Unlikely Words

On baguettes

aaron cohen — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:26:00 +0000

From a piece on French baguettes, I liked this:

Delmontel, now 41, began his career in Paris just as this movement was percolating. Trained as a cook and pastry chef, he initially looked down on breadmaking. Bakers had a reputation for being screwups in culinary school, with few prospects aside from vocational trades. “I thought, All they’re doing is mixing flour and water—what’s so hard about that?” he said.

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The Boss

aaron cohen — Thu, 24 May 2012 02:26:15 +0000

I don't know quite why, but I really liked The Boss.

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Every issue of the Avengers

aaron cohen — Tue, 22 May 2012 21:32:12 +0000

Well, I like this. Click through to see it larger.

Via Stellar.

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Beard punch

aaron cohen — Tue, 22 May 2012 00:29:37 +0000

I hate shaving, and I hate forgetting to shave. Good thing I'm in no danger of a beard punch.

Via Mike

Reminds me of Beard Slap.

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History of Mexican food in the US

aaron cohen — Mon, 21 May 2012 19:03:28 +0000

Last week, I posted a Smithsonian interview with a Mexican food expert on the history of tacos. Here's a companion article by Gustavo Arellano that is interesting, packed with nuggets of information, but also at times overwritten and needlessly political.

That you have a nation (and increasingly a planet—you can find Mexican restaurants from Ulan Bator to Sydney to Prague) lusting after tequila, guacamole, and tres leches cake isn’t an exercise in culinary neocolonialism but something closer to the opposite. By allowing itself to be endlessly adaptable to local tastes, Mexican food has become a primary vehicle for exporting the culture of a long-ridiculed country to the far corners of the globe. Forget Mexico’s imaginary Reconquista of the American Southwest; the real conquest of North America is a peaceful and consensual affair, taking place one tortilla at a time.

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My favorite eclipse stuff

aaron cohen — Mon, 21 May 2012 17:08:05 +0000

Ring of Fire by Gideon Davidson

Here's another and another and another.

2012 Solar Eclipse by J. Taylor

"I'm sorry to inform you that Earth is about to be been by a fire demon." By Wikkit

This one's via Kottke.

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Mad Men Season 5 Episode 10 recap

aaron cohen — Mon, 21 May 2012 05:37:43 +0000

Every week, Chris Piascik (@chrispiascik) illustrates his favorite quotation from the episode, and I write up a recap.

-We are flying! It's Christmas already ("I love Christmas in Manhattan"). Or almost (Roger is drinking to celebrate Pearl Harbor Day, so it's 12/7). And the episode title is 'Christmas Waltz', a reference to the song The Christmas Waltz which played at the end of the episode. I don't know what this had to do with what we saw this week, though. I noticed a lot of different relationship interactions, which might reference a lyric in the song, "It's that time of year / When the world falls in love." I think naming the episode America Hurrah, the name of the play Don and Megan saw, would have been too obvious.

-This episode featured more of Lane, Harry, and Joan than we've gotten in a while. Lane is in deep shit for paying taxes to the US instead of the UK. I'd guess he didn't pay taxes to the US either, but no way of knowing. I hadn't realized until the 'scenes from next week' last week, that Lane hasn't been on for a while. There was some conversation while watching this week that Lane would be the one to throw himself out a window (not Pete, as the advisers anticipate). In any case, Lane is broke, has been broke, and still hasn't told anyone. He has a tax bill of $8K, and concocts a plan to have SCDP borrow $50K on a short term loan so that the firm could pay out bonuses. His plan is somewhat derailed when one of the clients halts all work, delaying the partners' bonuses. Someone will find out. I liked the deliberateness of the check forging scene. It's emblematic of the series, and it was notable it was Don Draper's signature being forged, as he's living a forgery.

