My 2009 in Photos

January - Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States.


February - IKEA comes to Charlotte.


March - Only in New York


April - Brutalism can be cool...


May - ...so can paying too much for dinner.


June - An American pastime...


July - ...and a family tradition.


August - Beauty's where you find it...


September - ...often finding it by accident.


October - Icons of rock...


November - ...icon of retail.


December - With a dramatic finish.

Happy New Year, Y'all!

Holidays on Display

The main aisle of Marshall Field & Co., Chicago, circa 1955. (National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution)

Holidays on Display examines the art, industry, and history of holiday display across the United States. Focusing on parading culture and department store retail display, primarily between the 1920s and 1960s, when holiday displays were considered commercial endeavors equally rewarding for the American public, the exhibition showcases numerous photographs, postcards and rendering illustration of parade floats and window displays—including the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and Marshall Field & Company Christmas windows—as well as objects relating to the early creation of these displays.

“Holidays on Display” will be on view at the National Museum of American History through November 2010

Link to Smithsonian Institution
Online Exhibition
Press Realease
Asked and Answered | Holidays on Display

Malls of America: R.I.P.

As of today, the much appreciated Malls of America blog has been removed from Blogger. Keith Milford's work over the past several years chronicling the history of retail was legendary and remarkably thorough. The commentary was always informative and fun, and the photo quality was consistently good.

Malls of America was around for a couple of years before new posts came to an abrupt, unexplained end about a year and a half ago, but it served as the inspiration for at least a half-dozen blogs and websites. I was a supporter to the end, and I kept going back to the site for a while hoping to see new posts. Alas, it was not to be.

If you've never seen the site, check out the archived version before it's too late.

Reviving the memory of his beloved Carolina Circle Mall

Frequent LiveMalls contributor Billy Coore collects memorabilia from the former Carolina Circle Mall. (Greensboro News & Record photo by Neslon Kepley)

The love affair began at a young age, with the cheery music and constant spin of the merry-go-round.

The emotion only grew stronger over time, with trips to the food court, strolls through store aisles and afternoons at the movies.

Even when others fell out of love with Carolina Circle Mall, taking their business and money elsewhere, Billy Coore's devotion remained...

Read more of Lanita Wither's story on Billy Coore at the News & Record website.

Appreciation: Carlin, from straight comic to icon

By JOHN ROGERS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When he shucked the coat and tie for black T-shirts and jeans, grew his hair long and began to riff about those "Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV," George Carlin became more than just the countercultural comedian.

Carlin, who died Sunday of heart failure at 71, took comedy itself in a whole new direction.

No longer were nightclubs the territory of guys in suits telling harmless mother-in-law jokes.

"He was more than just a comic. His routines became part of the American lexicon," fellow comedian Paul Rodriguez told The Associated Press on Monday. "They came to say a lot about America and its times."

Indeed, when Muhammad Ali was stripped of his world heavyweight boxing championship for refusing induction into the U.S. military, Carlin noted that Ali, who made his living beating people up, had refused service because he opposed the Vietnam War.

"He said, 'No, that's where I draw the line. I'll beat 'em up. But I don't want to kill 'em.' And the government said, 'Well, if you won't kill people, we won't let you beat 'em up.'"

Arguably his most famous routine, though, was simply called "Seven Words."

More than just an outpouring of obscenities, it was — as almost all Carlin routines were — a clever play on the sound and meaning of almost every word Carlin used.

One word in the routine, for example (not one of the offending seven) was what he called "a two-way word," explaining: "You can prick your finger. But don't ... "

"Some people think the routines were all about saying dirty words, but it wasn't about that at all," says Jamie Masada, who as owner of the Laugh Factory comedy clubs knew Carlin for more than 20 years.

"He had a different motivation," Masada continued, "and the motivation was free speech. George believed when he was on stage that was like being in his church and he could say anything he wanted there."

It's only appropriate, then, that Carlin's name is attached to a key U.S. Supreme Court free-speech ruling, albeit one limiting the right.

The 1978 decision, the result of a radio station playing "Seven Words," upheld the government's authority to issue sanctions for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," Carlin told the AP earlier this year.

Other than that, he said at the time, he had very little interest in public affairs. He claimed to have not voted in a presidential election in decades.

"I was always out of step," he said. "I left school in ninth grade, I got kicked out of the Air Force, I got kicked out of the choir and the altar boys and summer camp and three schools and I was a pot smoker when I was 13 in the early '50s. I was always a lawbreaker and a kind of outlaw rebel."

One thing he was good at, though, was doing funny voices and making funny faces like his boyhood idol, Danny Kaye.

"When I was 10, 11, I was watching MGM movies with Danny Kaye," he said. "I kind of looked at that and thought, `Gee, I can do that.'"

After a brief pairing with comedian Jack Burns, with whom he would remain friends the rest of his life, Carlin went out on his own in 1962, inspired, Burns said Monday, by a Lenny Bruce show the two saw in Chicago in 1961.

By the end of the 1960s, Carlin had grown his hair long, added a beard that he joked covered his acne and began to embrace the countercultural ethos of the time.

"I finally did the right thing, which was to get in touch with my own real voice, and that made me happy for the first time," he once said.

From there, he would go on to record 23 comedy albums, win four Grammys, do 14 TV specials for HBO, write three best-selling books and appear in several movies. Just last week it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

"None of that would have happened if I had remained imprisoned in a suit," Carlin said.

As his humor became more observational, nothing was off-limits, from politics to sports to religion, with war and other atrocities frequent targets.

"The very existence of flame-throwers," he once joked, "proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, `You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, I'm just not close enough to get the job done.'"

At the same time, his humor could be gentle when the moment called for it.

He appeared as Mr. Conductor on the children's show "Shining Time Station" in the 1990s and was the voice of Fillmore, the hippie van, in the popular 2006 children's movie "Cars."

From a nightclub stage, however, his humor could always be expected to be scatological. And although his penchant for funny voices and faces might soften it some, it could still be in your face as he ridiculed God, joked about televising suicides and did things like simply ending a routine with a recitation of every synonym for penis.

"He made us look at things, look at ourselves. You won't find too many comics with the kind of chops to do that," said fellow comedian Tommy Chong. "You're only allowed to do that when you've paid your dues."

