designed by famed museum architect Renzo Piano.

Remember how I was talking about artists' visual vocabulary? To my untrained eye, I think that it's the same thing with architects. As I learn more about each architect, I'm starting to recognize the telltale hallmarks of their respective work.

For example, I visited the Morgan Library for the first time a few weeks ago and just by looking at around, I totally knew who did the addition before I even Googled it. It probably has more to do with the fact that I'd been watching the progress on the Modern Wing for months before it opened, and also, because Piano's designed several buildings that I've both seen and visited recently, including the Morgan and the relatively new New York Times Building, both buildings with a lot of glass and steel.

Rather than solid, closed exterior walls, his work seems to always have this slatted look of steel and glass - allowing for as much light through as possible, making the interior space seem brighter and bigger, lighter and airy. That slatted look extends to his ceilings - where they create this sort of flying-carpet kind of canopy above.

Though the existing museum space, was no slouch, The Modern Wing was no exception - I loved it, from the main hall, to the staircases, to the overlooks, and terrific interiors. A fantastic space - and well befitting all the supercool artwork they're exhibiting.

Off with their heads!

Magnet #674 - Tower of London

Love visiting the Tower of London, if only for the years and years and years of history cropped up within these pile of stones - the thing was begun in 1066 by William the Conqueror, after all.

Plus, no matter how many times you visit, you don't run out of things to do, tours to take, things to see and history to learn. Which is probably why I love it so.

What I don't love, and why I picked this magnet for today, is because we just finished watching the Brit show Gavin & Stacey's Christmas Special, and are sorely, sorely disappointed by their own brand of revisionist history.

Lock up those editors for BBC-A, because honestly, they've edited yet another BBC show beyond recognition.

Argh. I get that they need to edit for time or content or music rights, but man, sometimes, the Brit shows aren't worth watching, when half the good bits are on some digital clipboard somewhere across the waters.

Sigh. They really can't be angry when people turn to alternative resources when 1) BBC-A airs the shows on a delay (which they were starting to get better about), but 2) When they do finally decide to air the show (like this Christmas special I'm talking about is actually from 2008), they have to edit (and bleep) the hell out of it.

Mind you, I would bet that in addition to saving almost two minutes in time, they probably also didn't have the rights to Band-Aid's Do They Know it's Christmas? Such a shame, because this scene with Smithy and Gavin? Is the best scene in the entire episode!

And, if you haven't seen Gavin & Stacey - get thee to the (unedited) boxed sets - asap. Such a great show!

Sherlock Holmes, I presume

Magnet #673 - Sherlock Holmes

Oh, yes. I have totally been waiting to use this magnet for the day I saw RDJ's Sherlock Holmes.

I picked this up earlier this year at the BEA show, back when we thought our company rebranding was feature the world's greatest detectives, and position our account executives and creatives as brand investigators and storytellers. I know. Don't ask. It kinda seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm just sorry I didn't manage to convince anyone to pick this magnet as our little company launch tchotcke. Heh.

But yay, fun finger puppet magnet!

I kinda had really high hopes for Sherlock Holmes today, which is why I was kinda sad that it didn't live up to my own hype. Don't get me wrong - it was a fairly good movie, it just didn't rock my world as I expected it to.

I blame the overall story, which was only so-so. I tend to love mysticism in my stories, but this one wasn't at all engaging for me. Though the intricate Holmesian details were pretty good, my problem was that my attention was already lost by the time they started explaining the mysticism of the conspiracy.

One of the best parts about the movie was of course, Robert Downey Jr. He was fantastic, as we knew he would be. And you gotta love the total yay between RDJ's Holmes and Jude Law's Watson. The dialogue skipped along whenever the two of them were together on screen. Loved them - loved their banter. In fact, their banter should be in every movie ever made. And, honestly, Rachel McAdams was cute with them as well.

Another thing I love seeing in any movie is a historic background - in this case, London in the making (literally, with the Tower Bridge being built). Seeing St. Paul's and Westminster and even 221B was supercool. The Thames all crowded with boats plying their trade and horse carriages cluttering the streets was just fantastic.

Of course, now I'm trying to remember how accurate Holmes' and Watson's rooms were at 221B Baker Street - a few years ago, my sisters and I did our own little tour of the Sherlock Holmes house/museum. Pretty cool, even though the wax Watson scared the bejeepers out of me. Also? Check it - this Watson, not as hot as Jude Law. I'm just sayin'.

The Hans Zimmer score was fabulous, particularly with the undercurrents of Big Ben's Westminster chimes, keeping time with all the fight scenes toward the end.

Speaking of fights scenes - whoa. Just. Whoa. The fighting was intense and often - and as my dad said, every time my mom woke him up, people were fighting. But, they were well done.

So, yeah - it's still a recommend. Go. See it. While I wasn't carried away by it, there were a ton of things I really did like about the movie. Not the least of which, RDJ should totally have a stipulation in his contract to do at least one shirtless scene in every single movie he does.

I insist.

Merry Christmas

Magnet #672 - Panda

I used to have this friend who was always unnerved being around folks speaking non-English languages, convinced that they were talking about her.

This magnet, given to me by someone else, reminds me of her, because I could have sworn they got it in Beijing, and that's what the writing says. It doesn't. Then I thought it said panda. It doesn't. So, I haven't a clue what it says, and I just hope it's not something about me. Hahahah.

I picked this magnet today, mainly because I forgot to do a magnet photoshoot before leaving NYC, so all I have are the magnets already loaded in my photobucket, and this is the most Christmassy festive of the bunch.

But, also because Save the World Sister got her usual fill of pandas for Christmas. It's so funny, I remember at one point in her apartment, everywhere I looked, I saw another panda item. Things haven't changed.

And yep, we've already done Christmas. It's what we do - head straight home after Midnight Mass, jump into our jammies, and open presents. This year was a little weird, because after the snowstorm in DC, we decided it was easier for us to drive down to NC, rather than have our parents deal with the crappy roads (see yesterday's post for validation). So like Santa, we threw all our presents in the big red 4-runner, and headed for the open road, singing Christmas music all the way home.

But, home too late for Midnight Mass. So, we just jumped into our jammies, and did our Christmas tonight, in a proper showing of commercialism and consumerism cause and effect. Heh. Now everyone's asleep...except for me, who drank a Mountain Dew at 9 to keep me awake driving home. Ooops.

I know, middle of the night to open presents is weird, but this stems from years of practice. In fact, the saddest Christmas ever for me was the year I stuck to my guns, forced myself to go to sleep on Christmas Eve, in order to have a proper Christmas morning opening presents.

Only, amidst piles of discarded wrapping paper, my presents were the only ones under the tree. And I was the only one opening presents. By myself. Cuz everyone else was asleep.

Silly. Opening presents Christmas morning, instead of Christmas Eve. Who does that?


Hahahaahaha. Merry Christmas, ya'll!

eta:
Yay, thanks for the clarification, Erika! Shanghai, China. Awesome.