Side Salad: If I Knew You Were Coming I'd Have Baked a Hot Dog Cake
July 29, 2026
Good morning from Dieline’s editor-in-chief, Bill McCool. Here’s your daily side serving of design news, short musings, brand stuff, and forgotten ephemera.
If you hate leaf blowers, have I got a horrendous sound that will make you want to drive chopsticks into your earholes.
I don’t know what Battle Royale’s Tatsuya Fujiwara and food waste have to do with one another, but now you can find the actor’s face on a head of lettuce in Japan.
I 100% support influencer-free shopping spaces, in addition to pizza joints kicking Dave Portnoy out for filming trash content.
A24’s Backrooms got a Joya candle.
Suri is making refillable toothpaste with its own very special tube. Check out Charlotte’s interview with the founder.
The Weinermobile turned 90, so Milk Bar baked them a hot dog cake.
Substack has introduced an AI detector. Some writers are big mad and have dubbed it a “witch hunt.”
This is for everyone who saw The Odyssey and immediately Googled “cyclops penis“ upon exiting the theater.
Ahem, I meant to say “search it—cyclops penis—up.” Given Google’s propensity for kinda awful AI search dreck, you could also try searching it up elsewhere!
Sorry about those plastic prices that aren’t going down.
Julie Masino, the Cracker Barrel CEO and killer of elderly mascots who oversaw that (perfectly fine) redesign, has stepped down.
Lego and Olivia Rodrigo hid 333 Lego brick records in record stores around the world.
San Francisco Bay Coffee got a whole new coat of paint, literally. Looks spiffy!
Toodles.
-Bill