Category: etc.

Muji doesn’t inspire ecstatic fandom so much as subdued dedication. Otherwise, I’d turn into a screaming screaming junior high school girl every time I walked into one of their stores.

This Muji modular shelving system is one of five Muji products that received International Forum Design Awards in Hannover, Germany this year. Made from stiff, square-edged, recycled cardboard, and flush-fitted matte plastic joints, the system snaps together easily in a myriad of configurations. It’s clean and extremely functional, but yet it’s not thoroughly boring like most shelving. And it’s cheap, too.
You can see all the components online at the Muji net store [in japanese]
Square paper tube rack system [ifdesign.de]

A gravestone shop I pass on the way from the hotel to the supermarket offers cute gravestones as an alternative to the traditional obelisk variety. I asked, and they’re not just for decorating your Japanese garden. Couldn’t bring myself to ask if they actually got permission from Sanrio and Disney for these, though. It didn’t seem polite.


They’re about 140,000 yen each, and look like they were computer-carved from a smaller doll. The Kitty actually has a bow in contrasting red granite, and an actual hoodie, much like Degas’ Dancer has an actual tutu. Yes, I just compared Hello Kitty to Degas.

My thumbnail generator’s on the fritz, but here are some pictures I’ve taken around Tokyo using my Sharp TM-150. It’s pretty sweet for a phonecam, because it has a rather rare combination of decent megapixel camera and removable SD memory for cheap and easy mass image transfers.
First up is this Business Software Association commercial running on the Tokyu train:

Translation: “Company presidents who make you use illegally copied software are the worst!!”

“Hello, is this BSA?”

First of all, this whole Bathing Ape thing? Chill the flip out, people, it’s just not that cool. Bape is just Gap for the overly self-involved.
Anyway, TMN‘s mention of hopstop.com, a site for figuring out subway-to-subway trips in the city, reminds me it’s time to post about Norikae-Annai, aka Transfer Info, which is the same service for Tokyo.
It’s insanely helpful, if not as easy to start using cold; it gives you multiple trip options, indicating the fastest, cheapest, shortest on-train riding time… For untangling the spaghetti bowl that is Tokyo’s train/subway system, it’s pretty much indispensable.
I’ve got picture of Tadao Ando’s controversial new Jingumae apartment buildings nearing completion on Omotesando, the treelined main st of Harajuku. Ando’s concrete grid with a milky glass skin is starting to peek out of the scaffolding. Unfortunately, much of the opposite side of the street is now glass skin, too, so the street’s getting homogenized pretty quick. The interesting part of Ando’s buildings may be the courtyards, though. [Mori–who else?–tore down the Dojunkai Aoyama apartment buildings, revolutionary but crumbling 1927 concrete-and-ivy structures that served as incubators for much of the neighborhood’s alternative art and design scenes over the years. Oh well.]

Those penguins are everywhere. Remind me to include subjects in my next documentary that translate into cute plushtoys, because they have marched into every corner of the city.

Hedge funds are a lot like trucking companies: they’re usually started by one rather strong-willed guy who gets fed up with his bosses and decides he’s going to work for himself. One of the first things these egotistical entrepreneurs do is come up with a name and an identity for their companies. In both cases, the process is entertainingly amateurish, at least from a branding professional’s perspective.
Trucker logos–which I study regularly from my driver’s seat on the turnpikes between DC and NY–are achingly literal; I can easily imagine a trucker dictating the logo to his “artistic” sister-in-law [“It’s got a map, with a scroll on it, like the Declaration of Independence. And a cross.” “Put my name on a scroll, like the Declaration of Independence.” “It’s gotta be classy, with my coat of arms on it. And old-style writing.”] They’re little windows into what one man sees as important to get across: his ambition, his faith, his name.
So when the Wall Street Journal says hedge fund managers are trying to come up with names that are “soaring, mighty, fast or majestic,” –and that they frequently use their own initials–it feels familiar.
The hedge fund guys who put a lot of time into it also try to sound erudite and exclusive, like they’ve already arrived. They feel their fund’s name must somehow communicate not just their strategy or methodology, but their outlook on life; their firms are extensions of themselves. They try to assure potential investors–high net worth individuals and other fund managers–that they understand how these things are done. They’re a particular kind of unabashed lifestyle marketing, with a personal touch.
And so what’s important to hedge fund managers, besides Greek gods? There are the formative writers from college–I’ve seen Thoreau, Melville and Proust references–they presumably don’t have time to read anymore. But what’s most important to hedge fund guys, it seems–besides themselves–are luxe vacation spots: Aspen; mountains in Maine; that river in Idaho or Argentina where they go fly fishing; the peak near Val d’Isere with the double black diamond helicopter skiing. The Good Life. [thanks, TMN]

This afternoon just after 4:30, we heard a low rumble and felt everything sway and tremble for about 15-20 seconds. It was strong enough to make you stabilize yourself, but not so powerful that people realized it right away.
We were at Open Campus Day at ISAS/JAXA, the Japanese Aerospace Agency’s mission control center for Jean’s X-ray telescope satellite, Suzaku. We were in the lobby of the building; the sheet glass handrails along the central staircase all wavered back and forth throughout the quake.
In the mean time, a bunch of train lines across the Tokyo region were shut down, which backed up human traffic, even to Machida, on the west side of Tokyo. [Of course, watching the news, it turns out that Yokohama, on our side of Tokyo Bay, and opposite the epicenter, registered at least a 5 on the Richter scale.]
Anyway, the only real effect we’ve had is having to heft the stroller up five flights of stairs at the hotel because the elevators aren’t working anywhere.

