Daddy Types: March 2009 Archives

March 2009 Archives

March 31, 2009

The Dozen Or So Unhappily Circumcised Man March

If your head's not too desensitized to appreciate it, the Washington Post's story on the 50 or so intactivists who marched from the White House to Capitol Hill yesterday is entertaining. Also a little sad. Two foreskin-mourning college kids were...
[read the full post...]

There's A Sale At Jenny's!

It's true, I am constitutionally incapable of passing up a chance to make an Airplane! reference. It's also true that Jenn from Minor Details is doing some major Spring Cleaning, which means clearing out her private hoard of vintage children's...
[read the full post...]

Stokke, Chicco, Chicco, Stokke?

One of the many things I learned from Pamela Paul's book, Parenting, Inc.: Chicco's pronounced KEE-koh. Because it's Italian, obviously. Also, they're huge. The parent company Artsana has like EUR 1.6 billion in sales for three business lines, only one...
[read the full post...]

It's A Miracle! Giganta And Rocket Slides Are From The Same Company

It's obvious now, but until a couple of minutes ago, I had no idea Giganta the scary/awesome playground robot and the biggest, awesomest rocket-shaped playground structures were both made by the same company, Miracle Equipment Company of Grinnell, Iowa....
[read the full post...]

Will Oilily's New Private Owners Address Their Rosa Pomar Problem?

It turns out that while they were launching their new Spring line of knockoff Rosa Pomar bunnies, the Dutch moppet clothing company Oilily was itself being sold. The announcement appeared in the Dutch press two wekes ago that Lea Ward,...
[read the full post...]

March 30, 2009

BRIO On Swedish eBay: They Don't Make'em Like They Used To

And for a moment it looked like they may not make them at all anymore. But thanks to the excellent sleuthing of previous DT advertiser Christopher Robin of Our Children's Gorilla, we can enjoy a few sweet vintage BRIO...
[read the full post...]

RIP Helen Levitt

Who Froze New York Street Life on Film, Is Dead at 95 [nytimes] Previously on DT: Helen Levitt's Photos Of Kids And Their Street Art Related: whoa, her brother is Bill Levitt of Alta, Utah?! The Mayor!...
[read the full post...]

'Rocket Science': Rocket-Shaped Playgrounds By Lauren Orchowski

Giganta reminded me that I hadn't posted anything about the awesome photos of vintage rocket- and space-themed playground equipment that had been making the blog rounds recently. Not wanting to just do a me-too, "sweet! check it out!" reblogging,...
[read the full post...]

March 29, 2009

Giganta The Playground Robot Automatically Produces Fun, Nightmares

Giganta is certainly not the creepiest piece of playground equipment on this list. But it definitely leads the Non-Russian Surrealism, Most Prison-Like, and Robots Will Enslave Us categories. I'd love to see where these things were ever installed, if...
[read the full post...]

W Magazine Gets To The Bottom Of Octomom Media Frenzy, Finds Booster Seat

If you're like me, you've been ignoring the Octomom story because either there wasn't a clean baby gear angle, or the whole thing was an annoying, degenerate, media cluster(#*%$. Now thanks to some eagle-eyed reporting by a west coast correspondent...
[read the full post...]

LAT: Thanks To Half-Informed Hippies, The Best Schools Have The Worst Vaccination Rates

Weekend not ruined yet? There's still time. The Los Angeles Times notes that the number of unvaccinated kids in California schools jumped 20% in the last year--from 8,300 to over 10,000--and has more than doubled since 1997. But the times...
[read the full post...]

March 27, 2009

DT Friday Freakout: Short Tips Edition

We just rolled into NYC after just seven hours on the road. Thanks for nothing, Delaware. So though it should still ruin your weekend with alarmist interpretations of scientific research results, the Freakout will be cut short today: A new...
[read the full post...]

Robert Stern Explains Why There Are So Many Male Architects

It's because architecture as a profession is very demanding and involves much international travel. Also, because men don't have to worry about having a family or taking care of them or spending much time with them. Thank you, Dean...
[read the full post...]

