Kentucky GRILLED Chicken?

Are you kidding me?

This is Dunkin Donuts all over again

Doin’ It Veggie-Style

Check out my new blog Veggie-Style.

Veggie-Style is the daily chronicle of this self-professed carnivore’s 30-day sojourn into the land of vegetarianism with the hopes of overcoming the temptations of the flesh in order to develop healthier eating habits, unclog some arteries, and attain spiritual transcendence.

Nothing too tough for me.

But I’d love your comments, tips, tricks, recipes, encouragement, chastising, and experiences.

Click here to read the back story, and then take it from there. Subscribe to the RSS feed for daily updates.

30 Days. No Meat. God Help Me.

Dunkin Donuts On My Face

One must take care in writing brief blog posts on serious topics before finishing his iced coffee in the morning, otherwise he’ll end up with misunderstandings like the one that happened yesterday on this blog.

In Dunkin Donuts: Revisited, I brought up the concept of brands that damage themselves by offering new products largely irrelevant to their message and mission, just because customers ask for them in surveys and focus groups.

Matt Thommes, a developer, blogger, and Twitterer, commented on the post in disagreement, and wrote a longer reaction on his own blog. To my surprise, I completely agreed with him. And then I realized that the reason is we are talking about two related, but slightly different things.

Matt’s post correctly states that “your brand consists of your products and services,” not the other way around, and if you do it right, your brand will expand to encompass any new offerings as time goes on. He cites Apple as an example of a company that started in one business (computer hardware), and grew to include another, drastically different business (music and entertainment), and I couldn’t agree with him more.

But I wasn’t exactly clear in my post. I wasn’t writing against necessary expansion and market differentiation, but cases when it is done poorly. I used Dunkin Donuts and Subway as examples, but didn’t really explain why.

The difference between these companies and Apple is the way they go about introducing new products or services. When Apple does it, they throw the full weight of their brand behind the new venture. Both DD and Subway (and other food franchises) run limited, regional tests of new products before deciding whether or not to roll them out on a large scale, and it just feels weak, disingenuous. While I appreciate the reasoning and necessity behind such tests (and the many differences between a computer company and a restaurant), they always feel very much like tests - as though they are using paying customers as guinea pigs. Dunkin Donuts, for instance, is testing lunch food only in Connecticut, and Subway is selling pizza at about 30 locations nationwide (that there’s one in NYC really surprised me, though I admit that the pizza itself was rather tasty, if odd).

As an occasional consumer of products from both brands, it is the inconsistency encountered location to location that rubs me the wrong way, more than the fact that they want or need to expand in order to compete (DD is doing a great job differentiating from Starbucks, by the way). This is something that always annoyed me with McDonalds selling crab cakes on Cape Cod, as well as their brief foray into pizza in the early 90s (in Las Vegas, at least). I really, really liked the pizza, got used to seeing it there and ordering it, and when it was pulled, I felt cheated (especially since I was a child). That’s like Apple saying, “So we’ve been selling music for awhile, but it was just a test in your segment of the market. We’re not doing that anymore.” Brands expand, sure, but for the expansion to be effective, it needs to be consistent.

Some do it right, and some don’t. That’s really what I meant yesterday - that brands should take care not to expand for the sake of expanding, or just because of the results of some survey. They should make strong, well-considered moves and realize that more and more the markets are converging. Once upon a time, it might’ve been possible to conduct isolated trials without the national or global brand being affected, but that time is long gone. The internet has connected people worldwide, and they are talking about your products. They know. They know that you are doing something in one state and not another (and sometimes they want what you’ve got enough to drive cross-country), they know that you can order a “Royale With Cheese” and a beer in Europe, and it’s confusing (not to mention insulting) when you offer Newman’s Own Organic Iced Coffee in Massachusetts, and hawk the same product (or pretty much) as “Premium Roast” in New York.

UPDATE: Matt just posted a related article called Brands Creating Sub-Brands that I definitely agree with.

Dunkin Donuts: Revisited

Back in May, I wrote about Dunkin Donuts Iced Coffee, and the scourge of businesses following the “Sugary-Sludge-At-The-Bottom” method of product afterthoughtedness. This morning I was eating an Apple Pie from McDonalds (at 2 for $1, not a bad breakfast), and thinking about how many companies add products to their offerings without fully considering how it strengthens their brand or message. I’m not saying that McDonalds has done this with their Apple Pies, and in fact, I think they’re a great addition to the Breakfast menu, as well as the Dessert menu. Versatility is a big part of their thing.

