Sortroom.net

This is like the coolest collection of shopping sites around. Though Wired News has joined them all together in an article because they’re apparently ‘wacky’, I think they sound great. A $3,000 recycled paper table, buying a cow or flock of geese for a family in a developing country, a website that sells only one product per day and a subscription for monthly underwear delivery through the mail that retails beechwood-fabric panties! Perfect!

Wired News: The 10 Wackiest E-Commerce Sites

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This story (An Image a Little Too Carefully Coordinated) won its author a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. It’s worthy too. Robin Givhan of the Washington Post, congratulations.

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“This past summer I did lots of face painting, several magic shows, and I did good business at the Monroe Fair, and at Puyallup. I have been the featured speaker and entertainer at several events. This past Halloween, I set up my airbrushes on the porch of my home and instead of giving away candy, we gave away neon names to the delight of all the local children.”

Seattle’s Alternative Weekly: The Stranger’s Fashion Annual

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Developed as a way to ‘identify’ with ones clothes, the brand ‘429 Life’ uses the touchtone phone alphabet to create a subtle sign about one’s sexuality. On a phone the numbers 429 spell out gay, something you’re unlikely to have known if you don’t, you know, actually ever spell it out. The t-shirts tastefully, in tiny writing, have slogans like ‘Are You 429′, ‘429 You Wish’, ‘429 Boy’, and ‘Absolutely 429′. If you’re unsure whether you’re 429 or not, you can buy the ‘premium soft cotton’ t-shirts without any label.
Unless you’re looking it’s unlikely that you’ll see these labels, but if you know where to look for the labels from this brand – currenly only sold in three stores in the world – you’ll be in on the joke.

429life.com

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I have been and will be in Bath for the past few days and the next few days. In case you don’t know, Bath is a little city in the Ssouth of England, about an hour and a half by train from Central London. It’s the playtoy of the quietly wealthy from the Greater London region. Think of the Hamptons but a city. And tall thin houses made of sandstone. The man behind the name, Manolo Blahnik, lives here. It’s that kind of place; the boys all have trust funds and the girls all have rhinoplastys.

Since all the well-to-do boys and girls of the town have more money than they know what’s good for them, they were out in force today, whilst I wandered about from shop to shop, meandering home from the hospital. What eye candy. The boys in GAP prescribed v-neck layering with chunky scarves, and the girls in uber low cut jeans and gilets. It was a television commercial shoot but without the campy director or the go-go girls making a mess in the distance.

The one thought that struck me was, with they waxed eyebrow, cropped hair, modelled wardrobe and textbook girlfriend, all these boys want now is to be gay. It’s the ultimate status symbol of the times – though they’d have a bit of trrouble explaining it to mommy, it’d fit in with their continual grooming and the pretty boy look. Because they are pretty, don’t get me wrong, but switching teams, batting ‘for the other side’ would really make them complete, would circle the square and would make their whole existance finally make some sense!

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On Saturday night one of my best friends accompanied me to an underground parking garage at one of this city’s many Universities for the last session of recording for an R&B music video.

The ‘artist’ was a guy called something like Warm Ice 2K, but that’s just a guess. We couldn’t remember his stage name – it’s too much hassle when it’s as idiotic a name as that – his real name was Ryan. As a cool bar/background club filler tune it was great, but nothing too stand out. The song was a kind of production heavy, synthetic beats concoction that record companies come up with for their stars to include on albums as filler tracks. It was nice in an inoffensive, inattentive, who-really-cares kind of way. But nothing special.

We had a laugh though, standing around in the background ‘grooving’ alone after being asked to ‘have a good time’ when the camera was on us. I presumed that we didn’t need to have a good time when the camera wasn’t on us, so during our off moments we sulked and wailed into our hankies with self-pitying dispair.

Alice and I ate Jaffa cakes, giggled at ourselves and marvelled at the lunatic styling of the pumped-up The Fast and the Furious style cars that were the backdrop for the video. I had to laugh though when we noticed how the mixing deck that had been set up on one wall of the set was in fact a complete fake and they had to play the track (for dancing and miming purposes) from the insanely-huge speakers installled in one car’s rear. The car bounced with the vibrations.

Note the flames coming from the exhaust of the car here. And the guy doing his camera work didn’t even notice…
Toasty!

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