Baby In Trunk?

So this is the rear hatch on the new Tesla Model S sedan which debuted yesterday and is supposed to hit the market in 2011. Can you tell me how passengers 6 and 7 will fit back there without...
[read the full post...]

Trophy Trailer Not Included: SEMA Honda Accord 'Wicked Wagon'

Call me crazy, but these days, I love the 1996-7 Honda Accord Wagons, the last ones we saw in the US. Just a well-balanced, reliable, nice-looking, unassuming, small family-sized car. The problem, of course, is finding one in pristine...
[read the full post...]

March 26, 2009

Milk, The Mayor Of Sesame Street

I'd completely forgotten about this till ten minutes ago. Milk is a documentary short from Sesame Street's "How do they make ___?" golden era, the 1970's. Like the classic crayon film, and unlike their chatty competition over there in...
[read the full post...]

Generalissimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead.

Come for the caffeine, stay for the heartwarming words of advice from the adorable great-grandfather on a bicycle. And the caffeine. Coca Cola, yo te amo. [youtube via sullivan]...
[read the full post...]

When The Wild Things Are? Not Till October

OK, there was a moment when it looked like the delays meant it was going to suck. But after seeing the trailer for Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers' incarnation of Where The Wild Things Are, what sucks is that...
[read the full post...]

March 25, 2009

Richard Dattner's Habitot, The Ur-PlayCubes

Wow, awesome. While poking around a bit more on urban planner/architect/playground designer Richard Dattner's PlayCubes concept--which, according to the 2000 monograph of Dattner's work, seems to be doing just fine, thanks--I found this: Habitots. And this is what we...
[read the full post...]

PlayCubes: The Richard Dattner MidCap That Didn't Stick

Along with Paul Friedberg, architect Richard Dattner has been one of the most influential forces in modern playground design in the US. They both championed the adventure playground concept in the 1960's, which called for the transformation of underused...
[read the full post...]

Click Here, Or Some Other Baby Gets It

An important part of being around pregnant people is knowing when not to ask questions, and just do as you're told. So I'm posting this photo and telling you to all go vote for this nice pregnant lady's belly...
[read the full post...]

Strictly Baby Business: Link Roundup

I'm really not a fan of flooding the blogzone with a dozen miniposts, but I'd like to clear my browser tabs. So here are a few links and tidbits from the business end of the baby business: I think I...
[read the full post...]

Doubling Down: Phil & Teds Buys Mountain Buggy Out Of Bankruptcy

Rachel at Dainty Baby just emailed with the scoop: The National Business Review reports that Phil & Teds is acquiring the other offroad double stroller company in New Zealand, Mountain Buggy. Mountain Buggy's parent company Tritec went into receivership in...
[read the full post...]

March 24, 2009

Say What? Worapong Manupipatpong In Stockholm, Piet Hein Eek In America

Students from the Konstfack exhibited a "Garden Furniture" themed show at this year's Stockholm Furniture Fair. Which gives a bit of context for Worapong Manupipatpong's garden bench with roof and play loft, which he dubbed the White Tower. I...
[read the full post...]

If I Ran By The Names We Heard At The Zoo

Spring Break is upon us; pre-school Spring Break. As I try to wrap my head around the concept of a kid old enough to have a Spring Break, we also scrambled to patch together a string of playdates to keep...
[read the full post...]

March 23, 2009

Picture Yourself On A Plane. On An Island. A Bunny With Flower-scope Eyes

So while I'm waiting to see any response from Oilily about Rosa Pomar's flower-eyed bunny dolls and what looks like a cut-n-dry case of knockoffery, some new developments have come to light about the history of one design element...
[read the full post...]

Baby Remember My Name? Mystery Mid-Century Artist Pool

Can you identify the source of this photo and the artist who lovingly decorated a concrete box in the forest for his kids to play with? Andy posted it to his Reference Library flickr stream last spring, but he...
[read the full post...]

