We love artist Thomas Jeppe‘s wonderfully taped bike, via The Selby. The tape is not just a cool visual, it adds cushioning to the handlebars. We went looking for this snazzy handlebar tape at found a trove of close matches – Splash Ribbon – made by Cinelli, whose tapes get very high ratings. Possibilities include…
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When the news becomes abstract, we turn to the Big Picture’s slideshows to help us GET what is really going on. We recommend their current slideshow of the flooding Mississippi: at once frightening, heartbreaking and beautiful. We include this video of Johnny Cash singing “Five Feet High and Rising” (which we found via Constant Siege’s…
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For the past few years, we’ve been learning about how beautiful concrete blocks can be as a building material. The latest “lesson” came with a visit to the late Alexander Calder’s home in Connecticut for a birthday party for his daughter, who is a friend of ours. An artist who worked in a wide variety of…
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The best thing we found in the recent New York Times’ Design and Living Magazine was Bud Wise, a story and slideshow about making arrangements out of ordinary deli/supermarket flowers. Having found ourselves many times looking blankly at the mishmash of seemingly uninspired offerings at the corner store for a bit of REAL to perk up…
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We are really looking forward to seeing Werner Herzog’s 3-D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams about the Chauvet cave paintings in the Ardeche region of southern France. Thought to have been made about 30,000 years ago, they evince stunning skillfulness and beauty. This video immediately sent us on the trail of images of the…
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…a 1950’s mama…(let’s see, that would put her in her nineties now)… …just remember, there’s a lot about your mother – thousands of secret improvisations – that you don’t know…
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After we posted Gary Chang’s 344 square foot Hong Kong apartment, we thought we’d pretty much seen the pinnacle of morphing possibilities for TINY. Until this morning, when we found ourselves riveted by this video of photographer Christian Schallert‘s 258 square foot Barcelona apartment (apx 11′ x 23’): a former pigeon loft re-envisioned by designer Barbara Appolloni. (Check out…
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via the great Constant Siege. Related post: what is the most powerful word in the english language?
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This video is of comedienne/writer/producer/brilliantina Tina Fey’s hour-long interview with Google’s awkward, SO not-quite-getting-it Eric Schmidt about her book Bossypants. The best bits for us are 4 1/2 minutes right up front, starting at about 3:30 when Fey talks about her rules for improv, and Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels rules for hiring/collaborating. Although…
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From the always illuminating Peace and Love and Noticing the Details…
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When Consilientist | Futurist Stuart Dambrot alerted us to Norwegian designer Siren Elise Wilhelmsen’s toast spoons, we were totally smitten. We envisioned them brushed with olive oil and a cut clove of garlic, to eat our soup/stew/eggs with. Then we realized that they were part of a bigger study, of the idea that “Like the fascintating species of nature…
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Our two favorite takeaways from The Selby’s latest photo story of Charlotte Rust, stylist and co-owner of vintage store Fast and Loose in Auckland, New Zealand: her funky “tattooed” wooden table that invites friends to carve it + the candles stuck with melted wax right onto the table, pooling as they burn down to nothing.
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All week long, we’ve been getting Mother’s Day gift ideas in our email box…mostly deals on cornball flower arrangements. Then we got one from Doctors Without Borders, the great international aid organization, about sending one of their e-cards for Mother’s Day, and using that $20/$50/$100 worth of short-lived-flowers money as a donation that will really…
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Our friend Charlie Allenson had a big birthday a few days ago, and we had big plans to give him a shout out that day and find ourselves, THE DAY AFTER, having been swept away by..everything. Damn. Charlie’s at the jazz festival in New Orleans so we thought we’d publish some of the very cool…
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…spotted in Design Milk’s story on the Log Chop Bench. We didn’t care for the final product but love the photo and this nugget: “The log was debarked and the seats were axed out by a professional ‘Lumberjill’”. Lumberjill!!?? Googling it lead to the discovery that during World War II there was a branch of…
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The other day we got an email from our friend A.S.C. Rower, President of the Calder Foundation (we know him as Sandy). It’s subject line read: “More Noise Please!” The title of a poem by the late Steven J. Bernstein, a mutual friend, was the go-ahead for ‘the improvised life’ to feature posts about Rower’s grandfather,…
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Mondoblogo recently published this cell phone shot of a “my cousin’s” house AFTER a tornado set down on Tuscaloosa, Alabama, with these words: “He is a 1st year law student on full scholarship at U of A. (Roll Tide) He and his wife Ceci are lucky to be alive. They were trapped in their bathroom until…
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Tucked into Remodelista’s recent Knife Rack Roundup was this image: knife rack as impromptu message board, holding a recipe or list, or billet-doux (a love letter). Great!
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This is the model of joy and energy we’re aspiring to today….. (Slim and Slam Allstars, featuring Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers…from “Hellzapoppin” (1941) )Video link here.
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We’ve been getting emails from friends who are on their way down to the ramp supper in Helvetia, West Virginia – ramps being the pungent wild leek that grows throughout the Appalachian and Catskill mountains. We wrote about the supper this time last year, when we were headed to Helvetia ourselves, to the feast served…
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