Did your weekend feel kind of empty, devoid of excessive freakouts over the latest hyperbolic news reports from the worlds of science, health, safety, and parenting? Sorry, my bad. Here we go: Is ICE really trying to take the US-born...
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August 2009 Archives
August 31, 2009
DT Friday Freakout: Monday Makeup Edition
Gold-Plated Creative Playthings Dollhouse Bathroom
Now I love Dino like a brother--a brother who gave me a very fair price on a beautiful, old, Elephant Gray Eames RAR shell, and who added a truly excellent reproduction Eiffel Tower base--and who attached it for free,...
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New & Improved Hooter Hiders, Now With More Boning!
This just in from the DT Mommy Mailbag:Hey Greg - my client Bebe au Lait is introducing a really fun new collection of nursing covers for Winter/Holiday ~there are six new styles in the group which is part of their...
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August 30, 2009
Seriously, What IS Up With Crib Mattresses?
Now that you mention it, Mark, what's up with all those impossible-to-comparison-shop crib mattresses? I'm a newly expecting father and I'm usually pretty good at cutting through the myriad of choices and identifying preference when it comes to most babies...
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Old Timey Kid Book Awesomeness At BibliOdyssey
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } I picked this for the easy laugh, but my favorite title in this BibliOdyssey collection...
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August 29, 2009
FOUND: The Ford Buckminster Fullerwagon
There we go, that's better. Behold, Internet, the full glory that is/was the Ford Buckminster Fullerwagon. If you'll recall, a 1952 dinner discussion of the awesomeness of station wagons between Fuller and the editors of Ford's showroom magazine, Ford...
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Vinyl Wall Decal Not A Toy
By now I think it's clear to all concerned that die-cut vinyl stickers are no mere fad, but are a new, enduring classic. And as such, they deserve a place alongside flocked wallpaper, supergraphics, rag painting and feather marbleizing...
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August 28, 2009
Hyperchouette! Willow & Juniper Baby Rattle From Provence
During the summer lull, Kiosk has posted a little mini-market of finds from Provence, including this awesome, handwoven baby rattle they found at the Saturday market in Apt. It's by a potato basketweaver from Cadenet--which happens to be just...
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Marketers Turning To Dadblogs, Says Dadblogging Marketer
I love it when a marketing plan falls together. A couple of days ago, DT reader George heard a public radio news report about how dadblogs are the new marketing hotness: Sony markets to fathers with 'DigiDads' Sony has launched...
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August 27, 2009
When Max Eggers Got A Wolf Suit: Media Dad And Gay Socrates Debate WTWTA
I didn't mention the excerpt of Dave Egger's novelization of his screenplay adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are which ran in the New Yorker last week, mostly because I barely managed to read the magazine's publicist's email...
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Bam!
And that, my friends, is how you sell a bassinet in a depression. Argington just announced their newest, greenest, and cheapest nursery furniture ever, and I think it might just rock. The Bam Collection is available in birch or solid...
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Playgrounder Comes Out To Play
Before the kid was born, and I had a hard time finding any baby gear I could stand to live with, I thought I'd keep a list, so the next guy Googling around for an industrial-style changing table could use...
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August 26, 2009
On Child-Onset Schizophrenia
And to think some of my worst days as a parent are when K2 pulls all her and her sister's clothes out of their dresser for the third time. After escalating fits of hallucinations, violence, and uncontrollable outbursts and behavior,...
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Rambo Lambo For The Fambo: The Sultan Of Brunei's Lamborghini LM002 Wagon
Nothing refines one's appreciation of the station wagon's unique utility quite like having twelve kids, three wives--and sitting atop a vast oil field all one's own. From the Sultan of Brunei Treasury of Station Wagon Living comes this masterpiece:...
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CPSC Does Windows: 5.4 Million Blinds & Shades Recalled For Strangulation Danger
Whoa, now that's a recall. Six of them, actually. The CPSC has issued a sweeping set of recalls of window blinds, Roman shades, and roller shades sold at a whole bunch of major retailers and manufacturers, including Target, Ikea, Pottery...