March 22, 2009

Oilily, AKA The Dutch Portuguese Indies Plundering Company

Those Dutch, always with the greedy, unilateral attacks on the Portuguese Indies. In the 17th Century, it was the Dutch East Indies Company seeking to wrest control of lucrative spice trading routes in Asia that were controlled by the Portuguese...
[read the full post...]

March 21, 2009

Happy 50th "Birthday" To All The Little People Out There

What could warm a parent's heart more than sharing a treasured memory of a favorite toy with his own child? Today, March 21st, is the "officially marked" 50th birthday of Fisher-Price's Little People. That's right, the awesome little figurines...
[read the full post...]

March 20, 2009

They Might Be Making It Up: Fact-Checking The Kid's First Album

As part of a behavior modification training exercise, my wife recently presented the kid with a her very first CD: They Might Be Giants' first kid-oriented album, "No!" released in 2002. The kid was thrilled. She had obviously never...
[read the full post...]

Brio 26 Tile Pick-Up Game

I confess I can't remember at the moment, but I love whoever gave us this Brio Pick-a-Pair game like family. And it's beautifully made, with endearing designs that were no doubt applied to this high-quality hardwood by happy, skilled,...
[read the full post...]

Daddy Makes: Just Some Jetty, Happens To Be Spiral

I've had this image in my head for a long time, and I thought, with proper steps to assure a transformative work exemption under fair use law, it'd make a great t-shirt for the kids. And sure enough, it...
[read the full post...]

March 19, 2009

Since Cheaper Ones Are Already Unsafe, Your Dropside Crib Will Probably Become Illegal

A tipster phoned this in yesterday, and I when I went to look up the Consumers' Union expert's phone number to get confirmation--hello!--it was already on their safety blog. The Baby Industrial Complex panel that works with the CPSC to...
[read the full post...]

Bugaboos On eBay: A Price Analysis

On March 1st, Bugaboo dropped the US retail price of its original model, the Frog, from $759 to $629. Since one of the key arguments people make to justify the Bugaboo's premium is its high resale value, I was...
[read the full post...]

DT Xingqi-wu Xitstorm

I know today's only xingqi-su, but it's xingqi-wu in Asia, isn't it? Here are a couple of stories that make you say Wu Tang Fung, if you know what I mean: After that consumer activist group announced they had "found"...
[read the full post...]

March 18, 2009

Yow! Gabba Gabba! DJ Jack Black

Like I said, choose your licensed children's characters carefully, because they're gonna haunt you for the rest of your life. Jack Black in a DJ Lance Rock outfit. Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye, from the YGG! Season 2 episode "New...
[read the full post...]

Welcome To The Hotel Dora: You Can Grow Out Of It Any Time You Want, But You Can Never Leave

I knew it was a bad week, finger-on-the-pulse-wise when I learned about Nickelodeon and Mattel's plans to launch Tween Dora on NPR's weekend quiz show, "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me." But I needn't have worried. That was just the...
[read the full post...]

Remember, Son, Don't Take A Knife To A Tattoo Parlor Gun Fight

Judging from the number of people who emailed this tip to me, a lot of dads are wondering what is up with Taunton, Massachusetts' most misunderstood parenting philosopher/mixed martial arts aficionado, Stone Cold Derek Lindsay. Last we heard, Lindsay...
[read the full post...]

March 17, 2009

You've Come A Long Way, Baby Science

It's funny. At first, you see the title of the lone 1932 silent film, Comparative Tests On A Human And A Chimpanzee Infant Of Approximately The Same Age, Part 2, and it seems like too little. But by the...
[read the full post...]

Sudden Birth: Berkeley's Finest Cops Are Also Berkeley's Worst Actors

Unlike most of the digitized educational films in the A/V Geeks' vast library, Sudden Birth was almost certainly not rescued from a school dumpster. The training film was commissioned by the California Peace Officers Association in 1966 so that,...
[read the full post...]

