New Gap Logo

A story from here:

Gap changed its logo today without fanfare or even so much as a press release. It just kind of showed up on their website, no method of warning considered.

The new logo, a cold and unfeeling blue square crushed underneath the cruel weight of bold, black Helvetica, makes the company look more like it’s about to release a new word processor than a footwear collaboration with Pierre Hardy. Our questions about this abound, but we’ll start with this one: What the hell are they thinking?

BrandChannel points out that while Gap Inc. as a company might have posted over $14 billion in revenue last year, Gap as a brand isn’t doing nearly as well as it has in the past. And now it’s scrambling for a jolt of energy that will send it back to the top again.

“… Ditching the classic logo, recognized by everyone, in favor of whatever that new monstrosity is, demonstrates a prototypical brand panic move. With things not going in its favor, the brand decides to change the one valuable element it has going for it.

Ironically maybe, the new logo is perfect for the brand. It communicates exactly the values currently embodied by Gap: A sense of being lost and a lack of clear vision and creativity.”

Ouch. Well. We hate Helvetica as much as the next person who has a thing for fonts (we had the audacity to tell our 300-level graphic design professor that we thought it was the most banal font we’d ever seen). But we’ve noticed that the company hasn’t changed the logo on its Facebook or Twitter pages, so maybe (hopefully) they’re just testing it out and gauging how consumers would react to it. But if the company can make a design flub this big, should we expect the clothes to follow?

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An update to the above story is here.

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See the trailer for the 2007 documentary on Helvetica.

The Passion of the Clueless

Courtesy of this site.

Theme Dinners – Season 1, Week 4

The fourth Wednesday Night Dinner was another success. Our theme was Idioms. Each week, everyone seems to be embracing the themes. I am amazed at the creativity.

Here are the entries from the dinner:
Fork in the Road Cookie – Tied for first place (see image)
Who Cut The Cheese Plate
Pardon My French Cut Green Beans Sautéed with Almonds and Mushrooms – Tied for first place
High on the Hog (a large ham)
The Whole Enchilada
Ain’t That A Kick In The Head Rum Cake
Don’t Spill The [Red] Beans
Peace Out (She had little packets of Reece’s Pieces, which she proceeded to toss out to us.)
Cream (Spinach) of the Crop - Third place

Pardon My French was my dish. I hadn’t yet placed in the top 3 dishes so I was proud of my accomplishment. (Each week, everyone votes on his/her top 3 favorite dishes with 10 points going to the first place choice, 5 points to the second place choice, and 3 point to the third place choice.)

Next Theme: Dish that Reflects Your Fantasy Place to Live. I have already ordered Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I bet at least a third of the people will do French dishes so I really want to present something fantastic. I have until October 13 to work out the details.

We are having small events at each dinner evolve into traditions:
- Karly, the 10 year old, asks a discussion question while we are all eating – such “What did you want to be when you were 10?”
- Right before we sit down to dinner, each person has a short presentation describing his/her dish. (Our voting is based on the dish’s presentation, adherence to the theme, creativity, and taste.)
- At the end of our evening, the list of potential themes is handed out. Someone throws out a nomination, waiting on a “second” – then a vote. I think too many of us have been involved in formal meetings.

It looks like we have two more Dinners before we take a break for the holidays, starting up again in January. During that time, I plan on compiling all the recipes into a cook book.

With Jason, Debbie and Bart unable to attend, we were down to 11 people at this dinner. Next time, with the addition of two guests of my parents, plus Jason, Debbie and Bart back in, we’ll be up to 16 – our most ever. We also have three people on our “waiting list”. I want to invite them too, but we just don’t have the space. Maybe in January, we’ll start rotating houses.

More Sesame Street

Following up on this post and this post, Sesame Street is again dipping into the world of pop culture, parodying a show that no 3 year old would ever be able to watch.

Their skit...


The opening theme to the original...

Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon Perform the History of Rap

This article is taken from here.

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Justin Timberlake just chalked up another awesome TV appearance when he pulled off a history of hip-hop medley with Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday night. The duo rocked every rap hit from The Sugar Hill Gang to Jay-Z, starting off in the 80s and working their way up to current tracks.

Timberlake pretty much rocks it every time he appears on TV -- consider D*ck in a Box and J*** in My Pants -- and this performance on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" is no exception. The only surprising bit is that Fallon pulls off the raps pretty well, and that both of them do spot-on impressions of their favorite rappers. It also doesn't hurt that Fallon's backing band is legendary hip-hop outfit The Roots. The whole thing feels like a classy rap edition of Evolution of Dance.