-The return of Paul Kinsey as a Hare Krishna was just one of those scenes. I think we saw him earlier this year at Don and Megan's party, but he wasn't Krishna, and he wasn't as heavy. Am I misremembering that? He's lost and ended up at a Hare Krishna temple. It's interesting. Mother Lakshmi definitely represents the culty aspects of HK, while Paul represents the naive devotee (though they like him because he's a great recruiter). Lakshmi saw Harry, well, Paul's relationship with Harry, as a threat. "I'm trading the only thing I have." In one of the surprises of the season, Harry looks out for his old friend and gives him $500 to get him out of town (some of the money was likely leftover from Roger paying him to switch offices), and away from the Hare Krishna temple. Harry saw Paul as a reflection of himself, realized they weren't so different, realized it could be him adrift, and decided to help ("It will all seem like it happened to someone else."). At the same time, the frantic chanting did impact Harry, too. Also, Kinsey is STILL in a turtle neck. Remember the pipe? I liked Peggy giving Harry cold ass advice about what to do.

-I thought the Hare Krishnas were a good contrast to Don, who is also clearly adrift. He doesn't care about work, or the work. Every time he's alone in the office, he's lying on the couch. Last week, the only thing that got him motivated was beating Ginsberg. Also, at times, he seems ambivalent about Megan. He's happy with her, but maybe not as happy as he's told he is, every episode by someone different. This week it was Joan. ("The car does nothing for me." "That's because you're happy. You don't need it.") The play Don and Megan see is America Hurrah which debuted in November of 1966 and in some circles is regarded as the play of the 60s. Don didn't care for the message. He appears to be souring on advertising, and doesn't need a play reinforcing that. Maybe he's not souring on advertising, he's sensing the world changing, he's sensing his work won't be as revered as it's been. And then, a rousing speech at the end of the episode, pepping up the troops, and himself. I wasn't moved by the speech, and the nodding approval of the partners first, and then the employees, seemed a heavy handed way of showing the impact of the speech. Instead of us feeling the impact, we're given cues by the ensemble. We don't feel moved, but we know we should be. This happened last week with the forced laughter at the lame Pepsi Snowball pitches. Maybe Don is pushing himself back into the work.

-Joan got served! And then she freaks out at the moron receptionist. I liked Don and Joan roleplaying in the Jaguar dealership ("Look at your watch."), and I think they liked it, too. They have such a close relationship, and they flirt. Boy do they flirt. I think Don truly cares for her, as a friend, and that's nice to see. I'm not sure what the implications of Dr. Harris divorcing Joan are, but it's interesting she hadn't taken any steps towards that. Also, we found out Roger was sending her checks to help. I wonder if she'll start taking them now. Don's flowers are certainly going to spur Roger to increase his pursuit. "My mother raised me to be admired." I liked Don trying to get Joan to get with the guy at the bar. "Poor me, I struck out."

-Maybe it's just on Comcast in Boston, but in several of the episodes this season, I've noticed the audio not being quite synced with the action on the screen. There's not a whole lot more annoying than the dialogue being about a millisecond off from the mouths moving.

-Roger, who spent most of the episode drunk, had some great lines: "Oh, you're done with your bombing." "What's the hurry, Harry?" I thought What's the hurry, Harry would have been a reference to Harry Truman, but couldn't find anything. Only thing I could find was a 1968 book with that as a title. Pete has some good ones, too: "I don't know how to drive a stick shift." "You would have kissed me on the mouth."

-"Does your wife burn for you?" I thought romantic relationships were touched on in a variety of ways in this episode. Joan getting a divorce, Lane keeping their financial situation from Rebecca, Paul and Lakshmi, Harry and Lakshmi, Joan and Don roleplaying at the Jaguar dealership, and again at the bar, and of course Megan and Don. I don't quite know why Megan was so mad. I think I caught something about how Megan thought Don wanted her to think he'd left work before noon and wanted her to worry (about him cheating). This is probably what I was supposed to think, but that point, Don purposely testing Megan, could have been made clearer. Megan is impulsive (hitchhiking home from Howard Johnson's, throwing a plate of spaghetti), and maybe Don just likes a little crazy. The scene started to go in the direction of the first or second episode where Megan was yelling and Don told her how things were going to go. That was creepy and I was glad it didn't go that way this time. I don't expect Don to take it, but he seems bemused enough to go along with this for now. It feels off, doesn't it?

