You can’t say it’s summer when it’s September. Might as well stop with the elaborate justifications. It’s over. I almost feel better admitting it; now I can eat.
A few people have asked me how I like the redesign of the Oval Office. Well:
It’s certainly brown. I hate the table, which looks like it was saved from a rusty Borg cube. Otherwise it has a nice autumnal feel – sedate, calm, subdued. If I was called there I would find the colors soothing, but it does sort of have a 4:00 PM-in-America feel to it. I wonder if occupants of the office request a new look because they spilled coffee on the carpet, and think: that’s not coming up. There are splotches on the carpet at work that have been there for a long time, and have survived the person who made the mess in the first place. I don’t think anyone who made the spill remembers the particular incident, or regarded themselves responsible if they walked past a year later and saw a dark brown mark of shame. I know I’d probably spill coffee on the first day of my job as President, and it would just ruin the event. The Chief Joints of Staff would come in and I’d be on hands and knees, trying to blot it up. Cream-colored carpet. Really, gentlemen, it’s just asking for this. Of course you could call in someone to clean it up, but there would be silent reproach and judgment: really? On your first day? Oh it’s no trouble at all Mr. President. I got up this morning hoping I could help make history by cleaning up a rug. Can I get you a soda so you can spill some on the leather-trimmed blotter? It was a gift to TR from the Rajah of India.
I wonder what’s in the desk drawers. Whether the President has the same things we do – a battery, an old memory card that hardly holds anything anymore, a dead pen, a Post-It note pad with ten sheets left (you can’t throw it out, but you never get around to using them all), business cards you mean to scan. Probably not.
What’s missing? A computer. It’s odd to see a desk without a computer. It’s odd to think of someone in charge having a desk that doesn’t have a computer. So . . . someone in the next office sees something important, they print it off? I know what you’re thinking: if it’s important, the President will know it. But I like the idea that the CIC might hit the internet now and then, see what’s out there. What people are saying. Maybe he has a laptop. White House standard issue. Wonder if he has admin privileges.
So the last day of summer was spent as the first day was spent, I suppose. School then, and school today. Got her out the door; blogged, edited video – no Fair today, but rather editing of previous work – then the hour rolled around, and I sat outside waiting for the bus. It was late. It’s always late the first few weeks. She came trudging up the stairs, said school was “fine,” and declined to pass along any details. I assume that if they start branding them with hot irons, I’ll hear about it. After 5 we went off to her cello lesson, and the sky was wonderful:
Passed a neighborhood theater – it’s nothing special architecturally, but the typeface is spiffy:
It spawned a Chank font a long long time ago; wonder if it’s still around . . . yes. Then I filled up the gas tank, and you’re thinking: thanks, bud, for sharing! Well, there’s a tale there: I never let it get under a half a tank, but somehow it happened – and somehow I kept pushing it and pushing it, until the needle was kissing the E. I actually got on the highway last night when it was grazing E, and thought: I can do this. Today the Element took 11 gallons, which I understood to be the capacity of the tank. Turns out it’s almost 16. Makes me wonder: did gas gauges ever accurately reflect how much you have, or have they always had a built-in safety factor? I’d like to think that in the olden times an engineer would fix a cold Scottish eye on an underling who suggested they build in a safety margin, and tell him we’re not in the business of lyin’ t’ folks about their fuel, laddybuck. A man needs to know what a man needs to know.
I filled up at a yellow station, which was different. Usually I fill up at a blue-and-white station, or a green station if I’m heading to the mall on Saturday. Aren’t many yellows around here – and by yellow of course I mean Shell. I always feel somewhat sorry for stations whose brands are sparsely represented and have no ad campaigns. The company abandons markets all at once sometimes, but now and then they just retreat, and leave consignees adrift like shoals after the tide went out. The pump was plastered with information about Shell’s specially formulated gas, which boiled down to blah blah hydrogen blah blah injectors blah. You might think a smart petroleum company would go for the hip & flippant campaign – “Yeah, it’ll get you there” or “It’s just gas. Go over there and pay more, if you want.” But no. Me, I base my purchases on the usual intangibles that drive marketing consultants to despair. If they asked me today why I bought Shell, I’d say: it was close, it was Yellow, and I’m always amused by the company’s backstory – as I understand it, they began selling shells for decorative purposes, started a craze, then the son of the company’s founder was on an expedition to a foreign country to find more shells, and when he learned the locals also sold oil, he decided to branch out. Isn’t that cool, when you think of it? Also, the name isn’t “Pump and Munch,” which is another local chain, and sounds like a website that would be blocked at work.
