let lemons be angry

I saw some interesting things this weekend. There were the socks with one ear each,
men pretending to be menacing at the toy festival,

women sipping cocktails while perched on chair backs,

and boys nervously trying the same,

and the perfect yellow room to lounge around in.

LB was psyched about Verner Panton because we are quite the furniture folk, always testing seats in ikea and muji and wishing we needed them. He resonated in particular with these yummy yellow hammocks, and the man himself when he said, "I have to exaggerate to make a point." It's a designer's dream, to influence an era the way Panton influenced the look of the 70s. Or perhaps the 70s influenced him. How does design culture sweep into everything and meld with music, popular thinking, technology? Check out www.vernerpanton.com, it has redundant sound effects and animation overkill but an interesting presentation of the environments he designed.

The toy festival at SAM was disappointing for me because I imagined there to be themed rooms with tin toys, collectors' Barbies, traditional toys like pick-up sticks and the like. Instead there were mostly men's toys, meaning action figurines and comics. If I were a kid brought to the toy festival I would have been rather bored. The poster and press ad said nothing about such a targeted festival. Still they did have free popcorn and costumed figures walking around, and for $50 lb picked up a very cool mp3 player that transforms into a robot.

If anything could lure me to go to the states, it would probably be to go to their toys 'r'us.