-"Prepare to take a great leap forward."

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The case against Stan Lee

aaron cohen — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:42:46 +0000

This is a strange one. Alex Pappademas goes to meet Stan Lee with the implied intention of raking him over the coals for the injustice done to Jack Kirby, Stan Lee's co-creator of The Avengers, X-Men, and Fantastic Four, among others. The thing is, it doesn't seem like Pappademas is passionate about comics, in one way or another (if he mentioned his feelings in the piece, I missed it). And after doing a fairly thorough job making the case against Lee, he lets him off the hook in the 10 minute interview. Still an interesting read.

On the other hand, I can't conceive of any scenario in which ambushing and pissing off a man who'll turn 90 in December will make me feel awesome. Stan has no power. He's a pensioner whose job is to travel around walking red carpets and telling people he approves of movies other people have made based on comics he wrote in the '60s. If Stan suing Marvel 10 years ago was like Colonel Sanders suing Kentucky Fried Chicken, confronting Stan in 2012 about the injustice done to Jack Kirby by Marvel would be like grilling Mr. Peanut about the business practices of Kraft Foods.

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Bonkers Russian gymnastics video

aaron cohen — Thu, 17 May 2012 03:14:52 +0000

These Russian gymnasts are insane. Yipes. It's not the strength. It's not the flexibility. It's the strength AND the flexibility.

Via Interesting

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White Castle in pop culture

aaron cohen — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:21:03 +0000

White Castle has a page dedicated to all the White Castle references in pop culture. I imagine the music page needs a ton of help. Via @akuban###Possibly related posts: “Pop-culture Houdini” In the latest issue of Fast Company, there's a profile... Pop up restaurants in Boston I've been doing a lot of food events around [...] ### Possibly related posts:

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Armageddon as documentary from the future

aaron cohen — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:45:20 +0000

I TOLD TOLD YOU ARMAGEDDON WAS A DOCUMENTARY FROM THE FUTURE SENT BACK IN TIME!

NASA will begin training astronauts for an asteroid mission.

A team of astronauts are being trained to land on an asteroid to explore its surface, search for minerals and even learn the skills they may need to destroy it should one pose a threat to the Earth.

Via BoingBoing

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Helmet cam graffiti

aaron cohen — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:20:38 +0000

There are all sorts of helmet cams out there, but this graffiti process video is a new one for me.

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Fuck yeah, Massachusetts

aaron cohen — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:02:15 +0000

This is all I'm saying.

A few other metrics of social well-being: The Bay State has the second-lowest teen birth rate, the fourth-lowest suicide rate, and the lowest traffic fatality rate. The birthplace of Dunkin’ Donuts has the sixth-lowest obesity rate. And depending on the source, the first state to legalize gay marriage has either the lowest or one of the very lowest divorce rates in the country.

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Patrice O’Neal profile

aaron cohen — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:39:43 +0000

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc has a great profile in NY Mag of the comic Patrice O'Neal who passed away last year. It was hard to find a representative paragraph, so this will do. Just read it.

O’Neal’s work fought back not by running from the stereotypes but by refashioning them and trying them on, to see what fit—and what didn’t—and he coaxed his audiences to do the same. Could women really deny that they wore sexy clothing at work to turn men on? Didn’t all men have “rape-y” thoughts? O’Neal was determined that his comedy be something scary and exciting that he and the audience were creating together—they wouldn’t be able to pretend they hadn’t been a part of it afterward.