But then we have Dunkin Donuts offering pizza and hot dogs and selling Sobe and Gatorade and Snapple, Subway introducing their own version of pizza-to-order, and some idiot asking Steve Jobs why Apple doesn’t put “Intel Inside” stickers on their gorgeous, sticker-free, computers.

The best restaurants (and the ones that command the highest prices) have the smallest menus. Some don’t even let their customers choose. Whatever the chef wants to cook on Tuesday is what they eat.

I don’t care what focus groups and user-testing tell you what people think they want your business to sell. They don’t actually know. If you listen to enough of them them for long enough, you’ll turn your business into a convenience store.

A place where nothing matters but the fact that it is there.

Don’t let brand dilution happen to you. You know better than anyone what your business is and should be. Stay strong. Be honest.

Add value, not menu items.

Where I’m Getting My iPhone

If I get an iPhone. Yes, it’s still a question.

Pics of the 5th Avenue/47th Street NYC AT&T store follow below. As you can see, the brand switch (from Cingular) is nearly complete (still some orange, but no more Cingular name or logo), and AT&T is really using the release of iPhone as a vehicle for switching over. There’ve been guys working outside this store for weeks now - shining the brass, taping and untaping glass, setting up displays. These pictures are from yesterday, which is when I first noticed the presence of the AT&T logo instead of the Cingular one. Today, there’s a small iPhone display inside the store. Nothing fancy. Just a poster that says they’re getting it on June 29. It was creepy enough for me to be taking pictures yesterday (a guy on a ladder gave me a really weird look), so I decided to hold off until things are completed and/or I’m standing in a line with blue velvet ropes.

Notice the “display” they had up yesterday. If Steve Jobs saw that he’d have a stroke. Hell, I nearly went insane myself over the hyphen - let alone the capital I, which absolutely kills me every time I see it in newspapers and magazines (can’t they figure out how to begin a sentence without using the word “iPhone”?).

Pics, as usual, taken with my Samsung Trace T-519. Creative Commons “Do whatever the heck you want with them” license applies. My generosity overfloweth.





Bonus pics of my roommate (Gregory Polin) looking like a badass because he’s on IMDB, and me attacking a huge piece of meat because that’s what I do (apparently). It was really awesome (Becco).

10 Creative Commons Photos Of Ice Cream

Another way to beat the heat this summer (or have an awesome life any other season!) is to eat ice cream.

I’m a big advocate of ice cream from pretty much anywhere, with the exception of places like ColdStone and Maggie Moos, which serve up a nasty, pathetic excuse for my favorite frozen treat.

To put you in the mood I’m in right now, here are the first 10 Creative Commons-licensed photos on Flickr that show up when searching for “ice cream.”

Enjoy!

ice cream


ice cream with hot sauce


ice cream


Last ice-cream of the year


cajeta ice cream


Ciao Ice Cream


halva ice cream


No Ice Cream!


Lavender Ice Cream - AGAIN!


Herbal Ice Cream Mosaic

The Problem With Dunkin Donuts Iced Coffee

I haven’t eaten fudge in ages.

The last time I ate it, I made it myself, and for some reason (I claim due to a lack of proper mixing utensils) it came out slightly grainy, like the occasionally sugar-sludgy slurp of Dunkin Donuts Iced Coffee caused by their insistence on attempting to combine regular sugar (not even superfine) with a cold double-brewed coffee rather than using either a simple pre-made sugar syrup (like Starbucks, McDonalds, and most premium coffeshops) , or adding sugar to hot coffee first (ideally double-brewed, of course, to counteract the water added from the melting ice), and then icing it (like NYC street vendors and people playing along at home).

Both of these non-DD methods produce a much smoother beverage, one that tastes like it was conceived of as its own product - not a reworking of something designed for another purpose. It’s not that I don’t enjoy Dunkin Donuts Iced Coffee otherwise (I do - especially its price, though that is definitely challenged recently by [shudder] McDonalds’ entry into the market), it’s that it feels like it was added to their menu as an afterthought.

This afterthoughtedness isn’t exclusive to coffee. We see it everywhere - far too frequently in the tech world. In the rush to compete with a new product, companies add features to their existing offerings without much consideration, just so hey can promote it on the box. Over time (and sometimes immediately), their product becomes bloated and watered-down, full of features but devoid of character, of identity. It’s just like everything else, only not as good, because the other guys built their products from the ground up.