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Linux Baby Rocker Stuck In v0.9
Macjonesnz wrote this elegant MythTV code to rock an infant carrier by opening and closing the CD/DVD tray all the way back in January 2008, but it doesn't seem to have been picked up and expanded upon by the...
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Post-Traumatic NICU Experience Stress Disorder
Studies at Stanford and Duke of parents whose kids spent time in the NICU found that they often exhibited signs of post-traumatic stress disorder--including nightmares, flashbacks, and panic attacks triggered by beeping alarms--long after the kids came home:[A]lthough none of...
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August 25, 2009
First Time As Farce, Second As Tragedy, Or Vice Versa
I swear I was kidding when I wrote just yesterday that circumcision was All-American enough to get the wingnuts to squeal the Pledge of Allegiance. Now some liberal knucklehead's gone and proved me wrong/right by dredging up some birther theories...
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August 24, 2009
DT Monday Mommy Mailbag
It's been a while since I've dumped a mess of mommy marketing material on here. At first, I thought I was in trouble because I wasn't getting as many tone-deaf, gender-ridiculous press releases; what would I mock on the blog?...
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Unplayed With, Ungnawed On: Awesome Creative Playthings Steamroller
It doesn't get any better than this, folks. If by "it" you're referring to vintage, 70s-era Creative Playthings wooden steamrollers, gift-ready and new in the original box. Whether it's worth at least $45 for your kid to have the...
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Indie Rock Coloring Book By Yellow Bird Project
Graphic artist Andy J. Miller has been collaborating with the Yellow Bird Project on their Indie Rock Coloring Book for almost two years, almost since the YBP itself was founded. There's a page for each of the 32 indie...
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My Name's Doug, And My Cool Trick Is Painting Starbucks Cups
Here's a modern craftywork project from Our Gen X Ambassador Douglas Coupland: Something "kids can do by themself [sic], or maybe grandparents need something to do." Or Gen X'ers who look like grandparents. [youtube via dt reader chris]...
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Government Foreskin Panels Want To Africanize All American Baby Boys
How's my headline? Does it sound teabag militia wingnutty enough to get some cranky, gun-toting mobs to wave their "Don't Tread On My American Forskin!" signs outside the CDC? Because the NY Times reports that HIV/AIDS epidemiology officials at the...
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August 22, 2009
'Don't Tase My Mom!'
Here's that awesome dashboard video of a policeman in Syracuse, NY tasing and arresting a mom in front of her minivanful of kids. She'd just turned onto the family's street when the police officer pulled her over for talking...
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August 21, 2009
DTQ: What iPhone Picturebook Apps Do You Use?
It just gives me a headache to wade through the iPhone App Store. And the few picturebook apps I've seen look like crap: a jury-rigged reader with a couple of dopey clip art-lookin' titles no one's ever read twice. Still,...
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ZRecs: Sigg Totally Knew It Had BPA In Its Aluminum Bottles All Along
Day-um, I'm sure glad I'm not a baby bottle manufacturer trying to pass my expensive aluminum gear off as BPA-free. Because I'd live in daily fear of Z Recommends totally busting me some day. And if I were the CEO...
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DT Friday Freakout: Fish Edition
I've got a vacationful of stucco wall-inflicted bruises and unsupervised children to freak out over this weekend. But in case that's not enough, here are a few headlines from the worlds of scary science and safety: Blow out the candles...
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Phil & Teds Moves Mountain Buggy To China Right On Schedule
It's as simple as 3+6=9. March + 6 months = September. March was when Phil & Teds announced it was buying Mountain Buggy, its New Zealand competitor, out of bankruptcy. Six months was the timeline floated then for making a...
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Let's Panic About Babies!: What To Really Expect When You're Expecting
So awesome, even if the only mentions of dads are the "Is your partner an Insensitive Jock or a Deadbeat Dad?" poll and the "10 things to do with your partner instead of even pretending to be interested in having...
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August 19, 2009
The Ice Cream Menace
The NY Times article on the annoyances of the ice cream man cracks me up like five different ways: First there's the whole premise of the predatory ice cream man, whether he's an unlicensed immigrant sneaking into the playground, a...
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No, Elmo, I'm Your Father!
