April 2009 Archives
April 30, 2009
It's Baaaack! Knu Re-Reintroduces "Rocking Beauty," Gloria Caranica's Red Ball Rocking Horse
Or is that, "Knu re-reintroduces 'Red Ball Rocking Horse,' Gloria Caranica's Rocking Beauty"? I got this press release in my inbox the same time as some other folks, but I wanted to get some more info before posting about...
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Living On The Earth [While Mostly Naked, And With A Kid]
As soon as I saw the cover of Alicia Bay Laurel's Living on The Earth at the library sale, I knew I was buying it, and as soon as I opened it and found out the whole thing was...
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April 29, 2009
What Do You Make Of This? A Pteradactyl! Custom Crafty Purse
The kid is a non-stop art machine. We are literally drowning in art, which comes home from school in totebag-sized loads, and which has transformed every box that passes through the house. [My printer cartridge box? Now a duplex...
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Do People Still Take Naked Pictures Of Babies?
apparently, yes. naked + baby on flickr = 10,788 results Above, a photo of William Jefferson Blythe III, born in 1946, whose father was killed in a drunk driving accident three months before he was born. He took his...
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April 28, 2009
Just One Word: Plastic Crawligators. OK, Two Words
Dads of future boogie boarders of America take note: there's a Crawligator on eBay, and right now, it is only eleven bucks. $77. still not a record. UPDATE: The Crawligator bubble has not popped. It went for $405. Crawligator,...
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Volvo 240 Wagon X Toyota Supra Aristo Mashup
Crazy. Some guy in Hiroshima decided to drop a 300+ HP, twin-turbo, 2JZ GTE inline 6-cylinder engine from the Toyota Aristo [the JDM incarnation of the Lexus GS300, which was the only other model besides the Supra to get...
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April 27, 2009
Birds On A Tree? How Can That Be?
The Creative Playthings junkies mourn today, at least all the ones who didn't win the auction yesterday for this pristine and rarely seen Birds-on-a-Tree puzzle from Creative Playthings. Fantastic, and in a palette that'd match the kitchen you grew...
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Moving To A Higher State Of Baby Consciousness
The Boston Globe has an interesting article on the emergent techniques for measuring babies' brain development and activity, and how these advances are changing the commonly accepted model for how babies' brains work and develop. On one level, it's trippy...
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D'oh, How Was The Bugaboo Warehouse Sale?
I'm such a bad fanboi, I forgot to post about Bugaboo's warehouse-clearing sample sale that went down yesterday in Culver City. If you went, please tell me there were no Geckos....
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April 26, 2009
The Gospel According To Jelly Telly
It may have taken God just six days to create the world, but it's been almost two months, and the folks creating JellyTelly, which wants to be God's Chosen YouTube Channel, still got a lot of work to do....
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April 25, 2009
DT Freakout Friday: Was, Uh, Yesterday Edition
Sorry I'm late. I hope these alarmist, hyperbolic, or way-too-early-to-say stories from the news will still be able to ruin at least half your parenting weekend: Can't really top the headline: "Pregnant woman hit by car while running from bear"...
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April 24, 2009
Change Volvo Can Believe In? DOT Calls For Side Impact Standards, Mfr Car Seat Recommendations
Whoa, the Secretary of Transportation just posted the findings of NHTSA's wide-ranging review of US car seat safety standards policy [!] to his blog [!!], Welcome To The Fast Lane. The bullet points: "[N]ew side-impact standards as well as increased...
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D'oh! Why Didn't Anyone Tell Me They Was Selling A Gucci Station Wagon?
A 1973 AMC Sportabout with the entire $142 Gucci trim package, factory A/C AND just 39,000 original miles? AND no reserve? I woulda hotfooted it down to the Tom Mack Classics auction at Charlotte Motor Speedway [sorry, Lowe's, you...
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Tito, Bring Me A Tissue
A list of things that, rather than use a baby wipe, are easier to clean up after it dries: Steamed rice...
