June 2013
2 posts
May 2013
2 posts
April 2013
5 posts
March 2013
6 posts
“And what is all this postgame praying? Those new fashionable prayer huddles—what goes on? They can’t be thanking God for winning, because how do the teams with the losing records explain things? (“The Lord loves our team—He sabotages us so we can get a high draft pick.”) The players also cannot be thanking God for keeping them from injury, because they’re injured all the time.”
—Woody Allen on the ’90s Knicks.
February 2013
5 posts
“Carey’s quote reminded me of something I read in the early stages of my reporting, a 24-page report prepared for Frito-Lay in 1957 by a psychologist named Ernest Dichter. The company’s chips, he wrote, were not selling as well as they could for one simple reason: “While people like and enjoy potato chips, they feel guilty about liking them… . Unconsciously, people expect to be punished for ‘letting themselves go’ and enjoying them.” Dichter listed seven “fears and resistances” to the chips: “You can’t stop eating them; they’re fattening; they’re not good for you; they’re greasy and messy to eat; they’re too expensive; it’s hard to store the leftovers; and they’re bad for children.” He spent the rest of his memo laying out his prescriptions, which in time would become widely used not just by Frito-Lay but also by the entire industry. Dichter suggested that Frito-Lay avoid using the word “fried” in referring to its chips and adopt instead the more healthful-sounding term “toasted.”
—It’s toasted!
