Mad Men

Ok. So the new season of Mad Men starts this Sunday. I love this show. I don't typically enjoy dramas but I do love this show.

So, here I was yesterday evening, sitting in a sports bar/grill, trying to explain this show over dinner. I found myself trying to describe the plot and enumerate the reasons why I so irrationally love this show.

It IS more than the wardrobe and hairstyle choices, really - men in suits and fedoras, women in shirt-waists and heels, slick and sassy. Meanwhile, back at the bar/grill, all around me were men in Ravens ball caps, untucked golf shirts and cargo shorts, while women were sporting either Ravens jerseys or summer-time casual tee-shirts and flip flops (opening exhibition game Ravens/Redskins - Ravens kicked a@#). Not even a dusky, hazy romance of cigarette smoke to blur the edges of the establishment (and no, I'm not advocating smoking - asthma and smoke, not good - but you have to admit, it does set a certain mood and I do kinda' miss it in some ways). Fedora - ball cap. Heels - flip flops. You do the math on this one.

Anyway, my fondness for this show comes down to this. It is a sassy, historically-based prime-time soap opera. I don't mean soap opera in a bad way. I mean soap opera in the finest Dallas and Falconcrest way but even better because it contains an element of awareness and tribute to historical impact of events during that time (women's roles, men's roles, sexual preference, the Civil Rights movement, Bay of Pigs) and all the wonderfully awful reactions to these kinds of issues. And then, right along side these, there's smoking and drinking and golf and divorce and cheating and...well...drama in all it's HD techni-color glory, and then some.

It's a sophisticated combination of Shakespeare and the WWE. I mean that in the best possible way. You can't get much better than that.

Day 4

Remember? Back at the end of June? When I started out to write 30,000 words over the course of a month? Right. Well, I'm back to it. So this is actually Day 4. Nice.

Here we go!

the350project.net - worth a look

I'm quoting here from Vogue Knitting but don't let that stop you from reading about an interesting economic initiative:

"The premise of the 3/50 Project is simple: Pick three local stores you couldn't stand to see disappear and spend $50 every month at those stores (that's $50 altogether, not at each individual outlet). According to the numbers crunched by 3/50 Project founder Cinda Baxter, a retail specialist concerned about the economy's impact on indie stores nationwide. 'If even half the employed population spent a mere $50 per month in locally owned retail stores, those purchases would generate more than $42.6 billion in revenue." Want more math? For every $100 spent in locally owned independent stores, $68 remains in a community's economy, versus $43 spent at national chains and $0 spent on online purchases."

Now, I'm not interested in fact-checking here but it does sound rather like an interesting idea. Primarily because I like local establishments.