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Dick Bruna And The Seven Dwarfs
It still blows my mind sometimes what libraries will get rid of. In 1966, when Miffy was barely 11 years and six books old, Dick Bruna published a series of fairy tales: Tom Thumb, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood,...
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April 23, 2009
Paper AND Plastic: Somewhat Compostable Children's Chair By Claesson Koivisto Rune
See, Magis? You can make plastic-looking furniture for kids without using ecologically damaging petrochemicals. At Milan 2009, the Swedish architecture and design firm Claesson Koivisto Rune is debuting a compostable [!?] plastic children's chair called Parupu, which is Japanese...
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Baby T-Pain Likes Fish Sticks
Hah, babies crying through AutoTune. A new life awaits you in the offworld colonies. [via kottke]...
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Pocahontas Went To London On A Yellow Submarine
Another awesome library sale find: a beautiful copy of the 1967 psychedelic classic [I'd never heard of], Pocahontas in London, by Jan Wahl, illustrated by John Alcorn. The kid points out it's not as historically accurate as the D'Aulaire,...
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Did You Know It Is Or Will Be Shaken Baby Syndrome Awareness Week Or Month?
So maybe the Baby Shaker iPhone app was released Monday to drum up publicity for Shaken Baby Syndrome Awareness Week--in which case, our society is doomed, because apparently the media only freaks out over a problem with the App Store,...
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Apple Strangles Baby Shaker App In Crib
Apple just wanted the screaming to stop, is that so wrong? The iPhone review site Krapps.com set off a media tweetstorm yesterday when it publicized Baby Shaker, an iPhone app where a baby cries until you shake it real...
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April 22, 2009
We're Comic Books From The Government, And We're Here To Help
The library at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has a collection of government-sponsored comic books. Here are some of them, starting with my favorite. The rest are just filler, pretty much: Pogo: Primer for Parents from the TV Division of the...
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Milano Watch 2009: Color Me Villa?
On the bright side, it's nice to see that Magis didn't invent a method for turning petro-plastic into cardboard to make Javier Mariscal's Villa Julia playhouse. On the, uh, not so bright side, the Villa Julia may be the...
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Milano Watch 2009: Magis, Giant Plastic Dodo Not Yet Extinct
A giant plastic rocking Dodo debuted by a giant plastic manufacturer at a giant furniture and design fair in the middle of a depression while the planet's climate is deteriorating? Magis is ironic like a #$%ing Hummer turning donuts...
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Your Kid's Chinese Boss Is Coloring This Right Now
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } 14, originally uploaded by sinosplice. Just teach him to say "Yes sir, I can work...
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Who Makes Those Airbrushed Wrestling Mat Playgrounds?
Did you know that those Habitrail-like indoor playgrounds made out of plastic tubes and padded pipe were invented in 1982 by Jack Pentes? And that his soft modular play [SMP] solutions alleviated baby boomers' fears of letting their kids...
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The Sofa Is A Series Of Tubes: Martino Gamper Per Il Bambini
Besides the obvious coolness of saying I have a piece in the Andy Beach-curated Everyday Living Objects Shop in Milan--I mean, Milano--is saying I'm in a show with Martino Gamper. Yeah yeah, Enzo Mari and Bruno Munari! Martino Gamper! I...
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GTWDs Are The New Hotness In Australia
The Sydney Morning Herald has the scoop: seems that the business culture is starting to change in Australia, and more and more dads are demanding flexible work schedules so that they can be more involved with raising their kids. So...
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April 21, 2009
Tribeca Is Everyone's Suburb!
"Our Suburb" is an 11,000 sf townhouse conversion in Tribeca. The nickname was given by Curbed.com, which got it from an excited comment by one of the owners at a Landmarks Commission hearing. The owners, who used to have a...
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The Volvo Britax Car Seat Series: What's Wrong With This Picture?