Seriously: PUMP AND MUNCH. That’s the C-store brand for the Winner Gas franchise.
There’s something a bit disturbing across the street:
Between the tattered sign and the curiously inert old Beetle, you don’t get the sense of a dynamic, go-getter part of town.
Well: back to the Fair tomorrow. If you missed today’s video, it’s here, and it has a segment that just cracks me up. The tumblr blog was actually working today, which was nice; you can find the updates here if you missed them. (It’s the Institute of Official Cheer’s blog, in case you’re wondering.) Have a grand day – and see you at the Fair, perhaps.
No, probably not.
Pass it along, if you wish
99 Responses to It’s Yellow
Host with the Most
My goodness – over three bucks for gas? Around here it’s two fifty five, maybe two sixty. Don’t mean to hijack a thread that really hasn’t begun, but I thought prices like that were in Hawaii or CA.
Oh – the oval office? Looks like that ‘depression colorless chic’ catalog that I saw here a few days ago. Beige is so… beige.
The new Oval Office decor is remarkably bad. George W. Bush was probably the worst President we’ve had so far, but I actually liked his rug: http://www.bremenbaseball.com/whm/west-wing/oval-office/oval-office-2009-obama-first-day.jpg
I had enough of that lackluster ad jazz back in the slacker days. The apex or nadir was OK Soda.
Drink it or don’t who gives a ****?
Maybe an ad campaign with bastardized movie quotes:
Octane, mother****er! Do you speak it?
Maybe the Oval Office has a spiffy flat glass screen and projected keyboard set into the desk top, like the head of ENCOM in ‘Tron’.
It’s a somewhat small desk. Don’t suppose they can do much about that.
In old movies, the master criminal/evil ruler was always sitting in a throne with nothing in front of him. Terribly boring. With a desk, you can at least doodle or play solitaire. On the other hand, it makes it appear that Ruler of the World is just a civil service position.
Al apparently hasn’t noticed the president we have now.
I don’t know if Lileks meant to give us a link to yesterday’s video, but it’s here:
http://www.startribune.com/local/fair/101898883.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU
Terrifying pagan rites! I knew Minnesota must have some kind of Wicker Man scene.
I meant Al “F”, of course, not Irish Al.
Carmina Burina makes everything special – it was a literal LOL situation for me.
Oh – and gas is running about $2.49 in the KC area.
Of course, my vehicle takes mid-grade (about $2.60) and can take 20 gallons of it.
Do you have anything on the old Shell Answer Series? That is how I learned to count “one thousand one, one thousand two” after the car in front of me passes an object. I was only twelve! There were these little yellow booklets that told you how to change a tire, etc. Sometimes they would come as a magazine insert. But the idea was to go to the local Shell station for the new booklet that month (or quarter). The tagline was “Come to Shell for answers.”
Me, I don’t like that coffee table. It’s not just that it’s a square shape — it’s the Oval Office, we should have an oval coffee table — but it looks cheap and shoddy, like something I would have made from an old shipping case. Lots of stain to match the desk.
Bob
I hate it when James embeds a Google street view, and the page keeps jumping to that spot…
Here in the Garden State, I’m paying $2.39 for gas. And we aren’t allowed to pump our own.
@hpoulter: “Al apparently hasn’t noticed the president we have now.”
It would seem that way, wouldn’t it?
As to the Oval Office decor, it’s depressingly reminiscent of the 1970s. Much like the current administration.
That coffee table does clash. But imagine the room done up in a style consistent with it and you’ll really shudder.
As for dud presidents in, say, the last twenty years, the phrase “spoilt for choice” comes to mind.
I wonder if anyone has sat on one of those couches, grabbed an apple, and taken a big, juicy bite?
Doesn’t the Oval Office look awfully small? Also, isn’t the color scheme depressed? This is not Morning in America. In our Chief Executive, this is sort of worrisome.
Al:
Nonpartisan opinion of three presidents clearly worse than George Bush in the last 100 years:
In descending order:
1. Warren Harding
2. Herbert Hoover
3. Jimmy Carter
Also Richard Nixon gets an asterisk, depending on how you look at it he tops the list.