And indeed Carlin had. Early in their careers, Burns recalled, the two were so broke they shared a one-room apartment with a pullout bed.

"Two guys lying next to each other for three months. You can bet we made jokes about that," he laughed.

Carlin went on to develop a serious cocaine addiction, and as recently as 2004 he entered rehab to break what he called a dependency on vicodan and wine.

Despite those struggles, Carlin, who suffered the first of several heart attacks when he was only 41, said the coronary artery disease that finally killed him was the result not of drugs but of genetics.

"My father gave me this disease," he told the AP in 2007. "But he also gave me my gift of gab, my sense of humor. So what the ... . It was a good trade-off."

Legendary designer Yves Saint Laurent dies at 71

By ELAINE GANLEY

PARIS (AP) — Legendary designer Yves Saint Laurent, who reworked the rules of fashion by putting women into elegant pantsuits that came to define how modern women dressed, died Sunday evening, a longtime friend and associate said. He was 71.

Pierre Berge said Saint Laurent died at his Paris home following a long illness.

A towering figure of 20th century fashion, Saint Laurent was widely considered the last of a generation that included Christian Dior and Coco Chanel and made Paris the fashion capital of the world, with the Rive Gauche, or Left Bank, as its elegant headquarters.

In the fast-changing world of haute couture, Saint Laurent was hailed as the most influential and enduring designer of his time. From the first YSL tuxedo and his trim pantsuits to see-through blouses, safari jackets and glamorous gowns, Saint Laurent created instant classics that remain stylish decades later.

When the designer announced his retirement in 2002 at age 65 and the closure of the Paris-based haute couture house he had founded 40 years earlier, it was mourned in the fashion world as the end of an era. His ready-to-wear label, Rive Gauche, which was sold to Gucci in 1999, still has boutiques around the world.

In October 2006, Saint Laurent slipped and fell outside a Paris restaurant during Fashion Week, suffering slight scratches but reminding fans of the perennially fragile designer's advancing age.

Saint Laurent was born Aug. 1, 1936, in Oran, Algeria, where his father worked as a shipping executive. He first emerged as a promising designer at the age of 17, winning first prize in a contest sponsored by the International Wool Secretariat for a cocktail dress design.

A year later in 1954, he enrolled at the Chambre Syndicale school of haute couture, but student life lasted only three months. He was introduced to Christian Dior, then regarded as the greatest creator of his day, and Dior was so impressed with Saint Laurent's talent that he hired him on the spot.

When Dior died suddenly in 1957, Saint Laurent was named head of the House of Dior at the age of 21. The next year, his first solo collection for Dior — the "trapeze" line — launched Saint Laurent's stardom. The trapeze dress — with its narrow shoulders and wide, swinging skirt — was a hit, and a breath of fresh air after years of constructed clothing, tight waists and girdles.

In 1960, Saint Laurent was drafted into military service — an experience that shattered the delicate designer, who by the end of the year was given a medical discharge for nervous depression.

Bouts of depression marked his career. Berge, the designer's longtime business partner and former romantic partner, was quoted as saying that Saint Laurent was born with a nervous breakdown.

Saint Laurent returned to the spotlight in 1962, opening his own haute couture fashion house with Berge. The pair later started a chain of Rive Gauche ready-to-wear boutiques.

Life Magazine hailed his first line under his own label as "the best collection of suits since Chanel."

Berge has said that Saint Laurent's gift to fashion was that he empowered women after Chanel had freed them.

Nowhere was Saint Laurent's gift more evident than the valedictory fashion show that marked his retirement in January 2002.

Forty years of fashion were paraded in a 300-piece retrospective that blurred the boundaries of time, mixing his creations of yesterday and today in one stunning tribute to the endurance of Saint Laurent's style. He also designed costumes for theater and film.

There was the simple navy blue pea coat over white pants, which the designer first showed in 1962 when he opened his couture house and kept as one of his hallmarks.

His "smoking," or tuxedo jacket, of 1966 remade the tux as a high fashion statement for both sexes. It remained the designer's trademark item and was updated yearly until he retired.

Also from the 60s came Beatnik chic — a black leather jacket and knit turtleneck with high boots — and sleek pantsuits that underlined Saint Laurent's statement on equality of the sexes. He showed that women could wear "men's clothes," which when tailored to the female form became an emblem of elegant femininity.

"More than any other designer since Chanel, YSL represented Paris as the style leader," The Independent of London wrote in an editorial after Saint Laurent's retirement. "By putting a woman in a man's tuxedo, he changed fashion forever, in a style that never dated."

In his own words, Saint Laurent said he felt "fashion was not only supposed to make women beautiful, but to reassure them, to give them confidence, to allow them to come to terms with themselves."

Some of his revolutionary style was met with resistance. There are famous stories of women wearing Saint Laurent pantsuits who were turned away from hotels and restaurants in London and New York.

One scandal centered on the designer himself, when he posed nude and floppy-haired for a photographer in 1971, wearing only his trademark thick black glasses, to promote his perfume.

Saint Laurent's rising star was eternalized in 1983, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted a show to his work, the first ever to a living designer.

Subsequent shows at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and in Beijing made him a French national treasure, and he was awarded the Legion d'Honneur in 1985.

When France basked in the glory of its 1998 World Cup soccer final, it was Saint Laurent who took center field pre-kick off with an on-field retrospective at the Stade de France.

In 1999, Saint Laurent sold the rights of his label to Gucci Group NV, ceding control of his Rive Gauche collection, fragrances, cosmetics and accessories for US$70 million cash and royalties.

Industry insiders cited friction between Saint Laurent and Gucci's creative director, Tom Ford, as a likely factor in the fashion guru's decision to retire three years later. Ford stepped down in 2003.

When he bowed out of fashion in 2002, Saint Laurent spoke of his battles with depression, drugs and loneliness, though he gave no indication that those problems were directly tied to his decision to stop working.

"I've known fear and terrible solitude," he said. "Tranquilizers and drugs, those phony friends. The prison of depression and hospitals. I've emerged from all this, dazzled but sober."

Associated Press writers Rachid Aouli and Joelle Diderich contributed to this report.

