Stuffed Animal Lamps

An old friend of mine has a new art project —  stuffed animal lamps.

alison

Simple concept, elegant execution.  A grafitti artist friend adds some decoration.  There are a ton of them displayed here; I had trouble picking out my favorite one (I also like the sleeping camo guy, and the spiderman).

I like the marriage of functional and frivolous.  I’m also reminded of a case I worked on as a law clerk for a judge, about whether it is legal to copyright a Halloween costume.  The law in this area turned out to be completely incoherent, based on something called the “conceptual severability” test — the idea was that you could not copyright “functional” things, but if you could “conceptually sever” the design from the functional aspect of the object, you could copyright the design.  Of course this test posed an issue for costumes — what’s the function?  The law, of course, had an answer: masquerading!  Anyway the details were absurd — for example, some aspects of the test had to do with the “plushness” of the object, and whether it could stand on its own (hat) or needed to be on something to assume its shape (glove). 

Somewhat of a digression, but these lamps got me thinking about that — is the function just lighting, or also cuteness?

Steiff bear diagram

This graphic was introduced to me by a student, who did a really good presentation of the visual evolution of the teddy bear for an assignment called the Artefact Assignment. It’s a great sort of Rorschach test, in the sense that any given interpretation probably reveals more about the viewer than the object itself:

steiff

In fact, what this graphic diagrams is the change in design over time of the Steiff bear. The Steiff bear was introduced in 1903 by the German company Steiff, who became involved in a decades-long arms race (furry arms, to be sure) with the Mitchom company, who had released a ‘Teddy’ Bear in the United States around the same time (named after TDR, who allegedly refused to shoot a defenseless bear). 

Please feel free to submit any alternate possible interpretations (psychosexual or otherwise) via the comments box.

Good times

Thompson&ThomsonIt always warms my heart to read about Eng and Chang Bunker, aka the original Siamese Twins. Despite being conjoined, they managed to lead dignified, productive lives, ride horses, marry two sisters (?) and sire loads of children (!). However, things were not always rosy. Eng and Chang’s fondness for gambling and drinking, respectively, caused several heated arguments and even a few fist-fights, the logistics of which boggle the mind.

Another case of brotherly pull-though-it-ness: a few months ago, the news channels here showed footage of the Prague Marathon and of the Karanjan brothers, Francis and James, from Kenya. Francis is blind and runs marathons holding the hand of James, who I guess sort of guides him along, describes the sights they’re passing and concentrates on running the 26.2 miles himself all at the same time. I like this.

Nerd Time: The Leopard Seal

UntitledA few years ago, I got really into reading accounts of extreme adventures and explorations. There’s something comforting about sitting in the warmth of your living room while other people haplessly freeze to death, fall of cliffs, catch on fire, have their still-beating hearts removed by Mayan priests, or  get half-digested in a the stomach of a whale and emerge bleached and peevish.

During this time, I read two accounts of the Shacktelton expedition. Basically, Shackleton and his mates head off from the south pole, but their boat gets frozen in ice in the Weddell Sea, effectively trapping them for 6 months of dark Antarctic winter.  Adorably, they actually stage puppet shows and stuff like that in order to maintain their sanity. Eventually, the ship is crushed by ice and the crew is forced to float around on giant ice bergs for months trying to sail their way out of the sea to land.

All sorts of terrible stuff happens, but one thing that was really a head-scratcher for me was the frequent account of attacks by Leopard Seals. Leopard Seals? Apparently, this is a species of carnivorous seal specific to the Antarctic. Shackleton and his crew are constantly trying to drift off to sleep on their flying ice floe when this leopard seal thing clambers out of the sea and starts attacking them. Apparently, it’s a worst-of-both-words proposition, in the sense that the Leopard Seal is dangerous (like a non-seal) but totally fatty and non-nutritious (like a seal). So, once they kill it, there’s still nothing in it for the beleaguered crew

All this makes for a good scenario to re-enact with guests as an after-dinner game. Just commandeer a few sofa cushions to use as ice floes.

(Above: real Leopard Seal cranium. Eek.)

Taqueria Dolores

I’ve added Mission Mission to the blog roll, and was pleased to see that they covered the jarring Taqueria Dolores in one of their posts.

It’s a ‘Mission-style’ taqueria in Berlin (in Alexanderplatz, no less- a really sterile, touristy square) with maps of the Mission on the walls and bottles of Anchor Steam to be had. Behold:

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Basically, you can have fun locating on the walls three or four places you’ve lived while eating a really, really non-greasy burrito. All they’re missing is the unbelievably loud juke box that bursts into mariachi at unexpected intervals.

Man, I miss Berlin. Even though I’ve never lived there. The ‘Czech-Mex’ here in Prague is comparatively unimaginative and second-rate.

Follow-up on Grizzly Bear

elf712357fcra1Krafty recently pointed out to me that the lead singer of Grizzly Bear, Ed Droste, is actually the son of our grade school music teacher,  Diana “Ms.” Droste. This revelation immediately legitimizes in my mind the occupation of ‘grade school music teacher’, which I have to admit I’d held a skeptical attitude towards before.

I have few clear memories of Ms. Droste (as I was, like, 6 when she stopped teaching us), but they’re mainly pleasant. It’s when I think about the rogues gallery that followed her that I wonder how Will Ferrell hasn’t yet starred in an Anchorman-type role where he plays a music teacher in charge of leading small children in jocular rounds of ‘ta-ti-ti, ti-ti-ti-TAH-ti-ti-TAH-TAH!’

Fortnightly check-in

This blog is two weeks old today, which suggests the following info-graphic:

DAYS ON EARTH

Blog: 14

Son: 10

For better or for worse, this blog seems to be lacking two types of content that are staples of the blogosphere:

1. Embedded youtube videos

2. Sex

Maybe the lack of such gives this blog a refreshing, distinctive personality. Or maybe it gives it a stick-in-the-mud, stuck-at-home-on-the-Sabbath feeling, as I suppose neither multimedia nor promiscuity has any role in a properly-observed Sabbath either. We’re beginning to stray into the territory of Pennsylvania!: my imagined comedic musical about a community of Amish manning a power plant outside of Philadelphia.

Lastly, since the blog is 14 days old, I can link to this Grizzly Bear performance of ‘Two Weeks’ on Letterman in good conscience without feeling like it’s a complete non sequitur.

grizzly_bear-two_weeks

List of company name etymologies

Fascinating list here. This is a really great resource if you were wondering where companies had realised their names and trademarks.

Some very interesting ones:

  1. A&M Records – named after founders Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss (Actually, I believed it had to do with sound)
  2. Coleco – began as the Connecticut Leather Company. (who knew that!)
  3. Starbucks – named after Starbuck, a character in Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick (NOT Battlestar Galactic)