Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee

Jerry Seinfeld's online show.

ComediansInCarsGettingCoffee.com
Wikipedia

Abruzzo Bodziak's Barn "Irish Hills House"

Wallpaper* Architects Directory 2013
Irish Hills House 

"A house for a retired couple in Irish Hills, Michigan, responds to the request for a locally inspired barn-type building that is nonetheless contemporary in its execution. Using the vernacular language of red-painted, cedar vertical board cladding with white corner boards, the house allows for a single, significant transformation to the north. Traditional gambrel framing is exploited to pull a large picture window out of plane, taking with it the profile of that side of the building. The result is a building with false perspective, wherein the elevation of the house appears to recede in space, the white corner boards tracing the lines of inflection. 

The house’s open-plan upper floor hosts public spaces and a large semi-enclosed open air porch, alternately accessed by a long, grass-covered ramp similar to many earthen hay-loft ramps in the area. The stone base of the building wraps the lower, private floor and the ramp, as well as creating a retaining wall that defines an enclosed courtyard onto which the bedrooms look. A building with few punched openings (true to the barn typology), light and air is augmented by the occasional exploitation of the building’s cladding. In areas like the porch, the cladding boards are widely spaced to allow light and air to pass through. This technique is also used for enclosed areas, the cladding more of a rain screen with glass behind."

Modern Treehouses

Sportscenter Year Coverage

Deadspin - "What I Learned From A Year Of Watching SportsCenter"

Summertime Punch

New York Times T Magazine - "All the Rage | The Next Great Cocktail Craze? Boozy Punches"

"When 22,000 bartenders, distillers, industry reps and cocktail enthusiasts gathered in New Orleans last week for the 11th annual Tales of the Cocktail convention, one truth emerged: punches are back. Gin punches complemented sour flavors. Whiskey punches swirled with citrus. Nearly every event featured a bowl at the bar that was regularly drained and refilled. At the Absolut Welcome Party, 16 rooms of the French Quarter’s historic Arnaud’s Restaurant were transformed into a maze of bespoke bars and boîtes, featuring punch-bowl fountains of such classic concoctions as the sea breeze, the corpse reviver and the honey pot. And at the closing day’s annual Pig & Punch fund-raiser, herbaceous Jagermeister and Barenjager Honey Liqueur punctuated flowing bowls of tequila and plum-wine punch.

The colonial-era precursor to the cocktail has been enjoying a renaissance ever since the release of the cocktail historian David Wondrich’s 2010 book, “Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl.” Typically comprised of five ingredients (spirit, citrus, sugar, spice, water), punches have grown in popularity in part because of their low-maintenance preparation — all that’s required before serving is floating a giant ice cube in a massive bowl."

The Back to the Future Delorean Lego Set

Due to the enormous Internet demand and fan support on Cuusoo, Lego will be releasing this Delorean Back to the Future set on August 1.

Gizmodo - "The Lego Back to the Future Set Is Now OFFICIAL!" (December 2012)
Gizmodo - "Here's the New Lego Back to the Future Set" (July 2013)
Engadget - "Unleash your inner Marty McFly with Lego's Back to the Future set"
The Verge - "Lego 'Back to the Future' DeLorean materializes at Comic-Con, ships next month"

The Return of the Charlotte Hornets

ESPN - "Charlotte Hornets back in 2014-15"

"The NBA Board of Governors unanimously approved changing the Charlotte Bobcats name back to the Hornets beginning for the 2014-15 season during its summer meeting Thursday in Las Vegas.

The Hornets brand became available when the New Orleans Pelicans officially gave it up earlier this year as part of their own name change. The Charlotte Hornets moved to New Orleans in 2002, and the Bobcats joined the league as an expansion team in '04. Commissioner David Stern said Bobcats owner Michael Jordan has been in discussions to get the Hornets name back since he bought the team in 2010."

. . .

"The Hornets led the NBA in attendance for seven consecutive seasons in Charlotte, but the Bobcats have not been as successful in the market, which spurred the movement to return to the name.

"It is so true that it was a subject of conversation for the last couple of years," Stern said. "Fans of the old Hornets would say, 'Please give us back our Hornet name.' I laughed at it initially. But it stayed there bubbling below the surface, and there's something to it."