A man can go his whole life waiting in vain for a week such as this one, where he has occasion to thank both Hulk Hogan and Pauly Shore for their [advertising] largesse.
From now on, I’ll just have to learn to live with the knowledge that it’s all downhill from here.

So maybe you’ve noticed the “1 in 12 wins!” promotion campaign on the lids of most Coke products the last few months. As a pathetically, alarmingly addicted, inveterate loyal Diet Coke drinker, I know I have. The lids are on 20-oz and even 2-liter bottles, but the prize is a free 1-liter bottle of product. While I have to admire the company’s insidiously effective strategy of getting America to change its idea of a serving of Coke [over the years, we’ve gone from 8-oz glass bottles, to 12-oz cans, to 20-oz bottles, and now to 1-liter, or, in NYC’s case, 1.5-l bottles which are, that word again, insidiously easy enough to drink out of], I have to say, from where I sit, the campaign is an utter and complete failure; it has turned my Diet Coke buying and consuming experience into an annoying, shame-filled, welfare hell.
It’s not that I never win; that’s not a problem. It’s that many retailers refuse to redeem the little caps, even if they sell product with the contest-bearing lids, and even if they carry 1-liter bottles (which turn out to be in far fewer distribution channels/retailer types than you might expect, especially in DC and NYC where we live). And it’s not like I can tell you which kind of retailers reject them; I’ve had it happen at grocery stores, 7-11’s, gas stations, Korean delis, newsstands, bodegas, on the NJ Turnpike (where I’ve won at one rest stop and was unable to redeem at another), chain drug stores–there’s no way to know if you’ll fail without trying.
It doesn’t take many failed attempts to redeem a winning cap, which have involved confounding–and even angry–explanations from store managers about how Coke won’t credit them for the freebies, or how they don’t use a Coke distributor so they’re not participating in the campaign, etc.–to make one weary of the fight for one’s right to free soda. Except that it’s not a right, it’s an entitlement. Welfare.
You’re reduced, essentially, to begging for a dollar (or $1.50-1.75, usually) from a diffident cashier or a put-upon manager, when it’s obvious that you can afford it, you cheap bastard, trying to get something for nothing. Meanwhile, the line builds up behind you, and now you’re the jerk who’s holding everyone up for what, a dollar? I’ll give you a dollar to get out of the way and let me buy these Pampers, ya junkie!
But it’s not like I sought this out; I didn’t scratch off anything, or Supersize to get two more chances to win. Coke put me in this situation where I feel like a wronged, government-cheese-stealing welfare queen, whose resentment builds with the fresh taunt of each unredeemable winning lid I find; they’re lining up on the kitchen window sill pissing me off at this very moment. Now every time I lose, I feel a small sense of relief, one less pang I’ll have to endure.
Before I decided to rant–I’ll show them, Don’t they realize I have a blog??–here, I actually called the Coca Cola company for redress, sure, but also to report that their marketing campaign was having the exact opposite effect on at least one loyal, concerned customer. A very sympathetic representative comforted me, asked who these offending retailers were (um, all of them? I got so ashamed, I stopped trying. choke back the pent-up tears.), and asked would I be willing to speak with someone from the marketing and promotion department within 7-10 days? Sure, of course, I just want what’s best for you, Diet Coke.
She took down my number, and then she offered to mail me eight coupons for free 2-liter bottles. No offensee, I said, but the one time I called to get my money back from a Coke machine, I got one of your corporate coupons, and I couldn’t find a retailer who’d take it.
[update: my wife reminds me of a recent development, where I was able to use a bottlecap at the on-campus “grocery” store at Georgetown, where we’d taken the kid to the pediatrician. I figured it was because these college students were Coke’s most important customers (and also their cheapest and most demanding, and with the most unalloyed sense of entitlement and self-absorption)… Oh, Diet Coke, you know me so well. I could never stay mad at you…]

