Fredun Shapur's illustration and design work is as awesome as his name, and it baffles me how little information about it exists on the web. Shapur did toys and graphics for Creative Playthings, including an iconic series of posters and illustrations in the 1970s. [Hmm, not quite sure what's going on in that center right one...]

But it's easy to imagine how Creative Playthings' bold geometric figures evolved from, say, the simpler shapes of Shapur's 1965 children's book, Round and Round and Square. Which is itself a kind of 60's Hard Edge variation of the abstract anthropomorphism Leo Lionni used in his 1957 torn shape classic, Little Blue and Little Yellow. [Do I have to do all this myself, art historians?]

Anyway, it's good to see at least some online interest picking up in Shapur's work. The beautiful scans of Round and Round and Square are from Canadian artist Michael Dumontier's fresh & awesome blog, Stopping Off Point, which I look forward to stealing many more post ideas from in the near future.

Fredun Shapur, also Fredun Shapur's Playsack [stopping off point via a journey round my skull]

Fredun Shapur Creative Playthings catalogue scans on Ribambelles & Ribambins' flickr [flickr]

There were a lot of manly man ads and daddish and baby birthin' ads in the Superbowl last night, but none that beat Google's punchline.

Eventually, though, Google will probably start suggesting you put that extra cookie back, and then--if not before--it'll get a little creepy.

Every few years since the invention of lumber, someone invents a pair of interlocking cube stool/chairs for kids. This year, it's the UK design store Habitat, and the twist is, this one's made of molded ply, to give it that little Vedel-esque something.

Some blogs claim these are already listed on Habitat's site, but they don't show up for me. Hypothetically, they're £99.

Lock Kid's interlocking table & chair [habitat.co.uk via minor details, thanks dt reader nelson]

After some playground discussion, apparently, the kid decided she was a Colts fan. Because, you know, horses.

And sure enough, she watched her first Superbowl with the intensity of a crappy, watered-down beer addict.

And as we started bundling her off to bed, she managed, in between her sobs to say, "Every time I watch my team loses."

Which I think is the Redskins' motto, so that's convenient.

It's a snowbound Sunday night, and a doddering, old English couple just lipsynched in the middle of an LED extravaganza. What better time to give a shoutout to the advertisers who support Daddy Types and line the kids' 529 plans?

And what better time than when there's an ad for a controversial and scientifically problematic book, to reiterate the Daddy Types policy of not accepting or rejecting advertisements based on their content or political views? [With the exception of porn and gaming, which I do reject, after being sandbagged by CNN, which switched out an ad for a Glenn Beck week-long "expose'" about online porn addiction.]

So thanks to:

• Palgrave Macmillan, who advertised Dr. Julie Buckley's new book, "Healing Our Autistic Children," which asserts rather strongly that ASD should be considered a medical condition, which can be "cured" through aggressive dietary, vitamin/supplement, homeopathic, and other controversial treatments not endorsed by the medical and psychology mainstream.


• Adams Publishing, who thinks that, instead of chocolates, new moms might prefer "The Mominatrix's Guide To Sex," by Kristen Chase for Valentine's Day. Chase, who is also a blogger, ends her author's bio with this: "She currently resides with her family in Atlanta, where she chases after her kids and pleases her husband." Which is nice, as long as she's pleased, too, if you know what I'm sayin.'


• Seal Publishing, who also thinks books are better than chocolates, books such as Amy Ferris's "Marrying George Clooney," a laugh/cry/laugh again look at romantic life during and after menopause. Why not plan [way] ahead, and get both books?


• PBS Frontline's "digital_nation," which is not a book, but a documentary event that explores life in this crazy dadblogging, livetweeting, webcamming age we're living in right now.


• Sakura infant carriers, whose ad, you should know, has the absolute highest performance of any ad ever on Daddy Types. EVER. By an order of magnitude. No one can resist the power of a man wearing a baby.

And a perennial shoutout to Daddy Types' sponsors, Sparkability, EliteCarSeats.com, and JoggingStroller.com, who give Daddy Types a little kickback when readers place an order via their ads.