From Daily Finance, the money vertical/portal section of AOL's content strategy v8.0:Elmo, Sesame Street's most giggly spokesmonster, is going through some tough economic times. His mommy has lost her job. Elmo's daddy is still working. (Note: A Sesame spokeswoman...
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Advice For When The White House Asks You To Read A Book To Children
Alright, Melody and Rahm, you are the fifth and sixth White House-related celebrities to read books to large groups of children [the other four being former Utah governor and HHS secretary Mike Leavitt and his wife, and two guys...
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Larger-Than-Average Mickey Mouse Merchandise
1st Dibs: Come for the odd 1950's Mickey Mouse see-saw salvaged from a Miami Beach drive-in theater [$2,500 at Pierre Anthony Galleries in West Palm Beach, via anonymous works] Stay for the even more distended Mickey dresser, a head-scratching,...
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August 18, 2009
Alison Gopnik On How Babies' Brains Work And How They Learn
One of the forgotten pleasures of visiting the grandparents: reading the print edition of the newspaper. I just finished reading Alison Gopnik's editorial in the Sunday NY Times. Gopnik, a UC Berkeley child psychologist, has turned up on DT before,...
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Little Bony Pajamas At Gymboree
I don't have the patience to go in, but my wife can somehow find the one non-heinous, non-appliqued, non-pink-disaster at Gymboree. This time it was an extra set of pajamas for K2, which, if her head were bigger, balder,...
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Raised On The Roof: Unite d'Habitation Nursery & Creche
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Unite d'Habitation roof, originally uploaded by stewartski. Unité d'habitation, the massive, postwar housing tower in...
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August 17, 2009
Thriftshop Find: The Family of Man, The Magazine
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Thriftshop Find: The Family of Man, The Magazine, originally uploaded by daddytypes. Obviously it's kind...
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On Loving Ezra Jack Keats
Even in the middle of it, I forget much of parenting is transmitting or recreating my own childhood for my kids. We went to my grandmother's house, so the kid can rummage through the same coal-bin-turned-basement-toy-closet I used to; we...
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August 16, 2009
Wow, Vintage Kid-Sized Levi's
I confess, I haven't looked very much, but if Andy's posting them, I going to assume that I'm right in assuming there aren't too many pairs of dead-stock, c.1945 kid-sized Levi's, complete with the tags, floating around out there....
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August 15, 2009
Bears On Melting Ice By Masahiro Minami
Japanese designer Masahiro Minami has come up with a fun, playful way to teach your kid how the SUVs are killing all the polar bears. Just like the Industrial Revolution killed off all those ice floe-hopping brown bears. Have...
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Kay Bojesen, Resistance Fighter?
From the Kay Bojesen Samling exhibition at the Rudersdal Museums comes this fascinating bit of context about the creation of one of Bojesen's signature toys, the Royal Danish guard:At its birth in 1942, in the midst of occupation darkness,...
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August 14, 2009
Now What About The 2009 Honda Stream? Where'd That Go?
While I'm on the topic of mythical US Hondas, it's 2009, and I don't see a single Honda Stream anywhere. In 2007, Winding Road said the sweet, CRV- and Civic-based, 6-8-Japanese-sized-passenger, mini-minivan was coming to the US in 2009....
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UPDATE: Journalists Love Station Wagons They Can't Have
I wanted to see what the story was behind that, "Ooh, Acura's thinking of bringing the European Honda Accord Wagon to the US!" story. So I put in a call to the PR folks at Acura. They were very nice...
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DT Friday Freakout: Neo-Liberal Risk Culture Edition
What does the world of overhyped science and overly alarming and/or underpublicized safety news want you to freak out over this weekend? Researchers in Boston have found the cure to obesity: brown fat, which burns calories instead of storing them....
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August 13, 2009
365 Photos About 365 Kinds Of Diapers
You know those videos where a guy takes a photo every day for a year, and he looks the same in every picture, except that his hair grows out? This is not one of those videos. Happy birthday, Lex....
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My Left Foot [Powered Hop-along Hobby Horse]
For want of a www., a day was lost. It took me until now to realize I was missing the www. on the URL for my blog server. Stay tuned for pictures of the Audi grille that was destroyed...