(any body else is subject to your political persuasion)
Hoover got a bum rap – a necessary part of building the FDR myth. I would say Wilson was one of our worst presidents, but since any list but yours is subject to political persuasion, that is clearly a political view.
One example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918
Here’s an interesting article on how gas gauges work and why they are inaccurate when a tank is near full or near empty.
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-gauge1.htm
I wonder if there’s a Secret Service guy who’s primary job is to sanitize the President’s computer every night? I assume he’s got one somewhere, perhaps out of public view.
What I object to in the Oval Office makeover is the sofas. They are far too comfy. Those look like sofas you get to lie on and watch Saturday afternoon tv because it’s too dang hot (or cold or temperate) out to do anything. If you are The Leader of the Free World or meeting TLotFW you shouldn’t both be lying on sofas.
Oh, and gas is $2.65 here in Toledo.
The two states you can’t pump your own gas in: New Jersey & Oregon. I’ve lived in both of them.
I have heard that our congenial host has recently visited a fair. So which fair was it, and why hasn’t he said anything about it?
@GardenStater
I don’t think it jumps to the streetview if you use Chrome as your browser.
@RPD
Depends on what you mean by “sanitize.”
“Pump and Munch” is in a league with the chain “Kum & Go,” which I always thought evoked a bordello with a madam on a tight schedule.
The coffee table looks Photoshopped in that Oval Office photo. Oh, I’m sure it’s not. It just appears, to my eye, to be sort of hovering in the scene without being part of it.
Speaking of photos is that a UFO in your last picture, by the way? Right above the trees.
Most gas stations here are Shells, Mobils, Cumberland Farms or Go-Go Gas but there’s a new one I’ve seen popping up in the suburbs around the city. I can’t think of its name, but it has a logo very similar to the logo for the old Renegade Press publishing house (shoot, I can’t find a decent picture online, but it’s the logo in the upper lefthand corner of this cover http://www.flamingcarrot.com/…/FCbibliography.html ) and it seems to be taking over Shell stations.
There is also “Squat and Gobble”. The restaurants currently using that name are doubtless using it with self-aware irony, but I know there was one in OK City in the 40s. My mother thought it was disgusting.
$3.19 a gallon here in the Northern CA foothills. A bit more down in Sacramento. Costco and independents currently hold the price advantage $3.09 or so).
And I doubt I could find a full service station, even if I wanted to.
No streetview jumpage in Firefox.
I don’t mind the browns and tans in the Oval Office decor .v44. But does there have to be so much of it? I guess it’s like his politics: all or nothing.
“Pump and Munch”; nothing like a breakfast sandwich with gas fumes on your fingers. You people in NJ and Oregon don’t know what you’re missing.
Nope, I don’t like that decor. It’s so..boring. That’s frustrating, because you know it cost a lot of money. Yet it’s got no flair. And that table looks like a 1980′s kitchen floor ripped up and recycled. It would be more interesting if it actually were a recycled kitchen floor.
Hpoulter:
sure any list including mine is subject to political persuasion (the sarcasm wasn’t necessary) but very few people would rate Hoover a good president. You might say he suffered from the FDR myth but Democrats would argue vociferously.Even most Republicans think he was bad, wasn’t getting a bum rap (that’s not to say you couldn’t find a couple who would) He was a nice guy but face it. the guy presided over the Depression and did stuff to make it worse, never mind whether Roosevelt was good or bad.
Wilson- same thing as FDR- some people would rate him an abject failure others think he was great.
My list, not free from politics thank you for reminding me, was an attempt to look at the consensus of guys who are generally rated as bad, regardless of which party you are from.
The line anybody else is subject to your political persuasion was meant to let you put Reagan or FDR at the bottom if your political views so inclined and let their supporters argue with you, but the guys mentioned there are worse than Bush by most measures – whose record is mixed on almost every count.
That coffee table looks exactly as if someone slapped on peel-n-stick vinyl flooring tiles on three pieces of plywood.
I wonder what the story is behind that thing. Will have to look up the redesign web site and see if there are furniture descriptions.
As for the computer – I think the Office is more for going over papers and acting as a formal reception/meeting area for dignitaries and functions. The computer would most likely be some where else where they could hard wire the internet connection (am thinking that any wireless is for personal and non-work related use). Perhaps they give him a laptop without WIFI to work on and then his asst. dumps the docs for printing, storing, forwarding, etc.