After building guerilla adventure playgrounds for kids on abandoned lots around Copenhagen as a form of social activism, the Danish artist Palle Nielsen convinced the Moderna Museet in Stockholm to let him turn the gallery into a playground, too.

In 1968, Nielsen's Model for a Qualitative Society opened for just three weeks with an elaborate climbing scaffolding made of lumber, surrounding a giant foam mountain. There were water, dirt, and craft areas, and a bunch of dressup costumes borrowed from the local theater troupe. The cacophonous sound of of-the-hook kids was broadcast outside the museum--and into the cafe, where parents were made to wait, via a series of TV screens and loudspeakers.

When the fire department closed the whole thing down--giant mountains of foam blocks were apparently flammable--Nielsen rebuilt it in a tent outside.

It was a time when the authority museums were being challenged. In his press release, Nielsen questioned the viewers' assumptions of what a museum--and, by extension, art--is: "There is no exhibition. This is only an art show because the children are playing inside an art museum. This is only an exhibition for those who are not playing."

I'm stoked to see it and all, but I can't quite make out just what Nielsen's work really means. The artist and his Model for a Qualitative Society have been steadily championed by the Danish curator Lars Bang Larsen, who seemed to start writing about the playground show in the late 1990s. In 2000, Model was "hidden in the recesses of art history," but by 2007, it was "legendary."

Of course, during that same time, a whole wave of artists who made work out of social interactions and experiences came to prominence, so an old-school example of hacking a museum into a playground was sure to resonate. Part of me can't get over how absolutely impossible it'd be to re-stage this kind of exhibition in America. And another part of me is ready to drop the kid into the ball pit at Ikea and walk away.

Childs Play, 2000 [frieze.com]
Palle Nielsen on Playgrounds and Exhibition, 2002 [ynkb.dk, google trans]
"Social Liability," Lars Bang Larsen [kunst.no]
Nielsen's Model was re-imagined in 2008 at the Frankfurt Kunstverein, but it looks like grups. [kulturexpress.de]
And another version was done in 2009 in the Netherlands [kaapweb.nl]

If there's not two feet of snow to freakout over where you are, here are some other options:

• That definitely counts as two Freakout items. Which is freakier, I'll let you be the judge: A new dad in Kent, UK, found a razor blade inside a pair of £2 baby booties.
• The dad bought the booties [above] because they "reminded him of something King of Pop Michael Jackson might once have worn." [the sun via the awl]
• The Denver elementary school secretary who was fired and found guilty of abuse for masking taping the unruly kindergartener's mouth and hands apparently only did so after the mom--who is now suing the school district--dropped the suspended child off, then refused multiple calls throughout the day to retrieve him. [denverpost]
• Sperm researchers in England call the pH-changing molecule they've discovered, which controls motility and speed changes the sperm's "accelerator pedal" so they can get their story in the tabloids. [telegraph.co.uk via theawl]
• "Retraction: the Early Report on 'Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children' has been retracted. See the associated Comment for details. " No need, The Lancet! That powerful, clear statement should erase 12 years of vaccination-causes-autism hysteria overnight! [thelancet.com]
• Two pregnant sheep researchers [i.e., researchers of pregnant sheep] joked about how to get some of that Pfizer research money, and that's how we learned Viagra cures low birth weight! The march of science. [sciencedaily]
• "For years, scientists have warned of the possible negative health effects of bisphenol A..." Eh, don't give yourselves too much credit, scientists. It's 2010 and you're only just now connecting maternal BPA exposure to infant asthma in mice. [sciencedaily]
• In a groundbreaking new longitudinal study, researchers from the University of Montreal found that moms play a role in their 1-yo's development. [sciencedaily]
• Sensitive children are like orchids, but not, I assume, in that "buy one for ten bucks at Ikea, overwater it, then throw it out a month later" way. [sciencedaily]
• Speaking of orchids, we've kept a Home Depot orchid alive and blooming for months now by following the simple instructions on the tag: "Give it three ice cubes/week." Try it!

From The American Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine conference, aka The Pregnancy Meeting™, we learn that:

• Acupuncture cures depression during pregnancy. [sciencedaily.com]


• Sutures beat staples for C-section recovery. [sciencedaily.com]


• Eh, actually, that's about it.