Apple is famous for doing it the right way. They released their first iPod into a market full of mp3 players - many of which offered more features (even to this day) - but they were enormously successful simply because they started from scratch, started with no preconceptions about what they were supposed to do, and instead made something that was a complete product with its own character, not just a box full of the latest, greatest gizmos and buzzwords borrowed from elsewhere in a scramble to have the manual with the most pages.

We see the same afterthoughtedness all the time on the Web, too. Sites adding widget after widget, the latest javascript library, the fanciest CSS hack, trying to be “MySpace - only better!” or “Like YouTube - but with a six-star rating system!” or “Like Digg - but, well...hmm...with fewer users!” Some of this can be excused - many blogs, for example, start with a template. Not everybody is a master coder, and this isn’t a prerequisite to starting a site. Most of the time, it is a learning experience for people just getting their feet wet with some HTML and CSS, and this exposure, this experimentation and risk-taking is a definite good thing. But the truly great sites, the truly great business, the folks who are actually successful, start pretty much from scratch.

One more example: In the arts, virtually no one begins with a truly blank canvas. There are numerous accepted conventions, numerous defaults - there is almost always an agreed-upon starting point. Some of the most innovative and successful work in history, however, has come from individuals who have questioned the very foundations of their practice. Painters who asked, “Why use paint? Why use brushes? Why canvas?,” directors who asked, “Why a stage? Why a curtain? Why plot? Why dialogue? Why indoors?,” poets who asked, “Why rhyme? Why words?” This is the same in science, too.

Questioning the default inevitably leads to insight. Sometimes it also leads to failure - but there is always something gained, something learned, always some greater truth revealed in the process.

Make the possibility of endless possibilities the only default. Set yourself free to redefine a product category. Become the default. Become the guy everyone copies. Ask why, and if you can’t figure out a really good reason - say no. Don’t settle for sludge in your coffee. Don’t try to trick people into eating your grainy fudge. You might be able to sell it to them once, but after that, you’ll be the one forced to eat it. And that’s just gross. Really.

Grainy fudge is really gross.

Lean Mean iPod Grilling Machine

Engadget reports that our favorite fat-reducing grill-making icon and former heavyweight champ, George Foreman has jumped on the iPod bandwagon by releasing a product with a name so original, so unique, it’s astounding.

iGrill

Check out this indoor/outdoor electric grill slash iPod-playing party in your backyard! Available from Linens ’n Things.

Seems dangerous but cool.

How Fun Is Spending Money?

Seth Godin posted this great graphic about the pleasure we derive from a purchase versus the amount of money spent on it. He wonders if more companies might not start upping the “fun” factor of high-end purchases and offers the following as a wonderfully novel example:

What if a real estate broker hired a really personable ex-cheerleader/glee club member for $20 an hour to do nothing but sweat the details and be charming the entire time the closing was going on? Someone to run and get donuts and do xeroxing and get papers organized in advance... in the scheme of a million dollar purchase, not such a big deal, right?

Cheerleaders...hmm...kinda makes me wish I had that million right now.

I’m also conflicted about his whole graph - is it good or bad that Girl Scout Cookies cost more than Starbucks coffee?

Finally, does anyone know where I can get some Tagalongs (aka Peanut Butter Patties)? I mean, seriously. There’s no trans-fat anymore...

What Are Chicken Nuggets Made Of?

Some damn tasty stuff is my first answer. And, as repulsed as you may be at the idea of these trans-fat-laden trailer park delicacies from McDonalds, you must admit they taste good, especially with that deliciously sweet barbecue sauce that I wish they sold in stores.

I still haven’t gotten around to reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a book everyone was buzzing about last year, but Al Nye The Lawer Guy has, and this morning he posted an article about this very subject, giving us a taste, as it were, of what the book has to say about the thirty-eight (38!!!) ingredients that go into the making of a Nugget. There’s a lot of corn, to be sure, and a lot of corn-related stuff.

But the most interesting, and perhaps most awesome ingredient in the Chicken Nuggets is no other than, “tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to ‘help preserve freshness.’”

This lovely chemical has a great colloquial name, too: lighter fluid. Mmm. I would love to set some Nuggets ablaze, maybe roasted marshmallow-style. Who’s in?

