There’s a post on Fast Company that points out the worst NFL helmet designs and suggests alternatives. As soon as I read it, I knew the 12-year-old football fan inside me had to respond.
Author Ken Carbone lists the Cowboys, Eagles, Rams and Vikings among the best, with the Bengals taking the top spot. I’ve got to disagree with the Bengals. The tiger stripes are cheesy. My favorite is the Seattle Seahawks.
The bird looks like an early Native American woodcut, its furrowed brow makes it look mean and it’s the only NFL logo that wraps around the back of the helmet.
Ken suggests that the Patriots need a redesign as well, and I agree. I think the “Flying John Kerry” they’ve got now would be improved if it wrapped around like the hawk does. Right now, the Pats logo always looks crooked. When seen off of the helmet — a bumper sticker, perhaps — I want to adjust it so that the face’s profile is perpendicular to ground, but that makes the trailing colors seem to hang low. When situated as intended, the face gazes down at the ground, looking defeated. It irks me.
Ken came up with an Easy Rider/Evel Knievel/Captain America design that doesn’t cut it. Yes, it’s a bold alternative and would look cool when painted inside an end zone, but the previous associations are too strong.
Besides, the Pats have a more colonial than contemporary theme. If you can suggest a new Pats design, I’d love to see it.
The worst pro football helmets come from Vince McMahon’s ill-fated XFL. Look at these stinkers.
Horrible. The Demons is the only one that doesn’t look like the logo for an energy drink.
In this scene from The Shining, Jack is in the bathroom with Delbert Grady, the Overlook’s former caretaker. Jack stands to our right and Mr. Grady to our left. The perspective created by the parallel rows of urinals, sinks, ceiling lights and orange paint focuses our attention on the two men.
Kubrick holds this shot as Mr. Grady denies his identity. Jack presses him with a cocky attitude. Then the perspective suddenly changes.
The tables are turned, both figuratively and in the shot. The men “switch sides” as Mr. Grady drops the charade and tells Jack, “You are the caretaker, sir. You have always been the caretaker.” The focus is sharpened with more urinals and sinks are in the shot. Jack’s cocky attitude is replaced with fear.
Now we’re in Jack’s intimate zone. He gives a nervous laugh and his confusion and anxiety are palpable.
Now we’re only a few feet from Mr. Grady. In these close shots the characters have a very personal conversation. Mr. Grady explains the threat posed by Danny, and suggests the “good talking to” that Jack ought to give Danny and his wife, Wendy. Jack admits that Danny is a “willful” boy and reveals a secret about Wendy.
It’s a gradual crescendo that uses cinematography beautifully to heighten the increasing intimacy of their relationship and conversation, and one of the reasons I love Kubrick’s work so much.
One of the best Christmas gifts I’ve received was a K-Tel record that included “Cars” by Gary Numan. I played it over and over at my (patient) grandmother’s house. It’s a killer song.
Speaking of killer music, Trent Reznor is as relevant as he was 20 years ago, and this performance demonstrates why. Writing music is intensely personal, but Trent shares himself with artists (here, here and here) and fans (here, here and here).
There’s a great article at Smashing Magazine today featuring the most unique and creative American TV shows. It’s an impressive list and worth reading.
It also reminds me of my old idea for a Seinfeld episode that used Jerry, Kramer, George and Elaine as background extras. They’d lack speaking parts and would barely appear on screen. Instead, the entire episode would feature new characters we had never seen before and would never see again. It would have been brilliant.
When I was a child, I watched my grandmother levitate a table.
This was the woman who give my sister and me a Ouija board as a birthday gift. A devout Catholic whose faith in the occult was just as strong. In my grandmother’s mind, God and ghosts weren’t opposing forces but ingredients in the same recipe. Sometimes malignant, sometimes benign and always real.
When my sister and I were very young, we’d ask her to explain her tarot cards to us. She always used her cards at a folding card table. It had a red vinyl top and white steel legs as thin as the wooden dowels we used to prop up the tomato plants. The three of us would sit around the table, my sister and I with our feet dangling above the floor, and listen to stories about The Fool, The Chariot and so on. I can still see her small, veined hands rapidly sliding the cards in a great heap and hear the sound of them gliding across the vinyl.
At one point I heard the word “Seance” and came to know its meaning. I also knew that a seance was something that my grandmother knew how to do. My next memory is incomplete but what I can recall is clear.
We were sitting in the living room and my grandmother was alone at the card table. Her eyes were closed and she was sliding her hands across the vinyl as she did with the Tarot cards. The room was quiet except for the swish of her sliding palms. Then the table popped up into the air and fell back down. It popped up again and fell back down. This went on for a minute or two.
Then the table popped up and stayed up. Her hands slid wildly and the table undulated as if it were riding the waves of a violent sea. It leapt and dove, rose and fell. All the while, my grandmother’s hands made great circles across its surface.
That’s the last I remember of that scene, though I don’t know if that’s because it ended there or because my sister and I were led away. Later, my grandmother would tell us that “other hands” were moving that table, not hers.
Today, I have an irrational fear of those other hands. Yes, I’m a grown adult. I attended college and graduate school. I have a wife and two wonderful kids. I consider myself to be a man of reason.
But, when I go to sleep, I’ve got to walk 12 or 15 feet from the light switch to my bed. Every night as I move through the dark, I feel the cool air against my ankles. I become very aware of the protruding bones in my feet and the very thin layer of skin that protects them. As I get closer to the bed and finally step up into it, I cringe. Ever so slightly, but I cringe.
I expect a hand, cold and bone white, to reach out from underneath the bed and grab my bony ankle. Grab it and just hold it there, if only to let me feel the pressure and the cold of its grip. As a rational adult, I know this will never happen.
But if it ever does, I won’t be surprised one bit.
I’ve noticed that YouTube and Flickr won’t accept a video shot with the iPhone 3GS while in portrait mode. Bummer. Anyway, here’s one I shot this afternoon.
CameraBag [App Store link] is an app for the iPhone/iPod touch that lets you apply any of 11 filters to your photos, including Fisheye, Magazine, Cinema and more. My favorite is “Helga” and I’ve been playing with it for the past few weeks. It applies the exact same effect to every image, but it’s still a lot of fun. Below are some of my recent favorites.
It won’t replace my Holga, of course, but it’s still a nifty little toy.
I first came across the lovely Zooey Deschanel in the movie Elf. Now I’m seeing her everywhere, except that it’s not her.
Singer Katy Perry resembles Zooey so closely that I thought they were the same person, since Zooey has an album out now, too. Additionally, actress Alessandra Toreson, who also bears a striking resemblence, played a character named Zoe in the SciFi Network’s “Caprica.”
It can only mean one thing: Hollywood loves girls who resemble Zooey Deschanel. Good news for doe-eyed brunettes with ambitions for the big screen.