Nike set to release 23rd Air Jordan

BEAVERTON, Ore. (AP) -- It's gotta be the shoes, right?

No other basketball shoe has changed the face of business, athletics and marketing like the Air Jordan. This month, Nike releases the 23rd edition, and it is expected to be just as venerated as its predecessors.

The sleek design and link to Michael Jordan's jersey number make it a touchstone in the line. It's also Nike's first basketball shoe designed under its "Considered" ethos, which aims to reduce waste and use environmentally friendly materials wherever possible.

The Air Jordan XX3 will be released in three hyped-up rounds from January to February, starting with a limited edition to be sent to only 23 retailers to be sold for $230 and concluding with the national launch at $185.

There had been talk at Nike about retiring the shoe at No. 23, because of his iconic jersey number. But company officials won't say whether this will be the last of the line. Neither will Jordan.

"You'll just have to wait and see," Jordan said in an e-mail to The Associated Press, responding to questions about the upcoming release.

Before launching the first shoe in 1985, Nike had just signed Jordan for $2.5 million over five years. Nike won't say what Jordan's current contract with the company is worth.

Jordan's deal with Nike opened the door for sneaker manufacturers to chase after athletes, signing them up --sometimes just out of high school-- for multimillion-dollar contracts in hopes of being able to cash in on the next superstar. It sent sneaker prices to new heights, which has since generated a backlash against selling pricey shoes to basketball-loving kids.

"The Air Jordan franchise created the most coveted basketball footwear in the world and changed the basketball landscape forever," said Nike Brand President Charlie Denson.

Unlike most basketball shoes to date, which were often white and utilitarian, the Air Jordan was a shock of black and red. It was initially banned by the NBA for not conforming with other players' shoes.

Jordan continued to wear them and was fined $5,000 a game, which Nike paid.

"Nobody expected the mass hysteria created by its release," Jordan, who has been a part-owner of the Charlotte Bobcats since 2006, said in his e-mail to The AP.

A new edition was launched each year, and release dates had to be moved to the weekends to keep kids from skipping school to get a pair.

The frenzy got dangerous. People were mugged and even killed for the shoes.

The Air Jordans helped spawn a subculture of collectors, who line up at stores to buy the shoe's latest edition.

Jordan said he never expected that the shoe would become an icon.

"Like every kid growing up, I dreamed of making winning shots at the buzzer and I was fortunate to live out that dream, but never in my wildest dreams did I ever entertain the idea of the success of the Air Jordan franchise," he said.

The Air Jordans moved basketball shoes from true high-tops or low-tops to a middle range and used unheard of styles, such as patent leather toes and elephant print.

As Jordan's success grew on the courts, so did Nike's in the shoe industry.

People from the streets to the suburbs were wearing $100-plus basketball shoes, which was unheard of at the time.

That price is the norm today, but it has launched a backlash, such as the partnership between New York Knicks player Stephon Marbury and the Steve & Barry's store chain to sell basketball shoes for $14.98 -- a direct stab at pricey sneakers like Air Jordans.

At that time, the Air Jordan captured a mix of design, marketing, athleticism and player charisma that hadn't been seen before in the industry -- everyone wanted to "Be Like Mike."

"Athletes had been endorsing products for years prior to this," said Tinker Hatfield, Nike's Vice President of Innovation Design and Special Projects.

"But they were just signing their name to the shoe. I think there was a very understandable difference...Michael's personality and even the changes in the game and inspiration from other walks of life were all sort of being designed into this product and that made it more interesting."

Jordan and Hatfield work together on the design and function on many of the Air Jordan shoes. Jordan has final say on design matters.

Air Jordan was the lightning in the bottle that every company hopes for.

Advertising images of Jordan soaring across the sky were ubiquitous. Spike Lee could be heard hollering "It's gotta be the shoes" on television. And Jordan's outstretched arms with the swoosh nearby adorned walls across the country.

Nike quickly moved from a running company and newcomer to the basketball category to the market leader. Some industry estimates put Nike's current share of the basketball shoe market at about 85 percent. Far behind are Adidas and Reebok.

The idea of adding such unusual style to a product or so closely aligning with a personality was novel at the time, but it paid off.

Other companies tried to follow suit but it was like trying to come up with the next Harry Potter or iPhone for basketball.

The relationship completely changed the idea of sports marketing. Companies now make athlete sponsorships the centerpiece of their business, spending millions signing them and designing product lines and marketing platforms around them.

Jordan's original deal seems like a pittance compared to multimillion-dollar contracts inked these days, such as Nike's $90 million agreement with LeBron James.

"The beginning of the Jordan era marked a new and more sophisticated approach to leveraging an athlete," said Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon.

Like any bet, athletic companies take their risks -- some pay off, like Tiger Woods or LeBron James. But some don't, a la Michael Vick. Nike terminated its contract with Vick last August after his plea agreement on dogfighting charges.

Jordan was spun off into its own division in 1997, a move that some high up in Nike questioned when Jordan retired.

But the business is a key component, with new players signing on under the brand. Nike has spun that Jordan swagger into performance and luxury apparel for men and woman.

The Air Jordan remains the pinnacle piece for shoe collectors. The original Air Jordan 1 can sell for thousands of dollars, depending on various factors.

Jordan said: "It blows my mind that even after five years removed from the game the shoe would be stronger than ever and I would still be greeted by fans as if I had just won a championship all over again."

Happy Smurfday!

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — They're turning 50 without a hint of gray.

Just blue. Lots of blue.

The Smurfs are hitting the half-century mark, and Papa Smurf and Smurfette helped kick off a year of celebrations Monday with sarsaparilla juice and — naturally — Smurfberry cake.

The late cartoonist Pierre Culliford — best known by his pen name, "Peyo" — first introduced the tiny blue figures in a comic strip in October 1958. He called them Schtroumpf; they became known worldwide as the Smurfs.

The Smurfs, forest dwellers who live in little white-capped mushroom homes, developed their own "Smurf" language in which nouns and verbs were interchanged.

Their debut on U.S. television in 1981 launched their global rise to stardom and made the Smurfs a household name. A Smurf is a Pitufo in Spanish, a Schlumpf in German, Nam Ching Ling to the Chinese, a Sumafa in Japan and Dardassim in Hebrew.