Pity Party Of One From Bloomfield Hills Public Schools, Your Table Is Ready

As I read the Wall Street Journal article bemoaning the Bloomfield Hills, Michigan school system's loss of 250 students over the last two years, which necessitated the recent unfortunate announcement that the district is planning to close two schools...
[read the full post...]

Pinocchio Rug: Come Schnuggle On My Felty Balls

Two things we know for sure about the Pinocchio felted ball rug made for the Danish furniture shop Hay: the Nepalese felted wool ball industry is enjoying full employment, and that hair magnet is going to be a pain...
[read the full post...]

Ahh, The McMemories

As any serious doll collector knows, Yolanda Bello's doll designs for Ashton Drake, in her own eloquent words, "redefined doll collecting as the world knew it" when her first doll, Jason, a romping tot in a blue cloud suit designed...
[read the full post...]

March 16, 2009

Blinky The Friendly Hen Is Too A Storybook For Children

By the third time we read it tonight, with the kid on one knee and K2 clamoring on the rest of me like a chicken-laden jungle gym, I think we briefly equalled, if not surpassed, the surreal ridiculousness of...
[read the full post...]

Mammas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Formula-Fed Sicklings

Damn, baby! Nobody told me that 2004 US Dept. of Health & Human Services Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign with the public service annoucement featuring a [black?!] pregnant mom riding a mechanical bull also had radio spots! Or that those radio...
[read the full post...]

Heavy, Man: Tank Chair Two-Man [sic] Prefab Ply Rocker By Doug Michels & Bob Feild

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Tank Chair, 1968, Doug Michels & Bob Feild, originally uploaded by daddytypes. I found a...
[read the full post...]

Learning To Interpret A Baby's Cries

Some parents look to Science to translate their babies' cries. This is a mistake. The attentive parent will, with a little experience and practice, eventually be able to distinguish between his child's cries, and thus he can be confident that...
[read the full post...]

March 15, 2009

Shapely Science-Distorting Lactivists Annoy Pump-Hating, Stressed-Out, Guilt-Ridden, Haranguing Shrew

The specific arguments Hanna Rosin makes in her new Atlantic Magazine piece, "The Case Against Breast-feeding," are as follows: The increasingly strident culture of breastfeeding activism culture misuses science to induce guilt among upscale, "overachieving" mothers. The claims of scientifically...
[read the full post...]

March 13, 2009

C Is For Caddy And Carbon Tax: GM 'Green' Coloring Book

Did you know that in their spare time, GM, the pioneering environmental curriculum developer behind such classic "Teach 'Green'" lesson plan materials as this Cadillac CTS Sport Wagon coloring page actually makes this Cadillac CTS Sport Wagon? At least...
[read the full post...]

DT Friday Freakout: Lots More Tears Edition

Yes, in case you're keeping score at home, you've already noticed there was no Friday Freakout last week; because we freakin' went out of town for the weekend. So refreshing. But enough of that, let's get on with the overly...
[read the full post...]

Caonimama? Pushmi-Pullyu The Next Symbol Of Chinese Internet Freedom

When I bought this sweet, fuzzy vintage Pushmi-Pullyu doll on eBay a couple of years ago, I thought it'd be fun for the kid. Only when it arrived did I see how hilariously unplayable it was for a toddler,...
[read the full post...]

March 12, 2009

Grover, Can You Spare A Dime? Sesame Workshop Lays Off 20% Of Employees

Sesame Workshop announced layoffs of 67 employees today, roughly 20 percent of the non-profit company's workforce. In a statement to the Financial Times, the Workshop said it was "not immune to the unprecedented challenges of today's economic environment," and that...
[read the full post...]

McAwesome: French Fry Overalls

So here's the deal. I'll agree not to complain at commercials showing that when dads make dinner, they go to McDonald's on ONE condition: McDonald's agrees that when dads go shopping for overalls on etsy, they buy these. Deal?...
[read the full post...]

March 11, 2009

Plush Your Mother: Grass Mud Horse Dolls In China

Long Duck Dong, freedom fighter! The NY Times has a report about a fascinating protest movement that's sweeping the Chinese internet. In response to a massive political crackdown by government censors, ostensibly targeting vulgarity and porn, millions of net...
[read the full post...]

