April 11, 2006
Souvenir from the Past
Recently I bought a framed certificate from one of the thrift stores on Södermalm. The DX CENTURY CLUB certificate, from the American Radio Relay League, certifies that Axel Strom “has this day submitted evidence satisfactory to the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) that his station has conducted two-way communication with other amateur stations in at least 100 different countries since November 15, 1945. This certificate recognizes his outstanding performance and attests his membership in the DX Century Club.”
I'm pretty sure that Axel Strom, a Swedish ham radio enthusiast, is either long gone or packed off to an old folks’ home. It's the best explanation for the sale of this engraved, two-color certificate, which was signed by the communications manager for the American Radio Relay League, George Hart, on October 1, 1968 in Newington, Connecticut. The purchase cost 25 crowns, about $3.50, money well spent for a thrilling souvenir of the days before Skype and before the Internet, when it was no small accomplishment to establish two-way non-telephone communication with radio fans in at least 100 different countries.
Even if Axel could know about my purchase, I doubt it would cheer him. It's bound to dismay my husband, once he notices, and my daughter, who will end up having to get rid of it eventually (along with everything else I own). But it cheers me up, for some odd reason. Axel may be gone but visible proof of his passion for amateur radio lives on. Along with the ARRL.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:28 PM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2006
Pampered Pooches
"Based in Hollywood, [Rockin' Rodeo] caters to celebrity clients - Parker Posey has stopped by with her pooch, Drew Barrymore has browsed, Sharon Stone is a fan, etc. - along with oodles of poodles and pugs and pomeranians and their people, stylish persons who'll probably never bump into some secret Bloomingdales twin.
" 'We find or create truly unique pieces. So whether it's a concert T-shirt, cowboy boots, or a dog collar, each item is really a reflection of that individual or pet wearing that treasure," says Fauser. 'Our clients are people who want the exclusive, one-of-a-kind items that we find in vintage wear. And they certainly don't want anything less for their pet.'
"Fauser and Rockin' Rodeo co-owner Mary Ossanna would know: they've puppy loves of their own-Coco, Lucy, and Prada-who keep casually outfitted in custom collars made of antique leather. Like the finely aged leather belts, boots, and bags offered to Rockin' Rodeo's two-legged customers, the dog collars and leashes (priced between $80-450) can be further personalized with antique studding."
You can read more but doesn't the idea of personalized vintage collars with antique studding pretty much tell you everything you need to know about Los Angeles, pet owners, the innate lust for stuff humans are cursed with, plus late-stage capitalism in the United States?
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 02:40 PM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2006
Stylish Seating
There were supposedly 60-plus colleges represented at the Stockholm Furniture Fair last week. The gorgeous seating below is the handiwork of first-year students at the Estonian Academy of Arts.
Starting with the stool and moving clockwise, the designers are Mari Tosmin, Aap Piho, Ville Lausmäe, and Mari Rass.
I spoke to Kerli Valk, a third-year student, and demanded to know how the hell first-year students could crank out this kind of stuff in their first year. Valk seemed a bit bemused by my question and explained that the students spent their first semester working on a single project and the result was on display.
She also mentioned that there were 15 applicants for every opening in the four-year design program, which has a total of 40 students. So I'm guessing the people accepted into the program were pretty darn talented and experienced even before they set foot on school property.
The chair on the left is by Ketsia Suurväli, the chair on the right is by Irene Roos, and the circular wooden stool or sculpture (or toy--it was very popular with kids, Valk said) in the foreground is by Kertu Kaldaru.
The Stockholm Furniture Fair was the first time design students from the Estonian Academy of Arts has exhibited work outside of their country. I don't imagine it will be the last. I'll be honest--until now, I've never had the slightest desire to visit Estonia. But the work of these students makes me want to dash over immediately and see what else I've missed all these years.
I promised you a pic of the Save Our Souls design duo I blogged about recently. Johannes Carlström and Magdalena Nilsson are standing against a backdrop of their Gunner wallpaper. My apologies, SOS, for not making this pic smaller but I really wanted to show off your design. After all, who could resist this deceptively demure pattern of pink revolvers?
