Melissa and I went into Starbucks over the weekend. While paying at the counter, we were both excited about the song playing in the store-a song from Dirty Dancing. As I handed over my cash, I asked the nice young lady behind the counter if they were playing the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. She looked confused for a second, and then gave us the ‘once over’.
“No. This is satellite radio playing. I don’t know what this song is.”
We could tell she had no idea what Dirty Dancing was. I felt so old…
BERLIN (AFP) — Renowned French designer Philippe Starck says he is fed up with his job and plans to retire in two years, in an interview published in a German weekly on Thursday.
“I was a producer of materiality and I am ashamed of this fact,” Starck told Die Zeit weekly newspaper.
“Everything I designed was unnecessary.
“I will definitely give up in two years’ time. I want to do something else, but I don’t know what yet. I want to find a new way of expressing myself …design is a dreadful form of expression.”
Starck, who is known for his interior design of hotels and Eurostar trains and mass consumption objects ranging from chairs to tooth brushes and lemon juice squeezers, went on to say that he believed that design on the whole was dead.
“In future there will be no more designers. The designers of the future will be the personal coach, the gym trainer, the diet consultant,” he said.
Starck said the only objects that he still felt attached to were “a pillow perhaps and a good mattress.” But the thing one needs most, he added, was the “ability to love”.
Max and I love Cat Power. She was hands down the best live show we saw last year. And we’re going to see her again this spring. She came out opening with ‘New York’ last time, and it was fantastic. Here is a studio recording of this cover. She is strange, awkward and utterly adorable. When she sings, I truly get goosebumps all over.
A paper that Max wrote just came out, and the press are hitting him hard. He was on the news last night, and spoke to NPR this morning. Berkeley has him featured on the front page, and published the following about him and his paper.
My grandmother Pauline is in her 80’s and over the last few years has had some health problems. I have never known her to be a sickly woman, and it’s been hard wrapping my head around her doctors and hospital visits. She lives in her own apartment in New Jersey, where the rest of my family are. Last week, my mom and aunt realized it was time to have a caregiver move in with her. They are hoping that this change will give her the chance to rest and heal properly from a surgery she went through in the Fall. Pauline is the most stubborn person I have ever known. She just could not understand why her recovery from cancer surgery was not an overnight thing. And from what I can gather through my conversations with my mom, she has been fighting this recuperation all the way. And this is finally why they took charge and decided to bring someone in. As I am on the other side of the country, I know that my view of all this is widely different from the rest of my clan. While I do speak to Pauline every week, I am not seeing the physical wear and tear that all this has caused. I am so grateful that my family are doing everything they can to make her life as comfortable as possible. I remind myself everyday that I am blessed to still have a grandparent in my early thirties. Pauline and I have always been very close, and Max always teases me that I will be exactly like her when I’m an old lady. He adores her, and treats her like a queen whenever we see her. Right before my brother’s wedding in August, we had just found out that she had cancer. They were going to wait until after the wedding to proceed with treatment. Max insisted that we dance with her at the wedding. She is tiny, and was obviously not feeling her best at the time. But there we were, the three of us holding hands, dancing slowly together. She just kept looking from my face to Max’s. It was a very special moment…
My mom sent me this amazing video made by a family who took in their ailing father. Created by filmmaker Julie Winokur and her husband, photojournalist Ed Kashi, they delve into what it means to care for your parents when they are old and sick. Their previous work has researched the way elderly people are treated and cared for. I then found a follow-up piece they did 1 year later, that is equally as astounding. Both are really fantastic, and worth the 15-20 minutes it takes to watch them.
Daily | 
March 31, 2008 5:50 pm | 
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