-Lots here from Vanity Fair, including a word on their obsession with set design:
A scene-setting anecdote everyone in the Mad Men orbit tells is how Weiner came onto the set one day and focused on some pieces of fruit he said were too large and shiny and perfectly formed; produce in the early 60s—period produce—wasn’t pumped up. Get smaller, dumpier fruit, he ordered. (Depending on who was telling me the story, from cast members to network executives, the offending produce morphed from apples to oranges to bananas, but Amy Wells, the set decorator, said definitively: it was apples.)
The theme of season three is change. “We wanted our key art to be more high-concept,†Schupack explained, unveiling the new poster, which hits this week: Draper is sitting in his office, looking nonchalant, as water rises up to his knees.
-Story about the real life person Don Draper is based on.
In the 1960s, Draper Daniels was something of a legendary character in American advertising. As the creative head of Leo Burnett in Chicago in the 1950s, he had fathered the Marlboro Man campaign, among others, and become known as one of the top idea men in the business. He was also a bit of a maverick.
–Playboy is getting Madmenized for the next couple weeks.
Bryant mixes original creations with vintage pieces for the principal cast’s wardrobe, which is designed from scratch, starting with sketches. Her use of kaleidoscope colors, sparkling jewelry, brilliant prints and florals can be deliciously distracting.
Which is kind of the point of Mad Men. Bad is sexy. And then just very, very bad. The show lures you in with a glittering surface, but just below is a hothouse of homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, and a more general and crushing sense of isolation.
and Pete Campbell whom everyone hates except Matt Weiner apparently:
“I went to an all-boys school, and Pete’s like the kids I went to school with. He could have been Holden Caulfield’s roommate, who borrowed his coat and didn’t bring it back.â€
-Finally here’s the Wall St Journal on the story, which seems to be getting a lot of play this year, of the writing staff that is mostly female:
The story centers on Don Draper and his shadowy past, but a key part of the series, the writers say, is its complicated female characters. “It’s less skewed than it appears,†says consulting producer Maria Jacquemetton.
Waxy pointed to a question on Metafilter asking What books do people proselytize about and said, “Someone needs to compile this into a list, ordered by mentions.” How could I not?
I took every book and author mentioned and compiled a list for both. If a book was listed with an author, this was counted as an entry for the book only. The Metafilter question asked for fiction books only, but this rule wasn’t really followed so I counted everything. I did this fast and any errors can be blamed on speed, Drew’s Cancer, or both. Finally, it becomes obvious quite quickly, that this list is more about books people don’t like, as opposed to books with fanatical fans. This is summed up best by commenter OhHenryPacey, “If this list proves anything it’s that assholes are assholes and will be assholes about just about anything or book you’d care to mention.” You can’t argue with logic like that.
Interesting findings:
-Ayn Rand blew away the competition in the author Category with 11 mentions, while The Celestine Prophecy edged out Harry Potter 8-6 in the Books category.
-There are 124 titles on the Books list and 56 Authors.
-People mentioned Jonathan Livingston Seagull 3 times, spelling the name 3 different ways.
-Twilight had 4 mentions, though I expect this to grow over time.
–Kottke will be happy to note that while Infinite Jest is on the Books list 4 times, David Foster Wallace is not mentioned on the Authors list.
-Looking quickly, Ayn Rand inspires the most assholish proselytizing with a combined score of 16. But what do you expect with a name like Ayn.
-Seriously? The Wizard of Oz? You must not like anything.
I saw 100 Ways to Kill a Peep a couple days ago and thought, “Internet Marshmallow Peep Season started already?” It must have, though, Peeps links are popping off all over the place. To celebrate, I went on the Google and found all of the Marshmallow Peeps links worth looking at. There are 155 links in this post, and you’re not going to be able to click on all of them, so book mark and come back later. If I’ve left out a quality Peep link, by all means, send it to me. (Peeps previously covered on Unlikely Words here.)
