“Smörgåsbord II” is a Terrible Subject Line But Anyway

A second helping of leftovers

This week I have a selection of small items not worth being newsletter topics by themselves, so I’ve gathered them all in another smörgåsbord issue. There’s something here for everyone. Let’s dive in.

Ricky & Doris Get A Remix

A while back I shared a short film I made about street puppeteer Ricky Syers and his friendship with Doris Diether, the 90 year old woman who hung out in the park where Ricky performed. If you missed it, here’s the original video:

Not long after, TikTok user @sparrowmusic stumbled upon the video was inspired to make a musical remix. Click the image to watch:

I love seeing people inspired to take my work in directions I couldn’t have imagined. I used to have a section of my old blog for exactly this kind of thing.

The Usefulness of “There He Is”

Once I was invited to a networking event full of people far more prominent than me. I had met the host a couple times, but we didn’t know each other that well. I was invited as a guest-of-a-guest.

As I mingled, I eventually ran into the host. I thought he might remember me, but would he know my name? Would he have context for who I was? Were we going to have an awkward moment where he searched his memory and tried to place me?

Nope. While all these questions were running through my brain, he saw me and said, “There he is!” and pulled me in for a handshake.

There he is. What a perfect thing to say. It conveyed an idea that not only did he remember me but was waiting for me to show up. I knew that couldn’t be true, but it was much more flattering than, “Hey…. you!”

That has stuck with me ever since. I plan on using it if I ever become the sort of person who hosts networking events.

Scan Your Old Photos

I recently sent a box of 2,800 old negatives to be bulk-scanned by ScanCafe. It took a few weeks, and then I got a link to download the images. I added their scans to the Lightroom catalog where I manage all my personal digital photos so I have old and new pictures in one place.

The scans aren’t the highest-quality ever, but the images are about as good as an iPhone jpeg and great for reference. If I ever need a higher-quality image, I can always make a print or get a more professional scan from the original negative.

I’m more likely to look at my images digitally than go through a box of old 4x6 prints. And it’s really fun seeing photos you’ve long forgotten about.

Here are a few 30-year-old pictures that jumped out at me from the scans.

It’s slightly nerve-wracking sending original negatives in the mail, but I’ve done three batches of film over the years and they all came back fine.

Art Lien is Retiring

Art Lien is a courtroom sketch artist who has been covering the Supreme Court since 1977. He writes the blog CourtArtist where he posts his images, often with commentary.

He has announced that he will be retiring at the end of his current term. He gave a nice interview to Washington DC’s local CBS station about his career.

Back in 2008, I interviewed Art for a piece about the artwork that courtroom sketch artists do outside the courtroom. Some of the other sketch artists did things like fashion illustration or movie storyboarding. But Art was the only one who didn’t have other visual art side projects. At the time, his creative outlet outside the courtroom was being a member of the Baltimore Mandolin Orchestra.

An Oral History of Apple “I’m a Mac” Ads

Way back in my first Smörgåsbord issue, I mentioned that I was listening to a podcast about notable commercials called Tagline. In coincidental timing, they just launched their second season as I was writing this issue, and I enjoyed the first episode’s oral history of the “I’m a Mac” ads.

They interviewed the creatives behind the campaign, and I learned some interesting things, like:

• Before they landed on this format, an earlier pitch for a campaign was much different:

  It was called "A Week With Owen," and it would feature Owen Wilson as a Mac user, living with a PC-owning family for a week and staging a kind of intervention—showing them all the ways their computer was terrible… In the end, though, Owen Wilson declined—as did Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell and John Cusack. So they were back at square one.

• They filmed many more episodes than eventually aired because Steve Jobs couldn’t tell if they were going to be funny on paper. He had to see them finished. So instead of getting scripts approved ahead of time, they just shot everything and showed him rough cuts, sometimes even writing new scripts on the shoot itself. Eventually 323 spots were filmed and 93 were aired (including versions of the campaign in two other countries featuring different actors).

• Since more spots were filmed than aired, there’s a graveyard of ads featuring notable guest stars that nobody has ever seen:

  Jenna Fisher, who was arguably the biggest sitcom star at that point, she was the Computer Fairy, granting PC's wishes. We had Jeffrey Tambor. I think he was in one. I think he was a genie. Jesus, we had genies and fairies! [laughter] We had James Carville helping PC with his strategy. We had Zack Galifianakis for Santa Claus.

• The music was compose by Mark Mothersbaugh, which seems obvious now that I know, since it has a sort of Rushmore charm, but it never dawned on me.

• And there’s an explanation of why the lighting changed after the first batch of ads was shot. Did you ever notice?

You can visit the Clio website to hear the full episode or just peruse the transcript and watch some of the classic ads.

I Sold This Ninja Turtle for $250 on eBay

I was going to do a whole newsletter explaining why I turned down an offer of $125 for this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toy, and how I ultimately got $250 for it on eBay. Then I wondered if that’s something people actually would want to know about or if it just seems braggadocious.

Is this something you want to know more about? Reply or let me know in the comments.

And that’s it for another newsletter! As always, thanks for reading. Below, I leave you with frequent Bewitched guest stars Paul Lynde and Agnes Moorehead as an animated goose and rat singing my favorite song about a Smörgåsbord. If you know of a better one, let me know.

See you next time!

David