That's How It Happened

"the meal would start with one kilo of caviar and blini, a Russian pancake, followed by fresh bluefin tuna from Nova Scotia, served raw with a soy sauce and self-hunted snipes"

"We regret not to be able to full fill your reservation request for 2008. The extraordinary demand that we has received at the first moment of our management has again surpassed our limited capacity for one season."

"The rules are simple:

Player 1 draws a character with a power. Player 2 then draws a character whose power cancels the power of that previous character. Repeat."

"Available documentation typically gives more information about paternity than maternity, and usually reflects the parentage that was accepted in an individual’s lifetime. However, modern research has shown that as many as 10% of the children born in some Western societies have a biological father who is not the officially documented father of the child. While the adultery rate surely fluctuated over time and by social class, it is a simple calculation to show that any very long patrilineal descent is unlikely to be biologically accurate, even if the historical accuracy of the documentation for each link is unimpeachable."

"During the 1970s the self-styled "Dolly Parton of Belfast" became well known on Belfast's cabaret circuit, presenting a risqué act in Loyalist pubs and clubs, dressed in fishnet tights, wig and heavy make-up.

On another evening he had a few heart-stopping moments when his car developed a flat tyre in a staunchly nationalist area of Belfast: "After 10 minutes two guys pulled up and asked for my keys," he recalled. "They opened the boot, got the spare wheel out and changed it. I drove off blowing them kisses. I'll never know who they were, but a threat against me was in foot-high writing on a gable wall right by where I broke down."

...in 2002 Duddy paid the price for taking sides in the dispute when two masked gunmen fired shots at his front door. Although he escaped unharmed, his pet chihuahua, Bambi, was killed by the gunfire."

"Have we actually become so selfish and scared that we don't even want to consider whether some things trump safety? What kind of future does that augur?"

"The half-life of an irregular verb scales as the square root of its usage frequency: a verb that is 100 times less frequent regularizes 10 times as fast."

"To start off, David Myers of Sona in Los Angeles concocted a reception of duck confit eggrolls topped with lime pickle aioli and peekytoe crab beignets, all washed down with Dom Perignon Brut 1999. Then came the main courses. Adria prepared Ostras Con Pistachio Verde y Citricos (oysters with green pistachios and citrus; Wakada presented Ravioli of Asahi Crab with Crab Terrine and Finger Lime; Daniel Boulud (of Restaurant Daniel in New York City) produced Wild Scottish Grouse with Sarawak Pepper Cromesquis; and Thomas Keller came out with Four Story Hill Farm Cuisse de Poularde with King Richard Leeks, Spice-Poached pruneaux d'Agen and Black Winter Truffle Coulis. Renowned pastry chef Pierre Herme, who runs swank tea rooms and boutiques in Paris and Tokyo, came up with dessert."

"So, we got this email the other day:

Hello Wieden + Kennedy London,
My name is Luke Forsythe. If you are reading this on the morning of the 24th then I will be sitting outside on a turquoise Verner Panton.

Please do not be alarmed. I'm in a good state of mental health. However, I am determined to talk to a senior member of Creative. I know how busy you all are so I simply plan to wait until somebody has a spare moment.

I have a first degree in product design and have recently freelanced as a branding consultant and designer. I excel in idea generation and communication. I have the utmost respect and appreciation for what Wieden + Kennedy is doing and want, very much, to be a part of it.

