Silver Jacket

Category: Internet

  • Eye of Le Tigre

    LetigreRemember the LeTigre clothing line? Those Izod wannabe’s from the near side of the pond? They’re attempting a comeback [pun intended. pun will become clear later.] but seem to be struggling with their identity. Go to their homepage and scroll through the marketing wankery. It begins: "LeTigre is an American classic…" and ends: "Sported by American icons such as Ronald Reagan, Wilt Chamberlain, Peter North, and LL Cool J, LeTigre is worn today by YOU!"

    An odd collection of characters. Wait, Peter North? Hmmm… let’s Google him. Whoa, Nelly! Um, maybe there is another Peter North, one who is obscured on Google by the popularity of certain recreational bodily functions. So we go to Wikipedia’s Peter North disambiguation page. Well, there’s the first one, and then the only other options are a Canuck and a Limey. Looks like we had the right guy.

    So what does LeTigre want with Peter North? It kind of puts a different spin on their interpretation of iconic Americana, but Wilt and LL "Big Ole Butt" Cool J do indeed seem to fit that picture. With Reagan, it’s more of a linguistic metaphor. With the screwing of the masses, and all of that.

    If you click on the "Contest" link, it takes you to http://www.collegehumor.com/hottestgirl/. So that’s LeTigre’s intended audience: young males, who we know are horndogs. But still, I can’t believe this knowing wink, this most rancid of Easter eggs, really made it past LeTigre’s PR office. Oh well. Ronald Reagan and Peter North. Two great communicators, brought together by style.

    update:
    It all makes sense. It’s been suggested to me that LeTigre isn’t aligning itself with the likes of Izod (and J. Crew and Polo). They just have a slightly preppier take on the American Apparel manifesto: using porn to go after the hipster ironist.

  • Tiger Style!

    KamasutradollsWhy do we buy furniture? To have sex on, right? Right. Finally a furniture seller has faced up to reality and offered a web interface that lets you animate people having sex on their wares. This is shopper-centric merchandising without the BS.

    Tok&Stok, Brazil’s answer to Crate&Barrel, provides for your enjoyment three tables, three couches, a beanbag chair, and what look to be two dog beds(!). Fun for the whole family…

    Under the description of each item, there are five "Suggestions of use." You’ve got your doggy style, your 69, your reverse cowgirl, and a few other standards (and exotics) I don’t recall the names of. (The muscle memory is strong though.) Take your pick and watch Moby and Sinead O’Connor rub naughty bits right there. In case they didn’t include your favorite Kama Sutra position, there’s a SuperSpecialBonusFeature that I just LURVE. Click on "my own style" and play with 27 variables, creating the most bizarro antigravity freakazoid borderline-non-Euclidean mf lovemonkeyness you can fathom. (You cannot, however, toggle off the damn floating hearts.)

    Presumably they created their Valentines Book of Styles after receiving too much icky returned merchandise or witnessing too many unmentionable incidents on floor demos. "Try before you buy"? Not so much. "Um, yeah, Union of the Tiger isn’t compatible with these arm rests. Oh, sorry if the cushions are stuck together."

    update:
    My friend Jack–who is a chaplain and a grandfather–looked at the site and wrote: "I enjoyed the furniture thing but thought it was not very diverse. In Massachusetts we would hope the narrowness of heterosexuality would not be celebrated."

    Indeed. At Brown we would have called it heteronormative. At Brown that’s about the worst insult there is.

  • Spammer Names: July Edition

    Top ten spammer names in my inbox for the month of July:

    10. Thumbtack K. Population
    9. Employees V. Shaver
    8. Sweatier C. Anthropomorphism
    7. Disagreeing R. Freakiest
    6. Seediness O. Obstetric
    5. Diagrammatic J. Kibitzed
    4. Presidency T. Chumminess
    3. Grammatical B. Boneless
    2. Funeral O. Undershorts
              [drumroll]
    1. Cupsful J. Tightwad

    Congratulations, Cupsful!
    Join me next month for the August edition. The competition looks heavy already.

  • Matt Hutson of the Day

    Matt_warhammerToday I salute you, fellow Matt Hutson, commander of the Sa’cea Tau army. (That is Hutson’s army for playing Warhammer 40,000.)

    According to Wikipedia, Warhammer 40,000 is a "science fiction tabletop miniature wargame." I think that means people get together with their tiny soldiers, roll dice, and move the delicately painted figurines around on a table until someone wins somehow. Also according to Wikipedia, specifically its thorough coverage of Warhammer 40,000, someone who contributes to Wikipedia has a raging hardon for Warhammer 40,000.

    Here is Hutson’s vivid description of his battle experience with the Sa’cea Tau army:

    So far I’ve played three games with this army. The first game I played was against Graham Davey’s Chaos Space Marine army. Unfortunately a Bloodthirster appeared right in front of my army, charging me before I had a chance to shoot it. There was little I could do after that as it munched my Broadsides and Fire Warriors severely weakening my firepower. In my second game however, also against Graham, the Bloodthirster appeared quite far away allowing me to take it out in one turn. Of particular note in this game was my Stealthsuit team that wiped out a unit of Khorne Berzerkers in just one turn. My most recent game was in the Studio Cityfight campaign against Ian Vincent’s Eldar. In the mission I had to take a building from the enemy. I used a huge unit of Kroot to take the building while all my Tau units poured shots into the building. By turn four I had managed to wipe out almost all of the Eldar to give the Tau a decisive victory.

    Boyakasha! Brings back memories of my college-era bar brawls. With such glorious success, Matt, it’s no wonder you sit atop all Matt Hutsons on the Google heap. You make us proud! Keep reaching for those stars!

  • We Got Your Back

    Nsfw_logoDo you know what I love? I love NSFW. The phrase. The first time I saw it, no one told me what it meant, but I figured it out immediately. And I have a theory that this experience is common.

    Okay, here’s the scenario. You’re at work, you’re surfing the web, you see a link for, say, "Adult Engrish." It’s ambiguous. Adult could mean developmentally mature or it could mean naughty. You look around you and wonder, Is this link safe for work? And then you see a note next to the link: NSFW. Gotcha. I’ll look at it later.

    Now there is even a website to streamline the process of sending NSFW links to friends.

    What I love about NSFW is what it implies about the work experience and human nature. We all waste time at work. And if you’re sitting at a desk using a computer with broadband for eight hours a day, your cursor will wander. The internet invites diversion (and subversion.) Whether it’s during lunch hour or before a big deadline, it happens. So NSFW acknowledges the common tendency and answers your question as soon as you ask it. It is a silent wink. You are part of a community–we get you and we are looking out for you.

    I am not overstating my point when I say that NSFW makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

    (more…)