Fritinancy

April linkfest

A personal plug: I have a couple of new stories on the EatDrinkFilms site about an upcoming screening, with live orchestral accompaniment, of the classic silent film Pandora’s Box (1929). Pandora’s Box was made in Germany, but it starred a young American actress, Louise Brooks, whom the film historian David Thomson has called “one of the most mysterious and potent figures in the history of the cinema.” Read my story about Pandora’s Box and the sidebar about Club Foot Orchestra, the remarkable ensemble – now celebrating its 40th anniversary – that created the score for the film and will perform it, along with students from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, on May 6 at Oakland’s Paramount Theater. The event is being presented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Hope to see some of you local cinephiles there!

Louise Brooks as Lulu with Gustav Diessel as an anachronistic Jack the Ripper. Her hairstyle had lasting influence.

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I’ve been enjoying “Stiffed,” a podcast – not to be confused with Mary Roach’s book Stiff or Susan Faludi’s book Stiffed, both of which I also recommend – about the rise and fall of Viva, an erotic magazine for women that briefly flourished in the 1970s. Founder/publisher Bob Guccione died in 2010, but host Jennifer Romolini managed to interview his son, Bob Jr., as well as many of the women who worked at Viva and tried their damnedest to inject feminism into the mix. Related: my March 2022 post about “Minx,” which name-checks Viva and also rival Playgirl, for which I was a contributing writer..

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Another podcast worth your attention: A Way with Words, hosted by Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette. The April 16 episode examined, among other topics, why Southern Californians insert “the” before freeway numbers (“take the 405 to the 5”) and whether there’s such a thing as a “neutral” accent.

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“We are currently in the midst of a radical reinvention of English. Not perhaps since the 15th, 16th and early 17th centuries has the English language shifted faster, with the rapid introduction of loanwords (borrowed from other languages), neologisms, buzzwords, slang and a host of acronyms.” (Steven Mintz for Inside Higher Ed)

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Nugget, Nugg, Nug

The stimulus for this inquiry came from Simulate, a newish “bioengineered food” company with a brutally honest name and slightly unsettling packaging.

Simulate chicken-flavored modified-wheat-protein Nuggs. I can’t explain why one package says “chicken” and the other doesn’t, or why the chicken looks so skeptical. Is this an example of suicide food? Or just a normal poultry gaze?

 

The Simulate company was founded in 2018 by a 19-year-old “serial tech entrepreneur,” Ben Pasternak; it’s based in New York and maintains a tech-y affect in its marketing. (Its slogan is “Upgrading the World to a Positive Food System”; the package instructions include “Pull Tab to Install”;  the website includes a “changelog” of product updates, with version numbers.) The company filed for trademark protection for “Simulate” and “Simulate Nuggs” in 2021. The latter filing stipulates: “NO CLAIM IS MADE TO THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO USE ‘NUGGS’ APART FROM THE MARK AS SHOWN.”

So what is this thing called “nuggs,” anyway?

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Word of the week: Elevated

Suddenly, it seems, elevated is everywhere all at once.

Word of the week: Bicycle Day

This is a big week in the altered-consciousness universe. Tuesday, April 20, is, of course, 4/20, the date “cherished by pot smokers around the world as a reason to toke up with friends and massive crowds each year,” as a 2019 Vox article put it. The holiday pays tribute to the afternoon hour, 4:20 p.m., when a group of stoners at San Rafael High School, in the San Francisco Bay Area, would gather in the early 1970s to get high. (The shift from time of day to calendar date works only in the U.S.; everywhere else in the world April 20 is 20 April. But I haven’t heard of anyone trying to make “204” work.)

I’d known (and  written about) “420” for years. But  until very recently I hadn’t known about the week’s other big event: April 19, Bicycle Day. It commemorates the day in 1943 that the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann took some LSD and then rode his bicycle home from the Sandoz laboratory in Basel, where he was employed.

 

Bicycle Day blotting paper via eBay

Brands of the decade: 2010–2019

Ten years ago, when social media and blogging were still new and a rational person was in the White House, I did something ambitious and presumptuous: I published a list of the Brands of the Decade.*

And now it’s time to do it again.

To qualify for my highly subjective top-12 list, a brand had to meet these guidelines:

• Founded during the second decade of the 21st century or shortly before or
• Had a significant impact on the way we do business or live our lives during this decade or
• Consistently made headlines during the decade (for better or worse).