And I don't mean, "The kid has no legs," or "He's getting mud all over my leathers." Edmunds has a ridiculous article about how poor, helpless Volvo has launched "three new state-of-the-art child restraints," but they can't sell them...
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Karma, GL-Class In Village. GL-Class In Village, Karma
It's a proven historical fact that every single Greenwich Village-dwelling baby clothing company owner who uses the ill-gotten gains from selling licensed Tootsie Roll onesies at Wal-Mart to buy lease a Mercedes GL450, and then claims it's only because the...
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Recycled? And How: Color Me House Cardboard House Wins Dr. Toy Award, Costco Deal
I've been covering the children's cardboard industry long enough to know that recycling is the norm. What I don't do, though, is go around trading on my purported reputation as a toy expert by anointing straightup knockoffs with meaningless...
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April 20, 2009
Where The Wild Things I Like Are
So, one horrible thwacking sound from my DVD burner, one fast trip to the Genius Bar, one extended playdate at the playground, and one brand new drive--and just to be safe, one iPod Touch--later, and I'm back in business. Here...
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Two Idiots And A Blaby
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Blaby2, originally uploaded by geoframsay. It's no ringing endorsement of the Industrial Design program at...
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Bruce Of Holland
I was in a bit of a rut last week, not really feeling like I had anything worthwhile to post about here on the Daddy Types. Well, not anymore! Now I've got photos from random real estate listings from...
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We're From The Government, And We're Here To Help Stop Baby Tossing
When the Children's Bureau of the US Department of Health, Education & Welfare published its first edition of Infant Care in 1914, there was no data on birth rates or infant mortality, no child- and birth-related research, no pediatrics, and...
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April 19, 2009
And Others Have Googly Eyes Stuck Upon Them
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } collette, originally uploaded by Laser Bread. From Brock Davis's "Born With Googly Eyes" series. [via...
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April 18, 2009
Score One For The Little Bunny: Bankruptcy Court Orders Oilily To Remove & Destroy Rosa Pomar Knockoff Bunnies
Wow. If I'm reading my Google Translator right, Rosa Pomar has won. Fearing that publicity and criticism of Oilily's knocking off of Pomar's stuffed bunnies could derail the sale of the bankrupt company, the Dutch court trustee appointed to oversee...
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April 17, 2009
Amber In The Sky With Felt-Covered Plywood
I'd lost track of Thomas Maitz's Amber In The Sky loft bed since first seeing the renderings in late 2007, but as Swiss Miss reports, the awesome bed is now in production and on sale, at least in Germany....
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Not To Be All Andy Rooney About It, But...
Did you ever notice how hard it is to navigate a voice-activated phone menu with a crying kid standing next to you?...
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Things I'd Rather Not Be Recorded Saying, Vol XII
Especially if there's a chance they release the 911 call to the media:"I didn't know my wife was pregnant," Ryan said of his 27-year-old wife, already a mother of three.Couple unaware of pregnancy gives birth at home with help of...
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DT Friday Freakout: Spawning Season Edition
Sun's out, it's getting warmer, it looks like a great weekend--for random and preliminary medical research news to undermine your confidence in the way you're parenting! Since April is Autism Awareness Month, we'll start there: Were you aware autism is...
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April 16, 2009
Baby Police: Whatchoo Talkin' About, Osita Iheme?
OK.... So. Baby Police. A 2004 Nigerian comedy about a gang of swindling cops led by a Bart Simpsonian 6-year-old named Dada. Who happens to be played by Osita Iheme, a short, child-like adult actor who, along with Chinedu...
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Here We Are, Caitlin And Alec And You And I
"I never wanted to write this book," he tells us at the outset, in a hangdog advisory that we shouldn't expect too much. It was also a book I never wanted to read, but here we are, Alec and I,...
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Oh, BTW, The Juddy Crib Is Done
I guess now that K2's been sleeping in it for a couple of months, it's safe and stable enough to mention that the juddy crib is done. Stay tuned for some more glamour shots and lessons learned. Besides the...
