Archive for February, 2011
Our friend Shed Simove is in the midst of a social experiment: He’s trying to get his new book, What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex, to the top of charts on Amazon. The catch, because with Simove there’s generally (and wonderfully) always a catch, is that the book is actually blank. Yep, 200 pages of nothingness! (Help Shed and pick up a copy of the quickest read in the history of literature for under eight bucks.) In a guest blog over on Smarta.com, a portion of which we’ve pasted after the jump, Shed explained how this “novelty book” came to be, why he’s doing this, and how it’s selling thus far (pretty good!).
Joe Van Wetering‘s epic Mister Mittens Big Adventure T-shirt has been reprinted. The graphic is kind of like a big bang theory of hipster iconography. You’ve got your cat, your ironic glasses, your laser beams and your outer space vignette perfect for an MGMT video. Threadless has all sizes for $20 once again, and I would totally buy this if I didn’t already own a week’s worth of cat T-shirts from Brooklyn Industries.
Emergency preparedness is a familiar concept here in earthquake country, but a zombie apocalypse can happen anywhere. Thanks to Mike Lacher‘s new Google streetview mashup, you can test your evacuation route in realtime. Just to switch things up, I thought I’d see what kind of zombie action was lurking over at Wasteland on Haight Street. My suspicions proved correct, and I lasted a mere 30 seconds. Try it for yourself here. - Jeremy [via BoingBoing]
We can always count on the Japan Trends blog for some good old Engrish proddities from the far east. Here’s two that make us laugh (and make great gifts for your favorite fetishist or princess).
- Jeremy
The Graffiti Cocktail Shaker is another one of those noteworthy products we stumbled upon at New York Gift Fair, which I totally forgot about until coming across it again online yesterday. It’s being produced (or maybe just distributed) by Kikkerland. No information is available on their website, but it’s up for pre-order ($20) over on Unica, with a late-March ship date. -Quincy
We’re big fans of anatomy in pop culture here at The Jailbreak, so this “Phantom Sleeping Bag” from Japan caught our attention. Although Google translation doesn’t tell us why they thought it was a good idea to enhance the packaging with drool and a nose bubble, it does shed light on this gem of optimism:
Play your part in the inevitable for ~ $75 USD. - Jeremy
These exciting visions of the year 2000 were created nearly a century ago in 1910. They represent our grandparents’ ideas for inventions to improve life in the future. The innovations run the gamut from getting your hair cut by robots to getting your booksmarts through a wood chipper. I’s thought that the vignettes were made to accompany food. The original images are on view in Paris here. Click through to see why your iPhone ain’t all that. - Jeremy
Things Organized Neatly is a “tumblog” after my own heart. The site culls the best neurosis-inspired design from around the Web. Occasionally, as in the image above, the collection is available for sale. (Green gewgaws for twenty four bucks on Etsy.)Â Click through for a few more favorites that satisfy both aesthetics and OCD. -Jeremy
Posh Tots asks you to consider how much you really love your kids. The small children’s furnishings company makes some of the world’s most expensive luxury playhouses. For the right price ($47,000), your little princess can sleep in the Palace Playhouse Bed. For $52,000, your little pirate can storm Red Beard’s Revenge (while you and 3-4 other adults drink mead in the captain’s quarters). Looking like miniature golf course obstacles on steroids, some of the prefab mini-mansions approach the prices of small homes (though not anywhere near where we live). But as they say in a footnote on their About page: “Don’t [your] little ones deserve it?”  Jeremy and his wife, Greta, in cake topper form by the artist Mike Leavitt. Mutual admiration can be a beautiful thing, especially when it transforms from simple affection for another’s work into an actual working relationship. Such is the case today as we proudly welcome journalist, art curator and all around “Toy Maven” Jeremy Brautman to the Jailbreak family. Jeremy first caught our attention while working for the now-defunct ToyCyte, a designer toy blog where he served as editor-in-chief. After a stint writing the blog and handling the social media for vinyl toy company Neon Monster, Jeremy curated his first group art show, LOVE MOVEMENT, to great success. From these various efforts, which also included writing for the likes of Cool Hunting, JoshSpear.com, HEEB Magazine and maintaining his own personal blog, Jeremy has become perhaps the most knowledgeable and well-respected toy journalist working today. Likewise, Jeremy became acquainted with Jailbreak through various correspondences with us over the past two years, during which he shared his expertise on the toy world for a variety of our past, current, and ongoing projects. Going forward, Jeremy will have a myriad of responsibilities at this new gig, including, but not limited to, writing blog posts (starting with the one right above this!), tweeting, brand management, eating nauseating amounts of gummy bears, and generally having a pretty damn good time. Help us in welcoming Mr. Brautman to the team! -Quincy
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