While I was in Los Angeles last week for the very fun, very successful Dwell on Design Conference, I met up with Brendan F. Newnam, a friend of a friend and guy I’d been trying to hang out with either here in San Francisco or down in LA for some time. We finally got the chance at Lamill in Silver Lake and he, Drew and I had a fine breakfast and first rate coffee in the somewhat over-designed cafe that Brendan likened to “stepping inside a giant purse.”
After our breakfast, whose conversation touched on the former Yugoslavia, the works of Alan Furst, foraging for food and how the best minds of our generation have gone into stealth advertising, Brendan and I retreated to his car so that he could record me telling a joke.
Brendan’s day job is as a producer for the public radio show Marketplace, which I catch at least a couple times a week, and on the side he has a witty, short show called The Dinner Party Download. Each episode starts with a joke and here’s the one I told, or better yet, listen to the whole 15 mintue episode for free here and learn about the assassination of James Garfield, and the merits of really expensive charcoal. Brendan and his co-host Rico are smart, funny guys, and once you’re hooked you can check out the rest of the episodes on iTunes for the price of zero dollars.