Go Get Your Jacket

NIB

My hippie-dippy high school had an "art barn" and my friend Catherine (now a well-regarded painter, come to think of it) and I used to hide out in there taking our artworks more seriously than they warranted. Late one winter afternoon, trying to capture the opaque yet faintly luminous jade green of a bunch of grapes, I mixed up a color so alluring that Catherine, agreeing that she probably shouldn't eat it, dabbled a finger on my palette and touched it to her belt-loop. "I just want to keep it," she said.

So did I, although I stopped short of painting my pants with it. Some years later, though, I stumbled upon that green again in a Brooklyn junk shop. It was a Jadite plate from the 40s or 50s, a piece of cheap mass-produced mid-century glassware (often miscategorized as "depression glass") that would have been given away at a movie theater or with a box of some detergent your grandmother used to use. I just wanted to keep it, and for a good 10 years or so I hunted for pieces at flea markets and on the random glassware shelves of dusty Goodwill stores in the seedier parts of town(s). I wasn't alone in this, of course-- lots of people liked Jadite-- but t was still cheap and still showing up at flea markets and junk stores. And then one day it all  disappeared, to reappear in antique-shop windows and (once it existed) on eBay, with shocking price tags. What happened to humble Jadite to elevate its worth so suddenly and so steeply? Martha Stewart happened, and while there were no masses of women and gay men following my every aesthetic move, there certainly were for Martha. Jadite green became Martha green and my crappy yet lovely dinnerware became "collectible."

Oh well. I can live without the hunt for cheap glass plates, although it was fun. But I'm not sure I can live with the relentless collectible-ization of, not only everything I like, but pretty much everything, period. And if I can live with the toys of my own childhood becoming rare vintage collector's items commanding comically high prices at antique toy fairs, I am not sure I can handle toys from the 90s and early aughts doing the same. 

Some weeks before Chanukah this year, I sat down with Lilah and googled her suggestion, "princess doll" (with my refinement, "- disney - barbie") and scrolled through the surprisingly paltry  results. Too ugly, too sexy. too expensive, too, um, princessy... untill we landed on this:

 

Too cute, right? By which I mean, just cute enough. We liked her, and I liked her even better when I realized she wasn't even a proper princess,j ust Madeline, you know, of "twelve little girls in two straight lines" fame, dressed up as a princess. She was also used, but in EUC and what the hell, 20 bucks, and we were done.

Except no-one can be a princess ALL the time, so she'd need her school uniform, with its cunning little yellow hat, to change into. It was here that I discovered that these litttel dolls and their hundreds of tiny accessories aren't made anymore, and are, inevitably, "collectibles" now. I managed to kit her out with the uniform ad a little bed and a couple of other things but did you know that clothes for the 8" Eden brand Madeline doll, NIB, go for upwards of 95 bucks a set on eBay? 95 bucks! Who is buying this stuff?

Not little girls who want to play with them, obviously. And not their parents, either, I'm willing to bet. A $95.00, 3" high "recital" dress, still in the box, is going on some fussy older lady's high shelf, to be gloated over and dusted and, probably sold, eventually, at a  substantial mark-up, to some other fussy lady to complete her collection. And all of those fussy ladies are pissing me off. 

I get the appeal, I really do. I was pulled into searching and watching and poaching and pouncing to get my set too, and in the process I learned all kinds of arcane signifiers (Madeline dolls come with "flat hands" or not, "original faces" and new). The hunt is addictive, the good find triumphant. But it's still just a cute piece of vinyl junk. 

Why, as Marya put it, why oh why must everything be either disposable or collectible?

Post creepy animals

I hope to pull together a Halloween round-up but in the meantime, a question:

What the hell is this?

It's called "Horse Rita" which is helpful, since I'm not sure I'd ever have guessed. I thought it was a Bactrian camel. Anyway, it looks abashed and a bit abject. It hopes you won't beat it. 

The company, which is called Esthex (i'd expect to see this name attached to something like a blackhead extractor, but what do I know, maybe it's the founder's actually name: Oleg Esthex, of the Central Transdanubian Esthexes) makes many products  seemingly born for a life of exile on The Island of Misfit toys, iincluding the puzzlingly named "Cat Door":

 

That's what it says: "Cat Door." If that thing above is Rita the horse, then this is, I suppose, Door the cat, but why? Is their dog called "Leash?" Why is Rita there not called Stall, or Shit,  or some other random noun occasionally associated with the word "horse?" There's just something about calling a cat "Door"  that seems directly translated from the Toddler (2-year-olds are forever naming their loveys things like "Sponge" or "Balloon" or "Velcro") or possibly, via Babel Fish, from the Betelguesian. That thing just does not have any of the markers that constitute "cute" on this planet. Nor does it have any but the most rudimentary vestigial ears or tail, so its chances of reading as "cat" are pretty slim. I think it vaguely resembles a four-legged arachnid, or possibly one of the probably miss-reconstructed beasts from the Burgess Shale. 