Why Buy A Calder When You Can Make Your Own Abstract Mobile?

From the December 1954 issue of Popular Science, "How to make an abstract mobile," instructions which were preceded by "How to Make a Christmas Tree Mobile": You can really express yourself in an abstract mobile. Unlike the Christmas-tree mobile,...
[read the full post...]

And They Shall Beat Their Jogging Strollers Into Gun Haulers

Jason Calacanis, I can understand; I'm sure he was always practicing piano when his friends were out shooting. But the boys at Jalopnik act like they've never seen a shooting cart made from a jogging stroller frame before. The...
[read the full post...]

Hey Kids, Can You Say Pendejo?

For one brief, shining, hilarious moment at the end of this Jon Stewart clip about his feud with Jim Cramer and the CNBC/NBC/MSNBC conglomernaut, I felt a swelling of synergistic gratitude in my heart for Viacom. Unfortunately, that was...
[read the full post...]

You Can't Not Pick Your Kid's Nose

When I told her "You can pick your nose, you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your friend's nose," the kid laughed so hard I felt like George Carlin himself. Never mind that one of the things...
[read the full post...]

March 10, 2009

Thank You, Greatest Generation!

I don't read Thomas Friedman's column regularly, but if he promises to quote The Onion and make me think of Wonder Showzen from now on, I'll give him a chance. The Onion quote you can read for yourself. But...
[read the full post...]

DTQ: What Up With That Backwards Diaper, Kriss?

Did you just not notice you put the diaper on backwards, did you do it just to see what'd happen, or is that what you was born to do?...
[read the full post...]

I Remember These Legs

[via]...
[read the full post...]

March 9, 2009

Gang Sign, Backup In A Blogfight Provided

DadCentric is looking for a dadblogger. Who's also on Twitter. Though I suppose you could email. Grandpa. [dc]...
[read the full post...]

Two One-Offs: Nissan Skyline GT-R x Stagea Wagon Mash-Up

It's not just the Dodge Charger Magnum, people. The Nissan Stagea proves that lowriding station wagons for hoods who have the kids on alternate weekends can get dropped from the lineup in Japan, too. What we don't see, though,...
[read the full post...]

Live Long And Rocker

To the Star Trek purists who will scoff at my Vulcan reference in the title and claim that clearly Jack Rogers Hopkins' carved and laminated wood rocking chair shares obvious design vocabulary with Imperial Klingon culture, most notably the...
[read the full post...]

The Lost Adventure Playgrounds of New York

Adventure playgrounds are designed to facilitate various kinds of free-form, unprogrammed play. They were first conceived in Denmark in the 1930's and took off after WWII, when children were observed having a fine, old time on piles of rubble....
[read the full post...]

March 8, 2009

Meddling Kids Not Included: Dodge Ram 250 Mystery Machine

I"m always impressed with the lengths some folks will go to not get an SUV or a minivan. As Mystery Machine tribute vans go, this one was very subdued....
[read the full post...]

EU Honda Accord Tourer Continues To Taunt US

Hmm, let's see: Honda Accord Tourer S with 30 more hp squeezed out of its 2.2L i-DTEC diesel engine still doesn't come to the US market, under the Acura TSX badge or otherwise. US car market implodes. Coincidence? In...
[read the full post...]

March 7, 2009

The Single Most Notorious Surrealist Bugaboo

From the discussion of Meret Oppenheim's Object on MoMA's newly designed website:Oppenheim's fur-lined teacup is perhaps the single most notorious Surrealist object. Its subtle perversity was inspired by a conversation between Oppenheim, Pablo Picasso, and the photographer Dora Maar...
[read the full post...]

March 6, 2009

The Lucha Library Poster: From La Atlantida To Zebra Kid

El Jefe Design created this sweet Lucha Library alphabet poster last fall, para los ninos, of course. Because times are changing, and a kid these days has to know more than just "Nachoooooo!" if he's gonna survive on the...
[read the full post...]

