What Should I Call This?

The Tie Bar Pocket Squares: The Tie Bar was born out of frustration—frustration that ties cost so much. So former lawyers Greg and Gina Shugar decided to do something about it: Greg learned design, Gina learned the retail business, and soon thetiebar.com had solved their sartorial dilemma. It turns out they weren’t the only ones who were having trouble finding well-priced, on-trend accessories, and their success with neckwear led them to expand into tie bars, pocket squares, and cufflinks. Greg’s original designs (“traditional,” “trendy,” and “trenditional”), in seemingly countless colors and patterns, help any professional add that little extra.

$8.00 Denim - Light Blue (Cotton PSq)

 $10.00 Solid Wool - Navy (Wool PSq)

$8.00 CotDots - Navy/White (Cotton PSq)

$10.00 Wavebone Wool - Orange (Wool PSq)

Mati & The Music: 52 Record Covers 1955-2005 by Serge Bramly: The 1960s and 1970s offered many options for mind expansion: psychedelic drugs, Eastern meditation, sex—and the art of Mati Klarwein. Klarwein (1932–2002) was a major presence in the New York art scene, admired by everyone from Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí to Jimi Hendrix and Jackie Onassis (who commissioned him to paint a portrait of John F. Kennedy). His pop-surrealist universe of pantheistic religious harmony, sexual fertility and gender and racial unity gave visual expression to an era and to a generation of music, and was embraced by some of the most progressive musicians of his time. Mati & the Music presents Klarwein’s 52 paintings that appeared on album covers, a body of work that began in the mid–1950s and continued for half a century. The majority of the album covers Klarwein painted were commissioned by the musicians themselves, most famously by Miles Davis for his breakthrough fusion albums Bitches Brew and Live Evil and Carlos Santana for Abraxas. Others included Earth Wind & Fire, Buddy Miles and Gregg Allman. Major record labels also employed Klarwein, including Blue Note for Jackie McLean and Reuben Wilson, and Douglas Records for the Last Poets, Howard Wales and Jerry Garcia. With the trim size of an LP album, Mati & The Music will appeal to lovers of music, graphic design and psychedelic art.

$34.20 on Amazon

Commune Linen Throw: Saw one at the Ace Hotel & Swim Club in Palm Springs. Commune made this washed painter’s linen throw for us with metallic stitching — distressed just a bit, it wears the telltale signs from its portion of weather with a humble grace we can’t help but admire. It hangs from slatted walls next to the walking sticks. Versitile.

$200.00 at Ace Hotel Shop

Customized New Balance 574: Not to long ago the folks at New Balance launched the company’s new custom 574 program which allows you to take to the internet and create your own specially designed sneakers. It shockingly only takes five days for the special 574s to show up straight from the New Balance plant in Norridgewock, Maine. You can basically design the entire shoe all the way down to the color of the big N and the custom embroidery on the back of each sneaker. The possibilities are endless. So I trust you.

$114.00 at New Balance

Cuisinart Griddler GR-4N: Compact in size but big in features, Cuisinart’s countertop Griddler offers five-in-one functionality as a contact grill, panini press, full grill, full griddle, and half grill/half griddle. The stylish brushed stainless-steel housing looks sleek and modern in the kitchen and features a wide panini-style handle and a hinged floating cover that adjusts to various food thicknesses. On the base, two temperature controls and a function selector are clearly marked and have indicator lights for quick reference and accurate, no-guesswork operation. Open the cover and customize the cooking surface with removable and reversible nonstick grill and griddle plates that snap in and out easily and drain grease to an integrated drip tray for healthier cooking. The Griddler also comes with gourmet recipes and a cleaning scraper tool. The cooking plates, drip tray, and scraper all go safely into the dishwasher. Limited three-year warranty.

$98.95 on Amazon

Or cash…

I will take giftcards also…

…I’ll keep you posted

I’m completely convinced that human beings do not know how to care for nor how to be cared for. I think it has something to do with the fact that a person feels safe with the people they love/love them. However, the people that cares the most about you are the ones that are likely to stick around and forgive,… so that provides some sort of safety net in our mind that makes us think it’s okay to treat our loved ones badly. Actually, most of us do it, on a subconscience level, we are more likely to have an argument with our parents, sibling, friends, or significant other, than some passerby, even if they piss us off. And, if we’re having a bad day, or in a bad mood, it may become misdirected toward the people closest to us, just because we’re confident that they’re not going anywhere. We figure they’ll suck it up and take it, because they sense we’re just “frustrated,” or we had a “long day at work.” I’ll admit, I’m guilty, but I try not to take out my frustration in life on others. Or treat the people that will run through the wall for me less, than, because I know they will. To be honest those are the individuals we should be investing in. But thats a different story for a different day. But anybody “purposely” hurting the people that care about them the most needs to evaluate their inner self, their social skills, and their ability to hold long and fruitful relationships.

By Allison M. Vaillancourt

Last weekend, my local public-radio station ran a 2009 interview with Don Sobol, author of the Encyclopedia Brown series. Sobol talked about his 10-year-old mystery-solving main character and said that one of his most important tasks was making a really smart kid likeable to his readers. That caught my attention because I am constantly on the prowl for strategies to help really smart grownups be likeable.

Those of us who work in higher education have the opportunity to interact with a fair number of people who seem to think that being smart always trumps being congenial. For the most part, they do not mean to be unlikeable; it just doesn’t occur to them to make an effort to be pleasant. Their often standoffish or surly behavior prompts others to avoid them, which creates a nasty and perpetual cycle. “They are rude to me, so I have no choice but to rude to them.” I find this sad, but I can’t exactly ring them up and suggest they take a course on emotional intelligence, hire an executive coach, or start taking nice pills. But when someone asks for my advice, well, then I get an opportunity to have an important conversation — like the one I one had with one of my former graduate students when she called to ask for career advice.