Regards,
Luke Forsythe"

Let me just say that I'm sick of people digging up obscure masterpieces designed to make me feel like a philistine; or, worse, arguing that an acknowledged masterpiece isn't, in fact, a masterpiece at all, but the beneficiary of some collective cultural hypnosis. I'm going in the opposite direction: I'm going to call attention to a classic that, in my opinion, is even better than we all think it is:

Chinatown (1974)

If you really analyse a great film, it can teach you how to make a film, and Chinatown may be the best blueprint of all. It has: a compelling and/or entertaining subject, explored through a well constructed narrative (Robert Towne's screenplay brilliantly fictionalises the true story of Los Angeles' battle for a water supply)¹; a great cast, doing career-defining work (Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway both look and act better than they've ever looked or acted)²; an appropriately distinctive visual scheme (the sets, costumes and photography are painfully evocative, and Roman Polanski never puts the camera in the wrong place)³; and, most crucially, smart editing and scoring (the macro-editing has just the right press and release, the micro-editing is seamless except when it's not supposed to be; and Jerry Goldsmith's melancholy score - a last-minute addition - wraps the whole film in an intoxicating perfume of dread)⁴.

Of course, it also follows that bad films contain the reverse DNA, showing you what not to do. But, in general, I like to watch good films, because bad films make me sad. Actually, Chinatown makes me sad, too, mostly because it reminds me that I began watching and making films at a time when the movies really were just as great as they seemed to be. Oh well. At least I wasn't imagining things⁵.

1 This is a good moment to comment on the cottage industry that has sprung up around How To ... screenwriting manuals. I think of this because Towne's script is often cited as a great template (which it is) but, invariably, with no understanding or acknowledgment of the role film editing has in shaping a finished work. So any discussion that omits this issue shows a palpable lack of experience in the actual making of films on the part of the scriptwriting teacher/author.

2 I'm not kidding, Nicholson and Dunaway are fucking spectacular in this. His smile and her cheekbones? Come on.

3 Like I say, there's everything you need to know to direct a movie here. There's a huge difference between being economical and being cheap, and Polanski shows you the difference over and over again. You might not have noticed that he basically shoots the whole film with one lens; and check out the multiple-destination camera moves, which are invariably hidden within the actors' moves. Plus, there's nobody better at knowing when to pull the camera off the dolly and go hand-held.

4 This is a good moment to say that, currently, I think editing on a micro-level has never been better, and editing on a macro-level has never been worse. I leave it to you to decide why this is.

5 Oh no. I've officially become a bitter, nostalgic fuck. How did this happen?

What would be your last meal on earth? A tasting menu that featured a variety of seafood, prepared in many different ways, and inspired by the cuisine at Kiccho restaurant in Kyoto, Japan. Bamboo with assorted sashimi; prawns with tuzu; clams, sesame and nori seaweed soup; roasted fugu; scallops with miso and a clam tart; daikon turnip with abalone and sansho lettuce; kuzu tagliatelle with freshly grated ginger; and mountain potato stuffed with sweet beans and yuzu. I'd finish with fruit from the Amazon that I had never tasted before.

What would be the setting? Kiccho - the restaurant is a Japanese house with a beautiful Zen garden, and bears no relation to a classic restaurant. It has an incredible atmosphere: very Zen, decorated with floral designs and little else. I have enjoyed many meals during my life, some of them so marvellous that without a doubt they could be considered as artistic an experience as any museum visit or dance performance, but I had this feeling the most at Kiccho.

What would you drink? Champagne, because when I drink a great champagne, my soul is happy.

Would there be music? I would listen to fusion music, and the same Berber music that they have at Yacout restaurant in Marrakech, Morocco.

Who would be your dining companions? My wife, my family and my friends.

Who would cook? Auguste Escoffier. For me, when we talk about gastronomy, Escoffier is the icon.

"if you are going to get caught up in any kind of cult of personality, then you better make sure it's a good 'un. lets congregate and genuflect here for a while."

"What should you do when someone you don't like or don't know sends you a friend request? Most of you will hold your nose and accept the request. But why? This is like allowing a corsair-wielding pirate to board your vessel without a fight. Once you've accepted too many faux friends, Facebook becomes a real slog."

"A newly released Georgia Tech study shows that some Roomba owners become deeply attached to the robotic vacuums and suggests there's a measure of public readiness to accept additional robots in the house — even flawed ones."