Note: The lighter fluid is, by FDA guidelines allowed to comprise no more than 0.02 percent of all the oil used in a Nugget. Which means, you’re pretty much okay to eat them. And why wouldn’t you? They are delicious, and even healthier than Chicken Selects. I swear.

EDIT: After reading missa’s comment on this post, I have gone back to the original article on Al Nye to read he comments she mentions (which I swear weren’t there when I wrote this). As she says, the claim that TBHQ is similar to lighter fluid is intelligently debunked by a bunch of folks claiming to be chemists or something of the sort. I buy that, and feel bad for spreading false information about a food that is clearly very healthy to eat, and which tastes so good as to eliminate any guilt one might have about consuming it, especially when there is a 6 Nuggets for $0.99 promotion. Which there isn’t right now, but I’m hoping for one soon.

Happy VD! - M&Ms Scandal!

Welcome to the 200th post on Frivolous Motion. And welcome to Valentine’s Day. I have a wonderful girlfriend of nearly two years and we spent the weekend together in Hartford, but since I live in NYC and she’s not here, I have decided to write up an Anti-V-Day post to celebrate the occasion. At first I wasn’t sure what would be appropriate, but after stumbling onto the MyM&Ms site (I was directed there by a TV commercial advertising a special promotion they are holding), I immediately knew what to do.


As you will see at the end of the post, the form on the site allowing customized messages to be printed on the candy is not so great when it comes to censoring offensive words and phrases. I spent some time with my roommate and another friend last night and this afternoon doing what you might call research into the words that get by the coded censors. Now, I recognize that no form validation can be perfect, and that we tend to use a lot of “clean” words euphemistically these days, but allowing “fag” and “homos” but not “queer,” or “vagina,” “boobs,” and “erection” but not “penis” just doesn’t make a shred of sense.

And the rejection of “kill” but not “murder” or “shoot” or “stab” or “poison” or “bomb” or “hang” or even “lynch” makes me wonder how else I could possibly kill someone. Now, writing this, I realize I haven’t tried “choke” or “smother,” but surely those would pass.

Below, I have posted screen grabs of a bunch of the more offensive phrases that got past the censor-bot, as well as some fun anti-romantic sentiments, and a few others I thought were noteworthy.

Click the image to see it full size, in all its glory!

I invite you all, in the spirit of this joyous holiday, to check out the site, and do your own research. Anyone reporting back here with a link to some screengrabs will get their pics included in this post. Alternatively, you can email them to me at kevinmichaelkeating at gmail dot com and I will get them up when I have a second.

If I can secure enough extra dough to purchase the minimum four (4) bags (About 50 bucks! - Anybody else want some candy?) I will place an order for a bag bearing one of the slogans I have posted below. And I will let you know if it manages to make it to printing and shipping right here in this blog, complete with pictures. It is my guess that the process from submitting to printing to shipping is totally automated, but who knows - a real person might intervene and stop the order and notify the authorities about the potential hate crime or terrorist act I may commit. Luckily I have this here blog post to absolve me of all wrong. Right?

Happy Valentine’s Day to all!

Note: The pic is on Flickr, too, if you are into that.

Mmm. Tasty.

DELICACY Unlaid eggs, from hens destined for the soup pot, being cured in salt at Blue Hill in Greenwich Village. (Photo by Tony Cenicola/New York Times)

Read all about this beautiful...uh...food, courtesy of The New York Times. An excerpt:

This mostly lost treat is remembered well by anyone who grew up on a farm with laying hens, or who bought chickens from an old-fashioned butcher before the advent of factory farming. Now, when the tough old birds have stopped laying they are shipped off to places like Campbell’s, where they become chicken soup. They are worth so little that many are incinerated, their immature eggs unharvested.
...
Not everybody loves them, but ever since Mr. Barber dropped the term “embryonic eggs” from the menu in favor of “immature,” fewer customers have balked.

What Does 200 Calories Look Like?

wiseGEEK has an awesome feature that shows pictures of 200 calories worth of dozens of foods, sorted by calorie density. Some pretty surprising data, and some really nice photos, too! How does your favorite food stack up?

Mini-Dessert

The great guys over at 37 Signals wrote an interesting piece yesterday about offering “desserts by the bite” to “turn a $1 coffee into a $3 dessert.” The cool thing about this concept - offering small desserts for cheap - is that it allows restaurants to add a little bit extra to your check every time. Rather than get excuses about how full customers are (since they expect the typically huge, overpriced cakes and brownie volcano eruptions), they will feel okay (and a bit healthful) with the idea of having a cup of coffee and a tiny “thing” along with it. I won’t say much more about this, since Jason at 37Signals explains it very well, but I think this is a fresh idea that more restaurants ought to adopt. I know I’d buy it.

