Nike’s disappearing Basketball tights
At one point, Kobe Bryant made a big fashion statement by playing games wearing full length tights and got the basketball press and fans all interested. Then the NBA shut it down, banned the tights, and the soon to be product from Nike disappeared. Similar products were planned by other companies - Adidas and Under Armour, McDavid, possibly others - but have either been remarketed as running tights or just never saw the light of day. I’m fascinated by this. The idea that a product was good enough for the biggest brand in shoes and the best player in the NBA to get on board, but for some reason was hated so much by the NBA that the product was banned.
WTF? How are full length tights different from stupid arm sleeves? Tattoos are ok, but tights are off limits? Even though Adidas is now the official equipment provide of the NBA, players are still allowed to wear socks and shoes, and I assume underwear produced by other brands. Why not tights?
I recently tried compression socks from Nike. My calves felt great. I played longer, didn’t have leg cramps that night, and there was almost no soreness that night or the next day in my lower legs. My thighs - not so lucky. So why would the NBA want to deprive me of happy legs? Why would the NBA decide to take away the ability for Nike or Adidas to market such a product on the legs of the world’s most famous basketball players?
I have to know. I’m obsessed with this. I read about it online. Customer support at Nike has no idea, and claimed that I knew more about it than they did. Which is possible, but still.
Come on Nike. If I want to look like Peter Pan playing basketball, isn’t it my right? Especially if Kobe and LeBron are going to make it cool?!
APC Jeans
APC Jeans
Yes, THE jeans. APC jeans are magic. They require commitment. A new pair of APC New Standards comes to you hard, unwashed, stiff and TIGHT. You are supposed to order them 2 sizes down from your normal size. You are supposed to wear them for 6-12 months without washing them. You are supposed to enjoy the pain. For a month, it’s like having your dick in a vice. Then they slowly release their grip.
Then they deliver denim magic.
April will mark my 6th month with my first pair. Still unwashed. Still wicked awesome. I love them. What started as tight, stiff, comical pants are now comfortable jeans that look tailored to my body (not tight anymore, just well shaped.) Are most people likely to buy a pair of jeans that are ridiculously tight and uncomfortable and wear them for 6 months without washing? Absolutely not - which means more magic for freaks like me who are willing to commit. Thanks APC, for making sure I’ll always have at least 1 thing that is unlikely to ever catch on and become a fad.
If you have ever longed for the perfect pair of jeans, or spent countless hours trying on jeans and then going home irritated, depressed, enraged…then APC, and the ridiculous process that comes with them might just be for you.
MY Apc Jeans, new and old
By the way, my pants got press. That’s how awesome I am. If you wrap yourself around my butt for 6 months, you too will get an article. Like the bearded douche from the cheap suit commercials says, “I guarantee it.”
WORD TO YOUR MOTHER.
James Jean
Batter - James Jean
Descartes said that nothing anyone could write about was worth him reading - he wanted to experience things through his own eyes. Art is generally like that. I appreciate good art, but I love painting and drawing and the experience of creating art. Other people’s stuff is nice, but I would rather create visual work that suits my own asthetic. But I would adorn at least 25% of my body with artwork by James Jean. In fact, the only reason I don’t have a new tattoo is because I don’t have a clean version of his work to pull an image from - and I can’t decide what I want first. James Jean creates the kind of art work that is almost cruel - it’s so good it makes you think you’ll never be able to create anything as good.
I bought his Batgirl comics so I could frame the covers. He combines the spirit of manga, fine art, a kind of etherial spookiness, spirituality and modernity that I believe perfectly represents my own visual aesthetic. Old Japan and New, minimal and subtle and focused yet rich with detail. Songwriters used to say of Bob Dylan that he inspired them to write music, but also made them think they should give up. James Jean creates visuals that are like that for me.
Creepy but beautiful
If you haven’t enjoyed the James Jean experience, please visit his gallery websites for more of his work. I’m obsessed. The greatest thing ever would be for him to design a tattoo for me. The likelihood of that is slightly lower than my going back in time and beating Michael Jordan one-on-one in 1998, but a boy can dream. Please visit his website and see why James Jean is worthy of obsession.
http://processrecess.com
http://politewinter.com
Moleskines
mainstream, but still wicked awesome.
Sometimes when something becomes to much of a fad, I abandon it due it’s mainstreamness. Black frame glasses are almost there. Thank god beards never grew beyond hipsters and took off among normal joes. Surprisingly though, Moleskines are still a must have item. I have at least 10 in every room. They look cool, they come in a variety of perfect sizes, and depsite their having become fairly trite among designers and hipsters alike, I can’t stop loving them. I think I’ll make some cool leather covers for them.