Barn Find? Creative Playthings Moon Buggy

My wife works for NASA, and yet I had no idea our country faced a dire shortage of wooden moon buggies until this old-timey Creative Playthings moon buggy turned up for sale on eBay. It's the first one I've...
[read the full post...]

March 5, 2009

DTQ: Now What?

Out of the mouths of babe-tending new dads... Matt Gross, aka the NY Times' Frugal Traveler, just emailed with a great question which, remarkably, I have never heard before:As a brand-new stay-at-home dad, I'm a little mystified about what to...
[read the full post...]

All The Names In The Times' Last-Bohemians-In-The-Apthorp Story

For everyone who thought the only possible baby names to come out of the Apthorp were Wendy [Wasserstein], Cyndi [Lauper] and Apthorp, the NY Times has a story that will warm your heart. Or jab it like a knife, since...
[read the full post...]

March 4, 2009

Harvard Study As Close To Harvard As Baby Einstein's Gonna Get

A Harvard Medical School study of almost 900 kids ages 0-3 found that watching television and baby-targeted DVDs did not, in fact, promote learning or brain development. Even though 6 mo kids in the study were averaging nearly an hour/day...
[read the full post...]

Jesper K. Thomsen's Play Furniture Will Help You Keep Up Your Poor, Homemade Front

Flaunting one's wealth was always kind of tacky, but in this straitened times, it has become unseemly even to invest in quality. When one's investment banker neighbor has been laid off, it's impolite, not to mention inconsiderate, to be...
[read the full post...]

March 3, 2009

Milca Mayerova's Abeceda: The Czech Alphabet Book To End All Czech Alphabet Books

I worry that I'm slipping. When I first found out a couple of weeks ago about Abeceda, a pioneering artist book created in 1926 by members of a Czech collective in which photographs of dancer/choreographer Milca Mayerova "dancing" each...
[read the full post...]

Whoa. Tuesday. Freakout. Car Seats Fly In Undisclosed Government Crash Tests

I'd say I hope you're sitting down when you read this, but there's probably an unpublished NHTSA crash test that shows your seat's a dangerous flying projectile, too. An investigation by the nation's de facto consumer safety authority, the...
[read the full post...]

Venezia Senza Soldi, Con Bambina

If you follow his blog on nytimes.com, you know Matt Gross as the Frugal Traveler. To me, though, he'll always be the guy who took his wife and six-week-old [!] baby on vacation to Venice in the drizzly depths of...
[read the full post...]

March 2, 2009

Some Phony Survey: Dads Flake Out On Books, Should Watch More TV

"A mere 3% of fathers read to their children, compared with 89% of mothers." Somehow, even aunts and uncles read to kids twice as frequently [6%] as their own dads. At least that's the lead finding of a pointless online...
[read the full post...]

DT@CPAC How-To: The NRA Changing Pad

For all the hubbub about focusing on the family, CPAC, the big conservative movement gathering, was almost totally devoid of anything kid-related. I didn't see the 13-year-old kid who was apparently elected to lead the Right out of its...
[read the full post...]

Growing Up Wittgenstein

As we learn from Alexander Waugh's new book, The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War, being one Viennese steel magnate Karl Wittgenstein's nine children had its ups and downs. The ups: very musical. Brahms, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg and Mahler...
[read the full post...]

March 1, 2009

DT @ CPAC: Supporting Your Right To Hunt Baby Gear

So I'm watching Ana Marie Cox's flickr stream fill with photos from CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, and I'm like, "Dude! I known that parking garage-turned-exhibition-hall! It's right down the street!" Sure enough, the same hotel that was...
[read the full post...]

Bugaboo Frog March: Price Chops And Closeouts

UPDATE: just heard from Bugaboo's publicist, who informs me the Frog is NOT being discontinued--it's just an even better value than before! I'll be looking into how this "Frog discontinued!" rumor got started. Stay tuned. Last November, after word leaked...
[read the full post...]

« February 2009 | Main Index | | April 2009 »