Gotta give a big shoutout to the folks at NASA and JAXA, the Japan Space Agency, for the successful launch Sunday of Astro-E2, the next generation of X-ray telescope satellites.
Astro-E2 was the working name of the satellite on the ground; it was a rebuild of Astro-E, which blew up when its rocket went off course soon after launch in 2000. Since that mishap, there has been a gap in the X-ray spectrum that scientists could study. Two other X-ray telescopes (or spectrometers, actually) are in orbit right now: one is called Chandra, and there’s one called XMM-Newton, which is run by the European Space Agency. All three were designed to be complementary in their coverage of the X-ray spectrum and their resolution.
It’s traditional to wait and name a satellite only after it completes its second orbit, and after Astro-E2 made its second 90-minute pass over its Japanese launch site, it was announced that the name would be “Suzaku,” which translates variously as “red sparrow,” or “phoenix.” It derives from a creature guarding one of the four points of the compass on ancient Chinese astronomical charts, and it apparently has some regenerative characteristics like the phoenix in western mythology, something that obviously appealed to those scientists responsible for building and using this important satellite.
Those people include my wife, Jean, who is calibrating and characterizing the XRS, or X-Ray Spectrometer, and who will use it to continue her research on the composition and behavior of binary neutron stars. Congratulations and good luck. If I live to be 100, I’ll never figure out why someone so smart decided to marry me, but hey, I ain’t complaining.

Suzaku/Astro-E2 Homepage [nasa.gov]
How ’bout that, Suzaku is also the name of an anime demon character in Yu Yu Hakusho [absoluteanime.com]

“I mean, my first thought when I heard — just on a personal basis, when I heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought, ‘Hmmm, time to buy.'”
– from an on-air transcript of Brit Hume, Washington Managing Editor, FoxNews, 7/7/2005.

Credit where it’s due: one summer in the Hamptons, a housemate picked up Zsa Zsa’s autobiography at the Southampton library booksale–the one written in response to her Beverly Hills copslapping incident, not the other one–and it was hi-larious. Lots of stuff like, “I wear nothing in bed. Except for diamonds.”

Zsa Zsa Gabor In Critical Condition After Stroke [nbc4, via trent]
Buy Zsa Zsa Gabor’s One Lifetime Is Not Enough, from $0.49 at Amazon [amazon]

Nothing like a terrorist attack to whipsaw our sense of context, priorities and emotions. From Kottke‘s links this morning [note: the older, carefree links are at the bottom]:

# A series of explosions in London this morning during rush hour; at least 2 dead and 160 wounded   # 
The explosions were coordinated and officials have shut down the tube and central bus service.
# Mariopedia is “an illustrated listing of virtually every character, item, and enemy from the ‘Super Mario Universe'”   # 
# A list of mini golf holes based on movies   # 
“Raiders of the Lost Ark: You must putt the ball precisely into the idol’s head, or a 15-foot-high, 1-ton golf ball comes rolling after you.”

A scene this past weekend at a wedding in the Hudson River Valley:
At dusk, a 6-year-old boy would charge up to the younger kids and, with his fists full of sparklers, he would roar and shake his hands until they would run away crying.
When the sparklers went out, he marched around proudly, shouting, “I am the dominant democracy! I am the dominant democracy! Did you see them? They bow down to me!”
Happy Fourth of July!

The Times’ Kelefa Sanneh sounds pissed off, but weary, as he unpacks the contradictions and outright hypocrisy of mixtapes and the RIAA’s stunt raid on Mondo Kim’s last week:

So while record labels donate money to honor a man who helped promote mixtapes, the trade group representing the labels cracks down on those who sell them. And who goes to jail? Well, suffice it to say that the police haven’t arrested any of the major-label record executives who profit from the hype generated by mixtapes.And who scout out new talent at Kim’s. And the RIAA neglects to mention that the artists whose authority they claim also work hand in hand with mixtape producers to release, promote, test, and experiment with tracks.
Mixtape Crackdown Sends a Mixed Message [nyt]

While I smirked at the transparent publicity-hounding of Nike’s store-you-can’t-go-in-unless-you’re-cool-enough when I first saw it a few weeks ago, I figured it couldn’t work; no one’d fall for it and actually care because–hello!–it’s such an obvious stunt. I mean, the craptrap restaurant Jekyll & Hyde on 57th & 6th never lets people in immediately, either, but lines them up on the street. If tourist maroons fell for it, I always figured New Yorkers could spot a Barnum-level manipulation a block away. I guess I was wrong.
In this week’s NYT Magazine, a writer accompanies three celebrities in whose reflected glow NikeID wished to bask: an artist, a designer, and an NBA shoe salesman. [Never mind that the whole thing is fraught wtih publicist-paper complicity issues. This ain’t On The Media, folks, and I have a lot of room to talk, anyway, what with the Times picking up about a quarter of my Jamba Juice tab each month.]
What I got from the Times piece, though, was how hermetic NikeID’s own design concept for customization turns out to be, and how thoroughly at odds it is with the influencers and outside creatives’ tastes. I mean, “despite some gentle urging from the design consultants,” Vince Carter replicated the archetypal Nike shoe–white with a Carolina Blue swoosh–and both Sarah Morris and Narciso Rodriguez chose monochrome designs; Morris even chose the putty grey sample shoe.
Customizing Nikes is to expressing your individual creativity what rhythmic gymnastics is to sports. Whatever the people who actually do it obsessively say, most sensible people can see it for what it is after a couple of colorful swooshes.

Just Do It Yourself [nytmag]
Note: this post was inspired by Jen’s inspired takedown on Unbeige