So what if Project Runway is sucking this season. So what if they threw out all of the weirdos in the first few episodes and pushed the designers to make safe clothing (while telling them not to). So what if the corporate sponsorships have been put into overdrive? We're all waiting for a Snuggie-sponsored challenge. So what. I'm still watching, like the dutiful sheep I am.
If you hadn't heard, The Weinstein company (PR's parent company) just announced they would develop a video game with Atari that will debut on Nintendo's Wii next spring.
"The game will largely follow of the format of the TV show, with players
competing as aspiring fashion designers and presented with different
challenges as they create designs and outfit models with hair, makeup
and accessories. Players can then become the model and strut their
creations down the runway using the Wii Balance Board or take on the
role of a fashion photographer and document their designs."
I can't wait to see my fellow computer geeks outfitting their models in virtual sweatpants and three wolf shirts.
By the way...has anybody else noticed that Michael Kors and Spencer Pratt are basically the same guy separated by thirty years? Kors has even been copying Spencer's flesh-colored beard lately. I'm just sayin'.
The corporate giants of the world are learning to get along with the genius designers of the world. Last month, Rob Walker wrote about No Mas, a plucky little company that made badass retro T-shirts from a design that Cassius Clay sported back in the 60's. No Mas was threatened by Muhammed Ali's licensing goons, but eventually came to an agreement that let the company officially license the shirts.
Now, Lucasfilm has given the licensing nod to something that Extreme Craft wrote about way back in April....THE TAUNTAUN SLEEPING BAG WILL SOON BE A REALITY! The sleeping bag originally started as an elaborate April Fool's joke, but ThinkGeek soon found out that the Star Wars-themed sleeping bags were what the world has been waiting for. Here are the specs from Think Geek's website:
Classic Star Wars sleeping bag simulates the warmth of a Tauntaun carcass
Built-in embroidered Tauntaun head pillow
Plush Lightsaber zipper pull
Great for playing pretend "Save Luke from the Wampa" games
Teach your children about the best Star Wars movie ever
Fully Licensed Lucasfilm™ Collectable
Enough room for adults, plenty of space for kids
100% Polyester construction, Machine washable
Bag Dimensions - 33" x 67" (not including head pillow or legs)
Start making some babies to fit in those sleeping bags, everybody!
I'm working my way through Deyan Sudjic's new book The Language of Things right now. It's a powerful examination of how we choose to relate to the objects in our lives. I'm a big fan of gadgets, but I'm also a fan of well-made objects that we can form lasting relationships with. The creative reusers among us know that the two impulses are not incompatible. Remember that bondi blue iMac that you swore allegiance to ten years ago? It's been gathering dust in your closet for eight years?
Mac users have been repurposing their computers for years...most notably, the original generation of Macs make excellent "Macquarium" fish tanks. An eBay user is now selling his original iMac, which has been reborn as a hamster cage. I know there's a joke in there somewhere about the wheel that powers this thing. Does Apple still make a computer that is big enough to be reconfigured into something besides a tie tack or cufflinks?
I can attest to the sheer brutish durability of the El Camino, one of the most functional (and unfairly maligned) cars ever to come out of Detroit. My father had a series of three of them in the late 70's and early 80's. He'd buy a crummy one for a few hundred dollars, then add another hundred thousand or so miles to it before junking it. That said, the El Camino wasn't exactly a paragon of green technology (except for Bill Clinton's, which reportedly had AstroTurf in the back).
Enter Tom Leitschuh, a tinkerer extraordinaire who brought his El Camino into the modern era:
Leitschuh, an electronics controls engineer and owner of TDL Electronics,
got to work. The project went pretty quickly, taking about 200 hours of
his time over the course of six weeks. He got some help with donations
from QuickCable
and some hired hands to help with welding and fabrication. The tab came
to roughly $30,000, which included the cost of the car and a
transmission rebuild. The lion’s share of the bill went to the 46
lithium-ferrite phosphate batteries that cost him $18,000. They’re
located over the front and rear axles. Because Leitschuh yanked the
engine, radiator and other archaic equipment, the weight penalty for
the batteries is just 750 pounds.