Perhaps the indie-born trend toward "quirky" stuffed animals, which began at places like Etsy (which means the worst examples should be showing up at Regretsy) before taking off for the big time in the jolie-laide persons of the Ugly Dolls, should be running its course by now. Critters meant for kids have gone from quirky to just plain ugly to frankly alarming. I'm all for nontraditional standards of beauty, but that thing isn't nontraditional, it's just wrong.

Boys Toys

 

These dispiritingly colorless toys are from an outfit called Nova Natural Toys and Crafts, whose smug little catalog arrived here over the weekend. I'd never seen them before. My initial response is to hate them, since in my experience children care little about sustainability and toxic run-off and really like color (not to mention noise). But these trucks are actually pretty groovyonce you really take a look at them. They look a bit sturdier than the similar ones from Plan Toys, and the real working parts look like they might just really work. At sixty bucks a truck, they had better.

So I suppose I would have been leaning toward "Expensive, but they look like fun, plus you could always paint them" before I even got to that last one, on the bottom right there. But do you know what that is? That is a Unimog. They make a Unimog!  

No, I'd never heard of them either until I started hanging around with my husband, who always has the right tool for the job, except, well, he doesn't have an expensive German heavy-duty high-clearance  off-road vehicle* to go desert-ratting in.  But I do believe he would like to. So if Nova Toys and Crafts, the kind of outfit I'd otherwise have suspected of valuing virtue over fun, understands that a (certain type of) boy** needs a Unimog, I'm putting them on the "cool toys if you can afford them" list. Just like the Unimog itself. 

*(from Wikipedia, and not my bad grammar): New Unimogs can be purchased in either of three series:

1. Medium series 405, also known as the UGN ("Geräteträger" or equipment carrier), is available in the U300-U500 model.
2. heavy series 437, also known as the UHN ("Hochgeländegängig" or highly mobile cross country), is available as the U3000-U5000 model.
3. U20 is the smallest Unimog. It is based on a shortened U300 frame and has a cab over engine compartment from the Brazilian Accelo light truck (Caminhões Leves) series.

Hochgeländegängig!

**Yes, yes, girls too. But I don't happen to be married to one. 

Not all games are good games

I may have made fun of it, a little, at the the time, but I was pretty delighted when the National Museum of Play inducted the cardboard box and the stick into their  National Toy Hall of Fame, What could be more delightful than watching some bright little body turn an abandoned piece of packaging into a fort, a train, a cave, and a helicopter in rapid succession? Even when you bought the box's original contents, at considerable expense, to amuse him and he ignores it in favor of the box, it's still gratifying. It's the kind of thing you pretend to gripe about while secretly gloating about how imaginative your kid is. They all do it, but it's always special. 

The stick may be slightly more controversial, what with its greater probability of being deployed as a weapon, either imaginary  (light saber) or real (stick). Plus, there's that whole "putting your brother's eye out" thing. Still, kept under decent control the stick is a worthy device, and, again, it's good to see them relying on their own imaginations and creativity and not on, say, Mattel's. 

We've  given them discarded plastic food-storage bins, rolls of masking tape, empty buckets (they play "garbage," which is a bad game, so maybe we won't give them any more buckets), mailing tubes, plain blocks, and nothing, letting them forage for themselves and see what they can come up with. It's all good.

The other day they were playing with some of those, and some other stuff, none of it officilally toys. They were making up their own game and screeching with laughter and, at first intermittently and then increasingly often, with indignation and possibly pain. I got up. 

"Hey! What are you guys doing in there?"

"Playing 'Bonk The Head,' mom,"  answered Lilah. 

Oh. 

Foamy!

As a former child who lived for new art supplies (O giant tin box of Caran d"Ache pencils, I will never forget you!) I've been giving these gimmicky high tech kids' art products a jaundiced look.They seem so single-tasker, so limiting.  Stamps that stamp only on specialized paper, water colors where you use only water because the color, such as it is, is already impregnating the paper, you know the stuff. Most of it is from Crayola, which is kind of extra-insulting, since what could be less gimmicky than an old-school Crayola crayon?

Since I have children and they live in my house and wear clothes I bought them, I'll admit that I do embrace washability. The crayons and paints we had as kids may have had a certain gravitas-- having your roots in Renaissance pigment-binding techniques will do that to you-- but they sure as hell weren't washable. One enthusistic muraling session and your dad would have to repant the living-room, and I doubt he was ever very cheerful about it. 

I also kind of like this weird plastic modeling stuff, also from Crayola. It doesn't take as fine an impression as Play-Doh or plasticene, but it also does not stain, does not crumble or slump, does not smell funny, and does not devolve to that grim greenish brown all Play-Doh quickly achieves if your children's Doh-based activities are not strictly monitored. 

I made this little firepigman for Avi and left him straddling a coffee-mug rim overnight to dry. He dried down to a spookily light-weight space age permafoam. I was quite pleased with him.  

I wish I knew why Avi then dismembered him carefully, leaving a little pile of firepigman parts not unlike the little pile of vole parts your cat leaves on the stoop for you, but tidier. I really liked my firepigman! And I still kind of like the modeling foam. 