"I think that if he could see all that has been done with his characters since his death and the success and interest that the Smurfs still attract, he would be very, very, very, very happy and very proud," said Peyo's son, Thierry Culliford.

To mark 50 years of Smurfdom, organizers are planning everything from a 3-D animation feature film expected to be released next year to new comic book collections and a remastered release of the popular 1980s television animated series, Peyo's family said.

Peyo's widow and two children will help kick off a European birthday tour in Brussels. The Smurfs celebration will continue in Paris and Berlin.

The Smurfs also will team up with the UNICEF to promote children's rights and education worldwide, said Yves Willemont of UNICEF Belgium.

"The Smurfs and UNICEF have a lot of values in common — values about joy, happiness and respect," Willemont said. "We also have in common the fact that we are dedicated to the cause of children and to the promotion of every child and the right of every child to survive."

UNICEF and the Smurfs joined forces two years ago to raise the plight of ex-child soldiers in Africa.

Born in Brussels, Peyo worked as a movie projectionist before entering the world of comic strip drawing.

The Smurfs appeared as a supporting cast of characters in Peyo's 1958 "Johan and Pirlouit" cartoon, which was set in the Middle Ages.

The Smurfs quickly grew in popularity and by 1960, the Smurfs had their own comic strip series and. With the help of the Hanna-Barbera Productions, the Smurfs became an animated cartoon in 1981.

Thierry Culliford said the Smurfs promote love and friendship. He said many who grew up watching the Smurfs on TV during the 1980s and 1990s now are parents and want to introduce the Smurfs to their children.

Demand for Smurf stories continues, said Hendrik Coysman, managing director of IMPS, which controls the rights of the Smurf brand worldwide.

"Thousands of fans are asking for more stories and these will be based of course on the fantastic asset that Peyo has left us," Coysman said.

Peyo, who died 15 years ago, "would be very happy if he were here today" to see Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Handy, Jokey and the troop of 96 others celebrate 50 years of Smurfmania, daughter Veronique Culliford said.

Typefaces reveal a font of personality traits

By Sam McManis
SACRAMENTO (CALIF.) BEE
Friday, Jan. 11 2008

You are reading this story in a typeface called Poynter OS Text Two L. Or, if you're online, it's in an Arial font.

Did you notice?

Do you care?

Many people don't. They go through their daily lives — sending e-mails, writing résumés, composing Word documents, crafting PowerPoint presentations — oblivious to the multitude of typefaces at their disposal.

Take New York Times best-selling mystery author John Lescroart, who lives in Davis, Calif.

"I just use my default font," Lescroart says. "I don't even know what it is. Hold on. I can tell you in about 10 seconds."

As we wait for Lescroart's answer, let's ponder the sudden and curious ascension of typefaces (also labeled fonts in most computer programs) for many others. It's a phenomenon in the pop-culture world, really, that goes hand-in-mouse with digital technology.

A new documentary, "Helvetica," which explores the appeal of that most utilitarian of typefaces, is garnering good reviews. Online sites where you can buy — no exaggeration — more than 58,000 fonts have proliferated, as has the griping by typography traditionalists. One art snob in Indiana has even started an online movement trying to ban the goofy typeface Comic Sans.

And yes, academics have weighed in, too. Researchers at Wichita State University in Kansas have published a series of studies detailing what your font of choice says about you — sort of a Rorschach test for the Web 2.0 set.

But, anyway, back to Lescroart.

"OK," he says, "I'm currently typing in Times New Roman 12."

Then, he adds, almost apologetically: "I don't take advantage of what's out there."

Other people, however, do. And they see typefaces as extensions of their personalities.

"Typefaces are the clothes words wear, and just as we make judgments about people by the clothes they wear, so we make judgments about the information we're reading by the typefaces," typography analyst Caroline Archer told BBC radio recently.

For those who have, like, a life, here's a quick primer on typefaces: They are divided into two main groups — serif and sans serif. Serifs, simply, are letters with tiny horizontal lines added to the top and bottom of letters. Sans serifs, therefore, don't have such appendages.

Of course, designers have manipulated type into all sorts of tricked-out forms.

But do fonts really make the man or woman?

"The cliché in my business is that type talks," says Peter Norris, creative director for Sacramento advertising agency Runyon Saltzman Einhorn. "Think of it as your voice. A good company will be very consistent with its voice, whatever it's trying to convey. Some fonts are heavy and yell at you. Others are strong silent types."

Try this out as a new pickup line: Hey, babe, I'm a Rockwell Xbold. Are you my type?

Caroline Loomis, a junior high school computer arts teacher in Davis, says she tries mightily to get her students to go easy on the wacky fonts. One popular choice for kids, she says, is Blackletter686 BT.

"(It's a) very fancy, Old English kind of calligraphic font," Loomis says. "It's a headline font totally unsuited to paragraph text."

In other words, it's hard to read.

Loomis has hundreds of fonts at her disposal but admits that she remains a typeface conservative.

"While I might wish to use a font or color to express 'me,' I never actually do it for fear that the other person will interpret it incorrectly," she says.

Although Loomis does lighten up occasionally by using Comic Sans — but only in the privacy of her own home.

Hmmm. So, by the Wichita State psychology-research-study standard, does that mean Loomis has a split personality?

Perhaps. Loomis' penchant for Times New Roman makes her "stable, mature, formal and conformist," according to the data, whereas her Comic Sans bent makes her "happy, cuddly, youthful and casual."

But it's not really you that's being judged, lead researcher Dawn Shaikh hastens to add — it's how others perceive you.

Shaikh came by her study's findings after quizzing 561 subjects in 2005 and 2006 on 20 popular typefaces using 15 adjective pairs. From that, she and the two other researchers developed specific personality traits.

Shaikh's data suggest that those wanting to come off well in typeface correspondence should use sans serif fonts such as Verdana, Arial and Microsoft's new Calibri, or old serif standbys such as Georgia and Times New Roman.

Typefaces to avoid, lest you be saddled with a negative adjective: Rockwell Xbold ("rude, coarse, unattractive"), Impact ("plain, rigid, assertive"), Gigi (unstable, rebel, impractical) and Courier New ("dull, unimaginative, plain").