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)
February 11, 2006
Stockholm Furniture Fair: Bliss on a Stick
I went to my first Stockholm Furniture Fair yesterday. I don't know if all designers are nice or only the ones I've met, but I had a swell time and Apartment Therapy fans would cream their jeans over the nifty items on display.
There are too many cool things to mention in a single posting so today I will limit myself to reporting on a cheeky design duo called Save Our Souls. Johannes Carlström and Magdalena Nilsson, the two young designers behind this spanking new company, found inspiration in last year's global disasters, including Hurricane Katrina.
Yes, it is as weird as it sounds. As the company describes it, “Save Our Souls makes harsh, beautiful furniture with bitter-sweet aesthetic. The pleasant combined with the threatening and dark.” That’s an apt description. Later I’ll post a photo of the two designers against a backdrop of their Gunner wallpaper. It’s a subversively traditional, almost old-fashioned looking wallpaper with a repeating pattern in pink against a background of deep maroon. It takes a while to realize that the repeating image is a revolver. A revolver. I nearly burst out laughing when I got it.
The company showed four products: the wallpaper, a gorgeous black glass table (modeled on an oil spill), heavy, hanging black glass lamps (modeled on—you guessed it-oil drops), and a black bookcase I really love called "Fuckin Far From Ok" that has that phrase built into the shelves. If that's not modern life summed up neatly, what is?
To quote from the company’s statement (which I’ve cleaned up a tiny bit), “The greenhouse-effect is getting more severe every day with storms and hurricanes sweeping our world. The glaciers are melting. We produce. Consume. We buy more stuff than ever before and materialism is a way of life. We believe that almost every cultural worker has a dream of, if not saving the world, at least make it better or more beautiful. It's problematic to want to make new products. In fact very little new stuff is needed.
“What to do? Fold one's hands and pray, like sending out a SOS-signal, hoping for someone to rush out and intervene. Save Our Souls became the working name and we made a series of furniture that comments the world around us. This is not a moralizing sermon, we are just like anyone else, in fact we live happy lives in the industrial world. What we want to do is to use that silence between the catastrophes and remind ourselves. Instead of trying to forget, we put the light on the problems and make a visual experience of it."
Save Our Souls presented its new products in the Greenhouse, a special area of the Stockholm Furniture Fair devoted to new and young designers and design programs from colleges as far away as Tokyo. Few of the products displayed at the Greenhouse are in production, and many of them will remain prototypes. That's the nature of the business. But there was tons worth seeing, and I'll add more examples next week.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)
December 16, 2005
Strictly Optional: Chewing Gum Edition
Words of wisdom. "Success is like gum. It is fine till it's in your mouth but if you swallow it, it'll lead to indigestion."
Guess what crime you commit if you're a 34-year-old Australian twin suffering from anorexia? "Earlier this year, Clare received a two-month jail term for stealing chewing gum, a soft drink and a blender."
Too much information. "Cheryl Ankrom had set aside a minimum of one week for hospital recovery after her colon resection last August. Thanks to chewing gum, though, she headed home after four days. 'My intestines started working almost immediately,' says Ankrom."
Up next: pomegranate-flavored sausage, no kidding. "Ford Gum & Machine Co., Inc. of Lincolnshire, IL recently introduced Pomegranate Power Sugar Free Chewing Gum, a pomegranate and wild blueberry flavored gum made with natural pomegranate extract."
Americans gum up the works. "The Irish Business Against Litter group is seeking Government action to tackle the problem of chewing gum on Ireland's streets. ...The Government had planned a number of years ago to introduce a plastic-bag-style levy on chewing gum in an effort to combat the problem, but it abandoned the move following lobbying from US Ambassador James Kenny on behalf of the Wrigleys corporation."
In news beyond gum-chewing circles, it appears that Google has a worthy rival at last. From today's New York Times: "President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials. Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States..."