The Bobcats' website hailed the return of "Buzz City," and team officials said 2,000 season-ticket holders turned out at a downtown party that turned into a celebration of the name change. Fan favorite Muggsy Bogues and other former Hornets including Rex Chapman, Kelly Tripucka, Dell Curry and Kendall Gill attended as well.

Related,
New Orleans Pelicans Logo

Replace The with Ћ

The Daily Telegraph - "Aussie restaurateur Paul Mathis invents new letter of the Alphabet"

"The Most Influential Movies of the Last Century According to Wikipedia"

Gizmodo - "The Most Influential Movies of the Last Century According to Wikipedia"

Morning Coffee Art

Working for Foxconn

NYT - "The Demanding Off-Hour Escapes of China’s High-Tech Workers"

Zane Lowe's Conversation with Jay-Z

"The future isn't what it used to be"

Related,
CBS Sunday Morning - "The "retro-future" of "The Jetsons"

Food Logistics

Bloomberg Businessweek - "Why the McWrap Is So Important to McDonald's"

"After lengthy discussions with produce suppliers around the country, [Executive Chef and VP of Culinary Innovation Dan] Coudreaut managed to add one new ingredient to the McDonald’s arsenal: the English cucumber. That might not seem like a big change, but when the chain added sliced apples to its menu, it immediately became one of the largest buyers of apples in the country. The company had to build up reserves of edamame before it introduced its Asian salad. Coudreaut would like to add guacamole one day. Who knows what that would do to the avocado supply?"

The Canyons

Written by Bret Easton Ellis and directed by Paul Schrader (co-screenwriter of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull), The Canyons, is scheduled to be released August 2.

Background reading,
The New York Times Magazine - "Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie" (January 10, 2013)

Grand Theft Auto V - Gameplay Trailer

September 15, 2013.

KAWS's MTV VMA Moonman

How much would one of these retail for?

NYT - "MTV Awards Will Feature a New Moonman, Made Just for Brooklyn"

Related,
CBS Sunday Morning - "Street artist KAWS reaches new heights" 
KAWS - Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Float 
KAWS - Passing Through

Chris Malinchak - "So Good To Me"

Throwback Ad - Hamm's Beer

Umami Burger

New York Magazine - "Umami Burger Comes to New York, Armed With One Addictive Ingredient"

"Adam Fleischman likes to make a few things clear. First off, he wants New Yorkers to know that his L.A. Umami ­Burger empire—which has grown, in just four short years, from a $40,000 ­investment to a multimillion-dollar enterprise with madly popular, ever-multiplying outlets in San Francisco and Miami—isn’t a burger joint in the usual ho-hum, ­utilitarian way."

"Fleischman’s goal, in creating his original Umami Burger, was to take the same nostalgic template—the store-bought bun; the pale, not-quite-fresh tomato; the prepackaged patty; the processed yellow cheese—and blow it, politely, to smithereens. “When I created the Umami Burger, I wanted a forward-­looking burger,” he tells me. “I wanted a burger that was global and that had all sorts of modern influences.” 

And Fleischman’s Umami Burger—which, according to legend, he invented, with no prior culinary training, in his home kitchen using ingredients rich in the mysterious, controversial Japanese “fifth taste” called umami—turned the L.A. burger world on its ear more or less overnight. Since its debut in 2009, local celebrities (Ashton Kutcher, Jay Leno) and chefs (L.A.’s popular Michael Voltaggio) have attested to its addictive powers, and several highbrow critics, including skeptical New Yorkers like GQ’s Alan Richman, have declared it the finest burger in all the land."

Damien Hirst's Dots

New York Times - "Hirst Counts the Dots, or at Least the Paintings"

For years, buyers and dealers have debated the worth of Damien Hirst's dot paintings. (one has sold for as much as $3.4 million)

"Mr. Hirst has said he painted the first few dozen. The others he left mainly to a coterie of assistants, who, it seemed, could make them ad infinitum."

"This fall his publisher, Other Criteria, will release a book, a catalogue raisonné, that will show that there are exactly 1,365 spot paintings."

"For Mr. Hirst, the inventory is but another example of how, as an artist and businessman, he has often sailed against the winds. At a time when experts increasingly fear putting out catalogs and authenticating art, lest they be sued by owners whose works don’t make the grade and are left out, Mr. Hirst, 48, is creating a book that could define what is — and what is not — an authentic Hirst spot painting."