"Those (negative) typeface personalities do translate to the perception of the document," Shaikh maintains.

But, unpopular as they may be, they haven't yet drawn the ire of graphic designers in an organized campaign, a la Comic Sans.

Norris, of Runyon Saltzman Einhorn, says, simply: "I hate it."

Indianapolis designer Dave Combs has taken his hatred a step further by developing the semi-tongue-in-cheek website, bancomicsans.com, which encourages people to download decals to slap on any document or banner that uses the offending typeface.

"These widespread abuses of printed type threaten to erode the very foundations upon which centuries of typographic history are built," Combs writes on his site. "Since the advent of desktop publishing, powerful tools are in the hands of uneducated people unaware of proper font usage."

Microsoft designer Vincent Connare introduced the typeface in 1995. But Combs blames the average user for foisting Comic Sans on us in such inappropriate places as medical forms, governmental signage and resumes.

In any case, think twice ­— no, three times — before using a "fun font" like Comic Sans in a resume, advises Dan Greitzer of Resumes By Design in Sacramento.

"I really discourage anything outlandish," he says. "It's got to be readable. I use Times New Roman. It's serious, straight business writing. Courier or Arial also work. Don't get too weird."

But it's a whole other story for those with a decidedly artistic bent.

Lescroart notwithstanding, authors tend of obsess on typefaces. In the introduction to a new anthology of short stories to be published in February, editor (and novelist) Zadie Smith apologized to authors for removing their idiosyncratic font.

"There are quite a few writers in this volume who use variations on the nostalgic American Typewriter font (and they are all American), as if the ink were really wet and the press still hot," Smith writes. "We have two users of the elegant, melancholic Didot font (both British), and a writer who centres the text in one long, thin strip down the page, like a newspaper column (and uses Georgia, a font that has an academic flavor). Anyway, I hope what remains
will satisfy."

Because, after all, authors have been known to take matters into their own hands.

Several years ago, best-selling British horror novelist James Herbert had his publisher pulp the first run of a novel because it had the audacity to use a typeface other than Century Old Style.

Asked BBC reporter Ian Peacock, "What would you do if a publisher decided to print your book in Arial or Verdana?"

Herbert: "Then I wouldn't be with that publisher anymore. ... I'm a pain, but I'm usually right."

Yeah, we know the type.

Got Crocs? Be Careful on the Escalator

WASHINGTON (AP) — At rail stations and shopping malls around the world, reports are popping up of people, particularly young children, getting their toes caught in escalators. The one common theme seems to be the clunky soft-soled clogs known by the name of the most popular brand, Crocs. [read more]

Happy 25th Birthday to :-)

Language experts say the smiley face and other emotional icons, known as emoticons, have given people a concise way in e-mail and other electronic messages of expressing sentiments that otherwise would be difficult to detect.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — It was a serious contribution to the electronic lexicon. :-)

Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal "smiley face" in a computer message. [read more]

The Devil Wears Hermès (He Bought It at the Caesars Palace Mall in Las Vegas)

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

Published: August 21, 2007

Dana Thomas has written a crisp, witty social history that’s as entertaining as it is informative. (more at The New York Times)

"they're (not so) grrrreat"

Does 'Big Cereal's self-regulation mean anything?

According to published reports, cereal giant Kellogg is voluntarily phasing out advertising to kids under age 12 unless and until the foods meet certain nutrition guidelines. They have also agreed to stop licensing popular advertising characters connected to the affected products.

Is this a step in the right direction? Maybe, but it seems a little silly to me.

Anyone who’s read about the dangers of processed foods knows that breakfast foods like Pop Tarts and Froot Loops are not good for you, even as part of a “balanced breakfast.” And we all know that kids are gullible. I know I would try to stick everything in the supermarket cart I saw on Saturday morning cartoons (Remember those? Where have they gone?)

But…

Unlike with similar initiatives aimed at the tobacco and cigarette industry, the target market is not easily able to go buy (or have someone buy them) the product. Your five-year-old will beg and scream for Corn Pops, but it’s not like he can drive himself to Kroger and stock up.

Parents are buying this crap for their kids. Taking the commercials off cartoon broadcasts doesn’t mean anything if the parent goes and buys it for them anyway. And part of the reason that kids are so overweight and obese these days is because parents are enabling them with foods that are bad for them.

While it’s likely that some cereals and other products could be reformulated to be healthier, and hopefully they will be, by this intuitive, so much of what is going on is just window dressing.

Think about the kids menu at your favorite restaurant. Hot dogs, chicken nuggets, fries…none of this stuff is substantially healthier than a bowl of cereal (especially when studies have shown a link between increased levels of saturated fats in the body and the development of diabetes). But nobody (yet) has suggested that we take off the Oscar Meyer or Ore-Ida commercials.

Yes, I know it’s voluntary, but it’s a double standard, and in the media clip-entrenched world we live in, it makes something that (generally) does include some vitamins and minerals in its primary ingredients out to be the bad guy. Giving a kid another processed product in lieu of the suddenly evil cereal will not necessarily improve their health.

I guess my point is, what’s being done doesn’t hurt, but until an effort is done to make food healthier for all of us, especially kids, we’re really not doing anything special here by taking away Tony the Tiger.

A Pall on The Mall

Note from Steve: this article focuses on my collegues over at labelscar.com, a great mall history site if there ever was one. It also mentions frequent steve's blog contributor Mitch Glaser's excellent All the Malls of Southern California

Are dead malls worth saving?

Lissa Harris
The Weekly Dig, Boston

As a kid in suburban Rhode Island in the ’80s, [Jason] Damas (left) was, naturally, a mall rat, spending his spare time at the Rhode Island Mall food court and his spare quarters in the Aladdin’s Castle arcade. What’s odd is that he never grew out of it. One rainy day when he was 18, he drove to the Lincoln Mall a few towns over for no reason at all, and spent the day just watching people come and go. It was a bit of an epiphany for Damas...

...Now living in suburban Boston, the 26-year-old Damas is an avid historian—albeit a historian who writes under the pen name “Caldor,” taken from a now-defunct Northeastern retail chain that went belly-up in 1999...