L-o-l-o lolo

These little "lolos" (say it out loud) were both kids' favorite toy for well over a year, probably two, and indeed are still popular even now, when I think to bring them out. Despite the constant "where is your little dolly?"  calls from well-meaning grandma types in the park as the kids race by with their (empty) doll strollers, it's never been about the dolls. It's about the wheels. Of course. 

While I've often claimed that your basic toddler would find any old wheel affixed to anything-- a pointy stick, a wad of paper towels, a brick--  just as entertaining as any hand-carved, vegetable-dyed Montessori wheelie-gig  from the good-for-you toy store, the 10-buck Target doll stroller occupies a nice comfortable middle ground,  a perfectly simple, perfectly affordable, perfectly appropriate toy for any walking baby. So sold am I on this after watching Lilah and Avi whizz around with theirs for two years running (and wheeling) that I've caught myself  quite uncharacteristically approaching total strangers in the toddler-toys aisle to steer them away from the fancy walker things and toward the humble lolo. 

I guess I'd assumed, though, that since the lolos (now called "strollers, alas, at least by the children) had been out of sight for a while, replaced by more preschoolery scooters and tricycles, they would at last have faded slightly from consciousness. Wrong again! I've been fretting and sweating the transition to preschool this fall, and badgering the kids mercilessly with my relenttlesly upbeat social stories about how they will go, and there will be lots of friends, and the teachers will be nice, and mommy will leave but she'll always be back, and how they'll have this and do that and la la la la... and...

"And we'll have strollers," declared Lilah confidently after this morning's over-prepare the children session.

"Um, sure, I guess."

"Mine will be pink." 

Blue period

I can't imagine these constitute infringement, since they are horrible underlit iPhone shots nobody could ever mistake for the real thing, so here is Olivia, star of page and (small) screen, experimenting with appropriation and homage  (here, referencing late-period Pollack) on her bedroom wall:

And here's her mother's reaction:

Now, I'm an Olivia fan. I think she's a great little girl/pig/girl: funny and resourceful and a friend to dirt, lizards, and interesting bugs, all while wearing a tiara and a tutu. It would never have occurred to me that she might be anything but an excellent role model for my own little girl. Olivia is a dancer; so is Lilah. Olivia is a painter, and check out the bold brushwork and strong graphic sense exhibited in these works from Lilah's recent Blue Period:

On paper

And in this site-specific work for kitchen door:

Note: Oh, look! There's a "splosh red and black paint all over the wall" GAME on the Olivia site. What do we think? Show it to her as soon as she gets home, or plunk down for some sort of net-nanny thing to insure that she never, ever sees it? 

Oh, of course I'll let her play with it, but I also get the feeling I'll be making that face a lot in upcoming years. 

Toys R Not Us

Well, maybe toys R us, but Toys R Us is not us, or not me, and I decided this weekend that you can't make me go there ever again.

It was hot and the girl was sickish and we couldn't go to the beach, so we decided to make a field trip to the far suburbs and do some birthday reconnaissance and get some doo-dads to raise everyone's spirits. But once there and wandering the aisles I decided that TRU is just not going to work for me. I swear I'm not a "little and funky and inefficient is always better" person (often yes, but not always) but the monolithic brandedness and characterness (even a small pack of pencils is so encrusted with Disney princesses there could be anything in there: lipsticks, glue, vibrators...)  and the unrelenting sameness just sucks the joy right out of toys for me. I have two little kids and get so much pleasure out of procuring cool stuff for them that I have a blog dedicated to the project and yet I go in there and I just don't even want to buy anything. That can't be right.

But the prices, it has to be worth it for the prices, right?  Eh. I have the sales slip here and compared most of what we got and it's exactly the same on Amazon, so here's the new plan: if it's mass market and we know what it is and have determined the kids should have one, we order it. If we think it would be fun to go look at toys and maybe buy a few trinkets to brighten a dull Saturday afternoon, we go the local/independent/inefficient route, not that there's anything particularly inefficient about an independent toy store. Maybe there's no parking lot the size of North Dakota, baking in the South Bay sun, but that's a plus in my book. We park on the street, or we take the train.

I never thought it would take the pursuit of a PlayMobile fireman set and a plastic tiara to finally turn me into a hippie, but you never do see these things coming. And I still love Target, and hippies don't shop at Target, right?

On the other hand...

...maybe bubble machines just hate Jennifer.

More tea, Mrs Nesbitt?

Something about this tea set from Green Toys just flipped my "want" switch. It's got the do-gooder recycled milk jug thing going, and the darling mid-century vaguely Fiesta Ware styling, and is unbreakable (well, break-resistant).  Plus, its essential tea-setness alone was enough to spark images of my kids chirping "Another digestive biscuit, Miss Feathersham?" at each other while pouring endless tiny cups of "tea," and how can you not want that?

I'd mentioned it to their grandmother and it magically materialized here last week. They have been asking for tea parties ever since, and while they are not quite at the "another digestive biscuit?" stage you have to admit they are pretty damned close:

 

My mom wondered, initially, if perhaps the entire tea party concept would be lost on them, since where would they even have encountered such a thing, but she lacks my exhaustive  internalized catalog of Backyardigans episodes. Problem solved :