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April 15, 2009
DT WTF Wednesday: Strollers & Syrup
Some quick, headscratching news stories from around the strollerverse: The Albany Times-Union reports that Miguel Angel Rodriguez, 20, was arrested on attempted [!] grand larceny after an employee at Hollywood Video saw him pack "more than $1,000 worth of...
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April 14, 2009
The Most Famous Stroller In Cinema? Is For Sale
Southern California auction house Profiles in History specializes in movie memorabilia and historical documents and such. Their Spring sale on April 30th-May 1st includes items from the incredible sci-fi collection of the late Forry Ackerman; a whole slew of...
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Heh, Brooklyn Bridge
When I saw this old-timey postcard with a pair of dads pushing strollers, I wanted to write, "See? Brooklyn never changes." Then I thought I'd better wait until I found a postcard of the Great Park Slope Parents Benevolent...
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Tweenbots Trick New Yorkers Into Helping Them
The chirpy soundtrack blots it out, so you can't tell from the video is that people are not graciously helping the Tweenbot, a smiling cardboard box on wheels, pick its way through Washington Square Park. They are responding to...
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Where The Wild Things Weren't
OK, the White House Easter Egg Roll was awesome and all, but for our storytime, we had some knucklehead soccer player from DC United who wouldn't show the kids the book, and then would wonder why they didn't say...
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DTQ: What Do Kids In Cheerio-less Countries Eat First?
General Mills launched Cheerios in 1941 as the first ready-to-eat oat cereal. Baby Boomers grew up wanting to be the Cheerios Kid or be annoyed by the Cheerios Kid, which is why every American baby since then's first finger...
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Wasilla Area Man Is At-Home Dad
Luke Dittrich did a Hangout With Todd Palin article for Esquire. It stars piles of laundry, car seat bases, kid handoffs, trips to Target, snowmobiles, splitting childcare with your pregnant eldest daughter, Google Alerts set up for media mentions of...
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April 13, 2009
A Dollar And A Dream: Dish Towel Baby Clothes
Sure, any In 'n Out Burger employee can make a wrap skirt with a dish towel and a big-ass safety pin. But it only lasts to the end of the shift. But if you're in need of some seriously cheap...
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Diaper Changing Stations We Can Believe In
Sorry for the radio silence today; our timeslot for the White House Easter Egg Roll was smack in the middle of the day, and it threw everything else off. Still, it was pretty awesome. The Obama kids' playground which...
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I'd Like To Buy The World A Coke, Starting With Romania
K2 calls any drink a "Coke." I'm not troubled by this because it means I'm doing my important dad job: teaching my kid to love the right brands. Which makes it all the more unsettling to watch Choose, a...
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April 10, 2009
Everything But The Syrup Holder: 1957 Ford Country Squire Do-It-All
While I was trying to figure out which ancient station wagon Ford was referencing when they designed the Flex, I came across this rather insane photo in a vintage ad gallery The Old Car Manual Project's website. Now TOCMP...
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DT Friday Freakout: Somewhere In New Jersey Edition
Crazy Easter Bunnies aren't the only thing to worry about this weekend. Thanks to preliminary research of some kind or another, your whole parenting approach is wrong, too! For example: Whether it's all cars, the Turnpike, or New Jersey itself,...
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It's True, A Station Wagon Will Change Your Life.
Even a borrowed one. A couple of weeks ago, some publicists for Ford asked if I didn't want to try out a Flex for a while. The retrofuturistic not-a-station-wagon is one of the few cars I did want to...
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April 9, 2009
Let's See, What Rhymes With Citi?
Now that they have their fancypants corporate stadium, The Mets are giving their little league fans the shaft. I'll be sure to work this into the conversation the next time the kid asks me why we're Yankees fans. Why do...
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He's Right There In The Chair, Dear, Don't You See Him?