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August 12, 2009
The Kid And The Cave
If you've noticed things are a little quiet around here, it may be because we're on vacation, doing the grandparent circuit in Utah for a couple of weeks. Yesterday the kid and I went with my sister and her 3yo...
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Acura Guy Gets Hopes Up For US-Spec Accord Touring Wagon
One of the biggest annoyances about Honda is seeing the company's cool family-sized wagons and MPVs get totally stiff-armed in the US market. Take the sweet EU-spec Honda Accord Touring as an example. Even if we don't get the high-tech...
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August 11, 2009
Twitter's Dad
Looks like the guy who helped conceive Blogger and Twitter is getting ready for his own v2.0 to drop. Good luck, kids, don't sell this one to Facebook, either!...
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Huibert van Muilwijk Rolls Out New Q4 Crib
You know what, it's been too long since we had a good, old-fashioned crib rendering around here. So thanks to Huib for sending along these images of his next/new crib design, dubbed the Q4, which will debut at Dutch...
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August 10, 2009
WTD: The Ford Buckminster Fullerwagon
Don't let the old-timey photography fool you. The Ford Treasury of Station Wagon Living is not an artifact of the past; it is a blueprint of the future. From the foreword:Like most new ideas, the book has been a...
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Lovely Parting Gift: Gerrit Rietveld Dollhouse
I thought I'd tracked down every last kid-related design Gerrit Rietveld ever made, but it turns out I'd only covered the furniture, not the dollhouses [!]. Gerrit Rietveld presented the plans for this dollhouse to the Jesse family, repeat...
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August 9, 2009
Moonstruck: Fornasetti Luna Cradle
I've never quite been able to pin down Piero Fornasetti. Sometimes the slightly modern, slightly surrealist, slightly neo-classical Milanese designer's graphically intensive work feels crisp and fresh and great. And sometimes it feels like hopeless kitsch. I'm going to...
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Yes We Cane! Rattan Kids Furniture By Kay Bojesen [?!]
Is there anything that Kay Bojesen didn't make? In 1949, he created an export collection of rattan [spanskrør] kids and doll furniture for R. Wengler, basketmakers to HKH Frederic IX, King of Denmark. And the awesome pram above--sorry, doll-size...
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Nomadic Car Furniture: Ford Treasury Of Station Wagon Living
We're Ford country, y'all! This is so awesome, it's like someone slammed on the brakes, and I just got plastered by all the awesomeness bouncing around in the back of the Country Squire Wagon. Lash it down, people! As...
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August 7, 2009
John Hughes, Writing Dad
John Hughes, I can't quit you. In last summer's issue of Zoetrope All Story, Hughes recounted the creation of "Vacation '58," the short story that became National Lampoon's Vacation, which wrote on the sly while he was working at Leo...
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Free Bouncy Rides Sold Separately: Awesome Subway Dancing
This is just the most fantastical scene I've seen in a long time. Almost makes me wish we rode the L train more often. Or maybe instead of dance classes, we'll just go to Union Square and let the...
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DT Friday Freakout
Man, my browser tabs are ready to *POP* with all kinds of research and recalls ready to freak. you out: The next time you have to pay for your own C-section, go ahead and treat yourself. A news study shows...
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August 6, 2009
Funny As A Heart Attack: Mister Mom Writer John Hughes Is Dead
Wow. Considering how many of my neurons are devoted to remembering and reciting nearly every line from the rest of his movies--Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, National Lampoon Vacation, Uncle Buck, Home Alone 1-3,...
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DTQ: How Much Did Your Kid Cost?
Ever since reading Sarah Wildman's article about getting blindsided by a $22,000 hospital bill for the birth of their child, after they'd been paying $126/month for a carefully researched maternity care rider on their high-deductible, high-copay insurance policy, I've wondered...
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The End Of Adventure, Literature As Michael Chabon Knows It. Them. Also Maps
Here's what I hear: We don't let children go out in the woods today alone anymore, because of our unfounded fear of strangers in vans. The result of this Razing of the Wilderness of Childhood is, in the future, no...