Perhaps Leitschuh could one-up Bill Clinton by planting some real turf in the bed of his Green Camino.
My last Craigslist post yielded some interesting feedback...but none as interesting as the link my pal Henry sent me to itemnotasdescribed.com, a repository for all of those puzzling free Craigslist postings in the world. According to the site, these postings are (mostly) born of optimism and generosity. Surely SOMEONE can use that broken garden gnome or algae-filled broken hot tub. Other posts are clearly just people trying to trick somebody into hauling away their junk that would be too expensive to send to the landfill.
The little gem pictured above is something else entirely....a papier mache boot with a detailed map of middle earth painstakingly painted on it. Of course it's from San Francisco:
Handpainted Middle Earth map on papier mache boot, circa 1979. I’d like
this to go to a teacher or someone who will use it for educational
purposes, perhaps a library or non-profit that encourages reading.
Itemnotasdescribed.com breaks down the post almost word-by-word in an attempt to figure out the motivations of somebody who has kept an item like this around since 1979. I think most Extreme Craft readers would hold this dear in hopes that it would someday guide them to the fires of Mordor.
I've been scouring the web for Comic-Con images from last week to share with y'all, and I've found some good ones. Nothing holds a candle to this pair of costumes, though. This gentleman's Bubmblebee Camaro costume is off the chain...but if you look carefully, you'll see the young lady escorting him. Follow this link to Jalopnik, and you can revel in a whole photo set documenting the pair. I can only hope that he gives us a step-by step tutorial to make his costume a la TRON guy.
I love this costume, and I concur with Jesse Thorn in my distrust (and maybe outright hatred) of anybody who rails against the new Transformers movies because they're ruining the over-merchandised, horribly animated first Transformers cartoon series. How COULD THEY? At least the animated Mr. T. series and the animated Punky Brewster series (ooh...anybody remember the animated Rubik's Cube cartoon) didn't wait a generation to inflict themself on Saturday morning television viewers.
I've got a ton of photos and videos from China yet that I haven't tagged and sorted and uploaded. I'm going to be getting to those soon. In the meantime, I thought I'd share this amazing hotel from China that somebody forwarded to me. It's located in Hebei Province, and has been called various names over the years, including Tianzi Hotel, The Emperor Hotel, and the Son Of Heaven Hotel. The building is shaped like the three Chinese immortals who represent good fortune, prosperity and longevity. That's longevity on the left, with a giant cranium, holding a peach. Apparently, the peach is an exclusive suite in the hotel.
You can find more information, including a shot of the backside of the hotel and a Google Earth photo at the excellent Killerdirectory.com.
I don't often make Extreme Craft posts to gloat, but I've gotta make an exception just this once. Artist/Blogger extraordinaire Hilary Pfeifer devised a devious mid-summer contest that connected her blog, Etsy site...and love of poetry....chiefly, the limerick. I've been known to write a limerick or two, so I dived into her contest with gusto. The object was to write a limerick to accompany one of Hilary's amazing sculptures from her Etsy store, Bunnywithatoolbelt.
I've written before about my geeky love for public radio, so the above sculpture was a natural. Hilary even said in the title of the piece that the bird was listening to public radio. I gathered up a pen and paper and set to work. After some soul searching (and the determination that Ofeibea Quist-Arcton was too difficult to rhyme), I set my sights on my other favorite NPR reporter:
Rest on these speakers a spell, son To hear audio news that is well done from reporters acclaimed with elliptical names like Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson.
That's the winning entry, ladies and gentlemen. However, Hilary threw down the gauntlet and suggested that I make an accompanying rhyme for Sylvia Poggioli, a task I didn't take lightly. Here's my (slightly more adult) limerick about Ms. Poggioli:
there once was a scary parolee whose face was covered in pozole he said with a grin as he wiped off his chin that he wished it was Sylvia Poggioli
Let's keep the fun going...I think I've just scratched the surface of the public radio-themed limerick. If you have an NPR/PRI-themed limerick, email me at garth (at) extremecraft.com. I'll send the winning entry a copy of my DVD, ReConstruct: eco-friendly crafts made easy. I know you've got it in you, Extreme Crafters! If you need a refresher course in limerick writing, here's a link. See you in Nantucket!
