Revamp

February 4th, 2009Blog0 comments

Interesting story here about a three Michelin star chef revamping a chain of UK “roadside restaurants” (i.e. analogous to Bob’s Big Boy).

He (renowned chef Heston Blumenthal) does a total makeover from top to bottom: Food to interiors to graphic design. Many exciting visual examples are featured here.

I love the idea of taking what already exists and revamping it for a new audience. What I gather from this process is that you’ve got to go 100% — from taste to visual to even what the customer smells. Brilliant.

[All articles via the excellent Eat Me Daily.]

Hot Doug’s on Anthony Bourdain

February 3rd, 2009Blog0 comments

Hey hey, famous TV food snarker Anthony Bourdain just did a profile on my favorite Chicago hot dog stand, Hot Doug’s.

He showcased the duck fat fries and something I had not seen there: The Foie Gras hot dog. And apparently Bon Appetit magazine lists Hot Doug’s as one of the fifty best restaurants on the planet. Who knew?

Hamster Button

February 3rd, 2009Blog0 comments

It’s your usual Gizmodo article here about a (possibly fake?) new low-cost laptop from India. But what I really loved was the included child’s illustration of a computer keyboard:

Aw, it has a “hamster” button! What happens when you press that button, I wonder?

Canonical

February 2nd, 2009Blog0 comments

Okay, let’s talk about Captain Kirk.

I’ve been doing my diligent, required frame-by-frame dissection of the new Star Trek trailer. One thing that I find fascinating is that in J. J. Abrams’ reboot, James T. Kirk is an unruly badass from the start. Literally, from childhood when he steals what appears to be a 200 year old Corvette and drives it off a cliff. He is tough, ornery, a danger to himself.

Contrast this to the established Star Trek canon which states that James T. Kirk was originally a prudish nerd. He got beat up a lot and didn’t become the Kirk that we know until later. Ronald D. Moore:

Captain Kirk, when you see him on the original series, he likes to drink, he chases skirt, you know — he’s a hell raiser. But they talk about him in the Academy days, he was a bookworm. He was Mr. Straight-Laced.

But apparently in the reboot, Kirk is a bad ass motherfucker from the beginning. Your J. J. Abrams decided to flip the canon on its head. Why?

My theory is that the arc of this new Star Trek movie is this: We see young James T. Kirk. He’s rebellious, dangerous. He’s a threat to himself and others. But when he is forced to take command of the Enterprise, he suddenly has to come to terms with himself because people now depend on him. He is tempered because his life isn’t just his own. He will even have to order other people to their deaths. And through his new friendship with Spock, who is his exact yin-yang opposite, he becomes a complete human being — an adult. So it’s a coming-of-age story.

This makes sense since it’s been revealed that we’re tracking Kirk from childhood. To see the fullest culmination of a transformation we have to witness its most extreme point of origin. Besides, that’s what I would do if I were crafting a Star Trek movie designed for broad, mass-market appeal.

I am not a stickler for canon. I think it’s okay to re-imagine things in order to evolve them for a new audience. In fact, there’s probably no way around that.

I think the key is to identify what makes the original great and be faithful to that original identity in spirit. In this reboot, this new Kirk is very much in the spirit of Shatner’s Kirk. Quinto’s new Spock appears to be just as interesting as Nimoy’s.

I’m very excited to see if J. J. Abrams has been successful. Often when you go back to the original and you re-imagine it, you see new things. For instance, in thinking about Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, it was one thing to read about Sam and Frodo’s closeness in Tolkien’s words. However, when you see it on the big screen it evokes some serious homoerotic overtones.

Hobbit-erotic overtones?