Shedd Your Inhibitions

Published
by
David
on March 26, 2009
in chicago and random
. 3 Comments

While walking back from lunch, my friends and I noticed a series of banners along Michigan Avenue advertising the local Shedd Aquarium. They were decorated with tightly-cropped, highly saturated portraits, which gave the impression that the art director couldn’t decide if they wanted to go full-on artsy or unoffensively family-friendly, thereby ending up with something apparently meant to target the 9-year hipster artist demographic. And the tagline, “InSheddible Connections” — we couldn’t understand what exactly that was supposed to convey, but it didn’t take long for us to come up with some better phrases (and corresponding imagery/advertising motifs that would strike perfectly at the heart of the ironic 20-something demographic they so clearly are trying to reach):

“Sit Down and Shedd Up”

“Shedd Just Got Real”

“The Shedd is Bananas: B-A-N-A-N-A-S”

“Shedd, Yeah!”

“Get Shedd-faced”

“What the Shedd”

And my personal favorite: “I Shedd You Not.”

Update: Ryan came up with a few more:

“Hot Shedd”

“Shedd Happens”

Signs

Published
by
David
on March 18, 2009
in random
. 4 Comments

Force of Habit

Published
by
David
on February 26, 2009
in music
. 2 Comments

This is what you get when you start to regularly post on twitter: your thoughts get smaller and more compartmentalized, and it becomes exceedingly difficult to compose anything of length and substance. So instead you get this: one of my favorite songs, for as long as I’ve had any meaningful engagement with pop music — which is to say, the period that started when I got my own radio and my parents ordered cable television, thereby exposing me to MTV, sometime around sixth grade.

Two-and-a-half, continued

Published
by
David
on February 21, 2009
in life and movies
. 0 Comments

“You have a milkshake, and me have a milkshake. And my milkshake goes acroooooooss the room. And I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!”

One day, some fifteen years from now, Thomas will watch a semi-obscure movie from when his totally uncool parents were young, and he’ll finally understand where that one random thing he used to say over and over for no reason actually came from. And he’ll be baffled why his parents thought it was so funny.

Two-and-a-half

Published
by
David
on February 15, 2009
in chicago
. 3 Comments

“Is that dim sum?” he asks, pointing to a waiter pushing a cart full of dinner entrees. I can’t fault his logic: as far as he’s gathered in his not-quite-three years of experience, all food served from a push cart is dim sum, his favorite cuisine. Except when it’s actually giant Korean noodle bowls served from a massive tray placed on a wood-shop rolly-cart at dinner time.

No, that’s something else.

“That’s dim sum!” he says, with smiling confidence.

No, Thomas, that’s dinner.

“Dinner?” Suddenly confused now, not quite believing me.

Yeah. It’s nighttime. We eat dinner at night.

“Eat dinner at night?”

Yeah.

“That’s dim sum,” he says again, pointing to the cart.

No, Thomas. Dim sum is for lunch. We’re eating dinner right now.

“Dim sum for lunch?”

They make dim sum in the morning.

“Why?”

That’s just they way it is.

“Why?”

I don’t know. Might want to ask your dad.

“I want to eat dim sum.”

Well, I don’t think we can do that right now.

“Why?”

It’s night time. No dim sum.

“It’s night time.”

Yeah. You can only get it for lunch, in the morning.

“In the morning.”

That’s right.

“I want… I want dim sum tomorrow!”

That’s fine by me, Thomas, but let’s ask your dad first.

“I want dim sum when I wake up!”

Me too. Sounds great.