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This is what it looks like to get bit by a shark

aaron cohen — Tue, 15 May 2012 02:12:21 +0000

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Mad Men Season 5 Episode 9 recap

aaron cohen — Mon, 14 May 2012 05:19:25 +0000

Every week, Chris Piascik (@chrispiascik) illustrates his favorite quotation from the episode, and I write up a recap.

We're in the week before Thanksgiving, the season is moving along. I remember seasons past hitting Thanksgiving pretty hard, but this season it was more in the background. I had the sense that the first couple episodes were going a week or two weeks at a time, but the last couple episodes have jumped 6 weeks or more from the previous episode. Matt Weiner is committed to getting us out of the 60s.

-Betty's back, Hi, Betty. It looks like she lost some weight, which I know was important to her, so I feel glad for her. And she's in Weight Watchers. Incidentally, Weight Watchers was founded in 1963 and was owned by Heinz from 1978-1999. How's that for a tie in? We've seen Betty's nastiness before, but this was the first episode where we can say it was driven by hunger. In the first scene, she's eating a piece of toast, a couple cubes of cheese, and a grapefruit in the dark. Realizing now that maybe she was eating late at night as opposed to early in the morning? She'd be doing this to count the meal on the next day's points, like she did with the bite of Henry's steak. ('Bite of Henry's steak' not a euphemism.)

-Dark Shadows is the title of this episode, but I don't think it refers to the new Johnny Depp movie, or even the 1960s TV show, which was something of a supernatural soap opera. There have been dark shadows on the proverbial horizon all season, all series, really. Some nods to the title in this episode, Betty eating in the dark, Don working in the dark, Betty eating in the dark again (shooting the whipped cream into her mouth and then spitting it out), Henry cooking in the dark, Roger and Jane kissing in the dark, the smog warning on Thanksgiving. Winter is coming. The smog warning seems especially important.

-"Look at all these voices, look at all this talent." Don's starting to feel threatened by Ginsberg in a way he's not been threatened by Peggy or other copywriters. This is why he was working late and didn't get Sally her dang colored pencils. From the "Shit I Have to do" folder, Don knew what Ginsberg was going to pitch and worked hard to come up with something to beat it. Don was only able to match Ginsberg's idea, though, so he had to leave the Snowball-to-the-face in the cab. Obviously this burned Ginsberg, but no one will sympathize because they got the sale. The Ginsberg/Draper competition will be interesting here on out. (An aside, the pitches on the show continue to be mediocre. This episode it was reinforced when people laughed at the ideas for Snowball, twice. The ideas weren't funny, and the laughter came off as hollow. The idea for Manischewitz of the wine boxes under the bus seats was pretty good though.)

-"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Ginsberg quotes this after his pitch has seemingly been chosen by the team to be shown to the client. It's from the poem Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley. While Ginsberg quotes the line correctly, it's misused in this context, though, because of the theme of the poem. Stan reinforces this by telling him, "You should read the rest of that poem, you boob." Ginsberg is saying, look how great my work is, while the poem is about how nothing lasts, even, and especially great and mighty things. Great and mighty things like America in the 50s, SCDP, Don Draper, etc, etc. Pretty bleak, and a perfect poetic reference for the show. The advisers think the poem was about the most important thing in the episode, and I tend to agree. The poem was referenced earlier in the episode by Peggy in her Snowball pitch.

-Sally's family tree is another dark shadow looming. And now someone else knows a little more about Don's past. So Betty's been big for a while, but we still haven't seen her and Don interact in person this season. We don't know until Don says something about her fat face that he knows she's fat. Betty's obviously nervous about going up to get the kids and being seen. She's also, apparently, curious about the apartment. What's interesting is the kids weren't brought down because Megan wanted to look good for Betty, too, and was changing. "Well, you've seen most of it," Megan said coolly, though I'm not totally sure why she would mind so much. In any case, Betty saw the nice note Don wrote to Megan about light bulbs ("Lovely Megan, I went to go buy a light bulb. When I get back, I'll see you better. Love, Don." DARK SHADOWS) and needed to lash out about that and Megan looking good without a shirt and about having to eat celery, so she told Sally about Anna Draper. "Don't forget your father's first wife."