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Grilled Placenta With Peanut Sauce And Rice Vermicelli
Wait, is the annoying, new dad, placenta-schlepping, Time Magazine column-having Joel Stein related to the annoying, peanut-allergy-denying, yuppie-parent-blaming, Los Angeles Times column-having Joel Stein? Why would anyone take a single piece of food-related advice from that guy? Does the placenta...
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Wait, So It's Against The Law To Order Cooked Placenta Takeout?
Time columnist Joel Stein took a short break from attending the delivery of his firstborn child to hustle his wife's placenta home in a cooler so the Placenta Lady could come cook it, dry it, and grind it into 120...
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Thingamababy Totally OWNS The Baby Gloton Breastfeeding Doll Story, BTW
I know that it's suddenly flared onto the big gearblog and WTFblog radar, but AJ had that chup chupi chupiriffic Baby Glutton Spanish breastfeeding doll story down like three weeks ago. And he's got the hundred+ fervent lactivist comments...
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August 5, 2009
Men Shop At Mars, Parents Shop At Venus
Well, it's taken me a few years, but I think I finally have it all figured out: parenting, the difference between moms and dads, between quality and crap, between magazines and blogs, how to fluff an advertiser. And it's...
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Indian Bamboo For Kids By MP Ranjan
Prof. MP Ranjan sounds like the Eames and Enzo Mari of Indian design. Or at least Indian bamboo design. He's the head of the Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, where...
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This Week On Stardates Of Our Lives
You know how the first Star Trek series was just a string of adventures, and then Next Generation a little, but definitely by Deep Space Nine, the whole thing was a giant soap opera in space? If you didn't think...
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August 4, 2009
This Week In Affordable Artworks: Jane Mount's Kid Book Self-Portrait
I always make sure to have my vintage Pynchons and Nabokovs slotted in there just in case someone like artist Jane Mount comes over. See, like the rest of us, Mount likes to judge people by what's on their...
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AEIO, Not U, Never Y: La Danse Des Mots By Jean-Baptiste Mondino
What up, France? It's not enough to claim you invented flying and movies, now you think you invented music videos, too? I'll be dimplomatic and assume it's just a typo, otherwise the official position of the French Ministry of...
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August 3, 2009
Welcoming Your Little Bundle Of Joy And Hospital Bills, Holy CRAP!
Wow, last time we heard from Sarah Wildman, she was writing an incredibly insightful article for the New York Times stuffed with the wisdom of hard-found parenting experts on how parents in these New Depressionary times really might not need...
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Grey Gardens Coloring Books
Haha, you know how when you're just driving along life's highway, admiring the Maysles brothers' documentary filmmaking genius, and you suddenly get sideswiped by a passing editorial bemusement at unusual coloring books. And when you pull over to check...
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Words You Definitely Don't Want To Hear, Ch. MCXXI
When you're hittin' on a hot Swedish broad at your wife's funeral: "Daddy, it's me --Tatum!" Beautiful People, Ugly Choices [vanityfair.com]...
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We Have People For That
This tweet from artblogger Tyler Green cracked me up. And makes me hate Urbana, one of "DC's Hottest Restaurant Bar Scenes," before I've ever been there:At brunch: Kids made total mess of table. On way out one kid says to...
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Creative Playthings Store By Studio Works
I'm trying to remember how I found my way to architect Lester Walker's website, but I don't have any trouble remembering what stuck there: the sweet, futuristic retail store that Studio Works designed for Creative Playthings in 1969. Studio...
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August 2, 2009
Freak Not Fluke: Another Mercedes E-Class Crew Cab
Alright, Atlanta, you've got some 'splainin' to do. Schnell! This is the second Mercedes pickup to hit the market in Atlanta--second of just two in the US, according to the dealer/seller on Autotrader. [Of course, this 2001 E-Class has...
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August 1, 2009
Actually, That Does Look Like A Nissan GT-R We've Ever Seen
Edmunds may not have gotten the scoop on this sweet custom Kids Heart Nissan GT-R Wagon--which, in fact, we have seen, at a car club show in Nagoya--but they do move the story forward a bit. When Auto Fiends...
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