Hotdogs and Metaphor

Steve has a successful hotdog stand. Very successful, as a matter of fact. His stand sells over 106,000 hotdogs a day worldwide. These are simple hotdogs. They look and taste great, and offer all the essentials as far as hotdogs go - bun, ketchup, mustard, even sauerkraut and onions if you’d like. And they come in several sizes to suit your hunger. Steve is expecting to sell close to 20 million hotdogs in the Holiday quarter alone, because it is the time of year that family and friends get together and buy hotdogs for each other in a beautiful display of community.

Now, just when Steve is sitting pretty and reportedly enjoying sugar-plum fairy thoughts of extending his hotdog reign even further in the New Year by teaming up with wireless carriers like T-Mobile and Cingular, a challenger emerges.

This upstart isn’t exactly a New Kid on the Block, either. Bill, as our challenger is known, has a mega-successful hamburger business that puts Steve’s small beef operation to shame (at least when it comes to worldwide sales figures and market share), but his business has recently been plagued by the E-Coli bacteria and Mad Cow, and consumer trust in his brand has diminished. Bill hasn’t been too successful in the hotdog realm so far, but sees Steve’s continued dominance in this area to be a threat and wants to take a bite out of the very lucrative pie Steve has more-or-less created from scratch.

Seeing the holiday season approaching, Bill introduces his new product. It is a single hot-dog, equal in price and size to Steve's mid-sized frank, and includes all the requisite fixings. The wow factor - the thing that Bill hopes will push his dogs over the top - is a simple sharing feature. All customers of his hot dogs will be able to share their hotdogs with others who also have a Bill Dog. People are impressed with this innovation, simple as it may be, but in practice it fails to impress because there is just not a large enough customer pool to sustain it. It is simply too difficult to find someone with which to share. And even harder to find another individual with any sort of “taste,” after all. Further, it nearly goes without saying that the lack of a lower-priced, cocktail-sized frank (by far Steve's best selling dog) really hurts Bill’s chances. Given the commanding lead Steve has in this market, it is a real uphill battle for Bill, especially given the limits on the single innovation he brings to the field.

What, after all, could Bill do if Steve decided to add the sharing feature to his line of wieners? With the market penetration Steve currently has (and imagine after the holidays!) hardly a day goes by when one doesn’t see a dozen or more people on the street holding their Steve Dogs and bouncing along happily.

In the end, it seems as though Bill has made another misstep in his competition with Steve by introducing a new product and entering a new industry at a time when he might have been better off focusing on improving his other offerings and reclaiming his good name in the hamburger world.

How will this story end? Only time will tell.

What are your thoughts?

Mission: Semi-possible

Project Codename: eatnyc
(Any name suggestions? If I pick yours - you can win free dinner!)

Progress

Seemingly endless data entry on my urban restaurant search application is underway and moving along at a clip. Or something like that.

The link above shows a table of my current data. Once the first main phase of data entry is complete, efforts will be shifted toward displaying the data simply in several linked HTML pages, each with a different sorting method (street, alphanumerical, cuisine), and then obtaining more information for each restaurant (phone, URL, price). Later, when the data is relatively complete, I will focus on creating a dynamic framework for it to all sit on using, most likely, Ruby on Rails. Gradually, I will be developing a design for the site, and will focus on making the interface clean, easy-to-use, and free from lots of scary ads and information stealing your eyes away from the task at hand. It should be super simple to find what you are looking for. Super simple. Once the site is up and running full-out, the next step is slowly supplementing the data with more listings, adding some other functionality and methods of visualization, integrating Google Maps, perhaps, or developing an NYC-specific mapping “thing” best suited to visualizing the results by street.

I am shooting for finishing the data entry by Thanksgiving. After that, it will be a long, slow, uphill crawl that requires me to learn a server-side language from scratch. But it will be a super-exciting crawl, though. And a crawl with delicious food at the end of it.

One thing is certain at this point in the process, and that is this: No matter what happens, I, at least, will know where all the restaurants in NYC are located. That ain’t bad. Nope, nope, nope.

Feel Like Partying?