I'm kind of old and out of touch, so I don't always know about the sites the kids are frequenting these days, chiefly "Look at that fucking hipster", which is a repository of hipster transgressions against fashion, taste, suburban sensibilities.....and CRAFT! Their caption for this photograph was "I try to dress like a rapper in a Michel Gondry movie", which is pretty dead-on. As anyone who knew me in my younger days can attest, I've crossed some fashion lines (remember my gem sweaters phase when Leslie Hall was still wearing Depeche Mode shirts?), so I'm one to talk, but I thought this fashion statement belonged here.
Can somebody crochet a gigantic VW emblem for this young lady?
UPDATE! Thank you Raine for pointing me to Yokoo's etsy shop. I clearly posted the wrong chain:
That's the Extreme Chain I needed to post. I think Yokoo is perfectly capable of knitting herself the biggest VW emblem the world has ever seen.
Today marked the 40th Anniversary of the Kinetic Grand Championship, which has been described as the "Iron Man Triathlon" of the art world. I didn't exactly see Charles Saatchi and Mary Boone out eating cheese on the Samoa Dunes, but I did see Humboldt County, my new home, performing to maximum potential. I've written about the Kinetic Sculpture Race before--it's one of my favorite concepts, but it wasn't a reality to me...until today. I finally got to experience the awesome, amazing, crackpot, idiotic genius in person.
The lovely Claire and I took in the whole day of Kinetic Madness,which started at 9 AM in the Arcata Plaza. For the uninitiated, the Kinetic Sculpture Race is a 42-mile course over asphalt, sand and water. The vehicles must be human-powered, and a whole bevy of random rules are randomly applied. Before the race can properly begin, each vehicle is checked for "safety". I saw one vehicle nearly catch fire when the people running it put a ton of lighter fluid in an onboard grill with a rusted out bottom, but as long as the brakes work, the judges didn't seem to mind.
Speaking of judges, after the brakes are checked, each vehicle is judged on "pageantry". Some of the crews prepared skits, some prepared songs...but all of the crews bribed the hell out of the judges, which is mandatory in the competition. The crew of a vehicle called "Solid Gold Fifi" bribed the judges with some delicious looking Barbecued ribs that supposedly came from a giant poodle (but looked suspiciously like pork). The judges came away with piles of goodies. This being Humboldt county, one team even bribed the judges with their 215 (medical marijuana) card.
The vehicles themselves are miracles of engineering. Some of them are, anyway. Most are frankensteined together from old bike parts, but many also sport plenty of homemade parts and parts repurposed from other things. Remember that the vehicles not only have to make it through the 42-mile course, but they also have to make it through a few miles of the Humboldt Bay. There were boat vehicles, plenty of pontoons, and at least a few gigantic chunks of styrofoam with prayers attached to them.
The vehicles all have to endure "Dead Man's Drop", which is a VERY steep sand dune that has to be about 120 feet long. Some vehicles pussyfoot down the slope with all of the crew members trying to slow the vehicle down with all of their might, and some simply bomb down the slope. The above video is of "Hippypotamus" more or less bombing down the slope. I understand that only one vehicle took a tumble this year, which is kind of unusual.
Sadly, I won't be able to attend the next two days of the Kinetic Grand Championship, because I'm getting on a plane to Jingdezhen, China tomorrow. For all of your kinetic needs, you should check out our amazing local radio station, KHUM. They'll have reporters at all of the main sites, as well as a link to a video feed and an amazing blog. I was twittering today, and they were picking up various feeds and reporting on them. Tomorrow (Sunday the 24th) is the water portion of the race, which can lead to all sorts of sinking and mayhem. The race winds up on Monday afternoon in the beautiful Victorian village of Ferndale. If you're in California, and you're looking for some great Memorial Day weekend action, hop in your car and drive up to Humboldt County. I need somebody to report back to me on how the rest of the race goes.