Last year, Damas and [Ross] Schendel launched Labelscar (labelscar.com)—a blog, an ambitious retail history project and a state of mind, with a name that manages to be at the same time both poetic and technical....

Read More at The Weekly Dig.

Yeah! I want Cheesy (Tots)!

I'm not hip enough to publicly not like fast food, so I'll admit I eat a lot of it on my "dinner hour" between The City and Big Green. Usually Arby's, McDonald's or Long John Silvers (Long Green Slivers as Eddy calls it).

There's a Burger King on the way as well, and though I'm pretty much off The King after eating so much in college (they were open late), I pop in so every so often I won't suffer from McBurnout, Roast Beef Malaise, or whatever the hell eating too much LJS will do.

The latest trip was largely disappointing as usual, but I discovered a new menu item: something called Cheesy Tots.

This one-time experimental breakfast item apparently caught on at BK and has built up a following. Some people have raved about them, and others have urged its return when taken offf the menu temporarily

I love tater tots (almost went to Sonic to get some actually) and I like cheese sticks, so I figured these golden brown, saucer-shaped chicken nugget-looking bites might be worth a shot.

Not so fast.

Maybe I got a bad batch or something, but I thought they were awful. The mix of mozzarella and cheddar cheeses was decent enough, but the deep-fried coating was hard and starchy and the few potato bits found inside distracted too much from the cheese. The lack of a dipping sauce was a problem, as ketchup didn't work well at all with the other flavors, and there are only so many condiments that might work. Though I might suggest they find some to mask the overall taste :-)

Still, for the price, it wasn't a bad deal. Burger King isn't exactly known for their culinary prowess in the first place (see also: Chicken Fries), and if you're sick of french fries and onion rings, it does add another option to the palette.

Just don't offer me any. I'll pass.

Thanks to Baltimore, Air Force 1 still flying

Nike sneaker boasts 25 years of loyal fans

By Tanika White
Baltimore Sun reporter

BALTIMORE - In the 2002 hit "Air Force Ones," the rapper Nelly extolled his love for the sneaker in the song's title: "I need two pair," he drawled. "Give me two pair."

Clearly Nelly is not from Baltimore. If he were, he'd have far more than just two pairs.

Nike is launching a major promotion for the 25th anniversary of its Air Force 1 - a sneaker that Baltimore had a major role in saving and helping to become an urban fashion sensation of the past generation.

In contrast to the product hype often manufactured on Madison Avenue, the sneaker's following grew initially by word of mouth, before the Internet and with little TV advertising. The shoe originated in 1982, when Nike sales were one-15th what they are now and its future endorsement king, Michael Jordan, was still a freshman at the University of North Carolina.

Curiously, the buzz for the Air Force 1 centered in Baltimore, far from the major fashion centers and the only place where the model was sold for a time after it was all but discontinued.

"No city is as important to the Air Force 1 as Baltimore," Nike acknowledged in a booklet it sent to retailers recently for the 25th anniversary promotion. "The city rebirthed the shoe and set in motion a series of events that would change the way sneakers were perceived in the marketplace."

Nelly's two pairs wouldn't suffice for Melvin Bartee, for example. He has amassed at least 100 pairs of the $80 sneakers over the years, their orange boxes stacked to the ceiling in the basement of his East Baltimore home. "I don't even go down there to look for a pair anymore. I just buy new ones," said Bartee, 41, a youth basketball coach at the Cecil-Kirk Recreational Center.

Keith Holly of West Baltimore said he has at least 50 pairs of Air Force 1's. He buys them two at a time, wears them twice, maybe three times, then gives them away.

And even a trans-Atlantic distance couldn't stem Michael Boateng's passion for Air Force 1's. When he attended high school in West Africa, Boateng, now 29, said, "My parents mailed me the new ones when they came out."

While Nike helped shape the modern athletic wear industry with its line named for Jordan, the lesser-known Air Force 1 model has been the Oregon company's biggest seller, footwear expert John Shanley said. The shoe generated roughly $1 billion a year for the company at its peak, about $600 million in more recent years.

"I remember going to the malls at 7 a.m. and kids would be in line for those shoes," said Shanley, a New York-based analyst who covers the athletic wear industry for Susquehanna Financial Group. "There's no other shoe that ever created that kind of thing. Maybe some of the Jordans."

In 1982, Nike introduced the Air Force 1 as a high-performance basketball shoe. Moses Malone, who became the first basketball player to go directly to the pros from high school after declining an offer to play at the University of Maryland, was one of the first to wear the sneakers, starting a fad in urban areas.

"Back then, shoes had a limited run," Nike spokesman KeJuan Wilkins said. "They'd come out and then they'd go away forever."

By 1983, Nike was ready to discontinue the model for newer styles. But three Baltimore-area retailers at the time - Charley Rudo Sports, Cinderella Shoes and Downtown Locker Room - banded together to implore Nike executives to reconsider.

"The shoes were blowing out of my store," recalled Harold Rudo, then the footwear buyer for his father's store, Charley Rudo Sports. "I flew out to [Nike's headquarters in] Portland, Oregon, and met with the second-in-command."

Rudo and cohorts from the other two sporting goods stores persuaded Nike initially to continue selling two styles of Air Force 1's - white with royal blue, and white with chocolate brown - but only in their stores in Baltimore.

The first weekend the sneakers were re-introduced in Baltimore, Rudo said, he sold more than 100 pairs.

"Then, we started popping out new styles, color by color by color by color. We brought out one to two colors a month," said Rudo, who is known even today as "Mr. Shoe." "We were exclusive, the Three Amigos."

In pre-Internet days, word of mouth propelled sneaker-heads along the East Coast to Baltimore for Air Force 1's.

"We had people coming from New York, Washington, D.C.," Rudo said. "They were coming from all over Pennsylvania. They knew we had 'em, and they'd all come running to Baltimore to buy them from us."

Eventually, Nike concluded that Baltimore was on to something. About 10 years after the shoes' exclusive run in Baltimore, the company re-released the Air Force 1 nationally in the mid-1990s.

"This is something that is now on a global level," said Wilkins, the company spokesman. "People in Japan love the Air Force 1. People in Brazil love the Air Force 1. To think that it really started in Baltimore is kind of amazing. ... It has moved from being a performance shoe to a cultural icon."

