Among the letters to the editor published in yesterday's New York Times was one from photographer Alfred Gescheidt, who wrote (in the wake of the still bubbling brouhaha over Barry Blitt's New Yorker cover) of his experience with the relativity of political satire. Gescheidt, who memorably montaged a royal crown onto a photo of then First Lady Nancy Reagan to create a "Queen Nancy" postcard, noted that while "most considered this card clever satire, others thought it crossed the line into vulgarity." As for the official reaction:

The publisher received an official White House letter from Ronald Reagan's lawyer, warning him that many considered it the ultimate in bad taste. Yet Mrs. Reagan herself said on TV that she would never wear a crown because it would only mess up her hair. My federal income tax was audited for three consecutive years.

We're feeling a little queasy here at UnBeige headquarters, having spent much of the day chasing down Nutella-smeared baguettes and flaky delicacies from nearby Payard with too many flutes of Moët & Chandon. And so, while we retire to our Pierre Paulin-designed Mushroom chairs to enjoy a screening of Le Ballon Rouge, we offer you Paul Tedeschi's charming tribute to a wiser choice of festive beverages on this Bastille Day: Orangina. "Back in the stone age of web-based animation, oh, maybe five years ago, I put this together to entertain my clients at Snapple," noted Tedeschi last fall when posting the below video to YouTube. "I set it to the Canadian nation anthem because, frankly, the French one isn't all that funny." For further proof of Tedeschi's anthemic assertion, we point you to Jean Renoir's 1938 film La Marseillaise, which only becomes funny after the aforementioned quantity of champagne. A votre santé!

What with Memorial Day a distant memory and Flag Day now (safely) behind us, we wanted to take this opportunity to ask you, dear UnBeige readers, to keep us updated with your design happenings this summer, and in the ensuing seasons. We're always thrilled to receive reader tips (that's us pictured at left, mulling over a recent e-mail with the help of newly purchased fedoras), whether about a Revolving Door item (who's leaving? who has just arrived?), an event, a bit of gossip, a designer's hidden talent, or any newsy, design-y morsel.

We're just an e-mail away at unbeige AT mediabistro DOT com.

As we mentioned the other day, author and architecture/design/city planning expert, Diana Lind, is finally answering questions sent in to the NY Times about all things Brooklyn-related. And it looks like she's out to not disappoint a single person, as she's answered, in two parts, a bazillion of the submitted questions, from the obvious stuff about the controversial Atlantic Yards project to the more hypothetical, such as how all of the ubiquitous new housing construction will be viewed in the future (as oft-putting as it is today? or will people slowly get used to it once it starts to get some years on it?). Even if you don't care a lick about Brooklyn, there's some great discussion therein and you'd apt to get something out of it no matter where you live, even here in fly-over country. Here's a pick about how big and tall Brooklyn might get:

At the moment, the tallest building in Brooklyn is the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, a k a One Hanson Place. The tallest structure in the Atlantic Yards project, called Miss Brooklyn, will rise 511 feet -- one foot shorter than the bank. Because the project's developer, Forest City Ratner, has yet to identify an anchor tenant for the building and rumors have circulated about the project's lack of financing, I'm not convinced Miss Brooklyn will be built at such an enormous size. She was originally designed to be 620 feet tall -- she might shrink even farther.

And if that isn't enough for you, the site promises a third and final installment of Q&A sometime later today.

Surely inspired by this story in the NY Times a month or so back, "Parent Shock: Children Are Not Decor," The Independent just published this piece yesterday, "My New Baby Is Destroying My Perfect Designer Home." It's simply a series of entries by a self-professed "design-freak-turned-new-mother," wherein she complains about how her new child isn't doing its part in keeping her fancy, well-designed home as pretty as possible. While it's very simple to cast judgement on the people in both stories (the ones in the NY Times piece get off a little easier), reading each with a perpetual "tsk-tsk-tsk" emanating from your mouth, we somewhat understand that that has to be an incredibly difficult transition when your baby first comes home. But christ almighty, why would you ever agree to do a piece in a major newspaper about it?! No matter how positive the light they cast you in, there is absolutely no way to come out of something like this looking anything less than a heartless, materialistic jerk. Case in point:

December 2007: The black high chair has arrived. It is beautiful. The baby is beautiful. The baby looks beautiful in it. More importantly, the room still looks beautiful.