K2 doesn't know what a holiday is, and the kid figured out who the Easter Bunny was two Christmases ago, so CaptureTheMagic.com will not help us dupe our kids--about the Easter Bunny, anyway. That said, if they'd let me use...
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Zeus's Roommate
When the kid was born, one of my wife's best friends gave her a vintage copy of Norse Gods and Giants [1967], by Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire. Apparently, they all used to read it together in elementary school. It's...
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April 8, 2009
Just Give'em A Cardboard Box To Play With
So a publicist sent me [1] a Nintendo DSi the other day, which I still haven't opened yet. Though I'm a video game culture guy, I'm not really a video game guy. And I try to be upfront with...
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UCLA Study: Parents Cutting Costs, Not Foreskins
Actually, the study says that hospital circumcision rates are 24% lower in the 16 states where the procedure isn't covered by Medicaid. But not in Missouri, right? "'We whack 'em all,' says Dr. Renee Stein, whose clinic at St. John's...
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Make Sure Your Kid's Head Is The First Thing You Scratch In The Morning
My theory is that Life Maple & Brown Sugar cereal is actually designed to produce the smell of maple syrup, not the taste. But according to some olfactoryologists or whatever, women have a more highly developed sense of smell so...
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Someone? Anyone? Is Historien Om Någon Invisible To The Non-Swedish World?
While we're on the subject of 1951 and Sweden and Egon Möller-Nielsen, that also appears to be the publication date for Historien om någon, a children's book he illustrated by Åke Löfgren. It's a ubiquitous classic of Swedish children's literature;...
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The Egg and Stuff: Mod Swedish Playgrounds by Egon Moeller-Nielsen
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Stockholm - Tessinparken, originally uploaded by jaime.silva. I don't like to get my awesome vintage...
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For Sale: One Slightly Used, Knockoff-Prone, Dutch Moppetwear Company,
Oilily's having a sale! Of itself. The Dutch children's clothing chain has apparently not sold enough Rosa Pomar knockoff bunnies to cover its nut, because bankruptcy administrators in Amsterdam Monday ordered the company to be sold. Which is funny [and,...
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April 7, 2009
I Like Big Macs, And I Cannot Lie. But Those Other Burgers? Can't Deny
That when The King comes on with an itty bitty price for a kids meal in your face you get Sponge! So. @()#*$ing. Something. [via theawl.com] whoa, a full-length music video version [youtube via adfreak]...
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Child Crawling, 1887, By Edweard Muybridge
The painter Thomas Eakins convinced the University of Pennsylvania to underwrite Edweard Muybridge's massive, multi-year study of motion using high-speed photography. From 1882-86, Muybridge camped out in Philadelphia, photographing seemingly everything that moved. The result, Animal Locomotion, was an...
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"Nathan Needs Some Huggies" Still Not Working
Kudos to Southtown Star reporter Kim Janssen for making the connection, but I doubt the 21-year-old Jeremy Humphrey got the idea for stealing diaper money from the 22-year-old Coen Brothers classic, Raising Arizona: As you can clearly see from the...
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Atelier XT: Portuguese Indie Furniture
I've had this in my browser for weeks now, and I realized what was holding me back: I wanted to post just about everything in Atelier XT's 6,000+ flickr stream. Graca Paz and her husband Francisco are artists living...
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April 6, 2009
Who Knew? Pre-Bearpocalypse, The Berenstains Were Awesome.
Wow, who knew? Who knew that before they completely sold out and flooded the world with 300 million-and-counting books about their brainless Bear Family, Jan and Stan Berenstain were apparently excellent, talented, witty, and even famous illustrators of the...
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Oh Give Me This Home, Where Las Vaquitas Roam
Because I will not be spending $19.5 million to buy it. New York Magazine cuts a line of pure real estate China White in their feature on this 7,000-8,000 square foot duplex loft atop a West Village garage. But...