And I laugh at the thought of him having admin privileges. They might let him update his iPod software and that’s about it.
…I’m betting there’s no computer on his desk because any web history, web searches, and email would all fall under the “freedom of information” act.
can’t read what isn’t there.
guy googles “pretty girl dresses” for his daughter for christmas, and all heck would break loose
better to lean over and say to an aide, “find me a pretty little girl’s dress”. hmm. maybe not.
it ain’t easy bein’ the leader of the free world
I think I saw that same scheme the Oval Office has on a page in Our Host’s book Interior Desecrations, or else on the website of the same name. The whole thing reeks of 1970s-we’re-in-a-terrible-state-this-is-as-good-as-it’s-gonna-get motif.
When we were watching the President’s speech last night, my mom had an interesting question: What does Michelle call him when they’re not in front of everyone else? Barry? B.O.? Bob? Honey?
@Cory – I didn’t mean the sarcasm to wound, but it was kind of breathtaking to say your choices were “non-partisan”. IMO, FDR did a lot more to prolong the depression than Hoover did – and I don’t really consider myself a Republican.
Face it – every political opinion is partisan, if you have any views at all.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/oval_office_makeover_Woc1tnbXhU4RdrfqloygIP
More photos of the OO makeover. Oddly, after the first photo, the room doesn’t look quite so yellow. I like the rug from GWB’s term much more so than this one. But love this wallpaper.
And agree with Brisko who remarked that the coffee table looks Photoshopped into the picture. I think it’s that you can see that dark edge of walnut and gives the appearance of a poor cut and paste job. I think you could make a modern piece of furniture fit into the area and give it an eclectic look but that thing is just wrong. Also thinking those corners will do some damage to many a knee.
“Beige – I’ll paint the ceiling beige…
I’m with rbj; those couches look entirely too comfy.
And that table looks like contact paper on particle board.
Ordinarily I’d think it anti-intellectual to turn up one’s nose at a chemistry lesson, but then there are so many BAD ones. I presume that when Shell says its antiknock additive has nitrogen, they mean it’s just a Techron-like amino ether. Telling me it has nitrogen is like that Whole Foods employee I overheard telling a customer a certain supplement would give him more chlorine.
They don’t have c-stores in eastern Turkey, but in eastern Turkey was the best gas station name I ever saw: Kur?unsuzo?lu, “The Unleaded One’s Son.” Every single Turkish surname sounds like a leg-pull, especially the ones that had to have been picked well AFTER the 1934 decree.
Well, just tryin’ to get everybody’s mind off politics. I have certainly got mine off work.
@AnnaN: “…those corners will do some damage to many a knee.”
Good point. Barry better make sure to keep the lights on when he’s walking around the OO.
Oval Office decor is OK, I guess. A little too beige for my taste, though.
that coffee table has got to go! Is that formica ? As a previous poster mentioned, I’ve seen that pattern on kitchen floors before.
Gas here in Seattle is about $3.20/gal. I drive a chevy suburban – ouch.
@hpoulter, GardenStater, Cory, et al…You all have good points, and I may have spoken too soon when I said that George W. Bush was our worst president so far. For example, I forgot all about Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, LBJ and Nixon. For me, Jimmy Carter’s ineptitude was overshadowed by the concurrent horrors of disco music and the CB craze. Obama? I see him as Bush II.
So the Obamas got the new Restoration Hardware catalog in the mail too, apparently.
Paul: up here in Canada, if I’ve done my conversion right, we’re paying roughly $3.60/gallon. And that’s relatively cheap for us these days. And over in Ireland, they’re paying something like $6+/gallon. So $3.05 a gallon is pretty sweet. Gas prices in the US in general are CRAZY low compared to elsewhere in the world.
Now, RE: summer ending when school starts… Hogwash! For me, summer starts when the warm weather hits, and ends when it stops. Some years, that means that up here in the Toronto area we don’t get a summer starting till mid-July, sometimes mid-April. And most years, the warm weather sticks around till the end of September.
No matter how they decorate it, the underlying grace and beauty of the room shine through, like a beautiful girl dressed up in burlap sacks. The next President will be able to strip the ticky-tack and get back to something clean and elegant.