-Did you notice Don and Megan have a color TV? I believe that's the first we've seen on the show.

-Sally was a total B most of the episode, and Megan teaching her to fake cry on command is going to end up biting her in the ass. All Sally wants, though, is Don's attention, and when she finally gets the story from him, she seems mollified. "Your mother doesn't care about hurting you, she just wants to hurt us." Remember, Betty is having a Thanksgiving dinner of a bite of stuffing, a schmoo of gravy, and one Brussels sprout. Cut her some slack.

-Don was angry about Betty telling Sally and was going to call Betty and Megan was prescient, she didn't want to give Betty, "The thrill of having poisoned us from 50 miles away." As much as Betty was a fairly predictable character, I continue to be impressed by Megan. I also liked Sally putting it back in Betty's face. Betty was dying to know how her lashing out was received, and Sally played it perfectly.

-Roger continues to have comedic scenes, with Bert talking about selling Manischewitz without Pete, with Ginsberg asking for ideas. And he continues to use money to get what he needs. For the third time, he paid an employee at the office to get work done, and he bought Jane an apartment to get her to come to the Manishewitz dinner. At work, it's to show how feckless he is. It's a bit heavy-handed, though, that this has happened in a full third of the episodes this season after never having happened in the past. Roger did seem upset about christening Jane's apartment, but I have a hard time taking her feelings seriously because she seems super shallow. "You get everything you want and you still had to do this."

-Oh, Pete. You thought you had the New York Times Magazine all wrapped up and it was going to be so amazing Beth was going to come into the office naked. "I forgot you. And then I saw you in the New York Times Sunday Magazine." Roger's line when Pete was telling them about the profile was funny. "You shouldn't start with the Mayflower." "Don't wake me up up and throw your failures in my face."

-Other quotes, "Am I the only one who can drink and work around here?" "I feel bad for you." "I don't think about you at all."

What'd I miss?

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Bacon and Beer Fest recap

aaron cohen — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:59:22 +0000

It's been slow around Unlikely Words lately because I just put on the Boston Bacon and Beer Festival. We had 28 restaurants, 18 brewers (about 45 total beers), and 1450 attendees (along with about 200 vendors and 30 volunteers) at the House of Blues on Lansdowne St, right across the street from Fenway Park. It was pretty rad, if a little too crowded. Best of all, we raised a bit over $22K for two local hunger relief organizations, Lovin' Spoonfuls and Community Servings.

This is the third year of the Bacon and Beer Fest, and last year after it sold out in 2 minutes, I wanted to make it possible for more people to participate. This year I partnered with BostonChefs.com to turn Bacon and Beer Fest into Bacon and Beer Week, so from April 28 - May 5, there were bacon and beer themed events all over Boston. This included restaurant specials around town, a Bacon and Beer Karaoke Harbor Cruise, and a bacon and beer inspired art show from Super Precious Art Gallery (a new project of mine). Below are some links related to the week if you wanted to read more and so I can have them all in one place. Thanks to all the vendors, volunteers, and especially Jessie (for letting me talk about this incessantly for 10 weeks) and Alex (for letting me talk about this incessantly for 10 weeks and doing the dirty work).

-The line to get into the fest was long. I didn't get to check it out, but if you know Boston, the line went all the way down to the ATM in Kenmore Square. Here are a few other pictures I liked.

-We totally packed the HOB. Here's a picture I took. Here's one I found on Twitter.
Here's a picture from Robert Gill.

-Here's a Bacon and Beer Fest photo gallery by Boston.com. And here's a gallery from BostInno. And here's one from Mike Johnson.

-On the day after Bacon and Beer Fest, we did a karaoke cruise around Boston Harbor. There was a gigantic box of fried chicken skins, and things got weird resulting in people being duct taped to a column on the dance floor. A few days later, we had an art opening in a dive bar. It actually didn't get weird.