She was ready to leave her current job, but was finding it hard to find a new one. Her experience and talent were not in question, so why did she keep getting interviews but no job offers? The answer, I feared, was that people found her insufferable. Because the constant rejection had compromised her usual high degree of self-confidence, I decided it would be a bad idea to ask her if she had considered being less of an annoying know-it-all. Instead, I took an indirect route. “How do you think people perceive you?” I asked.

Without having to consider her response, she blurted, “They would say I am spot on in my analysis, efficient, and generally the strongest member of any group. I am, hands down, the most intelligent. No question.”

“So, do you have any friends at work?” I inquired next.

“Friends? No, of course not. Those people are really not friend material,” she replied.

“You know,” I countered, “that might actually be a problem for you.” This led us into an interesting conversation about the importance of letting others discover your brilliance rather than offering daily reminders about it, and the power of making a game out of being kind when such behavior doesn’t feel natural. “Fake nice can actually work,” I explained. “At the very least, quit complaining about how stupid your colleagues are.”

“But I am not trying to be liked, I am trying to get things done,” she responded.

“Think of what you could accomplish if people actually wanted to help you,” I replied.

What advice have you given to students or colleagues who delight in making others feel small? Have you seen excessive arrogance hold people back? Do you have any tips for gently increasing self-awareness in others? Do you ever engage in fake niceness in order to get things done?

It’s unfortunate that a lot of my peers have been getting into some serious trouble this off-season. What is it like 28 now? I have lost count. Thus, I figured I would share with you the 6 AFC and NFC acronyms I use to stay out of trouble. Excuse the Ebonics by the way, it is a more fun way to really express how I feel about this.

Alcohol

So you want to get wasted. The dumbest –ish you can do in 2012 is publicly party like it is 99. Mofos in the club will be live tweeting your buffoonery for the world to see. You are in the NFL, making millions and you got a mansion. Bring the party home dammit.

Firearms

No need anymore. We out the hood now. Get a bodyguard if you are still that paranoid.

Crews

A Crew is not needed. Just ask Drake and Chris Brown. Roll solo, it will save you money and trouble.

No man.

Deion Sanders taught me this. You badly need a no man. Someone that tells you what you don’t want to hear like

“Are you really finna smoke, drink and of all the cars you got, you gonna drive the Ferrari to the club tonight and carry your gun with you? C’mon fooool, you gonna be on the next flight to go see Goodell”

Keep your NO man closer and yes men farther.

Fallback

You are famous and there are people that will hate and test you. You can’t deal with it the way you would when you were in the hood. You need to just fallback.

Consent.

Be careful of chicks and groupies. Those consenting smiles are sometimes fake. Sooner or later you might be defending yourself in a frivolous sexual assault case as she tries to stick you for your paper. Yes, some of these women “Stay Schemin”. There is a simple solution. The iPhone has an HD camera now. Make sex tapes all the time. It will make great memories and save you trouble.

If you apply these acronyms, it will save you trips to @nflcommish and you know he ain’t playing around these days.

Yours Truly,

Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson

By Rob Jenkins

Nearly 30 years ago one of my professors, talking about the way language evolves over time, predicted that the next evolutionary stage would involve common punctuation marks. Specifically, he said, the apostrophe would eventually cease to exist.

Think maybe I should send him a text to let him know just how accurate his prediction was?

As someone who teaches college writing to the text-messaging generation, I have observed that not only apostrophes but also capital letters have become, if not extinct, then at least increasingly conspicuous by their absence–sort of like some of my students when their essays are due.

I first began noticing this trend back in the mid-’90s, when e-mail replaced the telephone as the most common form of interpersonal communication between two people not in the same room. And that was before everyone had a laptop, a tablet, or a smart phone (if not all three). These days, even people in the same room are more likely to communicate electronically than verbally.

The text-messaging revolution has exacerbated the situation. Personally, I’ve never quite understood the attraction of texting. Maybe that’s because I’m still using my old Fred Flintstone signature-model flip phone, which I believe is made of water-buffalo horn and lacks a QWERTY keyboard. Thus I’m constantly having to push buttons multiple times. What a pain.

Couple that with the fact that the curmudgeonly English professor in me refuses to use abbreviations, substitute numbers for letters, or ignore the punctuation that I was so painstakingly (and painfully) taught in my youth.

And there, for me, lies the rub: do you know many times I have to press the “1″ key before I get to the apostrophe?

The upshot is that I seldom text, unless I’m in a situation where I have to communicate but can’t call, such as when my kids are at school or I’m at the barber getting my ear hair trimmed.

For teenagers and young adults, though, it’s different. They text while watching TV, while sitting in class, while driving, even while performing various bodily functions. (Yeah, I know. Too much information.) And so they’re constantly using that handy texting shorthand, perpetually neglecting to capitalize, and consistently ignoring the apostrophe.

All of which would be fine if it applied only to text messaging. The problem, I fear, is that we’re raising an entire generation of students who don’t actually know that they’re supposed to capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence. Who don’t realize that the preposition “for” is spelled f-o-r. Who have never really learned–or at least rarely put into practice–the rule that a possessive or a contraction requires an apostrophe.

The result, as my professor foresaw long ago, is that we’re losing a part of our language. Is it really that important, the apostrophe? I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure my editor wouldn’t have published this paragraph without four of them.