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:34 PM | Comments (0)
December 14, 2005
Occupation: Gumbuster
"Britain has a gum-control problem. Look down at any well-trodden pavement and you'll see thousands of white and grey discs flattened across the stone. Each marks the scene of a crime, the moment when a gobbet's minty charm wore off for one idle chewer, who then decided that they couldn't be bothered to wrap it up or wait for a bin and just spat it out where they stood.
"This would be just a minor nuisance - unimportant, even - were it not happening on such a vast scale. It is estimated that three quarters of the British population chew gum regularly. They buy 980m packs a year, and spit out more than 3.5bn pieces - most of which they dispose of 'inappropriately'. The result is millions of little blots on the country's urban landscape, mapping out quite clearly the population densities on each street: great stripes of spots wait outside railway stations, tacky penumbras gather round bus stops, not to mention the hidden horrors of the bus seat and the handrail."
Despite the one-they disagreement, I'm in love with The Guardian's Leo Benedictus. He had me at "gobbet's minty charm." The piece is packed with unexpected statistics and hands-on reporting. Read it.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:27 PM | Comments (0)
December 07, 2005
Strictly Optional
"The Integra Total Facial System is an invention which would not look out of place in The Jetsons, the animated portrayal of domesticity in an interplanetary age. It is Mr Campbell's hope that within a year men and women across the country will sit with it in the evenings pressing two prongs against their faces. These emit micro-currents of electricity which exercise muscles beneath the skin and slow the ageing process." Of course they do. Clearly Mr. Campbell's spent a fair amount of time with something pressed up against his brain.
"It took nearly running over a young girl on a pony one night for Lee Annie Kelly to act on an idea she'd had for quite some time: headlights for horses." Fine but where's the beverage holder?
"Mobile Assets Corp. announced today at the conclusion of its annual strategy review that it will continue its primary commitment to developing predictive intelligence applications and add a new complementary technology initiative that may revolutionize the mobile communications industry." No word yet on the company's commitment to developing intelligent PR applications.
Last but certainly not least, "ExxonMobil has introduced a new line of proprietary gourmet breakfast sandwiches at its 680-plus On the Run(R) convenience stores in the U.S. ... The sandwiches are made with a premium mild white-cheddar cheese; an extra-thick smoky bacon round; a higher-profile egg; and a premium sausage patty that has a flavor unique to the On the Run Cafe brand." I find it *so* easy to believe that ExxonMobil's sausage patties have a unique flavor. Don't you?
I didn't find any of these items via Strange New Products but if you're a glutton for punishment--and there's no On The Run store in your neighborhood--it's a great place to find many more items that are strictly optional.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 08:36 PM | Comments (1)
November 24, 2005
Marketing: The Dental Connection
Sequestered in Sweden, I miss out on most developments in hip-hop. So the rage for dental jewelry is news to me. Don't miss the slideshow running with a great LA Times article by Chris Lee, who writes:
"Hip-hop has had a well-chronicled love affair with conspicuous consumption. Gold 'rope' necklaces and 'iced out' wristwatches covered in precious stones have become standard issue within the field. And over the years, rap paeans similar to Nelly's 'Grillz' have been devoted to sky pagers, Adidas sneakers, chrome hubcaps and the diamond affluence of 'bling-bling.'
"But according to Bun B, whose grill spells 'Trill,' the title of his recently released album, across six top teeth, dental jewelry is more than simply an assertion of rappers' purchasing power.
" 'Gold teeth have evolved from being just pieces of metal on your tooth,' said the hard-core rapper. 'For some people, it's an expression of who they are: their 'hood, what they represent.... It's marketing, a promotion.' "
An expression of the hood? Yeah, right. But promotion? Ubetcha. This trend didn't make any sense to me until I got to that line. The hip-hop artists profiled in the piece all got their grillz at a place owned by a fellow hip-hop star but you can get something similar from Mr. Bling. I'm rather taken with the $500 fang covers but there are plenty of choices.