Not for use in “Flip Cup!”

Death By Coke Blak

Emily Tucker thought I’d be interested in this, and boy was she right.

Energy Fiend is the self-proclaimed “most complete list of beverage caffeine content online.” And the page I was sent, “Death By Caffeine” is pretty super. Enter your weight, “Pick Your Poison” from a pretty comprehensive list of caffeinated beverages, click “Kill Me” and it will return a message like this:

After 165.61 bottles of Coca-Cola Blak, you’d be pushing up daisies.

Sweet. It even gives you a link to a place to purchase said poison. In case you feel like living on the edge, I guess.

Be sure to check out the “Death By Penguin Mints” page as well, where you’ll learn that Oral Fixation Night Light Mints are pretty deadly, at least if you eat around 5,000 of them.

Very nice find, Emily. I can’t wait to find which of my favorite beverages will kill me the slowest. So then I can drink it every day, guilt free.

It is most definitely not Cocaine.

7-Eleven and Produce

A couple interesting things for you this morning.

First, Freakonomics Blog has called my attention to a NYTimes article that details a deal made between the Chicago White Sox baseball team, and 7-Eleven convenience stores. Apparently, 7-Eleven will pay the team $500,000 yearly for the White Sox evening home games (of which there are about 50) to start at, naturally, 7:11pm, instead of the usual 7:05 or 7:35. Awesome.

And from one of my current favorite blogs, Spurgeonblog (which you should definitely check out if you haven’t yet), comes news of an awesome product, called Fruittree.

Chris writes:

One of my many vicious circles goes like this...

1. Decide to eat healthy.
2. Buy lots of fruit and other healthy foods.
3. Stick fruit in a big bowl on the kitchen table.
4. In a moment of clutter, set the bowl aside. Forget all about it.
5. Several days later, follow the swarm of fruit flies back to the forgotten bowl, now filled with a sickly sweet rotting goo that used to be bananas, oranges, peaches, and mangos.

One of the winners of a recent kitchen design contest may be just the thing for people like me. Fruitree is a concept piece designed to solve the out of sight, out of mind problem with fruit that goes uneaten and spoils. Fruitree is mounted on a wall, so the fruit is right in front of your eyes. Circulating air is pushed throughout the Fruitree, keeping the fruit fresh longer. Fruitree was designed by Chia Shee Loh, Antonietta Fortunato and Elena Godenzi.

Man, this is exactly what happens to me. Decide to go healthy, shop at one of the expensive “real” supermarkets (instead of a bodega), eat well for a day or two, get distracted, forget about all the tasty produce I brought home, notice it in about a week when it’s too late. Or, often, it is my girlfriend who will remind me that there is some fruit I should eat before it goes bad. Or tells me that it has gone bad. Or eats it herself so that it doesn’t go to waste. It’s a damn shame. One of these days, I’ll be able to focus. Maybe I’ll be able to do it without the Fruittree. But wouldn’t it be cool to have one?

Trouble visualizing? Here she is. Beauty, no?

Pancakes and Cruelty

In my morning Digg-ing, I stumbled upon this pretty awesome exercise in visual communication. It appears to be a work-in-progress for a final project in some class. Aside from the beauty of the artwork, and the craving for pancakes the picture has evoked, I think it poses an interesting set of questions for design and accessibility. How much can be taken away without rendering the message unintelligible? Could these instructions be understood by anyone? A child? Someone from another country? An illiterate person? Someone who’s never cooked before? Someone who has never had or seen a pancake? I think this aptly illustrates the concept of knowing your audience and designing for them, while acknowledging the possibility that someone outside your intended audience might see your work.

In the theatre, particularly the academic brand of experimental performance I have been schooled in, it's easy to forget that not everyone in your audience has the same knowledge of Futurism, Dada, Artaud, Cage, Cunningham, the NEA Four, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. While it is important not to dumb-down your message and aesthetic for the sake of “entertaining the masses,” one must consider how an alternative audience would receive the work. Is it worth it to completely alienate a group of people for the sake of not compromising your vision? Or is it possible to maintain your values and a legitimacy to the theatre crowd while managing to communicate something compelling and moving to those not “in the know?” How can we, as artists, do this? Does anyone have any examples of compromises you've made? Or do you see them not as compromises, but merely part of the process and considerations for making work?

Let me know, folks! Let’s get a discussion happening!

Here's the pancake recipe. Click to enlarge.