 It’s been a short week, right? It should feel unusual that it’s already Friday, right? Four-day weeks are the best kind, but they also make you feel a bit guilty. So this is what it’s like to work in France. Kinda nice. I see why they like it.
Of course, that’s an unfair slam on the French, but since I dinged the Welsh earlier, why not. In for a penny, in for a pound, to cite the old adage that really ought not to be used by investment counselors. You put everything into tin futures? Everything? Well, you know what they say! In for a penny, in for a pound! Why, the future of tin is just ripe for disruption!
Speaking of which: read a piece the other day about The Melt, a chain of restaurants that intended on glorifying the humble grilled cheese sandwich. They had a special machine that would produce the perfect GCS in 45 seconds, and if you used your app you could probably have it in your hands within 5 seconds of entering the store. See, you order it on your phone in your car, or as you approach; you pre-pay; you walk in and pick it up and eat. Sounds like heaven to me.
But here’s the problem. This is 2017 and people in tech in California believe they possess a unique style of insight and intelligence, because they have money to throw around. It’s like they believe they understand water on a spiritual level because they fell in the lake.
Forget Mars colonies and AI. Kaplan declared he had “developed a set of technology that allows us to make the perfect grilled cheese.” The innovation was as meaningful as it was miraculous: the sandwich had “that nostalgic thing,” Kaplan explained. Grilled cheese sandwiches were the fast food equivalent of Proust’s madeleines, priming them for disruption.
The article describes the chain’s shaky start - just five sandwiches and a few soup options weren’t enough, and it turns out people don’t want GCS for supper. Anyway, I wouldn’t care much about the issue one way or the other except for the idea that the GCS had to be rethought and disrupted.
Disruption is not necessarily innovation.
Also, some French people work very hard.
A few notes from the grocery store. I’ve had this one for a while, and may have posted it. If so I will throw myself to the ground, arms outstretched, silent, hoping my self-abnegation stirs an atom of pity.
It’s pizza! But look at those ingredients.
Stics. It has stics. If it had sticks you would be confused, but stics? That’s processed meat of the lowest kind, pressed into rods, colored, flavored, and shot through with fat. Disgusting. Unless the stick has a larger diameter, in which case it’s pepperoni. Delicious!
Criminey, Cap, dial it back:
What type of cap is he wearing? Whatever it is, it has sliced through his eyeballs and severed his eyebrows, which hover in a strange dance, unaware of their situation, like the staring, unseeing eyes of a severed head held up for the crowd to cheer.
About that deformed hand, we can only assume there was some horrible parafin fire below decks.
Below, an example of before-and-after package design, side by side on the same shelf. The old is swooshy and corporate, part of a 2015 redesign and brand-extension initiative that added lots of new flavors. I’ve tried them all. Underwhelming or weird or too much. The new design is meant to be small-scale, artisanal, and hip! Because they got that old friend from college who’s still working at the coffee shop and doodles a lot to make the letters.
What kind of links are these, Mr. Butcher?
Festival links? Are you serious? Am I that lucky, that blessed, that my links may be of the Festival Variety?
Oh, just so you know: Summer's over.
The Opus site: the unfortunate parking-lot cladding continues. Bad decision on the corner.
Up she goes. Slowly, but up she goes.
As noted, I'm going through the entire Gildersleeve series this year - and there's a lot.
"The only thing I ask is that the name of the album be unreadable."
"Done."
That'll do - thanks for stopping by this week, and I'll see you Monday.
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