Related,
Best Use of Art in Restaurant
Damien Hirst's Angel of the West

Beyond the dot paintings here are other famous artworks by Hirst,

Neymar

Brazil and FC Barcelona's futures have been wagered on 21-year-old Neymar da Silva Santos Jr.

The New York Times reported back in June that FC Barcelona paid Neymar's Brazilian club around $74 million to buy his rights and bring him to La Liga starting next season. Neymar helped Brazil win this summer's prelude to the World Cup, the Confederations Cup.

Can Brazil win next year's WC?
Can he help Barca return to previous form?

Throwback Car - the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia

1955 - 1974.

My grandparents drove a red Karmann Ghia living in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Summer Travel - The Drive-In - Taylor Falls, MN

House-made root beer floats, hot fudge milkshakes, hand-made burgers, deep fried cheese curds and more at this 1950's Americana throwback drive-in restaurant on the Minnesota/Wisconsin border.

The Drive-In Restaurant
Star Tribune - "Check, please: Pretty leaves, yummy meals"

Tony Hsieh's Plans for Downtown Las Vegas

New York Times - "Latest Vision for Las Vegas: A Downtown Vibe"

"Tony Hsieh didn’t look much like a modern-day Bugsy Siegel. Wearing backpack, T-shirt and jeans, standing outside a downtown bar, he patrolled his future empire along East Fremont Street here one sweltering morning.

But the flamboyant Siegel changed this city for good when he built the Flamingo Hotel, the first luxury casino on the Strip. Now Mr. Hsieh, a soft-spoken 39-year-old Internet billionaire who runs Zappos, the online clothing store, plans to do something as transformative. It’s a classic American dream: a Western-scale roll of the dice in a city that suddenly conjured up Belle Époque Paris and ancient Rome out of the desert. The idea this time is to build a version of the Mission district in San Francisco or the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in downtown Vegas.

Mr. Hsieh (pronounced shay) is relocating Zappos headquarters from Henderson, Nev., about 16 miles away, and investing hundreds of millions of his own dollars to retrofit downtown with, well, a downtown, in line with the latest trends."

...

"...Mr. Hsieh began to picture a different vision for the neighborhood: as an affordable locus for upscale young adults, having little or nothing to do with gambling.

In some ways, the most fascinating aspect of this vision is the relocation of Zappos. Moving its headquarters downtown represents a pointed alternative to the multibillion-dollar suburban office parks that Google and Apple are building in Silicon Valley, notwithstanding that so many of their own employees want to live in, and commute from, San Francisco. Mr. Hsieh has bought into the solid notion that chance encounters on the street or at a club — urban collisions — spark innovation: cities, inherently, nurture the economy and culture."

City Inspiration

Wired - "Why Pacific Rim’s Hong Kong Battle Will Blow Your Mind"

"While Knoll was in charge of making sure all the VFX worked physically, del Toro made sure the battle adhered to his beloved red and blue color palette – often going “full Italian” and using hues like those favored by directors like Dario Argento. The director also took cues from Hong Kong itself. 

“When you go to Hong Kong the thing that is so impressive and beautiful is the sort of neon-color night,” del Toro says. “There is literally a time when the night is falling in Hong Kong that there is a light show that all the buildings do and the night becomes almost like a living comic book.”

Buried in a Tomb Full of Gold

"When the Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s life-force left his body, the deceased found his eternal resting place inside a 250 pound, solid gold coffin. At current prices, that quantity of gold melted down into fungible specie would sell 4.8 million dollars. To put that into perspective, Michael Jackson, King of Pop was laid to rest in a gold-plated coffin that cost $25,000; a relative bargain."

Vice - "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Gold"

Playboy Marfa

"Over the next few months, motorists speeding through the West Texas desert on Highway 90, just outside the arts town of Marfa, will encounter an unexpected roadside attraction: a white neon Playboy logo hovering above a matte-black 1972 Dodge Charger perched at an 18-degree angle atop a concrete plinth. Playboy Marfa, as it’s being called, is the first in a series of art projects commissioned by Playboy’s new creative team of Neville Wakefield and Landis Smithers meant to reintroduce the brand for a younger generation. It’s the work of Richard Phillips — the artist best known for his hyper-realistic portraits of women, often in the mode of the old-school magazine pictorial — who was a natural fit for the brand, Smithers said. “I loved his idea of this glowing symbol in the middle of nowhere as we — Playboy — are emerging from this period of darkness.”

New York Times - "An All-American Roadside Attraction in West Texas"