Before he made Labyrinth: Easily the most incredible thing I saw all week, possibly all year. Jim Henson’s Commercials & Experiments was screened as part of Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater. Thanks to YouTube you can organize a mini-screening at home. Start with these Wilkins Coffee commercials (part 2, 3) featuring an early version of Kermit, some the first commercials to use humor (and rampant puppet violence) to sell products. Also behold the brilliance of the La Choy Dragon and the stunning short film Time Piece which was nominated for an Academy Award. We miss you, Jim!Good looking: The American Society of Magazine Editors announced the National Magazine Awards nominees this week and a bunch of the mags I contribute to are in there. It’s always good to see Print and Metropolis representing the design mags in General Excellence Under 100,000 Circulation. Wired is also a regular in several categories. But check out newcomer Good making a well-deserved splash in two big categories: Magazine Section (for their Transparency column) and Design! Huge congrats to everyone at the magazine for sticking to their guns. And of course, to Scott Stowell and the magicians at Open.

Saint Andrew: Metropolis’ Andrew Blum and I both wrote about Make It Right, the program that enlisted 13 architecture firms to design houses for Katrina victims in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward. But Andrew nabbed the interview I couldn’t—he got to spend quality time with Brad Pitt, who’s personally heading up the project. Brad even opened a beer for him! In his piece “Saint Brad,” Andrew even manages to look beyond those smiling deep blue eyes and talk about the architecture. You can read my lowly un-Brad-ified piece in the Architect’s Newspaper.

Do as I do: If you’ve been reading this blog for a few weeks now and wondering how you can go from a blogging job that pays you cash to blogging for yourself for free, boy, do I have the class for you! I’ll be teaching Blogging Basics at mediabistro.com’s LA office on Saturday March 29. After five hours, you’ll walk out with a solid concept for your blog and how to get started. Details and registration are here.

Hallelujah!: Spring began this week, which means only one thing: Peeps® are in the air! Peeps® have a special place in my heart, and on my Easter table. Stay tuned Monday for more marshmallowy creations.

Thanks to all my Peeps®, Max, Andrew and UnBeige.

Now that I have a blog with comments (!!!), I’m happy to send you towards my writing published elsewhere to hear what you think. Give it a read. Maybe we can discuss how wrong I am.

In my Eavesdrop column for the January issue of the California Architect’s Newspaper, I tackle a sensitive issue for some of you reading this blog: The redesign of Dwell.

What I didn’t get to say in this short piece is that I really love Dwell. I’ve written for Dwell. I’m going to a party they’re hosting this week. In fact, I’ve been a Dwell reader from the very beginning, something that I think has made me somewhat unnaturally possessive of the magazine. I bet a lot of readers feel the same way. So although the new fonts and dotted lines grate upon my brain, it’s not as much the way it looks as what the redesign represents. (I have nothing, however, against the use of pink. Go pink!)

I’m most disappointed because I got way excited when Dwell recently hired some very smart people: Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG; Sarah Rich, formerly of Worldchanging and Inhabitat; Aaron Britt, who is probably the second smartest person on the planet since he used to work for William Safire; design director Kyle Blue, who blogs at Arkitip; and designer Geoff Halber, who came from Winterhouse. Mind you, most of those people were hired to replace people who quit, but all of those people, I assume, have some very smart things to say about the future of where we live. The hyped-up design and scaled-down content unfortunately says Look at these cool houses! If Dwell wants to go that route, it’s probably fine for some of its readership. But then it’s just another magazine on the newsstand.

Also in January’s Eavesdrop, my recap of December’s gin-and-Tang-soaked shmoozefests Art Basel Miami Beach and Design/Miami (which is pretty much a condensed version of my coverage over at UnBeige, except for the Yves Béhar moment, which I relive every morning as I wash my face…sigh). And finally, there’s the Back of the Envelope Bush Library Contest, where sketches for the soon-to-be-designed library for the soon-to-be-former president will be judged by the highly-literate folk at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Coincidentally, just after we sent that issue to the printer, another contest to design a presidential institution was announced: White House Redux. Anyone can participate, and the winning ideas will be announced in June, which gives officials plenty of time to make the proper renovations for whoever moves in—or, uh, back in—next year.