Monthly archives for "July 2010"

Culled from my Facebook posts:

Back in the 1990s, Comedy Central did a series of fantastic interstitial ads called “Think Positive” with the Buddy Scott Trio. It was filled with the ironic 50s nostalgia that characterised so much of the US in the late 1990s.

The subject in each ad’s focus was always in a dire, impossible situation (my favourite was with the man on death row) and, when things seemed their darkest, the Buddy Scott Trio would strike up the song “You’re Gonna Win!”.

This song is frequently in my head, particularly if something is going spectacularly wrong.

And the drummer: he is awesome.

Culled from my Facebook posts:
Twenty signs you don’t want that web design project, via Zeldman.

I swear that I’ve experienced at least some of these, particularly #3 & #6.

Culled from my Facebook posts:

I was born in the depressed industrial town of Waterbury, Connecticut. For about the first half of my life, I lived within 30 miles of it & so knew the town pretty well. As a child, it seemed like a big city to me. It’s not.

In any event, looming over Waterbury, on a hill, was a huge, glowing cross. This was the site for a kitschy Catholic attraction called the “Holy Land”, a 1/4 scale representation of Christ’s life. My understanding is that the cross has been replaced, but I vividly remember flying back to the UK from Newark & passing over Waterbury: you always knew you were there because of the huge looming cross. The attraction is not maintained: there are some wonderful pictures of this decaying place.

“Jerusalem” in Waterbury’s Holy Land (photo by Shaun O’Boyle)

My mother brought me there as a small child & inadvertently added to my confusion about religion. My father always brought me to a tiny church in a village called Bethlehem: I clearly remember thinking, “If this stuff is so important, wouldn’t it be a bigger deal?”. Now, however, as we walked through a depressing plywood Jerusalem, with statuary about waist height, I thought “Well, people were supposed to be smaller then”.