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Some People In The Neighborhood Crave A Mister Rogers Cover Album
You probably have a dozen or so lodged in your brain, but Fred Rogers composed and wrote over 200 songs. I'd like to think some serious musical types are poring over them, looking for some material to arrange, record,...
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The Toys Our Grandfathers Built Are Now Antiques
On the way to get a haircut this weekend [in DC, Georgetown], I was stopped by this awesome, homemade pedal plane in the window of Metro Interiors, one of the few clean 20th century vintage shops I've found in...
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April 5, 2009
You Sing It, Sister Belkin!
The NY Times' Lisa Belkin has never been more right than when she completely agrees with me:True, the results of these studies are incremental and preliminary -- a few I.Q. points here, a few hundred schizophrenia cases there. Yet for...
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April 4, 2009
The Family That Bikes Together Can't Steer Together
Found this awesome Family-Cycle in a story titled "Eccentric Cycles," which ran in the September 1949 issue of Mechanix Illustrated magazine. It was right under the French guy who strapped a 56-pound, four-tube radio to his bike so he...
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April 3, 2009
DT Friday Freakout: Smoking Edition
Some quick 'n dirty scientific studies from which to draw way-too-hasty parenting lessons: Remember that Freakout where the breastfeeding, organic treehugger mom was all worried that perchlorates might be in her kid's drinking water? Well, that's the newly discovered benefit...
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Phil & Teds Has No Triumphant Video!
When DT published the news last week that Phil & Teds was buying its bankrupt competitor Mountain Buggy in an all-New Zealand deal, I came off sounding too harsh about Phil & Teds owner/CEO Campbell Gower's earlier gloating about MB's...
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Uh-Oilily
Suffice it to say that dealing with their knocking off of an indie Portuguese designer's rabbit is close to the bottom of Oilily's urgent to-do list. From DT's Man In Holland comes the tip that the bankruptcy judge hearing Oilily's...
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What Are You Trying To Do To Me, O Warehouse Stores?
I shop at you, I drop my kid in your ball pit, I join your clubs, I make end tables out of your paper towel bales, and this is how you repay me? You gang up to turn me...
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April 2, 2009
Space Songs Through The Ages
As the husband of a NASA astrophysicist and the father of a space-fascinated kid, and as a fan of obscure, vintage kid culture, I really want to like Space Songs. Space Songs was one of a 6-album set, "Ballads...
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Cool Tricks: Eefin' & Hambonin' On Hee Haw
Hi, my name's Jackie Phelps. And my name's Jimmie Riddle. And our cool trick is hambonin' and eefin'. [youtube via dinosaurs and robots] Or as the fancypants at NPR like to spell it, Eephing: Jimmie Riddle and the Lost...
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Not April Fool's, But Also Decades Late: The Death Star Beach Ball
Lucas, I oughta... just ship the damn thing already. The R2D2 Inflatable Drink Holder can wait. Shiny kid from A.I. not included: Death Star Beach Ball available at Target [starwars.com via boingboing]...
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April 1, 2009
Peepsisqatsi
Boy, you'd never see this "How do they make ____?" film on Sesame Street. Alas, it's only a slideshow: How Peeps are made [chitrib/getty images]...
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AAARRRGH!! JUST LET THE KID BE BALD FOR A FEW MONTHS!
I've tried to keep my trap shut about the headband thing, because it's apparently so important to some moms that their kid is identifiably female, they don't care if she actually looks like a striped billiard ball--or worse, a rental...
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Tauntaun Sleeping Bag
The only thing I don't understand about this insanely awesome tauntaun sleeping bag--with guts printed on the inside, and a freakin' light saber zipper pull!--is why it took nineteen 29 [simple math!] years for them to make it. Seriously,...
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Novelty & Birth Order: A Negative Correlation Theorem
It's four o'clock, and this is the first post of the day. We're collecting a helluvalot of data, that's for sure, and the analytical model is still in the rough stages, but the operating theory about why birth order matters...
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