Until Nike announced a 25th anniversary promotional campaign for the Air Force 1, only a select few were aware of Baltimore's role in popularizing the model early on.

"So often you think of L.A., New York, Chicago for this kind of thing," said Mike May, spokesman for the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

While Nike poured millions into promoting its Jordan line, it barely advertised the Air Force 1, lending the sneaker an underground appeal. Like Converse's canvas Chuck Taylors and Adidas' Superstar model, Nike's Air Force 1 became a phenomenon with a clean, simple look. As more colors were added, buyers continued to clamor for the shoe because no matter the outfit, there was an Air Force 1 to go with it.

"You can basically get any color to match your clothes, whatever you feel like wearing," said Boateng of East Baltimore. "I've worn 'em to church. I'll be wearing a blazer and then I'll have on my Air Forces."

Today, there are more than 1,700 different styles of Air Force 1's, although the shoe is essentially the same as in 1982 - unusual for Nike sneakers, even Air Jordans. There are versions in patent leather, multi-colored styles and some designed by graffiti artists. Wealthy rap artists and celebrities often take a pair of Air Force 1's and upgrade the "swoosh" with designer monograms, such as Louis Vuitton's signature LVs.

After-purchase customization of the Air Force 1 has become a cottage industry for some city artists and retailers.

Dwayne Gillard, 27, of West Baltimore, had one of his five pairs of white-on-white Air Force 1's professionally decorated at Mondawmin Mall with "Hundred Grand Federation," the logo for his side business as a rapper.

"You gotta have a pair of Air Force 1's. You put 'em on at night, and I swear you look like your feet are glowing," Gillard said. "Then you gotta have a second pair. The second pair you gotta get somebody to customize 'em for you. The third pair is the backup for that first pair. And the fourth and fifth is for when nobody's selling them no more. I got five right now because I know come May, I'm not gonna be able to find 'em."

Baltimore retailers sometimes struggle to meet demand, said Jeffrey Bowden, a spokesman for DTLR, formerly the Downtown Locker Room, which now operates from Atlanta to Chicago.

"It's absolutely a phenomenon," Bowden said. "It's clearly the Baltimore shoe. There were times there where it was hard for us to keep them in stock, through all sizes, from kids' all the way up to men's.

"That real hard-core demographic, they're like, 'Hey, I need a new pair of Airs,' just because they got a scuff on them. And they've got to have every color when they come out," he said. "I'm even guilty of that. I've had hundreds over the years."

Nike officials can't explain why the shoe has had such a foothold in Baltimore, but they are grateful for the love.

To promote the 25th anniversary version of the Air Force 1 - and the just-released Air Force 25 sneaker - the company built a pricey in-store display at DTLR in Mondawmin Mall, one of the first stores to originally sell the Air Force 1, Nike said.

The display shows players of the past in flight jumpsuits, such as Malone, beside a "second coming" of current stars such as LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, who are promoting the new Air Force 25s.

Local sellers don't expect the relationship to wane anytime soon.

"Twenty years from now ... it's going to be the same thing," said Greg Vaughan, manager of Mondawmin Mall's DTLR and a former salesman at Charley Rudo Sports, one of the three stores that saved the shoe. "I'm watching generations of kids growing right into it."

i LV u

How much do you love Louis Vuitton?

Obviously, the iconic French fashion brand has become increasingly popular over the past few years across a wide spectrum of socioeconomic classes, spawning any number of imitators in its wake. But is it special enough to theme your entire wedding based on the classic LV coated cavas pattern?

I got this email the other day and it cracked me up (I've been on a 'posting spam' kick lately). Don't know if these picturea are real, but they sure are laughable.

The happy bride and groom.

A very creative fabric treatment on the train of the bride's dress.

Good enough to eat?

Only a fine automaker like Oldsmobile is worthy of the LV emblem. :-)

a year of spam

Note from Steve: I got this email from my friend Sonya. It cracked me up!

SUMMARY OF MY LAST YEAR 2006 ON THE COMPUTER

• I must send my thanks to whoever sent me the one about rat poop in the glue on envelopes because I now have to use a wet towel with every envelope that needs sealing.
  
• Also, now I have to scrub the top of every can I open for the same reason.
  
• I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl (Penny Brown) who is about to die in the hospital for the 1,387,258th time.
  
• I no longer have any money at all, but that will change once I receive the $15,000 that Bill Gates/Microsoft and AOL are sending me for participating in their special e-mail program.
• I no longer worry about my soul because I have 363,214 angels looking out for me, and St. Theresa's novena has granted my every wish.
  
• I no longer eat KFC because their chickens are actually horrible mutant freaks with no eyes or feathers.
  
• I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a water buffalo on a hot day
  
• Thanks to you, I have learned that my prayers only get answered if I forward an email to seven of my friends and make a wish within five minutes.
  
• Because of your concern I no longer drink Coca Cola because it can remove toilet stains.
  
• I no longer can buy gasoline without taking a man along to watch the car so a serial killer won't crawl in my back seat when I'm pumping gas.
  
• I no longer drink Pepsi or Dr. Pepper since the people who make these products are atheists who refuse to put "Under God" on their cans.
  
• I no longer use Saran wrap in the microwave because it causes cancer.
  
• And thanks for letting me know I can't boil a cup water in the microwave anymore because it will blow up in my face...disfiguring me for life.
  
• I no longer check the coin return on pay phones because I could be pricked with a needle infected with AIDS.
  
• I no longer go to shopping malls because someone will drug me with a perfume sample and rob me.
  
• I no longer receive packages from UPS or FedEx since they are actually Al Qaeda in disguise.
  
• I no longer shop at Target since they are French and don't support our American troops or the Salvation Army.
  
• I no longer answer the phone because someone will ask me to dial a number for which I will get a phone bill with calls to Jamaica , Uganda , Singapore , and Uzbekistan.
  
• I no longer have any sneakers -- but that will change once I receive my free replacement pair from Nike
  
• I no longer buy expensive cookies from Neiman Marcus since I now have their recipe.
  
• Thanks to you, I can't use anyone's toilet but mine because a big brown African spider is lurking under the seat to cause me instant death when it bites my butt.
  
