It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!

I hadn't thought about this until just last night, but I think my excitement level over holidays directly corresponds to when the traditional specials start airing on T.V. I had the pleasure of watching the Peanuts classic by Charles Schultz, It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown with my little boy last night. He seemed to get a kick out of it... and I enjoyed watching him be entertained by the same thing that entertained me this time of year when I was growing up. Did you realize it was made way back in 1966! Talk about staying power. Anyway, I'm feeling nostalgic over how excited I used to get for Halloween now... the Great Pumpkin was apparently a trigger. Just like Pavlov's dog! Happy Halloween!

Wikipedia link to The Great Pumpkin
IMDB link to Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin T.V. Special
Amazon link to buy the Charlie Brown video

Thinking about other shows synonymous with holidays... specifically Christmas:
A Christmas Story - (Side note: Ralphie popped up recently in The Break Up with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn!)
A Christmas Carol
It's A Wonderful Life
The claymation Rudolph videos
Of course, National Lampoon's take on Christmas

"Happy Halloween! I'm a Dinosaur!"

In the immortal words of my nephew, "Happy Halloween! I'm a dinosaur!" We've got it on video. Cute as hell.
"Did you know T-Rex's eat guys?"
"Are you sure Ross? They don't eat plants and trees?"
"No. They eat guys."

In the spirit of the season, here are a few sites to get you in the spirit:
Phantoms and Monsters Blog
ExtremeHalloween.com (costumes)
The Best Halloween Costume Ever (YouTube)
T.A.P.S (The Ghost Hunters)

Enjoy! Happy Halloween!

Noteable Other Design Blogs

It occurs to me that there are probably thousands of other design/designer's blogs out there in the blog universe. (I know, its an amazing moment of clarity) Permit me, if you will, to point out a few of my favorite.

design*sponge - Check out the mini-trends page. A daily website run by Brooklyn-based writer, Grace Bonney.
Design Observer - A blog that focuses on design and culture. Often points out the flaws in design and designer's work.
Feed Me Cool Shit - I find the title annoying, but the information spectacular. Great design, great content on design and culture.

A Painter and a Sculptor

Jason Ruhl is an artist who paints and works in mixed media. His stuff is minimalist with a history. There is often social commentary mixed in, along with the fantastically clever pop culture reference. He uses pink, which is an arbitrary comment by me, but I love pink. Seriously. His mixed media work includes compositions, of amongst other things, vintage ads and comics and medical drawings. I also think his Polaroids are reviving the media, and this new series of buttons has got some serious potential. Who doesn't love a good button.

Jason belongs to an informal artist's collective called No Fun. I don't believe I know any of this group personally, but they all seem to do great, interesting, valid work. Check out a collabrative effort including some of these artists at this blog spot.

Tracey Scheich is primarily a sculptor who's work is plain and simply elegant. The latest stuff I've seen called "Creatures" is elegant, but fun at the same time. I look at these creatures as little action figures in ceramic. And, that is a good thing in my opinion. These characters have a soul, and a back story, and a running narrative, and a future adventure with other ceramic friends. Love this stuff.

Visit their web sites. Get in touch with them. Buy lots of their work.

Images shown belong to their respective artist. Please visit their web sites for more.

The Cool Hunter

I like to think I am cool enough to "give a shout out" to the following site, but now that I think about it, I put quotes around "give a shout out" in addition to using the slang "give a shout out" which is really dated and not cool at all. Oh well. I accept my uncoolness.

Check out the following site if you want to be cool. The people who update this site are WAY cooler than I am:
The Cool Hunter

Picture above credit to The Cool Hunter.net. "Props" to The Cool Hunters, and the designer of the room shown. There I go again with those quote marks.

Hella-of-a Designer

Surfing the internet the other day looking for great designers, and the name Hella Jongerius keeps coming up. Rightfully so. One of a crop of great Dutch designers, formerly with the famous Droog Design, now producing work under Jongeriuslab. A substantial list of collections and design accolades to her credit. This is apparently an important designer for our time. I just like the stuff she designs. Insert description of work here... her work is nice to look at, but have you ever noticed that people who write reviews of things use the same language over and over again? Makes it feel unoriginal. I hate that.

Check out her site. I'm curious to hear what you might think we'll remember Jongeriuslab for in 30 years. What is the icon? Is there one piece? Will the style just get grouped into a big group of Dutch designers with "this style". Write a post. I'm curious about your opinions.

i Robot - i Like

Admittedly, I'm not on the cutting edge of the technology bubble here by talking about the Roomba robot vacuum and its siblings, by the iRobot company, but I do want one. More so recently than ever before. They just keep getting better, doing more and more jobs for us. Actually take the time to physically vacuum or wash the floor? Too easy. NOW, I can even get by without having to actually get my hands dirty cleaning my gutters with their new Looj. This is amazing! Live smart, not hard I like to say.

And, to add to the cool factor, so many people have been "hacking" the Roomba, that the company now offers an open platform model that can be customized. I understand one person was able to program it to retrieve beers from the refrigerator. That is so completely, impractically cool!

Or, they also offer a ConnectR robot, which you can use to interact with your kids, or pets instead of you! How good can it get? "Gee honey, I'm sort of worn down from work today and really need a break. Just send in the robot to talk to little Timmy about how school was today." Alright, I realize I just switched to sarcastic. But there are limits to what duties we should expect robots to do for us. And I suppose it does require some interaction from you... BUT, I digress... Check out the Roomba at iRobot.