Popularity Contest

Webby AwardsNominations for this year’s Webby Awards are out, and I’m here to shamelessly plug a couple of favorites. First off, NYTimes.com is up for an award in the somewhat odd category of Best Home/Welcome Page. Suffice it to say, I’d encourage everyone to vote for everything Times-related, including our excellently written The Caucus, up for Best Political Blog; DealBook, our indispensable breaking news outlet covering the world of high finance; NYTimes.com Real Estate, our highly addictive index and marketplace for homes you can and can’t afford; and These Times Demand the Times, the companion site to our marketing campaign that debuted last year, which is up for an award in the category of Best Copy/Writing.

But that first award I mentioned for Best Home/Welcome page is the one I’ve got my eye focused on most keenly. It would be a very satisfying affirmation of the work we all do at NYTimes.com to have our front door, so to speak, recognized for all the hard management, debate and tireless tweaking that goes into it; it would be nice to get it, is all I’m sayin’. So please go cast your vote.

Also, I want to cite Design Observer, up for for best Culture/Personal Blog, as another nominee that I think deserves special attention. (It has no affiliation with The New York Times.) Though not without its flaws — I sometimes take issue with its reserved embrace of the conventions of online publishing — it’s nevertheless a remarkable site. The fact that this kind of critical design thinking is published regularly and for free is still hard to believe even though the site is in its fourth year of publishing. Over that time, it’s come to occupy a unique and indispensable position in the blogosphere as a platform for some of the most engaging, most provocative and, crucially, most accessible serious design discourse around. They have my vote.

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Apple’s Unnecessary Objects

In last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. Pamela Paul reviewed “Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole,” a new book by the political theorist Benjamin R. Barber. (It has a very good cover.) In reading it, I was struck by one phrase she wrote:

“Children’s lives are reduced to shopping excursions in which their identities are subsumed by brands — they’re the Nike generation, Abercrombie kids, iPod addicts.”

Hold up, “iPod addicts”? I haven’t read Barber’s book yet, so I don’t know if he in fact includes Apple and its ubiquitous iPod among his list of corrupting, infantalizing and, ahem, swallowing culprits. But the mention of everyone’s favorite fruit company alongside what I consider to be less seemly brands — Nike and Abercrombie are two of my least favorite companies anywhere — was a surprise.

In reading this, I was also reminded of a scene from “Fight Club,” an admittedly much less serious critique of modern capitalism, in which the characters embarked on a casual vandalism spree, targeting various consumer brands. For a very brief moment, an old-style Apple logo is displayed prominently in one of the targeted window displays. It’s not a flattering guest appearance for a logo, as the message is clear: Apple is an enemy.

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Three Things I’m Late On

Round-up time. If only each day was a few hours longer than twenty-four, I wouldn’t be so behind in posting these three items. If only!

First, I was lucky enough to be sitting about fifteen rows back from the third base line at Yankee Stadium on Saturday afternoon when Alex Rodriguez hit that game-winning grand slam against the Baltimore Orioles — in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs and two strikes. I acknowledge that even an event as unique as that is flirting the edge of what readers of this weblog are generally interested in, but I just wanted to say it was one of the coolest, most exhilarating things I’ve ever seen.

As it happened, my Saturday turned out to be a great day for seats at live events. Later that evening my girlfriend and I had front-row seats to see “Jack Goes Boating,” a two-act production from Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Ortiz’s LAByrith Theater Company — both actors appeared in it as well. It’s currently in its original run right now at The Public Theater in downtown Manhattan. Even if it’s not a groundbreaking entertainment, John Ortiz’s confident, commanding and highly watchable performance reaffirmed my contention that he’s currently the best kept secret going in the world of acting.

Finally, I’m very, very late to the party on this one: Wow, have you seen “The Shield”? I’d completely missed this FX Network original series until now, but it’s unbelievably good. Oh, and while we’re talking television, one more thing… Sci-Fi Network’s Battlestar Galactica is the most overrated television show ever.

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