-Upon entry to the Bacon and Beer Fest, everyone is given one cup and one spork, both compostable, to use throughout the event. This seems to do an OK job limiting the amount of waste created. In the first year, we were pretty combative when people asked for a replacement, but age has softened us.

-Chris Piascik and Josh LaFayette made some awesome shirt designs. All told I ordered 465 shirts which weighed 154 pounds.

-I know of at least 3 people who got the bacon and beer hat trick by attending the festival, the karaoke cruise, and the art show.

-Here's a screenshot of the server load Wheretoeat.in experienced the hour tickets went on sale. The site...crashed.

-Bacon and Beer Fest got some really good press this year. I'm pretty excited about the coverage in The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald (Herald again), The Weekly Dig, a Boston.com blog, another Boston.com blog, and I was on TV again, doing a little bit better than last time.

-And now I can stop talking about or thinking about bacon and beer for a while.

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They use ferrets to look for buried art?

aaron cohen — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:58:54 +0000

An update on the Gardner Museum Heist?

They have brought with them a ground-penetrating radar device, as well as two beagles and a ferret, to look for what they say are weapons. But we all know what they are actually looking for -- and they are looking for the paintings,” McGuigan said.

Authorities have said that at least two men dressed as police officers talked their way into the Gardner on March 18, 1990, tied up the security guards, and left with 13 masterworks, including three by Rembrandt and five by Degas. Some of the stolen pieces could sell for $50 million on the open market, art experts say.

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Super Precious Art Gallery Bacon and Beer Art Show

aaron cohen — Wed, 09 May 2012 01:30:13 +0000

I think I told you a couple weeks ago about a new project I was working on, an art gallery called Super Precious with regular group shows featuring art inspired by a certain theme. Last week in conjunction with Boston Bacon and Beer Week we did a pop up opening of the latest show, art inspired by bacon and/or beer. The pieces above are just 4 of 18 pieces for the show. I'm psyched about how the art came out, psyched to get this all going. We've got the next couple themes planned out, I think you'll like them. Check out superprecio.us to see (and buy) all the pieces.

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Mad Men Season 5 Episode 8 recap

aaron cohen — Mon, 07 May 2012 05:25:15 +0000

Every week, Chris Piascik (@chrispiascik) illustrates his favorite quotation from the episode, and I write up a recap.

In October of 1966, Lyndon Johnson toured the West Pacific for 17 days, visiting 7 countries. In two scenes, when Megan told Peggy she was quitting, and when she cooked dinner for Don, there were radio news on in the background. I think this might be a nod to America beginning to be collectively aware/interested in what was happening in Vietnam, but not yet discussing it regularly. Not sure why else there'd be two undiscussed references on the same topic. The other date reference is The Beatles album, Revolver, which came out in early August 1966.

And we're back to using episode titles for thematic guidance. This week's title, Lady Lazarus refers to a 1962 poem by Sylvia Plath. The poem alludes to oppression, death and rebirth, and a phoenix, and the episode was jammed with related references.

-It's pretty clear now that Megan has replaced Betty on the show. I know the scenes from next week showed Betty, but I imagine we're not going to see very much of her until Sally gets a little older. This was another Megan episode, and I'll mention it again, but this is not Don's season. Megan declares she doesn't like advertising, which has been building for a while now. The title of the episode refers mostly to her, oppressed by the job, being reborn (again) as an actress. When she told Don she needed to quit, she was wearing a firey red dress from earlier in the day, referencing the phoenix. At the beginning of the episode, she felt like she needed to hide it from Don. We're supposed to think she's cheating, especially when she involves Peggy in the lie, leaving the office dressed for dinner. The scenes of Don calling in were interesting. We get to see what he's like at home by himself (watching TV and going to bed early). Don, Peggy, and Megan riding up an elevator together the next day is one of those quintessential Mad Men scenes.