• Thank you too for all the endless advice Andy Rooney has given us. I can live a better life now because he's told us how to fix everything.
  
• And thanks to your great advice, I can't ever pick up $5.00 I dropped in the parking lot because it probably was placed there by a sex molester waiting underneath my car to grab my leg.
  
• Oh, and I can no longer drive my car because I can't buy gas from certain gas companies!

If you don't send this e-mail to at least 144,000 people in the next 70 minutes, a large dove with diarrhea will land on your head at 5:00 PM this afternoon and the fleas from 12 camels will infest your back, causing you to grow a hairy hump. I know this will occur because it actually happened to a friend of my next door neighbor's ex-mother-in-law's second husband's cousin's beautician...


• A South American scientist from Argentina , after a lengthy study, has discovered that people with insufficient brain activity read their e-mail with their hand on the mouse.

Don't bother taking it off now, it's too late!

Mall-aise: Shopping Malls as seen by Herman Krieger

Tuned In (Photo by Herman Krieger)

Photographer Herman Krieger recently emailed me about his photo essay on malls in Oregon (or anywhere, for that matter) called Mall-aise. It's very striking and I figured it would be of interest to LiveMalls readers.

Mall-aise: Shopping Malls as seen by Herman Krieger

Still waiting on the ‘Great Pumpkin’

By JIM BECKERMAN
The Record (Hackensack N.J.)

You'd think that selling "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" to CBS back in 1966 would have been as easy as selling ... well, pumpkins on Halloween. Or Charlie Brown at any time.

Not so, animator Bill Melendez recalls.

"We didn't know whether the network would buy it," Melendez says. "I'd always have to do a sales pitch. And I can really do a pitch. They used to say: ‘Come on, Bill, do a dance for The Man.'"

And this was after "A Charlie Brown Christmas" had been a huge, Peabody- and Emmy-winning hit in 1965, and after the "Peanuts" comic strip mania was well under way.

Friday will mark the 40th anniversary of the TV special, which has now become for some as much of a Halloween tradition as candy corn and soaped windows.

It will be shown at 8 p.m. Friday on ABC (WOLO-25, cable channel 5), in tandem with "You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown," a later "Peanuts" special with a "Great Pumpkin" subplot.

"We translated the Christmas idea to the pumpkin patch," says Melendez, who had little idea he was creating a small but much-loved new piece of Americana with his yarn of the eternally optimistic Linus, who forgoes trick or treating to spend his night in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arise and bring toys to all the good little children of the world.

Never mind that the other kids laugh at him. Never mind that Linus — otherwise the egghead of the Peanuts bunch — would seem to have rather obviously confused Christmas and Halloween.

Commentators — the kind of people who write books like "The Gospel According to Peanuts" — have seen in Linus a symbol of faith, which endures even in the face of doubts and sneers.

Or, alternately, a symbol of religious delusion — persisting in spite of the efforts of sensible people to talk the sucker out of it.

"We threw everything (into) it," Melendez says.

And viewers responded. To this day, every gardener who discovers an oversize gourd in October feels it a civic duty to phone the local newspaper to report that the Great Pumpkin has arrived in his back yard.

"Believe it or not, that's Charlie Brown, above, happily perched inside our version of the Great Pumpkin (a 125-pound North-ville-grown giant)," reads one newspaper caption below a photograph of a toddler peeping out of a giant jack-o'-lantern, reprinted in the book "Charlie Brown & Charlie Schulz."

More recently, and more cynically, an episode of the quirky animated cable TV series "Robot Chicken" featured a Great Pumpkin summoned by black magic, who kills off all of the "Peanuts" kids except Charlie Brown, before being destroyed by the Kite-Eating Tree.

This year, in honor of the 40th anniversary, there has been a cornucopia of Great Pumpkin-related merchandise, including an "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" domino set from Sababa Toys, a 500-piece "Great Pumpkin" jigsaw puzzle from USAopoly and a 40th anniversary coffee table book about the making of "Great Pumpkin" from HarperCollins.

"I didn't know at the time that this was going to be anything vital," says Melendez, 90.

Originally from Sonora, Mexico, south of Arizona, Melendez had already been in the animation business for years — working for such giants as Disney, Warner Bros. and UPA — when Charlie Brown and fortune came knocking.

By the early 1960s, he had set up his own fledgling animation studio, where among other things he made several Ford TV spots using animated "Peanuts" characters.

In 1965, Coca-Cola approached the late "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles M. Schulz and independent movie producer Lee Mendelson about doing a "Peanuts" Christmas TV special. Mendelson and Schulz got Melendez onboard, and they proceeded to create a 30-minute show that turned all the rules upside-down.

Instead of professional adult actors, they recorded kid voices. Instead of brassy humor, they kept the warm, whimsical tone of the original comic strip. Instead of standard "cartoony" music, they used jazz.

"I was at that time doing a lot of work out of San Francisco," Melendez recalls. "That's where I met Vince Guaraldi. He was a very popular musician in the Bay area. You could go into a bar where he would be playing piano. I said, ‘We gotta use him.'"

"Linus and Lucy" and the other tunes Guaraldi wrote for the "Peanuts" specials have since become classic. But when Melendez and his colleagues first screened "A Charlie Brown Christmas" for CBS executives, they weren't having any of it.

"Too slow ... the kids don't sound pro ... the music is all wrong ... the story kind of wanders" are some of the comments Mendelson recalled hearing from the CBS brass.

"They questioned it for a simple reason: They wanted something that would be guaranteed to succeed," Melendez says.

They needn't have worried. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was such a hit that the network went ahead with plans for other "Charlie Brown" specials. Of the six earliest ones, only "Christmas" and "Great Pumpkin" are regularly revived — probably because unlike, say, "He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown," they revolve around holidays.

"If it was tied up to Happy Dog Day, that would be something," Melendez says. "But that show and the others don't have a strong link-up to anything. We don't have any means or chance to expose them."

By now, Melendez has done 50 Charlie Brown specials, and four Charlie Brown feature-length movies. And he's ready to do more.

Even if he has to dance, once again, for The Man.

"Even now, we always go job to job," he says. "I have things, stories, and I'd sure like to do some more. But it depends. First, I have to get a network to agree with the idea."