Sat, August 01
Pucker
National Mustard Day
Mustard is, well, cutting the mustard. As more Americans brown-bag lunch and dine at home, sales of the sauce are up. Revenue at market leader French's grew more than 6% last year. But mustard's sometime partner and neme-sis is doing even better: This past winter, sales of Heinz ketchup rock-eted 9%. For a response, we called Barry Levenson, curator of the World Famous Mustard Museum in Wisconsin. "Did Shakespeare ever write about ketchup?" he said. To which we replied, "He wrote about mustard?" Yes, he did, in The Taming of the Shrew. (Grumio: "What say you to a piece of beef and mustard?") Touché? -- ACL
Sun, August 02
Ogle
MOMAs "No Discipline" Show
New York
Israeli-born designer Ron Arad "is the most curious person I know," says Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. "We titled the show 'No Discipline' because so many designers choose to be on one side of design or the other -- working with galleries or industrial manufacturers -- but Ron was one of the first artists to be beyond those divisions." Arad's first major U.S. retrospective highlights his love for iterative design (successive chairs made from steel, carbon fiber, polyurethane, and fiberglass) and technology (SMS-enabled crystal chandeliers). Curious, indeed. -- KR
Sun, August 02
Spend
100th anniversary of first Lincoln penny
The first U.S. penny -- pure copper and featuring a woman with flowing hair -- was minted in 1792. But it wasn't until 1909, a century after Lincoln's birth, that the 16th prez's image made it to the coin. Now, to mark Honest Abe's 100th year on the one-cent piece, the U.S. Mint is introducing four new designs, each representing an era of Lincoln's life -- for instance, a log cabin for his childhood -- to replace the Lincoln Memorial on the tail side. Now those are some pretty pennies. -- AB
Fri, August 07
Fight Back
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Directed by Stephen Sommers
We love seeing famous monuments fall in movieland. The Statue of Liberty, for instance, has been done (Deep Impact), redone (Independence Day), and done again (Cloverfield), but a toppling Eiffel Tower, as seen in the trailer for G.I. Joe, feels newer to us. Big bangs signal a big budget -- and big hopes from fanboy lovers of the 1960s dolls (sorry, "action figures") and 1980s toys, cartoons, and comics alike. The now de rigueur video game will be released alongside the film, and as with all toy-to-movie-to-game adaptations, expectations are low. But the promos for G.I. Joe proclaim, "When all else fails, one team won't." We so want that to be true. Yo, Joe! -- ZW
Thu, August 13
FEED
The Global Food Crisis
Zacatecas, Mexico
Even as Americans talk about flab (see July 27), 15% of the world is going hungry and food prices in most developing countries are higher than they were a year ago. Profiteers are a problem; specul-ation on food prices has replaced speculation on mortgages, claims political scientist Susan George, author of How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger. She'll keynote this conference, which will dissect the latest devel-opments in the politics and economics of hunger. There's plenty of food ... for thought.-- GENEVIEVE KNAPP
Fri, August 14
Tackle
Madden NFL 10
Since 2001, seven of the nine athletes chosen for the cover of Madden NFL have ended up injured or ineffective after that season. "I never really thought the curse was real," says Madden NFL senior project manager Anthony Stevenson. "But last year, after Brett Favre's own team didn't want him back, I changed my tune a bit." Not that superstition affects sales: The 2009 edition moved a record-high 2.3 million copies in its first month. This year's cover has two athletes, the Steelers' Troy Polamalu and the Cardinals' Larry Fitzgerald. Stevenson hopes that will "reverse the curse." If not, at least John Madden, who in April announced his retirement from play by play, can go out with a big "boom!" -- DM
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