-When Megan goes down in the elevator for her lunch, it's a symbolic following of her dreams. Don lets her go and immediately presses the down button, maybe to follow her? When the door opens, he looks down into the guts of the building. Taking a big leap, the elevator shaft represents to Don what would happen if he followed his own dreams (whatever they are). And yet, he doesn't seem to be too concerned she's doing it, at least publicly. "I don't want her to end up like Betty, or her mother." "She's not disappearing, is she?" "No she's not." The Beatles song Megan tells Don to play, Tomorrow Never Knows, has an early refrain, 'It is not dying.' Interesting because of all the death references today and this season and this series. In the scene immediately after Don listens to these words, we see Megan in acting class, acting dead. Heavy.

-Peggy is disappointed, but tonight's episode at least explains Megan's lack of enthusiasm last week when Peggy mentioned that type of thing was the best you could expect. That statement probably impacted Megan more and differently than Peggy intended. "You're taking up a spot and you don't even want to do it?" I'm not really sure why Peggy is so disappointed, except that maybe Peggy felt like another woman around would make it easier for her. "2nd wives, it's like they have a playbook." "I think she's good at everything. I think she's just one of those girls."

-Actors acting as actors is always funny, but Don and Megan were pretty good as the couple from the Cool Whip commercial. And Cool Whip is a funny product for this because it's fake just like everything, right? So incredibly bleak. Life is supposed to be sweet, but instead, it's artificial non-dairy dessert. "Tell them Megan's sick. Peggy will do it." Peggy can stand in as Don's professional wife, even her name is similar to Megan's. How am I just realizing this now? In the Cool Whip pitch, Peggy freaks, and sabotages it for some reason. Whenever Peggy freaks, Don gets this look like he has no idea what to do or how to handle her. The scene of Don with his eyebrows raised, cigarette pack out, Ken, and Peggy, was another quintessential Mad Men shot. Why do you think Peggy is so mad? I'm too tired to write it all out.

-And now Pete. I'm not sure why, but I don't hate him as much as ~~everyone~~ Chris does. He's so pathetic. His desperation is deepening, though, like a teakettle beginning to whistle. I didn't pick up on it last week or the week before, but Pete's gun got mentioned, eep. Alexis Bledel from the Gilmore Girls is a good object for his obsession, a bored and complicated housewife, likely much like Trudy, but new, different. He drives her home, and somehow takes her shutting the car door in the middle of a conversation as an invitation for sex. She left the door to the house open, somehow knowing that her shutting the car door would be the perfect invitation. The 60s were weird. She doesn't want a new partner, though, what she wants is someone to invite themselves over for dinner and kiss her passionately in the vestibule while her husband is getting some papers. She wants a thrill. Pete wants a thrill, too, but he wants more. He's such a puppy. The eyes/Earth thing might be a bit early for them to discuss, because it doesn't seem like there were color photos of the Earth like she was describing until 1967. Yhere was a lunar orbit photograph of the Earth released in August of 1966, but it was black and white.

-Harry and Pete's interactions were funny. "Why do they get to decide what's going to happen?" "They just do." This dialogue contrasts with Joan and Peggy talking about 2nd wives having a rulebook. Doesn't really paint women in a flattering light. Pete is going on about being lead on, and I couldn't tell if this was meant to reference his perspective on forcing Peggy to have sex in season 1. Beth isn't helping matters with the heart drawing on the car window.

-Harry is something like the dopey Sterling this season. His scenes are almost always comedic, but more because of the situation than the lines. And Pete carrying skis was hilarious.

-Some interesting quotations I didn't have a place for: "More trouble than it's worth." "When did music become so important?"

-And finally, shame on you Mad Men. If there's one thing I feel like I can depend on, it's continuity. When Beth and Pete are talking on the phone, there's a pearl, not part of her string of pearls, maybe another necklace, that changes positions several times during the conversation. Is it too much to ask for someone on the show to spot that? GIVE ME PERFECTION!

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