i’ll take the high road and you’ll take the low road

Though never looking forward to my long workweek commute—which is less frequent in these times and am able to telework (oder Home Office) most days one big consolation is a stretch of road I take over the mountains from outside of Bischofsheim to Fladungen along state road 2288, the Hochrhönstraße, crossing the highlands and connecting two regions as well as a conduit to manage traffic through the UNESCO-recognised nature reserve. Opened to vehicular traffic with fanfare on this day in 1958—construction began in the early 1930s but delayed during the war and only much later was the gravel path asphalted, this twenty-five kilometre scenic route could well be the highlight of any journey but it is especially nice to see just before coming home.

font specimen

Boing Boing brings us a nice retrospective appreciation of the life and work of the recently departed typographer Ephram Edward (Ed) Benguiat (*1927), whose expansive family of fonts every one of us has surely encountered and used—Bookman, ITC Avant Garde, Panache, Souvenir—plus his formatting, layout and logotype for periodicals including Esquire, Playboy, Reader’s Digest, the San Diego Tribune newspaper and Sport Illustrated.

Beginning his work in graphic design just after World War II as a so called “cleavage retoucher,” Benguiat was part of a team assigned to airbrush out nudity or otherwise suggestive images in film and magazines to comply with Hays Code impositions, however by the 1970s his signature aesthetic for display typefaces and titles was in the kerning—regarded as “sexy spacing” between letters, flirtatiously not quite touching. Aside from movie posters and corporate campaigns for Super Fly (1972), Planet of the Apes (1968) and Foxy Brown (1974, ITC Caslon, № 224), Benguiat also was responsible for the opening credits sequence for the prestige television series Stranger Things. Learn more at the links above.

try the grey stuff - it's delicious, don't believe me, ask the dishes

Best thing I’ve seen in a few days.

“Wear A Mask” to “Be Our Guest”

Brilliant... pic.twitter.com/qGoYlLmKjA

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) October 18, 2020

the pharmacological merits of apotropaic magic

Just as drills for a zombie apocalypse is a useful heuristic for disaster-preparedness in general, so too are models of the inevitable vampiric saturation of run-away predation verses a more managed approach a tool for understanding contagion and immunity. Deferring to science, Dracula will always best our superstitions and folk-interventions.

pilzfund

H and I wandered a bit in the woods foraging for mushrooms, and while we didn’t really encounter anything that we were reasonably certain was edible and warranted collecting and later research, we found that the forest was ripening with all sorts of fungi, including Wood’s Ear (Auricularia auricula-judae—see previously and which we forgot again was safe for consumption and is widely used in China—I just don’t know about the texture and the prospect of picking one up) that was pretty widespread along the path and some more nice examples of fly agaric (Amanita muscaria, Fliegenpilz, see above). 

A new variety that we had not encountered beforehand, however, were these colourful ones in the same family—sometimes referred to “verdigris agaric” called blue roundhead (Stropharia caerulea, der Grünblaue Träuschling)—the specific epithet caerulea being Latin for blue while for contemporary speakers it generally indicates a shade between azure and teal. Host trees are usually beeches (Buchen) and thrive in alkaline soils.

this is what happens when streams are crossed

We previously enjoyed the musical mashups The Grey Album and the Beastles (full compilations at the link below) and so appreciated making the acquaintance with the broader repertoire of cross-over classics with Kraftwerk and here with Ray Parker Jr’s Ghostbusters vs Intergalactic (see also).

international necktie day

Honoured worldwide on this day, the fashion tracing its origins back to the traditional uniforms worn by Croatian mercenaries stationed in France during the Thirty Years War (1618 – 1648) with knotted neckerchiefs (see previously), which garnered the interest of the courtiers in Paris—especially when the boy king Louis XIV donned this accessory. Worn by both men and women, this article of clothing came to be called the cravat, a compromise between the endonym Hrvati and the exonym Croates, with the lacier variety distinguished as a jabot. Traditionally the observance includes historical and art installations as well as presentations on etiquette and knotting a tie.