Just a couple of days ago, I wrote about my daughter Haley’s quest to get into a prestigious design school and some of the entrance challenges facing aspiring designers these days—as compared to my own experience back in the Dark Ages. I left off with “Drum roll, please…” since her acceptance had not yet been determined.
Today, she received the final answer: “Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the UW Division of Design.”
This, my friends, is what happens when you leave a trombone player unsupervised for a couple of weeks.
It’s probably a good idea I’m not smart enough to engineer one of these things. Otherwise, the entire string section from the EWU Symphony Orchestra circa 1985–89 might not be with us today.
Life was really simpler when I attended college.
I remember casually taking the SAT test one Saturday in high school, but I couldn’t possibly tell you the results (nor do I want to know). These days, GPA, SAT/ACT scores, AP courses – not to mention how much you help the poor – are all measures pored over by college admissions.
What happened to the days when attending design school was simply a matter of enrolling? As if a diploma and filling out a registration form didn’t demonstrate a real passion for a life-long career.
For my oldest daughter, Haley, who also has an interest in my profession, it’s something like being a contestant on American Idol: do or die. This past Tuesday, she attended an all-day tryout for future graphic designers (or, as it’s called these days, “visual communication design”) at the University of Washington.
Over 130 kids where there, vying for 42 spots. Bring your portfolio, they were told. Demonstrate your creative thinking with two live assignments that would make most professionals more than a little nervous, and make sure your resume and a letter of intention are free from typos.
A week will pass before Haley knows whether the design professors are more like Simon Cowell or Jennifer Lopez. And since they only encourage freshman to apply, don’t bother applying next year if you don’t make it. You only get one chance.
Jeez. And I thought some of my professors were tough when their critique was less than enthusiastic about one of my lame design solutions.
Nothing to do now but wait. Drum roll, please…
There are a number of two-word phrases that, when combined into one word, cause a shift in grammatical function. For example, set up is a verbal phrase; setup is a noun. Likewise login, a noun (or, in some cases, an adjective), becomes a verbal phrase when written thus: log in.
I bring this up because a depressingly large number of people seem to confuse everyday with every day.
The former is principally an adjective, as in “I need a suit for everyday wear.” The latter is an adverbial phrase: “I smoke three packs of cigarettes every day.”
To demonstrate the difference, here’s Big Joe Turner with Pee Wee Crayton and Sonny Stitt:
[audio:https://helveticka.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/04-Every-Day-I-Have-the-Blues.mp3|titles=04 Every Day I Have the Blues]“The only way to write is well,” said A. J. Liebling, “and how you do it is your own damn business.” He’s right, of course. Which means Stanley Fish is wrong. Joseph Epstein explains.
The Washington Post celebrates the 25th anniversary of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with a list of 25 Bueller-related contributions to pop culture.
Germany has Bach; Austria has Mozart, Britain has Elgar. And Norway? Why, black metal, of course.
Finally, Kuriositas takes a look at John Heartfield’s anti-Nazi photomontages.
A new study confirms what I’ve long suspected: left-handed people are no more likely to be gifted than their right-handed counterparts. One could even go so far as to suggest that left-handedness is an indication of cognitive impairment.
But I won’t.
Sometimes, an idea is so simple and obvious it seems like it can’t possibly work. Take…er, “breastaurants.”
“Why do regular customers come in three times or more a month?” asks the CEO of one particular franchise (called, with characteristic understatement, Twin Peaks). “What more could a guy ask for: great food, sports, beer, and a cute girl to look at. We don’t go real deep.”
Eddie Vedder’s new album of ukulele songs—called, um, Ukulele Songs—is 35 minutes of awesome. No, really. Check it out:
[audio:https://helveticka.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/03-Without-You.mp3|titles=03 Without You]“Hone in on.”
Not only did I hear this phrase—twice—yesterday, I also saw it in print. (Granted, it was the Inlander, but still.) The problem is, it’s incorrect.
To hone is to sharpen. You hone knives, lawnmower blades, and battleaxes. You also hone your skills at something—like wielding that newly sharpened battleaxe.
To home in on something is to move toward a target. (The center of a target is called “home.”)
Alas, it’s not nearly as simple as all that. My copy of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (fourth edition) approves of the use of hone in when referring to advancing toward a target or goal; likewise when directing one’s attention or focus.
But when you read on, you discover that hone in is, in fact, nothing more than an “alteration” of home in. In other words, enough ill-informed people have mistakenly uttered “hone in on…” that the editors of my favorite dictionary have effectively waved the white flag of surrender.
Yes, yes, I know that language evolves. But evolution—whether of species or of words—is a function of necessity, not of laziness or ignorance. In what possible way is hone in an improvement over home in? What gaping hole in our language does it fill?
Yeah. That’s what I thought.
Yeah, I like typography—almost as much as I enjoy sitting down. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I want to combine the two, even with the “coordinating floor lamps [that] cover more than 20 punctuation marks.”
Design Blog has the details.
From Louis Menand’s article on the value of higher education in the June 6 issue of The New Yorker:
“…students and their parents are overvaluing a commodity for which there are cheap and plentiful substitutes. The sticker price at Princeton or Stanford, including room and board, is upward of fifty thousand dollars a year. Public colleges are much less expensive—the average tuition is $7,605—and there are also many less selective private colleges where you can get a good education, and a lot more faculty face time, without having to spend every minute of high school sucking up to your teachers and reformatting your résumé. Education is about personal and intellectual growth, not about winning some race to the top.”
Read the entire article here.
We’ve been doing a lot of celebrating here at the last word. First, it was the news that a Tintin movie will be released this coming December. Then, it was the 100th anniversary of the death of Mahler, followed by Bob Dylan‘s 70th birthday.
But we’re certainly not going to let the birthday of the late Miles Davis pass without mention. Rather than celebrate with something from Kind of Blue or In a Silent Way, however—groundbreaking albums each, but a little obvious, don’t you think?—I thought it might be nice to share “Autumn Leaves” from Cannonball Adderley’s 1958 album Somethin’ Else.
I was just a kid when I first heard this tune. But Miles’s entrance on the head, halfway through the 24th bar, changed me forever. Check it out:
[audio:https://helveticka.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/01-Autumn-Leaves.mp3|titles=01 Autumn Leaves]Wanna avoid a natural disaster? Don’t watch “The Real Housewives of New Jersey.” Apart from that, it seems your best bet is living in the northwest.
Five of the eight U.S. metro areas with the lowest risk from weather disasters and earthquakes are in Washington State; Spokane ranks sixth safest overall. So we’ve got that going for us. Which is nice.
Now, if only we had a real record store.