I still don't get it. Gold choppers remind me of Jaws, the James Bond villain in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. Of course there's no reason this particular trend would speak to me but clearly it has an audience or Mr. Bling would not be in business.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:12 AM | Comments (0)
October 28, 2005
Closet Tips and Rental Handbags
Now even the guys are supposed to be obsessed about storage. Exhibit A: The October issue of GQ includes a one-page article called "5 Point Plan for October: Get Your Closet in Order." But that's not the big news. The big news is that there is not one but two businesses that rent handbags, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Guess it's kind of like leasing a Lexus. Why own if you can rent and trade in an outmoded model for something snazzier? Especially when designer bags cost nearly as much as autos these days.
"Bag Borrow or Steal is the more established of the two. For $19.95 a month, customers can rifle through the Trendsetter "closet," stocked with less expensive brands like JLo and Liz Claiborne. Access to the mid-level Princess closet costs $49.95 a month. And for $99.95, the Diva membership offers the latest in Marc Jacobs, Emilio Pucci, and Louis Vuitton - bags that can retail for up to $1,000. ... Prices at From Bags to Riches range from $19.95 to $89.95 per month. High-end inventory includes Balenciaga, Dolce & Gabanna, and Fendi."
From Bag Borrow or Steal staff writer Teresa Mndez rented "a small mint-green Marc Jacobs (similar bags retail around $700).To my admittedly untrained eye, it looked like the real thing. The silver hardware was substantial, the leather gently worn and buttery - presumably from previous borrowers." So far so good. But then: "The Dooney & Bourke I chose from From Bags to Riches looked to be grass green in the photo (approximately $250 retail). But the bag that landed on my doorstep was much darker. It resembled and vaguely smelled like something my grandmother might carry, and appeared unlined - unlike most of handbags in the Dooney & Bourke line."
I'm not a bag hag but my kidlet has developed a keen interest in designer bags, I'm sorry to say, thanks to teen movies like Mean Girls, in which the queen bees carry Prada bags. A shoe fetish makes sense to me but handbags? Handbags?
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 06:19 PM | Comments (1)
October 25, 2005
Elizabeth Hickok Recreates San Francisco in Jello
Artist Elizabeth Hickok has created a miniature Alamo Square using Jello, of all things. It's brilliant, it's cool, words are inadequate. Don't miss her Telegraph Hill video, which features a wobbly purple Transamerica Pyramid, among other landmarks. Yes, Boing Boing covered it first but I actually heard about it from photographer Chris Holmes. Thanks, Chris!
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 01:47 PM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2005
Wedding Rings May Cause Impotence
Stop the presses: Wedding rings reduce male power and may cause impotence, according to Pravda. And if Pravda says it, you know it must be true.
A wedding ring, which many men constantly wear on the fourth finger, may initiate a variety of sexual disorders and eventually end up with partial or even complete impotence. A recent research work conducted by Belarussian scientists revealed that widespread beliefs of losing strong virility after many years of wearing the wedding ring on the ring finger are based on certain scientific reasons.
Scientifically speaking, those men are morons. "Known bio-therapist, healer Sergei Gagarin," explains part of the problem thusly:
Any educated person probably may remember the so-called right hand screw rule from the course of physics: when the electric conductor moves into a closed circuit, the self-induction EMF (electromotive force) with a certain vector occurs in it. Similarly, the nerves in human fingers can be compared to the conductor, while the wedding ring acts like a closed circuit.
There's more but basically, "those who do not wear wedding rings 24/7 may have a lot fewer problems in their sex lives," he says. Especially, I imagine, if their sex lives involve women other than their wives.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 07:46 PM | Comments (0)
August 29, 2005
What's That Stuff?
"Ever wondered about what's really in hair coloring, Silly Putty, Cheese Wiz, artificial snow, or self-tanners?" Luckily for us, Chemical & Engineering news has a special report that examines "the chemistry behind a wide variety of everyday products." Thanks, Tim!
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)