My favorite: a DC city guide that I bought before moving to DC, which I eventually didn’t do. The economy may have wrecked my plans to join a creative agency in the nations capital, but my $10 DC city guide is still something I’m totally obsessed with.
I wish I could send a Moleskine to James Jean and have him fill it. That would be the greatest thing ever.
The economy (and every expert’s failure to understand it)
I can’t help but listen to NPR, various TV pundits, and every random idiot on the street who has an opinion about our failing economy and think that they are all full of shit. Ok, so tv pundits being full of shit is fairly obvious, but no one seems to have a clear understanding of what’s going on enough that they can predict what’s going to happen next.
I will now attempt to leverage my psychic abilities to predict the future of our economy, and along the way provide some insight about how we got here. *(Hint, I will not be speaking of bad mortgages and stupid banking practices because I think everyone now understands that stupidity.)
First, look at who is struggling:
Circuit City - Cut out qualified, tenured employees and hired less qualified apathetic drones to not give a shit about customers for less pay. Right. And they closed. This has nothing to do with bad mortgages.
Brokerages - So let me get this straight. Less regulatory oversight allowed brokers to turn Wall Street into a massive ponzi scheme with their investors money and 401Ks. This. Failed. In. The. 1980s. Idiots.
Compusa - Let’s not forget one of the first victims. Compusa was a total predictor of Americans running out of patience for poorly run big box retailers. News flash big box retailers, US consumers have lost patience in being manipulated, lied to, and treated like crap. Compusa and Circuit City were 2 of the worst practitioners in this area and deserved a terrible death.
Real Estate - LOL. Seriously. What more needs to be said? You can’t keep building forever and pushing up prices indefinitely. This is what happens when you let anyone be a real estate agent or mortgage broker and they end up treating the entire US housing market like a massive land grab. Bad deals, inflated prices, and record foreclosures.
Detroit - Ok, one more time Detroit. MOVE FASTER. People get sick of boring cars and bad gas mileage. Everyone BUT YOU has figured out that your cars look fucking gay and wear out too fast. And seriously, if you’re going to bank your entire business strategy on making bigger, fatter vehicles while gas prices continue to climb and instability in oil rich regions gets shakier by the day. You deserve a big fat failure.
Employees - You idiots. The world cannot sustain less than 5% unemployment because from my experience 6-8% of the US is unemployable. That means you, everyone that worked at Circuit City and Compusa. And hey morons in manufacturing - you know how your unions keep pushing up your wages and benefits? Yeah, that is called reducing profits are making American manufacturing less competitive. That means eventually, your greed will eliminate your job altogether. It reminds me of that stupid childrens fable about the dog with the steak seeing his reflection and dropping his steak and having nothing….ah, forget it. You’d better start going back to school or learning the culture in 3rd world countries because that’s who’s going to have your job in the next 5 years.
Look around folks. This isn’t a massive economic collapse the likes of which haven’t been seen since the great depression. People are still lining up for iPhones and Nintendos. This is about consumers right sizing the market. You want to make a profit - make better shit for people to buy. We don’t need 900 different brands of soap. We don’t need 5 different retailers selling the same shit +/- $.05. I’m not going to drive a mile to save a nickel and your employees are retarded. In this regard, republicans have it right - the market is a powerful force and if companies don’t keep up they should be allowed to fail on their own. That being said, no one ever considered the long term effects of having a decade of 3-4% unemployment.
Americans are staging the worlds first complete reset of both the economic and political system. They may not realize it, but look at the record fund raising by Barack Obama. Americans still buy innovation. Americans will still buy what they need. Companies thought that the pockets where bottomless pits of cash, and they are not. This is just consumers right-sizing the products and services they buy on a massive scale because now that the housing market has stabilized and the ridiculous equity payouts are gone, everything is just getting back to normal and normal people don’t need 4 65″ plasma tvs and 1 more American made truck that gets 10 mpg.
Apple, that goes for you too. There is not an infinite need for music players and laptops and if you make shitty products your consumers will leave you too. But I love my new iPhone, so thanks and keep up the good work.
I’m out bitches. What was the last thing you bought?
Best Buy sells everything at a competitive price and Amazon had a record Q4 in 2008.
Oooohhh…Cool Beer! (St. Peters)
Yesterday, on a random trip to the liquor store I met the sexiest beer in the world. A few bucks later, I took this beautiful creation home, laid it out in front of me on the kitchen table and starting snapping photographs. This beer is HOT. If this beer was a girl, it would probably be a supermodel. I MEAN, LOOK AT THIS BEER!! My god, it’s definitely the Giselle of beer - you couldn’t give a shit whether there is any depth or substance, so long as you get to look at it all the time. Unlike the aforementioned supermodel, with St. Peters beer I get to to take it’s top off. I really hope this beer is a delightful, delicious alcoholic treat. I look forward to being able to say, “OMG, this is the BEST BEER EVER!” Truth be told, even if it’s mediocre I will likely buy it again.
