AMC’s Mad Men is all about image. Don Draper, played by a rakish Jon Hamm, is an advertising executive whose specialty is convincing the rest of the world to buy whatever he is selling—even the identity he’s taken pains to craft, leaving out less desirable details of his past. Form follows function: the show’s creators have been heaped with praise, and more than a few awards, for the pitch-perfect slice of the 1960s they create and serve up to fans each week.
Articles by Tessa Stuart
Bill Pops Soda’s Bubble
To make a point to the assembled crowd at Marina’s Monterey Bay Science, Education and Technology Center last Friday, Assemblymember Bill Monning recalled a commercial that reached 111 million viewers on Super Bowl Sunday. The ad showed a Latina woman holding a liter of soda, asserting herself in bold defiance of forces that would try to tell her what she could or could not drink. PepsiCo paid $3 million for the 30-second spot; Monning invoked its as an example of the aggressive campaign soda manufacturers are waging for a particular demographic. “They are targeting minority communities because that’s where we have the more abundant consumption,” he told the crowd.
Missed Connections
We know you’re lonely, but (good news!) you’re not the only one. There are 124,720 single Santa Cruz County residents, according to figures from CNN and Money Magazine. Here we present an unedited snapshot of love and longing in our city in the past week alone, courtesy of Craigslist.org.
Tiffany 4Ever
The first single off the singer Tiffany’s self-titled 1987 debut album flopped. It was the second, a remake of Tommy James and the Shondells’ 1967 hit “I Think We’re Alone Now,” outfitted with drum machine beats and some serious bass synth, that would propel the album to the top of the charts in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland. It sold 4.1 million copies all told, making it a platinum record four times over.
The War At Home
“Babies still cry, telephones ring, Saturday morning cartoons screech, but without the men, there is a sense of muted silence, a sense of muted life,” Siobhan Fallon writes in You Know When the Men Are Gone, a collection of loosely connected stories about experience of Army wives and their soldier husbands deploying from Fort Hood, Texas.
A Curiously Strong Entrepreneur
Logan Christopher assumes a bridge position: balanced on his feet and the back of his head, back arched, belly up, with his arms straight up in the air and a large kettle bell in each hand. A stack of three concrete blocks is placed on his stomach. A sledgehammer-wielding assistant winds up and lets fly. Concrete bits spray in all directions.
Beards of Comedy Santa Cruz-Bound
Last autumn saw a resurgence of the beard across Northern California as thousands of fans, rallying to the “Fear the Beard” battle cry, fuzzed up in support of their beloved Giants and closing pitcher Brian Wilson. On Monday, the softer side of facial hair will be showcased as the “Beards of Comedy” tour minivan rolls into town for a show at Don Quixote’s.
Sustainable Animal Husbandry In The Spotlight
When FDA investigators visited a hatchery in Iowa last August they found the source of the massive Salmonella outbreak that forced the recall of 500 million eggs and left more than 1,600 people sick: hens caged in manure pits overrun by rodents, swarmed by thick clouds of flies and containing maggots “too numerous to count.”
Little Basin Park A Big Deal
The California State Parks Department struck a deal on Jan. 14 to acquire Little Basin, a 535-acre Santa Cruz Mountain property adjacent to the Big Basin Redwoods State Park once used as an employee retreat by Hewlett-Packard. The state purchased the land, appraised at $13 million in 2007, for $6.5 million dollars from the Sempervirens Fund of Los Altos and the Peninsula Open Space Trust, based in Palo Alto.
Streetsigns: Dancing In The Dark
Maybe it was the fact that the crowd skewed young, or that the multiuse space at the 418 Project in downtown Santa Cruz has a little bit of a gymnasium feel, or maybe it was the older couple on the fringe of the crowd peering around like someone’s parents, but as the Bane Show was getting underway on Sunday night there was something awkward about the event, in a distinctly high-school-dance kind of way.