I guess I'm fine with both the idea of colorable wallpaper AND this particular execution. I like the drawing style, or what I can see of it, well enough. Though frankly, I'm not sure it's really even necessary. For $30, the price of a gallon of paint at some point down the road when you tire of it, you could just designate a kid's wall the Coloring Wall and let her go to town on it.

Some crazy German art dealer friends did that with their kitchen wall, and various artists would join in with their kids to doodle and draw; it looked fantastic.

No, what really bugs me--me, an MBA, an art collector, a stuffhound--is the tone and mission of the website behind the wallpaper, a startup called Culture Label. This undiluted brand consultancyspeak is like unanesthetized dental work:

CultureLabel.com is your one-stop-culture-shop, bringing you an edit of products [!] currently available from over 70 leading museum shops, galleries, artists and culture institutions from around the world...Every item is handpicked by our arts partners - the masters of curation [!?]...

We aim to plant 'cultural shopping' in the mind of every consumer looking to find that ideal buy...

At the core of CultureLabel lies a fruitful marriage that mixes commercial expertise with cultural excellence. For us, someone seeking great art and someone seeking great product have some very similar needs...

For us, cultural entrepreneurship is all about connecting culture and consumers - demolishing walls and supplying enormous mainstream demand...

Anyway, the wallpaper's £40.00 for a 10m x 0.5m roll. Have at it. [culturelabel.com]

Not my thing, but I can respect and appreciate the fine work Paul Zelinsky did on his renaissance-style illustration of the story of Rumpelstiltskin. Some of those characters are so finely drawn, I expect they are relatives or neighbors or something. And for whatever reason, it's the book K2 is fixated on at the moment, so fine.

BUT. Seriously, is this the worst episode of Three's Company ever?

Why the hell is the dad, a "poor miller," totally making this stuff up about his daughter in an attempt to impress the king in the first place? Does he think the king'll just say, "Oh, straw into gold? How nice that she has a talent." Or that he'd be all, "So I guess you're poor by choice, because if your daughter could spin straw into gold, you presumably wouldn't be poor anymore!" Did the miller really have no plan when he mentioned this?

And I can cut the king some slack for holding the daughter accountable--i.e., threatening to kill her if she doesn't produce. Maybe that's just how kings were back then. And switching on a dime from head-on-chopping-block to queen was no big deal then, either.

But then--and this is the real Three's Company communications breakdown part--she bargains away her yet-to-be-conceived child without any apparent concern that the king might not approve? Didn't she think that through? And then even when she's on the verge of losing the kid, she never tells the king at all? Even after she manages not to?

A flying kitchen spoon, I got no problem with, but these crazy, shortsighted knuckleheads who end up having to get rescued repeatedly by a magical dwarf from entirely avoidable situations of their own making? It just makes no sense to me.

Rumpelstiltskin by Paul O. Zelinsky, $8 [amazon]
Not really helping: Rumpelstiltskin Wikipedia Page [wikipedia]

iPod = iPog
smoke or steam, as comes out of the sidewalk or the middle of the street = Holy Smokes!

The first is just mis-hearing, but holy smokes? That reminds me that she's not just making these up; she's picking them up from the people around her.

Which is why she wanders around with her toy cell phone pressed to her ear, going, "It's me."

And why the kid surprised me at the same age by exclaiming, "Dude!" and I learned that's what my wife says to drivers who cut her off on the freeway.

Previously: Cake Cups!

Joel is an at-home dad in Portland, where he just finished building this awesome modernist dollhouse for his son Jack. [His daughter's apparently more into bicycles at the moment.] Hardwood dollhouses are sweet.

Holy smokes, he made all the little designy furniture, too.

Holy smokes again, his whole blog is full of handmade clothes, wooden toys and craftastic projects. It's the most impressive combination of testosterone and sewing machines I've seen since Spooky Daddy.