I’m not going to pretend that I bought this beer for any reason other than it’s amazing design. I love great packaging and product design, and it’s rare to see it. I have an Aeron chair, I have a Le Corbusier lounge chair, I have a Heywood Wakefield table, an iPhone, blah, blah, blah. This beer deserves to stand amongst these wonderful, beautiful examples of real world product design.
Why am I obsessed with, and prattling on about a freaking beer bottle you ask? Take a look:
St. Peters Ale, Stout and Porter
Son of a bitch, I love Anathallo
You must at least listen twice.
You have to hear it. The first 20 seconds of track 2 is just the perfect song for a chilly day in winter. Etherial, glowing, special but not too far in the distance that it’s not approachable.
I admit I have a tendency to like obscure music that is sometimes hard to immediately like. (*For the record, TV on the Radio is not that band.) In this case, i needed something that wasn’t too sad for the holidays but accepted the occasional melancholy of winter. Anathallo has filled that hole for me and in the process, made a very special record. You should go here: http://www.emusic.com/album/Anathallo-Canopy-Glow-MP3-Download/11291307.html
Remember, if you like Nickelback - stop reading my blog and sterilize yourself, because the world doesn’t need anymore stupid people.
Bois 1920 Cologne
Bois 1920 - Sushi Imperiale
I purchase cologne infrequently because it hurts to spend $70-90 on how I smell. This is exacerbated because what I like to smell, and what my wife likes to smell is generally not the same. And by generally, I mean damn near always. She likes Obsession. My last purchase was Ferragamo, which has a nice smell but is practically invisible within minutes. I’ve stopped being polite about how much I put on in the morning, but regardless, by 10am the scent is gone.
But…
I just found Bois 1920 and that might change everything. Bois 1920 is a natural cologne, which means more oils and more money. But it also tends to mean the scent will last longer, be more “present” when worn, and it has a greater chance of changing with the body chemistry. *I tend to find that alcohol based colognes stay truer to their scents whereas oil based scents change a bit once absorbed. It’s a terribly unscientific study and may not even be remotely accurate - but that’s my observation.
Because she likes a more spicy, vanilla, musk scent on me (and I can’t bring myself to wear Obsession) Bois 1920 has an option that fits perfectly. And even better, I like to smell it too. So, yes it’s more expensive, but it’s also a bold, longer lasting smell that she and I will both like and ever since I put it on I’ve been obsessed with it.
Is it odd to be really attracted to my own scent?
Learning Japanese.
Learning Mandarin Chinese is probably more relevant, but there is something about Japanese that has intrigued me for years. I haven’t actually “studied” Japanese, although my plans are in May ‘09 to begin studying via Rosetta Stone, but regardless of my lack of drive the interest is there.
I’ve looked into classes. None locally.
I’ve researched costs to travel. Not cheap.
I’ve considered posting a listing on Craigslist.com for a Japanese friend. Somehow can’t seem to find a way that doesn’t seem creepy.
My hope is that by the end of 2009 I will have the foundation of the Japanese language and can travel there to test my skills. Maybe I’ll release a popular music album so I can say, finally, that I’m huge in Japan. I will probably be the first white male to visit Japan for leisure who doesn’t secretly harbor a sexual fascination with Japanese school girls - a source of pride for me actually.
Moscot Glasses
Girls get all the cool shit. Fancy shoes. Fancy purses. Bajillions of accessories. Boobs.
What do guys get? Watches, tattoos and glasses. Everything else is just a variation on something relatively boring. Unless you’re a short asian kid with a hip-hop obsession, then you get to have a closet full of rare Nikes that are REALLY impressive…to other collectors…
But I found that the right pair of eye-glasses can cut through the wash of fashion mediocrity of Gap khakis and oxford shirts and make an otherwise shit-tastic fashion statement suddenly look a little more interesting. Enter Moscot, from New York. These glasses are great because they are bold, only available at Moscot, and most guys wouldn’t wear these. I have 2 pair - 1 for sunglasses. They aren’t as trite as Ray-Bans, but they will lead to one of the most fashionable people I’ve ever seen at any tech tradeshow walk up to me and ask me about my “great glasses”. He was wearing Dolce and Gabana frames, which were also nice. He was stunned that he didn’t know about Moscot, and he had a Brooklyn accent.
They also lead to moments where your smart-ass kids are watching Waynes World and say, “Hey dad, Garth is wearing your glasses.” Or when they watched Austin Powers and the six year old said, “Dad, he has your glasses.”
Stupid kids.