I would call marshmallow Peeps ‘the Bacon of the nineties’ for the way they captured the hearts and minds of internet users everywhere. Both bacon and Peeps are bad for you and delicious, and for some reason, that makes the crazy things you do with them so viral. Much Traditional Media ink has been spilled attempting to chronicle the Peep phenomenon and none of it has gotten any closer to figuring it out than any of the more recent coverage of the bacon meme. You can view some of the attempts in Salon , The Phoenix, Slate, More Intelligent Life, and the New York Times. Here’s a Brand Study of Peeps upon the brand’s 50th anniversary, which was in 2003.
As far as I can tell, however, The New Yorker has never written about Marshmallow Peeps. Elitists. Though maybe they’re afraid to tussle with the growing anti-Peep movement in Brooklyn, whose leader is clearly afraid of Peeps.
Along with Traditional Media, web citizens from all over documented their passion with expressions of crude HTML (these are the links to click if you want to remember what the internet looked like before Web 2.0). Unfortunately, many of these websites have long since been abandoned and now float without mooring, along a marshmallow sea of wistfulness. Tracy & Mia’s Peep-O-Rama is better than the current Peeps site, and here’s their list of Peepy Links, not all of which still work. Geekbabe’s Big List of Peeps Links is also a good place to grasp Peep culture circa 2003. What is it about Tripod? PAGE O’ PEEPS might be the worst site on the internet (in a ‘in-case-you-forgot-what-the-internet-looked-like-in-1997 way), but Peep Page is a seizure-inducing second. This unofficial Peep fan club is devoid of anything remarkable, the unofficial Marshmallow Peep page is very yellow, and Pop-Cult.com’s Peeps page has a lot of facts, but the granddaddy of all Peeps fact lists is Alt.Food’s Peeps FAQ.
On the more nefarious side of Peep activities, there is Peep jousting, Peep fighting, Peep War, a turn based Peep strategy game, and this amazing Peep prank, which really deserves the attention of the writers of The Office for some Jim vs. Dwight inspiration.
I like Peeps, I just don’t want to eat a lot of them all at once so I would stay away from this Peep eating contest in Florida, or this one in Buffalo, or this one in Maryland, which I don’t think happens anymore, or this one in Sacramento that definitely still happens. (Incidentally in 2007, they had an amazing painting of a large sock monkey humping a Peep on the moon as a prize.) (Further, someone sent them marshmallow Peep porn, which is entirely unsafe for work and which I beg you not to look at. There’s some things you can’t unsee and this is one of them.) Lastly, this Peep eating contest from the This or That Burlesque Game Show takes a strange turn halfway through.
To my vegan friends, here’s a recipe with yammy pecan Peeps cupcakes and not for nothing, but if you live near Albany, you should check out this Veggie Easter meetup, which will ALSO feature vegan Peeps. For further research, the most comprehensive and varied collection of Peeps recipes can be found at cooking with Peeps. Use the recipes you find there and those above to compete in this Peep meal creation contest.
For you drinkers, here’s a recipe for a Peeps martini, or Peep-a-Tini, but this one looks tastier and, frankly, cuter. Plus, spiff up any drink with this Peeps straw.
It was harder than I thought it would be to find random blog posts about Peeps, but two are here and here, while this rebuttal of Steve Almond’s rejection of Peeps is extremely worth reading.
Also, don’t forget to head to PeepFest 2009 if you’re in Chapel Hill.
Peeps is a book not about Peeps. Yoga Peeps is a website not about Peeps doing yoga. Peeps is a social utility not about Peeps. Six Peeps is a blog not about six Peeps. Peeps is an iPhone application not about Peeps.
I’ve come to the end and don’t have a paragraph to put this post about 7 bizarre marketing vehicles, this post about being stalked by Peeps, this post about a city in PA dropping a giant Peep on NYE, or this one about Peeps being Harbingers of Doom for the Human Race. I actually didn’t have the patience to read that one all the way through, but if those pictures of kittens grown in bottles bother you, don’t click through. On the research front, a friend put a Peep into a glass blowing kiln and it kept it’s shape for 25 minutes, a peanut M&M lasted only 6 minutes.