Modern Doll House [madebyjoel]
Made By Joel [madebyjoel]

That kid there is Erik Ross, I met him once with his mother Lillian, at a party I helped organize for Sofia Coppola. Nice folks. And of course, that's a Nanna Ditzel high chair, which looks pretty fantastic. Never seen one in its natural, vintage habitat before.

Not sure what J.D. Salinger's doing in the picture. Never knew to ask.

Ah, here we go. Ross said Jerry loved kids.

Salinger Snapshots from the personal collection of Lilian Ross [newyorker.com via dinosaurs + robots]
My long friendship with J.D. Salinger [newyorker.com]

Wow, just because they don't have labels doesn't mean you can knock them off. The Museum of London is selling a London-in-a-Bag play set which is a straightup ripoff of Muji's original -in-a-Bag series of toys, which were created--in London!--by the design firm Industrial Facility.

Fake, tarted up London in a Bag, £12.99 [culturelabel.com]
Original, unpainted London in a Bag, £5.95 [muji.eu]

From the unbridled destruction of the landscape by proto-suburban sprawl, to the ever-looming threat of unemployment from technological obsolescence, to the desperate search for work--any work--that drives prices and wages to near zero--and literally leaves the working man trapped with no escape, Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel has a lot of material for Fake Werner Herzog to work with.

Instead, he mostly goes with Mike's taboo love for Marianne. Which, unless you're Klaus Kinski, should be just fine.

Werner Herzog Reads Mike Mulligan And His Steam Shovel [youtube via dt reader rolf]

I cannot get over how dead-on accurate this is. I get a press release every. single. weekend from New York Magazine about some over-educated city parent anxiety-inducing cover story or another. Every. Single. Week.

Dear New York magazine,

My baby. My baby! Recently my baby had some tests. My baby is 2.5 months old. My baby! Sometimes my baby seems different than other babies. My baby should have be accepted to a very good college in the year 2025.

My Baby? My Baby Seems So Smart But I'm Also Scared About My Baby [theawl.com]

Wow, Airform Archives posted a mint-in-box Collage and Construction Set, "A Project by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Creative Playthings, Princeton, NJ"

It looks like the perfect companion for Art for the Family the 1960 book by MoMA's director of education, Victor d'Amico.

It also, truth be told, looks pretty much the same as any decent pile of craft materials, and it pales in comparison to the veritable craft trunk my mom got the kids for Christmas.

It's like how, after watching a computer-animated homage to be-bop on Backyardigans, you turn on the Charlie Brown Christmas Special and it looks like a class project strung together from 3-panel comic strips. Some things really are better in the future.

Or at least pipe cleaners and ric-rac: When a box is full of inspiration... [airform archives]

And was sent to his room without any nominations.

Yow. As if this weren't a big enough buzzkill already.

Oscar Snubs: Why The Wild Things Aren't Nominated [vanityfair.com]

We sure showed those Capitalists bastards, eh, Comrade? With the discovery of this awesome Soviet-era children's book version of a Bolshevik-era play, it's turning into Trotsky Tuesday around here.

These days, Will from Journey Round My Skull is on an illustrated bookbuying tear through Mother Russia [Yeah, capitalism!], and he just posted Klop (The Bedbug), adapted and illustrated in 1974 by George Kovenchuk from the 1928 play by Russian Futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Near as I can tell [from this recap, The Bedbug is a sharp satire of early Soviet-style communism which tells the story of a bumbling, drunk proletarian named Prysipkin who gets buried and frozen alive in the aftermath of a wedding reception fire at his new mother-in-law's beauty parlor. Then he's discovered and thawed out 50 years later, only to wreak havoc on the Glorious Communist Future of 1979 by bringing a bedbug and alcohol with him. Eventually, he and the bedbug end up in a zoo?

So it's a little Austin Powers, a little Planet of the Apes, a little Somewhere In Time, a little Encino Man, and a little Solaris, with some Kafka sprinkled on top. And all communist! For the kids!

People, if this capitalist machine we've jacked ourselves into is worth a damn, I expect to see a crowdsourced English translation of this book available on Lulu.com by the end of the week. USA! USA! USA! USA!

We have captured a most rare specimen of an extinct insect which was extremely popular at the beginning of the century [journeyroundmyskull]