Maybe she’ll put in a grizzly bear rug. That would look nice.
I won’t go any further into the political discussion, apart from noting that Bush was by far not the worst president, but I will admit he was oddly ineffective at explaining what he was on about. His profile will rise once the political fires die down, as they will over time.
Besides, BO already has him beat.
On to less weightier matters: I can’t help looking at the OO photos without thinking of National Treasure II, which we saw recently. I wonder if any president, after seeing that movie, doesn’t get the urge to look at the undersides of the drawers and what he’d say if he was caught by his aides. (Let’s hope he doesn’t ask his predecessor for the Book of Secrets.)
Hpoulter:
Apology accepted, I know you weren’t trying to be mean.
And there is a movement today that FDR prolonged the Depression (the Amity Schlaes school), which has some legs but has a little bit of a partisan bend.
IT’s quite possible that’s true, but Roosevelt also was instrumental in winning World War II. Got to give him big points there.
Hoover – nobody is going to argue he helped get us out of the Depression.
And seriously is anyone going to argue that Hoover was a better president than FDR, even if FDR did prolong the Depression?
In terms of domestic policy, foreign policy, corruption, popularity (in the case of FDR/Hoover, four times versus once),
I think it’s possible to rate presidents and avoid too much partisan bend, not to get an absolute list but to get perspective. Some people will be at the very top, others at the very bottom- and the middle is where we bring our big arguments (LBJ, Jackson, Wilson). not completely objective but not a “political” list per se.
Sure every Democrat you ask today will say Bush is the worst president ever – that’s partisan and not really looking very objectively at what he did or didn’t do.
Without a lot of historical perspective yet, and without any strong feelings for or against Bush can one objectively say he was worse than Harding?
Let’s try to put Bush in perspective – won two terms, economy not bad for most of the time but bad on growing deficit, wars highly controversial, good on foreign aid to Africa, not so good on human rights, domestic agenda marginal at best. 9/11 difficult variable to figure. Some of the verdict will be out for a while.
Not Lincoln, but not Harding.
Obama- let’s wait before coming to any grand conclusions.
Two interesting issues here. First POTUS’ IT arrangements. I think we can safely rule out any wireless anything for or around him other than the encrypted Motorola radios used by the Secret Service. Wouldn’t want any stray RF emanations from POTUS’ computer getting picked up now would would we?
As for best and worst presidents, I’m of two minds about Bush. On balance he did pretty well, I think. On the other hand he spent waaay too much, and allowed two monstrous bureaucracies to be created, Homeland Security, and the National Intelligence Directorate. Both of which were redundant and unnecessary. Oh, and I almost forgot my least favorite outfit, the TSA. Wilson, actually I think he did a good job if you are prepared to ignore the police state he installed during The Great War, the income tax, and the League of Nations. Add in his antipathy toward black people, and bada bing, bada boom. Harding and Buchanan though, what a couple of howlers.
I am hoping the coffee table is the secret entrance into the Prez’s real office with the empty coffee cups, overflowing ashtrays, stacks of paper, computers with cables all sticking out, etc. The place where the real work gets done.
On the other hand, I would like to see a cavernous room with imposing chair on riser with the President sitting there stroking a cat.
That’s because we don’t tax the ever-lovin’ hell out of it.
Yet.
The newly decorated Oval Office looks entirely too informal. One would expect something more elegant for the office of the leader of the free world. That decor would be more appropriate in the President’s private living quarters. And I agree that the boxy, formica-looking coffee table is hideous.
Cory, you may want to rethink your low marks on Harding:
-We reversed many of Wilson’s racist policies (primarily dealing with African-Americans in Fed’l jobs)
-He released most of Wilson’s political prisoners (was it Debs?0
-The early 20s were pretty prosperous.
Oh, and the Oval Office could use some blue. In the mock Oval Office film sets, it always seems to have blue which seems correct.
Of course with blue they may have problems chroma keying in the president when he broadcasts from the “undisclosed location”.
Obama having admin rights … har har har! At first I imagined the OO desk having an Our-Man-Flint arrangement with PC screens and gadgets popping up. After further reflection they probably keep him off of the computer as much as possible for security reasons.
Gas here in Mayberry is about $2.40/gal, and a nickel or so less down in SC. If one of them there hurry-canes hits the Gulf, then all bets are off.