Tomorrow Museum’s got a great post on Mad Men and women’s business wear. I found this tidbit especially interesting:
Prior to watching the show, I thought of the women’s struggle in the workforce as a problem perpetuated by male bosses. But Mad Men demonstrates just as much tension comes from the other women, who, either jealous or comfortable with the status quo, don’t want to see Peggy get ahead. Secretaries wield an enormous amount of power in office politics.
Thematically, Mad Men keeps getting richer and richer.
A: Cary Grant; and I knew him too. The first time I went into his office he said, “Is that a Brooks Brothers jacket?” I said, “Yes.” And he said, “Right off the rack, right? They’re great.”
Train travel, particularly high-speed train travel, should be *the* way to get anywhere on the East Coast, mid-to-southern California/Vegas, and between moderately large cities clustered together (Chicago, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Detroit; Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston; Florida; Kansas City, St. Louis, Omaha, Tulsa; Portland, Seattle, Vancouver; etc.)
There’s a rather lengthy profile of Christopher Hitchens in the May 2008 Prospect which contains some fascinating insights into his personal life and work habits, as well as his protean political views. Of course, it’s not really cool to like Hitchens – he is someone, after all, who isn’t afraid to savagely attack his friends in print – but as a polemicist he’s second to none, and I admire him for that. That and his thick skin. The following two quotes, in particular, stood out to me:
“Christopher Hitchens’s apartment is curiously unchanged in the 13 years since I first visited him in Washington. A portrait of him and his wife, screenwriter Carol Blue, is still unframed. There is little art on the walls, few travel mementos; just bookshelves, a spacious living room, a modest kitchen and an annex for the alcohol. The aesthetic is not so much utilitarian as uncluttered of anything that would distract from the essentials of his life: reading, meeting people, drinking, laughing, arguing, writing.”
“The appearance he gives of living improvisationally must obscure a ferocious interior organisation. Articles get written at any time of day or night, with extraordinary speed and fluency—however much he has drunk. He turns out a couple of pieces in the intervals while I’m taking a breather from merely talking.”
“Bullitt Rule. Any car chase in San Francisco will be downhill, even though the most likely places from which someone would flee are all downtown, at the bottom of all the hills.
“Bullitt Shift. Cars in high-speed chases can shift through more gears than they have. See Bullitt, where Steve McQueen’s car upshifts more than sixteen times.”