My personal favorite moment: Fallon and Timberlake doing the Soulja Boy dance.



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I wish I stayed up late enough more often to see Jimmy Fallon.

Friends of Irony

The website Friends of Irony is one of my favorite daily reads. Here is today's post...


see more Friends of Irony

Story: Local bakery refuses to make rainbow cupcakes for gay customer

An Indianapolis bakery is under fire from the gay and lesbian community over a choice not to serve a diversity group.

Indianapolis —
An Indianapolis bakery is under fire from the gay and lesbian community over a choice not to serve a diversity group.

A campus organization said it was denied service in what's become a flashpoint in the fight for equal rights.

This is what they were after: a mulitcolored cupcake to celebrate "National Coming Out Day" next month; a rainbow confection to honor the diversity on the campus of IUPUI. But the student who had the order placed at Just Cookies was told no.

"We're right on the cusp of being equal with anyone else, I don't know why they would do that," said student Shan Parker.

That student's partner and close friend are both troubled by the refusal. They believe it shows Indianapolis has a ways to go to embrace the gay and lesbian community.

"They weren't asking to petition for anything, they were just ordering cupcakes for an event," said Rebecca Scherpelz.

Fox59 went to City Market to get the business's side of the story, Just Cookies, but we didn't get just one version of what happened.

"Look around, we don't have cupcakes," said owner Lilly Stockton.

Stockton said she talked to someone who did ask for rainbow cookies but couldn't accommodate the order.

Stockton: "I don't have enough colors to do that."

Reporter: "Not enough colors, not because you didn't like what they stood for?"

Stockton: "She didn't tell me what it was for."

Then we talked to her husband David, who gradually made it clear that there was an earlier order... and yes, the customer was refused.

"I explained we're a family-run business, we have two young, impressionable daughters and we thought maybe it was best not to do that," said co-owner David Stockton.

"Values" is the same word used in the other argument.

"I just hope that what comes out of this is that there's some dialogue and discussion on what we value in our community, how we share those values and how we interact with our community members," said Scherpelz.

And the end of the day, the order was placed with another bakery on Massachussetts Avenue. "National Coming Out Day" is Oct 11th.

IUPUI's spokesperson said the school has no formal complaint against the bakery and added embracing diversity means allowing the business owners the right to their opinion and the right to choose how to serve its customers, as long as those customers are not discriminated against.

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Make your thoughts known about the bakery at Urban Spoon .

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Watch a video of the story here.

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Katy Perry - Update

Here is an update to this post.

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According to the 9/23/10 Los Angeles Times:

When Katy Perry visited "Sesame Street," Elmo didn't seem to mind her cleavage -- but parents who previewed a version of her singing a rewritten "Hot N Cold" while playing tag with the furry red guy begged to differ.

Seems that sheer fabric that goes from neck to, um, places lower than Katy's neck on her "dress-up clothes" won't cut it as a preschool-appropriate outfit, with show producers Sesame Workshop deciding to pull the segment from the kids show's Sept. 27 season premiere.

"Sesame Street has always been written on two levels, for the child and adult. We use parodies and celebrity segments to interest adults in the show because we know that a child learns best when co-viewing with a parent or care-giver," the producers said Thursday in a statement.

"We also value our viewer’s opinions and particularly those of parents. In light of the feedback we’ve received on the Katy Perry music video which was released on You Tube only, we have decided we will not air the segment on the television broadcast of Sesame Street, which is aimed at preschoolers. Katy Perry fans will still be able to view the video on You Tube."

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From my other blog, here are tons more shirtless pics of Alexander Rodriguez.

Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock

Gotta love The Big Bang Theory!


1) Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock
Scissors cuts paper,
paper covers rock,
rock crushes lizard,
lizard poisons Spock,
Spock smashes scissors,
scissors decapitates lizard,
lizard eats paper,
paper disproves Spock,
Spock vaporizes rock,
and rock crushes scissors.


2) One of my favorites, Wil Wheaton has guest starred twice - so far.


3) They wear cool costumes.

Katy Perry

Carlos calls Katy Perry the poor man's Zooey Deschanel.

Well, call me a poor man. I don't like a lot of current music, but I really like her.

My favorite song of hers is Hot N Cold. Bonus: The hot guy in the video. (His name is Alexander Rodriguez.)



Here is a link to the original video. ("Embedding disabled by request.")

I was thinking of all this today because I found this video - her singing a version of the song with Elmo on Sesame Street.



Want more shirtless pictures of Alex Rodriguez - this one, not the baseball player? See my other blog.