See?! We're sure she's a perfectly nice, capable mother, but gah, that quote! And that's just one of many! So please, let this be a lesson to you design-obsessed, expecting parents, especially those of you who live in fancy houses: if you catch a reporter sniffing around, chase them off or call the police. You don't need everyone who reads the newspaper hating you.

In case you missed it, PingMag has gotten into the popular "show us your desk" trend, wherein people take photographs of where they spend their days working (based off the, well, nearly every website over the past couple of years). But they're putting a nice spin on the standard, which, much like how this writer's mother feels about those home remodeling shows on HGTV, never seems to get boring. What Ping is doing is holding a Japan vs. UK contest, to pit British designer's desks against Japanese designer's desks, in a winner-take-all, battle to the death, all in the name of celebrating UK-JAPAN 2008. In truth, even though it's billed as such, there really isn't anything competitive about the whole thing. It, once again, just follows that fun pattern of enjoying looking at where designers do their thing, while simultaneously allowing you to raise and lower your pride and ego at will, depending on how much better or worse your desk is to each photo.

You know how we like to tease you on select Thursdays with the design-themed goodies we have planned for the following day? Well, today is no exception. Tune in tomorrow for all of the details about a special new...something! We offer a couple of hints: the above photo and the suggestion that if the news were a table, it would have flush surfaces, and straight block legs equal in thickness to the top of the table would form its four corners. Flummoxed? Don't worry. We're Gunna tell you tomorrow--you can BET on that.

By now you've read yesterday's late-breaking announcement and the fond, '90's R&B-themed farewell. But we couldn't stop there. Although we didn't have time to prepare (or convince Chip Kidd--or Peter Mendelsund--to design) a fitting festschrift for our dear departing editrix, we decided to do the next best thing and declare today, February 1st, official UnBeige Alissa Walker Tribute Day! (And unlike tomorrow, this holiday does not involve a famous rodent who dabbles in meteorology.)

So, why not gather your Star Wars memorabilia and design magazines around you and spend the rest of this Friday strolling down a designcentric memory lane as you peruse some of Alissa's greatest hits of the past two years in our voluminous UnBeige archives (including, of course, her recent coverage of Compostmodern, AIGA NEXT, and last fall's Dwell on Design confab) and join us in raising a glass--filled, of course, with several scoops of brilliantly-hued gelato (baby)--and toasting the wonderful Alissa. We'll be back soon to give you the scoop from today's Greener Gadgets conference and some design highlights from the first day of New York Fashion Week.

Be sure to tune in tomorrow when we'll have all the exciting insider details about a lucrative (shall we say) new design project in New York City. OK, OK, we'll give you a hint:

That's all you'll get out of us for now. Until tomorrow, we're keeping this one under our hat$.

We could go on all day about all the lovely holiday cards we received this year (see also Steven Heller's 1981 tome, Artists' Christmas Cards), but we know you need to get back to the present-opening and pie-eating, so we'll just share with you a couple of our favorites.

First up is a delightfully festive take on the traditional New York City "Anthora" coffee cup from Soho-based accessories company MZ Wallace, founded in 2000 by Monica Zwirner and Lucy Wallace Eustice. We've long been been impressed not only by the company's wares, which manage to be both beautiful and practical, but also their stunning graphic design. Who's behind those suitable-for-framing postcards and catalogs, not to mention the understated website (which today features a flickering yule log)? We recently learned that MZ Wallace's creative team is led by Seth Glickman and Meg Moorhouse. We promise to tell you more about them in 2008, but in the meantime, enjoy the card:

Another holiday card highlight was this one from photographer Brett Beyer, who is a wizard with lighting effects (check out his website for samples of his "light sculpture"). With his holiday note, Beyer included this image that he captured of the Brooklyn Museum, adding, "I don't have any holiday images but this one seems pretty festive."