Because I’m a name developer, I gave a little extra weight to brands with interesting or influential names.

A message to sticklers: Yes, I know that actually a decade begins in a year ending in 1, not 0. SORRY.

In alphabetical order, then:

November linkfest

The wildfires have barely been extinguished here in California, but it’s already word-of-the-year season across the pond, where three prominent dictionaries chose words or phrases with a common theme: climate change, or preventing it. Cambridge Dictionary went first, with upcycling: “the activity of making new furniture, objects, etc. out of old or used things or waste material.” Collins Dictionary chose climate strike: “a protest demanding action on climate change.” And Oxford Dictionaries picked climate emergency from an all-environmental shortlist that included “climate action,” “climate denial,” “eco-anxiety,” “extinction” and “flight shame.”

Let the record show that lexicographer Jane Solomon, recently of Dictionary.com, spotted the trend back in September.

So @OxfordWords picked ‘climate emergency’ for their 2019 Word of the year. And @CollinsDict picked ‘climate strike.’

In September I suggested ‘climate crisis.’

Clearly lexicographers are all on the same page about this. https://t.co/75klqC7c6e

— 〰️Jane Solomon〰️ (@janesolomon) November 20, 2019

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Kosher (for Passover) cannabis

Years ago, long before California legalized cannabis, I knew a pair of Jewish Deadheads whose Passover table always included “sweet herb” (wink, wink) along with the traditional bitter herb. (Or so they said. They never invited me to their seder.) I’ve lost touch with them, but if they’re still observing the ritual, I bet they’re plotzing over this year’s convergence of 4/20—the equivalent of St. Cannabis’ Day—and the first day of Passover. It’s like Thanksgivukkah, but for stoners. Call it Weed-Over, if you must. (The coinage belongs to Arielle Kaplan, a writer for Alma, the new-ish Jewish publication “for ladies with chutzpah.”)

So: How best to honor the occasion? Is cannabis kosher? Is cannabis kosher for Passover? Are we going to be asking 420 questions instead of the traditional four?

To the last question I say: Isn’t the seder already punishingly long? As for the others, here’s what I’ve dug up.

Name in the wild: Blunts+Moore

Now that the sale, possession, and use of recreational cannabis have been legal in California for a full year, what’s happening with weed branding? Well, cannabis ads are still outlawed on San Francisco’s Muni buses, streetcars, and cable cars. On the other hand, I’ve been noticing a lot of outdoor advertising in strategic locations around the Bay Area: big, bold billboards near freeway on-ramps and bridges. Some are for companies that were founded before full legalization took effect on January 1, 2018, like Eaze (a delivery service) and Weedmaps (“a community where businesses and consumers can search and discover cannabis products, become educated on all things cannabis, review cannabis businesses and connect with other like-minded users”).

But one new brand caught my attention when I saw it on a billboard on the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge: Blunts+Moore. Merely descriptive was my first thought. After all, blunt has been a slang term for “marijuana cigarette” for at least 30 years; the Random House Dictionary of Historical Slang connects it to Phillies Blunt*, a trademark in use since 1958 for a brand of inexpensive cigars.

But wait: there’s more. And also Moore.

May linkfest

Hotels.com registered the longest URL in internet history “to prove it has more than hotels.” (Adweek)

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“One very recent scandal in immigration politics in Britain was, improbably, named after a ship that sank decades ago.” (Lingua Franca) .

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Kim Kardashian’s decision to name her new lingerie line “Kimono Intimates” has provoked charges of cultural appropriation. But all Jezebel – and I – could think of was a 30-year-old condom brand.

 

Word of the week: Blockchain

If you’re just a tiny bit aware of blockchain, it’s probably thanks to Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer virtual currency introduced in January 2009 and rising sensationally, if erratically, in value ever since. (On November 25 a single bitcoin was worth US$8,770.) Bitcoin was made possible through blockchain technology, which, put as simply as possible, is a linked and cryptographically secured list of transactions.

Blockchain – also known as advanced digital ledger technology, or ADLT – makes obvious sense for currency. But it’s much more than the core component of a quirky monetary system with an enigmatic inventor. “Simply put,” The Economist explained in an October 31, 2015, article, “it is a machine for creating trust.” And that means blockchain’s potential for secure transactions of many kinds is seemingly limitless. In fact, “blockchain for X” is fast becoming the new “Uber for X.”

Chart via PwC.